Ethnic unrest tarnishes leader’s reforms Italy threatens to not pay EU funding
SHIBURU Kutuyu, a 45-yearold Ethiopian maize and coffee farmer, was jolted awake by gunshots one night in June. He told his wife and seven children to flee.
They returned to find their mud-walled home had been burned down, but no sign of Shiburu. Eleven days later, fellow farmers found his body hanging from a tree, his severed limbs strewn on the ground.
“A mob of Oromo youths killed him in the most gruesome manner,” said Shiburu’s brother-in-law Mulugeta Samuel from one of the dozens of camps in southern Ethiopia filled with people who fled violence between two ethnic groups: the Oromo and the Gedeo.
A surge in ethnic violence, sometimes in the form of mob attacks, has displaced nearly 1 million people in the past four months in southern Ethiopia and is inflaming bad feeling between ethnic groups in other regions.
The violence threatens to undermine Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s calls for unity in one of Africa’s most ethnically diverse countries. It also overshadows the popular liberal measures he has announced since coming to power in April.
Some observers say young men from Abiy’s ethnic group, the Oromo, have been emboldened by his rise and are attacking other groups in revenge for years of marginalisation.
Ethiopia’s security apparatus is in a state of flux since Abiy announced reform plans, said Asnake Kefale, an assistant professor of politics at Addis Ababa University.
“Some individuals have taken advantage of this state of affairs,” he said.
On Thursday, Sorri Dinka, spokesperson for the Oromiya Police Commission, said authorities were taking action against individuals suspected of ethnically-motivated crimes.
He mentioned the so-called “qeerroo”, a term used to describe young Oromo men involved in the protest movement over the past three years that culminated in former prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s resignation.
Some people who fled their homes still feel federal government and local authorities are failing to halt violence against them.
Tihun Negatu escaped an attack on her village in June. She and her two children have been living in a school converted into a shelter, wearing the clothes they fled in.
“The government is not willing to bring them to justice,” she said of the Oromo men who chased her farming community off its land, and burned down her home and a bar she ran.
The government denies turning a blind eye. Federal disaster management chief Mitiku Kassa said a committee of ministers and regional officials has been formed to oversee rehabilitation and reconciliation efforts.
He said nearly 400 people in Oromiya have been arrested on suspicion of inciting violence between Gedeos and Oromos.
“If not stopped altogether, such incidents are very dangerous for the country as they may spread,” he said.
The government has urged elders in both communities to seek reconciliation. Town hall meetings have been taking place regularly though they have not halted the violence. – Reuters/african News Agency (ANA) ITALY’S government threatened to withhold next year’s contributions to the EU budget if Brussels failed to resolve a stand-off over the fate of immigrants stranded for four days in an Italian port.
The around 150 mostly Eritrean migrants are being held in the port of Catania on board the Diciotti, an Italian ship that rescued them in the Mediterranean nine days ago.
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who heads the anti-immigrant League party, has said he will not let them disembark until other EU states reach agreement on taking them in – prompting a criminal investigation into whether they are being held against their will.
Davide Faraone, a lawmaker in the opposition Democratic Party, who has been on the Diciotti to monitor conditions, said the migrants had refused their breakfast and were beginning a hunger strike.
Envoys from about a dozen member states – excluding the Eastern states who refuse to accept migrants – were meeting in Brussels yesterday to discuss the situation.
Salvini’s government ally, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi di Maio, who leads the 5-Star Movement, late on Thursday said his party would not approve next year’s EU funding if there was no action soon. He repeated his threat yesterday.
“The soft line does not work; the hard line will be to withhold funds if they don’t listen to us,” Di Maio said.
Rejecting the Italian threats as unhelpful, the European Commission said a solution for the Diciotti was its “priority”.
“Unconstructive comments, let alone threats… will not get us any closer to a solution,” said spokesperson Alexander Win yesterday.
Italy has been on the front line of Europe’s refugee crisis, seeing more than 650 000 migrants land on its shores since 2014, though numbers have fallen dramatically this year.
A campaign promise to further curtail arrivals helped propel 5-Star and the league into office in June. – Reuters