JAWAR MOHAMMED: The Ethiopian media mogul taking on Abiy Ahmed

ADDIS

ABABA - Having previously warned that Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed risked turning into an "illegitimate" ruler, Jawar Mohammed, 34, has now become the most high-profile opposition politician to be detained since the Nobel Peace laureate took office in April 2018.

An ethno-nationalist with a Facebook following of nearly two million, Jawar is accused of being linked to the murder of a policeman during the violence which erupted last week after music star Hachalu Handessa was gunned down in the capital Addis Ababa.

His allies deny his involvement in the murder, saying Abiy ordered his arrest to neutralise the popular opposition politician.

Both Abiy and Jawar hail from Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, the Oromos, but have differed sharply over the future direction of Ethiopia since Abiy took power in 2018, with a promise to democratise and unite the ethnically divided nation after decades of authoritarian rule.

For government supporters, Jawar's arrest was vital to help quell the ethnic nationalism and violence that they accuse him of fanning to derail the prime minister's "coming together" vision, aimed at forging a new sense of national unity in the country of more than 100 million.

But for Jawar's supporters, his arrest showed that the prime minister had become intolerant of the 34-year-old's alternative vision, which revolved around the federal state giving self-rule to Oromos and other ethnic groups in regions where they constitute the majority.

'I am an Oromo first' Born in 1986 to a Muslim father and an Orthodox Christian mother, Jawar established his credentials as an Oromo nationalist in a 2013 interview with the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera television station.

"I am an Oromo first," Jawar - then exiled in the US - declared, adding that Ethiopia had been "imposed" on him.

His comments unleashed what Keele University law lecturer Awol Alo described at the time as a "political tsunami," with people either passionately supporting him or harshly criticising him in a highly polarised debate that swept through Ethiopia and the diaspora.

"I am an Oromo first" later grew into a political campaign, with the-then Minnesota-based Jawar criss-crossing the US to rally the diaspora to oppose the regime back home and to win their "freedom."

The campaign culminated with the launch later in 2013 of a satellite television station - along with social media accounts - under the banner of the Oromia Media Network (OMN).

"We've airwaves now liberated of Oromia. We the will liberate the land in the coming years," Jawar said at its launch.

As its then-chief executive officer, he turned the OMN into a powerful voice of the youth, whom he called "Qeerroo," which literally means "young unmarried man" -a term first popularised in the 1990s by the-then banned

Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) rebel group in its bid to attract recruits.

Having grown up in the small town of Dhumuga where the OLF had a strong presence, Jawar often said: "I was born in the Oromo struggle," as he recalled learning about the "oppression" of Oromos under the rule of emperors and autocrats alike.

Despite being the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, Abiy was the first Oromo prime minister, while during the time of Emperor Haile Selassie, their language and traditional religion were banned.

A bright student, Jawar left Ethiopia in his teens when he won a fellowship to study in Singapore in 2003. Two years later he moved to the US where he graduated with a political science degree from Stanford University and a masters degree in human rights at Colombia University in 2013.

– BBC.