Opposition, bias and hatred against Ethiopia
Anti-Ethiopian sentiment or Aithiopiaphobia is a fear, broad opposition, bias, prejudice and/or discrimination against/toward Ethiopia, its people and government as whole. [1]
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Anti-Ethiopian sentiment or Aithiopiaphobia is a fear, broad opposition, bias, prejudice and/or discrimination against/toward Ethiopia, its people and government as whole. [1]
During the Italian occupation, Benito Mussolini determined Ethiopia as a colony with intent of humiliating Ethiopians in reprisal to their defeat at the 1896 Battle of Adwa, as well as competing with France and Britain in relations of colonial interests. The Italian government grieved by the loss of Ethiopia. [2]
Anti-Ethiopian sentiment as foreign policy appeared in War in Somalia following Ethiopian government support the US-led war on terror against jihadist militant groups in the region. On 28 December 2006, the Ethiopian government, backed by the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFG), entered Mogadishu and expelled leaders of Union of Islamic Court (UIC). As the conflict intensified, the Islamic Courts Union, Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), and more remarkably, Al-Shabaab have publicized an increase of anti-Ethiopian attitude while the latter became more influential to circulate as a movement. [3] [4] [5]
Eritrea has soured relations to Ethiopia beginning its federation with Ethiopia imposed by the United Nations in 1950 and annulled by Ethiopian government. Many Ethiopian nationalists—the Amhara elites—supported the annexation while leftist Eritreans viewed Ethiopian annexation as hostile to Muslim inhabitants and Eritrean statehood, mounting national liberation movements like the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) in 1960. As the Eritrean War of Independence began, ELF rebelled with the Ethiopian Imperial government under Emperor Haile Selassie and the Derg regime, forming alliance with the Tigrayan Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) until 1991 Derg defeat. With the rise of TPLF in Ethiopian politics from 1991, Eritrea began to have good relations with Ethiopian government at least until the 1998 border war. [6] [7] After Algiers Agreement in 2000, both countries' government went stalemate and frozen conflict. Shortly after taking office in 2018, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed signed joint declaration at 2018 bilateral summit to end 20 years long conflict. The two countries then enjoyed trade and diplomatic ties. [8]
Anti-Ethiopian concept can be defined by the opposition of Ethiopian nationalism by different ethno-nationalist groups. Ethiopian nationalism, a form of civic nationalism, repudiated by ethno-nationalist party such as Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) who claimed the Amhara-Tigray Ethiopian Empire subjugated Oromos from their homeland. [9] Furtherly, they claimed Oromo nation has its own social and political policy and superseded by Abyssinian principle via colonialism initiated by Emperor Menelik II. [10] [11] Likewise, they asserted that Ethiopian nationalism is propagated in order to advance Amharan culture assimilation. [12] Even the Amhara people historically affiliated to Ethiopian movement, the use of "Amhara nationalism" is heavily debated among historians and scholars. [13] [14] Although Marxists student activist Wallelign Mekonnen wrote in his manifesto that Amhara is "one of the ‘nations’ of the country", he did not accurately define their identity.
The government of Ethiopia is the federal government of Ethiopia. It is structured in a framework of a federal parliamentary republic, whereby the prime minister is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. The prime minister is chosen by the lower chamber of the Federal Parliamentary Assembly. Federal legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament. The judiciary is more or less independent of the executive and the legislature. They are governed under the 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia. There is a bicameral parliament made of the 108-seat House of Federation and the 547-seat House of Peoples' Representatives. The House of Federation has members chosen by the regional councils to serve five-year terms. The House of Peoples' Representatives is elected by direct election, who in turn elect the president for a six-year term.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front, also called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist, paramilitary group, and the former ruling party of Ethiopia. It was classified as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government from May 2021 until its removal from the list in March 2023. In older texts and Amharic publications, it is known as Woyane or Wayane.
The Oromo Liberation Front is an Oromo nationalist political party formed in 1973 to promote self-determination for the Oromo people inhabiting today's Oromia Region and Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. The OLF has offices in Addis Ababa, Washington, D.C., and Berlin, from which it operates radio stations that broadcast in Amharic and Oromo.
The Marxist–Leninist League of Tigray (MLLT) was a semi-clandestine Hoxhaist Communist Party that held a leading role in the Tigrayan Peoples' Liberation Front (TPLF) in the 1980s. The majority of the TPLF leadership held dual membership in the MLLT, including Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1995 until his death in 2012.
Ethiopian nationalism, also referred to as Ethiopianism or Ethiopianness, according to its proponents, asserts that Ethiopians are a single nation, and promotes the social equality of all component ethnic groups. Ethiopian people as a whole regardless of ethnicity constitute sovereignty as one polity. Ethiopian nationalism is a type of civic nationalism in that it is multi-ethnic in nature, and promotes multiculturalism.
Amhara nationalism is a form of ethnic nationalism and political movement that advocates the interests of Amhara people in Ethiopia, asserting Amhara is a single secular nation with ethno-cultural identity. The movement broadly emerged as counter discourse of the modern Ethiopian politics, which is based on national oppression thesis.
The Oromo conflict is a protracted conflict between the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and the Ethiopian government. The Oromo Liberation Front formed to fight the Ethiopian Empire to liberate the Oromo people and establish an independent state of Oromia. The conflict began in 1973, when Oromo nationalists established the OLF and its armed wing, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). These groups formed in response to prejudice against the Oromo people during the Haile Selassie and Derg era, when their language was banned from public administration, courts, church and schools, and the stereotype of Oromo people as a hindrance to expanding Ethiopian national identity.
The 2021 Ethiopian general election to elect members of the House of Peoples' Representatives was held on 21 June 2021 and 30 September 2021. Regional elections were also held on those dates.
The Prosperity Party is a political party in Ethiopia that was established on 1 December 2019 as a successor to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) by incumbent Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The merger into a countrywide party is part of Abiy's general policy of distancing the country's politics from ethnic federalism. It ran for the first time in the 2021 general election.
Ethnic discrimination in Ethiopia during and since the Haile Selassie epoch has been described using terms including "racism", "ethnification", "ethnic identification, ethnic hatred, ethnicization", and "ethnic profiling". During the Haile Selassie period, Amhara elites perceived the southern minority languages as an obstacle to the development of an Ethiopian national identity. Ethnic discrimination occurred during the Haile Selassie and Mengistu Haile Mariam epochs against Hararis, Afars, Tigrayans, Eritreans, Somalis and Oromos. Ethnic federalism was implemented by Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) leader Meles Zenawi and discrimination against Amharas, Ogaden, Oromos and other ethnic groups continued during TPLF rule. Liberalisation of the media after Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in 2018 led to strengthening of media diversity and strengthening of ethnically focussed hate speech. Ethnic profiling targeting Tigrayans occurred during the Tigray War that started in November 2020.
Following the 2018 dissolution of the ethnic federalist, dominant party political coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, there was an increase in tensions within the country, with newly resurgent regional and ethnically based factions carrying out armed attacks on military and civilians in multiple conflicts throughout Ethiopia.
The OLA insurgency is an armed conflict between the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), which split from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in 2018, and the Ethiopian government, continuing in the context of the long-term Oromo conflict, typically dated to have started with the formation of the Oromo Liberation Front in 1973.
Tigrayan nationalism is an ethnic nationalism that advocates the interests of Tigrayan people in Ethiopia. Inspired predominantly by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) with its predecessor Tigray Liberation Front (TLF), this type of nationalism holds that Tigrayans are an independent group with unique ancestry, heritage, history and culture outside Ethiopia. As such, they claim Tigray is the source of Ethiopian civilization and utterly a benefactor of state-building without other local ethnic groups. Tigrayan nationalists accuse Amharas of imposing their cultural, economic and political hegemony over Tigrayans.
Since the 1990s, the Amhara people of Ethiopia have been subject to ethnic violence, including massacres by Tigrayan, Oromo and Gumuz ethnic groups among others, which some have characterized as a genocide. Large-scale killings and grave human rights violations followed the implementation of the ethnic-federalist system in the country. In most of the cases, the mass murders were silent with perpetrators from various ethno-militant groups—from TPLF/TDF, OLF–OLA, and Gumuz armed groups.
The fall of the Derg, also known as Downfall of the Derg, was a military campaign that resulted in the defeat of the ruling Marxist-Leninist military junta, the Derg, by the rebel coalition Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) on 28 May 1991 in Addis Ababa, ending the Ethiopian Civil War. The Derg took power after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie and the Solomonic dynasty, an imperial dynasty of Ethiopia that began in 1270. The Derg suffered from insurgency with different factions, and separatist rebel groups since their early rule, beginning with the Ethiopian Civil War. The 1983–1985 famine, the Red Terror, and resettlement and villagization made the Derg unpopular with the majority of Ethiopians tending to support insurgent groups like the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF).
The 1995 Ethiopian Federal Constitution formalizes an ethnic federalism law aimed at undermining long-standing ethnic imperial rule, reducing ethnic tensions, promoting regional autonomy, and upholding unqualified rights to self-determination and secession in a state with more than 80 different ethnic groups. But the constitution is divisive, both among Ethiopian nationalists who believe it undermines centralized authority and fuels interethnic conflict, and among ethnic federalists who fear that the development of its vague components could lead to authoritarian centralization or even the maintenance of minority ethnic hegemony. Parliamentary elections since 1995 have taken place every five years since enactment. All but one of these have resulted in government by members of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) political coalition, under three prime ministers. The EPRDF was under the effective control of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which represents a small ethnic minority. In 2019 the EPRDF, under Abiy, was dissolved and he inaugurated the pan-ethnic Prosperity Party which won the 2021 Ethiopian Election, returning him as prime minister. But both political entities were different kinds of responses to the ongoing tension between constitutional ethnic federalism and the Ethiopian state's authority. Over the same period, and all administrations, a range of major conflicts with ethnic roots have occurred or continued, and the press and availability of information have been controlled. There has also been dramatic economic growth and liberalization, which has itself been attributed to, and used to justify, authoritarian state policy.
Oromo nationalism is an ethnic nationalism advocating the self-interest of Oromo people in Ethiopia and Kenya. Many Oromo elites, intellectuals and political leaders struggled to create an independent Oromia state throughout 19th and 20th century, since the start of Abyssinian colonialism under Emperor Menelik II. No consensus has been reached yet regarding the motives of this type of nationalism, whether the Oromos librate themselves to form a nation-state or offer self-determination in federal Ethiopia.
The Welkait question involves a controversial territorial dispute surrounding the Ethiopian area Welkait, which is situated in the present-day Tigray Region. Welkait had been an independent area but was incorporated within Begmeder province, but after the fall of the Derg in 1991, the area was given by the TPLF government to Tigray's Western Zone. During Abiy Ahmed administration, the Tigray and Welkait Committee counterparts held peaceful talks in Gondar on 19 April 2018. Abiy pleaded the Welkait question should be addressed in peaceful resolution.
Anti-Amhara sentiment is opposition, hatred, discrimination and bias against Amhara people in Ethiopia. Amharas are subjected to longstanding ethnic hatred among the Tigrayan elites. Persecution of Amharas are typically stemmed from accusation of Amhara for atrocities and land acquisition during the colonial rule in the Ethiopian Empire; many Oromo activists and intellectualists pertained Amhara of being "Neftenya", a feaudal lord and vassal who manages the lands loyal to the imperial government.
Anti-Oromo sentiment or Oromophobia, is opposition, hatred, discrimination or prejudice against the Oromo ethnic group. Anti-Oromo sentiment has root its accusations during the rule of Ethiopian Empire, particularly in the reign of Emperor Menelik II in 1880s. Oromo nationalists argued that the Oromo have been subjugated and oppressed by dominant Amhara feudal rulers and its oppression persisted throughout 20th century. Under Haile Selassie, Oromos have been targeted to persecutions after long wave of resistance. Many Oromo revolutionaries like Mamo Mazamir, Haile Mariam Gamada and General Tadesse Birru faced execution by Selassie government and then the Derg regimes.
