On November 26th 2018, the council of the Gurage zone voted 100% for Gurage statehood, which makes Gurage separated from the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR). This vote was sent to the Regional Council to decide for a referendum in a year’s time. But the Region Council did not respond in due time. Following the constitution’s procedural legislation, the Zone Council appealed to the House of Federation to acknowledge the rights of the people and support the people to get the regional state as described in the constitution.

However, over 2 years the Federal Council did not respond to this request. Again, early August 2022 the Gurage Zone Council voted for a regional state despite the enormous pressure, harassment and intimidation from the government. Still the government denied the people’s vote and put pressure on reversing their vote and citizenship rights. This was actively reinforced by the existing SNNPR regional government that is actively advocating for “cluster” restructuring.

It is interesting to see how the government, as one of its demoralizing tactics, used state-media to report on the Woreda House of Councils declining the Zone Council’s votes even though the action of the Woreda Council was unlawful. The same state-media were willfully ignorant and never reported on the majority vote for Gurage Regional State. Still the people continue struggling for their legal rights peacefully – amidst active state violence.

Chronic state violence is the DNA of Ethiopian state-building projects. One can also argue, every state is intrinsically violent or leviathan as they say. In our case, each regime in history starts with a radical intervention to discontinue state violence and propose different trajectories, but only to find itself possessed with actively using violence and repression as a way of asserting states power and structure making violence part of everyday life.

Yet we don’t seem to have a clear idea and consensus as a nation on what exactly we mean by state-violence. We are always in a state of crisis that we also don’t have the skills to identify its different forms. The most obvious violence known to us, generation after generation, and that continue to define the nation-state is launching war against its own citizens, torture, mass arrest, and extortion under the label of “terrorism”. Such violence is what we are capable of talking about, protesting against, and have language for. At the same time, we seem to be uninterested, often because we are preoccupied by the survival-mode we are living under, in placing other forms of state violence that are integral parts of, and play a crucial role into leading to our predicament of collecting dead bodies of innocent lives, internal displacement, and generational trauma.

Violences such as repression of the media; deflecting accountability away from the state, skilful debilitation of political opposition parties, destroying the social fabric of our society, intentionally sideling minority groups and invisibilising their suffering, treating women as second-class citizens, and fabricating an unequal power dynamics between different ethnic groups when the reality on the ground is far more complicated, and when all tactics fail riding on our historical past that none of us seem to have mutual sympathy and understanding. All these toxic “political” strategies are often used by our politicians in power, including by those who are working toward gaining one. We often struggle to recognize these “not so obvious” state violence as violence.

However, violence has a discursive and physical form and different ways of deployment. When the state erases or sidelines citizens’ questions, it is violence. When the state attacks people who are trying to amplify marginalized voices, and debilitate collective movements, it is violence. The physical violence does not precede the discursive violence, they are entangled.

It has been a struggle for Gurage politicians and activists to maintain the Gurage Regional State question while fighting against state repression that uses different forms of violence to de-escalate the Gurage people movement. From declining to give equal media representation, to invisibilising the violence that has been inflicted on the people and side-lining the existential question by deprioritizing as “not so urgent”.

Gurage is a victim of this political violence and the physical violence that follows it. This has been experienced through the illegal deployment of command post, the intimidation of shop owners during the strike in Wolkite by the command post, the mass killings during the water protest, the crackdown on youth, the illegal arrest and torture of council members, and the attempt by the government to prevent the registration of GOGOT party by arresting its leaders and illegally taking documents that were to be submitted to the Board of Election.

It is in this context that the political conditioning of SNNPR in the contemporary Ethiopian political structure is being designed, fought against and debated. Right from the start, we are made to believe and accept that the political and existential crises of the SNNPR region is not as urgent compared to other areas in the country. It is how for a very long time that the state-building ideology successfully operates by creating politically unequal society and hence differences among citizens. It is also in this context that we push back against deprioritisation of the Gurage regional state question and bring back the issue of state violence and repression to the center.

From the onset, the political constellation of SNNPR is part of the state violence which collapsed 56 ethnic groups in one region with no significant autonomy and power compared to other regions. Gurage activists often make a joke saying “but ‘south’ is only a geographical location not a name”, still it helped in invisibilising the political, economic and social problems in the region.

Now PM Abiy’s administration came up with what they considered a “solution” to divide the “Southern Nation” into smaller groups by clustering a few ethnic groups together. The logic behind this restructuring, first and foremost, is that it is inhumane. The problem lies in the total obliviousness of the administration that feels entitled to dismiss one’s identity, culture, historical relations, and dignity of the people. The government cannot simply create groups just to make the administration expense and labour easier.

It is one thing to claim federalism on the idea of diversity based on ethnic identities for political purposes by emphasising on our differences; it is totally another thing to assert the autonomy of diverse ethnic groups in a way that is tangible to everyday people. Still, Abiy’s administration went on to impose a restructuring of SNNPR in “cluster” forms, a top-down solution that will further make SNNPR politically irrelevant and powerless. Clearly, there was also an underestimation of the pushback that would come from the people. This is what happens when one is used to pushing people to the periphery and making them politically powerless.

Despite the state’s annoyance and tantrums, the people of Gurage have been very vocal against the cluster project that has been pushed down upon them. For many, it is never clear as to why PM Abiy’s administration, similar to the government body before, resists applying the constitution that the state claims to defend and actively support. More so, it is infuriating to know what seems like a very straightforward administrative work, as it is described in the constitution, has become such an impossible right to access. It begs the question how do we claim to abide by the constitution yet block people from getting what is rightfully theirs?

Still, the Gurage people and activists have been trying to engage with the state in a peaceful resistance using the same constitution as a basis for these protests. We have been witnessing how Gurage politicians, activists, lawyers, and people’s representatives repeatedly speak about how the Gurage people have been following the constitutional requirements in a chronological order; how they have been working hard to make sure that everything that is needed from the people’s side is presented.

Here, it is important to think about the very many ways state violence is experienced by citizens in an expansive way. In a country that is constantly brutalised by horrific physical violence, it seems that other forms of violence are not part of the public discourse, if not accepted as normal. It is not only that the Gurage people have been killed, tortured, and arrested, it is also the fact that these violences are not well recognised at the national level, certainly the crisis in the zone is not considered as a national crisis.

In fact, national politics is overwhelmingly centred around the political chaos in the northern part of Ethiopia, because of an unjust majority-minority structure that emanates from ethnic-federalism, hence state violence. This is not to say that what we have been witnessing since November 2020 does not amount to a national crisis, it absolutely does. But at the same time the situation in the Gurage Zone is a crisis for the people of Gurage and it should be treated as such at a national level.

Certainly, regular update of the progress about the people’s struggle is majorly reported by journalists and media networks that are from the Gurage people created intentionally to give attention to Gurage affairs and get media coverage and fill-in the representation gap in the country – medias such as Gurage Media Network, Zebider Tube, Emat Gurage Media etc. All these platforms are dedicated to voicing the plight of the Gurage people with the information that is needed. Often media critics discourage the establishment of media networks that identify with a specific ethnic group and identity. However, these critics do not pay enough attention to structural exclusions and how it is intentionally built through erasing lived experiences of people as trivial, minor, or at times invisible.

Indeed, there were attempts from the government to silence these Gurage media platforms. We have witnessed that journalists were arrested the day cluster was denied by the council, GMN manager Beyene Wolde was also arrested, and Emat Gurage media office was looted. In spite of that, these ethnic-based media platforms are the only medium to help the voice of the people to be heard, and inform the general public. But they can only perform as a social media platform, not mainstream media.

Do you know that Gurage Media Network FM 99.1 is unable to voice the public’s concern as a mainstream station, but on social media platforms? If this is not an expression of state violence and repression, then what is? We are yet to see and are negotiating with the current zone administration to help change such tactical repressions, it is however off to a promising start. In addition, the community-based Zebider Tube and Emat Gurage Media social media platforms facilitate concurrent discussions on the political and social issues of Gurage people. These media platforms, with all the limitations, through Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and YouTube channels, have given an active attention and ethically represented what is happening in the Gurage zone.

Very recently, on 11 August 2023, the GOGOT party announced its plan to sue the government for defying the constitution and failing to address the question of Gurage regional state. The party has nominated 25 lawyers who are based in Addis Ababa and Wolkite to represent this court case and legal proceedings. This is a historical moment in Ethiopian history considering it is the first of its kind next to Wolaita based political parties which did the same. Yet, it is not getting the attention it deserves, enough media coverage and support.

With all these challenges and struggles the Gurage people movement still continues. We want to end this short essay by raising an important question that is – to what extent can the state continue positioning some political crisis at the periphery and some at the centre? Silencing and invisibilising the political demands of some communities?

An anonymous contributor, Wokiyanda, has furnished this article to Qawa Press.