The Washington Post - 11.03.2020

wednesday, march 11 , 2020. the washington post eZ re k A

unsuccessfully to maintain

control of the Asian outpost. It

finally recognized the country’s

independence in December 1949.

Indonesia claims about 40,

people were killed in the fighting.

— Associated Press

Turkey seeks reduced charges

against U.S. Consulate worker:

A Turkish prosecutor s aid a U. S.

Consulate employee should b e

acquitted o n charges of e spionage

and t rying to overthrow t he

government but should face jail

on a lesser charge of belonging to

a terrorist organization. The

prosecutor told an Istanbul court

that the evidence did not back up

the o riginal charges against

Metin To puz, who has been i n jail

for n early 2^1 / 2 years while facing

trial. To puz i s accused o f links to

officials w ho led a 2 013

corruption i nvestigation a nd

were later f ound t o be m embers

of a network b lamed f or a failed

2016 m ilitary coup.

— F rom news services

ceremony in Bogor, just outside

the capital, Jakarta.

The Netherlands did not

initially apologize for its 350 years

of colonial rule and aggression

until 2013, when the Dutch

ambassador expressed remorse

for massacres c arried out by the

Dutch military to crush resistance

against colonial rule in Java a nd

Sulawesi islands after Indonesia’s

1945 declaration of independence.

That a pology came only after the

victims’ widows took the Dutch

government to court.

“ In l ine with the previous

statement by my g overnment, I

would like to express my r egret

and apologize here for the

excessive violence on the part of

the Dutch in those years,” t he king

said Tuesday. “I do so with full

awareness that the pain and

sorrow of the affected families will

be felt for generations.”

Indonesia declared its

independence on Aug. 17, 1945, but

the Netherlands refused to

acknowledge it and fought

Venezuela’s legitimate leader

because they view Maduro’s 2 018

reelection as fraudulent.

Guaidó garnered wide support

across the country after he

declared himself interim

president last year. But Maduro

continues to hold all levers of

power in practice.

— Associated Press

iNDONesiA

Dutch king apologizes

for colonial-era killings

King Willem-Alexander of the

Netherlands apologized Tuesday

for his nation’s a ggression during

its colonial rule of Indonesia and

formally recognized the Southeast

Asian country’s independence

date during his first state visit to

the former Dutch colony.

The king’s a pology was

conveyed after he and Queen

Maxima were hosted by

Indonesian President Joko

Widodo and his wife, Iriana, at a

back the National Assembly,

which was taken over two months

ago by a splinter faction of the

opposition that claimed

leadership of the legislature with

the support of the ruling socialist

party.

Riot police backed by armored

vehicles blocked the protesters’

progress downtown, where

masses of red-shirted state

workers and Maduro supporters

were gathering.

Shortly afterward, clashes

broke out as protesters flung rocks

and sticks at s ecurity forces, who

responded by firing volleys of tear

gas. Guaidó then led a smaller

group that reconvened in a safer

part of town.

Just h ours after the march, a

special police unit arrested three

opposition leaders allied with

Guaidó at a Caracas hotel where

they were staying, lawmaker

María Beatriz Martínez said.

Nearly 60 nations, led by the

United States, recognize Guaidó,

head of the Congress, as

denies any wrongdoing and says

he is the victim of a media-

orchestrated witch hunt.

His legal troubles stood at t he

center of last week’s national

election, Israel’s t hird in less than

a year. Like elections in April and

September, this one ended

inconclusively.

— Associated Press

VeNeZUeLA

Security forces repel

protesters with tear gas

Venezuelan security forces fired

tear gas Tuesday to repel an anti-

government march led by

opposition leader Juan Guaidó,

who is struggling to reinvigorate

street protests to capitalize on

mounting international pressure

on embattled socialist President

Nicolás Maduro.

The opposition supporters, who

numbered several hundred,

assembled in a neighborhood of

Caracas with the goal of taking

isRAeL

Netanyahu’s request

to delay trial is rejected

An Israeli court on Tuesday
rejected Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s r equest to delay the
start of his corruption trial,
clearing the way for proceedings
to begin as planned next week.
Netanyahu’s a ttorneys had
appealed for a delay, s aying they
needed more time to review
evidence.
The presiding judge noted that
the first session, on March 17, was
only a procedural reading of the
charges and that the defendant’s
response was not needed —
therefore, there was no
justification for a delay.
Netanyahu has been charged
with fraud, breach of trust and
accepting bribes over accusations
that he accepted expensive gifts
from wealthy friends and offered
to exchange favors with powerful
media moguls. The Israeli leader

The World

Digest

BY MAX BEARAK

JIMMA, EthIopIA — On a busy
back street in the hometown of
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Nobel
Prize-winner Abiy Ahmed, two
men sipping coffee and chewing
khat tried out a new pastime:
having a heated political dis-
agreement in public.
Africa’s second-most-populous
country is heading into its first
multiparty campaign season af-
ter Abiy lifted a ban on opposi-
tion parties, dissolved his ruling
party that controlled life here
with an iron fist for nearly three
decades and scheduled elections
for August.
Abiy’s promise to transform
Ethiopia into a full-fledged de-
mocracy has earned him wide-
spread praise abroad — and is
why some Ethiopians aren’t as
worried as they once were that
speaking critically of the govern-
ment could lead to a knock on
their door by the intelligence
services.
But the openness has also laid
bare a deeply polarized country,
riven by political and ethnic rival-
ries entrenched by Abiy’s prede-
cessors. Rather than uniting the
country, democratic politics
could derail violently right at
their outset in Ethiopia, especial-
ly if Abiy’s g overnment denies the
opposition space to campaign
openly.
The elections are a high-stakes
gamble for Ethiopia’s future. De-
spite widespread poverty, unem-
ployment and ethnic violence
that has uprooted millions from
their homes, Ethi o pia remains
stable enough to broker regional
peace agreements — including
with neighboring Eritrea — and
Abiy’s promise of new economic
policies has landed the country
billions of promised dollars in
foreign loans and investment.
Major political violence would
scuttle those ambitions.
In an attempt to preempt such
violence, officials say, the govern-
ment has begun to dispatch secu-
rity forces to clamp down on
opposition gatherings and re-
strict Internet service, phone ac-
cess and physical movement
across a vast opposition strong-
hold where people have been
detained in droves and some
killed in custody. Critics see the
makings of a crackdown on dis-
sent. Rights groups and journal-
ists have reported cases of arrests
and disappearances of vocal op-
position leaders and supporters.
In speeches, Abiy has forceful-
ly rejected ethnic politics and
re-christened his party the Pros-
perity Party — an anomaly in a
sea of coalition and opposition
members whose names explicitly
denote ethnicity. (Ethiopia is
split into nine semiautonomous
ethnic regions.)
The power of the Prosperity
Party “in the coming election will
draw on the fear of ethno-
nationalism, for people’s person-
al well-being — and even the
survival of the nation,” said Abel
Abate, an Ethiopian political ana-
lyst. “But there is lots of nervous-
ness, lots of tension, lots of suspi-
cion toward the PP from all
corners of the country.”
Abiy’s platform is particularly
unpopular in two ethnic regions:
Tigray, in the far north, where
power was centered during previ-
ous governments before he
wrested it away; and his own
Oromia, home to the country’s
biggest group, the Oromo, who
make up at least a third of the

national population and whose

ethno-nationalist leaders helped

Abiy gain power but now want

Oromo interests to be put first.

Sitting across from each other

on this back street in one of

Oromia’s largest market towns,

Hassen Mohammed Isa, 30, and

Isak Macha, 35, enacted a two-

man version of Ethiopia’s nation-

al political debate.

“A biy’s ideas are great, but we

see that he is surrounded by

chameleons of the past regime,”

said Isak, who, like an enormous

but uncounted percentage of

Ethiopians, is unemployed. He

gets jobs unloading trucks every

once in a while but relies mostly

on the largesse of family and

friends. He supports an Oromo

nationalist party t hat promises to

bring wealth back to Oromo ar-

eas that its leaders say was

hogged by smaller but more pow-

erful ethnic groups under the

previous government.

Hassen is a rare success story

in Jimma and holds a degree in

laboratory technology. He sup-

ports Abiy’s vision of an Ethiopia

in which national identity comes

before ethnic identity.

“The way [Isak] is thinking —

you see, most people in Ethiopia

haven’t even passed class eight in

school. That is why when you let

these groups operate freely, eth-

nic politics becomes bigger than

ever. Every perceived insult rais-

es the possibility of a riot, and

every riot can start a war,” he said.

“Friend, this is a country where

most people have nothing, abso-

lutely nothing,” Isak shot back.

“Only when we figure out today,

then we think about tomorrow.

How do we get the best tomor-

row? We are ready to believe

anything. I want to live a life just

like you.”

Both the ruling party and the

opposition will have to rely on

coalitions of ethnic parties to

prevail in the election. But while

the Prosperity Party has a unify-

ing figure in Abiy, the opposition

is more scattered.

Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo

media baron who spent years in

exile in Minnesota before Abiy

came to power, recently returned

and is fashioning himself as

Abiy’s main foe — though he has

not publicly announced his can-

didacy and has been locked in

battle with the government to

recognize his Ethiopian citizen-

ship after he said he renounced

his U.S. citizenship.

His supporters are deeply de-

voted to him, and when security

forces tried to arrest him in

October, riots broke out that

Violence may mar Ethiopia’s step toward democracy

Prime minister’s decision to allow opposition parties has revealed a deeply polarized country ahead of high-stakes election set for August

resulted in almost 100 deaths.

That spark looks likely to be

ignited again and again over the

course of the campaign season,

but Jawar says he preaches non-

violence to his supporters and

claims clashes have been instigat-

ed only by security forces under

Abiy’s orders.

“If the army is deployed, there

will be blood. And that, well, it

comes down to Abiy. If there is

violence, it will begin at his

command,” Jawar said on a re-

cent Sunday at his residence in

the capital, Addis Ababa, where

he ate a meal of injera and lentils

while scrolling through Face-

book, where his Oromia Media

Network has more than 1 million

followers.

Jawar’s anti-Abiy argument has

gained steam among new sup-

porters because local officials

from the ruling party have pre-

vented his Oromo Federalist Con-

gress party from holding numer-

ous public meetings. Last month

in Jimma, for instance, the oppo-

sition party was denied permis-

sion to use a stadium for a rally on

the grounds that the campaign

season hadn’t officially begun, but

then the Prosperity Party was

allowed to hold a rally in the

middle of town on the same day.

“They brought oil, sugar, T-

shirts and had a rally on the same

day we had requested ours,” said

Samira Kamil, a local Oromo

Federalist Congress leader.

“Preaching democracy but being

a dictator — that’s Abiy for you.

We’re not even able to introduce

ourselves to the people, and this

election is meant to be free?”

In the days after the rally, she

said, she began getting phone

calls from unknown numbers —

raspy voices issuing veiled

threats — and was followed on

the street by suspicious men. She

was arrested Feb. 26, charged

with “disrupting a meeting” and

released on bail two days later in

what she said was an attempt to

intimidate her.

Ta ye Dendea, spokesman for

the Prosperity Party in Oromia,

said that the Oromo Federalist

Congress was denied permission

for a meeting in part because

they “engaged in inciting conflict,

saying that if they win, they

would retaliate the previous mis-

deeds.” He also said that the

Prosperity Party had not orga-

nized its own rally but that sup-

porters of Abiy had come out

onto the streets on their own

volition.

Abiy and Jawar were once

friends and worked together to

usher out Ethiopia’s old political

guard and build the cornerstones

of democracy. Now Jawar says

Abiy is a would-be authoritarian.

“I came to the opposition side

not to create chaos,” Jawar said,

“but to make them competitive,

to make the election a real elec-

tion, to make Abiy feel like he has

to run for the money.”

The concern over deepening

ethnic divides seems to portend a

future at odds with the plaudits

Abiy received after initiating his

raft of policy changes.

“The government will appar-

ently continue to do what it has

done in the past: restrict public

space while allowing the ruling

party to use them abundantly,”

said Abate, the analyst. “Instead

of an opening of political space, it

may ultimately be a narrowing.”

[email protected]

ermias tasfaye Daba contributed to

this report.

eDUarDO sOteras/agence France-Presse/getty Images

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, center, returns to Addis Ababa in December after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.

agence France-Presse/getty Images

Jawar Mohammed, a member of the Oromo ethnic group who has

been critical of Abiy, addresses supporters outside his home in

Addis Ababa in October. Jawar is now a key opposition figure.

“Only when we figure

out today, then we think

about tomorrow. How

do we get the best

tomorrow? We are

ready to believe

anything.”

isak Macha, a 35-year-old ethio pian

who supports an ethnic opposition

party