The error is to confuse what is essentially a question of democracy, of exercising universal rights, regardless of blood, family or kinship ties, with the acts of governing and being citizens. For these rights to be exercised, it is essential that public functions become impersonal, free of any imperative other than the carrying out of universal rights and the accountability to those who elect. What matters is not that the state claims to be Oromo, Tigrean, or Amhara, or their federation, but that it functions on the basis of universal rights, including those rights that individuals claim as a result of belonging to particular ethnic groups. To understand that what is said here is in the direct interest of those ethnic groups in whose name power is exercised, the essential condition is a firm grasp of Ethiopian events as direct products of the pursuit of ethnic hegemony. You cannot marginalize other ethnic groups and expect to remain free.
Dictatorial methods crush everybody without distinction.
The act by which the Tigrean elite steps on other peoples is also the act by which it surrenders its own freedom. In fact, the irony is that the marginalized groups are freer than the ruling ethnic group. If there was any freedom of press and speech in the country introduced by this government, it is limited to Addis Ababa and this may have been a cover to convince international diplomats. The core of family life is destroyed, possibly worse than in the times of the Derg regime. The worst of all times has come upon our people where only the elderly, women and children are left at home with their beloved ones never to come back.