The Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church has denounced the killing of at least sixty of its faithful in two attacks on Christian villages in the Arsi zone, in the Oromia region, in the center of the country. According to the statement from the Holy Synod, released on the night of Monday, October 26, fourteen people died on Tuesday the 20th in Gora Silingo, in the Merti district, and another forty-six on Saturday the 24th in the villages of Tereta, Chole and Birbo, in the Shirka district. More than twenty people were seriously injured and twenty homes were reduced to ashes, according to Al Jazeera, the Turkish agency Anadolu and the EFE agency.
The Synod described the killings as “extreme cruelty and tragic suffering inflicted on our citizens”, in words translated by this editorial team, and maintained that the violence violates the constitutional guarantees of the right to life and religious freedom and threatens the Ethiopian tradition of peaceful coexistence among different confessions. The Orthodox Church called on the Government to publicly condemn the attacks, to strengthen the protection of civilians and to bring those responsible to justice, and demanded preventive measures from the security forces to prevent recurrence. It also announced that it would seek meetings with senior government officials, held prayers for the victims on Monday and ordered its churches and monasteries around the world to hold services for them on Tuesday, after the Divine Liturgy.
Vatican News provides details of the Shirka attack, which it places on the night from Saturday to Sunday. According to the witnesses it cites, the assailants went house to house killing neighbors with firearms and knives, and among the victims were elderly people and children. A church was damaged, and the temples of neighboring villages sheltered those fleeing. The area is inhabited by Muslims, Protestants and Orthodox Christians. The toll, the Vatican media warns, is still provisional. EFE specifies that it has not been able to independently verify the figures.
No one has claimed the attacks, and the Synod does not identify the perpetrators. According to local media cited by Anadolu and Al Jazeera, a local official attributed them to a recently formed rebel alliance that includes the Oromo Liberation Army, a group that the Ethiopian government declared a terrorist organization in 2021 and that on other occasions has denied attacking civilians. Vatican News reports that the authorities point to a coalition, which they call “Tsimido,” that would also include the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the Amhara Fano militias and that, according to the government, seeks to overthrow it and fuel ethnic and religious tensions. EFE recalls that in recent years massacres have been attributed to the Oromo Liberation Army, but also that government forces have been accused of killings and reprisals against civilians. The regional government of Oromia has promised to pursue those responsible.
Violence against civilians in this area is not new. In July, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council documented at least 432 civilians killed in targeted attacks in eastern Arsi from 2021 until June 1 of this year, according to Al Jazeera. At the end of May and beginning of June, some eleven people died in another attack in the same area that the authorities attributed to the Oromo Liberation Army, according to Vatican News. The Synod’s own statement recalls, according to EFE, that numerous faithful had already been killed in the same area before.
Oromia is the largest regional state in Ethiopia, with about forty million inhabitants, and government forces have been fighting armed groups in its territory for years. The Tewahedo Orthodox Church is the largest Christian denomination in the country.
In the same week in which nine Christians were shot dead at a funeral in Jordan, the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia mourns sixty faithful killed in their villages.
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