14th April, 2024

“Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere”

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Re : Urgent Appeal: STOP Amhara Genocide in Ethiopia

Dear,

As we commemorate the 30th year of the Rwandan Genocide, we draw attention to another ethnic-based savagery that has been unfolding in the vicinity of Rwanda — the plight of the Amhara people in Ethiopia, described by many as a silent genocide that has received no or very little attention despite the gravity of the atrocities and the magnitude of the brutality inflicted by those in power.

For over three decades, the Amhara people have been perceived as a political threat to an ethnic-based rule and have endured systemic oppression. Not only have they been a subject of political and economic marginalisation, but also of ethnic-based violence, mass incarceration, killings, and displacement. Their voices have been silenced, their leaders either suppressed, driven out of the country, or killed. The last six years have especially seen an escalation of horrifying human suffering and violence. The campaign against the Amhara people has intensified since August 2023 after the regime announced a state of emergency in the region and declared an open war. Thousands of Amhara intellectuals have been imprisoned without court orders or trial for the past eight months. In the past week, Christian Tadele and Yohannes Buayalew, incarcerated prominent parliamentarians of Amhara origin, have disclosed the torture, physical and psychological abuse they suffered in the hands of the authorities when they appeared in court after they were jailed without any charges for 8 months. Secret recordings of their testimonies have leaked out  describing the humiliation, torture, and abuse they face for no reason other than their ethnicity. 

The invasion of the Amhara Region by the regime’s army which has been using heavy weapons, artillery shells, and drones against defenceless civilians and their property, intentional burning of crops, as well as execution of unarmed innocent civilians in public since August 2023, has claimed the lives of countless innocent civilians, the destruction of civilian properties, and very little public infrastructure there is in the region that has been neglected for decades. The impact of this conflict on daily life is immense. Schools, colleges, and universities either lie empty or are used as army bases, denying children and the youth the chance of education. Even hospitals and monasteries are not spared from being used as army barracks. Very few vital industries in the region have become useless due to the disruption caused by the ongoing war and the blockade that isolated the region. Farmers in the Amhara region are denied access to seeds and fertilisers. That ignited the conflict, and that is still the case. The region is repeatedly cut off from essential services such as electricity, telecommunications, and internet, further compounding the region’s woes.

After the brutal conflict between the dysfunctional central government and the regional government of Tigray that had lasted two years, 16 months of which took place in the Amhara Region, essentially making the Amhara Region the battleground resulting in millions of internally displaced people in the region, causing an unsustainable burden on local resources and infrastructure. The civil war in neighbouring Sudan has also contributed to the influx of refugees in the Amhara Region. Without immediate intervention, the region teeters on the brink of collapse.

If the current situation continues, we fear that the consequences will be catastrophic. Hate speech against the Amhara people, targeted murders of prominent individuals who spoke up against failures of the government and violence by a killing squad (called Koree Nageenyaa) that the government set up and that is under the direct command and control of the Prime Minister of the country to assassinate those he perceives as a challenge to his brutal rule. Property seizure sand abductions for extortion have become common practices in Ethiopia and more so for the Amhara people. The international community must act swiftly and decisively to prevent further tragedy and continuation of the genocide and anarchy.

We urge you to use all means available to you to raise awareness of this crisis and advocate for intervention to protect the lives and rights of the Amhara people and condemn the lawlessness practised by the Ethiopian regime throughout the country and in the Amhara region. The government is using various tactics to initiate more divisions and conflicts between different sections of society to prevent unity against it and extend its grip on power by any means it can. We fear that these attempts will further fracture the already fragile society and may lead to a failed state, the consequences of which would be far-reaching in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa .

 

Yours sincerely,

Federation of Amhara Association in Europe