Ethnic discrimination in Ethiopia
[5][6][7] During the Haile Selassie period, Amhara elites perceived the southern minority languages as an obstacle to the development of an Ethiopian national identity.
[23][24] Meles Zenawi of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), who replaced the Derg in 1991, introduced a political restructuring of Ethiopia called ethnic federalism.
Alemante G. Selassie, writing in The Yale Journal of International Law, argued that the new structure, formalised in the 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia, gave too much formal power to ethnicity.
[10] Ethnic states that were not part of the core traditional Abyssinian realm such as the Afar, Somali and Harari regions were excluded from the ruling EPRDF coalition.
[25] Ethiopians classified as "ethnically Eritrean" were deported from Ethiopia to Eritrea in a program that started in June 1998, during the Eritrean-Ethiopian War.
He quoted ESAT journalist Mesay Mekonnen calling for "drying the water so as to catch the fish" as a way of removing Tigrayan dominance in Ethiopia.
[27] In 2020, during the Abiy Ahmed, post-TPLF government of Ethiopia, Terje Skjerdal and Mulatu Alemayehu Moges found that freedom of print, broadcast and journalistic online media had increased greatly, but had also become highly polarised in terms of promoting ethnic nationalism.
Semhal stated that in 2020, she had been detained by 20 armed police in Mekelle and held for 48 hours without access to a lawyer and without being informed of the reason for her detention.
[6] The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) reported Tigrayans being forced to take leave from work and prevented from overseas travel.
The Daily Telegraph interviewed six Ethiopian Airlines employees, who estimated that 200 staff with "Tigrayan sounding names" had been put on indefinite leave.
[11] The head of security for the African Union headquarters, in Addis Ababa, Gebreegziabher Mebratu Melese, was fired based on recommendations by the Ethiopian Ministry of Defence in early November.
[29] Some of the Tigrayan soldiers in Ethiopian contributions to peacekeeping missions, including four in South Sudan and 40 in Somalia, were forcibly flown back to Ethiopia.
[12] According to Gedion Timotheos, at the time federal Attorney-General, about 700 ethnic Tigrayans were detained in Addis Ababa in November 2020, dropping to around 300 in December 2020, on suspicion of links to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
[34] The New York Times said that the November mass detentions "swept up anyone of Tigrayan descent, many of whom had no ties to the rebels or even affinity for them," including "mothers with children and the elderly".
The detainees were selected based on "a mix of hints: their surnames, details listed on identification cards and drivers licenses, even the way they speak Amharic..." Laetitia Bader of HRW described the state of emergency, which formally permitted the mass detentions, as "'legitimizing and legalizing unlawful practices' and creating a 'real climate of fear'.
[35] In late November 2021, Andargachew Tsege, a federal Ethiopian government advisor and British citizen, made statements that researcher Mehari Taddele Maru interpreted as incitement to genocide.
