July 2, 2026
Global Condemnation without Confrontation (2019-2026)
I am saddened by the violence against Christians in the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia. I express my closeness to this Church and to the Patriarch, dear brother Abuna Matthias, and I ask you to pray for all the victims of violence.
Pope Francis, Speech at Saint Peter’s Square, Sunday, 3 November 2019
Government forces have themselves taken part in violence against Orthodox Christians, including opening fire on a peaceful Epiphany procession.
The U.S. Office of International Religious Freedom (2022)
Oromia Region security forces shot and killed Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church parishioners in a church in Shashemene town as they tried to prevent the church from being seized by a splinter group. Oromia Region special forces and police officers also beat Orthodox Christians wearing black in mourning and protest.
The U.S. Report on International Religious Freedom on Ethiopia (2023)
I want to particularly draw the attention of the global community to the continued presence of risk factors for genocide and related atrocity crimes in Ethiopia. Alice Nderitu, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide United Nations News, 2023
Alarming trend targeting Orthodox Christians… Tragically, the assailants have explicitly stated their intention to destroy the Orthodox Church… CAP Freedom of Conscience, 2024
Between 30 May and 1 June 2026, armed men killed Orthodox Christian civilians in their homes, on roads, and as they fled. Furthermore, they burned churches including a century-old Church to the ground. Orthodox Christian households were specifically singled out, with homes set ablaze and properties looted..
European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), 2026
First and foremost, a cardinal caveat is in order. Ethiopia’s Crisis is exploited, not born of faith. The crisis this campaign focuses on is not a clash between Islam and Christianity. For centuries, these faiths have coexisted peacefully across Ethiopia — not merely tolerating one another, but sharing genuine mutual respect. Muslims have helped build churches; Christians have helped build mosques. Muslims have given their lives trying to hide or help Orthodox Christians escape harm.
In keeping with this tradition, the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (EIASC) stood on principle, issuing joint appeals with its Orthodox Christian counterpart and urging the government to “arrest and prosecute perpetrators” of violence explicitly targeting Orthodox Christians.
The root of the crisis this campaign addresses is government-instigated conflict that cynically creates and exploits tribal and religious fanaticism. Extremist elements within both Islamic and Christian communities are an embarrassment to the faiths they claim to represent. Incidents mentioned in this report carried out by Islamic extremists — who are weaponized by, and in turn weaponize, the government to advance their agenda — should in no way be taken as a generalization about the Muslim community.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is not simply a religious institution. It is one of the world’s oldest Christian traditions, custodian of ancient manuscripts, monasteries, and sacred sites. According to the last official census, Orthodox Christianity is spiritual home for 43.5% of the population of Ethiopia. A 2017 Pew Research Survey found 78% of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians attend church weekly, and 65% pray daily. This is staggering, by any standard.
Ethiopian Orthodox followers are widely referred to as People of the Cross. In the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, the cross is not merely a symbol displayed in sanctuaries. It is a living expression of identity, history, and daily life. Some tattoo the cross on their forehead, wrist, or neck and embroider it into their traditional dress. The cross is carved into the stone walls of ancient rock
hewn churches; and woven into the rhythm of daily prayer and life. The campaign highlights this because the cross resonates with the broader Christian community across denominational lines in a way that “the Ethiopian Orthodox Church” — an institutional name — cannot.
For nearly two millennia, the Church has endured empires, invasions, untold atrocities, political upheaval, and social transformation. Despite it all, the Church and its followers remain peaceful in the most profound sense of the word — anchored in a faith that has outlasted every temporal power that sought to diminish it. When they face atrocities, they do not rise up in arms; they flock to their churches to pray for salvation.
In a recent call for help, Abuna Ermias, an Archbishop in the Amhara region, and a prominent member of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox establishment, did not ask for protest or insurrection. Instead, he pleaded for prayers wiping his tear from his face:
“እንዴት እንደምናደርግ ግራ ገብቶናል ከብዶናል በጣም ቤተክርስቲያኗ እየፈረሰች ነው ልትጸልዩልን ይገባል ጸልዩልን ጸልዩልን አልቅሱልን”.
Translation: “We are confused and overwhelmed about what we should do. The Church is being destroyed very much. You need to pray for us. Pray for us, pray for us. Weep for us.”
The fact that the Church and its believers face an existential threat has been flagged by the US government reports, international human rights organizations and media outlets. In its most recent Active Genocide Alert update (May 2026), the Lemkin Institute lists “attacks on sites of worship and heritage sites” among the genocidal tactics it attributes to the government, and goes on to state: “Widespread attacks have also been undertaken against followers of the Orthodox Church which are often conflated with the Amhara identity by state and nonstate actors.” There are two reasons for the conflation of the Amhara identity and Orthodox Christianity.
First, for centuries, Amhara identity was closely intertwined with Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, and many foreign observers used “Amhara” and “Christian Ethiopian” categories interchangeably because the Amhara-speaking national culture was historically built around the Orthodox Church. Second, according to the last official census, among the Amhara ethnic group, roughly 82–84% identified as Ethiopian Orthodox Christians.
In an article titled Promoting and Developing Oromummaa, the godfather of the Anti-Orthodox ideology (Professor Asafa Jalata of University of Tennessee- Knoxville) accused Amhara Orthodox Christians of being perpetrators of “The Ethiopian colonial terrorism and genocide” against Oromos. This along with Anti-Amhara and Anti-Northern Culture (Orthodox) songs played on government controlled media are driving the observed atrocities.
Despite dire reports and warnings from the US government and credible international media and human rights organizations, there is no international effort to hold government and non government forces accountable. This campaign aims to fill this gap.
The Government’s Intent is Clear
The clearest evidence that targeting the Orthodox Church is systemic not episodic comes from Prime Minister (PM) Abiy Ahmed himself. In an explosive interview with The Horn Conversation, Taye Dandea (former State Minister of Peace and member of the PM’s Prosperity Party Central Committee) recounted a disturbing private conversation with the PM in which the PM said he will exterminate Amharas. When the journalist asked directly if Abiy “explicitly said he wanted to exterminate the Amhara”, Dandea confirmed it, stating: ”Yes, he said I am exterminating them.”
This is not an isolated allegation. Independently, journalist and Stanford fellow Abebe Gelaw has stated publicly, in a Facebook post-dated October 18, 2023, that in a private conversation Abiy told him: “Amhara will not lead Ethiopia again. Not in a million year!”
A third account extends this pattern from private remarks to a semi-public statement of policy intent. Pastor Binyam Shitaye — a Protestant clergyman currently in exile in Uganda, previously arrested in Ethiopia for publicly supporting the unity of the EOTC during the 2023 church schism — has stated that he was among roughly 400 Protestant church leaders invited to a meeting with the PM, at which the PM made the following remarks about the Orthodox Church:
I do not want to see the Orthodox Church. I have banned them, through a letter, from entering my palace and conducting prayers. Throughout their entire era, they looked down on you, pushed you aside, and persecuted Gospel believers. Now, the time is ours.
Pastor Binyam confirms this wording is verbatim from the Prime Minister’s own remarks, not a paraphrase, and states he raised the account with fellow Protestant leaders at the time and has discussed it publicly on multiple occasions; he reports that none of the roughly 400 attendees has stepped forward to dispute it. A recording in which he recounts the episode is available here. Pastor Binyam is available to testify or be interviewed by international media on this account.
International law treats ethnicity and religion as distinct protected categories. This campaign does not present one as a stand-in or euphemism for the other. The more precise narrative is that the government is engaged in a campaign of intersectional targeting: leveraging historically overlapping identities to simultaneously dismantle the political standing of the Amhara as an ethnic group and the spiritual and cultural infrastructure of the EOTC as a religious institution. Each dimension of harm is independently documentable.
The PM’s Public Statements as Precursors for Violence
The systemic persecution of Orthodox Christians has been set in motion, in part, by public statements from Ethiopia’s own leadership. In a televised exchange with the Orthodox Church leaders, including the Patriarch, the PM accused them of being a training ground for killers:
Isn’t it right here, around Addis Ababa, where we found monasteries training soldiers. It is not in Gojam [the heartland of the Orthodox Church]. It is here in Addis Ababa. What’s the point of training soldiers in a church? What’s the point of preparing killing and killers?
One army general went further, declaring that any church sheltering such activity would itself become a target:
From now on, it will be hit. If it is inside a church, the church itself will be hit.
Blaming the Orthodox Church for Ethiopia’s Poverty
During a national television broadcast, the PM openly targeted the historical legacy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, stating:
Christianity entered Ethiopia in the first century, beginning before it expanded anywhere else in the world. That Christianity should have served as a tool to defeat poverty and transition the poor into prosperity. It failed to serve that purpose.
Historically, it is well-established that Christianity was adopted as the state religion in Aksum during the 4th century, not the 1st century — a historical fact the PM is undoubtedly aware of. More troubling, however, is the glaring double standard inherent in his critique; no similar demands or public rebukes are leveled against Islam, which arrived in Ethiopia during the 7th century, or Protestantism, which started in 1630 and became an organized Church in 1830.
Historically, mass atrocities have often been preceded not by direct calls for violence alone, but by narratives portraying the targeted population as a security threat, a source of national decline, or an obstacle to progress. Repeated official statements portraying the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as a source of violence and national economic decline have created an environment in which attacks against Orthodox communities could be framed as security operations and advancing socio-economic progress rather than violations against Orthodox Christians.
A Tragic Arc: From Political Intent to Justification to Government Wrath
The Prime Minister’s defamatory accusation against the Orthodox Church constitutes a direct and firsthand act of malfeasance, which paved the way for the state’s violent machinery to unleash its wrath upon the Church and its flocks. International organizations have documented allegations that Ethiopian government forces committed attacks and abuses affecting Orthodox Christian communities, including through drone strikes, artillery operations, killings, and destruction affecting religious sites.
Apart from those quoted in the opening of this campaign, OrthoChristian.com has documented an attack on St. Michael Church in southern Ethiopia left worshippers dead, with the church’s own media center citing 35 killed, attributed to security forces who opened fire on people who had gathered in the church compound.
Military and police forces have repeatedly forced travelers from predominantly Christian regions off buses, assaulting their priests in front of them. Prosperity Party cadres pared Orthodox priests through the streets of the Oromia region with a dead black chicken hung around their necks — an image meant to brand Christians as sorcerers. This is a common practice. The priest was paraded in a major Oromo city passing in front of a police station while people on the street shout “Hang Him!”
From Dereliction of Duty to Complicity
Before addressing active government hostility, a simpler and more readily provable pattern of nonfeasance must be examined first: the state’s capacity to respond to religious property crimes is not in question. The crux of the matter is it is selectively applied.
The Control Incident — Ayat (June 2026): On June 20, 2026, residents of a residential compound in Ayat, Addis Ababa, damaged the fence of a partially-built structure of an under-construction Protestant congregation, the Kingdom of Heaven Ambassadors International Church. The Addis Ababa Police Commission issued a verified public statement within forty-eight hours, naming twenty-one apprehended individuals, quantifying damages at 10,132,000 Birr, and confirming ongoing investigations. The accused perpetrators are Orthodox Church members. Video circulating independently of the police statement shows comparatively limited physical damage to a section of perimeter fencing; the estimated loss was a gross exaggeration.
In comparison, when it comes to crimes committed against Orthodox Christians, a materially different pattern emerges:
• Shashemene (February 2023): The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a state affiliated body, found that Oromia regional security forces used “excessive force” resulting in the deaths of eight EOTC parishioners. No public prosecution of those security forces has been reported in the three years since.
• Shirka and Merti (February 2026): At least thirty-four Orthodox Christians were killed. Dozens more died in the Arsi zone across 2025–2026. Still, deafening silence from the government.
Tere are numerous similar examples including televised a military officer slapping a priest and parading a priest with a dead chicken hanging from his neck shown above. There are many atrocities documented by international organizations and US government reports. Three of Ethiopia’s most authoritative religious bodies — the Permanent Synod of the EOTC, the Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council — were compelled to issue joint appeals urging the government merely to “arrest and prosecute perpetrators.” The government’s reaction is the proverbial hear-no-evil and see-no-evil.
There is prima facie evidence of discriminatory enforcement — a violation of Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 91(1) of the Ethiopian Constitution. Nonfeasance does not remain passive. It creates a vacuum that extremist forces fill — and government rhetoric actively encourages that filling.
Government Framing as a Precondition for Violence: The Prime Minister’s preemptive framing of the EOTC as a “den of killers” has had the effect of muting public outrage and normalizing inaction. When senior officials characterize Orthodox practice as witchcraft or describe biblical names such as Mariam or Yohannes as affronts to regional identity, they provide ideological cover for extremists.
Incitement of Atrocities and Actions Have Entered a Dangerous Phase
An Islamic extremist not only incited violence against Christians and their churches, but also freely shared his recorded video on Social Media:
“መግደል አለብህ፣ መግደል አለብህ፣ መገደል አለባቸው፥፥ ጨርግድለት አንገቱን። ልትነሳ ይገባል፥፥ ቤተ ክርስቲያኑን ታቦቱን ልታጋይለት ይገባል።”
Translation: “You must kill, you must kill, they must be killed — cut their neck. You must rise up. You must burn their churches and their sacred Ark tablets.”
In another recorded incident, two Islamic extremists are seen surrounding women and children — some barely two or three years old — and forcibly tearing the crosses from their necks. Footage of these acts circulates widely on social media, intended to inspire further violence; those responsible show no apparent fear of accountability because they expect no repercussion from the government.
The atrocities have gone as far as “slitting open the belly of a 9-months pregnant woman, rip her fetus out, and hand the lifeless child to the dying mother.” The woman was 29 years old. There was also the case of a pregnant women who died of ventricular fibrillation triggered by a sudden shock of terror when machete-wielding anti-Christian Oromo gangsters broke into her house.
This video clip shows yet another incident. A man is weeping in agony, saying: “They cut my 37 years old wife’s belly open and killed her and the unborn child, saying a Christian child will not be born on our land. They did this in front of our children.” The video is in Amharic, but you can feel the spirit of his agony without understanding Amharic. Watch it for one minute from the 2:30 minutes mark.
To Grasp the Gravity of this, Consider the Reverse.
Assume Christian extremists were filmed rounding up Muslim women and children, tearing off their hijabs and snatching kufis from toddlers. Assume Further, Christian extremists split Muslim pregnant women and killed the fetus because they did not want to see a Muslim child born.
The government would respond immediately, and people of every faith would rise in outrage. Yet when the Orthodox Christians are the target, the PM’s preemptive framing has muted that outrage and normalized inaction.
A Church Demolished While Palaces Rise
The contrast in priorities is difficult to overstate. While hundreds of churches have been demolished, the Ethiopian government has pursued a multi-billion-dollar palace complex outside Addis Ababa — cost estimates in international reporting have ranged from roughly $13 billion to over $15 billion, a sum on the order of Ethiopia’s entire annual national budget. Le Monde described the project as “pharaonic taken by delusions of grandeur” glamoured up with a waterfall, three artificial lakes, a zoo, and luxury villas. The cost is 10% of the nation’s GDP. By comparison, the cost of Russia’s Kremlin, France’s Élysée Palace, and the White House each amount to a minute fraction of one percent of their respective national GDPs.
To top it off, the governor of the Oromo region is spending undisclosed millions on his mansion, with artificial reflective lakes, electronically monitored underground parking, indoor swimming pool and a peacock garden with dancing water fountains. The first two pictures below show the official rendering of the Oromo mansion the governor shared on Social Media. The third one is the governor’s mansion in Michigan. In 2022, the State of Michigan’s GDP was 490.32 billion U.S. dollars, nearly four times that of Ethiopia. Considering this, why should Americans allow their tax money to go to Ethiopia?
This spending pattern matters to the campaign for a concrete reason. The United States is Ethiopia’s largest single source of foreign assistance, having provided more than $1.8 billion in humanitarian aid alone since fiscal year 2022. Both the IMF and World Bank have published research on the fungibility of aid — the principle that aid earmarked for one purpose can free up domestic funds for another, including purposes the donor would not have chosen to support.
Equipment financed through international infrastructure assistance has, according to multiple reports, been used in the demolition of churches and residential homes. The campaign’s funding suspension demand, set out below, follows directly from this concern.
The Diaspora’s Silence — A Question the Campaign Must Answer
Far more than 100 Ethiopian Orthodox Churches operate in the United States alone, most maintaining a full tabot and liturgical life. No other Ethiopian community organization has comparable reach, resources, or platform for mobilizing international attention. The diaspora church has the institutional capacity to act on its own Church’s behalf.
In light of the scale of the government-linked campaign against the Church, and the notable silence of its diaspora institutions, the diaspora wing cannot be acquitted of the charge that it has failed to perform its fundamental duty of defending its faith.
To state the matter plainly: when Christian families are burned alive, priests are beaten and stoned to death, and pregnant women are slaughtered alongside their unborn children, the silence of the diaspora Church is indefensible. It borders on betrayal of the highest order.
Getting the International Narrative Right
The protection of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is a matter of religious freedom and human rights, and the campaign should be framed accordingly — not as the defense of an institution, but as the defense of a people whose faith, lives, culture, and civilization are inseparable from the cross, and through it, connected to Christians worldwide.
Key Framing Principles:
Disentangle religion from ethnicity. The Orthodox Church is too often discussed only through the lens of Ethiopia’s ethnic and political conflicts, entangled with the Amhara political situation specifically. While the two are closely linked, care must be made not to make the religious dimension subordinate to the ethnic-political one. This is essential to a successful international campaign.
Separate categories of harm. International audiences respond to clearly separated categories: Religious persecution (attacks on clergy, restrictions on worship): War crimes and civilian harm (drone strikes, mass killings, and forced displacement); and Cultural destruction (damage to monasteries, ancient manuscripts, and religious artifacts). Separating these categories allows the campaign to build three complementary global voices: a religious voice (reconciliation, human dignity), a legal voice (evidence, international law, accountability), and a humanitarian voice (civilian protection and displacement).
From Strategy to Action
The following priorities call for urgent, near-term action.
1. Establish an EOTC International Documentation Center. The single greatest communications weakness is the absence of a curated, verified, and consensus evidence base. Credible, internationally documented evidence is too often mixed together with unverified allegations, which weakens the credibility of both. A focused set of well documented incidents — reported by international media and human rights organizations — is more persuasive than a large volume of mixed-quality claims. There is already more than enough internationally documented material to build a compelling case.
2. Build an international spokesperson network. Establish one global spokesperson, supported by regional spokespeople in Europe, North America, Africa, and elsewhere, to ensure consistent and credible messaging across markets.
3. Use international media strategically. Replace lengthy documents with concise media packages, fact sheets, and short video content suited to how journalists and policymakers actually consume information.
4. Build a religious freedom coalition. The EOTC should not appear to stand alone. The campaign should actively partner with Orthodox churches abroad, Catholic human rights organizations, evangelical religious freedom groups, and Muslim and Jewish interfaith organizations. A message such as “an attack on a church is an attack on religious freedom everywhere” carries real diplomatic weight when carried by a broad coalition.
5. Organize an international day of mourning for the EOTC. All Ethiopian Orthodox churches, in Ethiopia and abroad, should move their Sunday services to a single, common demonstration of solidarity, with congregants asked to attend in black. Washington, D.C. is a natural anchor point for this demonstration in the diaspora. The Washington metropolitan area alone is home to more than 40 EOTC churches, and EOTC members from as far as New York to South Carolina — within roughly a six-hour drive — should be called on to converge there in large numbers.
Demands from the International Community
A demand to simply “stop the violence” is not actionable. The campaign should instead make four specific, concrete demands:
1. The Church must call, on its own initiative, for an unfettered investigation into the Prime Minister’s allegation that it is training killers. This is a self-standing demand, made by the Church for its own sake, independent of any demand placed on the government. A Church confident that the allegation is false should welcome scrutiny rather than dispute the charge in the press. Making this demand first, and unconditionally, puts the government in a bind: it can no longer cast the Church as the party with something to hide.
2. A separate, unfettered international investigation into the government’s own role in the systemic campaign against the Orthodox Church — including the conduct of its security forces, military, and aligned militias. Hundreds of churches demolished by earth-moving machines were done by the Oromo regional government, the political base of the PM.
3. An independent international investigation to determine whether international development funds, sovereign wealth assets, or public-private partnership frameworks have been directly or fungibly diverted to finance the Prime Minister’s $15 billion ‘Chaka’ palace project and Shimeles Abdisa’s $500 million gubernatorial residence — particularly given that these mega-structures are being built on confiscated lands in areas predominantly occupied by Orthodox Christian communities and adjacent to Orthodox churches. The lands are forcefully taken without compensation in violation of the nation’s constitution.
4. A suspension of all U.S., World Bank, and IMF funding for a period of three to six months, pending the full completion of both investigations.
Even if the government refuses to be the subject of an investigation, the Church’s own demand for an investigation of itself must go forward regardless. The Church must appeal to the international community to make it happen. A refusal by the government to submit to scrutiny, after the Church has already submitted itself, is itself a telling answer — and one the international community should be invited to draw its own conclusions from.
Conclusion: Intent, Justification, and the Wrath That Followed
The most potent development in the accountability framework is the explicit language of U.S. House Resolution 937, which asserts that “the Ethiopian government has given the United States no option but to limit their power by using every tool available to hold them accountable.” This resolution does not emerge from a vacuum; it is a direct legislative response to a documented three-part pattern of abuse:
First, government intent to target the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has been established through official statements, policy directives, and systematic actions that single out the Church for suppression. Second, contrived government justifications—including fabricated national security threats and spurious legal pretexts—have been deployed to manufacture legitimacy for these actions. Third, the ensuing wrath unleashed by both state security forces and aligned non-state actors against Orthodox Christians has manifested in mass killings, church desecrations, arbitrary detentions, and the forced displacement of clergy and laity alike.
Critically, the resolution’s determination that the U.S. has “no option but to limit their power by using every tool available” accomplishes two strategic objectives. First, it elevates this three-part evidentiary framework from mere allegations to a prima facie case compelling executive action under the Global Magnitsky Act and the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)—neither of which require a criminal conviction, only an executive determination based on substantiated facts. The evidence of intent, pretext, and violence meets and exceeds that statutory threshold.
Second, this language bypasses the traditional veto-blocked pathways of the UN Security Council and the ICC by creating a unilateral, agile mechanism for sanctions, “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) designation, and aid-conditioning. The documented pattern of government intent, contrived justifications, and the wrath of state and non-state forces directly triggers the CPC criteria under IRFA, which defines a CPC as a country that has “engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
Beyond these targeted sanctions, the United States and European nations must leverage their substantial influence within the Bretton Woods institutions to condition further financial assistance on genuine accountability. By using its position as a major shareholder to block or condition these disbursements until the Ethiopian government halts its campaign against the Orthodox Church and submits to unfettered international investigation, the U.S. can apply direct financial pressure where sanctions alone cannot reach—targeting the regime’s access to the hard currency and budget support essential for its survival.
The political will to act is no longer the variable; the resolution has crystallized it. By declaring that the evidence has left the U.S. “no option,” Congress has formally acknowledged that the documented intent, pretext, and violence against the Orthodox Church constitute an irrefutable case for action. The variable now is the speed of executive implementation and the parallel willingness of the UK and EU to align their Magnitsky-style regimes with the precedent Congress has just set. Inaction is no longer a policy choice; it is a failure to execute the statutory obligations that the evidence has already triggered.
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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