NPR News:埃塞俄比亚镇压异议人士致近100人死亡

In Ethiopia, the government is cracking down on dissidents with deadly force. This past weekend was one of the most violent. Witnesses say security forces killed nearly 100 people. But skirmishes continued today in parts of the country. NPR's East Africa correspondent Gregory Warner is based in Nairobi. He's been watching what's going on. And, Gregory, to start, what happened this weekend to provoke this level of response from the Ethiopian government?
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Well, these protests had been going on for almost a year. The response by the government has always been a military one. There are often reports of shootings, killings, mass arrests. I think the high death toll this weekend — there are reports of more than 90 people killed. Again, those are numbers from activists. We don't have official tallies from the government. But I think it shows just how widespread these demonstrations have become.
CORNISH: Tell us more about these dissidents and what they're calling for.
WARNER: Well, I think the key thing one needs to know about Ethiopian politics is that last year in the election the ruling party, called the EPRDF, won 100 percent of seats in parliament — so clean sweep. Opposition politicians are harassed, jailed, tortured. Journalists can find themselves in jail just for the crime of criticizing the government. I spent a lot of today calling up people in the capital, Addis Ababa, just to find out what was going on. And I should say that I could not even call my sources in the other regions where the protests were actually happening. The phones were cut off. People really have no news, and so they're just getting all these rumors, these reports from those regions about bodies found or door-to-door police searches, arrests, disappearances.
Meanwhile, on state television, you have these choreographed denunciations of the protest, denunciations of Facebook and Twitter are seen as instigators. That is the backdrop, I think, for all these various protests and why all these local grievances have no space to be discussed and can spill out into the street.
埃塞俄比亚政府正在用致命武力镇压异议人士。上周末是最暴力的一天之一。目击者称安全部队导致近100人死亡。但是今天，小冲突仍在埃塞俄比亚部分地区持续发生。NPR新闻驻东非记者格雷戈里·华纳现在在内罗毕。他一直在关注埃塞俄比亚的局势。格雷戈里，上周末发生了什么，以致于埃塞俄比亚政府会做出这种程度的回应？
格雷戈里·华纳连线：这种抗议活动已经持续了近一年的时间。政府通常会用军事方式来回应。这里经常发生枪击事件、杀戮事件以及大规模逮捕行动。上周末的死亡人数很高，有报道称超过90人死亡。当然，这一数据是由活动人士提供的。我们没有政府提供的官方伤亡人数。我认为这表明了这类示威活动有多普遍。
柯妮什：请你详细介绍一下这些异议人士以及他们的诉求。
华纳：我认为有关埃塞俄比亚政治，大家需要了解的一个关键问题是，在去年的埃塞俄比亚大选中，执政党埃塞俄比亚人民革命民主阵线赢得了议会的全部席位，这是一场彻底的胜利。反对派政治家被折磨、关进监狱并遭受酷刑。记者可能会因批评政府罪被关入监狱。今天，我大部分时间都在给我在首都亚的斯亚贝巴的线人打电话，想了解那里发生的情况。我要说的是，我甚至不能联系到其他抗议发生地的线人。电话被切断了。人们得不到消息，人们得不到消息，他们只能听到一些传言，还有发现尸体、警方挨家挨户搜查、逮捕、失踪等消息。
同时，埃塞俄比亚国家电视台谴责这些抗议活动，称脸谱网和推特网担任了煽动者的角色。我认为这就是不同抗议活动发生的背景，民众的不满无处诉说，只能走上街头进行宣泄。

CORNISH: You talked about the difficulty in reaching out to these areas. Where are we talking about? Where is this happening?
WARNER: Well, up until recently, this has mostly been happening in one region of the country, which is actually all around the capital, Addis Ababa. And that's a region called Oromia, it's mostly ethnic Oromo. Now it's spread north to a region called the Amhara region, and that is actually mostly ethnic Amhara. These are the two largest ethnicities in Ethiopia.
CORNISH: So help us understand how ethnicity comes into play here.
WARNER: Well, so in Ethiopia, geography is ethnicity. And the country's actually divided. The regions are literally organized by ethnic regions. So ethnicity is politics. Political parties are organized along ethnic lines. There's definitely an ethnic element, then, to these protests. But ethnicity in Ethiopia is really complicated. And there's been a lot of efforts by activists at least to call for ethnic tolerance to say these are political protests. These are not expressions of ethnic hatred.
But the government definitely wants to characterize these protests as the work of ethnic separatists and ethnic terrorists that would justify the military response. And there have been very disturbing reports of some ethnic-based violence, so we'll see what these protests turn into.
CORNISH: Before I let you go, Ethiopia is a key U.S. ally in East Africa. Is that relationship being complicated by the government's response here?
WARNER: Well, I last visited in Ethiopia in May, and the protests were still going on then. I had a not — a lot of conversations with people about the U.S. support for Ethiopia, which has continued robustly despite the lack of democratic freedoms there. Ethiopia's a large recipient of foreign aid. The military gets a lot of training and resources to fight terrorism. Again, this is the same military cracking down on the people. In those conversations, though, people were fairly realistic about the United States. People said of course America supports the ruling government. It's up to us to figure out how to change that regime.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Gregory Warner. He spoke to us from Nairobi, Kenya. Thank you, Gregory.
WARNER: Thanks, Audie.
柯妮什：你刚刚谈到有些地区无法取得联系。具体来说是哪些地区？那里发生了什么？
华纳：直到最近，埃塞俄比亚有一个地区一直处于封锁状态，这个地区就是位于首都亚的斯亚贝巴附近的奥罗莫州，该州人口主要以奥罗莫族人为主。现在封锁状态从北方一直延伸至阿姆哈拉州，这个州的人口以阿姆哈拉族人为主。这两个民族是埃塞俄比亚两个最大的种族集团。
柯妮什：请你说明一下种族在这里发挥了什么作用。
华纳：埃塞俄比亚地理是按种族划分的。这个国家实际上非常分裂。可以说各区域是按种族划分的。所以政治也是按种族区分的。各政党是按照种族组建的。这些抗议活动肯定包含种族元素。但是埃塞俄比亚的种族问题非常复杂。活动人士在呼吁种族宽容、表明这是政治抗议活动等方面做了很多努力。他们说这些抗议并不是要表达种族仇恨。
但是政府肯定想将这些抗议事件描述成种族分裂者和种族恐怖分子的行为，以此来为军事回应辩解。而且这里也有一些令人人不安的种族暴力事件发生，所以我们还要继续观察，看这些抗议事件会演变成何种情况。
柯妮什：最后一个问题，埃塞俄比亚是美国在中非的关键盟友。这种关系有没有因埃塞俄比亚政府的回应而变得复杂？
华纳：我上次去埃塞俄比亚是今年5月，当时抗议活动也在持续进行。我就美国对埃塞俄比亚的支持采访了很多人，虽然这里缺乏民主自由，但美国的支持力度仍在持续加大。埃塞俄比亚是国际援助的受援大国。埃塞俄比亚军队在打击恐怖主义方面得到了很多培训和资源。而镇压民众的正是这支军队。通过采访我得知，人们对美国的态度比较实际。他们说美国当然要支持执政党。我们要自己找到改变这个政权的方法。
柯妮什：以上是NPR新闻的格雷戈里·华纳带来的报道。他从肯尼亚内罗毕和我们进行了连线。谢谢你，格雷戈里。
华纳：谢谢，奥迪。