After the collapse of the Ethiopian army in Tigray, following a ten-day offensive by the TDF in central Tigray, the Ethiopian government has resorted to targeting Tigrayans in all parts of Ethiopia. Tigrayans are going through the closure of their businesses, evictions, detention, and unwarranted searches in the capital.
In Addis Ababa, the federal police have mainly been on alert to Tigrayans after the fall of Mekelle. The government’s recent anti-Tigrayan rhetoric has been the main reason for the surge of attacks and profiling of Tigrayans in Ethiopia.
On Monday, the Prime minister appeared before the parliament to explain the situation in Tigray. In his appearance at the House of Representatives, the PM barged in with vitriol, and soon after, profiling against Tigrayans started to take shape.
“In Tigray, our forces were attacked by the people of Tigray. If our troops moved in small numbers, the locals would pounce on them,” he said out of frustration at the outcome of the war. “Our army finally had to withdraw to its base.” These kinds of speeches by the PM have been the main reason behind the new wave of hate speech and targeting of Tigrayans.
After the PM spoke out in parliament, government supporters and Prosperity Party activists went on social media, in full force, to add gasoline to the fire. ‘We won’t slaughter a whole cattle for the ailing hen’ was a saying making the rounds on social media. The PM used this phrase in the parliament to explain the military’s withdrawal from Tigray somehow.
In my understanding, the ailing hen is Tigray, and the cattle are the rest of Ethiopia. And as Tigray suffers a devastating humanitarian crisis, the rest of Ethiopia shall not be dragged into a situation like the one witnessed in Tigray.
The Prime minister and many others tried to justify the shocking withdrawal of the ENDF by bringing the notion that the longer the military confrontation in Tigray, the worse Ethiopia will be economically, diplomatically, and politically.
Against the backdrop of the intensifying vitriol, Tigrayans report arrests, detention, forced searches of their businesses and homes. In Jigjiga (Somalia regional state), Dire-Dawa, Adama, Benshangul-Gumuz, and Gambella Tigrayans have been arbitrarily arrested and detained. In Alamata – technically part of Tigray but forcefully annexed by the regional government of Amhara – Tigrayans are in ‘misery.’ The reality was grim in alamata, where Amhara militia and para-militia groups had been imposing their authority and ‘Amharanizing’ the indigenous population of southern Tigray.
Many of the detained are reported to have been taken to a site in afar regional state, Awash Arba, where Tigrayans are wallowing in prison centers.
It’s possible that the Tigrayans taken from the big towns are being taken to the Awash Arba camp. Predominantly Tigrayan neighborhoods in Addis Ababa, in ‘22’ and Teklehaymanot’ have borne much of the abduction and Targeting of Tigrayans.
Axumite Media reported a story of a Tigrayan who had been detained; a Tigrayan journalist who was at a restaurant dining when police officers entered the restaurant and started asking for identification. After the officers had identified that the man was ethnic Tigrayan, they took him to a police station.
At the police station, the journalist was asked questions and was released later in the evening. The journalist told Axumite Media that the station where he was held had been packed with other Tigrayans, like him, detained and arrested arbitrarily.
After Addis Standard reached out to the Ethiopian Human rights commission senior media advisor, he said, “Such measures could aggravate the public‘s concerns on the risk of ethnic profiling.” Aaron Maasho, on his part, said that no further information is available but added, “Our team is monitoring the situation closely.”
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