In Ethiopia, it was a mediation of members of their families, communities and religious figures and a celebrity in athletics that on Sunday, March 7, convinced Oromo leader Jawar Mohammed and the leaders of his party to end their hunger strike. It’s been done since Monday night. What role did this delegation play exactly, and how was it composed?
The athletes are Ethiopiasuperstars worshiped by all the peoples of the Federation. So they sometimes play a political role, like the legend of athletics Haile Gebreselassie, who became a multimillionaire businessman who even aspired to be elected deputy, by playing on his influence and his money “to eradicate poverty,” he explains.
And so among veterans of politics and guerrilla warfare, traditional leaders and religious figures who visited Jawar Mohammed and his comrades last weekend at the clinic where they are being held and cared for, was the famous Oromo athlete Derartu Tulu., Cousin to the well. respected long distance runner Tirunesh Dibaba and, like the latter and her sisters, born in the same village as champion Kenenisa Bekele.
For those who know Ethiopia well, this should come as no surprise. In Oromo culture, conflict resolution is codified and adheres to specific rules with its rituals and vocabulary. And the role of the elderly and women is crucial. Academic Hamdesa Tuso explains that elders in traditional mediation are prevalent in everything – speaking, presiding over meetings, passing judgments – and that women are protected by customary law from physical abuse, making them “safe messengers to conflicting parties” and “moral voices in troubled times.”
“From spectacle politics”
This type of usual mediation has often been initiated outside the political-military field during Oromiya’s recent history, he recalls in a research entitled Indigenous Conflict Resolution Processes in Oromo Society and especially after the fall of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 to prevent the internal wars between rebel movements participating in the armed struggle endangered Oromo’s participation in the new democratic life.
But for researcher Gérard Prunier, the mediation last weekend was “glasses policy only”, as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed knows how to arrange it. It’s about “a battle of communication, cooking between Oromos” to try to regain control of the situation. “It is as old as Stalin, who emptied the Gulag to strengthen the army,” he adds with irony, a genuine-false mediation wanted or simply accepted by a head of government, “who no longer has the people’s oromo favors, while Jawar Mohammed preserves a significant popularity ”.
Behind this operation and the mediators’ call for stops the hunger strike Oromo leaders, according to him, it would be a mistake to see a humanistic gesture. The goal, he said, was to unite everyone “through blackmail around national unity through beloved figures of the people.” But he concludes: “Everyone knows that the end of this hunger strike for an ambitious and intelligent man like Jawar Mohammed was inevitable, mediation or not. This man is an excellent chess player and he is always several moves ahead of Abiy Ahmed. ”
.
