Arena Tigray
or Arena Tigray For Democracy and Sovereignty
( ti, ዓረና ትግራይ ንዲሞክራሲን ንሉኣላዊነትን) is an Ethiopian political party based in the
Tigray Region
The Tigray Region, officially the Tigray National Regional State, is the northernmost Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob people, Irob, and Kunama people, Kunama people. Its ...
and participating in the
Medrek coalition federally.
Creation
Arena Tigray was created by
Gebru Asrat in the early 2000s, when he left the
Tigray People's Liberation Front
The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; ti, ህዝባዊ ወያነ ሓርነት ትግራይ, lit=Popular Struggle for the Freedom of Tigray), also called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist paramilita ...
(TPLF) and the
.
''
Addis Fortune'' counts Arena Tigray as the second oldest political party in Tigray Region.
Leadership
Arena's first leader was
Gebru Asrat.
In 2017, at Arena's fourth congress, Abraha Desta, a philosophy lecturer who had spent two years in prison under TPLF rule, was elected as the new chair.
, Amdom Gebreselassie was head of public relations for Arena Tigray. He held the position of vice head of the Public Relations Bureau of the
Transitional Government of Tigray until mid-March 2021, when he was dismissed by the federal government for publicly calling for legal action against perpetrators of
sexual violence in the Tigray War and for attributing
war crimes in the Tigray War to Amhara Region security forces and
Eritrean Defence Forces.
Politics
In 2019, Arena Tigray's leader, Gebru Asrat, was seen as a major leader of ethnic Tigray opposition in Tigray Region.
Federalism
Arena joined the
Medrek national coalition of political parties at the coalition's founding in 2008.
As of 2017, Arena continued to be active in Medrek.
2020 Tigray regional election
In August 2020, prior to the
2020 Tigray regional election, Arena Tigray announced that it would boycott the election, in agreement with the
National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE), on the grounds of "political provocations by the TPLF", the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...
and what it saw as the illegitimacy of the election.
Tigray War
On 3 February 2021, Arena Tigray party member Goitom Tsegay stated his long-term opposition to the TPLF and his opposition to the
Tigray War
The Tigray War; ; . was an armed conflict that lasted from 3 November 2020 to 3 November 2022. The war was primarily fought in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia between the Government of Ethiopia, Ethiopian federal government and Eritrea on one s ...
, objecting to human rights violations by
Fano
Fano is a town and ''comune'' of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort southeast of Pesaro, located where the ''Via Flaminia'' reaches the Adriatic Sea. It is the third city in the region by popul ...
and other Amhara militias and their taking control of Tigray Region territory, communication blocks and a lack of transparency, the
extrajudicial executions of civilians,
rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...
, the presence and role of the
Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) in the war, and starvation. Goitom stated that "many" Arena Tigray members were "wholly against the war" but had been unable to organise a formal meeting given the war situation. Goitom concluded that peace negotiations between the federal government and "Tigray militias and political parties" would be needed to return the region to "some normalcy".
Claims of repression
In February 2020, Arena Tigray members reported harassment and physical attacks. Markos Gessese, a member of the Arena Tigray executive committee, was attacked en route to lodging a complaint about harassment. Arena claimed that the attacks and harassment were deliberate, planned and decided by the TPLF. The TPLF claimed that two members of Arena had been arrested under criminal law, not for political reasons, and described Arena's claims as intending to "divide the people of Tigray".
References
{{Africa in topic, List of political parties in
Ethnic political parties in Ethiopia