Ethiopia's ruling party bans movement of people between the country's ethnic regions. The move violates the country's current constitution.
For the last several weeks, people were complaining about being stranded in northern and southern entries of Addis Ababa. Now, Abiy Ahmed's right-hand man and mayor of Addis Ababa announced the defacto policy in a speech given to members of the party in Addis Ababa.
Adanech Abebe said anyone who comes to the capital Addis Ababa from the non-Oromo northern and southern provinces is a threat to their regime.
Addis Ababa is Ethiopia's largest and most developed metropolitan area. It has specialized hospitals people are refereed to from others undeveloped regions in the country. But Adanech Abebe says everyone who comes to the city including pregnant women are a threat to their government plan of retaking Ethiopia back to the Middle Ages.
In ancient times, towns and cities were gated and were only open by the permission of the king.
Many observers call Abiy Ahmed's regime in Ethiopia as medieval and barbaric as it has seen the death of over a million people in a horrific civil war and starvation in just four years. The regime shows no sign of remorse for the death of civilians in multiple parts of the country. The leader of the country also acts like a medieval ruler by making personal power dealings at the cost of the country. He's also building a multi-billion-dollar palace while people are dying from starvation. This ban on movement of people adds to that medieval and barbaric nature of the government.
Ethiopia is legally divided into ethnic enclaves, but the constitution allows movement of people between enclaves. This move by Abiy Ahmed's ruling clique is also against the current constitution.
Since Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party came to power in 2018, never-seen-before horrific killings started taking place first in Burrayu town outside Addis Ababa and Jigiga in the east. The killings continued accompanied by a conventional war with former rulers TPLF and so far, the death toll is over a million.
Reporting by ShegerPost staff