By Yirgalem Addisu
There is something almost cruelly poetic about celebrating Ye-Hibret Qen in Ethiopia today. What better day to applaud harmony than the one on which the government reminds us, in cadence and chorus, that Ethiopia is united. At least in official speeches?
On Pagume 4, Abiy Ahmed Ali’s media machine once again rolls out the familiar hymn: Medemer, national cohesion, “United People, Great Nation.” The packaging is immaculate: unity, shared values, collective prosperity, a common future. One could almost forget that the past eight years have shown, with brutal clarity, how impossible it is to manufacture unity through deceptional political power.
The irony is not that Ethiopia celebrates unity. Ethiopia desperately needs unity. The irony is that the rhetoric of togetherness has become a theatrical performance, increasingly disconnected from the lived reality of millions of Ethiopians.
Eight Years of “Medemer” and a Multiplication of Grievances
When Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, expectations were enormous. He arrived promising political reform, reconciliation, and a new national direction. Medemer was presented as an alternative to the politics of division: different identities, histories, and interests brought together around a common Ethiopian project.
It was an attractive idea. But somewhere between the speeches and the battlefield, between the promises and the political maneuvering, the country became more fractured. The Tigray war became the defining catastrophe of the first half of his administration. The conflict killed civilians, displaced millions, and left behind deep political and social wounds. The Pretoria agreement ended the major fighting, but ending a war is not the same as rebuilding trust1, 2. And the wounds did not stop there.
Violence and insurgency have continued in Oromia, while the Amhara conflict has become another major source of insecurity. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented continued hostilities, war crimes, and serious abuses in Amhara and Oromia through 2025–2026, including drone strikes that killed civilians, mass arbitrary arrests, and a shrinking civic space ahead of the 2026 elections1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
So perhaps Ye-Hibret Qen requires a slightly different question: Together with whom?
From “Unity in Diversity” to Competing Memories
Ethiopia’s fundamental problem was never that its people were incapable of living together. Ethiopians have lived together for generations. The problem is political: who feels included in the national project, who feels excluded, whose history is recognized, whose suffering is acknowledged, and whose political aspirations are considered legitimate?
The past eight years have not resolved these questions; in some cases, they have intensified them. Political identity has become increasingly entangled with ethnic identity, while historical grievances have been revived rather than reconciled. Communities increasingly interpret national politics through the question of who controls the state and who benefits from it.
Academic research and human rights reporting alike identify a persistent trust deficit between communities and the role of ethnic political mobilization in undermining national cohesion1, 4, 5. That is the uncomfortable contradiction. A government can repeatedly say “multinational unity in brotherhood” while citizens increasingly ask whether the state actually treats them as one people.
The Tragedy of Weaponized Memory
Perhaps the greatest damage is not simply the number of conflicts, but what conflict does to memory. A child who grows up seeing members of another community as enemies does not inherit merely a political disagreement—they inherit suspicion. A family displaced from its home does not experience conflict as a debate about federalism. A mother who loses a son does not care which political slogan eventually receives credit for the peace. And a community that believes its suffering has been ignored does not easily respond to another government speech about harmony.
This is how national cohesion quietly dies—not through one dramatic declaration, but through thousands of accumulated grievances.
The Cruelest Irony
There is an especially cruel irony in celebrating harmony while millions remain affected by conflict and displacement. UN agencies continue to describe Ethiopia’s humanitarian situation in terms of overlapping conflict, displacement, climate shocks, and other emergencies. UNHCR and other sources estimate roughly 3.3 — 4.7 million people internally displaced in recent years, even as more than 2.5 million displaced people have returned home7, 8. And yet we are invited, once again, to celebrate how united we have become.
Perhaps the government should be congratulated. It has certainly succeeded in creating one thing that appears remarkably consistent:
- The Tigrayan have grievances.
- The Amhara has grievances.
- The Oromo have grievances.
- The Somali have grievances.
- The Afar has grievances.
- The Gurage has grievances.
- The Wolayta has grievances.
- The smaller nationalities have grievances.
Increasingly, even Ethiopians who simply want to live peacefully are exhausted by being forced to choose which political narrative they are supposed to belong to.
That is not national cohesion; that is national fatigue.
One Man, One Ethnic Project, One Divisive State
At the centre of this fracture sits a government that has become, in practice, an ethnic-extremist-dominated machine: a one-person project increasingly reliant on a narrow ethnic-political base, security apparatus, and patronage network9, 10, 11.
The evidence is not subtle:
- Repression and Arbitrary Detention: Mass arrests of ethnic Amhara across the country, including in Addis Ababa, under emergency-style frameworks, with thousands detained over months with little due process 3, 6, 12, 4.
- Targeted Persecution in Western Tigray: Systematic discrimination, arbitrary detention, and exclusion of Tigrayans from services and employment, described as “unrelenting” and potentially crimes against humanity 13, 14, 15.
- War Crimes and Impunity: Continued fighting in Amhara and parts of Oromia, with all sides implicated in serious abuses, drone strikes killing civilians, and a stalled transitional justice process that promises accountability but delivers delay 16, 1, 2, 5.
This is not the work of a neutral state trying to hold a diverse country together. It is the work of a divisive, destructive, war-mongering leadership that treats political disagreement as disloyalty and ethnic suspicion as a governing tool.
As the old saying goes, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” The speeches may still play in Addis, but in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, Somali, Afar, and beyond, the reality on the ground negates the official story.
Unity Cannot Be Declared from a Podium
The fundamental misunderstanding is that unity is not something a government can announce. You cannot legislate trust. You cannot manufacture reconciliation with slogans. You cannot build togetherness by asking citizens to forget yesterday’s bloodshed while refusing to honestly discuss what caused it. And you certainly cannot create national solidarity by treating political disagreement as disloyalty.
Real unity requires something much less glamorous than grand speeches: justice, accountability, equal citizenship, institutional trust, political inclusion, and the courage to acknowledge suffering—even when acknowledging it is politically inconvenient.
It requires a government capable of saying:
- We were wrong here.
- We failed there.
- These people suffered.
- Their grievances are legitimate.
- Those responsible must be held accountable.
- And tomorrow, every Ethiopian will have the same political worth regardless of ethnicity, geography, or political allegiance.
That would be togetherness worth celebrating.
The Ethiopia We Actually Need
The answer is not another ideological project. Ethiopia does not need to replace one form of domination with another. It does not need Oromo nationalism defeating Amhara nationalism, Amhara nationalism defeating Tigrayan nationalism, or Tigrayan nationalism defeating another nationalism.
It needs something more difficult: an Ethiopian citizenship strong enough that people do not have to choose between their identity and their country. A person should be able to be proudly Oromo and proudly Ethiopian. Proudly Amhara and proudly Ethiopian. Proudly Tigrayan and proudly Ethiopian. Proudly Somali, Afar, Sidama, Gurage, Wolayta, Gambella, Benishangul, Harari, and Ethiopian.
That is what “unity in diversity” should mean. Not uniformity. Not political obedience. Not silence. Belonging.
So, Happy Day of Harmony
Happy Ye-Hibret Qen.
Let us celebrate the unity we aspire to have. Let us celebrate the togetherness that exists in speeches. Let us celebrate the “One People, Great Nation” that appears on official messages.
But perhaps, before congratulating ourselves too enthusiastically, we should ask a rather inconvenient question: If eight years of a government ostensibly committed to unity have left Ethiopia with so much distrust, conflict, displacement, and political fragmentation backed by mounting evidence of repression, war crimes, and ethnic-targeted abuses 6, 14, 12, 1, 2, 5, 15, 13, 16. Perhaps the problem is not that Ethiopians do not understand unity.
Perhaps our leaders have not yet learned how to practice it.
Because real harmony will not arrive when the Prime Minister declares it. It will arrive when an Ethiopian in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, Somali, Afar, Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, Sidama, or Addis Ababa can look at another Ethiopian and see a fellow citizen before seeing an ethnic constituency.
Until then, Ye-Hibret Qen risks becoming the ultimate Ethiopian political irony: a national holiday celebrating togetherness in a country whose own government has become the chief architect of division.
The writer can be reached at : yrhaduta@gmail.com
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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References
- https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/06/16/hrw-oral-statement-at-the-62nd-session-of-the-un-human-rights-council
- https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/02/04/horn/east-africa-war-crimes-election-repression
- https://warwatch.ch/situations/non-international-armed-conflicts-in-ethiopia/violations/
- https://allafrica.com/stories/202604230080.html
- https://x.com/addisstandard/status/2019096109918917040
- https://thehuman-rights.com/ethiopia-amhara-region-continued-conflict-2026-update/
- https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/ethiopia
- https://humanitycentereddata.com/ethiopia
- https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/47729/
- https://ethiopanorama.com/?p=305046
- https://redseabeacon.com/divide-and-reign-the-politics-of-fracture-under-colonel-abiy-ahmed/
- https://borkena.com/ethiopia-targeted-and-forgotten-the-persecution-displacement-mass-killing-and-mass-arrest-of-the-Amhara-people/
- https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/04/22/ethiopia-persecution-of-tigrayans-unrelenting
- https://english.ahram.org.eg/UI/Front/Inner.aspx?NewsContentID=566480
- https://english.ahram.org.eg/UI/Front/Inner.aspx?NewsContentID=562119
- https://zehabesha.com/the-myth-of-medemer-how-abiy-ahmeds-fabricated-philosophy-failed-ethiopia/