Posted by The Ethiopia Observatory (TEO)
by Jason Burke, The Guardian
Addis Ababa had a plan – to expand, and lead newly prosperous Ethiopia into a brave new century. But after protests led to a violent and harrowing state crackdown, what happens next could reverberate across Africa.
‘We are marginalised in everything’

Police fire tear gas to disperse protesters during Irreecha, the thanksgiving festival of the Oromo people in Bishoftu town of Oromia region, Ethiopia. Photograph: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters
Drive out of Addis Ababa’s new central business district, with its five-star hotels, banks and gleaming office blocks. Head south, along the traffic-choked avenues lined with new apartment blocks, cafes, cheap hotels and, in the neighbourhood where the European Union has its offices, several excellent restaurants. Go past a vast new church, the cement skeletons of several dozen unfinished housing developments, under a new highway and swing left round the vast construction site from which the new terminal for the Ethiopian capital’s main international airport is rising.
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Tags: Corruption in name of development, ethnic minority regime, ethnic politics, land grab, Spreading inequality, tplf oppression and repression