The
Ethiopian government is engaged in its bloodiest crackdown in a decade, but the
scale of this crisis has barely registered internationally. According to Human
Rights Watch, more than 400 people, including many children, have been killed by the country's security forces in
Oromia, Ethiopia's largest region, with lethal force unleashed against largely
peaceful, student-led protests.
For the past seven months, security forces have fired live
ammunition into crowds and carried out summary executions. While students were
first on the streets, many others have joined them, including teachers,
musicians, opposition politicians and healthcare workers. Tens of thousands of
people have been arrested, some of whom remain in detention without charge, and
there are credible reports that detainees have been tortured or beaten – some
of them in public. Hundreds of
other people have been forcibly disappeared.
In normal circumstances, a
crackdown on this scale would generate large-scale media attention and prompt
strong international censure. But global media coverage has been very limited,
in part because of Ethiopia's draconian restrictions on media reporting and the
difficulties journalists face in accessing the region. The response of
governments internationally, including the British government, has also been
extremely muted.
The
reason for this is not a lack of information: diplomats in the country have a
fairly good idea of what is going on in Oromia. Instead, it appears to be a
flawed political calculation that the UK's massive investment in Ethiopia's
development efforts (over 300 million pounds of aid is provided annually) would
be undermined by public criticism or greater pressure on the government to rein
in its abusive security forces.
The
other obstacle is Ethiopia's acute food crisis, where a severe drought – the
worst since the famine of 1984-85 – has left 18 million people in need of aid.
Global attention on this issue has led many governments around the world to
overlook or downplay the other very urgent crisis unfolding in Oromia.
But
these trade-offs are short-sighted and counter-productive. Ethiopia's
repression and its deepening authoritarianism hinder, rather than help, the
country to combat food insecurity, promote development and tackle a range of
other challenges. And they create the conditions for further instability and
polarisation.
Indeed, it was the very lack of
respect for rights in the Ethiopian government's approach to development that
first triggered unrest in Oromia last November. The early protests were a
response to the so-called 'Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan',
which proposed a 20-fold expansion of the municipal boundary of the capital.
Protesters
objected that this top-down initiative from the government, introduced without
meaningful consultation or participation of the affected communities, would
displace thousands of ethnic Oromo farmers from land around the city. Those
displaced by similar government initiatives over the past decade have rarely
received compensation or new land on which to rebuild their lives – and
protesters feared a repeat of this experience on a larger scale.
Concerns were also expressed
about mining and manufacturing projects in Oromia and their impact on the
environment and access to water. In mid-January 2016, the government announced
it had "cancelled" the Master Plan. But despite this, the government
does not seem to have changed its approach (it is still marketing land to
investors, for example), there has been no let-up in the repression, and the
protests continue. The government's violent response and the rising death toll
have further inflamed the situation and decades of historic Oromo grievances
around cultural, economic and political marginalisation have come to the fore.
