Understanding Hate Speech Against Tigrayans: How Words Fueled a Genocide

"The demon blood, asckakache Knnegger Tigray came to toot someone's horn. Once a tight always a Tigrat"

"When you get the fuck out of Ethiopia and all of our lands that's all the help we'll need"

"...why don't you take your relatives with you from the Amhara region? You dog"

"#ContinueTigrayFamine"

"You are a thresher and a theif's son"

"You insult a whole ethnic group and you cry fake genocide."

"I am happy your people were massacred like sheep's"

"Don't bother with a this TigRAT. She's just a rat being a rat."

"Don't mess with SHABIA. The next step wipe out evil agames [slur for Tigrayan]."

"...owning dirty agame is my family heritage."

These are just some examples of abuse from various Amhara and Eritrean users of the platform X.

Now, devoid of context you might say that these are just individual cowards hiding behind anonymity and saying outrageous things to evoke a reaction. But tragically these vile words are but a snapshot of what Tigrayans endured during the two year genocide launched by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, aided by foot soldiers from Somalia proper with the direct involvement from the U.A.E.

These words of hate propelled forces in the upper echelons of the Ethiopian society to attempt to erase an entire people and enlist other nations to do so. But incidentally those very words helped to build a case that they were guilty of the genocide of the Tigrayan people.

Starting in August 2021, the Head of the National Intelligence and Security Services of Ethiopia advocated for the elimination of the TPLF, its followers, and ideologies stating that the ‘junta mentality’ was ‘not limited only to a few thugs, swindlers, liars, murderers vagabonds, and terrorist pensioners’. [...] By November 2021, the Deputy Director of the Ethiopian Media Authority was calling for the removal of the TPLF, described as a ‘thorn’ and ‘traitors,’ from Ethiopia and implied that all Tigrayans has been affected by the TPLF ‘disease.’”

One speech by Prime Minister Abiy’s social affairs adviser, Daniel Kibret, was as openly genocidal as you can imagine. He says: “Weyane [Tigray] is not something we can understand. We can only erase it. For instance, Australia. ... there is an island called Tasmania which is found in southern Australia. They have destroyed Tasmanian tribes until only one person remained. There was only one person left for [continuity of] the race. Only one person! They have completely wiped them out. It is only by wiping out. As I had said before, it is only by wiping out [of existence] the disease called Weyaneness. ... Firstly, so that is may not exist physically. ... Secondly, the [very] idea. The idea of Weyaneness must never exist. Even in the form of an idea. ... When people say “Weyane” one ought to say “in the name of the father”!

Kedir Juhar, mayor of Dire Dawa has stated on national television that “Tigrayans are worse than the devil himself.”

The retired general “had reportedly returned to [Ethiopia] to become a close associate of prime minister Abiy.”Thinking about the extent to which the ethnically charged rhetoric had become part of public discourse, religious leaders also used terms like “the enemy,” and “sickness,” and “cancer” when pretending to speak about the TPLF, but TPLF as a code word to mean the Tigray people in their entirety.

One preacher is also alleged to have called Tigrayans “hyenas,” “traitors,” and “junta.” And in a country where the overwhelming majority of people are devoutly religious, the rhetoric of revered religious leaders has always had a profound effect on the public.

Another broadcast, which followed after violence in Gonder in mid-2016, included a ‘call for solidarity from the people of Gonder’, portraying the violence as:

“a struggle between a minority tribe who want to exterminate us and get the upper hand to rule over us and we, the people, who suffering [sic] has never come to an end... This plan of havoc is prepared by 5 million people against the 95 million people... Do we wait until they exterminate us one by one? There is only one choice ... taking measures by force ... one way of removing dead fish from the sea water is by drying the sea.”In particular, ESAT journalist Mesay Mekonnen broadcasted that: “the difficulty that we (Ethiopians) are facing now is not between the oppressor government/regime and the oppressed people, as other countries are facing. What we Ethiopians are now facing is between a small minority ethnic group, representing five percent of the Ethiopian population, who wants to rule Ethiopia subjugating others and the subjugated peoples. And the solution for what we are facing at this time is ‘drying the water so as to catch (kill) the fish.’” This allegory of “water” and “fish” is meant to signify that the TPLF leadership within the Ethiopian government at the time was the water needed to be drained, i.e., “it means that there is a need to massacre the population [of] Tigray in order to annihilate the TPLF. This was not a call to kill against individual members of Tigray people, but it was a call against the entire Tigray people extermination [sic].”

These quotes were extracted from the New Lines Institute genocide report on the Tigray conflict, and they brilliantly painted the picture of Ethiopian (Amharas in particular) and Eritrean incitement to genocide and how they eventually followed through.

But as I anticipated it didn't do a thing to convince those (particularly people in the Eritrean and Amhara communities who supported the war on Tigray) that the genocide was real. And that, of course, is a manifestation of their visceral hate for Tigrayans. Just like holocaust denial is a dead giveaway that someone is an antisemite, denial of the death, destruction and pain of the Tigrayan people is the logical extension of centuries of mistreatment at the hands of Ethiopian empire.

But it's important to analyze the origins of anti-Tigrayan hate starting with the Amharas (whose leadership conceived of and orchestrated the genocide), the Ethiopian Empire is essentially an Amhara empire as historian Patrick Gilkes says and an outgrowth of that is Amhara supremacy. They wanted to see an Ethiopian empire built in their image, as another historian Haggai Erlich in his book "Greater Tigray" indicates as the Amhara thesis. And in many ways that succeeded as Amharic is the official language, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is completely led by Amharas and preaches in Amharic even in areas where the language is not understood and overall Amhara culture is seen as the default Ethiopian culture.

So a critical part of the endeavor is maintaining dominance. The biggest blow to that was the 27 years of Tigrayan leadership, through the TPLF dominated EPRDF, and the act of decentralization, allowing each regional state (and their corresponding ethnicities) to have more autonomy. And the country began to thrive, the economy was developing by leaps and bounds (consistent double digit growth every year), many public schools and universities were opened, the healthcare sector was continuously expanding, dams were built, and the Chinese were investing heavily in the country. The fact that Tigrayans, who had long been pushed out of power, were able to accomplish all of this proved to be a humiliating defeat in the eyes of the Amhara elites. Much like the collective rage that racist conservatives felt about living under a black president in the United States that it led to the birther movement ( a series of false claims right wingers made that Obama was not born in the country) and eventually Trump. The fury over Amhara supremacy being violated paved the way for the rise of Abiy and a genocidal war being waged on Tigray.

When it comes to the Eritreans, their views on and relationship to Tigrayans are a little bit more complex as their whole identity is a colonial creation as the nation-state was carved out by the Italians in 1890 and so many of them have bitterly clung to that identity ever since. In truth, most Eritreans are ethnically Tigrayan so the million dollar question is how and when did the animus they have towards Tigrayans develop?

Historians believe that the hate was at its infancy during the time of Italian colonization. The Italians often told them that they were "civilized" and that Ethiopians were "barbarians" that needed to be ruled. And Tigrayans often dominated work sectors that consisted of menial jobs in Eritrea which birthed the slur 'agame' for Tigrayans.

Fast forward to the border war of 1998, which was Eritrea vs. Ethiopia, and because Tigray borders Eritrea, of course, Tigrayan forces played a strategic part in the war which Eritreans long viewed as a betrayal as their was great civilian suffering during the conflict.

But most significant is the long standing People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) regime headed by the odious Isaias Afwerki. It is notoriously repressive (it's even called the North Korea of Africa). Virtually everyone is mandated to serve in the military and there is frequently jailing, torture and murder of political dissidents or those suspected to be. And freedom of religion is severely stifled as it is limited to four state recognized faiths. But despite all of that, the supporters of the regime worship it and even deify Isaias Afwerki so much so that experts have called it a cult.

So one side effect of this is the demonizing and scapegoating of Tigrayans within that society, particularly after the Tigrayan-led government of Ethiopia at the time, had an embargo placed on Eritrea for financing and training militant groups in Somalia that served to destabilize the horn which devastated their economy and many tended to blame Tigrayans in general for what happened so much so that militants even stated to their Tigrayan victims during the genocide that "you made us poor so we are going to set you back 40 or 50 years".

Additionally there were deportations of Eritreans suspected of working with Isaias' regime during the TPLF dominated EPRDF led government, which many Eritreans in the country and throughout the diaspora still hold deep bitterness over as they view it as a direct assault on their national identity despite the fact that in 1991 when the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) "liberated" Eritrea they deported hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans.

But tragically inciting language evolving into a full blown genocide is hardly unique to Ethiopia. You see it with the language that countless Turks/Azeris use towards Armenians including throughout the Azerbaijani government as the president referred to Armenians as 'barbarians and vandals', with an 'infection' that 'needed to be treated.' The language that Hutus used against Tutsies preceding the Rawandan genocide of 1994 at times referring to the minority group as cockroaches often on the public radio dubbed the "soundtrack of the genocide". In the Bosnian genocide there were many that attested to the fact that Serbian soldiers referred to them as "Ustase dogs" often before forcing civillians to dig their own graves. So in a twisted way all of our struggles are connected, this type of naked hate and othering is universal and has devastating impacts that trickle down to generations to come.

So what's the solution here?Well, quite frankly there are many. When it comes to the Eritreans, as many support the genocidal PFDJ regime, which as I mentioned has been likened to cult, so there needs to be serious, thoughtful deprogramming of his supporters. That means one of the first steps that can be taken is consulting with cult experts and getting their assessment of the situation.

The next is perhaps the most complicated and challenging but absolutely essential for long term peace which is healing the deep wounds within Eritrean society. The society begins with a very fragile identity as colonized people, and devolves into complete destruction with the commencement with the PFDJ regime. We can't forget that these are broken people who have had all of their fundamental rights stripped away, first under the thumb of the Italians, then briefly the English, onto King Haile Selassie culminating in the blood thirsty Isaias Afwerki. The horrors attributed to Eritrean actors in this recent conflict is a product of the systemic psychosocial problems there that undoubtedly originate in trauma.

On to the most obvious solution, which is removing Isaias Afwerki and his regime from power which can be a bit more complicated as it seems as though America has been supportive or at least apathetic to his governance but he is started to violate western interests by working with Russia, so maybe there is hope for a U.S backed removal.

Or perhaps the spell will one day be broken and the opposition will gain enough momentum to overthrow him, and we should do what we can to bolster that opposition and support them in whatever way we can. For example a group emerged called the Brigade N'Hamedu, which opposed the current regime and aims to overthrow Afwerki and transform Eritrea into a functioning democracy with human rights enjoyed by much of the globe. They are working in exile and deserve the international community's unconditional support.

The Amharas on the other hand, are starting to turn away from their full-throated support of Abiy Ahmed because of the conflict that has been raging in the Amhara region, so maybe we can use that as a window to foster dialogue between Amharas and Tigrayans, perhaps if the Amharas were put in a position of hearing the Tigrayan stories from the genocide and if enough of them demonstrate true remorse we can start to heal.

So the crux of the solution is humanizing other people, understanding and accepting each other's pain and that often can come through raw exposure. Sometimes through lived experiences. Unfortunately there are very powerful vested interests that are preventing that from happening because they have something to gain from conflict. I said once, though, that I believed in the depths of my soul that justice for Tigrayans would come and I still believe that because the dams have been broken, the bombshell Tigray Genocide report was released and every day people are learning about what happened in Tigray. We on the right side of history just need to do what we can to facilitate that and we will all cross the finish line together.

-Hannah Saba Habtu