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22-01-2024
ADDIS ABABA: Celebrations have been taking place in Ethiopia’s historic holy city of Gondar for the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian festival of Timket.
The celebration, which marks the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, is considered one of the most important religious festivals in the country but this year things have been more subdued than usual because the Amhara region has witnessed outbursts of violence between local militias and government troops in recent months.
Festivities continued this week despite the conflict, albeit with armed police officers standing guard.
Saturday’s main event took place after pre-sunrise rituals, and hundreds of youngsters used the pool in front of one of Gondar’s fortresses to get baptized.
On Friday, choirs took to the streets to escort replicas of the Ark of Covenant – also known as tabots that, according to tradition, contain the ‘Ten Commandments’.
Priests carried tabots into one of the fortresses in Gondar, where they will be kept until the end of the festivities.
Earlier, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has found himself at the centre of a new conflict, this time in the vitally important Amhara region that marshalled its troops to help him thwart an attempt by rival Tigrayan forces to topple him.
The conflict is the latest sign that Abiy is battling to live up to his Nobel laureateship an honor bestowed on him in 2019 for ending long-running hostilities with Eritrea and setting Ethiopia on the path of democracy after almost three-decades of iron-fist rule but Abiy’s reputation as a peacemaker and democrat has been further tarnished by the conflict in Amhara, the second-biggest region in Ethiopia.
The violence has raised alarm internationally, with Israel evacuating its citizens and Jewish people from the region last week.
Abiy is facing a formidable challenge to his power from militias known as Fano – an Amharic word loosely translated as “volunteer fighters”. The phrase was popularised in the 1930s, when “volunteer fighters” joined the army of Emperor Haile Selassie to fight Italian invaders.
It is still used today by the farmers and young men who have formed militias to defend the Amhara people whose future, they believe, is threatened by the government and other ethnic groups.
Although they have no unified command structure, these militias or Fano have demonstrated their strength in recent weeks by:
Carrying out what Ethiopia’s Minister of Peace Binalf Andualem called “horrific attacks” on army camps. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
