An identifying character common to humanity is their compassionate nature. This is shared both among the traditional and those dubbed modern societies. The traditional societies tend to have strong bond in their relationships that usually govern their behavior. The modern ones, as it were, stick to observance of designed instruments of control and regulation in which the ‘correct behavior’ is promoted while the ‘wrong ones’ are checked. Mostly, they give emphasis to the individual in the protection of rights and imposition of duties in what they call “liberalism”.
In the traditional or may be semi traditional societies, customary practices appear to outweigh the supposedly ‘civilized’ in the day to day interactions. Customary practices are used in the control and management of communities even in the presence of formal or modern versions of administration and regulation. People adhere to the communal attachments more than the formal ones that seem to be a little bit imposed in areas where the formal institutional behavior are not rooted at the grassroots level.
In Ethiopia, both are practiced with a certain degree of variations between rural and urban depending on the extent of control and administration over the people. In rural areas fellow feeling, interdependence and collaboration are common that possibly contribute to harmonious life where peace and security are naturally guaranteed. In recent past, however, that communal bond has been alarmingly depleting because of the ongoing conflicts in different parts of the country. In areas where conflicts turned violent livelihoods are dismantled; there are displacements of the local population; acts of crime like killings, robbery, kidnapping followed by demand for ransom are on the rise; and in the process social bond are alarmingly disintegrating.
The extent of cruelty where conflicts at times intensify and at others subside, the nature and level of cruelty is incomprehensible in view of the age old norms observed on the one hand and the status of civilization humanity attained worldwide on the other. News reports accompanied by illustrative still and moving images disclose acts of extreme horror. At one time we saw a young man thrown into a burning fire and prevented from escape pushed back by those on site. An accompanying voice vow better to eat the flesh just as one may eat fried mutton. Again, some carried beheaded human being praising the culprits as if it were an act of heroism done to the enemy. Recently, for that matter, video recording circulated screening of slaughtering of a young boy identified belonging to an ethnic group, an act which has not been investigated to this day and no corrective measure taken against all the cases cited here.
Such acts of cruelty take place following the disintegration of social fabrics that used to connect people in their daily lives. That has created gaps in which acts of crime got intensified. Killings of human beings have become so common that it seems to be as if it were part of ‘accepted norms’. News that create shock waves across the society circulate over the media without the measure of check and balance expected of those responsible to do so.
Unfortunately, there are no significant reactions from human rights organizations, religious associations and traditional institutions. Such unheard of acts of crime in the past in our country must signal shameful state of affairs indicative of unavoidable abysmal. It is time to call up on religious leaders, custodians of the tradition, public figures and all influential entities exert pressure to reverse the alarming situation. In general, violations of human rights, breach of rule of law and mal practices in governance that has shaken communities across Ethiopia should be the concern of all before it may get out of hand. The CDG calls up on all concerned to exert efforts in the restoration of peace.