In a restaurant in the town of Nkimet (western Ethiopia), Vesha Abra reveals a piece of paper with the names of 11 men on it, who said that the soldiers shot them last year, and a mass detention campaign followed.
Visha and two of his siblings fled from their home in the Julesu area to Nkemet, leaving behind a brother arrested last February, for the second time in a year, and he was severely beaten to the point that he could not walk.
Rapid arrests and executions became common in remote areas of Oromia, the largest in Ethiopia, where security forces are waging war against armed separatists in the region, which brutally treat civilians.
Witnesses say the local opposition in Oromia - where Ethiopia's largest nationality lives - is subjected to an indiscriminate campaign of repression, in a country that is assumed to be on the path to moving from one-party rule to a democracy.
Contrary to expectations,
the British Economist magazine indicates that what happened in Oromia was not what the Ethiopians expected of Abi Ahmed, who became prime minister since 2018, as he was seen as a young reformer from the Oromia region, and he promised to bring democracy to the benefit of all, and compensate the people of the region for what they say is Centuries of political and economic marginalization.
At the beginning of his term, the Ethiopian Prime Minister released thousands of political prisoners, and welcomed the return of the opposition forces in exile to contest the elections, scheduled for next August.
Abi Ahmed also made peace with neighboring Eritrea, which enabled him to win the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as concluded a peace agreement with rebel armed groups, including the Oromo Liberation Front, which is now a recognized opposition party, and the armed wing of the Front (Oromo Liberation Army) agreed to lay down its arms. . On the other hand, the Front's militants joined the police in the region, and many hopes were strengthened to see an end to the rebellions, which began operating nearly half a century ago.
But the social unrest that escalated Abi Ahmed to the highest political position in Ethiopia is still dividing the country, as years of unrest in the Oromo region have weakened the local government, and have left a security vacuum, in my region and in the (West) and Goji (South) regions.
Mutual accusations
When anti-government opponents returned to Oromia, they sometimes worked with police forces to impose order, but they quickly accused the federal government of betraying the Oromo region case, and reneging on promises they made to provide them with jobs in the police.
In turn, the Addis Ababa government accuses the Oromo Liberation Army of retaining its weapons. Because the government and the Oromo Liberation Army did not reveal the details of the peace agreement concluded between them, it is easy for either of them to accuse the other party of not fulfilling its obligations under the agreement.
By the end of 2018, the Oromo Liberation Army militants had returned to the forests, and began attacking Ethiopian army convoys, and a number of officials had been killed, and last year the Ethiopian Air Force bombed Oromo Liberation Army training camps.
After signing a third peace agreement in 2019 with the government, the Oromo Liberation Front formally separated from its armed wing - despite the belief that the two sides maintain secret communication lines - and the Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency in the Lalagha and Goji regions, and assigned the army responsibility for their security.
By the beginning of 2020, the fighting between armed men and government forces in Goji had forced about eighty thousand people from their homes.