History is rife with brutal dictators who have committed gross human rights violations by targeting specific groups to justify their actions. These leaders often label certain populations as the root cause of social issues, fostering hatred and propaganda to rationalize their cruelty.
Millions have suffered unimaginable horrors: gassed, placed in concentration camps, physically reduced to skin and bones, and psychologically broken. Starvation has driven people to scrape the earth for seeds and roots to survive. The hatred some regimes harbor toward certain people knows no bounds. It is so extreme that any harm inflicted upon them is not seen as cruelty but as a necessity. These regimes are devoid of empathy for human suffering; they are like vicious, rabid dogs, happily tearing apart lives or societies with no remorse.
Such a regime exists in Ethiopia today, one that is using every means necessary to destroy the Amhara people. The systematic marginalization, genocide, and destruction of culture and religion have escalated into a full-scale military campaign. A region of about 50 million people has been under military blockade for nearly two years. This region was a battleground between Abiy Ahmed’s regime and the TPLF for 16 months of the two-year conflict. Once the Tigray war ended, the Ethiopian regime shifted its focus to crushing the Amhara people. As it did with our Tigrayan brothers and sisters, the regime is using rape and hunger as weapons of war. The denial of seeds and fertilizers to the region—due to nothing but ethnic hatred—sparked the conflict. This was followed by a military and economic blockade to prevent the movement of people and goods, compounded by ongoing bombardments using drones and heavy artillery. The deliberate destruction and burning of crops by foot soldiers have now led to famine.
The Amhara people, like all Ethiopians, have faced many challenges throughout their 3,000 to 5,000 years of history. They have withstood invasions by external powers—from the Ottoman Empire to various European invaders, the last being Italy during both World Wars. The Amhara resisted these foreign invaders, ensuring Ethiopia remained the only African country never colonized, despite aerial carpet bombardments and the use of chemical warfare and modern weapons by Italy. Ultimately, they triumphed, and today we live to tell the story.
The Amhara are descendants of the wise king of the Habash, who gave Muslim brothers and sisters safe sanctuary when they were persecuted. Fairness is at the heart of Amhara culture. They have never raised arms against anyone except when provoked and attacked. They are the descendants of King Menelik, who defeated European invaders but treated them with dignity when he captured their soldiers. Menelik also ordered that no harm befall anyone when the kingdom was invaded from the south, and after victory, the invaders were allowed to lead a normal life in Ethiopia. The Amhara are also descendants of Emperor Haile Selassie, a co-founder of the United Nations and the African Union, who trained and equipped Nelson Mandela and assisted many African countries in regaining their independence from colonialism. Haile Selassie’s words were immortalized in Bob Marley’s song “War”: “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war.”
Ironically, it is the descendants of these great leaders who are now seen as inferior and destined for extermination by Abiy Ahmed’s regime.
As the military campaign fails to achieve the desired outcomes, with bullets, drones, and bombs not killing enough people, Abiy Ahmed has turned to hunger as a weapon of war, aiming to eliminate the Amhara people on an industrial scale. A man-made starvation of epic proportions is unfolding.
Just as the Amhara have overcome numerous challenges throughout their long history, they now face a man-made catastrophe. But they will emerge victorious in their resistance to survive. This is a war they did not choose, but it has been forced upon them solely because of their ethnicity.
The Amhara region, almost half the size of Germany, is lush, fertile, and known for producing agricultural goods that meet regional demand and contribute significantly to Ethiopia’s food security. The land, blessed with diverse climatic conditions, supports a variety of high-quality crops. It is a breadbasket for Ethiopia. But under military blockade, this region is now facing famine, not as a result of natural disasters or climate change, but as a consequence of deliberate actions by the Ethiopian regime to subjugate and exterminate the Amhara people.
The world stands by as Abiy Ahmed continues with his plan, turning a blind eye to the slow, systematic genocide of the Amhara people—a process that has been unfolding for decades.
