Who are these 'outside forces' the TPLF blames for all the bloodshed in Ethiopia?

By Tsegaye Ararssa

August 15, 2016

 

What's this nonsense that these terrorists such as Ganen Getachew Reda are talking about when they talk about 'outside forces'?

 

Every time people protest, they like to frame it as something done by outside forces such as Eritrea, G7, OLF, etc. It is inscrutable to me how at least the latter two became outsiders.

 

Recently, the terrorist regime is trying to say that the ‪#‎Oromoprotests‬ are the work of outside forces just because a handful of social media activists from abroad make noise about the protests at home. They are suggesting just because these Oromo activists live abroad, they are, for that reason, outsiders. And for that reason the voice of the protesting mass doesn't count. Because that voice is a voice of outsiders. (This is an interesting re-enatment of the historic othering of the Oromo in Ethiopia.)

 

But the irony is that it's the regime that is an outside force to Oromia. And as if its decades of mass murder, plunder, and turning the whole region into a concentration camp is not enough, as if sending hundreds of thousands into exile through atrocious acts of persecution is not enough, as if their dispossession and displacement of the Oromo is not enough, they now blame Oromo activists as outsiders.

 

It may well be that some of the activists are from abroad. It may well be that these activists are more visible on social media than the protestors in Ethiopia. What does it say about the regime and the state of freedom in the country?

 

More interestingly, how is it that the whole population rejects a regime that is supposedly elected to take 100% of parliamentary seats (just a couple of months before the protests started) merely because of the writings of a handful of activists from abroad? What does that say about the regime's relation to the people (or lack thereof) when it doesn't have 1% of the support and influence these activists have among the people?

 

Of course, we are increasingly seeing what "outside" means now. Perhaps anyone outside of the ethnic group that the regime represents is an "outsider". This is othering par excellence!

 

The regime may have thought of using this strategy of othering in order to exclude its opponents. But every time they do it, they are alienating themselves from the polity.

 

And they are meeting their end in that state of alienation. The regime has decomposed and will soon die its natural, or induced, death, and this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. What does come as a surprise is that it is dying a very lonely death. Isn't there some one in their circles who could remind them that it's cold out there, especially when you are alienated and lonely?