Tigray People's Liberation Front

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The People's Liberation Front of Tigray ( Tigrinya ሕዝባዊ ወያኔ ሓርነት ትግራይ ḥizbāwī weyānē ḥārinet Tigray , English Tigray People's Liberation Front , shortcuts TPLF in Ethiopia better known by the acronym Woyane ) is a former Marxist-Leninist liberation movement and today's party in the Ethiopian region of Tigray .

The party is the ruling force in Ethiopia's ruling coalition Revolutionary Democratic Front of the Ethiopian Peoples (EPRDF). The Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin and the former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi , who died in 2012 and who was also party chairman, are or were members of the TPLF. In addition, the Tigray People's Liberation Front in the Ethiopian region of Tigray provides the regional government.

Sign for the former EPDM / APLF / ANDM / ADP headquarters in Melfa during the Ethiopian Civil War

The Tigray People's Liberation Front has a total of around 500,000 party members. In the parliamentary elections in May 2005, the party received a total of 38 of the possible 546 seats, of which 24 were men and 14 women.

The military arm of the Tigray People's Liberation Front was the Tigré People's Liberation Army .

ideology

Today the Tigray People's Liberation Front is officially democratic-socialist and advocates the self-determination of the Tigray ethnic group. The People's Liberation Front of Tigray is shaped by the former experience in the fight against the communist Derg government under the Ethiopian Labor Party .

In the 1970s, the People's Liberation Front in Tigray followed an Albanian -influenced communism as its guiding ideology, but from the late 1980s onwards it developed a new ideology that is composed of state dirigism, capitalism and democratic elements, with socialist goals in the organization's policy since around 1985 moved further into the background. The TPLF also advocated an anti-imperialist and anti- feudal democratic revolution against Amharic centralism and for Eritrea's right to self-determination .

history

The Tigray People's Liberation Front was founded in 1975 by younger intellectuals from the Tigray University Student Association (TUSA) as the successor to the Tigray National Organization (TNO), which was formed in 1974, who were dissatisfied with the promonarchist course of the established opposition in Tigray Province and were under the influence of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) stood. The TPLF has been in opposition to the Derg under Mengistu since it was founded and initially saw itself as a Marxist-Leninist movement that maintained close relationships with the Labor Party of Albania and, to a lesser extent, with the KPD / ML in the FRG in the 1970s and 1980s .

In alliance with the EPLF, the armed units of the TPLF succeeded in militarily opposing the royalist - conservative forces around Ras Mengesha Seyyum ( Ethiopian Democratic Union ), the nationalist Tigray Liberation Front and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (IHAPA) at the end of the 1970s to enforce the dominant force of the opposition in Tigray and - after several military setbacks by the Derg regime - to control areas from 1980. The TPLF began there to set up an administration, to carry out an agrarian reform (which was also recognized as relatively successful by opponents) and to take important steps towards equal rights for women and Muslims in a society that had hitherto been dominated by Christian patriarchy . The rebel organization itself also managed to survive the famine and the forced resettlements initiated by the government in 1984/85 . However, it did not succeed on their related care Society of Tigray ( Relief Society of Tigray to distribute relief supplies, REST). The TPLF allegedly embezzled development aid for arms and the establishment of a Marxist party illegally. 95% of the aid funds sent were used to buy weapons.

From the beginning of 1989, the TPLF Tigray controlled completely (except the city Maychew and the provincial capital Mek'ele , from March 1989, Mek'ele) and joined with the Democratic Movement of the Ethiopian People ( Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement , EPDM) and the Democratic People's Organization the Oromo merged to form the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front , at times there was a parallel structure within the TPLF with the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray (MALELIT), the aim of which was to build a cadre party .

See also

literature

  • Dieter Beisel: Journey to the land of the rebels. Tigray, an African future. Reinbek 1989, ISBN 3-499-12515-3 .
  • Kahsay Berhe: Ethopia: Democratization and Unity. The Role of the Tigray's People Liberation Front. Münster 2005, ISBN 3-86582-137-5 .
  • John Young: Peasant revolution in Ethiopia. The Tigray People's Liberation Front. Cambridge 1997, ISBN 0-521-59198-8 .
  • Jenny Hammond: Fire from the Ashes. A Chronicle of the Revolution in Tigray, Ethiopia, 1975-1991 . Red Sea Press, Lawrenceville 1999, ISBN 1-56902-087-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Giga Hamburg: Parliamentary elections in Ethiopia. Pre-election campaign (PDF; 63 kB, German )
  2. ^ Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung : Parties in Ethiopia: Between Ethnic Orientation and Program Orientation (PDF; 135 kB).
  3. ↑ Website of the Ethiopian Parliament ( Memento from July 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, English ).
  4. ↑ Brockhaus Encyclopedia in 5 volumes (2004), 1 (A-EIS), p. 260.
  5. ↑ Meyer's Large Country Lexicon. 2005, L, p. 50.
  6. ↑ laut.de: Money for weapons branched off from March 8, 2010.