Neftenya
[3] The Shewan conquerors that were described as neftenya were originally a group of aristocratic rulers of the Kingdom of Shewa who were high ranking members of Menelik II's Royal Court and their soldiers.
[4][5][6] While upper class Amhara who came to the south as conquerors originated from all parts of the northern highlands, all came as vassals of the specifically Shewan state.
[11] Since local people, whatever their origins, were also able to assimilate into the Neftenya class, by virtue of marriage, or adopting the religion, language and cultural traits of the Amhara,[3] it also included Tigrayans, Oromos, and Gurages,[2] a majority of which came from the Kingdom of Shewa.
Shimelis Abdisa used the Amharic word neftenya ("riflemen" in English) to refer to the ruling class established in the wake of Emperor Menelik II's conquest in southern Ethiopia in the late 19th century.
[16][17] From the 17th to the 19th centuries, Amharas were the dominant politico-military influence on central and southern Ethiopia, and later on conquering portions of north-central Ethiopia (including Gondar, Amhara Region and Raya Azebo, Tigray Region - for a short period of time) during the Imperial period of Tewodros II, Menelik II, and Haile Selassie.
[28][29][30] In 1967, the regime of Haile Selassie I outlawed the Mecha and Tuluma Self-Help Association and later instigated a wave of mass arrests and killings of its members and leaders.
Many member of the ruling elite were deeply opposed to the idea of loosening control on the rebellious southern regions conquered under Menelik II.
The Shewan officials and soldiers who settled in Illubabor, known as neftenya, were assigned to a number of peasant households, or gabbars depending on their rank and position.
[citation needed] The Oromo recount a long history of grievance which casts them as colonial subjects violently displaced from their land and alienated from their culture.
[37] Beginning from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the adjacent Amhara community engaged in constant voracious attacks and raiding expeditions against the surrounding Oromo nation.
[50] Allusion to Amhara, the second most populous ethnic group in Ethiopia, as "neftegna" or "neftenya" (meaning "musketeers") by the government and local officials was described as "inflammatory" by Human Rights Watch in 1995.
[53] Officials of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, including, those from the ANDM (Amhara National Democratic Movement) used the term "neftenya" (gunslinger), as well as "chauvinist", "oppressor" , "Yekedmo sre'at nafaqi" (English: "one who pines for the old order"), in a "derogatory" sense during their period of rule according to Amanuel Tesfaye,[54] and usage in the context of the Hachalu Hundessa riots in 2020 was called "inflammatory" by Terje Skjerdal and Mulatu Alemayehu Moges, as part of their paragraph on hate speech predominating in Ethiopian media at the time.
[55] In the context of interethnic conflict, the term is used as a reference toward extreme Amhara nationalists, in which the suppression of the identities, languages, cultures, traditions, histories and religions of the annexed lands and conquered peoples are placed under a One-Nation, One-Language, One-Religion imperial rule based on the Amhara culture,[56][2] as well as against politicians or portions of the general public regardless of ethnicity perceived as Ethiopian nationalists who support multicultural civic or liberal nationalism in order to move Ethiopian politics and governmental administration away from ethnicity-based identity politics in order to support the individual rights of each person; which politically vocal ethnic federalists and ethnic nationalists who oppose such views claim it to be a ploy towards taking away group rights-based political powers from various ethnic groups.
