The horrific footage, far too graphic to publish in its entirety, surfaced undated and unverified on the web earlier this year.

Anonymous uploaders claimed it depicted the aftermath of a deadly drone strike in Ethiopia’s north-western Amhara region on 19 February.

The strike killed at least 30 civilians.

“They wiped us out,” said one survivor, who lost seven relatives in the attack and later helped to transport their bodies.

“They had been dancing and celebrating just a few hours before. Then we had to collect their bodies piece by piece. I haven’t felt alive since that day.”

The survivor confirmed that the attack came from an unmanned aerial vehicle, more commonly known as a drone.

“There were two drones we saw that day. One was a dark coloured one with a low roar. This was the one that attacked. But there was another one, a surveillance drone which had a lighter shade and a red flashing light, as if it was recording us.”

Initially, it was difficult to confirm accounts of the massacre.

As the conflict between the state and the rebel Fano militia has intensified, the government has denied journalists access to the region and imposed significant restrictions on mobile communication.

The army denied that any civilians had died, describing the incident as an army operation that led to the killing and capture of rebel militants.

Eyewitness testimony

The army’s version of events was contradicted just days later when the first media reports emerged, notably in the Addis Standard and on BBC Amharic.

These reports included harrowing eyewitness testimony. The dead were from only three or four families.

An infant who had just been baptised survived, but seven of his relatives were killed – some still wearing their white ceremonial dress. Other bodies were too mangled to properly identify.

There was one detail on which the media reports did not agree – the exact location of the massacre.

Addis Standard said it happened in Sasit, a small town north of Debre Birhan.

The BBC located it at “Fela Megenteya”, which loosely translates as “Fela Turn” – an informal name that does not appear on any maps.

Some activists said it was in another, slightly larger town, called Sela Dingay.

All of these locations are found in the same district, within 30km of each other.

But no one had exact co-ordinates for where the strike occurred.

This is important for two reasons. Symbolically, it is difficult to honour the dead when we don’t even know where they were killed. And practically, it is much harder to collect evidence of war crimes when we don’t know where to look.

Pinpointing the massacre

The drone strike was only the latest in a string of deadly drone strikes since the outbreak of war in August 2023, between the Ethiopian army and ethnic Amhara rebels known as the Fano.

More than 300 civilians have died in at least 31 drone strikes in Amhara in the past year alone, according to reports collated by the Armed Conflict Location and Events Database.

The Ethiopian national army and the Fano militia are former allies who together fought against rebels from Tigray, another region in northern Ethiopia, from 2020 to 2022.

They fell out after Fano militants were ordered to disarm and disband, following the signing of a peace treaty in Pretoria that ended the war on Tigray.

Instead, Fano fighters remobilised and captured a slew of towns across their home region in August 2023.

The federal troops deployed to crush them have struggled to contend with Fano’s familiarity with the terrain and the wide support they enjoy among the locals.

The federal army has been repeatedly implicated in human rights abuses against civilians in the region.

A previous visual investigation by The Continent, a little over a month into the conflict, geolocated footage of Ethiopian army extrajudicial killings of civilians to an area near a police academy in the Amhara town of Debre Markos.

In the initial video footage of the February drone massacre, there was not enough visual evidence to conclusively geolocate the attack.

This changed when additional images – 12 photographs and a 65-second video clip – were delivered to The Continent by Misganaw Belete, a lawyer and human rights advocate who was based in the Amhara capital Bahir Dar, and worked with a team to compile evidence of war crimes across the region.

“Unfortunately, the war in Amhara is underreported,” said Misganaw. “The world’s focus is elsewhere. By compiling evidence today, we may assure that accountability and closure for victims may be obtained tomorrow.”

By authenticating the new evidence and analysing open-source documents and satellite imagery, The Continent successfully geolocated the massacre to a specific four-way intersection between villages in the rural Amhara North Shewa Zone, some 220km northeast of Addis Ababa and nine kilometres west of Sasit.

The big clue came in the footage provided by Misganaw, which showed bodies in clearly discernible civilian attire.

In the background, two connected transmission towers are visible a few hundred metres apart, parallel to the wreckage of the truck. There is a village in the distance.

The attack appeared to have taken place at an intersection of two roads.

Publicly sourced documents, including a 2022 village assessment study produced by the International Organisation for Migration, lists a village by the name of Fela, with precise coordinates.

On Google Earth – which erroneously names this location as “Jingodo” – a fourway intersection is clearly visible leading into the village, with the transmission towers in the background.

The visual evidence is consistent with eyewitness descriptions of “Fela Turn”, making this overwhelmingly likely to have been the site of the drone massacre.

The site’s coordinates are 9°56’10.7”N 39°25’06.9”E.

When war crimes investigators are finally able to access Amhara, this is where they can begin to collect evidence.

Ethiopian government spokesperson Billene Seyoum did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Last week, the Ethiopian army announced plans for a major new offensive against Fano militias in Amhara, claiming that efforts to find a peaceful resolution have failed.

“The only language they understand is force. From now on we will talk to them in that language,” said army spokesperson Colonel Getnet Adane.

This article first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It’s designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy at thecontinent.org

Believed to have been filmed in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia, it was widely circulated by Ethiopian social media users and has sparked outrage.

An investigation by The Continent has confirmed that the footage was filmed in Debre Markos, a city in Amhara, just a few kilometres from the local police academy.

In the undated 93-second clip, several people in civilian clothing are seated on the sidewalk. They appear to be held captive by the men in uniform.

They are beaten and then dragged from the sidewalk into the street.

Two bursts of automatic rifle gunfire are heard, and a man slumps over in a way that suggests he has been shot in the back.

At another point, a different person is on his knees and appears to be pleading for his life.

As the clip ends, several people in civilian attire walk away with their hands in the air. Two dead bodies are left behind.

“[The footage] is under investigation,” Daniel Bekele, the chief commissioner of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, told The Continent.

By analysing the landmarks seen in the video – including a gas station and nearby residential buildings – The Continent geolocated the killings to an area in the south of Debre Markos, along the main A3 road to the capital Addis Ababa, which is about 380km away.

Although it was filmed at a distance, the attire of the dozen or so soldiers in the video is discernible and consistent with the uniforms worn by soldiers of the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF).

These are not isolated scenes.

Residents of Debre Markos told The Continent that, beginning in the middle of August, government forces have killed scores of civilians in the city, after accusing them of being members of, or sympathising with, a local militia known as Fano.

“I witnessed killings and only just escaped with my life. Children have died too, ” said a resident who, like everyone else in this story, requested anonymity.

A sudden escalation

What is happening in Debre Markos is part of a broader conflict that has recently engulfed this part of the country. It has its roots in the two-year civil war between the Ethiopian government and the regional government of Tigray, which officially ended in November 2022.

During that war, the Ethiopian government empowered the Fano – a militia group which recruits its members from the Amhara, Ethiopia’s second-largest ethnic group. The militia fought alongside government troops against the Tigrayans.

But following the ceasefire last year, the militia took issue with orders from Addis Ababa to disband.

Fano leaders argued that the federal government did not have the capacity to protect ethnic Amhara civilians, who in recent years have been targeted in massacres across western Ethiopia.

The parties also disagree on how to deal with the disputed Western Tigray territory bordering Sudan. Amhara forces have controlled it since capturing the area from Tigrayan forces in 2020, but Defence Minister Abraham Belay recently announced that the region’s fate would be decided in a referendum.

Tensions simmered between the two parties until early August, when the Fano militia suddenly announced that they had captured a slew of cities and towns across the region from federal forces.

On 3 August Yilikal Kefale, Amhara’s regional president at the time, wrote to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed asking him to intervene by sending federal troops. The next day, Addis authorities declared a six-month state of emergency in the region and began a forceful response.

Within weeks, federal troops had forced the rebels from major towns – but, as reports on the ground show, and The Continent’s reporting confirms, the campaign has been brutal.

A brutal pattern

Debre Markos was one of the cities that was captured by the Fano and then retaken by federal forces. The extrajudicial killings captured in the viral video are likely to have happened in the immediate aftermath of government soldiers entering the city on 11 August.

This is supported by elements of the video itself. On 2 August, locals in the city had set up makeshift road blockades to slow down the advance of federal military vehicles. Photos published by local media, and eyewitnesses interviewed by The Continent, confirm this. In the video, these roadblocks appear to have been dismantled – a tyre and large rocks are strewn about the street.

The spate of extrajudicial killings in Debre Markos appears to have continued for several weeks following the filmed incident.

On 27 August, Ethiopian troops shot and killed Limatu Amare, a lecturer at the town’s university as he was leaving a church, witnesses in the city said.

“He was a hard-working and beloved teacher to many students in the area. He wasn’t a member of any armed group,” the witness added, explaining that he too was shot at in the same incident. “I remember Limatu used to speak glowingly of the Ethiopian army. But they are the ones who spilled his blood.”

According to the Fano militia, the brutality in Debre Markos was repeated elsewhere in the region. “Debre Markos wasn’t the only city where such killings happened,” said Mere Wedajo, a Fano military commander. “To compensate for their battlefield losses, the soldiers get emotional and massacre the people.”

Accounts from Majete, a town 500km east of Debre Markos, give credence to Wedajo’s claims.

Several Majete residents told The Continent that on 2 September, upon entering the town after days of fighting, federal forces conducted a house-to- house search during which they killed several residents and physically assaulted many others. They blame federal forces for 31 civilian deaths in the town.

One woman said that her young brother was shot dead inside their house, where he was sleeping when soldiers forced their way in late in the night.

“He begged them to not kill him. My older brother fled but they caught my younger brother,” the woman said.

She and several others fled Majete that night, fearing further violence, especially the threat of sexual assault.

Another resident, who spoke from a nearby town where he is in hiding, said that he found the dead bodies of his two sons on the outskirts of Majete three days after they were taken into custody by federal forces.

At least 183 people have been killed so far since the Amhara conflict escalated last month, according to the United Nations. At least two dozen of them were killed in a 13 August government air strike on the town of Finote Selam (about 83km northwest of Debre Markos).

Billene Seyoum, spokesperson for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, did not respond to an email seeking comment on the allegations contained in this story. The Continent also sent questions to the ministry of defence. No response was received.

Additional reporting by Liban Mahamed.

This article was first published by The Continent.

Along with wishes of good health and prosperity, many Ethiopians expressed hopes that 2015 – the Ethiopian calendar is about seven years behind the Gregorian calendar – would mark the end of the country’s two-year-long civil war. 

Since then, these hopes have dimmed. 

Fighting has resumed in the northern Tigray region and Tigrayans rang in the new year to the sounds of armed drones overhead and bombs exploding, killing at least 10 people in the regional capital of Mekelle. 

The brutal conflict between the Ethiopian government and Tigray’s regional leadership is thought to have killed thousands and left millions displaced, at risk of famine. Civilians have been targeted with alarming frequency. There has also been fighting in parts of Afar, Amhara and Oromia states.

Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been widely condemned internationally for his military’s abuses during the war, which led to the United States imposing sanctions on the country.

Domestically, however, Abiy has faced far less pressure. Press freedom is virtually non-existent – more than 60 journalists have been arrested since the beginning of the war – and authorities are quick to crack down on internal dissent. 

State media outlets broadcast a relentless barrage of war propaganda, making it hard for any other opinions to be heard. This includes incitements to violence, even from government officials, and open calls for genocide.

Defying the war drums

Despite this hostile environment, opposition to Abiy’s war – or “law enforcement operation”, as he initially termed it – is gathering momentum.

Twenty-two months into a conflict that has brought the country’s economy to the brink of ruin, and shredded the social fabric of its ethnically diverse population, more and more Ethiopians are calling for an end to the conflict, despite the risks of doing so.

“People are tired of hearing of death and displacement,” said Addisu Bekele*, who works for a ride-hailing service in the capital. He initially supported the war effort. 

“I think we were tricked. War can’t be a solution; too many innocent women and children have died for nothing.”

On 8 September, hundreds of women took to the streets of the capital Addis Ababa to call for peace, a negotiated end to the war and an end to sexual violence against women, which has been routinely weaponised by all the warring factions.

Demonstrators wore white clothing bearing messages of peace and carried placards denouncing the war. Women carrying microphones yelled “Selam!” – the Amharic word for peace. A loudspeaker blared the single of the same name by popular Ethiopian artist Mahmoud Ahmed.

The song has a storied history. During Ethiopia’s war with Eritrea in the late 1990s, Mahmoud was dispatched to the front lines to sing patriotic songs for the troops. But he also performed Selam, getting the soldiers to dance along to his pacifist anthem – angering and embarrassing the officials who sent him.

The women’s march, organised by a coalition of local women-led, feminist NGOs, is the first of its kind in a city that has seen countless military parades and government-organised, pro-army demonstrations over the past two years.

“More than 400 women participated in the march and they expressed their wishes for a happy, peaceful new year for Ethiopia,” said the Timran women’s rights group, which helped to organise the march. They also urged the involvement of women in every peace-building process that takes place in Ethiopia.

Collective action

Such open rebukes of war on the streets of Addis Ababa have been rare and those who make them risk being labelled traitors and subjected to harassment and arrest.

Nonetheless, the voices calling for peace are getting louder.

Just two days before the women’s march, a collective of 35 civil society organisations scheduled a press conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in Addis Ababa’s upmarket Kazanchis district. They planned to call for an end to hostilities.

But the press conference never happened. Security forces blocked entry to the hotel, forcing the cancellation of the event, saying that their orders came from “higher up”.

A few hours later, the participating organisations – among them the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association, the Editors Guild of Ethiopia and the Centre for the Advancement of Rights and Democracy – released a joint statement calling for “peace and accountability”. They demanded a mediated end to the war; the commencement of a national dialogue; the restoration of interrupted banking and communications services to the Tigray region; accountability for perpetrators of war crimes and an end to hate speech.

The statement did not mention the warring parties explicitly, focusing instead on calling for peace – in its original Amharic, “selam” is used 12 times.

But, for government officials, the statement crossed a red line.

The signatories were summoned to a meeting on 9 September at the Elilly Hotel. Non-state media were denied entry. While the meeting was meant to stay private, two attendees, who requested anonymity, shared details of what took place.

The meeting was led by Alemu Sime, a member of parliament and a senior official within the ruling Prosperity Party. He is a close confidant of Abiy. 

The sources said he used threats and intimidation in an effort to force the statement to be retracted.

“Alemu was very angry. He threatened to revoke our permits and warned us that he could jail us at a moment’s notice,” said one source. “He said, ‘Don’t think you are neutral by calling for peace, you are siding with the enemy. If you don’t think that the survival of our country is your business, let us know now. We will revoke your operating licences.’ He even accused us of betraying Ethiopia.”

The meeting was adjourned with several frightened representatives appearing apologetic and claiming to have been led astray. All were warned that any similar moves would result in retaliation by the state.

The participating organisations have so far refrained from publicly discussing the meeting with Alemu. The Ethiopian government did not respond to a request for comment. 

On Thursday, Jima Dilbo Denbel, the head of the national Agency for Civil Society Organisations – the body that regulates NGOs – was quoted in state media saying that “action will be taken against civil society organisations that are working against our country’s sovereignty and the interests of the people”.

Fall from grace

If anyone knows how risky it is to preach peace in Ethiopia today, it is the singer- songwriter Tariku Gankisi. He is better known as Dishta Gina, which is also the name of his most popular single.

In 2021, Tariku had the world at his feet. He was a rising star in Ethiopian music and the song Dishta Gina was racking up millions of YouTube hits (it currently has more than 28-million views).

It even caught the attention of global superstar Akon, who produced his own remix. Among his many fans was none other than Abiy Ahmed.

Before he became a singer, Tariku had been a soldier. He participated in the Ethiopian-Eritrean border war of 1998 to 2000, which killed an estimated 70 000 people.

The war left a lasting impression on him. On 7 November, Tariku was asked to perform at a pro-war military rally in Addis Ababa. There were thousands of people in the crowd, and millions watching on TV. But, instead of singing, he took the microphone and delivered an emotional plea for peace.

“Enough!” he said. “Why do we have to keep killing? Stop sending youths to the front and send elders to reconcile us. The muzzle won’t bring us a solution!”

Tariku’s outburst was covered by international media and he won admirers the world over.

However, he was also subjected to vitriolic criticism on social media, in particular from pro-government accounts, and received death threats.

Eventually, he was paraded on primetime Ethiopian television where he issued a tearful apology. He has since left Addis Ababa for his hometown in southern Ethiopia.

His career appears to be over. The war goes on.

When Gebremichael arrived in the city, he found a mob looting his nephew’s workshop. Gebremichael begged them to stop. Instead, they turned on him.

One relative, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: “The looters took them, Gebremichael along with another 10 or 11 people who worked in that area — by vehicle. We tried to follow them but we were not able to get their whereabouts.

“Then other people told us they were killed. They are buried in a mass grave.”

Gebremichael was not political, his relative said. He was not educated, and did not read the hatred and misinformation that swamps Ethiopian social media. Yet his relative claimed online hate campaigns and calls for violence — particularly on Facebook — played a key role in not only his killing, but those of many others.  

“The worst thing that contributed to their killing are the so-called activists who have been spreading hate on social media,” he told the Bureau. Some posts, he claimed, would name individuals or even post photos, helping create an atmosphere “inciting attacks, killings and displacements”.

Thousands have died and millions more have been displaced since fighting broke out between government forces and armed opposition groups from the country’s Tigray region in November 2020. The government has also been fighting an armed group from the Oromia region, and the United Nations secretary general António Guterres said last November that “the stability of Ethiopia and the wider region is at stake”.

On November 9, Mercy Ndegwa, Facebook’s public policy director for East Africa, and Mark Smith, its global content management director, used a blog post to offer reassurances that Ethiopia “has been one of our highest priorities” and that their company “will remain in close communication with people on the ground”.

But the Bureau’s investigation has uncovered a litany of failures. The company has known for years that it was helping to directly fuel the growing tensions in the country. Many of those fighting misinformation and hate on the ground — fact checkers, journalists, civil society organisations and human rights activists — say Facebook’s support is still far less than it could and should be.

A senior member of Ethiopia’s media accused Facebook of “just standing by and watching this country fall apart”. Others told the Bureau that they believed requests for assistance had been ignored and that arranged meetings did not take place. These failures, they said, were helping to fuel a conflict that has already led to reports of ethnic cleansing and mass rape. Amnesty International has accused both sides in the conflict of carrying out atrocities against civilians.

Yet posts inciting violence or making false claims designed to encourage hate between ethnic groups in Ethiopia have been allowed to circulate freely. The Bureau has identified and spoken to relatives of people allegedly killed in many attacks, but has not been able to cross-check specific details on the ground because of the ongoing violence.

Facebook said it had worked for two years on a comprehensive strategy to keep people in Ethiopia safe on their platforms, including working with civil society groups, fact checking organisations and forming a special policy unit.

Gebremichael’s family cited one Facebook user in particular: Solomon Bogale, an online activist with more than 86 000 followers on Facebook. Though listed on Facebook as living in London, Bogale’s social media indicates that he has been in Ethiopia since August 2021, with posts of him in fatigues and carrying an assault rifle often accompanied by statements praising the Fano, an Amharan nationalist vigilante group.

One of Gebremichael’s family members said Bogale’s “inciteful posts” had resulted in many attacks on Tigrayans in Gonder.

In the weeks before Gebremichael’s killing, Bogale called for people to “cleanse” the Amhara territories of the “junta”, a term often used by government supporters to refer to the Tigrayan forces fighting the government and to Tigrayans more generally. The post continued: “We need to cleanse the region of the junta lineage present prior to the war!!”

On October 31, two days before Gebremichael’s disappearance, Bogale posted an image of an older women holding grenades, with the caption: “#Dear people of Amhara, there are mothers like these who are fighting to destroy Amhara and destroy Ethiopia! The main solution to save the #Amhara people and to protect Ethiopia is we Amharas have to rise up!! Get together Amhara.”

The Bureau has verified that both posts remained on Facebook almost four months later, along with many others from various sources containing hate speech, calls for violence and false claims. Throughout the conflict misinformation and hate have been used on Facebook and other social media, inflaming tensions and influencing the outcome of military operations.

Contacted through Facebook, Bogale denied that any Tigrayans were killed in Gonder in early November, saying all Tigrayans in the city were safe. He claimed that Tigrayan forces had killed ethnic Amharans in the region.

He also said he would delete the posts cited by the Bureau.  

Facebook said it had reviewed the posts flagged by the Bureau and had removed any content that violated its policies. The Bureau found one post had been removed. At the time of publication, the post of the woman holding grenades remained online.

Criticism of Facebook’s failings is made more damning by the extensive evidence that the company has known of the risk of such problems for years, according to disclosures made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to the US Congress in redacted form by the legal counsel of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. The redacted versions received by Congress were reviewed by a consortium of news organisations, including the Bureau.

As early as January 2019 an internal report into various countries’ “On-FB Badness” — a measure of harmful content on the platform, including hate and graphic violence — rated the situation in Ethiopia as “severe”, its second-highest category.

By June 2020, Facebook had become even more starkly aware of the problem. An internal document discussing measures used to assess the level of harmful content said it had “found significant gaps in our coverage (especially in Myanmar and Ethiopia)”.

Six months later, Ethiopia had risen to the top of Facebook’s list of countries where it needed to take action. In a presentation circulated on 10 December 2020, the risk of societal violence in Ethiopia was ranked as “dire” — Facebook’s highest threat warning. It was the only country to be given that ranking.

More than a year later, the Bureau’s investigation has found that Facebook is said to have frequently ignored requests for support from fact checkers based in the country and some civil society organisations say they have not had a meeting with the company in 18 months. The Bureau has learned from multiple sources that Facebook only appointed its first senior policy executive from Ethiopia to work on East Africa in September.

Facebook does run a third-party fact-checking programme, providing partners with access to internal tools and payment for fact checks. As its website states: “We rely on independent fact checkers to review and rate the accuracy of stories through original reporting.” But it has not partnered with a single organisation based in Ethiopia to tackle the misinformation spread by all sides in the country’s conflict.

Abel Wabella, founder of the Ethiopian fact-checking initiative HaqCheck, said Facebook had failed to support his organisation since he first approached executives more than a year ago.  

“They told me, ‘Okay, we can help you, just write to us, our email.’ They gave me their cards. And I wrote to them,” he told the Bureau. But he heard nothing back. “At that time, our initiative was very small, so I thought they didn’t find something good in our platform, so they wanted to keep silent because of that.”

Wabella sent two further emails over the next few months, the second to the new Facebook executive from Ethiopia he had heard had been appointed. Despite assuring him that she would take action in September, he said he had heard nothing from the company since.

Rehobot Ayalew, HaqCheck’s lead fact checker, said the lack of support had severely hampered her team’s work. “Most of the people have low media literacy, so Facebook is considered to be credible … So working with Facebook, and also checking and verifying Facebook content, is the major way to counter this disinformation.”

Wabella added: “The problem is not specific to Tigray. Ethiopian citizens from every corner across ethnic groups were severely affected by hateful content circulating online, specifically Facebook.”

The other major independent fact-checking organisation based in Ethiopia, Ethiopia Check, is also not part of Facebook’s partner programme.

Facebook said it had constantly worked with civil society organisations and human rights groups on the ground, but did not partner with HaqCheck and Ethiopia Check because neither was certified by the International Fact-Checking Network.

Facebook does work with two fact-checking organisations on content from Ethiopia — PesaCheck, which runs a small team in Nairobi, and Agence France-Presse — but both of them are based outside the country. AFP has just one fact checker in the country. Although misinformation flagged by PesaCheck and AFP has often been labelled as false or removed by Facebook, content investigated and debunked by HaqCheck has largely remained unaltered and free to spread.

This has included false declarations of military victories on both sides, false allegations of attacks on civilians and false claims of captured infiltrators. On November 25 last year, the Ethiopian government banned all unofficial reporting of battles, further enforcing an information vacuum in which misinformation spreads easily.

“As far as I know, support for fact checkers in Ethiopia by Facebook is almost non-existent,” said the senior person working in Ethiopian media, who asked to remain anonymous. “Facebook doesn’t pay the attention Ethiopia needs at this crucial moment, and that’s contributing to the ongoing crisis by inflaming hatred and spreading hate speech.”

A number of civil society groups have similar complaints of feeling ignored and sidelined. Facebook organised a meeting with several groups in June 2020, to discuss how the platform could best regulate content before scheduled elections. As of November, two of the organisations involved said they had heard nothing about any subsequent meetings.

“The recent development has been overwhelming. Facebook should have had a similar consultation,” said Yared Hailemariam, executive director of the Ethiopian Human Right Defenders Centre. “Facebook also ought to have a working group, collaborating with human rights organisations and civil society groups.”

Haben Fecadu, a human rights activist who has worked in Ethiopia, said the hate speech issue was flagged to Facebook years ago but the company had still not provided adequate resources to deal with it.

“There’s really no excuse and I wish someone had come down harder on them about it,” she said. “I’ve doubted they have invested enough in their Africa content moderation, and doubt that the Africa team has had enough resources to moderate content properly. They don’t have enough moderators … I suspect they didn’t have a Tigrinya-speaking moderator until very recently.”

Facebook’s owner, Meta, said in January that it would “assess the feasibility” of complying with a recommendation by its independent oversight board that it launch a human rights assessment of its activity in Ethiopia. The recommendation came after the board directed Facebook to remove a post that claimed Tigrayans were involved in atrocities in the Amhara region.

Ayalew, the HaqCheck fact checker, said the inadequate support from one of the world’s richest companies was demoralising. “We usually come across sensitive content, images that are horrifying and hateful content. It’s hard by itself,” she said. “And when you know that, even though you’re trying, you’re not getting the support from the platform itself, that is allowing this kind of content.

“You ask yourself why? Why am I doing this? Because you know that they can do more, and they can change the situation. They have a big role in this, and they’re not doing anything. You’re trying alone.”

Mercy Ndegwa, speaking on behalf of Facebook, said: “For more than two years, we’ve invested in safety and security measures in Ethiopia, adding more staff with local expertise and building our capacity to catch hateful and inflammatory content in the most widely spoken languages, including Amharic, Oromo, Somali and Tigrinya. As the situation has escalated, we’ve put additional  measures in place and are continuing to monitor activity on our platform, identify issues as they emerge, and quickly remove any content that breaks our rules.”

Just over three weeks after Gebremichael’s murder, Hadush Gebrekirstos, a 45-year-old who lived in Addis Ababa, was arbitrarily detained by police who heard him speaking Tigrinya.

“After they knew he was a Tigrinya speaker, they said, ‘This one is mercenary’ and took him to a nearby police station … They were beating him hard,” said a relative, who also wished to remain anonymous and who was told what happened by witnesses.  

“Two days after — on November 26 — his body was found dead, about 200 to 150m from the police station. They threw his body out there.”

Again, Hadush’s relative said he had no political or social media engagement. Again, he believes that it was lies and hate on Facebook that played a key role in causing the killing.

“It really does. Irrespective of reality, because people do not have the ability to verify what was posted on Facebook. Like calling people to kill Tigrinya speaking residents — as a result of hatred and revenge feelings … You don’t even know who is killing you, who is detaining you and who is looting your property. It’s total lawlessness.” — Bureau of Investigative Journalism

An analysis of hundreds of internal memos and interviews with about a dozen former and current members of the VOA’s Horn of Africa division shows Ethiopian government biases in how the broadcaster frames the conflict, and in the stories and viewpoints it chooses to air.

These biases mean the VOA’s coverage remains largely favourable for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize and whose security forces stand accused of massacres and ethnic cleansing.

Among the journalists interviewed is Jason Patinkin, who served as an international broadcaster in the Africa division’s English to Africa service. He worked as a reporter, host, producer and editor of content for the network’s radio, television and web audiences. 

“The VOA’s coverage writ large shows that the organisation has taken a side in Ethiopia’s Tigray war. Every level of the VOA hierarchy knows about the bias, in part because I’ve raised it at every level, yet so far management has failed to put a stop to it.”

In a response to questions, the VOA, which is funded by the United States, said: “VOA does its best to cover the situation in Ethiopia fairly and accurately. There are strong feelings in the region about the conflict, and we hear from partisans of all sides. Our goal is objective journalism.”

It wouldn’t comment on specific allegations but said: “When we receive complaints, we investigate and take actions, if necessary, against journalists whose coverage has violated our principles of producing accurate, balanced and comprehensive reporting, with this or any other story.”

Global influence

The VOA, with a budget topping $250-million, broadcasts content in 47 languages, with more than a thousand journalists serving audiences around the world. 

More than a dozen of the VOA’s Horn of Africa division’s reporters and stringers are based in Ethiopia, and more work remotely from Washington DC for the network’s Amharic, Tigrigna and Afaan Oromo language desks, and contribute English language stories as well. Since the establishment of the division in 1982, the VOA’s broadcasts reach more than 11-million listeners weekly. [Correction: There are only 10 reporters and stringers based in Ethiopia, according to correspondence from the VOA’s public relations office subsequent to publication]

For months, the Ethiopian government waged a “law enforcement operation” in Tigray under a communications blackout, with journalists and aid workers prohibited from entering the region. Ethiopian forces were sent in to oust the Tigrayan regional government on November 4, backed by troops from neighbouring Eritrea.

Eventually, through the accumulation of accounts, the use of satellite imagery and footage smuggled out of the region, journalists began to piece together a grim picture of a civil war with punitive atrocities meted out against the region’s inhabitants.

Major news outlets worked remotely with unreliable phone access, or with Addis Ababa-based correspondents whose press credentials risked revocation at a moment’s notice. Local media coverage has been largely snuffed out by Ethiopian authorities, who rounded up half a dozen reporters weeks into the war. 

Despite the constraints, the VOA and its team of local reporters remained unperturbed while journalists from Reuters, Deutsche Welle and the BBC received warnings from Ethiopian authorities for their critical coverage.

Even with these difficulties, journalists have unearthed the war’s hidden tragedies. The world has since learned of the razing of villages, the gang rape of women and extrajudicial killings. Last month, a consortium of outlets, including CNN, the BBC and Bellingcat, identified Ethiopian soldiers as being behind the videotaped executions of dozens of men near the town of Mahbere Dego.

The VOA boasts a newsroom with an arsenal of foreign experts and reporters who hail from the region, yet it has thus far produced precious little hard-hitting journalism on the conflict in Tigray.

Patinkin says this is by design.

Concerned with the VOA’s reluctance to highlight atrocities carried out by Ethiopian forces and their allies, he raised his concerns with upper management, which did little. Earlier this month, Patinkin quit the network over the inaction and unwillingness to curb the VOA’s spread of what he says is Ethiopian government propaganda. 

“I have repeatedly raised this issue across different levels of management and even with the acting director, but everyone has dragged their feet,” he said. “I could not, in good conscience, stay at an organisation that is acting against every journalistic value that I know.

“We’re talking about potential crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and perhaps even genocide carried out by Prime Minister Abiy’s forces and allies. Yet with a few exceptions, I think the VOA’s coverage shows the organisation has sided with the perpetrators both by commission and omission. At the end of the day, the only recourse I had was to leave and speak out.”

A tale of two massacres

The network’s coverage of atrocities has been noticeably selective.

Atrocities committed in the war by state forces appear to get little to no coverage. Whereas the November 9 killings of hundreds of civilians in the town of May Kadra, which Amnesty determined was carried out by a group loyal to the Tigrayan rebels opposed to the Ethiopian government, received extensive coverage.

From November through to February, the VOA’s Amharic language desk has produced more than a dozen news pieces on the May Kadra massacre.

A story on Amnesty International’s own report was produced. Reports on funerals held for the victims and the erection of a monument a month later to honour them were published. Interviews with officials discussing the massacre, and the trials of suspects were also allocated airtime. Eventually, the VOA sent a video team to the battered town to meet the survivors. 

This contrasts greatly with the network’s coverage of the Axum massacre, which was similarly uncovered by Amnesty International and made global headlines.

In that atrocity, where soldiers from Eritrea went door to door killing hundreds of unarmed males in their homes, coverage has largely focused on statements by government officials either criticising the Amnesty International investigation or denying that civilians were among the dead. A report by The Intercept revealed that a Tigrigna language report on that massacre was withheld from publishing for weeks.

Journalists identify Negussie Mengesha, who, until recently, was the head of the VOA’s Africa division, as overseeing the transformation of the VOA into a pro-Ethiopian propaganda outlet. Negussie joined the Horn of Africa service in 1982, the year of its inception.

Tizita Belachew, also a VOA veteran and Negussie’s confidante, is said to also be complicit. She made the climb from the Amharic desk to her current role as the service head.

Neither Negussie nor Tizita responded to requests for comment.

Between 2012 and 2014, Peter Heinlein, a former VOA correspondent to New Delhi, Moscow and Addis Ababa, took over the Horn of Africa service. He was briefly arrested by Ethiopian authorities in 2012 for “illegally reporting” on an uprising of Ethiopian Muslims.

Frustrated by what he said were Negussie’s efforts to undermine his authority, Heinlein wrote a lengthy complaint in 2013, outlining all that was wrong with the Horn of Africa desk. 

According to Heinlein, the matter dates back to when the Horn of Africa service was founded and tasked solely with translating English news stories from the central department to Ethiopian languages. He explained that when the VOA paved the way for language services employees to publish their own stories, translators were suddenly asked to become journalists, something many weren’t qualified for.

“A big part of the problem is that the language service staffers have widely varying levels of training in, and understanding of, the craft of journalism as it is practiced in western countries,” Heinlein wrote. “And because skill in a particular language is a requirement in these services, the field of qualified applicants for these jobs is narrow, and heavily laced with people with political motivations.”

Eight years later, Heinlein believes that speaking out could perhaps usher in the overhaul he believes is needed at the VOA.

“Of course, this story deserves the light of day which has long eluded it,” Heinlein said.

The Voice of Abiy

For decades, the VOA’s Amharic service made a name for its criticism of the Ethiopian government. Then, in October 2018, Negussie met Abiy. Accompanied by Tizita, the two had what he described as an hour long “off the record” discussion.

The VOA’s reporting has since shifted away from its anti-government stance. Interviewees say Negussie and Tizita have enforced the change in a newsroom that they feel they have ownership of.

Staff at the VOA echoed their exasperation with editorial policies, which they say have curtailed their freedom to pursue certain stories. They also lament the hiring of staff who, they say, were brought in solely to tow the government’s line.

“At the Horn of Africa desk, the VOA has definitely become the Voice of Abiy,” one employee said.

Negussie was to retire in November, but postponed this when the war in Tigray broke out. Staying on board as Ethiopia was engulfed by fierce fighting, he oversaw Tizita’s appointment as the Horn of Africa’s service head, notifying staff in an email sent out on December 31. He retired last month.

Despite the recent appointment, staff say that Tizita has been working unofficially as an editor-in-chief for years. Under Tizita’s stringent control, story ideas deemed damaging for the Ethiopian government, such as the Axum massacre, are either dropped, delayed or edited until rendered unrecognisable.

In emails, Tizita urges staff to push through a story on a pro-government rally in Washington DC. But in reaction to a Reuters story on the Axum massacre, she doesn’t hold back in her scrutiny of it.

Journalists who requested anonymity said the division heads are able to slant the editorial coverage in this manner knowing that, with families to raise and the lack of Ethiopian language newsroom opportunities elsewhere, few journalists are likely to openly protest despite growing discontent.

Patinkin agrees. “There’s a climate of fear, including in the English to Africa division, due to mismanagement and toxicity,” he says. “I believe that part of the reason I’m more comfortable speaking out compared to some of my colleagues, is that I’m a US born white male with no children and no major financial obligations. Sadly that gives me more protection.”

The atmosphere is the reason, according to interviewees, why the VOA, with all of its resources, trails the likes of The Telegraph, LA Times and VICE News in terms of hard-hitting coverage of the Tigray war by a distance.

Slanted coverage

The VOA has instead elected to produce extensive coverage of pro-Ethiopian government rallies in New York City, Washington DC, Las Vegas, and areas outside of the US where Ethiopians reside. A report on a dinner party organised by Ethiopians in the US to raise funds for their army was also published.

The M&G has amassed data from 107 meetings held by the Horn of Africa service between the start of the war in Tigray on 4 November last year and 30 April this year. After meetings, the network issues a list of “morning highlights”, a preliminary list of stories given approval by Tizita and an Amharic desk journalist, Solomon Abate.

Only at 18.7% of those meetings have stories on the war, inclusive of Tigrayan voices, been given approval by Tizita or Solomon. The data shows that the majority of approved stories were one-sided, featuring interviews with government or military officials. Meanwhile, at nearly a fifth of the meetings, the war in Tigray was omitted from the day’s agenda.

Official guidelines emailed out to staff by Negussie’s deputy, Scott Stearns, are also revelatory. Stearns, described by colleagues as a protégé of Negussie, instructed that journalists were not to use the term “civil war” to refer to the war in Tigray. Patinkin has claimed that the use of “war” was also forbidden.

“There are to be no deviations from these instructions by any member of any Africa division language service on any platform,” reads the 14 November email sent by Stearns.

The M&G, Reuters and CNN are among a plethora of outlets who have designated the ongoing crisis in Tigray as a war. The head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church recently characterised it as a genocide of the Tigrayan people.

The Ethiopian government has expressed dismay at the regular use of “war” or “civil war,” by media and diplomats alike.

“(Ethiopia) is not embroiled in a brutal civil war, it is undertaking a law enforcement operation that will salvage the nation from descending into a civil war,” reads a 28 November bulletin published on the social media handle of an Ethiopian state-run fact checker account.

The VOA’s Horn of Africa division, in particular it’s Amharic language desk, has adopted use of the government’s terminology. On other occasions, the outlet has opened stories on the war describing it as “what the government refers to as the law enforcement operation”. 

Staff say the term is inappropriate, because it sugarcoats the war’s sheer brutality.

“Honestly, using the term is a disgrace to the profession,” said one VOA employee. “It eats at you knowing that others believe you are complicit in a coverup of the truth.”

Making mention of the network’s lack of original reporting on a conflict fraught with human rights violations, the employee bemoaned the VOA’s use of journalists and camera crews to at least five Ethiopian cities late last year, to provide extensive coverage of pro-government rallies held in support of the army. 

“That was a giant waste of the VOA’s resources,” the individual said. “We are investing loads of money and manpower into producing pro-war propaganda.”

Patinkin says the effect of the Horn of Africa’s division’s coverage has been noticeable by the dearth of English language reporting from the region. He believes this is likely because propaganda can fly under the VOA’s radar in Ethiopian languages, but wouldn’t be given a pass in English.

“The news centre has an East Africa bureau, yet there hasn’t been a single story on the war, except for one which was critical of Abiy. And that one was removed from the website,” Patinkin said. [Clarification: Patinkin was referring here specifically to stories from Ethiopia on the Tigray war]

“From February onwards, as journalists gained access to Tigray and released original investigations into atrocities blamed on pro government forces, VOA’s News Centre produced nothing from the region for its international audiences.”

“There was, however, an original English language report from Washington DC, about pro-government rallies. That contrast, to me, says it all.”

Patinkin added that the shortage of original news means international audiences who rely on the VOA for their news are being left in the dark about Tigray and are turning to competing media houses to fill the news gap left by the VOA’s poor coverage. 

“Essentially, our English language coverage of the war is from our UN and state department correspondents, and not from the ground. I believe this is deliberate. I doubt that access is an excuse, considering that the Horn of Africa service chief and senior division officials recently traveled to Addis Ababa at a time when other journalists are targeted by crackdowns.” 

One-sided report

In addition to its coverage of pro-government rallies and fundraisers, the VOA’s Amharic language coverage of the war includes stories that appear to fall short of journalistic standards.

One mid-December Amharic radio segment reads like a communist-era style news bulletin. It featured interviews with wounded fighters at a hospital.

“Ethiopian soldiers injured in the Tigray war, say that the end result of the law enforcement operation, has them healing from their wounds quicker than ever and eager to rejoin their comrades in the army,” is how the announcer begins the first 20 seconds of the story.

The story proceeds: “TPLF [ Tigray people’s Liberation Front] fighters being treated in this same hospital tell the VOA that they’ve paid sacrifices for a pointless cause.”

The announcer’s lines appear to be little more than patriotic outbursts. The story violates the VOA’s journalistic code, which calls for contrasting viewpoints to be included in a story.

On 28 December last year, the VOA broadcast an eight-minute interview with the chief of the Ethiopian army, General Birhanu Jula, addressing what the VOA itself controversially stated were claims by “certain TPLF supporting media organisations who state that the war in Tigray isn’t over”.

Jula spoke uncontested, saying that TPLF forces had been crushed and that only remnants in remote hideouts remained. With the interviewer offering no rebuttals, the radio segment could have doubled as an army communique.  

The VOA has also dedicated ample airtime to individuals who condemn critical coverage of the war in Tigray. One scholar who appeared on a January radio segment, went as far as linking death and destruction in the country to what he called “irresponsible news coverage”.

Last month, another report amplified a government communique that claimed the TPLF had infiltrated media outlets to publish stories besmirching Ethiopian army forces with the goal of exonerating the TPLF for its roles in atrocities. 

Government supporters have been brought on air and have propped up a conspiracy theory that the TPLF has used its influence to sway media outlets and diplomats to do their bidding. Their calls to fight back against what they say is a campaign to “tarnish” the country’s image, are thinly veiled calls to reject news coverage that shines a spotlight on state violence in Tigray.

With these stories, interviewees are rarely challenged or asked to provide evidence for their claims. There are no opposing views and, perhaps most problematic of all, no mention of the violence in the region.  

Although stories like these are given the nod, others, which are far more balanced, are removed because they are deemed too critical of the Ethiopian government, according to several interviewees. 

Another internal memo confirms this. In December, Addis Ababa-based stringer Simon Marks produced a two-minute video segment that debates whether Abiy still merits his Nobel prize. The video was published on the VOA’s website by the network’s central division, which overrides the Africa division. 

According to communications, the video was removed at the behest of Stearns, who emailed instructions telling division staff not to use the segment. Taken down from the website, the video remains on YouTube.

Patinkin says he sought to escalate the matter in pursuit of a solution.

“After only getting evasive non-answers from Stearns and silence from Negussie, I raised the issue with Steve Springer, who oversees standards at VOA,” Patinkin said.

“English to Africa Service chief Sonya Laurence-Green was willing to speak to me about my concerns. However, when we spoke, she reiterated that we were not to call the Tigray conflict a war, and openly expressed pro-government views, citing an opinion piece by former Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn. She also stated that any casualties inflicted by Ethiopia’s government were collateral damage and couldn’t be compared to atrocities committed by the TPLF.

“With this, I lost confidence and trust with the Africa division management.”

He said that the final straw was after Springer referred him to the VOA’s acting director, Yolanda Lopez. “She was noncommittal and responded with evasive non-answers. It became clear that every level of VOA was unwilling or unable to address the problem, so I put in my two weeks notice.”

Activist complaints

Whistleblowers aren’t the only ones to complain of the network’s bias.

For Ethiopians, who hail from a country consistently ranked among the bottom third in global press freedom ranking indexes, the VOA is often the only independent source for news in their mother tongues. 

Last year, outrage over VOA coverage following the 29 June murder of musician and activist Hachalu Hundessa led to hundreds of Ethiopian Americans, who shared ethnic Oromo ancestry with Hachalu, protesting outside of the VOA’s Washington DC headquarters.

“Be objective. Our stories matter” was the cry of one young protester. The outrage led to the brief trending of the hashtag #unfollowvoaamharic among Ethiopian Facebook and Twitter users, who had called for a boycott of the platform.

“Most of the VOA Amharic team share an ideological similarity with the current prime minister,” said Abdurazak Dube, a human rights activist who helped coordinate the online protest. “They advocate for the regime informally in their media coverage. Tizita Belachew was the main focus of our campaign, as she’s in charge there.”

Abdurazak said that dozens of complaint letters were written and mailed to those high up in the VOA hierarchy but the criticism did not result in any changes.

“The VOA, especially the Amharic service, has been silent for the most part and when they speak up its directed at either downplaying the impact of the Tigray genocide or justifying it,” says Meaza Gidey, who is affiliated with Tigrayan activist network Omna Tigray. “The lack of impartiality in their almost nonexistent coverage of the Tigray genocide is a disgrace to the American taxpayers funding its operational costs.”

Staffers singled out Negussie and Tizita for criticism. “The VOA is their personal tool to pursue political goals in Ethiopia,” says one. “Anyone who interferes is attacked and harassed. They have maintained their fortress this way and it has come at the cost of our dignity.”

Patinkin says: “I think Stearns, Negussie and Tizita are the main culprits. But if I, as a low level, relatively new hire, was able to see all of this going on, I don’t think anyone in VOA management can credibly say they weren’t aware of the problem.”

The whistleblowers say Negussie’s retirement is unlikely to change much, with Tizita still firmly entrenched at the service, and Stearns, whom interviewees identify as being moulded by Negussie, appointed Africa division acting director.

“Unless the network’s lackadaisical approach changes,” one says, “a retired Negussie will run the VOA through his proxies. Sadly it seems that none of the higher ups care.”

Extensive attempts were made to obtain comment from Tizita, Stearns and Negussie. Lopez has not responded to queries.

This story was amended on 15 June 2021 to reflect the correct number of VOA stringers and reporters in Ethiopia, as per correspondence from VOA; and to clarify one of Jason Patinkin’s quotes.

The fierce battles that had begun in early November between the federal government troops and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the former governing party of the northern region, were fought under the cover of a communications shutdown. Phone and internet services to Tigray were severed and journalists and aid workers were barred from entry. The ensuing conflict killed thousands of people, with at least 50 000 people crossing to neighbouring Sudan to flee the fighting, including air raids and heavy artillery.

Phone connectivity returned in several towns and cities in the weeks that followed the government’s capture of the regional capital of Mekelle on 28 November, but the majority of Tigrayan areas still cannot be reached by telephone and the entire region remains deprived of internet access.

Humanitarian aid, meanwhile, has started to reach those affected by the fighting, although it remains at a trickle as bureaucratic hurdles and continuing fighting hamper the stalled efforts to provide life-saving assistance to millions of people, including newly displaced people and refugees already sheltering in camps based in Tigray.

Al Jazeera has obtained a confidential copy of the minutes of a January 8 meeting between the Tigray Emergency Coordination Center, international aid groups and Ethiopian officials in Mekelle. Aid agencies’ representatives appear to criticise the government’s response to the crisis.

“Overall, commitment is very low and it should be addressed by internalizing the situation and acting timely,” the leaked document reads. “Humanitarian partners call for unhindered access to people in need.”

The document appears to further highlight the gravity of the crisis, as it quotes an Ethiopian regional administrator saying that hundreds of thousands are at risk of starvation if food assistance efforts are not ramped up.

“People are dying of starvation. In Adwa, people are dying while they are sleeping. [It’s] also the same in other zones in the region,” said Berhane Gebretsadik, according to the document.

Both the prime minister’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum and Tigray’s interim Governor Mulu Nega are yet to respond to emailed queries seeking insight on the matter of humanitarian assistance reaching Tigray. The government has previously said it remained committed to protecting and supporting the civilian population, while Abiy has said no civilian lives have been lost in the government’s offensive.

While there is no official explanation for the hold-up, it coincides with a period of mounting allegations of abuses by government forces, an uptick in lawlessness and reports that soldiers from neighbouring Eritrea had intervened in the war, fighting TPLF forces alongside the Ethiopian army.

The communications shutdown has made it impossible to independently authenticate claims about the presence of Eritrean soldiers, who have reportedly been accused of atrocities, including extrajudicial killings.

Both Addis Ababa and Asmara have denied their involvement in the conflict, but an Ethiopian military commander said in a video posted on social media earlier this month that Eritrean soldiers had indeed participated in the fighting – a position later echoed by Mekelle’s interim mayor.

Mehari Taddele Maru, a professor at the European University Institute, alleged the refusal to allow unhindered access to the region was meant to keep news of starvation and abuses by state forces under the wraps.

“Deliberate obstruction of humanitarian access is a classic method of systematic starvation of people,” Mehari told Al Jazeera. “Ethiopian government and Eritrean troops continue to obstruct access to humanitarian aid. The blanket continues and thus first-hand information is almost impossible to get. The restriction of information is in itself a crime of the state to hide other crimes.”

The region is also facing a shortage of medical supplies and food, with hospitals destroyed and rampant looting reported. Banks in Mekelle were closed in the initial days of the war, leaving people empty-handed or with a perilously short supply of cash for basics, before reopening in late December.

“Things are becoming calm here,” said Ermias Tachene, a merchant who resides in Mekelle. “Shops have food once again and people are going back to work. Outside of the city, I’m not so sure as it’s dangerous to venture out there and the phone lines there are still disconnected.”

Food prices, which had skyrocketed as a result of war-induced shortages, have largely returned to earlier levels. Despite reports of rampant crime, including the rape of women in Mekelle, stability is gradually returning to the region’s largest city. Businesses are restarting operations and Tigray’s airspace has been reopened.

But outside of the capital, banks remain shut and fighting is continuing as Ethiopian troops and their allies hunt TPLF leaders believed to have retreated into rural Tigray. On Wednesday, the Ethiopian government said that Seyoum Mesfin, a notable TPLF official and Ethiopia’s former foreign minister, was killed in fighting alongside two other officers. TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael is believed to be at large, hiding in the region.

Experts feared the burgeoning humanitarian crisis may intensify local resistance.

“In past conflicts, mass starvation in parts of Tigray has stiffened local resistance and led to prolonged conflict,” said Murithi Mutiga, Horn of Africa project director for the International Crisis Group.

“If the government is to be taken at its word that its campaign is aimed only at ousting the TPLF and not at harming the Tigrayan people, they should swiftly accede to the demands of humanitarian agencies for access to Tigray and even to areas TPLF forces may still control to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe of the sort that would make it harder to find a path out of this devastating conflict.”

In mid-December, frustration with Ethiopia’s refusal to allow aid groups to enter Tigray led to the European Union to postpone delivery of almost 88 million euros in aid money destined for Addis Ababa. Ethiopia has since allowed some aid to reach the region – the Red Cross has brought in medicine among other “relief supplies” – but humanitarians have complained that the government continued to hinder efforts on the ground and that only a fraction of those in desperate need of assistance had been reached.

The UN’s emergency aid department, OCHA, in a report earlier in January, said up to a third of shipments and food deliveries have been rejected by authorities.

Last week, the EU affirmed that budget support for Ethiopia had been suspended indefinitely.

“We receive consistent reports of ethnic-targeted violence, killings, massive looting, rapes, forceful return of refugees and possible war crimes,” Josep Borrell, the bloc’s high representative for foreign affairs, said in a statement on Friday. “And while people are in dire need of aid, access to the affected region remains limited, which makes it very difficult to deliver humanitarian assistance.”

During the war, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) lost control of the four refugee camps it operated in Tigray that were hosting Eritrean refugees. It recently regained access to two of them, but the other two which hosted a combined total of more than 35,000 people remain inaccessible.

Both camps were reportedly overrun and ransacked by Eritrean soldiers during the war, with reports citing satellite images suggesting that destruction at the camps took place as recently as January.

“We have had no access to the Shimelba and Hitsats refugee camps since November,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told Al Jazeera. “We have been receiving a number of reports of significant damage to those camps, including recent reports of the camps being burned, and indications that many refugees have fled in search of safety and food.”

“We stand ready to return to the camps as soon as safe access is possible and stress the importance in the meantime of being able to assist those who have fled the camps.”

This article was first published on Al Jazeera

NEWS ANALYSIS

At about 2am Ethiopian time on Wednesday morning, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took to his Facebook page to make a grave announcement. “The Ethiopian Defense Forces, run by a command post, have been tasked with saving the country,” he said. He said that the regional government of Tigray, a northern province, was guilty of “crossing a red line” and that Ethiopian troops had been ordered to take action. “I call on Ethiopians to remain calm, be on high alert and back the military effort.”

Several commentators have described this as tantamount to a declaration of war against one of Ethiopia’s own regional states.

About an hour later — still in the early hours of the morning — Abiy appeared on state television. He said that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that governs the Tigray region, was guilty of “treason”. According to Abiy, Tigray regional security forces had assaulted Ethiopian military bases in the towns of Mekelle and Dansha, killing and injuring soldiers based there. 

The Ethiopian army’s Northern Command, one of four regional commands, is based in Mekelle, the Tigrayan regional capital which is more than 700km north of the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. Tigray’s regional government has announced an airspace closure, according to AFP, and has claimed that the Northern Command will “stand with the Tigray people and the regional government”.

Tigray is home to about six million of Ethiopia’s population of 110-million people, and is located in the north-east of the country, along the border with Eritrea.

Tensions between the federal government in Addis Ababa and Tigray’s regional government have been running high for some time, and relations had soured considerably in recent months. Although this escalation remains shocking, analysts have warned for months that conflict loomed large.

Efforts by the Mail & Guardian to contact residents in Tigray were fruitless, because internet and phone lines were not functioning. Later, internet-service-tracking organisation Netblocks revealed that there was a considerable drop in Ethiopia’s internet usage that began about an hour before the prime minister’s announcement. As such, the Abiy’s claims remain difficult to authenticate, and the region is virtually cut off from the outside world.

BBC journalist Desta Gebremedhin, from the BBC’s Tigrigna language desk, was able to make contact with a relative in Mekelle. “My cousin in Mekelle could hear the raging gun battles,” he said. This indicates that the fighting is within the vicinity of a major urban centre.

Despite the prime minister’s claims that his soldiers were ambushed and pushed into the war, preparations for the eventual escalation had been made at least days in advance. Large-scale movements of Ethiopian troops heading northwards were reported in recent days. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Tigray regional president Debretsion Gebremichael announced that his forces were prepared for conflict, stating that “if war is imminent, we are prepared not just to resist but to win”.

A year ago, few could have predicted today’s events, when the prime minister of Ethiopia posed for cameras in Oslo at the award ceremony after receiving the 2019 Nobel peace prize. Hailed for bringing two decades of military hostility with neighbouring Eritrea to an end, the peace deal in 2018 sparked wild celebrations in both countries and was a rare feel-good story from the often conflict-ridden region. Yet already the seeds of conflict with Tigray had been sown.

A widening rift

Prior to Abiy’s appointment as prime minister in 2018, the TPLF led a governing coalition that had monopolised power in Ethiopia for 27 years, ever since its armed wing helped to overthrow Ethiopia’s brutal communist junta in 1991. The coalition was called the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRDF), and it ruled Ethiopia largely uncontested for three decades. This included the 21-year-rule of Meles Zenawi, who was himself from Tigray and a TPLF leader.

But the TPLF-led government’s authoritarian rule precipitated popular protests that began in 2015, and eventually led to upheaval within the governing coalition. In 2018, Abiy Ahmed — a relatively unknown leader from the Oromia region — and his allies usurped the ruling clique and took control of the EPRDF.

This was bad news for the TPLF. It lost its grip on power in Addis Ababa, and many of its former strongmen were declared persona non grata and detained or forced to flee the capital. But it remained in control of its home base in Tigray, where its armed wing is based. Initially, it also remained part of the country’s coalition government, but no longer enjoyed political dominance. 

The rift between the TPLF and Abiy’s federal government in Addis Ababa widened, with officials in Mekelle openly expressing dismay with decisions made by the federal government. In late 2019, Abiy dissolved the EPRDF and merged its constituent entities into a single party he dubbed the Prosperity Party. The TPLF criticised the merger and decided against joining the new party, severing ties with Abiy and his allies — leaving the TPLF outside national government for the first time in three decades.

Officials from the two sides have since regularly traded barbs and accusations. Federal government officials accuse the TPLF of attempting to assassinate the prime minister at a rally in Addis Ababa in July 2018. A grenade was thrown near a podium where Abiy had been addressing a crowd, the explosion left five people dead and more than 140 injured. Abiy escaped unharmed. TPLF officials, meanwhile, have accused the federal government of discrimination against ethnic Tigrayans. 

Tigray’s elections: the point of no return

In June, Ethiopia’s parliament confirmed that the national elections scheduled for August 2020 would be postponed for up to a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The decision was heavily criticised by opposition critics, with many accusing the prime minister of using the pandemic as an excuse to unlawfully extend his mandate. The TPLF in Tigray denounced the decision, labelling it “unconstitutional”, and declared that it would unilaterally hold its own regional elections as scheduled.

In the meantime, a war of words broke out: state media outlets regularly broadcast anti-TPLF material to audiences nationwide, and the TPLF pushed its own line with its own broadcasters. Both sides also held military parades, which were interpreted as thinly veiled attempts at antagonising or intimidating each other.

In addition to the propaganda effort, Abiy’s friendship with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has been contentious. The Eritrean president loathes the TPLF. His enmity dates to the 1998-2000 war between Eritrea and Ethiopia which left 70 000 people dead. TPLF officials now accused Afwerki and Abiy of conspiring to destabilise Tigray. In February, one irate Tigrayan official accused Eritrea of meddling in Ethiopia’s internal affairs, going as far as threatening to “cut off [the president’s] hands” if Eritrea’s long-time dictator refused to refrain.

Last month, a televised broadcast showed Abiy giving his Eritrean counterpart a tour of Ethiopian air-force base installations. This only served to exacerbate tensions, which were not helped a few days ago when the Eritrean embassy in Ethiopia taunted the Tigray state leadership in a Facebook post, stating that it was “game over” for them. This led to suggestions that Eritrea could intervene militarily on Abiy’s behalf. The social media war of words continued with TPLF party official Getachew Reda tweeting on Tuesday that his party would prevail over the governments in Addis Ababa and the Eritrean capital Asmara, who he labelled “terrorists”. 

The regional election in Tigray eventually went ahead on schedule, in defiance of the federal government, with the TPLF overwhelmingly defeating domestic opposition in Tigray. Abiy mocked the elections, calling them “hollow”, but at the time stated he did not intend to send troops to Tigray. Instead, the Ethiopian government stated it would not recognise the newly elected regional government and retaliated by slashing the budget allocated to the Tigray region. 

For its part, Tigray announced that as of 5 October it would consider Abiy’s rule as illegitimate. This is the date that Abiy’s term would have ended if the national elections had gone ahead as planned.

On 30 October, perhaps with potential hostilities in mind, Abiy ordered Brigadier-General Jemal Mohammed to take up a post as deputy commander of the Northern Command at its base in Mekelle. But the brigadier-general never reached his new office: he was intercepted by Tigray regional government officials on arrival, and told to return to Addis Ababa.

Getachew Reda, the adviser to the Tigray state president, later clarified in a tweet that the officer was told to return because “any appointment after October 5th is unacceptable in Tigray”.

Grave implications

The consequences of conflict between Addis and Tigray are already being felt in the rest of the country. On Sunday, 54 ethnic Amhara civilians were brutally massacred at a school compound in Oromia. The Ethiopian government promptly accused the TPLF of involvement in the massacre, although it is yet to present evidence. The killings happened a day after Ethiopian soldiers based in the district suddenly vacated the region on Saturday, leaving residents at the mercy of armed militants. Some reports suggest that those soldiers were headed towards Tigray, giving weight to claims that the war was planned well in advance and not triggered by incidents that took place on Tuesday night. 

These reports are difficult to confirm. Given the internet shutdowns across the region in which war is suspected of breaking out, and the government’s increasingly thin tolerance for independent journalism, verifying what has transpired in recent hours in Tigray is virtually impossible. 

Neither side has heeded calls from both the African Union and the European Union to commence dialogue that would de-escalate the situation.

One of the poorest countries in the world, already struggling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic and grappling with deadly outbreaks of communal violence, is now on a war footing.

Outside Ethiopia’s consulate in Lebanon’s capital Beirut, about 60 young women brace themselves for another night of sleeping on the street. They used to be employed as housekeepers, but the combination of a crippling economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic meant that they were laid off and kicked out of their employers’ homes.

These women are desperate to return home. But after being abandoned — usually without pay — they can’t afford a plane ticket home, and there is little prospect of further income. “There’s no money or jobs here,” said Genet, an 18-year-old Ethiopian woman. She’s sleeping on concrete, cushioned only by a thin blanket. “I suffered too much, even before becoming homeless. I just want to return to my family.”

Since May, thousands of domestic workers of various nationalities have been abandoned by their Lebanese employers who claimed they were no longer able to afford to pay them. Under Lebanon’s notorious kafala system, through which visas are sponsored by individual employers, these workers have little to no rights and no means of redress.

Members of Egna Legna Besidet, an organisation run by Ethiopian domestic workers, visit the women outside the consulate twice a day to deliver food and sanitation items. “We are trying to find them shelter,” volunteer Hana Ashenafi told the Mail & Guardian. “But until we do, I deliver food and drink here twice a day. I also go to the embassies of Kenya, Sudan and Gambia before my day ends. These women are in danger of starving and their governments aren’t doing anything.”

Whereas the Philippines organised repatriation flights to bring many of their 30 000-odd nationals in Lebanon back home this year, African governments have been hesitant or unwilling to do the same.

A CNN report revealed that Kenyan consular staff encouraged women to take up sex work to pay for their airfare. After the explosion, frustration boiled over and Kenyan women turned on their consulate, protesting outside it and demanding staff facilitate their departures home.

Like Kenya, Ethiopia has also been heavily criticised for its perceived neglect of stranded citizens in Lebanon. In an emailed response to the Mail & Guardian, Tsion Teklu, a state minister at Ethiopia’s foreign ministry, denied that the government was unresponsive and declared that a plan to identify and repatriate citizens had registered some success. He said that more than 250 migrant workers had been able to pay for their own return tickets, while an additional 165 tickets were booked by individual donors and charities.

‘We are tired of fighting to survive’

“I just want to go home, even if I find work I won’t want to stay.” Tsion, like her compatriot Genet, is also 18. She has been scarred by her experiences in Lebanon.

“I spent a year and six months working in a home. They let me eat once a day and when I complained, my employer would hit me. He once punched me in the mouth and my teeth bled. I was never paid. They owe me 18 months of pay. When I complained about not being paid, they took me to a police station and falsely accused me of theft.”

It is not uncommon for employers to falsely accuse domestic workers of theft to avoid having to pay salaries. Tsion spent five months at a women’s incarceration facility and had nowhere to go to when she was released just weeks ago. She has been spending her days on the pavement outside the consulate for the past two weeks now.

Genet, who was initially reluctant to share her story, decides to open up when she hears Tsion speak. 

“I escaped my employer’s home in Baalbek where I worked for a year. He was abusive, a horrible man, and he owed me six months pay. But he told the police that I had stolen the family’s gold and gave them a description of me. They caught me. I spent a year and three months in prison for nothing.”

Genet says that her case was never taken to a judge and she would likely have never left had she not caught Covid-19 in the cramped prison. “After I started coughing they let me out. The others were afraid to approach me. That’s why I’m out now. I couldn’t even contact my family during my time in prison. My brother thought I was dead until I called him last month.”

Under the kafala system, women like Genet and Tsion are ineligible for legal representation and have no legal redress when abused. 

Lebanon’s labour restrictions for migrants has garnered global condemnation. The death of Ghanaian domestic worker Faustina Tay last March — and Lebanon’s subsequent refusal to prosecute her abusive employers — severely tarnished the country’s image. According to the country’s general security intelligence agency, on average two domestic workers die in Lebanon every week. Many are driven to suicide by the constant abuse, or killed.

Last Saturday, Lebanese Labour Minister Lamia Yammine announced in a tweet that her office would soon implement a proposed amendment to migrant worker laws that would “abolish the sponsorship system and enshrines the rights of migrant domestic workers”. 

It is unclear if the proposed amendments to the kafala system would entail the inclusion of migrant workers in the country’s labour law. But most domestic workers just want to go home.

Migrant domestic worker lobby group This is Lebanon, known for using Facebook to publicly shame employers into halting their abuse, launched a crowdfunding drive to support the repatriation of stranded migrant workers. Patricia, a case worker with the group who uses a pseudonym to avoid endangering colleagues, says the lackadaisical approach of African governments towards their citizens in Lebanon is what’s behind their initiative that has thus raised more than $33 000.

“They are all trying their hardest to avoid shouldering the costs,” Patricia told the Mail & Guardian. “Not just Ethiopia, other countries too. The president of Sierra Leone arrived in Beirut to receive medical treatment but hasn’t bothered to ask about his nationals who are stuck here. As for women from smaller countries such as Togo and Côte d’Ivoire, only God knows how they’ll ever get home.

“Tweaking the kafala system would be too little too late for hundreds of thousands of women who need rescuing. Domestic workers aren’t interested in staying.” 

The Middle East Eye reported last week that some 38 stranded Gambian domestic workers similarly had their repatriation costs covered by a nongovernmental organisation, after their government refused to shoulder the burden. 

“It’s like prolonging the nightmare,” said Ashenafi, the volunteer. “We are tired of fighting to survive. The abusive working conditions, being thrown out and then the explosion. How much more terror must we experience before our lives start to matter?”

An internet blackout imposed by Ethiopia’s government ensured few details of the violence have emerged publicly. However, the Mail & Guardian was able to speak to relatives of the deceased who gave eyewitness accounts of the unrest.

“They were merciless: they killed my son in the most disgusting way possible,” said Dereje Feleke, a resident of Dera, a small town of 17 000 inhabitants in Oromia Region, southwest of Addis Ababa. “What did we do to deserve this?”

 According to Dereje, on the night of June 28, hundreds of young Oromo men armed with clubs and machetes targeted ethnic minorities in Dera. They roamed from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, stopping at the homes of people like Dereje, who is of ethnic Amhara ancestry.

The assailants targeted Dereje’s son Mersha, 28. He was dragged outside, stabbed multiple times and finally beheaded by members of the jeering mob. Dereje managed to escape with the help of neighbours, but witnessed his son’s killing. 

Mersha’s body was left in the street and the house was burnt down. The engineer and Arba Minch University graduate had recently applied for a job with Ethiopian Airlines.

Seven people were killed in Dera that night.

“My son died the worst kind of death — even criminals don’t deserve this sort of cruelty,” Dereje said. “It troubles me every day.”

Dereja spoke to the M&G from Dera’s Medhanealem Church, which is currently sheltering about 50 people who were made homeless in the violence. 

“I’ve built a life here in Dera,” Dereje said. “We have been raised with the Oromo who are our friends and family here.”

As the killers proceeded from house to house, ethnic Amhara residents fled to the homes of their Oromo neighbours, who were able to offer protection. Dereje went into hiding until the next morning, when displaced and newly homeless survivors made their way to the refuge of the church compound.

Hewan, who requested to withhold her last name, also from Dera, fled the town with family members. “My uncle was cut to pieces on the street. His son is in a coma: they hit him in the head with a blade.”

She said: “Dera is where I was born and raised. Oromia is home: I was raised here; I speak the language too. I have represented Oromia in school sporting competitions at national level. Where do they expect someone like me to go?”

Another man, also sheltering in the church, said: “The killers moved from home to home. They knew their targets and they were quick and methodical with the way they poured gasoline over properties. Nobody in town recognised any of them. They aren’t from the area, but someone from here must have guided them.”

Residents of Dera who spoke to the M&G claimed that the regional Oromia Special Police Force did not intervene to stop the violence. According to another survivor, at least 150 members of the force were housed at Dera’s stadium, minutes away, as the carnage unfolded.

“We kept calling them and begging them to help,” he said. “They told us that without orders, they couldn’t get involved. They saw the fires and the fleeing people and stayed put.”

Oromia regional state security chief, Colonel Abebe Geresu, did not answer phone calls or text messages from the M&G asking for a response to these claims. A spokesperson for the Ethiopian military also failed to respond to requests for comment.

According to the government, at least three members of the Oromia Special Police Force were killed during the unrest, although the location and manner of these deaths have not been confirmed.

The regional police unit was founded less than a year ago, and saw its latest recruits graduate in March, to much fanfare. The force reportedly took over the town shortly after the attackers had left.

In the absence of the police, the quick thinking of ethnic Oromo residents in Dera likely saved many lives, although more than 60 homes were burnt down. In other towns, such as Shashamane, schools and businesses were attacked by arsonists, with scenes of total devastation shown on state media broadcasts.

Back in Dera, residents have continued to support displaced people by bringing food and clothing to the church. “This isn’t us,” said one such man, an ethnic Oromo resident of Dera, who was visiting displaced people at the church. “They’ve lived with us for decades, but someone out there is trying to pit us against each other.”

Similar scenes were replicated in other towns and cities in the region. In Addis Ababa — which is entirely surrounded by the Oromia region — violence targeted ethnic Oromos, with scores displaced from their homes. Footage emerged on social media showing what appeared to be clashes between police and large groups of young men in the capital, some of whom hurled rocks or brandished clubs or sticks.

Government response

In response to the unrest, the Ethiopian government has arrested more than 3 500 people, including Jawar Mohammed, a prominent Oromo opposition leader; and Eskinder Nega, a journalist and activist who has previously compared the organised groupings of Oromo youth — known as the Queero — to the Interahamwe, the youth militia that participated in the Rwandan genocide.

It has also accused three men of planning and executing Hachalu’s murder, and has arrested two of them. On Friday, Ethiopia’s attorney general, Adanech Abiebie, announced: “The man who pulled the trigger is named Tilahun Yami; he has admitted to doing so while in our custody. Abdi Alemayehu is the name of his accomplice.” She added that a manhunt continues for a third participant, identified as Kebede Gemechu. All three are accused of belonging to a splinter faction of the Oromo Liberation Front, a once-banned political organisation that advocates for greater Oromo representation in government.

The attorney general revealed little about the nature of the killings earlier this month. But as calm is slowly being restored, more details are emerging.

Some of the violence was committed by the state itself, according to witnesses. In Negele Sigalo, a village about 175km south of Addis Ababa, there was no protest activity, according to residents.

“Ours is a small peaceful village. There were never any protests or anything of that nature,” said Shubee Adam. But that didn’t stop soldiers, who were deployed to calm tensions, from using excessive force, he said. “My brother was a family man. He was sitting when one soldier clubbed him in the head, unprovoked. When Aman stood up to defend himself, another soldier shot him dead.”

Aman Dube Ganamo was a 43-year-old father of four. According to his younger brother Shubee, he had no links to any armed groups, and supported his family through farming and running a small shop. “We lost my father when I was young, so Aman became an older brother and a father to me,” Shubee said. “Now I have to become a father figure for his four children because the military murdered their father.”

Aman’s children, a 22-year-old daughter and three younger sons, have fled to a neighbouring town to seek refuge with relatives.

This was not the only incident in which the army was implicated. Hachalu’s cousin, Moti Hundessa, told the Washington Post that six people were killed by soldiers as they were transporting the musician’s body to his hometown of Ambo for burial.

Earlier this year, Amnesty International published a critical report, which accused the Ethiopian army of routine human rights violations, including rape and extrajudicial killings. Amnesty warned that: “These violations and abuses could escalate out of control unless the government takes urgent measures to ensure security forces act within the law and remain impartial in undertaking their duties.”

Government officials have not revealed how many people were killed by security forces. They have been reluctant to expand on the nature of the violence. One of the few indications came from the Oromia Region police commission’s Ararsa Merdasa, who said that as of July 4 some 50 civilians belonging to ethnic minorities in the region — mostly Amhara — had been killed.

Hachalu’s older brother, Habtamu Hundessa, wasn’t willing to speak about the details surrounding his brother’s death when he was contacted by the M&G. But he did say: “Hachalu always stood for justice. He had a stubborn character, but always wanted to do right in the eyes of the oppressed. He would have been very sad if he were around to see all this death today.”

At least 50 people are dead after a day of unrest in Ethiopia, sparked by the murder in Addis Ababa on Monday of renowned musician and activist Hachalu Hundessa. Amid an internet blackout, security forces have arrested journalists and political leaders of the Oromo.

On Tuesday morning, thousands of people went into the streets near Addis Ababa’s St Paul Hospital where a post-mortem examination was being carried out. The vehicle carrying his coffin as he left the hospital was swarmed by youths, few of whom were wearing the mandatory protective face masks. Such is the effect the 34-year-old singer had on his millions of fans. 

This impromptu funeral procession of sorts was broadcast live on local outlet Oromia Media Network (OMN). Shortly afterwards, police ransacked the broadcaster’s offices and detained several staff members. “The police have rounded up our journalists and destroyed property at our Addis Ababa headquarters,” said Kitaba Megersa, an OMN board member. “A few of our employees had to escape police, but others were arrested either during the raid on headquarters or out in the field while covering the mourning.”

Among those arrested were members of the Oromo Federalist Congress opposition party, Jawar Mohammed and Bekele Gerba. The arrests have sent shockwaves across the country, as their influence is almost unparalleled among opposition candidates. The government reacted by shutting down internet access across the country in an attempt to either quell the protests or stem the flow of information.

“Nobody is above the law,” federal police commissioner Endeshaw Tassew said in an address on state media. “The group of detainees led by Jawar Mohammed attempted to bring the body for burial in Addis Ababa, against the wishes of his family. A police officer was killed in a violent scuffle by a member of the group’s entourage.”

Endeshaw said that weapons were confiscated from Jawar’s bodyguards, and that 35 people were arrested. No explanation was given for the raid on the OMN’s office.

Later on Tuesday evening, gunshots were heard in Addis Ababa, as well as three explosions. 

Police say several suspects in Hachalu’s murder have been arrested.

Human Rights Watch’s Horn of Africa director, Laetitia Bader, said: “Ethiopian authorities should respond to reports of protests in Addis Ababa and other cities and towns following the killing of popular Oromo singer Hachalu Hundessa by acting urgently to reduce tensions and to ensure security forces do not make a combustible situation worse. The government should order security forces not to use excessive force or carry out arbitrary arrests, including against protesters, as they have often done in the past.”

The internet blackout and closure of OMN was condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organisation promoting press freedom worldwide. “Ethiopian authorities’ persistence of old patterns of censorship in response to crises, when the public most needs access to timely news and information, is deeply disappointing,” said sub-Saharan Africa representative Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should immediately end the internet blackout, free the Oromia Media Network journalists detained in the course of their work, and guarantee that members of the press can report on this moment of protest without fear for their safety or of losing their liberty.”

Songs of injustice

Hachalu — aged just 34 when he was killed — was a larger than life figure, popular for his outspokenness and his use of music to advocate for the rights of the Oromo. The country’s largest ethnic group has endured systematic repression by the central government for much of Ethiopia’s modern history. 

In the 2000s, the government incarcerated thousands of Oromo, including Hachalu.

His beginnings in the town of Ambo were like that of any other boy, until he was imprisoned at the age of 17 on suspicion of links to the Oromo Liberation Front, a banned political party. He spent five years behind bars until a judge ruled that he must be released for lack of evidence. He was given no compensation for his wrongful imprisonment.

While behind bars, with hundreds of other young men like him in prison on trumped up charges, Hachalu became convinced that amplifying the plight of the Oromo through his music was his true calling.

His 2015 hit single Maalan Jira, epitomises Hachulu’s vision, and will remain the cornerstone of his legacy. The song is a catchy, melodious and vibrant beat for those who don’t understand the language Afaan Oromo. But to understand the words is to recognise his status as a master lyricist. Behind the uplifting tune is a lament of historical injustices suffered by Oromo farmers over half a century. The urbanisation of much of Ethiopia over the course of the 20th century made victims of Oromo farming communities, who were pushed further and further away from Addis Ababa. 

The release of the single came shortly after the announcement of an expansion of Addis Ababa into surrounding areas. The plan did not include compensation for the inhabitants of these areas. The issue was so charged that it sparked a wave of protests in November 2015. Oromos took to the streets of towns and villages to call for the cancellation of the plan, singing along with Hachalu as they did so, galvanised by his lyrics and melodies that pulled on the heartstrings.

Protests ignited elsewhere in the country, primarily in the Amhara region. With the nation brought to a gridlock, it became impossible for the status quo to remain. These political pressures are ultimately what catapulted Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — himself Oromo, albeit affiliated with the ruling party rather than the political opposition — into office. Aby said in a tweet of Hachalu’s killing that Ethiopia had “lost a precious life today”. 

In 2017, Hachalu released Jirra, which translates to “we are here,”, and was far more uplifting than his previous hit. Hachalu celebrated gains made by Oromo society as a whole, and paid tribute to the sacrifice that it took to come this far. As renowned Oromo scholar and Keele University lecturer Awol Allo described it, Jirra “embodied a newfound collective optimism, a feeling that Oromo culture is no longer in jeopardy, and a sense that the Oromo society is finally in the middle of a robust ascendancy”.

In perhaps his most daring performance while on stage during a 2017 benefit concert at Addis Ababa’s Millenium Hall, he issued a call for the Oromo to “mount their horse and march on [Addis Ababa]”. It was interpreted by Ethiopia’s broadcast authority as a call to unseat the government and the concert’s live feed was immediately interrupted. 

“It was very distressing, how could they play this live,” said broadcast authority head Zeray Asgedom at the time. “Get your horse, take over the city. How can [Hachalu] sing this?”

Hachalu would later clarify the meaning of his message with a local television channel, LTV. He said that Oromo horsemen, who fought and repulsed invading colonial Italian forces at the 1896 Battle of Adwa, “have no reason not to remove the power in the Presidential Palace committing atrocities against the innocent”. His comments sent shockwaves through Ethiopian society, which was so accustomed to strict state censorship laws.

Months later, the long-awaited overhaul in government took place, with Abiy taking charge. Hachalu thrived; Zeray was dismissed from the broadcasting authority.

Hachalu leaves behind a wife and three children. He will be buried in his hometown of Ambo.

This article has been updated to reflect the number of fatalities in the protests. At the time of publication, there had been 10 reported deaths. The number has since risen.