MINILIK SALSAWI

  Addis Ababa (AFP) – "Our history and our identity have been erased," laments Samira after the destruction of her birthplace in the historic Piassa district in the heart of Ethiopia's capital. The demolition in Piassa is part of an urban renewal scheme for Addis Ababa © Michele Spatari / AFP

In the heart of Addis Ababa, the historic, ramshackle neighbourhood of Piassa once teemed with shops and cafes. People would come from across Ethiopia’s capital city to buy anything from jeans to jewellery. Today it lies in ruins. Its distinctive stone houses, with their wooden balconies and slanting metal roofs, are almost all gone. In their place are jagged fields of rubble, picked over by workers with sledgehammers. People stop to stare at the wreckage. Some take pictures. But they do not stay long: the ruins are guarded by police carrying clubs. “I’m angry,” says a former resident. “It’s my heritage that’s been destroyed in front of my eyes, without any consultation at all. We were never told the plan.” The extent of the destruction of buildings in Piassa can be seen from a terrace in the Addis Ababa neighbourhood. Photograph: Michele Spatari/AFP/Getty Images For years there had been vague talk of demolishing Piassa, sweeping away the densely packed shantytowns that ha

 A REUTERS INVESTIGATION In Ethiopia, a secret committee orders killings and arrests to crush rebels    Warning : This story contains disturbing visual content. A secretive committee of senior officials in Ethiopia’s largest and most populous region, Oromiya, has ordered extra-judicial killings and illegal detentions to crush an insurgency there, a Reuters investigation has found. Reuters interviewed more than 30 federal and local officials, judges, lawyers and victims of abuses by authorities. The agency also reviewed documents drafted by local political and judicial authorities. These interviews and documents for the first time shed light on the workings of the Koree Nageenyaa – Security Committee in the Oromo language - which began operating in the months after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. The committee’s existence has

  Fano: Ethiopia's New Dawn of Defense for the Marginalized ( Mengistu Mussie , Phd ) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Over the past few years, a new force has emerged in Ethiopia's complex socio-political landscape and represents the hope and resilience of its marginalized populations. Fano, a burgeoning collective, is positioned as a protector against the turbulent tides of division after stepping onto the stage at a crucial moment. It has emerged as a symbol of resistance against the ethnocentric factions that have for a long time been in control of Ethiopian politics with an iron fist. Fano's beginnings are modest yet profound, having rooted themselves in the hearts and minds of those on the peripheries of society and considered enemies by the ethnocentric elite. The movement grew out of necessity, relying on a shared desire to protect the defenseless and give voice to the voiceless. It wasn't a spontaneous event but the