Re: End the State of Emergency and Withdraw the Army from the Amhara Region
We, members of the Federation of Amhara Associations in Europe of Ethiopia origin, are writing to express our deepest concern regarding the endless state of emergency in the Amhara region.
Six months ago, the Ethiopian Government announced a state of emergency and deployed its army to the Amhara region declaring a full-scale invasion. The region has sustained extensive economic devastation, significant civilian casualties, disruption of basic services, and destruction of public infrastructure.
The purported goal, envisioned six months ago, of the swift quelling of the uprising within declared two weeks in the Amhara region has become a distant wish. The inhumane atrocities, gross human rights violations such as indiscriminate killings, massacres, executions of innocent civilians in public, mass detentions, torture, rape, deliberate and intentional burning of crops and destruction of homes and civilian property as well as devastation of the regional economy have unified the opposition against the regime. Much of the territory in the Amhara region is now governed by the highly disciplined Fano who enjoy substantial support from the local population. The regime’s structure is dismantled by Fano in many areas. In its place, publicly elected officials are in charge of administration in a direct challenge to the authority of the regime.
Fano adheres to a strict code of discipline in protecting even government infrastructure, including banks and financial institutions. They stand against rampant corruption and lawlessness. Ordinary citizens who live in Fano-administered areas, despite destruction of basic infrastructure and lack of public services, are relieved of corruption and bureaucracy that are known to be hardships endured by ordinary civilians in government control areas.
In light of the above, to prevent more losses of lives, and avoid further suffering it is prudent for the government to end the state of emergency, withdraw its army from the Amhara region and strive to find a political solution to the conflict for lasting peace and stability by engaging with the Fano using peaceful means as its military campaign has failed. The causes of the uprising of the Amharas that led to the conflict are clear and simple. They want respect for their basic human rights to live, work, and travel safely and freely in their own country. They want an end to decades-long political, and socioeconomic marginalisation, as well as systemic ethnic-based killings. They called for an end to extortion, open bribery, robbery, destruction of their properties, their mass displacements with impunity, which, still, is a common practice.
As a last straw, they were denied the very basic needs of farming, access to fertilisers and seeds, at the beginning of the last rainy and farming season hindering them from producing agricultural products to sustain their livelihoods. Such deliberate and unwarranted denial was seen as an act and an attempt not just to cripple the region economically, but to starve the population. There was also no attempt to address the long-standing grievances described above. Instead the regime chose to subdue the region using all-out war and brute force.
We call upon all peace-loving nations, organisations, and human rights defenders to press the Ethiopian regime so that it doesn’t extend the state of emergency which is supposed to expire at the end of January 2024, and pull its troops out of the Amhara region as a primary measure and cooperate with human rights organisations to investigate the war crimes and human rights abuses by its troops to bring about sustainable peace in the Amhara region and the country.
Yours sincerely,
Federation of Amhara Associations in Europe