borkena, Ethiopian News Video
October 27,2017
Featured below is a short video of academics of Amara and Oromo background discussing the relationship between the two language speaking groups.
Given the existing radicalized ethnic sentiment, the discussion might give some meaning to a considerable number of Ethiopians.
However, in view of social and cultural history which highlights assimilable grounds between Oromo and Amara language speaking groups, which in fact manifests itself in the fact that Oromo and Amara are the most intermingled language groups in Ethiopia, the view is not something to be elated about. It rather indicates the level of the damage wrought to the social and cultural relations between the two language speaking groups due to manufactured ethnic politics.
As things stand now, more than 60 percent of the population of Ethiopia constitute youth group, born after the coming to power of the ruling party which introduced ethnic-based administrative structures on a federal level with a constitutional right of “self-determination” up to secession.
Unfortunately, it seems that in most cases the youth group, especially in Oromo and Tigray regions, is an ideological captive of radical ethno-nationalism and espouse it with a “revolutionary” fervor. Worse, they are recking havoc either by making ethnic war out of nothing causing the deaths of innocent farming communities in the rural Ethiopia in the southern parts of the country. If they are not wagging ethnic war themselves, they are becoming a tool for those who want to wage one.
For that reasons, initiatives like these are relevant not only from the point of view of mitigating potential ethnic-based conflict, which is recurring in the last two or so decades mainly because of the ethnic ideology which at times make manufacturing conflict as a strategy to maintain a hold on power, both government power and leadership position in the opposition possible. What is your thought on this matter? Please share it in the comment section or in the comment thread in social media.
Video credit: Amhara Mass Media Agency. The discussion was held in Bahir Dar
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