What happened in Woldia

Fano Zemene revealed the secret, who betrayed? The information was heard from prison. What happened in Woldia? Zemene was a member of the military group called Arbegnoch Ginbar (Patriots’ Front), which joined forces in 2015 with Ginbot 7, a resistant group led by the current Education Minister, Birhanu Nega (Ph.D.). These two forces operated for years in Eritrea, trying to fight the then EPRDF-led government of Ethiopia. However, in 2018, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office and called all forces operating abroad to come back to the country and work with his government, the Arbegnoch Ginbar-Ginbot 7 fell apart, with its leaders returning home.
When the more well-known members of the group, such as Birhanu Nega and Andargachew Tsige, flew into Addis Ababa in September 2018, they received a mass welcome at the airport. Zemene Kassie and others had found their ways back home and stayed low, until the conflict in Northern Ethiopia erupted in November 2020. There’s currently a mixed feeling in Bahir Dar concerning the arrest of Zemene as there is a conviction among several youths that he is at the forefront of organizing a group that would independently defend the Amhara. There is unusual tension in the city with the deployment of a large number of security forces since the report of Zemene’s apprehension. Residents told Addis Zeybe that the presence of the region’s special forces would have been cautioned by some calls on social media by activists for the people to go out and hold a mass demonstration.