In the middle of the night of October 22, an audio recording was published on Facebook monitoring developments of an ongoing crisis in the Puli neighborhood of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, and the voice of the leader of the Ethiopian Federal Police was heard giving instructions to the Preventive Security personnel charged with protecting Jawhar Muhammad - a well-known political activist And the CEO of Oromia Media Network - they are required to vacate their site at Johar’s residence. The security element who spoke with the official for the first time refused to implement these directives as illegal orders received in the middle of the night, while another component told the commander explicitly that they would not leave the essence of the "monsters of the night", and that they were willing to sacrifice their soul and soul in order to protect it. This incident, incident in the Polly neighborhood, quickly turned into a bloody clash that killed at least 86 people in Oromia region, according to official estimates.
It is worth noting that the Oromia region itself had witnessed five years ago the outbreak of a broad social movement known as the Oromo Protest Movement, and those protests began at first as a resistance movement against land confiscation, but it soon became a continuous opposition movement against the stifling grip of the coalition government on the political scene , Against discrimination in the distribution of national resources, and against the use of excessive violence in resolving political disputes in Ethiopia. These protests continued for nearly four years before they resulted in the overthrow of the authoritarian coalition system and the announcement of the beginning of the era of democratic reform. One of the results of this movement is that it pushed the name of Gohar Mohamed to fame, as a prominent political figure in Ethiopia.
As a result, in August 2018, Jawhar moved to Ethiopia to contribute to the process of democratization in the country, and since then he has been subject to a feverish political attack from his opponents, so they have produced documentaries, television and radio programs, and publications against him on social media, aiming in their entirety. To discredit him, discredit him and burn him politically. [1]
More recently, this campaign has become so intense that Jowhar is described as a specific devil in a human body, seeking to destroy Ethiopia. Last week, the campaign reached its climax when Jawhar was described as a man who incites chaos and must be tried for murder. Due to the widespread popularity of this campaign, some media outlets have tended to describe [2] Jawhar as a "nationalistic or nationalist". Even the Guardian newspaper spoke of him as "a person who stirs polarization and ethnic division" [3] in the country.
As for his friends and millions of his supporters, Jawhar is considered a political activist who led a remarkable social movement that overthrew one of the most repressive regimes in Africa and ushered in a new era for democratic transformation in Ethiopia. They also see him as a brilliant politician and strategic planner, who has given his youth the cause of improving the lives of millions. While appreciating his dedication and dedication to the cause of the Oromo people, they realize at the same time that he is working tirelessly to promote the values of equality, freedom, justice and dignity for all Ethiopians. As such, there is nothing - according to their view - something in the core record that can lead one to conclude that he is a person who calls for chaos and destruction.
In this short article, I will give a presentation on Jawhar's life, refuting the image being promoted by his political opponents. It is true that the offer I am making here is testimony from a friend, but - in contrast - it is not a fawning defense that is overrated or inconsistent with the conditions of objectivity. I got acquainted with Johar more than a decade ago, and worked with him on many intellectual, political and societal projects that show me his dedication and his keenness to work hard towards positive change in society, and his contributions - more than anyone else - to the process of transformations taking place in Ethiopia. . In this case, it is impossible for one to gain the hearts and minds of Oromo by going beyond a character the size of a substance, and this is an issue that deserves to be taken into consideration by Prime Minister Abi Ahmed.
In addition, the ongoing demonization campaign against this loyal activist of his people contradicts the goals of uniting Ethiopia, which many critics of the essence hope to achieve. Stability. If Ethiopia is indeed in urgent need of stability and a diplomatic tact in political competition, the most realistic way to achieve this must be through cooperation with Johar, not through his antagonism.
Struggle work: a personal matter
A person's personality is formed through secondary experiences, and often through unimportant experiences one experiences in his life. And of course Johar's life does not deviate from this rule. However, one of the classifications leveled against Johar Muhammad is his accusation that he is an extremist Muslim who seeks to establish an Islamic state in Ethiopia. Johar was born in the small town of Damouga in the Arce region, and grew up in an environment where he learned the importance of religious tolerance. For him, all things started from home. He grew up in a Muslim father and an orthodox Christian mother, and his Islamic upbringing did not prevent him from choosing a Protestant Christian wife and mother for his children. These early experiences - i.e. related to origin and roots - are implanted in the essence of a firm conviction that there is no rift in society that cannot be bridged through negotiation. I conclude from the above to say that the rapid rise of the essence of fame did not come because of his alleged Islamic inclinations, but rather reached this position by relying on his spacious imagination, hard work, perseverance and determination to achieve the goals.
Jawhar grew up in his early years in the confines of his grandfather, who is considered one of the adorable Oromo sages. Hence, the personality of Johar was formed in part by the image of his grandfather with a consensual tendency, and on the other side, he was influenced by the sacrifices of his father in the Oromo Resistance Movement. The personality of his grandfather, who was a staunch advocate of individual rights against the incursion of the state, planted deep doubts about any absolute authority, while society instilled in him the need to respect the history of Oromo, their culture, laws and social systems. As for the knowledge of the history of his father’s militant generation, he drew primarily from the leader of the guerrilla war and one of the most prominent figures in the Oromo struggle, Abdul Karim Ibrahim Hamid, popularly known as “Jara Aba Jada”. Knowing that history made him realize the brutality of the monarchy against the Oromo, and also made him realize the importance of solidarity with peoples who were subjected to similar persecution. Thus, Jawhar grew up in a national family, like many Oromo nationalists, during which he learned valuable lessons that emphasize the inviolability of the national cause. At the same time, the Oromo tradition of equality has instilled confidence that the call to respect human rights in Oromo will have a positive contribution to the establishment of an Ethiopian state that respects the rights of all its citizens.
In addition to the foregoing, the formal education that Jawhar received received made him a distinguished person over his peers, due to the clarity and uniqueness of his goals behind the education process. His endeavor to obtain university education was primarily aimed at possessing knowledge related to the study of social and political changes, and then using that knowledge to improve the human condition. Therefore, after completing the initial and intermediate stages in Ethiopia, Jawhar joined the United International College of Southeast Asia in Singapore and graduated in 2005.
While in Southeast Asia, Jawhar was able to travel extensively in these countries, and there he began to learn about his own traditions and values and gain skills respecting human difference. In the United States, he obtained a degree in political science from Stanford University, and a degree in postgraduate studies in human rights from Columbia University in 2013. During his presence in these institutions, Jawhar was able to refine his knowledge in the study of political science in the fields of theoretical study And comparative studies. This pairing between these two courses offered him the ability to become an intellectual engaged in political work aimed at bringing about a positive change in the lives of all people regardless of their ethnic backgrounds.
Jawhar achieved all these accomplishments by relying on his toil and insightful mind, since since he left his parents' home in his teens, Jawhar remained alone on himself throughout his college years. In this sense, he is a man who made himself and has not lost - despite everything - the compass of his focus on strategic goals. Not only that, but the harsh life he was exposed to in his youth earned him a strong, difficult-to-carry personality whose features appear even in his mature personality at the present time, and he uses it intelligently against his opponents, whether they are individuals or even a heavily armed regime. Moreover, Jowhar is considered a discreet educator and a very energetic activist who has abandoned his personal ambition in the interest of public service.
The Ormut protests
On November 12, 2015, a demonstration in a small town in central Ethiopia sparked a historic protest movement that quickly turned into a massive revolution that included the whole of Oromia region. The protests continued for nearly four years, during which they spread to other parts of Ethiopia until they were finally culminated in the overthrow of the authoritarian regime. Here, I must point out that these protests, known as the Oromia protests, were closely linked to the life of Johar Muhammad.
Of course, there are a number of reasons for the association of the protests with Jawhar's life. First, Jawhar understood from the start the path of these protests, while political analysts and observers expected that the uprising would be brutally suppressed within a short period. And he, though he did not know the exact path of these protests, but he was aware that it was a moment of opportunity for a historic opportunity to change order in Ethiopia. In this context, I will testify in the next part of an eyewitness that demonstrates Johar's ability to predict and understand events in a way that enabled him - in the end - to benefit from the protests.
In early December 2015, weeks after the Oromia protests, Jawhar invited me to appear on the Oromia Media Network screen to comment on the issue of the ongoing protests in Ethiopia. On December 4, 2015, Johar and I appeared on the same screen and spoke in "Avan Oromo" to explain the reasons for the protests and to talk about the demands that the protesters were calling for. The next day we did the same thing in Amharic. At the time, I was not aware of the value of the TV talk and its impact on the movement of the protests taking place in the country. But I agreed to participate out of respect for the network, in the hope that it would become "a voice for the Oromo people".
Gawhar realizes the importance of social media at an early stage
Jawhar was clearly aware of the important role that television could play in sustaining the momentum of social movements, since since the beginning of 2003 he had tirelessly sought to establish the Oromia Media Network, establishing a television broadcast center in Minneapolis on March 1, 2014. Although the requirements for launching such a satellite were not complete, the feeling of need prompted Johar to launch the network. Not only that, but it was clear from the start that the Oromia Media Network will become a resistance media platform, as Johar said in his inaugural speech: "We have liberated the launch of this Oromia space, and we will start from now on to liberate the land in Oromia." When thinking about Johar’s speech now retrospectively, we are assured that Johar had a plan about how the protests would be conducted, and the strategy that would be followed to achieve the intentions of those protests.
At the same time, Jawhar was working on collecting other tools that would help move the group's action against the authoritarian regime in Ethiopia. For example, upon finishing the aforementioned joint episode, Jawhar told me with a feeling of joy and relief on his face: “I now have a hundred thousand followers on Facebook. We thank God for the grace of Facebook, we will use this platform to lead the revolution.” I answered him by saying, "This is a good thing," and I was not fully aware of the truth about the purposes that made him excited by that image, because I did not expect that social media could be harnessed to mobilize and lead the social movement. However, Jawhar seemed to have realized early on the power of the media to collect information from volunteer "journalists" on the ground in all parts of Oromia, so pictures, reports and audio recordings poured onto his laptop and stationary, and from there he tabled, examined, and verified the information contained therein and from He then sends it back to Oromia through his Facebook account and through Oromia Network.
The Oromo people rediscover their unity
Intensive TV broadcasting provided the information to the Oromo people and mobilized them to continue the struggle. Its impact was enormous, through which the Oromo people were able to rediscover their unity as a nation and to circumvent clear-cut political demands. Jawhar's publications on Facebook and other media outlets provided information to protesters and organized them to make group work a success. And of course the way this information was published and secretly staged demonstrations was confusing the authoritarian regime.
In late June 2016, highly experienced activists working with Jawhar penetrated the Ministry of Education computers, and were able to remove the national examination papers. Jawhar then demanded - based on this technical gap - to extend the date of the exams for students in Oromia because they were unable to prepare for the exam because of the protests. This incident took officials by surprise, and eventually they found no choice but to comply with the request to extend the appointment.
It did not stop there, as the system was awaiting many surprises. In August 2016, the protest movement organized demonstrations in more than 200 urban centers in the Oromia region. This activity was considered an unprecedented achievement, because the movement was able to secure the organization of this wide mobilization without the knowledge of the system's security services. By the end of the same month, an initiative to boycott markets closed all shops and government institutions throughout the entire Oromia region. The result was that the capital, Addis Ababa, became completely paralyzed, which led to a paralysis in commercial traffic on all sides of the country. Thus, the regime became unable to keep up with the resistance movement.
Thus, these aforementioned events represented a turning point in the course of the Oromo four-year protests. He assured people through which the image of the enormous monster (Leviathan) in which the system used to describe itself, to claim that there was no force to conquer it, has all become a mirage of water that the regime calculates. By the Arisha massacre in 2015, and the five days of anger that followed the massacre, it became clear that the regime in Ethiopia was not only fragile, but it was also apparent that it was teetering on the verge of falling.
Social media and protest
With the exception of the role of Egyptian activists during the Arab Spring period and some activists of the Black Life Movement Important, few people were aware, before the Oromo protest movement, the power of social media to support social movements and expand their internal frameworks. The activists had no understanding of the role this media could play in bridging ties, strengthening the narrative of protests, and mobilizing individuals and resources. That is why it can be said that the greatest and most persistent innovation in the Oromo protests lies in its ability to pair and integrate social media with the tools of social movements. In this regard, Jawhar was the one who undertook the engineering of this merger and the revolution that resulted from it.
To make this marriage successful, an Oromite Resistance Foundation was built (and rebuilt) to advance the burden of teamwork in the Oromia region, out of sight of the Ethiopian security services known for their competence in this area. It is basically a youth institution known as "kiroro", and people refer to Johar as his "spiritual father", in reference to being the founder of this organization, but Johar himself did not claim "paternity" for this organization. But when a journalist asked a coordinator of this organization whether they considered "Johar" as the founder and leader of the organization, the coordinator described the role of Johar as follows [4]: "Johar provided us with political analyzes and advice, as he can obtain information from within government departments, and from Then it extends it to the youths of the kiruru. ".
Gohar agreed with this description and stated, in the context of answering a journalist question from "Walta TV" [5]: "I consider myself a brother of the young Kiroro, and we grew up together." This answer suggests that Jawhar assisted in the process of reorganizing groups that were already in place and making them responsive to the work in this digital age. Whatever his role within the organization, his intimate relationship with the organization is incontrovertible. In sum, through the incorporation of media technologies with the tools of social movements, Johar was able to make an unparalleled contribution to the process of overthrowing the authoritarian ruling coalition system in Ethiopia.
Based on the foregoing, the Kiroro movement is considered a new type of resistance movement that has benefited from communication technology, as it has benefited from artistic expressions in which messages of culturally coded resistance are conveyed depending on the skill of activists in the technology and their use of their tools to mobilize the masses in order to achieve their strategic goals. Through the use of the Internet to organize wide-ranging activities such as public demonstrations, boycotts, home strikes, and protest stops, activists in Manafiye and Kerouro on the ground have been able to create a cross-border resistance movement. Most important of all, the protest movement succeeded in achieving its goals, neither the intelligence and security services were able to detect, nor the military apparatus managed to break its thorn. It achieved its goals through a remarkable peaceful resistance that claimed the lives of many Oromo youth - of course - but it preserved the lives of many of the region's non-Orominians.
The kiruru organization is in a transformation
Since his return to Ethiopia on August 6, 2018, Jawhar has been trying to rein in the youth of Kiroro from exerting any negative pressure on the democratized government of Prime Minister Abi Ahmed. His aim was to ensure a successful democratization experiment in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, evidence emerged that the young Kororu was impatient with the performance of the government, especially as they had clear and consistent demands that were demanding autonomy in the regions, sharing power at the federal level, equitable distribution of regional development revenues and resources, and defending the identity and culture of the Oromo. However, the current administration used to marginalize these demands, if it did not abandon them completely. Moreover, the prime minister's performance in power and his new philosophy, labeled "devastating", have exacerbated the doubts of the youths of Al-Kerur towards the government that they now believe their revolution has been hijacked.
The youth congestion erupted in the early hours of October 23, 2019, following the government's attempt to eliminate the preventive guarding of Jawhar Muhammad. As the youths of El Kerro took a second time to the streets to protest against the abolition of the guard, they considered it a politically motivated measure that the government woven against Jawhar. This is how the keroro youth took to the streets in urban and all rural areas of Oromia in order to protect their "companion of their path", Jawhar. Meanwhile, the masses burned the "destroyed" book of the Prime Minister, dropped his propaganda boards and set fire to the Prime Minister's photos, chanting slogans calling for the fall of Abi Ahmed.
Upon Johar's first talk about the incident, he asked the protesters to "remove roadblocks, clean the streets, bury the dead, and go home." The protesters responded to Jowhar's directives and returned to their homes. Nevertheless, Jawhar's critics continue to denounce that the government has not arrested and prosecuted him on charges of killing innocent citizens. Indeed, politics in Ethiopia is being practiced in reverse, calling for the victim to be brought to justice so that the perpetrators go unpunished!
Although there has been a lot of criticism of the kiruru phenomenon written in the media, it is worth emphasizing that the young people who returned to the streets are not mindless rioters receiving orders and offers from Jowhar without scrutiny and accountability. It is true that their latest demonstration occurred spontaneously due to the incident that took place in Johor's residence, but before this demonstration the coordinators in central and eastern Ethiopia had previously announced their intention to facilitate demonstrations against the government. These young men have real demands, some of which are old from the days of the revolution, some of them are new demands, and as long as the government does not fulfill their demands, they will inevitably return to the streets.
In this regard, if we look at the Prime Minister's record on the matter, and also look at his reaction to the deaths of hundreds last week (about 129 people according to some unofficial estimates), we conclude that the demands of the young men of keroro do not seem to be fulfilled any time soon. . Of course, Jowhar will try to urge them to exercise restraint, to give an opportunity to the country's democratic transformation. However, there may come a time when even Essence itself cannot curb the young men of keroro.
Collaboration instead of antagonism
There is no doubt that Johar is today considered the most influential political figure in Ethiopia. He gained his influence mainly from the strength of his mental presence, his extensive knowledge of the laws of social and political movements, his skill in using digital media, and his perseverance in achieving the goals he set for himself. That is why he used to collect massive information from his Facebook account and his network of knowledge inside and outside government departments, where he reviews and develops a strategy on how to deal with it and then executes its output quickly. Moreover, he uses his unparalleled linguistic fluency, his carefully constructed personality, and his ability to predict how political events can turn out.
As far as I know, it is not the essence of tendencies in the sport that is practiced abroad, that is, in the open air, but he enjoys playing the "political game", as I know this is his favorite sport. This unique focus on this game is what made him the leader of the longest notable social movement that toppled dictatorship through peaceful demonstrations, so he made history in Ethiopia, and demonstrated to the world how media can interact with social movements to bring about political change.
As the leader of the Oromo protests, he demonstrated the substance of his toughness, and perhaps his ferocity, in using tactics when entering a fierce competition circuit. When the ruling coalition decided to adhere to the reform option and began the path of transformation, it changed the essence of its political stance from that of a leader of the resistance to that of a statesman. That is why he announced upon his return on August 6, 2018 that the resistance had turned to power, and that work was now being spent on democratization, peace, and the promotion of equal opportunities. In this context, Gohar stated in an interview with him: "I believe that if we establish democracy in the Ethiopian state - allowing all races to participate in the political process and obtain fair shares in wealth and power - then there will be the possibility to see a future generation in this country that is proud of Oromism and Ethiopian At the same time, I would argue that this is achievable. On another occasion, he stated: “We fought for a democratic government and not for a popular government. We do not care who governs, but what matters most to us is that those who judge the approval and authorization of people through the ballot box” [7].
The utterance of such words does not come as a matter of political opportunism, but rather an expression of a firm conviction for democracy. These words also attest to the fact that Johar is a pragmatic politician who, since returning to Ethiopia in August 2018, has been calling for a new social contract for the Ethiopian people. Even recently, when the protests erupted, Jawhar was the first public figure to call for calm and a return to normal. In this case, no distortion of his personality, no matter how great, can diminish his political importance, as he has become a political figure that cannot be overlooked in the current Ethiopian scene. Therefore, the Ethiopian politicians will benefit from him if they cooperate with him more than they hostile to him.
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This report is translated from: Ethiopia Insight and does not necessarily reflect the Meydan website.