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Press release
Wolayta Human Rights Committee (CMDH)
April 18, 2020
WCHR is concerned that there is an increasing xenophobia in several cities in central Ethiopia related to the current CoronaVirus pandemic.
Unfortunately, the past two years of systematic and brutal ethnic-based human rights abuses in Ethiopia, particularly in the larger state of Oromia, have not taught our society a lesson. Therefore, several minority residents and witnesses in the cities of Oromia are reporting the growing alarmism and hate speech of the “native” politicians of Oromo against those they perceive as “foreigners”, ie Wolayta, Dawro, Dorze, Amhara, Gamo and others. The same politicians and activists whose hate speech triggered massacres in Burayu, Sebeta, etc., are now reigniting their incitement on the grounds that the non-Oromos are infected or carry the CoronaVirus.
Such false propaganda should be publicly condemned by the Ethiopian and Oromian governments. Authorities must control the spread of such xenophobia before it gets out of control. Often, local politicians freely use labels like “Naftagna” to insult minority communities in southern Ethiopia, which use Amharic for commerce in the cities of Oromia. Previous comments by local Oromo politicians threatening to eliminate “settlers” or ban non-Oromino languages and ban interethnic marriages have had a major impact on the psychology of minorities in Oromia and have contributed to deadly acts of terror. Instead of healing these wounds, the Oromia government media and the opposition media (OMN, etc.) continue to broadcast to politicians using similar inflammatory language and terminology. The Oromia region media also recently announced that it will waste money from its taxpayers by adding the Swahili language to its broadcast, rather than communicating with discriminated minorities or using multiple languages to pay Ethiopian minorities living within Oromia. .
Unlike the Rwandan genocide more than two decades ago, ethnic cleansing in Oromia and other regions of Ethiopia did not occur long ago. The suffering of some of the Millions of displaced people in Ethiopia is still fresh and we do not need to look very far in past history to learn the lesson of our mistakes. The WCRC urges the governments of the Ethiopia and Oromia region to take urgent and appropriate measures to prevent the fake xenophobic news related to the Corona virus from spreading further and causing more violence.
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