In 1993, as ethnic cleansing in Rwanda raged, the international community remained eerily silent. The same climate that led to the Rwandan Genocide is emerging on Ethiopia’s western front — Metekel.
A wave of genocidal massacres has swept Metekel in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia, creating a humanitarian catastrophe that has left hundreds of thousands displaced, thousands killed and injured and many more left destitute with their homes and livelihoods burned to ashes.
While the unrest started in 2019, the massacres in the last three months have accelerated with daily attacks and fatalities. The stories and images from the massacres are indescribably grim and disturbing: armed assailants going house-to-house identifying the ethnicity of individual households, families slaughtered and their bodies butchered, corpses disemboweled, bodies found with organs removed, children dying as they tried to flee with arrows lounged in their backs, families set ablaze in their homes, mothers killed as they protectively cradle their infants, children left orphaned, crops and livelihoods destroyed and fetuses removed from the wombs of women.
With the death toll ranging from day to day— 34 killed one day, 207 another, the victims are unceremoniously buried in mass graves.
Road to Ethnic Cleansing
While the stories of mass suffering from the ethnic massacres in Metekel are horrifying, they need to be told and critically examined, because ethnic cleansing doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
People do not wake up one day and spontaneously decide to butcher their neighbors. They are taught to fear. The Rwandan genocide did not start with slayings and the Holocaust did not start with gas chambers. Both events were preceded by a process of dehumanization in which marginalized groups were cast as enemies and outsiders.
That was the case in Rwanda, that was the case in Germany and now we see it in Metekel, where ethnic cleavages have deepened, fueled by hate speech through the creation of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ narratives — pitting one against the other. Reduced to their ethnic identities, victims are pejoratively labeled as “outsiders” and “settlers” in the place of their birth.
Often dehumanization is most dangerous when it is followed by state-sanctioned discrimination. In Rwanda, it was the creation of ethnicity-based ID cards used to identify ethnic Tutsis. In Germany, it was a string of laws created to exclude Jews from public life. The Nuremberg Law of 1935, for instance, stripped German Jews of their citizenship by reducing them to subjects of the state.
In Ethiopia, the Benishangul-Gumuz constitution was revised in 2002, designating five ethnic groups — the Gumuz, Shinasha, Berta, Komo, and Mao — “owners” of the region while relegating ethnic minorities who make up over 40 percent of the population as residents, but not citizens. This served to disenfranchise targeted ethnic groups and ensure that employment opportunities, political power, and even rights of political participation are limited to those from the “right” ethnic group. Much like the Nuremberg Law of 1935, the revised constitution codified into law and institutionalized the disparate treatment of marginalized groups.
As a result, the recent massacres in the Benishangul-Gumuz region have systemic support. Government officials at different levels — local, regional, and federal — are deeply involved in facilitating the massacres. Their roles range from providing structural support to supplying guns and intel to the Gumuz militia. Over 5 federal and regional officials have been arrested, and 100 fired from their positions for their roles in the massacres. However, in the wake of the daily attacks, questions still linger about the extent to which those involved have been held to account.
In an interview with the HPR, Dr. Melkamu Alemu, a physician native to the region notes that because “government officials at different levels—from kebeles to regional officials to higher officials working at the ministry level are involved in the crimes, it is difficult to expect something from the regional government.” When ethnic cleansing is institutionalized and coordinated as it is in Metekel, re-gaining trust is difficult, especially when the factors that contribute to the current landscape persist.
Dr. Alemu also discussed the role of foreign actors like Sudan and Egypt, who oppose the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) located in Metekel and as a result, have an interest in using current divides to foment unrest in the region. Online, Facebook and Instagram have recently removed more than a dozen accounts and pages on their platforms from Egyptian firms for violating policy against foreign interference and waging a coordinated inauthentic campaign targeting Ethiopia. On the ground, the Egyptian government has been providing monetary, military, and diplomatic support to armed and unarmed Ethiopian rebel forces to incite instability as the nation begins to utilize the resources of the Nile River. Exploiting ethnic divides, therefore, has become a hallmark of foreign actors who have vested interest in undermining the region’s stability.
The Current Landscape
It has been months since the massacres began. The federal government has declared a state of emergency and deployed armed forces to control the region. While the zone has been under the stewardship of a federal military command post, a command point for mission operations, the brutal attacks and killings persist with no end in sight.
Innocent civilians from Metekel continue to be displaced at an unimaginable scale, enduring harrowing conditions to reach overcrowded and squalid camps in neighboring regions that cannot host them indefinitely. Many more are unaided, hiding in forests. Their collective desire to have a safe and dignified return home seems more and more unlikely as the massacres continue. Those that remain do so at their peril. Starved and disconnected to access, their communities are in a dire situation, living with a constant fear of persecution.
The ethnic cleansing of Amhara, Oromo, and Shinasha residents in western Ethiopia underscores the urgent need for the Ethiopian government to quickly act to stop violence against ethnic minorities. As the onslaught continues, the humanitarian crisis must be addressed. Civilians must be protected, an independent and transparent inquiry into the atrocities must be conducted, and perpetrators at all levels must be brought to justice. Without a doubt, justice is a requirement for the healing process to begin. If institutions continue to support the perpetrators of ethnic violence, the crisis will persist.
The people of Metekel deserve to live a life free from discriminatory killings, perpetual displacements, agonizing human rights abuses, and man-made food insecurity. Their homes have been destroyed, their livelihoods stripped away and their loved ones murdered. The gut-wrenching reality of human tragedy in Metekel coupled with the heartless political leaders that shape it is horrifying and yet unnervingly reminiscent of past atrocities. Etched on the Holocaust memorial stone at Treblinka is a promise inscribed in seven languages: “never again.” However, in the decades that have followed the Holocaust, in places ranging from Rwanda to Cambodia, mass atrocities have happened again and again. Both the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide are examples that highlight the impact of silence on the global stage. If we look the other way and remain silent in the face of ethnic cleansing in Metekel, history will inevitably repeat itself.
Image Credit: “Pomnik Ofiar Obozu Zagłady w Treblince 2017c” by Adrian Grycuk is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
