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Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 40
Location: University of Chicago
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Getz #7 – Tigrayawinet, Part I
Donald N. Levine
Of the many strange elements in the current trial of political prisoners and journalists, the charge of genocide seems the most peculiar of all. Consider, for example, the idea of launching such a charge against Professor Mesfin Wolde Mariam–the man who, of all Ethiopians I know, owns the clearest lifelong record of standing for nonviolence. What is one to make of that?
For all the apparent irrationality of accusing Professor Mesfin and others of committing genocide (zer matfat) or even incitement to genocide, there are bound to be reasons for such an accusation. In searching for those reasons, one must be careful; so much of what passes for political discourse in Ethiopia consists of rumors and back-biting. For half a century I have witnessed constant imputing of far-fetched motives to political actors. “Igele is an opportunist,” “ Igele is really a spy for X”–you know what I mean. What facts can be fairly securely attested?
1. What is certain is that for many years, slurs and threats against Tigrayan Ethiopians have been fairly common, especially in the Amhara and Oromia regions, and that these escalated sharply in the aftermath of the 2005 elections.
2. It is also certain that CUD leaders carefully refrained from including any anti-ethnic language in all of their public documents. I could be proven wrong, but I doubt that any authentic documentation to the contrary will be produced in the trial proceedings.
3. Those who issued the anti-Tigrayan statements, then, were not the official party leaders now being accused, but ordinary civilians or, at most, rank-and-file party supporters. The CUD and other opposition leaders actually exerted a moderating influence on those who wanted to express such feelings.
4. The resentments being voiced, finally, were not directed against ordinary Tigrayans. Rather, they expressed a long accumulation of resentments about governance under an overwhelmingly Tigrayan political elite. Those resentments became more open in the course of last year's political campaign and especially in its aftermath. In June, the sale of machetes surged in Addis and elsewhere; Tigrayan students in campuses in Addis, Alemayhu, and Awassa were armed and reportedly trained to "defend themselves."
5. By disseminating the allegation that those who vented those resentments were like the vengeful Interhamwe murderers, the government made tactical use of those expressed resentments. The government's allegation may in fact be responsible for inciting some of the surge in the procurement of weapons.
However, to repeat: the resentments were not directed against Tigrayan people as such. Numerous Tigrayans expressed resentments against the TPLF themselves; thousands of Tigrayans voted for the opposition candidates, and at least one Tigrayan and one spouse of a Tigrayan now sit in prison for allegedly supporting genocidal statements against Tigrayans. Those resentments were directed, rather, against the TPLF cadres, and that for two main reasons. One was in fact ethnic-political: the fact that the EPRDF administration has been directed by a small number of Ethiopians from a minority ethnic group, in violation of the regime's announced democratic aspirations.
The other was ideological: the fact that EPRDF had apparently betrayed Ethiopia's proud record as a historic nation and in so doing had stirred up ethnic tensions. Echoing the Eritrean fiction that "there was no country called Ethiopia before Minelik’s rule," as a recent Sudan Tribune article puts it, one of their leaders even wrote under the TPLF seal that to say that Eritrea was historically been part of Ethiopia was "nothing more than a fairy tale [and that] Ethiopia as a country does not start from the civilization of Aksum." Accordingly, those who championed the symbolism of Ethiopian nationality they suspected of being "Amhara chauvinists."
The irony in all that must be stunning to anyone who knows the slightest bit about Ethiopia's history. If ever there was a seedbed of Ethiopian nationhood, it was Tigray. Tigray was the region that nurtured the core complex of Ethiopia as a multiethnic polity. The kingdom of Aksum was, Mani of Persia observed in the 280s CE, the third of the four great powers of the ancient world. As early as the 6th century CE the Roman Venantius associated Aksum with the country then known as Ethiopia. The Ethiopian power centered in Aksum controlled many tribes, and at its zenith reached across the Red Sea to Himyar as well as up to the citadel of Meroe in Nubia. Even after Aksum fell and the political center shifted southward, Tigray remained a vital part of Ethiopian nationhood. Tigrayan scribes reportedly redacted the Kebra Nagast which provided a charter for Ethiopian nationhood. Emperors in principle returned to Aksum to be crowned; some of the most dramatic episodes in Ethiopic literature describe the visits of Iyasu I to Aksum in the 1690s. Ras Mikael Sehul of Tigray was the power behind the throne of the Gondarine court for many years. And it was a Tigrayan Emperor, Yohannes IV, who implemented the vision of Atse Tewodros in rebuilding a strong multiethnic polity, in a vigorous reign cut short by the vengeful spear of a scion of ancient Nubia fifteen hundred years later. The Raya region of Tigray, where Afar, Agau, Amhara, Oromo, and Tigrawi long lived together amicably, embodies Ethiopian mutliethnicity at its best.
Yohannes IV of Ethiopia would have been horrified by pronouncements of his descendants a century later who challenged the reality of Ethiopia's historic nationhood. Yohannes ridiculed the pretentious claims of Italian colonialists to the Red Sea Coast, affirming that it had always belonged to Ethiopia de jure, even during years when the Turks established beachheads there. He made common cause with “Amhara” Emperor Minelik in the effort to check the Italian encroachments. Yet the banner of Ethiopia as fiction guided the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front when they entered the capital in May 1991.
This dramatic reversal of Tigrayan sentiment, from champions of historic Ethiopia to debunkers of its reality–how did it come about? How did the TPLF warriors pursue the cause of partisan Tigrayawinet? How has the thinking of EPRDF leaders evolved since then? What options does that portend for Ethiopia's future? These questions will be addressed in Part II of this piece, which may shed additional light on the mystery of the genocide charge against the Kaliti detainees. |
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