{"id":15400,"date":"2018-09-17T17:25:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T17:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15400"},"modified":"2018-09-17T17:25:42","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T17:25:42","slug":"ethiopia-thousands-protest-after-deadly-ethnic-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15400","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia: Thousands protest after deadly ethnic violence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of the Ethiopian capital to express their anger after a weekend of deadly ethnically motivated violence.<\/p>\n

At least 23 people were killed in a weekend of unrest targeting minorities in the ethnic Oromo heartland on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, police said on Monday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A<\/span><\/span>bout 200 people were arrested in connection with the violence, which broke\u00a0out as leaders of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a formerly-banned rebel group, returned home from\u00a0<\/span>Eritrea<\/a>\u00a0after being invited back by reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On Monday, protesters blocked roads and shut businesses as they waved flags and jogged through neighbourhoods across Addis Ababa to denounce the weekend killings in the Burayu suburb.<\/p>\n

Some demonstrators criticised Abiy for the first time since he took office in April and started ushering in a number of reforms.<\/p>\n

“We demand justice,” some of the rally-goers chanted as they passed by the office on Abiy, who is the first Oromo to hold the office of prime minister.<\/p>\n

“Mobs of ethnic Oromo youth then marched here in Ashwa Meda and attacked our homes and looted businesses chanting ‘leave our land’,” Hassan Ibrahim, a trader told the Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n

“By nighttime, there were several dead bodies along roads.”<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian government has denounced the violence.<\/p>\n

“Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed strongly condemns the killings and acts of violence against innocent citizens,” Fitsum Arega, the prime minister’s chief of staff, said in a tweet.<\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Thousands of Ethiopians hailed the return of the once-banned Oromo group on Saturday\u00a0[AFP]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Oromo, Ethiopia<\/a>‘s largest ethnic group who make up about a third of the population, have long complained of being marginalised during decades of authoritarian rule by governments led by politicians from other smaller ethnic groups.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the Oromo have been angered by what they see as encroachment on their land.<\/p>\n

Abiy’s predecessor,\u00a0Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned<\/a> in February following violent anti-government protests that had swept the Oromo heartland for two years.<\/p>\n

Since taking power, Abiy\u00a0has pursued a reconciliation strategy, steering the state away from a hardline security policy in place for decades.<\/p>\n

But Abiy’s reforms have yet to halt ethnic violence.<\/p>\n

Clashes between Oromos and ethnic Gedeos in the south caused nearly a million people to flee their homes soon after he took power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of the Ethiopian capital to express their anger after a weekend of deadly ethnically motivated violence. At least 23 people were killed in a weekend of unrest targeting minorities in the ethnic Oromo heartland on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, police said on Monday.\u00a0 About 200 people…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}