The Excuse Is the Tell in the Violence Against Amhara Civilians

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Claims of self-defense risk concealing possible genocide.

Violence against the Amhara community, particularly in western Oromia, remains pervasive but has been overshadowed by the armed conflict in the north of the country. Since September 2022, Oromia regional security forces, beyond their earlier acquiescence and inaction in the face of violence by non-state armed groups, have begun carrying out direct attacks against Amhara communities, mainly in East Wollega Zone.

As has become routine, such attacks have been preceded by media campaigns and rallies echoed by prominent Oromo politicians, including Jawar Mohammed, claiming that the Amhara-based armed group Fano had first attacked Oromo civilians.

The latest reported attacks on Amhara communities in East Wollega and Gurage zones in late August and September 2026, carried out by Oromia security forces accompanied by a vigilante youth group, were followed by similar media campaigns.

Having spent years documenting these attacks in western Oromia, I want to be clear that I neither deny attacks against Oromo civilians nor downplay them. I strongly believe justice must be served for all victims, regardless of ethnicity.

However, the existence of Amhara-based armed movements in the region, or wrongdoing by fighters on the Amhara side, does not justify the continuation of what may constitute a decades-long genocide against Amhara communities in the region.

Ethnic Roots

To understand why the Amhara have continued to face ethnic violence, particularly in Oromia, it is necessary to examine the events that followed the 1991 revolution. At the time, a coalition of ethnonationalist parties influenced by Marxism-Leninism and Walleligne Mekonnen’s article, “On the Question of Nationalities in Ethiopia,” overthrew the previous regime.

Upon assuming power, these forces introduced ethnic federalism to dismantle what they described as Amhara domination.

Accordingly, they established regional states along ethnic lines, with each nationality granted the right to self-determination, including secession. The arrangement divided residents into those considered “natives,” entitled to own land in a region, and “non-natives,” treated as outsiders. In effect, each region was designed as an ethnic homeland, resembling the republics of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union.

This arrangement undermined the rights of those classified as non-natives, pitting groups considered native, along with the state apparatus, against them and vice versa, and contributing to atrocities against Amhara communities.

Even if the claim of Amhara domination were accepted, the logical response would be to guarantee equality for all. Yet, in the eyes of ethnonationalists, rectifying that domination has often appeared to mean cleansing Amhara communities from regions they deem not to belong to them.

This interpretation was evident as early as 1991, when Amhara and Christian communities were subjected to widespread attacks, particularly by the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) authorities exercising de facto control in eastern parts of Oromia.

Human Rights Watch and the Ethiopian Human Rights Council documented massacres in Gara Mulata, Weter, Bedeno, Gelemso, Asebot Monastery, Arba Gugu, and Arsi Negele between 1991 and 1992. In some incidents, hundreds of people were killed, including newborns and older people. Victims were killed in particularly cruel ways, including being thrown off cliffs.

Escalating Violence

When Prime Minister Abiy came to power in 2018, many Amharas hoped, based on his promises, that he would steer the country away from ethnonationalism and halt targeted attacks against Amhara communities, particularly in the Oromia region.

However, Abiy’s government and ruling party have retained the existing structure of ethnic federalism, which leaves Amhara communities vulnerable to attacks. The attacks, exacerbated by hostile rhetoric, have escalated to an industrial scale yet remain largely unchecked.

As a human rights researcher, I witnessed some of the most abhorrent crimes against Amhara communities in western Oromia. One incident emblematic of dozens of similar cases was the Tole massacre, which took place on 18 June 2022 in Gimbi district, West Wollega Zone.

Ten entire Amhara villages were wiped out, with at least 400 people, mainly women and children, killed, thousands injured, livelihoods destroyed, and survivors forced to flee. The organized attack lasted only a few hours. This incident demonstrated the gravity of the attacks that Amhara communities have endured for decades.

The perpetrators spared neither pregnant women and their unborn children nor newborns as young as 15 days old or elderly people as old as 100. According to the accounts, perpetrators cut open pregnant women’s abdomens, removed fetuses and dismembered them, and burned dozens of people, including women and children, alive. A 64-year-old survivor told me that he had lost 22 family members, including his two wives and several descendants. No members of several families survived.

This pattern has recurred both before and after the Tole massacre. On 4 July 2022, for example, Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) forces reportedly carried out another large-scale attack on Amhara villages in Lemlem Kebele, Hawa Galana Woreda, Qelem Wellega Zone.

Those killed included a four-month-old girl and an 85-year-old man. At least 278 Amhara villagers were killed, many others injured, and thousands displaced from villages where they had lived for decades or been born. Between 23 and 25 September, a further 177 Amhara villagers were killed in Jarte and Amuru towns, in Horo Guduru Wollega Zone. Others were injured or displaced, and as many as six members of a single family were killed. The victims ranged from a 20-month-old boy to an 80-year-old man.

State Involvement

The targeted attacks against Amhara communities were not solely insurgent violence. The state has been implicated through direct action, inaction, and structural factors.

More recently, government security forces began carrying out attacks directly. When Amhara communities organized to defend themselves against OLA attacks in East Wollega, state-financed Oromo Special Forces took over the attacks on Amhara communities under the guise of counterinsurgency operations against those who had begun resisting the mass killings. They had previously provided no assistance to stop the attacks. From November 2022 to the present, Oromia regional government forces have continued to attack Amhara communities directly across Kiremu and Gida Ayana woredas in the zone.

This is a strong indication that the earlier OLA attacks may have been carried out indirectly in coordination with Oromia regional government authorities. Other evidence supports this allegation. Many survivors I interviewed identified Fekede Abdisa as the commander of the forces responsible for the OLA massacres.

At the time of the attacks, he was openly at odds with Jaal Marro, the commander of the main OLA faction. Fekede voluntarily surrendered to government forces last year. The prominent Oromo politician Jawar Mohammed testified that Fekede was a government agent tasked with carrying out massacres of ethnic Amharas.

Beyond directly and indirectly carrying out attacks against Amhara communities, the government has often failed or refused to protect victims, even after being informed of imminent attacks. In many incidents, including the Tole massacre, government security forces stationed nearby remained at a distance, watching the violence unfold rather than intervening to protect civilians. Survivors consistently told me that when they asked government forces, including the army, to protect them or intervene, the forces often replied, “We don’t have orders.”

Above all, the state’s complicity in the possible genocide against the Amhara has structural and administrative dimensions. Ethnic federalism and ethnonationalism remain in place, pitting state institutions and other communities classified as natives against Amhara minorities.

State machinery has also been manipulated to misinform the public and the international community, undermining sympathy for Amhara communities under constant attack. For decades, the government structure, diplomatic channels, and media have worked to spread the belief that the Amhara were the country’s dominant group and were responsible for abuses, including those directed against them.

The government has also used its power to sanction selectively in ways that contribute to the persecution of Amhara communities across Oromia. The government and affiliated media remain silent even in the face of large-scale massacres. In a few instances, when doing so serves the ruling class’s political agenda, government authorities, communication channels, and media outlets speak out, distorting the facts, denying the ethnic motivation behind the attacks, and referring to the victims generically as “citizens.”

Ethnically targeted violence against Amhara communities is not reported, acknowledged, or condemned at the government level. Instead, the government obstructs independent scrutiny of these incidents. The government has used arrests, extrajudicial killings, torture, and intimidation against journalists, including Abay Zewdu and Meaza Mohammed, and human rights defenders, while imposing sanctions on media outlets and human rights organizations for reporting on ongoing crimes against the Amhara.

It has also denied the UN-appointed ICHREE access to investigate human rights violations independently, including those against the Amhara.

The government’s selective enforcement of the law is also notable. While armed actors and even unarmed civilians involved in efforts to defend Amhara communities have been sanctioned, there have been no known prosecutions for the killing of Amhara civilians since this pattern began in 1991.

Atrocity Crimes

Based on the available evidence, the massacres of Amhara communities may amount to crimes against humanity, war crimes, and even genocide.

According to the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity include specified acts, such as murder, persecution, and forcible transfer of population, when committed “as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.”

While the descriptions of the incidents above indicate the occurrence of underlying acts, the contextual elements—including whether the crimes were widespread or systematic and involved an organizational policy—require further comment. The large number of victims, counted in the hundreds, and the extensive geographical spread of the violence across eastern Oromia indicate the widespread nature of the attacks.

The involvement of organized groups such as the OLF, ODP, and government forces, together with an apparent policy of ethnic homogenization or of terrorizing and punishing Amhara communities for remaining in Oromia and supporting Amhara-based armed groups, may point to a systematic pattern behind the attacks and an organizational policy. The recurrence of the attacks over time, far beyond isolated incidents, further supports the argument that they were systematic.

The same acts, when committed in the context of an armed conflict and in connection with that conflict, may also amount to war crimes.

Strong indications suggest that the attacks may amount to genocide under Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention and Article 6 of the Rome Statute. Both define genocide through specified acts, including killing members of a protected group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction, in whole or in part.

The Excuse

Since 2022, and with increasing frequency in 2026, attacks on Amhara civilians in Oromia have repeatedly been accompanied by claims, including those made by Jawar Mohammed, that Fano militia operating nearby had first attacked Oromo civilians.

Such an excuse is not unique to genocide, nor does it absolve perpetrators of liability. During the 1915–1917 Armenian Genocide, Ottoman authorities invoked Armenian resistance, alleged collaboration with Russia, and wartime national-security concerns to justify mass deportations. In Rwanda, Hutu extremists exploited the invasion and subsequent military campaign of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to portray Tutsi civilians collectively as RPF accomplices.

In both cases, an armed conflict involving some members of a group was used to justify violence against the wider civilian population associated with that group. Tribunal jurisprudence recognizes that such rhetoric can indicate an organizational policy underlying crimes against humanity. A similar pattern is evident in Ethiopia, where Fano’s actions are invoked to justify collective punishment of Amhara civilians in Oromia who, according to the evidence presented here, are not combatants.

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While this commentary contains the author’s opinions, Ethiopia Insight will correct factual errors.

Main photo: Displaced ethnic Amhara residents of Gida Ayana Woreda, East Wollega Zone, 2023. Source: Oromia Media Network.

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