GENOCIDE PREVENTION IN ETHIOPIA

Genocide Prevention in Ethiopia (GPE) is a human rights advocacy group that is established in response to a series of alarming ethnic based civilian massacres in Ethiopia. The frequency and the nature of ethnic based killings has become so rampant and unparalleled necessitating GPE’s formation to be a voice for the voiceless.

The GPE initiative holds a view that the problem is of structural, institutional & governmental nature inexorably linked to the Ethnic Federalism system instituted in Ethiopia 30 years ago. The system has toxic geographical, demographic and historical dimensions and the genocide ensuing currently is considered by many as the system has finally gone to full fruition.  Specifically, the system awards ownership of regions to what it labels ‘owners of the land’ (these groups were labeled so arbitrarily depending on how the ruling coalition at the time views their significance in gerrymandering the nation into Balkanized states), leaving those who live in these newly ethnically segregated regions that ended up being labeled after other ethnic groups as ‘settlers’ in their own country, leaving them with no legal, political, or economic representation. It does not take farsightedness to imagine that these citizens that are made ‘outsiders’ will easily become targets of genocide and perpetual terror by individuals and groups, at will. 

The Ethnic Federal system morphed after a divisive design that has several inherent flows among which some are listed below.

1. It was conceived out of a violent territorial expansion objectives of the TPLF (Tigray People Liberation Front) by annexing adjacent lands where the majority of the residents are Amhara and Afar from the west, south west, east, and south east with intent to eliminate Amharas in all forms of their existence (geographic, socioeconomic, historic, and personhood) from their land of birth and that of their ancestors.
2. It ignored the thousands of years of cohesive existence of more than 80 ethnic groups by partitioning the country into 14  regions subjecting tens of other smaller ethnic groups to dominance by major regional ethnic groups. These semi-independent regions were divided roughly based on made-up ethno-lingustic borders with a couple of multi-ethnic regions like Dire Dawa & Addis Ababa, which later were gradually made to lose their self-governance through undemocratic processes.
    
3. It created and implemented non symmetric regional constitutions that were not uniform among the new regions it created thereby creating an apartheid-like system where the majority was denied voice or citizenship rights overnight, as they simply found themselves in newly & haphazardly delineated 'regions'  which illegally remove their residence as their   ‘ancestral place of birth’ even if their ancestors lived in these new so called regions for millennia.
    
4. It was intentionally designed and implemented to be exclusive as practiced by Italian invaders from the 19th and the 20th centuries with objectives to divide and conquer Ethiopia, and was forced upon the people.

As a result, ethnic federalism first targeted Amharas by labeling them as ‘Neftegnas’[1].

While ethnic federalism was instituted by Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), these two architects later parted ways due to power struggle, with the TPLF leading a token coalition government for 27 years until its ouster in the 2017 reform. Nevertheless, even after the reform ethnic federalism is pursued extending institutionalization of genocidal attacks against ethnic minorities living in the ‘ethnically labeled regions’, where they were deemed "settlers" by the ethnic apartheid system even if these people are indigenous to the land and are citizens of the Ethiopian nation. 

As a result attacks against ‘Neftegnas’ have escalated and thousands continue to die. The frequency of these killings not only has increased but also has taken institutional form where local government officials and law enforcement have either directly been involved in some of the killings or indirectly collaborated in the planning and the execution of the crimes with the perpetrators.

These unabated genocidal crimes necessitate the formation of Genocide Prevention in Ethiopa, (GPE) an independent watchdog and advocacy group for prevention, and justice for victims in the state of Delaware on October 24, 2020.

[1] A code word for ethnic Amharas, Orthodox Christians, and other minorities living outside of their ‘regions’.