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Ethiopia Official Threatens to Continue Mass Murder in Oromia to Grab Land; Use the Hashtag “#StopAbayTsehaye” to Protest Abay Tsehaye and the Addis Ababa Master Plan
February 21, 2015 · Finfinne Tribune & Gadaa.com
(OromoPress) – Abay Teshaye, a member of the Executive Committee of Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and adviser to the current nominal Prime Minster of Ethiopia, made a genocide threat against the Oromo people who oppose the implementation of a land grabbing policy. Abay Tsehaye made the threat with a vitriolic tone of hatred and arrogance toward the Oromo:
“The master plan will be implemented now. If anyone from the Oromia regional administration or anti-peace forces oppose this, we’ll cut them to size,” OMN reported citing a leaked Amharic audio of Abay Tsehaye from a meeting that took place in Hawasa town in the south. Made against the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) and the wider Oromo people; the threat comes on a the heels of massacre across Oromia region from May to July 2014. Oromo media have repeatedly reported that Abay Tsehaye was one of TPLF/EPRDF masterminds of the episode of genocide that claimed the lives of over 200 Oromo students and led to the incarceration of 3,765 students and farmers across Oromia in mid-2014. The students were protesting the implementation of a land grab policy in Oromia towns and rural districts in and around Fifninnee/Addis Ababa, which led to an unexplained disappearance of over 200,000 Oromo farmers.
Abay Tsehaye made the statement at an official meeting on behalf of his party and the Tigrean-led Ethiopian government. His speech was not an empty threat since he and other TPLF officials have followed through with threats and engaged in acts of genocide in Oromia State against innocent civilians, especially the Oromo youth, over the last 24 years (since Tigreans grabbed state power). Oromo activists created a Twitter hashtag #StopAbayTsehaye to protest the angry and arrogant genocide threat by Abay Tsehaye and to spread awareness about the issue to the global audience.
Few months ago, in an interview with journalist Befekadu Moroda of Oromia Media Network (OMN), I asserted that TPLF and the Tigrean ruling class have transformed into Neftegna. Abay Tsehaye’s recent words and behavior testament to that. Remember the Neftegna system that gave monopoly over the means of violence and the sources of wealth produced chauvinistic agents who exploited and disrespected oppressed groups in Ethiopia. The system also engineered social behaviors that justified the actions of those agents and popularized myths of the dominant groups socio-cultural superiority. Overtime, the ruling class and its base began rationalizing and institutionalizing prejudice and extreme form of violent responses towards those who dissented.
During the early years of their rule, as violent and oppressive they were, TPLF differentiated themselves from their predecessors by being sensitive and showing reasonable respect for groups they subjected. However, they began abandoning such sensitivity as they consolidated power and began amassing wealth, and they have started adopting the ugly behaviors of their predecessors. Nowadays, emboldened by the absolute monopoly of the means of violence, intoxicated with abundance of wealth at their disposal and facing no so significant threat to their rule, the TPLF Tigrean rulers’ rudeness, arrogance and disrespect for other cultures have become their norm. Just like their predecessors, they have the false sense of inherent superiority which had made them feel invincible. This behavior is even worse among their rising generation – which was born into wealth and power and grew up being drugged with post-victory (post-1991) bravado of TPLF.
This is good and bad news. It’s ‘bad’ because such collective behaviors increase and justify violence and repression against the subjected populations. However, on the ‘good’ side, it makes the system intolerable – expanding the base of resistance, and, consequently, speeding up the downfall of the system. –
#StopAbayTsehaye – Abay Tsehaye’s Liyu Force (aka TPLF’s Liyu Force in Ogaden) Responsible for the Mayu Muluqqee Massacre and Other Militarized Land-Grabbing Expeditions of the Tigrean Neftegna
In 2007, as a right-hand military security man of Meles Zenawi, Abay Tsehaye was in charge of creating the TPLF “Liyu” (“Special”) Paramilitary Force in Ogaden/Somali Region. The nickname among Ogaden Nationalists for the TPLF “Liyu” Force in Ogaden was (and still is) “Abay Tsehaye’s Liyu Force.”
Abay Tsehaye’s “Liyu” Force was responsible for the Mayu Muluqqee and other massacres and uprooting of Oromos in Eastern Oromia over the last two years. The “Liyu” Force conducted military raids on innocent Oromo farmers in Eastern Oromia to rob them of their land.
Abay Tsehaye’s “Liyu” Force was also behind the Asabot/Miesso attacks in Chercher in Oromia. He’s also the main TPLF agent behind the tribal conflicts in Moyale and other areas on the Southern Oromian and Kenyan border.
In 2010, Abay Tsehaye was then moved to a newly created “Sugar Corporation” as a director (read here about the resume of Abay Tsehaye). Many were surprised by the move of a Military Security Adviser to a Sugar Corporation directorship position. However, the surprising appointment soon became clear. The main goal of this “Sugar Corporation” is to lead military-backed (Neftegna, i.e. backed with rifles) land-grabbing missions in the South (Oromia, Ogadenia, Sidama, Omo, Afar, and other Southern Parts) in the name of “expanding” commercial farmings. Abay Tsehaye has become the face of the Tigrean Neftegna in the Ethiopian Empire – he leads large land-grabbing missions (supported by TPLF’s military) just like the Menelik-II era’s grabbing of land from Southern natives (Oromo, Ogaden, Sidama, etc.)
In addition to the Mayu Muluqqee Massacres, Abay Tsehaye’s militarized land-grabbing expeditions are well documented in Gambella, Omo region, Afar – and even in the Amhara region (he was in charge of the plan to turn the Waldiba Monastery in the Amhara region into a commercial sugar farming).
#StopAbayTsehaye – The face of the Tigrean neo-imperialist Master Plan in Oromia and elsewhere in the Ethiopian Empire has recently appeared on the regime’s TV in military attire as he vows to wage a genocidal war on Oromo farmers in Central Oromia (especially those around Oromia’s center Finfinne). The “Addis Ababa Master Plan” is a plan to evict and dispossess Oromo farmers of their land, and also to cleanse Oromo from Finfinne and from areas surrounding Finfinne – in order to make the land available for Tigrean and other Habesha Neftegnas (in the name of ‘investment’ and ‘development’). Those Oromo farmers already evicted from the Kilinto area are settled in slums in Finfinne where they lead below-poverty living as security-guards and house-maids (after losing their land to Tigrean and other Habesha ‘investors’/Neftegnas). For TPLF, ‘development’ is the enrichment of Tigrean Neftegnas – not the empowerment of Oromo farmers. The struggle must continue to #StopAbayTsehaye, the face of Tigrean chauvinism and Neftegna in Oromia and elsewhere in the Ethiopian Empire. Gadaa.com
