Haacaaluu Hundeessaa poses in traditional costume, in Addis Ababa, March 2, 2019
Addis Ababa:
The death toll from ethnic protests and violence that erupted in Ethiopia last week following the murder of a popular Oromo singer has risen to 239, according to a count of police figures.
Pop star Hachalu Hundessa, hero of many Oromo people who saw him as the voice of their marginalization, was gunned down by unknown attackers Monday of last week, fueling ethnic tensions threatening the country’s democratic transition.
Demonstrations erupted in the capital Addis Ababa, as well as in the surrounding region of Oromia, which is the homeland of the country’s largest ethnic group, which has long felt economically and politically sidelined in the nation. diverse.
Officials attributed the deaths to a combination of lethal force by security agents and inter-ethnic violence.
“As a result of the unrest in the region, nine police officers, five militiamen and 215 civilians have lost their lives,” Oromia acting police commissioner Mustafa said on state television on Wednesday. Kedir.
Addis Ababa police previously reported 10 deaths in the capital.
The number of deaths is an increase from the 166 deaths reported this weekend.
Mustafa also said that there had been “considerable damage and looting” of public and private property.
“To control these disturbances, more than 3,500 suspects have been arrested. It was anti-peace elements who carried out attacks using the death of the artist as a pretext to dismantle the constitutional system by force,” he said. -he declares.
“The Oromo population should include other ethnic groups living there.”
– Threat to a planned democracy –
Hachalu’s music was the soundtrack to the anti-government protests that swept Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the country’s first Oromo leader, into office in 2018.
However, as Ethiopia prepares for elections that will test its democratic transition under Abiy, many Oromo nationalists feel betrayed, arguing that the Prime Minister did not defend their interests.
Free and fair elections scheduled for August have been postponed due to the coronavirus epidemic.
The warming of ethnic tensions in the country of more than 100 million inhabitants was a major challenge for Abiy, whose efforts to loosen the reins of the iron rule and open up democratic space led to an increase in jockeying for power and influence.
Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for ending a long-running conflict with neighboring Eritrea, has been accused of going back to the tactics of his predecessors, with a spate of arrests from High-level opposition politicians at protests last week.
Five senior leaders of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) were arrested, as were Jawar Mohammed and Bekele Gerba of the Oromo Federalist Congress, as well as Eskinder Nega, a longtime government critic who recently spoke out against government policies that , according to him, favor Oromos.
Abiy said that Hachalu’s murder and the violence that ensued was part of a plot to stir up trouble in Ethiopia.
He linked chaos to another major headache he faces: the filling of a mega-dam that Ethiopia has built on the Blue Nile, which faces objections from neighbors Egypt and Sudan.
“The wish of the latest news is to make the Ethiopian government look away from the roadblock,” Abiy said Tuesday during a question and answer session with lawmakers, without providing any evidence to support this claim. .
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
