Eskinder Nega.
Freedom fighter.
The killing of Tegegn Balcha, who was stricken down execution style on Friday, May 8, 2026 while in the custody of Addis Ababa’s militarized police, is an inhumane act which should be taken for what it really is— a harbinger of darker days for Africa’s political and diplomatic capital city.
While the international spotlight on Addis Ababa has as of recent times trended more towards the rapid facelift the city’s landscape, the deeper and more profound story of the trauma of the hundreds of thousands of people forcibly uprooted from neighborhoods in which they had lived for generations has been carelessly overlooked.
At the center of this story is an ethnic-based political ideology embedded within the constitutional and institutional structure of the state which shapes governance, policing, land administration, economic access and political representation in the capital. As a result, residents of Addis Ababa in the millions have faced marginalization and exclusion in a city where ethno-political loyalty determines power, privilege, and opportunity. This is why people see more than a rogue police in the slaying of Tegegn Balcha.
I see my own grief—for Tegenge Balcha, for the city of my birth and for my country—reflected in the eyes of many who understand that what happened was not an accident, but an inevitability of the system of state-sponsored ethnic-hysteria we live under. Tegegn’s life and death has become a mirror reflecting the struggle of every residents of Addis Ababa. When the regime tries to dismiss this tragedy as a simple dispute between individuals, it is attempting to conceal this deeper truth.
Like Mohamed Bouazizi, whose death sparked the Arab Spring, Tegegn Balcha too was a humble, apolitical trader, and yet the political order did not spare him.
In this system, the ruling elite have fused business, livelihood and political power so tightly together that they now determine who is allowed to survive and who is destined to fail. Because Tegegn did not fit the dominant ethnic and political order, the system viewed him as an obstacle rather than a citizen. He was pushed towards death because a person’s ability to earn a living is shaped by tribal background and political loyalty.
We must recognize that Addis Ababa’s militarized police force has been transformed into the enforcement arm of an ethnic-based political vision. And by placing a military general at the head of this supposedly civilian oriented police force, the regime has signaled that it views the public as a subject people to be coerced and controlled through brute force.
This is why the police behave less like protectors and more like occupiers. They have become instruments of a political war brought into our streets to impose an agenda of ethnic and religious demographic transformation which cannot be sustained through dialogue, understanding or consensus.
The reality we face is that for the vast majority of the city’s residents simply living in Addis Ababa has become an act of political defiance. The current constitutional framework was designed to produce this kind of marginalization, and as long as it remains intact, we will continue to bury more young men like Tegegn Balcha. This is a systemic crisis that requires a systemic solution.
I am calling on the people of the city to recognize their strength and capacity to resist. We must understand that the knock that came to Tegegn’s door will eventually come for everyone who does not fit the regime’s narrow mold unless we stand together to dismantle this corrupt system.
Let there be an end to the politics of hate and the system it sustains.
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May 12, 2026.
