PJ needed to set the tone for peace in Ethiopia
It is with great alarm that I view the current violent conflict in Ethiopia, where I spent the spring, 2018 semester as a State Department Senior Subject Specialist. I was based at the University of Gondar, near the Tigray region from where the conflict originates, but traveled throughout the country, including to Mekelle (also spelled Mek'ele), the capital of the Tigray region. 

As a peace journalist, I am as always concerned with the news media and their coverage of the conflict. Are they accurately reflecting the situation in Ethiopia? Are they fanning the flames of conflict, or instead are they practicing peace journalism?

I called upon two of my Ethiopian colleagues to help me make sense of the media coverage. I’ve decided not to use their names, out of respect for their privacy.

First, regarding international coverage, both of my colleagues are critical of the news media. My colleague whom I’ll call Abel said, “some of the international reporting has been surprisingly incomplete and partisan. The national defense forces were engaged in respecting rule of law in the defiant Tigray Liberation Front Forces. While this was the fact many news organizations such as Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy Magazine, the BBC and The Guardian represented the event as a brink of civil war. This is totally out of context and incomplete.”

He continued, “The other dishonest news come from Reuters news agency. While the Tigrayan Liberation forces have killed more than 500 ethnic Amhara civilians in border town of May Khadra, the reporter reported as (though) they were ethnic Tigrayans and were killed the national defense force. This is totally a fake information which is aimed at disinforming the international community.”

My second colleague whom I’m calling Kaleb agreed. He said, “Most of international news are biased... This is not civil war. It is a military operation…I also believe that Tigrayan brothers and sisters are ill informed and highly influenced by TPLF’s (the ruling party in Tigray) propaganda and disinformation. TPLF has created a false narrative in the country that Amhara (the region bordering Tigray, which includes Gondar) is chauvinist.”

Media coverage by Ethiopian outlets is also a concern. At the local level during any conflict, peace journalism asks whether local media reports are flag waving, jingoistic propaganda (traditional war reporting), or whether they are more balanced and give local residents a chance to consider non-violent responses to conflict.

A quick perusal of several Ethiopian news sources reveals the prevalence of traditional war reporting. (Keep in mind that there are only a few sources in English, so this analysis is severely limited.) The Ethiopia News Agency (https://www.ena.et/en/), for example, uncritically parrots government information in stories titled “Inhabitants of Addis Ababa Express Support for National Defense Force,” “Ethiopians Honor Defense Force,” and “Reports, Footages Claiming Airstrike on City of Mekelle (in Tigray region) False.” Ethiopia Zare (https://ethiopiazare.com/) does the same in stories like “The Ethiopian government asked the international community to condemn TPLF.” One needn’t look beyond the lead of this story to divine its approach: “The heinous and reprehensible massacre committed against innocent civilians in Mykadra by TPLF is clearly a grave violation of the most basic norms of international law.”

The same jingoism can be found in at least one Tigrayan media outlet, Tigray Online (http://www.tigraionline.com/) in stories titled “Barbaric-Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing, Extreme Savagery, in Ethiopia,” “(Ethiopian leaders) Abiy Ahmed and Esayas Afewerki Planned and Started a Joint War against the Innocent People of Tigrai,” and “Ethiopians fleeing to Sudan describe air strikes, machete killings in Tigray.” This last story includes the quote, “They killed anyone who said they were Tigrayan. They stole our money, our cattle, and our crops from our homes and we ran with just the clothing on our backs.”

Instead of this traditional reporting, peace journalists would critically analyze propaganda, and instead seek to balance stories with reports from all sides. PJ stories would reject inflammatory language (“barbaric,” “innocent people,” “savagery,” “machete killings”) and instead use more straightforward, less anger-inducing verbiage. PJ would give a voice to everyday people impacted by the conflict, without exploiting them for partisan purposes. Peace journalists would also examine the source of the conflict, and lead societal discussions about potential solutions.

Peace journalism alone won’t end the violence in Ethiopia, but can help erect a foundation upon which peace can someday be built.

Students:Whether you candidate won or lost,
use this election as peacebuilding opportunity
Note: I plan to email this to all of my students as soon as we have a presidential winner.

Nov. 4, 2020

Dear Peace Studies and Peace Journalism students:

Despite the divisions and angst it has generated, the presidential election nonetheless offers us the opportunity as peacebuilders to put our craft into practice. This is true regardless of which candidate you supported.

If you supported the winner, congratulations. As a peacebuilder, I would hope that you would accept the results graciously and with humility, and not celebrate by using inflammatory language that might deepen partisan, racial, and cultural divides. Further, as a supporter of the winner, I believe it is your responsibility to reach out to those who supported the other candidate to build bridges, in the parlance of peace studies and peace journalism. During these discussions, begin with listening, and with showing empathy for the emotional impact from the election results. Let them know that your vote was cast with the best intentions, for the leader and policies you feel will be most beneficial for the country, and was not a ballot cast against the supporters on the losing side.

This difficult discussion is not optional. The father of peace studies, Dr. Johan Galtung, wrote this week on Twitter that failure to conduct these demanding conversations will lead almost inevitably to violent conflict. As a “winner,” you are uniquely positioned to demonstrate your humility by initiating these discussions.

If you supported the losing candidate, I’m sorry. Keep in mind that during your life, you will assuredly win and lose some electorally. Politics are cyclical.

Even though the results seem very personal, I believe that they are not. Sure, there are obnoxious forces on both sides who do vote with malice in their heart—racists, xenophobes, homophobes, haters of Christians and rural Americans, elitists, etc. But I believe that 99% of us vote with the best intentions, not intending to personally harm anyone. Some of these good intentions arise out of ignorance and social and geographical isolation, and offer an opportunity to you as a peacemaker to educate those around you about our diverse society. This is a chance for you to build bridges as well. Begin by listening carefully, and don’t be argumentative or pedantic.

Regardless of how your candidate performed, you can harness your anger and disappointment, or energy and enthusiasm, to build peace. Begin by looking around to find the impediments to positive peace in our society. Positive peace, as theorized by Dr. Galtung, is the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. Positive peace is sustainable and built upon a foundation of justice and opportunity for everyone. Make it your mission to seek out and combat impediments to positive peace, be they structural (laws, policies, procedures) or cultural (ideology, language, traditional attitudes). Your peace activism might, for example, battle sexism or racism, or seek to expand and protect religious and free speech rights. You could also monitor and call out news media that distort and fuel the divides in our society.

In short, what will you do as a peacebuilder to plant the seeds for a sustainable, lasting peace?

We can do better—better at communicating with and respecting one another, and better at fostering positive peace. We’ll never get rid of partisanship, but perhaps we as peacebuilders can help build a society where the nastiness and bitterness accompanying our elections becomes a relic of the past.

Peace,

Professor Youngblood