[ad_1]
DENVER (AP) – Denver-area resident Mohammed Warid is monitoring the political conflict in Ethiopia, at least as much as he can with a communications blackout in parts of the country.
The president of the Colorado Oromo Community is concerned for his family, and for him, that includes everyone who lives in the Oromia region of Ethiopia. At least he has been able to speak to his loved ones, unlike those who struggle to communicate with their families and receive news about the North Tigray region. Under the last political regime, the people are suffering; they live in fear; they are being imprisoned for their ideologies; they are being tortured and killed, he said.
“They are not well,” he said. “Daily activity is not good.”
Warid, along with the Colorado Oromo community, has helped plan protests after the high-profile killings in Ethiopia. Like those with Tigrayan roots in Colorado, the Oromo community is making its voice heard in Colorado and calling for change.
But, as is the case in Ethiopia, Ethiopian communities in Colorado disagree about the cause of the problems in their home country, particularly which entity is the aggressor, and they worry about their families and friends who live there. Supporters of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who took office in 2018 and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, say the new regime is bringing necessary political reforms and “law and order” to the sunken country. in ethnic tensions while responding to the attacks. of the opposition. They insist that most of the violence, which escalated in early November, has ended.
The people of Tigray, where the army and opposition groups were fighting, and other areas experiencing waves of violence, say Ahmed is far from democratic and is persecuting his own people. They cite human rights abuses and consider the conflict to be a progression over time.
Nebiyu Asfaw, a resident of Adams County, came to the United States as a child with his mother in search of a better life. He still has friends and family mainly in Addis Ababa, the capital, and said they have not been affected by the unrest in the country. Asfaw speaks to them regularly and calls published reports of violence “hype.” What is really happening, according to his reading of the situation, is that the new prime minister introduced reforms after 27 years of an oppressive regime and is trying to end ethnic politics in his 10 nation states with more than 80 ethnic groups. .
“The majority of the community supports the reform effort and we are hopeful that Ethiopia is going (in) the right direction,” Asfaw said.
The main conflict occurred about a month ago, according to Asfaw, referring to the November attack by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in Tigray and the federal military action. The transition has not been perfect and the war is ugly, he said. But he blames the “old guard”, the powerful leader of the TPLF party, for not recognizing Ahmed’s leadership.
“When you organize a country into ethnic regions and when you politicize your ethnicity, there is simply no winner,” he said.
But that’s not the way many Tigrayans, including Millete Birhanemaskel, see it.
Birhanemaskel has been unable to communicate with her relatives in Ethiopia for almost two months.
The Denver resident, who was born in a refugee camp in Sudan after her family fled Ethiopia in the 1970s, says the generational trauma is almost unbearable. His family is from the northern region of Tigray, where much of the communication was cut off during the violent internal political conflict.
“It’s terrifying,” he said. “It is mental terrorism. Your mind is a terrible place when you don’t know what happened. “
She believes that the Ethiopian government has launched a disinformation campaign about the true scale of the violence, particularly against the people of Tigray. The stories of refugees in Sudan and others who were able to reach their families alarm her, and include mass killings, bombings by the federal government and the inability to bury their dead.
“Even bigger than him crushing democracy and being this false reformer is the humanitarian aspect of this,” Birhanemaskel said.
Many Oromos are also against changing the federalist government due to historical persecution and what they say is violence now orchestrated by the new regime, Warid said.
The situation was not perfect before Ahmed came to power, Warid acknowledged, but at least they had peace, he said.
However, members of the Colorado Ethiopian Community non-profit organization say they are happy with the change in the political structure and believe that their families’ lives in Ethiopia will improve. They maintain that any type of violence is due to the loss of power of the main political party.
The non-profit organization Aurora, along with other groups, has raised thousands of dollars to provide aid to Ethiopians during the most recent conflict.
Cherinet Daba, the group’s treasurer, came to the United States as a political refugee about two decades ago. He fled Ethiopia when he began to fear for his life, going to Kenya, then South Africa, and finally the United States.
He said that some of his brothers were arrested and imprisoned due to their ethnic group and their lack of support for TPLF policies, including spying on members of their own community.
“It was bad,” Daba said of the conditions. “Especially if you are an independent person, your life would be in danger.”
Now the Tigrayans say they are the ones being tortured, imprisoned and killed.
On Monday, Birhanemaskel participated in another protest. She is part of several groups, including the Tigray Community in Colorado, and is working to compile a list of the names of those killed. They have also staged protests across the country, including in Denver on Capitol Hill, chanting slogans like “Stop Bombing Tigray,” “Abiy is a tyrant,” and “America, speak up.” She plans to travel to a refugee camp to hear directly from those affected.
The groups also have a list of demands: open lines of communication, open humanitarian borders, remove Eritrean troops from Tigray and launch an independent third-party investigation into government abuses.
