Saturday in Milan is a warm sunny afternoon. In Corso Sempione, in front of the Rai headquartersEritreans and Ethiopians from Milan and Lombardy met for a protest garrison.
The flags with the colors yellow, red, blue, green, blue, wave in the street closed to traffic and full of people of all ages.
Few police vans, to ensure the safety of a peaceful demonstration.
Passers-by stop intrigued, asking the fighters who are cordoned off what is happening.
Yes, because this is the reason for the demonstration in front of Rai. Of what is happening in Ethiopia, after November 4, 2020, we speak and write very little. Rai is absent, not justified. Incredible the little space given to war first, then guerrilla warfare, between Tigris of the tplf and central government headed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. A clash that, risking creating instability in Ethiopia, a country with over 100 million inhabitants, would become a fuse for the whole Horn of Africa.
Meanwhile, news of April 22, the United Nations Security Council welcomed the efforts of the government of Ethiopia to organize aid, including food, sent to the region and to initiate joint work between two commissions, one internal and one external, to verify possible violations of human rights .
What is happening today in Ethiopia and why this Milanese demonstration was organized, explains the spokesperson of the Ethiopian community in Lombardy, Romeo Spina. “We are here to make the voices of our peoples, of Eritrea and Ethiopia, be heard, because in recent months the conflict in Tigray between the tplf and the government has been exploited, giving a different image from the real one”.
The Tigers it is the region north of Ethiopia, where about 6 million people live. On 4 November last year, the Tplf (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) attacked the North Barracks, the largest federal arms and ammunition depot in the country. A military attack which the central government of premer Abiy Ahmed he responded with force. The army, it has been said since the first communiques, would not have targeted civilians, however, trying to stop what has been called a “terrorist attack”.
On that November night, many soldiers of the national army were killed by tplf militias, precisely because of their ethnicity. The survivors fled to the nearest border, finding refuge and care in Eritrea.
L’In fact, Eritrea is the country bordering the Tigrai. For this reason, the Eritrean army, after the attack by the Tigrinya militias, entered Ethiopia to guard an area that has become hot again. It is in fact the same area where, from 1998 to 2000, the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia took place with the area of the town of Badme at the center. In 2002, the Algiers Agreement would put an end to the dispute, establishing that the Badme area was Eritrean. An agreement, however, that the then premier Melles Zenawi he has not accepted. Nor has the international community insisted on it.
“Before the current conflict”, says Spina, “Prime Minister Abiy sent emissaries for peace to the Tigray region for three years. But the goal of the tplf and former governor Debretsion Gebremichael was not peace. They wanted to overthrow the federal government. For this they had called elections in the region, without the consent of the government electoral committee, thus transgressing the Constitution. A serious fact. For twenty-seven years the tplf has plundered the coffers of the state, to pay the lobbies in the West, to throw mud on Ethiopia and also on Eritrea. We want this to be known.
“Did the Tigray want more autonomy?”, I ask him. “The Tigray is already led by his children,” he replies. “The central government has no interference. Indeed, the opposite has happened. As long as the tplf was in power, it took, by force, more and more space. Their motto was, if we are not there, a united Ethiopia cannot exist ”, he concludes.
But soon there will be elections in Ethiopia.
“Yes, in June. Our government is working to build democracy, to get everyone to vote. And the winner will be the one desired by the elections. And elections are not won with a gun, ”he says.
Do you think that the guerrilla warfare in Tigrai will go on for a long time?
“The tplf is not in a position to hold up a confrontation with the federal army. The guerrilla will not end immediately, but it will not be able to stop our democratic path. The supporters of the tplf are now few.
Here in via della Rai, there are also many Eritreans, almost all waving the flag. “We are here to demonstrate with the Ethiopians,” he says Ghirmai Habtemichael. “Our goal”, he continues, “is to make it clear in Italy, as has been done abroad, that much of the information arriving from channels close to the tplf is false. This is why we are here, with our flags flying together with those of Ethiopia ”.
Many of the demonstrators wonder if Rai will report on the demonstration under their windows. If he listens to the protest, which has arrived, so to speak, at home, like take-away food in time for Covid.
Among the crowd, there is also Enrico Marcora, currently a director of the Municipality of Milan. He is here for the friendship that binds him to the two Milanese communities, the Ethiopian and the Eritrean. “I believe that the path of peace that began in 2018 must continue, that that is the right path. I am here to make my support for peace felt ”.
The word peace often returns among the protesters, especially among the younger ones. None of them think Prime Minister Abiy should return the Nobel Peace Prize received in 2019, precisely for having signed the friendship treaty with Eritrea, thus eliminating almost twenty years of cold war.
Many Eritrean and Ethiopian representatives speak to the Milanese in Italian. They are asking for peace for their countries and for all of Africa. A peace that also begins with information, so that people know who wanted the “fratricidal war”, as a very young protester defines it, and who instead fights for peace.