Authorities in Robe, the main town of Bale zone in Oromia, about 400 kilometers southeast of Addis Ababa, ordered a congregation of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus in 2019 to leave the building where it had worshipped for ten years, World Watch Monitor reported. Meetings between church leaders and local officials had not changed the decision, and churches elsewhere in the region said pressure on them was growing.
The eviction letter, dated 15 May 2019 and signed by the mayor, Birhanu Dadi Tafesse, gave the church 30 days to go. It said neighbours had complained about noise, that the worshippers were not from the area and that the building was not suitable for services. “Based on the consensus we have reached in the committee formed, you have to look for another place and leave the current place within 30 days,” the letter said. The congregation had acquired the building from a private owner and used it without incident, a church source said.
The source, who was not named for security reasons, rejected the noise complaint. “If noise is the problem, Protestant churches cannot be the first to be accused of sound pollution,” the source said, pointing to the loudspeakers used by mosques and Orthodox churches. “This decision is nothing other than a display of animosity towards Protestant churches in the region.” Church leaders feared that if the order stood, it would encourage similar complaints in other Oromia communities. At the 2007 census, Oromia was about 51 percent Christian, including 17.7 percent Protestant and 30.4 percent Orthodox, and 47.6 percent Muslim.
There had been violence in the area before. In June 2018, 20 Christians were killed in Goba, near Robe. A local source linked the killings to Christian opposition to a monument for a prominent Muslim figure, though accounts of who was responsible differed, World Watch Monitor reported. “Similar tensions are bubbling under the surface in other parts of Oromia,” the source said.
Protestants were not the only ones reporting difficulties. In Woliso, about 120 kilometers southwest of Addis Ababa, authorities were reported to have taken Orthodox church land and handed it to followers of Waaqeffannaa, the traditional Oromo faith. Ethiopian law guarantees freedom of religion, but the Christian charity Open Doors ranked Ethiopia 28th on its 2019 list of countries where it is hardest to live as a Christian.