Economic and development analysis: Perspectives on economics, society, development, freedom & social justice. Leading issues in Oromo, Oromia, Africa & world affairs. Oromo News. African News. world News. Views. Formerly Oromia Quarterly
(Advocacy4oromai, Melbourne, 30 May 2015) The Oromo Irreecha Arfaasaa festival, held on 30 Mya 2015 for the first time in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia at Mount Dandenong.
The ceremony was celebrated at Mount Dandenong to promote the Oromo Good Spirit tradition of respect for nature and gratefulness for life.
It was celebrated under the theme of “Moving Forward: Restoring the Good Spirit of Humanity” in which it aimed to celebrate Irreechaa festivals to follow our tradition and religion in society, to create public awareness where Oromo cultural and religious issues was discussed.
According to the organisers the festival was designed to provide a better understanding of Oromo culture, history and humanity, to pave the way for promotion of the Oromo culture, history, and lifestyle.
The Celebration of Irreechaa Arfaasaa, a national Spirit Day, is held yearly both to thank Waaqaa for the blessings and mercies we have received throughout the past…
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Tarkaanfii kanaan loltootni Wayyaanee 7 oggaa ajjeefaman, 10 ol ammoo madoo taasifamuu Ajaji WBO Zoonii Kibbaa ifa godheera.
Meeshaaleen adda addaas diina irraa fudhatamuun dantaa QBOf akka oolfaman hubachuun danda’ameera.
Waraanni faashistii mootummaa Wayyaanee akkuma amala isaa tarkaanfii WBOn irratti fudhataa jirutti aare ummata meesha maleeyyiitti roorrisuu fi daangaa biyya ollaa cabsee seenuun maqaa WBOn ummata nagaa ajjeesaa fi goolaa…
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The following is a letter from former U.S. Senate candidate Prof. Mohammed Tahiro to U.S. President Barack Obama regarding Ethiopia’s General Election, which was held on 24 May 2015:-
——
Mohammed Tahiro
May 27, 2015
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President, Thank you for the opportunity to write to you on an issue that is important to me as well as the United States. Ethiopia held regional and parliamentary elections for the fifth time under the current Constitution on Sunday, May 24, 2015. Unlike previous elections, the current election was conducted in the absence of international observers. The African Union sent fifty six observers to monitor elections with over forty five thousand polling stations. The 2005 and 2010 elections were marred with serious allegations of vote rigging by the ruling EPRDF. The European Union and international human rights organizations had condemned the practices of the Ethiopian government as fraudulent and undemocratic. In 2010, the ruling party declared itself winner of 99.6 percent of parliamentary seats; out of a total of 547 seats, only 1 seat went to an opposition politician. Many people believe this alone is evidence enough to indict the government as illegitimate. In the years and months leading up to the current election, the government had allegedly been engaged in open prosecutions of opposition party leaders and supporters. There are credible reports of political killings throughout the country. In Oromia State, opposition leaders were detained, tortured, and some allegedly killed by an unpopular government determined to staying power. Allegations of widespread vote rigging have also been reported in Gondar and throughout the northern counties as well as the South. Opposition parties allege the Ethiopian Electoral Board is staffed by government operatives with the sole purpose of putting its seal of approval on a preordained outcome. Mr. President, diaspora-based independent media outlets, such as the Oromia Media Network (OMN) and others, have been reporting claims of harassment and abuses against opposition leaders and supporters perpetrated by the government. Entrenched political and economic interests are testing the legendary decency of the Ethiopian people. Contempt for the people and the rule of law has been the hallmark of this government. Their refusal to yield to the will of the people has nudged the country one step closer to a civil conflict. As an American, I believe supporting true democracy in Ethiopia is in the long term strategic interest of the United States. In the election held last Sunday, the ruling party printed the ballots, took possession of the ballots, manned the polling stations, and counted cast ballots. This is not a democratic process by any measure. MEDREK, a coalition of main opposition parties, has declared the election fraudulent and that it will not accept the outcome. The people of Ethiopia are demanding fair elections. Fair elections mean guaranteeing the integrity of the process. To that end, I’m asking you, Mr. president, to support the initiative to hold new elections in twenty four months, with at least one international observer from the United States, the United Nations, or the European union manning every polling station. Until such time as Ethiopia is ready to have an independent election commission, it’s only fair that the elections be conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. only then, can we even come close to guaranteeing the integrity of the process.
Thank you for your consideration and I eagerly await your response.
Most Respectfully,
Mohammed Abbajebel Tahiro
Former U.S. Senate Candidate for the State of Texas
Barattoota Oromoo kan Yuuiversitoota garagaraat osoo karaa nagaan hiriira bahani dhimma abba biyummaa isaanii falmata jiranuu lubbuun isaanii waraana mootummaa Wayyaanen darbite keessaa seenaa gabaabaa barattuu Tigist Maammoo Simaa isiniif qooda.Tigist Abbaa ishee Obbo Maammoo Simaa fi Haadha ishee Aaddee Ayeetuu Maammoo irraa bara 1992 akka lakkoofsa Oromootti Biyya Oromiyaa Godina Kibba lixa Shawaa Aanaa sadeen Sooddoo Ganda Saaririti jedhamutti dhalattee.Mana barnoota sadarkaa 1ffaa kan barattee 1_8 mana barnoota Calalaqa kan jedhamu miilan deemsa sa’a lama deemte barattee.sadarkaa 2ffaa 9_12 mana barnoota Harbuu Cululleetti baratte.Akkasuma qabxii gaarii fiduun Yuuniversitii Maddaa Walaabutti waggaa 1ffaa barata osoo jirtuu FDGf n gaaffii mirgaa baratooti Oromoo Ebla 28,2014 kaasaniin wal qabatee rasaasa diinaan wareega lubbuu saba Oromoof jecdha kafalte.
Gootittiin Oromoo Tigist Maammoo dhalattee ganna 22ti gootummaan uumata Oromoof wareega kafalete. Qabasaawaan yoo kufe illee Qabsoon itti fufee kaayyoo isaanii bakkaan ni gaha.
Read moreat:
Seenaa Gabaabaa Gootittii Oromoo Barattuu Tigist Maammoo Simaa
http://https://vimeo.com/129102110
http://www.obstv.net/#!Qophii Utubaa Maatii Dr. Lookoo Duubaa/czys/5567288d0cf298b2d3ebedeb
In its literal definition, the term development is generally understood to mean an intentionally conceived course of action that aims to realize the full potential of a given population. Though previously the notion of planned development was largely confined to communist countries, it now seems to have drawn some attention across the board.
Probably, the reason why the word has attracted attentions outside the communist block was partly due to the phenomenal success registered with US Marshal Plan and “Reverse Course” program to rehabilitate the war-torn Europe and Japan respectively in the aftermath of World War II.
Later on, several attempts have been made to replicate the success of the aforementioned planned development interventions in most developing countries after they won their political independence. Nevertheless, unlike the European and Japanese case, an all-out success with planned development in many of the developing countries, with the exception of a handful of Asian and Latin American countries, had remained until very recently quite a distant dream.
To the contrary, the net outcome of long years of planned development interventions in many of these countries for the most part ended in creating unbridgeable income gap between the rich and the poor, pervasive poverty, environmental degradation, chronic political dictatorship, civil wars, insecurity and instability.
The ever changing economic models and strategies which these countries have opted to on various occasions such as economic growth approach, centrally planned socialist economy, growth and transformation plan, structural-adjustment program, poverty alleviation program, participatory development and all that could well be symptomatic of the crisis of planned development in the past decades.
Of course, in speaking the adoption of a development model, it is worth noticing that there may be several internal and external factors that directly or indirectly impact the choice made by a given country. The competing major international ideological orientations, the fashionable development discourses, the leverage and influence of hegemonic powers, the influence of global financial and economic institutions, bilateral and multilateral diplomatic relationships between and among countries and the political and ideological orientations of the powers that be are to mention but a few.
Be that as it may, in this article I would like to argue about Ethiopia’s adoption of the ‘developmental state’ ideology that can largely be attributed to the incumbent’s political interest to mend legitimacy crisis and carry on with its repressive rule. And for this to happen it has apparently resorted to different political strategies as briefly discussed below.
Mystifying development
One of the biggest lessons learned from the failure of the first ever attempted ‘economic growth’ model that sought only to enhance the national economic wealth of the nation – GDP – was that a true and sustainable development must give due attention to all-round development which includes, among others, the economic, social, moral, intellectual and spiritual needs and demands of the larger population.
Subsequently, this has led to the new concept of an inclusive, participatory and human-centered development that has found wide currency since the 1980s. Such concepts of development also compel the need to make citizens active and conscious actors in a development process that ultimately determines their destiny.
Contrary to this, what is now transpiring in Ethiopia largely looks a full-blown psychological campaign to instill false-consciousness among the people by elevating the notion of development to a mystique and idol stature. The intention behind this clearly lies in making people unconscious and unquestioning actors who would readily submit to everything that comes in the name of development.
Consider the unrelenting media propaganda which scarcely misses mentioning development in the course of the day. Now, each and every government initiation comes wrapped with the tag of development. While a view or an action that aligns with the government would soon receive the honorific title of ‘developmental’, in contrast, any dissenting view or action would quickly be admonished as ‘anti-development’. In short, observing how the term development is used today in Ethiopia, probably one gets the impression that it might have acquired a new meaning which approximates something ‘sacred’.
Just imagine for a moment what a message of a sticker commonly put on the door of a soon-to-be-demolished shop that reads, “Sealed for Development Purpose” implicitly implies. In this connection, it is also worth to recall the occasion some years back when the top religious leaders had appeared on the public media to ‘consecrate’ the “Great Renaissance Dam” whereby they pronounced any non-consenting gesture towards the construction of the dam to be viewed as a kind of blasphemy that deserves some sort of admonition.
When people attempt to make the things that they themselves have created an object of worship, in the Marxist economic discourse, it is often said to be a form of fetishism. Thus, the unrelenting effort that the Ethiopian government has been waging supposedly to mystify and idolize the notion of development could be none other than “development fetishism”.
Development as a pretext
One major reason for instilling the attitude of “development fetishism” among the people seems to lie in the government’s ambition of attaching itself with a rather eye-catching infrastructural and building construction activities now underway in the country irrespective of its effect on the living realities of the ordinary mass and thereby portray itself as an indispensable actor without which Ethiopia’s development would be impossible to think of.
In this regard, it’s worth looking back at the circumstances that led the government to proclaim the status of ‘developmental state’ some few years back. Apparently, the government switched to the idea of ‘developmental state’ following the infamous 2005 election when it lost its credibility with the larger public. Furthermore, it was followed by the time when it kept itself busy with issuing some draconian laws. From this it follows that the declaration of ‘developmental state’ was but a tacit act of openly installing an authoritarian system.
After all, the notion of ‘developmental state’ is often associated either with those Asian countries with a communist political system or naked authoritarian regimes that have clung to power for so long, except Japan.
Evidently, all the messages and actions that now emanate from the ruling party in connection with the upcoming election also well signify how the ruling part is determined to use development as an excuse to cling to power indefinitely without any serious contender. Ironically, all this is not only against the unrelenting rhetoric of democracy and freedom but also in flagrant contradiction to the spirit of the constitution that itself has given birth to.
Fought for the sake of development or justice?
While proclaiming the status of developmental state which is in many ways repressive, the present day rulers seem to have forgotten why in the first place they had fought a bitter war against the former repressive regime, the Dergue. Surely, it was not so much for the sake of primarily economic development as it was for social justice.
As a matter of fact, development – especially that of material and physical – is just one among many other important duties and functions that a just government is required to carry out. This is not to say, however, for poor countries like ours the issue of development is not an imperative one. Yet, to promote development at the expense of justice, the rule of law, freedom and democratic rights, which in fact are crucial for sustainable development, presumably by virtue of being a ‘developmental state’ is very much unbecoming of such a sort of government.
Above all, the essence of a truly democratic government lies in its commitment to advance the freedom and democratic right as well as the welfare and security of its citizens. Indeed, the prime difference between authoritarian and democratic government rests on the fact that in the latter such great questions as development that evidently bears great stake in the life of people are to be decided not by whims and illusions of an individual or a group of tyrannical rulers but by well-informed, rational needs and demands of the larger citizens. Certainly, no thoughtful and rational government would attempt to reduce citizens to be blind worshipers of an idol that is created for political purpose. As the eminent classical sociologist Emile Durkheim had put it, “A healthy political system requires good faith and the avoidance of force and fraud. It requires, in a word, justice.”
Ed’s Note: The writer can be reached at tayesosa@yahoo.com
UNPO, 24 May
Almost 37 million Ethiopians had registered to cast their ballots in Ethiopia’s parliamentary and regional elections which took place on Sunday 24 May 2015. Although the results will only be announced in June, history shows that the only winner will be the long-ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by incumbent Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn: the party is expected to “win” nearly all – if not all – of the 547 seats in parliament and thus form the Government. Since 2005 the EPRDF has engaged in repressing any dissent and political opposition in Ethiopia, cracking down on independent media and civil society organizations, while charging government critics under harsh anti-terrorism laws. This has left the country without any viable counter voice to the ruling party and resulted in highly controlled political participation – something which according to the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and Sidama Liberation Front (SLF) is reflected in Sunday’s “fake” election.
In 2010, the EPRDF won 99.6% of the parliamentary seats, with various election observation missions (EOMs), including that of the European Union, saying the election was marred by intimidations and harassment of opposition activists. Human Rights Watch stated that the victory was the “culmination of the government’s five-year strategy of systematically closing down space for political dissent and independent criticism”. Such allegations were repeated on the occasion of this year’s election, which was the first since the death of former PM Meles Zenawi, the man who transformed the EPRDF into a powerful political organisation, while completely disregarding international standards for democratic governance and respect for human rights. The Government has denied any allegations of misconduct and accused the opposition, as well as its archenemy Eritrea, of plotting a disruption of the vote. Just before the elections, PM Desalegn claimed: “We remain vigilant and confident that the general election will be peaceful, free and fair, notwithstanding destabilisation attempts that may be tried by Eritrea or its local emissaries, which we will respond to with stern measures”.
The National Election Board of Ethiopia claims that the environment created for political parties this year was exceptional. However, the only international body present to monitor the electoral process was the African Union, the headquarters of which is based in Addis Abeba. The European Union and the United States, which monitored the 2005 and 2010 elections, did not participated this time, and their recommendations from the previous years remain largely ignored. It should also be noted that already before the Election Day, human rights groups claimed on Saturday 23 May that the polls could not be free or fair due to a lack of freedom of speech and participation byindependent media.
According to Al Jazeera, the voting process itself was smooth but the fractured opposition has complained of irregularities in the run-up to the election and of harassment and intimidation of their supporters. Furthermore, opposition groups also complained that several of their members were detained. Despite all these allegations, on the day of the election, the African Union’s EOM stated that the electoral process was held in an “orderly manner”. The polls closed at 6 pm on Sunday, but the final results will only be released by the National Electoral Board after 22 June 2015.
In a joint statement released the day after the elections, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the Oromo Liberation Front and the Sidama Liberation Front put forth that the elections were not an expression of the democratic will of all the people, and that the preparation, the process and the final results of this election were and will be intentionally flawed. Therefore, according to international standards, the election process cannot be considered free, fair and impartial. The three liberation fronts also argue that is not an accident that the international community opted out of observing this election, and instead purposely kept away to avoid legitimising this fake excercise of democracy. The complete statement is available here.
As highlighted during the latest in a series of conferences organised by UNPO, entitled “Cartoon Democracy: Authoritarian Rule and Elections in Ethiopia”, UNPO deeply regrets that ethnic and political opposition groups in Ethiopia were once again deprived of their basic right to freely participate in determining the future course of their country. This should serve as a wake-up call for the EU, US and UK – the three largest development donors to Ethiopia – to better monitor and condition how their funds are being spent and to increase their support to democracy and human rights. Otherwise, the much praised stability of Ethiopia is very much at risk.
SBO: Caamsaa 27, 2015 – Oduu, Filannoo kijibaa Wayyaaneen walqabatee FDG Oromiyaa keessatti deemaa jiru irratti gabaasa bal’aa, akkasumas dhimmuma kanaan walqabatee gaaffii fi deebii dargaggoo Dachaasaa Lammii waliin
https://soundcloud.com/gadaa-oromo-radio/sbo-sagantaa-afaan-oromoo
Video: Medrek Opposition Leaders Present Evidence of Electoral Fraud in Favor of EPRDF
Filannoo Ethiopia caamsaa 24,2015 gaggeeffame irratti paartiin MADREK bu’aa sagalichaa akka hin fudhanne Caamsaa 27 bara 2015 gaasexessitootaaf ifa gochaa ture.Innis, filannichi wayita gaggaffamaa ture rakkoo deggertootaa fi taajjabdoota keenya irra ga’e akka nuuf ilaalamuu fi filannoon naannoo hatameefi burjaajeffame kanatti akka irra deebi’amu jedhan.
Related:
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1244445
In Bule Hora university, ethnic Oromo students broke through security and closed the polling station citing ”no need to vote if it will not be counted properly”.
Two Observers killed in Kofele Arsi and Ambo , also over 500 Obsrvers are jailed.
About 85% of nearly 36 million Ethiopians casted their votes, says the National Election board of the country. The board has said the election was peaceful, free and fair. The only international observer, the African Union mission, on its part has said the election has met their standards.
Addis Ababa remains largely calm following Election Day, yesterday. Security has clashed with protesters in Oromia, the largest and most populous state that has seen large pro-opposition rallies over the last weeks. At least one killed in Midakengi district of west Shewa in election related violence.
Compared to the rest of the country, turnout was low in Addis Ababa and there are many reports of voter intimidation, observers harassment, and other irregularities. In places where results are announced, the incumbent regime has won most of the votes. The opposition has dismissed these results citing they are rigged.
In Oromia region, the situation is very tense. In West Shewa zone that had seen large crowds of demonstrations in support of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), and a stronghold, there has been number of incidents of disputes and conflicts. In some places such as Gudar, dispute between observers, between voters and observers, voters and reps of election board escalated to confrontation. In other places such as Gindeberet, local militia opened fire on the local voters harming some of them.
Eye witness are reporting reinforcement and deployment of large regime security forces to districts such as Cheliya, Ambo, Toke-Kutaye, Bako, Jeldu, Dandi, Gindeberet and Midakengi. These areas had also seen widespread protests last year against the Addis Ababa master plan.
The opposition bloc Medrek has claimed that over 90% of its observers were chased away from polling stations by security of the ruling party. According to reports over the last hours, situation remains very tense after one individual was killed in Arsi zone, another one also was killed in Hadiya in SNNPR.
In Bule Hora university, ethnic Oromo students broke through security and closed the polling station citing ”no need to vote if it will not be counted properly”.
The Ethiopian regime has already declared it is a winner through its affiliated websites and openly on its state radio. The regime will likely continue its 99.6% share of the parliament, even more if not. — Korma
Press Statement
The United States commends the people of Ethiopia for their civic participation in generally peaceful parliamentary and regional elections on May 24. We acknowledge the National Electoral Board’s organizational efforts and the African Union’s role as the only international observer mission on the ground. We also note the importance of the nine televised party debates as progress in fostering open public discussion of the challenges facing the country. We encourage all candidates, political parties and their supporters to resolve any outstanding differences or concerns peacefully in accordance with Ethiopia’s constitution and laws.
The United States remains deeply concerned by continued restrictions on civil society, media, opposition parties, and independent voices and views. We regret that U.S. diplomats were denied accreditation as election observers and prohibited from formally observing Ethiopia’s electoral process. Apart from the election observation mission fielded by the African Union, there were no international observer missions on the ground in Ethiopia. We are also troubled that opposition party observers were reportedly prevented from observing the electoral process in some locations.
A free and vibrant media, space for civil society organizations to work on democracy and human rights concerns, opposition parties able to operate without impediment, and a diversity of international and domestic election observers are essential components for free and fair elections. The imprisonment and intimidation of journalists, restrictions on NGO activities, interference with peaceful opposition party activities, and government actions to restrict political space in the lead-up to election day are inconsistent with these democratic processes and norms.
The United States has a broad and strong partnership with Ethiopia and its people. We remain committed to working with the Ethiopian Government and its people to strengthen Ethiopia’s democratic institutions, improve press freedom, and promote a more open political environment consistent with Ethiopia’s international human rights obligations.
Motummaan Wayyaannee Sagalee Uummataa Saamee Aangoorra Turuudhaaf Tattaaffii Gochaa Jiruun Walqabatee Mormii fi Hokkara Uumamu Hundaaf Itti Gaafatamaadha
Ibsa Garee Deeggartoota Koongiresii Federaalistii Oromoo Idil-Addunyaa
Motummaan Wayyaannee Sagalee Uummataa Saamee Aangoorra Turuudhaaf Tattaaffii Gochaa Jiruun Walqabatee Mormii fi Hokkara Uumamu Hundaaf Itti Gaafatamaadha
Filannoo biyyoolessaa bara 2007 ilaalchisee dhaabbileen mirga namoomaa hedduun erga duula nafiladhaatii kaasee haalli jiru haqa qabeessaa fi bilisa akka hin taane mirkaneessaniiru. Wayyaaneen duula nufiladhaarratti tumaatii, dhaanicha, ajjeechaa fi hidhaa raawwachuun ni beekama. Dhaabbileen mormitootaa wal-falmii filannoorratti injifannoo guddaa galmeessisuudhaan deeggarsa ummata bal’aa argachuunis ni beekama. Rifaatuu kanarraa kan ka’een, mootummaan gabroomsaa kun filannoodhaaf guyyaan lama yoo hafu muummichi ministeeraa yeroo isaa malee paarlaamaa biyyattii walga’ii waamuuudhaan mormitootarratti doorsisaa fi dhaadannoo dhageessisanii turan. Kunis mootummaan bu’aa filannoo humnaan saamuuf qophii jabaa godhaa turuu isaa ni mirkaneessa.
Dabballoonni ADWUI (EPRDF) ajaja hooggantoota isaaniirraa kennameef raawwachiisuuf sa’aatii filannoon itti jalqabamu dursanii halkan achi buluun korojoo guutan, humnoota poolisa federaalaa, humna waraanaa dafee dhaqqabaa fi milishaa bobbaasuun bakka bu’oota boordii filannoo fi taajjabdoota filannoo MEDREK/OFC irraa waraqaa eenyummaa saamuun guutumaan guututti (90%) buufata filannoo irraa ari’aniiru. Dabaltaanis, barattoota manneen baronootaa ol’aanaa kaardii filannoos dhoowwatanii mirga filannoo isaaniis irraa mulqaniiru. (Godina Arsii aanaa Kofalee fi godina Shawaa Dhihaa aanaa Midaa Qanyiitti kaadhimamtootaa fi deeggartoota OFC ajjeesaniiru.) Jimma, Naqamtee fi Baddalleettis hoogganaa ol’aanaa OFC kan ta’an obbo Baqqalaa Garbaa fa reebaniiru.
Kanaafuu, mootummaan nama nyaataa wayyaanee sagalee ummataa saamuun tarkaanfii ajjeechaa, hidhaa fi reebichaa hamaa hedduu raawwate. Nuti Gareen Deeggartoota Koongiresii Federaalistii Oromoo Idil Addunyaa gocha waayyaanee kana balaaleffachaa ibsa armaan gadii kana baafneerra.
1. OFC/MEDREK filannoo guutuu Oromiyaa keessatti geggeeffame moo’eera.
2. Gochaan raawwatame ulaagaa filannoo addunyaa fi seera biyyattii kan hin guunne waan ta’eef cimsinee ni balaaleffanna
3. Saamiinsa sagalee uummataa irraa kan ka’een mormii ka’u hundaaf itti gaafatamaan wayyaaneedha.
4. Mirgoonni heeraan ummataaf kennames humna waraanaatiin irraa mulqamee, bakka buutotnii fi taajjabdootni boordii filannoos ta’ee taajjabdootni mormitootaa buufata filannoorraa ari’amanii filannoon geggeeffame haqa qabeessa akka hin taane ni ibsina.
5. Ummanni keenya Koongiresii Federaalistii Oromoo filachuu fi falmii barbaachisu hundaa godhuu keessaniif isin galateeffachaa kana boodas tarkaanfiin itti aanu maal akka ta’uu qabu KFO irraa hanga kennamutti mirga keessan kabachiisuuf qophiidhaan akka eegdan waamicha isiniif dabarsina.
6. murnootni mootummaa farra ummataa kana aangoorraa kuffisuuf karaa adda addaatiin socha’aa jirtan marti kan beekuu qabdan mootummaan wayyaanee aangoorra kan ture jabina qabaatee osoo hin taane faffaca’iisa humnoota qabsoo Oromoo irraa kan ka’e ta’uu ni hubanna jennee amanna. Kanaafuu, mirgoota ummata keenyaa kabachiisuuf yeroo garaagarummaa xixiqqaa dhiisnee gamtaa fi tokkummaadhaan kaanu amma.
Qabsoon itti fufa!
Garee Deeggartoota Koongiresii Federaalistii Oromoo Idil-Addunyaa
Related:
26.05.2015
WASHINTON,DC—Aanaalee Filannoo Oromiyaa hedduu keessatti humnoonni hidhattootaa Mootummaa akka taajjabdoonni korojoo humnaan harkaa fudhatamee fi irraa hariyatamnitti mallatteessanii fi seera-qabeessa fakkeessan doorsia, hidhaa, miidhaa haga rasaasaan rukkutuu ga’u irratti geggeessaa jiru, ka jedhan – barreessaa Kongiresa Federaalawa Oromoo, Obbo Beqqelee Nagaa ti.
Qellem Wallaggaa keessatti sababaa kanaan namoonni sadii sababaa kanaan walitti-bu’insa uumameen namoonni sadii rasaasaan haleelamuu isaanii, Arsii Lixaa fi bakkawwan hedduu ka biroo keessatti immoo taajjabdoonni hidhamuu dubbatu.
Aanaa Gadab Asaasaatti namni Mederekiif dorgomanii fi Shawaa Lixaa keessatti taajjabduun filannoo amma hidhaa baqadheen dhokadhee jira, jedhanis himannaadhuma wal-fakkaataa qaban.
Blue Party Wins in Addis Ababa with 61.9%, Medrek Wins in Oromia with 52.1%
(Eritrean Press) – IT IS A LANDSLIDE FOR THE OPPOSITIONS
Allen Connelly, a western representative for the exit poll organizing group said, “The exit poll was carried out by a coalition of university student volunteers from Addis Ababa, Jimma and Adama.”
Independent team of college students randomly surveyed thousands of voters statewide on Sunday. The exit poll reportedly cross-examined thousands voters from Oromia and all 10 districts of Addis Ababa. All voters surveyed were asked for their party selection, their age and their ethnicity.
Mr Connelly said his group organized exit polls in Addis Ababa and Oromia state because of shortage of volunteers in other states. Two volunteers were arrested (then later released) by police in Dire Dawa and Ambo while operating the exit polls, added Mr Connelly.
According to the exit poll final results, the ruling party EPRDF received 26.4 percent of the votes in Oromia while the opposition party Medrek got nearly 52.1% (most of them in central and western Oromia zones.)
The OFC branch of Medrek and OPDO branch of EPRDF were the most popular parties mentioned by Oromia voters during the exit polls.
The EDP, UDJ, AEUO and other small opposition parties collectively received only 21.5% in Oromia, according to the survey.
In Addis Ababa city, the unofficial results show the opposition Blue Party won the election with 61.9% while the EDP, UDJ, Medrek and AEUO got a combined 30.6% and the ruling party EPRDF received only 7.5%. The AEUO and EDP parties were more popular among the older age city voters while the city youth overwhelmingly selected the Blue Party. Many Blue Party voters cited previous UDJ (Andinet Party) affiliation.
Among those Addis Ababa voters who voted for all the opposition (92.5%); nearly 38% identified themselves as Amhara ethnic groups, 21.5% mixed ethnic group, 17% as Oromo, 14.5% as Gurage and the rest were smaller ethnicities.
Some voters complained about the ballot box malfunction and many eyewitnessed opposition party election observers being harassed by the police. The majority voters during the exit poll said they have no confidence that their vote will be counted.
Related:
“90% of MEDREK election observers in Oromia are harassed & aren’t on election observarion.”
-Obbo Bekele Naga
“BREAKING NEWS | OFC/Medrek Leaders Report Election Irregularities (OMN).”
In Hadia Zone, Mehar Kerga-“Ha” Polling Station,the ballot box got moved to a nearby health centre due to power outage.#EthiopiaElection2015
VOA: Mr. Elias Hadero, Hadiya National & Medrek Candidate in Southern Region, Claims Vote Rigging.
VOA: Mr. Elias Hadero, a Hadiya National and a Regional Parliament candidate of the Ethiopian Social Democracy-Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Union (a Medrek party), explains the vote rigging in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region. http://gadaa.net/FinfinneTribune/2015/05/voa-mr-elias-hadero-hadiya-national-medrek-candidate-in-southern-region-claims-vote-rigging/
-Souce: Caamsaa/May 25, 2015 · Finfinne Tribune | Gadaa.com
Oduu Owwituu!!! Oduu Owwituu!!!!!! ================================ ////////Filannoon osoo hin jalqabamiin xumurameeee!!!!!!//////// Godina Harargee Bahaa Aanaa Giraawaa Araddaa Raasaa Nagayaa je’amanitti filannoon…xumuramee tahu maddeen oduu gabaasan.
Naannoo oromiyaatti Godina Harargee Bahaa aanaa Giraawaa araddaa Raasaa nagayaa Akka maddeen keenya nuf gabaasanit Hawaasa naannichaa humna waraansatin eega waliti qaban booda Kaardi filannoo eega irra sasaaban booda Wanta irraa hafe nutu guuta jechuun ummanni gara mana isaati akka gale beekun dandayameera . Mootummaan wayyaane yeroon filannoo osoo hin gahiin humna woraana issat fayadamuudhan Gandoota baadiyyaa adda addaati gochoota akkas ni geggeeysa jedhame kan sodaatama ture yommuu tahu , akkuma jedhameeti Haraarge bahaa Aanaa Giraawwa ganda raasaa keeysati filannoon yeroo isaa male akka geggeeyfame xumurame madden keenya nuf gabaasaniiru . Akkasumaas bifuma walfakkaatuun Naanoo oromiyaa Godina Arsii Aanaa Balee Ganda Xaqqetti Waraqaan Kaardi filannoo Qaamota mootumaatin haawaasa doorsisuudhan kaardi filannoo hunda isaan irra guurani akkaxumuran madden gaabasiniiru .
ODUU GADDAA AKKA ODUUN NU GAHE IBSUTTI HOJJATTOONNI FILANNICHAA SEERA QABSISOOTA TURAN AKKA IBSANITTI MAGAALAA DIRRE DHAWAATTI HARKA 100%90 MADAREK TAHUU YEMUU ARGAN HOJJATTOOTUMA ISAANII WAAMANII WARAQAA 300 IRRATTI OFUMAA MALLEEFFATANII SANDUUQA KEESSA GALCHAN JEDHAN ODUU 100%100tti DHUGAA TAHEEDHA OF QOPHEESSAA KAN LAMMIIF HADOODDAN WANTI TOLAAN DHUFTU HIN JIRTU
– Social Network ( Facebook)
No Democracy in Ethiopia. No fair and free election in Ethiopia. Caamsaa 24/2015 Mooraan Yuunibarsiitii Jimmaa, Mattuu, Wallaggaa, Amboo, fi Dirree Dawaa addatti humni waraanaa guddaan itti seenee jira.
Qeerroon Bilisummaa Oromoo barruulee warraaqsaa belbetuu qabxiiwwaan armaan gadii of irraa qabduu Mooraalee Yuunibarsiitii biyyaatti hundarra facaasuun mootummaa Wayyaanee raafama guddaa keessa galche jira. waraanni wayyaanees bifa lamaan mooraa Yuunibarsiitii seenaa jira, inni tokko uffata sivilii uffachuun, inni lammaffaa immoo hidhannoodhan, barruulee qeerroon facaasaa jiruu adamsuufis lafa waranni kun hin seeniin hin jiru, qabxiiwwaan barruu qeerroo irra jiru muraasni isaa: 1. Dimookiraasiin hin jiru, filannoon hin jiru (No Democracy in Ethiopia and no fair and free election in Ethiopia) 2. Gaaffii mirga abbaa biyyummaa uummata Oromoof deebiin kennamuu qaba. 3. Ilmaan Oromoo jumlaan hidhaman gaaffii tokko malee hiikamuu qabu. 4. Mootummaan Ce’umsaa hundeeffamee, filmaanni demookiraatawaa ta’ee fi haqaa fi bilisa irratti hundaa’ee akka gaggeeffamu jabeessinee gaafatna. 5. Nuti Qeerroon dargaggootni barattootni Oromoo bilisummaa fi dimookiraasii barbaadna, hanga Oromoon bilisoomuu fi Oromiyaan Walaboomtutti FDG jabaatee itti fufa. 6. Waranni nagaa biyyaa,fi daangaa biyyaa eeguuf ijaarame malee dhaaba siyaasaa tokkitti EPRDF/TPLF eeguuf hundeeffame diigamuu qaba. 7. Humni waraanaa Mooraa Yuunibarsiitii seenee barattoota gooluun yakka. waraannii uummata keenya irra qubsiifame kaafamuu qaba, barruun jedhuu mooraalee dhaabbilee barnootatti raamsuun wal qabatee wayyaaneen lafa seentuu dhabuun humna waraanaa guddaa mooraalee Yuunibarsiitiitti ol seensisuuf dirqamtee jiraachuun gabaafame.. gabaasaan itti fufa!!
Yunversiitii Bulee Horaa Keessatti Barattoonni Sabni biroo Erga Filatanii Xumuranii Booda Dabareen Barattoota Oromoo yeroo Ga’u Ganama sa’a shan irraa Jalqabee Waraqaan Filannoo dhumeera jechuu dhaan Filannoo dhaabsisanii jiru. Sababa kanaafis Barattoonni Oromoo Bulchiisa Yunversiitii Bulee Horaa Jalatti Walitti qabamuu dhaan “Mirgi Keenya haa kabajamu ta’uu baannaan Rakkoo Kana booda dhufuuf Bulchiinsi Yunversiitii Bulee Horaa fi Mootummaan biyyattii itti Gaafatamummaa Fudhachuu qabdu!!” jechaa jiru.
Ethiopia’s May 24, 2015 election in Oromia Special Zones near Finfinnee voters were not allowed their phones
https://www.cpj.org/blog/2015/05/with-limited-independent-press-ethiopians-left-vot.php
Filannoon Fakkeessaa fi Kijibaa Abbootii Irree malee Ummatoota hin Fayyadu.
Filannoon Fakkeessaa fi Kijibaa Abbootii Irree malee Ummatoota hin Fayyadu. Bittaan gita bittoota Tigraay ummatootaa Itophiyaa irratti humna qawween of irroomse Itophiyaa tarree biyyoota hiyyeeyyii keessaa baasuu hin dandeenye. Kadhaa gargaarsa alagaa irraa argamuun jireessuu keessaa baasuu dadhabee har’as taanaan Impaayerittiin hiriira biyyoota gargaarsaan jiraatan keessatti akka hiriirtetti jirti. Saaminsi daangaa dhabe murna aangoo irra jiruun adeemsifamu abbootii aangoo duroomsee lammiilee sadarkaa of jiraachisuu dadhabuu fi abdii dhabuu irraa, kanneen osoo jireenya barbaadanii galaana keessatti dhuman, biyyoota gara garaa keessatti haala suukanneessaa fi gaddisiisaan ajjeefaman lakkoobsi guddaa dha. Bilisa tahanii gurmaa’uun, yaada qaban ibsatuun guutummaatti yakkatti fudhatamee hidhaa, ajjeechaa fi roorroo gosa gara garaa lammiilee irraan gahuun Itophiyaan biyyoota Afriikaa irra dabree sadarkaa addunyaatti iyyuu tarree duraa keessatti argamuun haala qabatamaa biyyattii keessaa ibsa. Saaminsi, cunqursaan, buqqa’insi fi dhiittaan mirga dhala namaa waggoota 24 dabraniif adeemsifamee fi sadarkaan har’a irra gahe egeree biyyattii kan dukkaneesse, ummatoota kan abdii dhabsiise dha. Wayyaaneen qawween dhufe. Qawweenis jiraate. Fuula duras Itophiyaa abbaa irrummaa paartii tokkoo jala tursuun murtii isaa bosonaa qabatee dhufe tahuun kan shakkamu miti. Ammas kana ifaan labsatee jira. Mootummaan Wayyaanee, ummatootni maal barbaadan? maal gaafataa jiran? Maalis hawwan? jedhee yaada ummatootaa hubatee gaaffii isaaniif deebii kennuuf kan fedhii hin qabne tahuu irraa gaaffiin ummatootaa deebii hin argatiin jiran. Kan Wayyaaneetti fardii, akkaataa itti aangoo humnaan argate tiksatuu danda’u irratti bobba’uu qofa. Waan taheef aangoo isaatti iggitii godhatuuf mala adda addaatti fayyadama. Tooftaalee aangoo irra ittiin of tursuuf itti gargaaramaa turee fi jiru keessaa filannoon kijibaa waggaa shan shanitti adeemsifamu isa tokko. Filannoon Caamsaa 24, 2015 itti baallamamee jirus Wayyaanee aangomsuun alatti faydaa biraa argamsiisu hin qabu. Sababootni isaas haalli filannoon kun ittiin adeemsifamu kan ulaagaa filannoo dimokraatwaa hin guutne tahuu qofa osoo hin taane murni Wayyaanee sagalee ummataan aangoo kan gadi hin dhiisne tahuu murteeffatuu irraa ti. Filannoon 5ffaa kun filannoota kanaan duraa irraas addummaa hin qabu. Kan filannoo kana mataa itti tahuun geggeessaa jiru boordiin filannoo kan sirnichaan sirnichaaf utubame dha. Kana waliin dorsisii fi dinniinni, hidhaa fi dhaaninsi mootummaa Wayyaaneen ummatoota irratti raawwatamaa jiru nageenya isaa kan gaaffii jala galche, bilisummaa isaa haqee sodaa itti bulche dha. ABOn akeekaa fi amala Wayyaanee bareechee waan beekuuf, akkasumas, itti bahi filannoo iftoomina hin qabnee, haqa irratti hin hundoofnee fi dimokraatawaa hin taanee maal akka tahu waan hubatuuf filannoo Caamsaa 24, 2015 hawwii fi fedhiin ummatootaa ittiin guutamaa irraa hin eegu. Kana irraa ka’uudhaanis yeroo gara garaatti ummatootni Itophiyaa addatti ammo ummatni Oromoo filannoo fakkeessii Wayyaanee akka lagatu waamichaa kan dabarsaa ture. Har’a Itophiyaa keessatti jibbinsa Wayyaanee fi sirna cunqursaa Wayyaaneen durfamu irraa ummatootni qabsoo hadhaawaa geggeessaa fi gaaffiilee adda addaa kaasaa jiran. Kanneen sirnicha irratti mormii finiinsaa jiran keessaa ummatni Oromoo durummaan hiriiree argama. Ummatni Oromoo kan ilmaan isaa wareegaa jiru, qabeenya isaa itti dhabaa fi baqaaf saaxilamee mankaraaruu irratti argamu, filannoo kijibaa keessatti hirmaatee barcuma lamaas tahe kudha lama argatuuf miti. Rakkoo siyaasaa, dinagdee fi hawaasummaa jaarraa tokkoo oliif irratti saare dhabamee walabummaan isaa dhugoomee bilisa tahee jiraachuufi. Akeeknii fi hawwiin ummata Oromoo kun ammoo filannoo sirna abbaa irrummaa jalatti geggeeffamuun tasa hin argamu. Waan taheef ummatni Oromoo haqa kana hubatuun furaan dhibdee isaa qabsoon malee kan hin argamne tahuu beekee, filannoo kijibaan akka hin dagamne ABO irra deebi’ee gadi jabeessee hubachiisuu fedha. Filannoo kana keessatti hirmaatuun mootummaa irratti qabsaawaa jiru seeressuu qofa taha. Filannoo mootummaa farra ummata Oromoo irroomsu keessatti qooda fudhatuun haada sirnichi mormatti nu kaa’ee jiru ofitti jabeessuu qofa taha. Addatti ammo dargaggoon Oromoo qabsoo bilisummaa Oromoo fuula dura tarkaanfachiisuu keessatti wareegamni baasaa turtanii fi jirtan akka firii godhatu dandeessisuuf Fincila Diddaa Gabrummaa jabeessuun filmaata isa duraa akka tahetti itti fufsiisuun murteessaa dha. Morkaa fi xiqiin ykn jibbiinsa Wayyaanee qofa irraa ka’uun filannoo kijibaa jala gugatuun wareegama kanaan dura baafame irratti bishaan naquu taha. Waan taheef ummatni keenya sochii aangoo mootummaa Wayyaanee seeressuu kamuu lagatuun mirga isaa qabsoo isaan harka galfatuuf akka qabsoo isaa finiinsu ABO gadi jabeessee waamicha isaa haaromsa. Injifatnoo Ummata Oromoof! Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo Caamsaa 18, 2015
Related:
‘Ethiopia’s elections are just an exercise in controlled political participation.’
Jason Mosley
On Sunday, millions of Ethiopians will line up at polling stations to participate in Africa’s largest exercise of political theatre. A decade-long campaign by Ethiopia’s government to silence dissent forcibly has left the country without a viable political opposition, without independent media, and without public challenges to the ruling party’s ideology.
For most Ethiopians, these elections are a non-event.
The one potential dividend of these sham polls, however, is the international attention they will garner for the government’s growing political repression. The blatant disregard for internationally recognised standards for free and fair elections just might convince Ethiopia’s largest donors that it is time to rethink their relationship with an increasingly authoritarian government.
As long as democratic governance and respect for human rights are pushed aside by donors in favour of economic development and security cooperation, Ethiopia’s long-term stability is at serious risk.
Since 2005, the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front’s (EPRDF) has cracked down on independent media and human rights groups.
In 2009, parliament passed the charities and societies proclamation, which placed restrictive regulations on non-government organisations, including limitations on foreign funding. Today,only a handful of these groups exist, and most are struggling to survive.
The preferred government strategy for eliminating independent media is to file criminal charges against publishers, and to impose hefty fines and prison terms. When lawsuits do not succeed, the government simply arrests journalists, as occurred last year when bloggers and journalists affiliated with the Zone 9 blogging collective were apprehended. The group remains imprisoned and charged as terrorists.
Post-election, the EPRDF, secure in its hold on power, might be willing to allow a small degree of dissent: Ethiopian officials are increasingly wary of reactions by the international community to the crackdown on critics and in 2013 published a national human rights action plan.
Global development podcast What causes conflict and how can it be resolved? – podcast
From the ready availability of weapons to the marginalisation of women, many factors can push a population towards conflict
The US, UK and European Union – Ethiopia’s largest donors – need to increase their support for democracy and human rights because much can be done right now.
Despite years of political repression, a new generation of human rights defenders is slowly emerging. The Zone 9 bloggers represented this new generation, using new technologies to educate fellow Ethiopians on exercising and defending their rights.
The human rights and democracy groups that remain are finding creative ways to conduct their work. This includes working with traditional development organisations, which the government generally tolerates, or focusing on seemingly apolitical issues, such as government accountability and corruption, that are important in strengthening Ethiopia’s democracy.
Donor countries fall short in their support for these groups. In the US, President Barack Obama’s latest budget request includes some $400m (£257m) in assistance to Ethiopia – but only $2m of it is for democracy and human rights programming.
The UK is equally parsimonious in democracy support. One reason is that the EPRDF makes it difficult for domestic groups to accept outside aid.
Donors could take concrete action right now. First, supporting off-shore programming allows activists to travel outside Ethiopia to get technical and strategic advice. Second, donors’ strategies for Ethiopia should include funds specifically dedicated to strengthening independent media outlets and journalists; the EU intends to take this step after the election.
Placards belonging to protestors outside the Foreign Commonwealth Office to demand the immediate release of UK citizen, Andargachew Tsege, who is being held in incommunicado detention in Ethiopia, having been kidnapped in Yemen in June 2014. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
A poster demanding the release of UK citizen Andargachew Tsege, who was kidnapped in Yemen last June and is being held in Ethiopia. Photograph: Stephen Chung/Alamy
Also, donors can find ways around foreign funding restrictions by pushing for the creation of funding pools considered local under Ethiopian law. The EU did this in 2011, when it created the Civil Society Fund, providing assistance to local human rights and democracy groups. The US should use its economic and diplomatic leverage to do likewise, a move that would provide a much-needed lifeline for these groups.
Greater funding for human rights will be vital for Ethiopian activists, whose reach has been limited by the charities and societies proclamation.
Before that came into being six years ago, the country’s leading human rights organisation, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), operated with a budget of $400,000 and 60 employees.
Today, its budget is less than half that figure, and staffing is down 80%. The only thing keeping EHRCO alive is financial aid from the EU Civil Society Fund.
Ethiopia receives nearly $4bn in official development assistance. This is more than any other country in Africa and makes up a significant portion of the government’s annual budget. If the US, UK, EU and Canada coordinated policies, Ethiopia would have to respond to their human rights and democracy concerns.
Ethiopia’s election should be a wake-up call for the international community. With each successive election that does not allow genuine choice, both apathy and resentment grow, and Ethiopia risks falling prey to the same instability that has plagued its neighbours.
Daniel Calingaert is executive vice-president of Freedom House. Kellen McClure is an advocacy officer in its Africa programmes.
Related:AmnestyInternationalReport_BecauseIAmOromo014
Even by Ethiopia’s own standard, the 2015 elections appear to be far less competitive than the last two polls. The country’s one-time vocal opposition is all but decimated, in part because of their own undoing but largely due to the ever-tightening political space and the lack of freedom to organize.
Amnesty International, 22 May 2015
The run-up to Ethiopia’s elections on Sunday has been marred by gross, systematic and wide-spread violations of ordinary Ethiopians’ human rights, says Amnesty International.
“The lead-up up to the elections has seen an onslaught on the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. This onslaught undermines the right to participation in public affairs freely and without fear as the government has clamped down on all forms of legitimate dissent,” said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.
The Ethiopian authorities have jailed large numbers of members of legally registered opposition political parties, journalists, bloggers and protesters. They have also used a combination of harassment and repressive legislation to repress independent media and civil society.
The lead-up up to the elections has seen an onslaught on the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. This onslaught undermines the right to participation in public affairs freely and without fear as the government has clamped down on all forms of legitimate dissent.
In the run-up to Sunday’s elections, opposition political party members report increased restrictions on their activities. The Semayawi (Blue) Party informed Amnesty International that more than half of their candidates had their registration cancelled by the National Electoral Board. Out of 400 candidates registered for the House of Peoples Representatives, only 139 will be able to stand in the elections.
On 19 May, Bekele Gerba and other members of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC)-Medrek were campaigning in Oromia Region when police and local security officers beat, arrested and detained them for a couple of hours.
On 12 May, security officers arrested two campaigners and three supporters of the Blue Party who were putting up campaign posters in the capital Addis Ababa. They were released on bail after four days in detention.
In March, three armed security officers in Tigray Region severely beat Koshi Hiluf Kahisay, a member of the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum (EFDUD) Arena-Medrek. Koshi Hiluf Kahisay had previously received several verbal warnings from security officials to leave the party or face the consequences.
In January, the police violently dispersed peaceful protesters in Addis Ababa during an event organized by the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ). Police beat demonstrators with batons, sticks and iron rods on the head, face, hands and legs, seriously injuring more than 20 of them.
At least 17 journalists, including Eskinder Nega, Reeyot Alemu and Wubishet Taye, have been arrested and charged under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP), and sentenced to between three and 18 years in prison. Many journalists have fled to neighboring countries because they are afraid of intimidation, harassment and attracting politically motivated criminal charges.
Civil society’s ability to participate in election observation has been restricted under the Charities and Societies Proclamation (CSP) to only Ethiopian mass based organizations aligned with the ruling political party.
Amnesty International calls on the Africa Union Election Observation Mission (AU EOM) currently in Ethiopia to assess and speak to the broader human rights context around the elections in both their public and private reporting. It also calls on the AU EOM to provide concrete recommendations to address the gross, systematic and widespread nature of violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly which have undermined the right to participate in public affairs freely and without fear.
“The African Union’s election observers have a responsibility to pay attention to human rights violations specific to the elections as well as more broadly,” said Wanyeki. “The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights protects the right of Ethiopians to freely participate in their government. This right has been seriously undermined by violations of other civil and political rights in the lead-up to the elections.”
Background
Amnesty International has been monitoring, documenting and reporting on the human rights situation in Ethiopia for more than four decades.
Since the country’s last elections in 2010, the organization has documented arbitrary and politically motivated arrests and detentions, torture and other ill-treatment, as well as gross, systematic and wide-spread violations of the rights to freedom of expression and association.
https://www.amnesty.org/articles/news/2015/05/ethiopia-onslaught-on-human-rights-ahead-of-elections/
UNPO, 22 May 2015
On 20 May 2015, the situation in Ethiopia ahead of the 24 May parliamentary election was discussed during the European Parliament’s monthly plenary session in Strasbourg. After an introductory statement on the EU’s policy towards Ethiopia by Commissioner Christos Stylianides, speaking on behalf of EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, MEPs from across Europe and the political spectrum were given the opportunity to express their point of view on the issue. While several MEPs expressed deep concern for the human rights situation in Ethiopia, especially in the Ogaden region, and argued that the EU should make better use of its power and funds, others underlined the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the country, considered to be a cornerstone for stability in the Horn of Africa. Overall, the debate largely reflected the EU’s dilemma of a constant tradeoff between economic/security related interests and its core values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
That Ethiopia is an important partner to the European Union, especially thanks to the stabilising role it plays in the Horn of Africa and in countering religious extremists such as Al Shaabab, is hardly any breaking news. Neither is the important progress the country has made in terms of economic development in recent years. And yet, this is what the statement of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/ Commission Vice-President Federica Mogherini emphasised, while also, albeit rather softly, approaching the problems surrounding the upcoming Ethiopian election. While recognising that 24 May will not signify a victory for pluralist democracy with a free and fair plebiscite, the statement continued by stressing that the EU has raised its concerns with the Ethiopian government and that democratic transition always takes time.
Among the MEPs participating in the debate, Davor Ivo Stier (EPP), Miroslav Piotrovski (ECR), Cécile Kyenge (S&D), Lidia Senra Rodriguez (GUE), Jordi Sebastiá (EFA/Greens), Bogdan Wenta (EPP), Fabio Massimo Castaldo (EFDD), Josef Weidenholzer (S&D), Alessia Mosca (S&D), Julie Ward (S&D) and Ana Gomes (S&D) expressed great concern with regards to the human rights situation in the country, referring to, amongst others, the appalling statistics on imprisoned and exiled journalists and the difficulties faced by opposition groups who had tried to register for the elections. Many of the aforementioned also highlighted the fact that the previous elections, in 2005 and 2010 respectively, to which the EU had sent election observation missions, had been declared ‘not fair’ – a criticism bluntly rejected by Ethiopia.
The alarming situation in the Ogaden region, where trade and humanitarian embargos, accompanied by severe repression and human rights violations, including systematic rape, are severely affecting the population, was raised by Julie Ward, Ana Gomes, Josef Weidenholzer and Jordi Sebastiá. Well informed about the dynamics in the Horn of Africa, they warned that the situation in Ethiopia is all but stable; on the contrary the Ethiopian Government’s repressive policies are providing fertile ground for extremists to operate on.
Moreover, many of the interventions echoed that the EU and its Member States should be bolder in conditioning development funds to Ethiopia on the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Also highlighted was the importance of carefully monitoring these funds and making sure that they are actually used for development projects, rather than to finance crackdown on dissidents and political opposition movements. In this context, it was recommended that the EU issue a statement ahead of the elections, or immediately after, stating clearly that it does not consider these elections a manifestation of democracy.
Another line of argument was maintained by MEPs Louis Michel (ALDE), James Carver (EFDD), Marie-Christine Arnautu (non-attached) and Steeve Briois (non-attached), who argued that although the EU should encourage Ethiopia to adhere to international human rights standards, the first priorities should be to keep a good relationship with the government and put even more emphasis of the question of regional stability.
Following the heated debate the ball was passed back to the Commission for the HR/VP’s response: whereas the EU will continue to engage in development efforts, it will also work towards strengthening human rights, and deepen its engagement to promote long-term democratisation in Ethiopia. This seemingly vague approach shows that the EU is currently facing a moral dilemma with regards to Ethiopia, whereby the economic and security interests at stake allow for a rather relaxed attitude towards Ethiopia even, if it is clear that the latter does not adhere to the Union’s core values of democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights, including minority rights.
Nevertheless, the announcement made during the Plenary session of HR/VP Mogherini’s intention to travel to Ethiopia in the near future could be seen as an opportunity for the EU to take a firmer stance on the human rights dimension of its relations with Ethiopia under the Cotonou Agreement, and to pressure for the embargo to be lifted and for international NGOs and journalists to be allowed access to the Ogaden region. Although it might be economically beneficial for the EU to maintain its soft approach to Ethiopia in the short term, UNPO firmly holds that the only way to achieve long-term stability and prosperity is through the unconditional fulfilment of the human rights of all Ethiopians, including the Ogaden and Oromo people.
You can access the list of speakers and the video of their statement on the European Parliament’s website(the discussion on the situation in Ethiopia started at 17:10).
Photo courtesy of Gerry Balding@flickr
In advance of Ethiopia’s elections scheduled for May 24, Freedom House issued the following statement and policy recommendations:
“The Ethiopian government’s disregard for international standards for free and fair elections as it prepared for voting should convince the United States that it must rethink and shift its relationship with that government,” said Mark P. Lagon, president of Freedom House. “For Ethiopia to represent a stable, reliable ally in the region, U.S. security and economic assistance must be accompanied by Obama administration strongly urging it take tangible steps to strengthen civil society’s voice, good governance, and democracy.”
Policy Recommendations
Ethiopia is rated Not Free in Freedom in the World 2015, Not Free in Freedom of the Press 2015, and Not Free in Freedom on the Net 2014.
Freedom House is an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.
https://freedomhouse.org/article/ethiopia-elections-signal-need-us-policy-change#.VV_c9dJVikp
The Oromo Federalist Congress’s (OFC/Medrek) last campaign stops before the upcoming Sunday polls were Gujii, Borana and Bale Zones in southern Oromia, and Xuquur Incinii (Diree Badhaas) and Holataa in central Oromia. At each of these campaign stops, OFC/Medrek supporters/voters had come out in huge recording-breaking numbers.
Gujii Zone: Southern Oromia:-
OFC Supporters/ Voters at Nagallee Borana stadium with Baqqalaa Nagaa
Xuquur Incinii (Diree Badhaas) and Holataa: Central Oromia
Dr. Merera Gudina with his supporters in Xuquur Incinii:
Bale: Southern Oromia
Duulli Filannoo Bara kanaaf gaafa Caamsaa 21 bara 2015 kana Godina Baalee Aanaa Sinaannattii fi Gooroo keessatti Dargaggoonnii fi Maanguddoon Biyyaa Waliin gurma’anii Uummanni Aanaa Kanaa Hubannoo Argatee Koongiresii Federaalawaa Oromoo Akka Filatuuf Magaalaa keessa naanna’anii Sochii guddaa gochaa yoo jiru.
Related:
http://www.siitube.com/videos.php?vid=c9565beee
http://www.voaafaanoromoo.com/content/article/2781344.html
VOA Afaan Oromoo, WASHINGTON DC—
Ibsa muummicha ministeeraa kanaaf deebii gama mormitootaan deebii kan nuu kennan barreessaa paartii federaalawaa uummata oromoo obbo Baqqalaa Nagaa turan. Uummata keenya qabsoo inni eegale doorsisi mootummaan oofu hin dhaabsisu jedhan.
Waggoota digdamii afuriif uummatichaaf bu’aa hin buusne har’a ka’anii gama misoomaan uummataan fedhii keen guuta jedhanii waadaa duwwaa seenuun waan fakkaatu miti uummatis gowwoomsamaa hin jiru jedhan obbo baqqalaan.
Mootummaan taajjabdoota keenya ka filannoo maqaa isaanii boordii Filannoo irraa guurratee mana hidhaatti naqaa jira, reebaa fi hiraarsaa jira kan jedhan obbo Baqqalaan filannoo taajjabdoota hin qabne geggeessuuf dhiisuu keenya murteessuuf jirra jedhan.
Nuti kan nuti uummataaf waadaa seennu kanaa fi sanan sii godha jennee gowwoomsuu utuu hin ta’ini yoo carraa arganne sirna dimokraasii fi haqaa diriirsuu dhaan uummati keenya jireenya wayyaawaa akka jiraatu gochuuf qabsoofna jedhechuun obbo Baqqalaan nuuf ibsaniiru.
Burundi’s turmoil points to a shifting social and political landscape
Clár Ní Chonghaile, The Guardian, Thursday 21 May 2015
Analysts see the upheaval in Burundi as symptomatic of a public craving for principled politics and an end to the era of the autocratic statesman
The upheaval in Burundi may bear many of the hallmarks of a classic African military coup but, for some analysts, the crisis is indicative of a newfound public hunger for good governance, and a reaction against administrations run by political strongmen who cloak repression in the trappings of democracy.
As global leaders work on the sustainable development goals (SDGs), a blueprint for governing development over the next 15 years, young people in Burundi are making their own demands, of their leaders as well as international donors.
Their appeals for democracy and abuse-free institutional processes mirror the call in SDG 16 to promote the rule of law, ensure equal access to justice, and develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions.
Burundi refugees say there is no turning back as fears grow of reprisals at home.
Burundi’s crisis began in late April after the ruling CNDD-FDD party nominated President Pierre Nkurunziza to run for a third term in the country’s June elections, despite a two-term constitutional limit. Protesters took to the streets and clashed with police.
Then, on 13 May, Major General Godefroid Niyombare told reporters that he had dismissed the president. The attempted coup was short-lived, however, and Niyombare is now on the run. Nkurunziza is back in charge, and fears of reprisals are widespread.
Rights groups say at least 20 people have been killed and more than 110,000 Burundians have fled to neighbouring countries, raising fears of a “severe humanitarian crisis”.
Some observers predict a drawn-out period of uncertainty and violence, with particular risks for opposition activists and the media. Protests continued on Wednesday, while the government said local and parliamentary elections would be delayed for a week but the presidential elections would go ahead as planned on 26 June.
Some elements of the crisis – the timing of the coup to coincide with the president’s absence at a regional summit, the fear of ethnic tensions exploding – seem to hark back to Burundi’s unstable past. But Jesper Bjarnesen, senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, says the dynamic is different this time.
Bjarnesen visited the Burundian capital Bujumbura recently and met with young activists who style themselves “the Arusha generation”, a nod to the peace accords that, in 2005, brought an end to a 12-year civil war between Hutu rebels and the mainly Tutsi army.
For these activists, ethnicity is no more the issue than Nkurunziza himself: rather, they feel the president has violated the constitution.
“It’s about political principles,” says Bjarnesen. “That is remarkable. It’s not that long ago that ethnicity was in many ways the … defining split. What I got from [the activists] was this sense that formal politics are just not a useful medium for those not in power.”
Yolande Bouka, a researcher in conflict prevention and risk analysis at the Institute for Security Studies, says Burundi’s government has long shown a disdain for the Arusha peace accords that has chipped away at trust between political actors.
The protestors and the opponents to Nkurunziza’s third term are trying to evoke an African spring
Jesper Bjarnesen, senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute
“Should the conflict drag on and erode inter-ethnic trust … it is possible to see a flare-up of ethnic tensions,” says Bouka, adding that the international community should have acted sooner on warning signs that the authorities were cracking down on dissent after the 2010 elections.
Nkurunziza is not alone in attempting to use almost absolute political power to extend his rule. Next door, Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, is said to be considering another term despite a two-term limit. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, already one of Africa’s longest serving leaders, has already changed the constitution to allow him to run again.
There are more cautionary tales. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila was forced to withdraw a bill seen as an attempt to extend his term after protests in January. Nkurunziza may also be mindful of Burkina Faso’s former president, Blaise Compaoré, one of Africa’s longest serving leaders, who was forced from office after he tried to change the constitution and run for another term.
End of Africa’s ‘big men’?
The idea that the “big man” model of rule is running out of steam may be gaining traction among the continent’s leaders.
At a regional summit this week, west African heads of state discussed a proposal to limit presidential mandates. The proposal was rejected because of opposition from Gambia and Togo, where there are no term limits, Reuters reported. But the discussion did not go unnoted.
“The protestors and the opponents to Nkurunziza’s third term are trying to evoke an African spring, with Burkina Faso setting the precedent. They are trying to use public protests to end a regime that has used both legal and illegal ways of reinforcing its grip on power,” says Bjarnesen.
Burundi unrest leaves 50,000 refugees facing dire conditions in Tanzania.
Thierry Vircoulon, project director for central Africa at the International Crisis Group, says Burundi’sproblems are in the 2010 elections, which most opposition parties boycotted.
“The first mandate of President Nkurunziza was about the consolidation of his power within the ruling party, and his second mandate was about the consolidation of his grip over the institutions and the preparation of his third mandate. This is a pattern that we see in a lot of post-conflict regimes in the region,” says Vircoulon.
A former Belgian colony, Burundi is one of Africa’s poorest countries, ranking 180 out of 187 states in the 2014 UN human development index. It relies on foreign aid for half its national budget. Britain’s Department for International Development ended bilateral aid in 2012, and has been criticised by a parliamentary committee for doing so.
Bjarnesen says that while donors are in a catch-22 situation, suspending assistance will only hurt the poorest. This month, the EU said it would withhold €2m ($2.2m) of aid, while Belgium also announced a suspension of electoral aid.
“Cutting aid in itself just does not work,” says Bjarnesen. “The threat now of cutting funding to the elections, who is that serving?”
For Bjarnesen, elections now would be devastating for the opposition but perhaps palatable to international partners – a situation that encapsulates an ideological tug-of-war between the merits of stability versus true democracy.
“To a large extent, the international community would rather have some sort of elections and then relative stability rather than continued political instability with the threat of conflict,” he says.
“That’s the biggest weakness of the response from the international community: it’s so short-sighted and focused on visible symptoms … whereas what is actually keeping the status quo is this kind of structural violence that has been in place since Nkurunziza came to power.”
Bjarnesen is critical of “international lenience” towards African governments. “The argument would be these are young democracies, they need time to develop … I think that moment has passed. I don’t see any reason why you would measure democracy in Burundi against standards other than those you use in the UK or Sweden.”
Peoples under Threat is Minority Rights Group’s annual authoritative rankings table which highlights those countries around the world where the risk of mass killing is greatest. Peoples under Threat is created by compiling data on the known antecedents to genocide or mass political killing. While the individual indicators describe the current situation – what is happening – the index as a whole seeks to predict what may happen. As an early warning tool, Peoples under Threat has been widely used by UN officials and other human rights and conflict prevention practitioners. Almost all the significant episodes of civilian killing that occurred over the last year took place in countries which were near the top of, or major risers in, 2015’s Peoples under Threattable. The Peoples under Threat ranking highlights countries most at risk of genocide and mass killing. The ranking is created by compiling data on the known antecedents to genocide or mass political killing. Click on a country to view its Peoples under Threat information. The large orange number indicates the country’s position in the ranking. http://peoplesunderthreat.org/ Indigenous people at risk , Anuak, Afars, Oromo, Somalis, smaller minorities Oromo rally in London Communities at risk in Ethiopia: Anuak, Afars, Oromo, Somalis, smaller minorities
The report shows that Ethiopia ranked ninth in 2014’s Peoples under Threat index – the same position as in 2013’s index. It is one of the countries that ranked the risk for genocidal mass killing is the highest. The culprit is the government controlled by the TPLF regime.
| 2015 Data | Peoples under Threat value |
|---|---|
| Self-determination conflicts | 5 |
| Major armed conflict | 1 |
| Prior genocide / politicide | 1 |
| Flight of refugees and IDPs | 0.0013 |
| Legacy of vengeance – group grievance | 8.9 |
| Rise of factionalized elites | 8.7 |
| Voice and Accountability | -1.293 |
| Political Stability | -1.394 |
| Rule of Law | -0.622 |
| OECD country risk classification | 7 |
| TOTAL | 16.38 |
Ethiopia ranked ninth in 2014’s Peoples under Threat index – the same position as in 2013’s index.
How is Peoples under Threat calculated? Since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, our ability to identify those situations most likely to lead to genocide or mass killing has improved. A number of comparative studies of the factors preceding historic episodes of political mass killing had been undertaken since the 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that researchers pioneered quantitative longtitudinal analysis of a wide range of such factors, enabling the testing of different causal hypotheses. This research enabled the identification of those preconditions that were most likely to lead to genocide and political mass murder (politicide). Minority Rights Group International has drawn on these research fi ndings to construct the Peoples under Th reat table, although responsibility for the fi nal table is exclusively our own. Peoples under Th reat is specifi cally designed to identify the risk of genocide, mass killing or other systematic violent repression, unlike most other early warning tools, which focus on violent confl ict as such. Its primary application is civilian protection. Indicators of confl ict are included in the table’s construction, however, as most, although not all, episodes of mass ethnic or religious killing occur during armed confl icts. War provides the state of emergency, domestic mobilization and justifi cation, international cover, and in some cases the military and logistic capacity, that enable massacres to be carried out. Some massacres, however, occur in peacetime, or may accompany armed confl ict from its inception, presenting a problem to risk models that focus exclusively on current confl icts. In addition, severe and even violent repression of minorities may occur for years before the onset of armed confl ict provides the catalyst for larger scale killing. Th e statistical indicators used all relate to the state. Th e state is the basic unit of enquiry, rather than particular ethnic or religious groups at risk, as governments or militias connected to the government are responsible for most cases of genocidal violence. Formally, the state will reserve to itself the monopoly over the legitimate means of violence, so that where non-state actors are responsible for widespread or continued killing, it usually occurs with either the complicity of the state or in a ‘failed state’ situation where the rule of law has disintegrated. Certain characteristics at the level of the state will greatly increase the likelihood of atrocity, including habituation to illegal violence among the armed forces or police, prevailing impunity for human rights violations, official tolerance or encouragement of hate speech against particular groups, and in extreme cases, prior experience of mass killing. Egregious episodes of mass killing targeted principally at one group have also seen other groups deliberately decimated or destroyed. However, some groups may experience higher levels of discrimination and be at greater risk than others in any given state. Minority Rights Group International has identifi ed those groups in each state which we believe to be under most threat. (Th is does not mean that other groups or indeed the general population may not also be at some risk.) It should be noted that although these groups are most often minorities, in some cases ethnic or religious majorities will also be at risk and in relevant cases are therefore also listed in the table. In some cases, all the groups in the country are at risk of ethnic or sectarian killing. Th e overall measure is based on a basket of ten indicators. Th ese include indicators of democracy or good governance from the World Bank; confl ict data from the Heidelberg Institute for International Confl ict Research and the Center for Systemic Peace; data on the fl ight of refugees, internally-displaced persons and other populations of concern from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees; indicators of group division or elite factionalization from the Fund for Peace and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the US State Failure Task Force data on prior genocides and politicides; and the country credit risk classifi cation published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (as a proxy for trade openness). For citations and further information, see the notes to the table. For a fuller discussion of the methodology, see State of the World’s Minorities 2006. Based on current indicators from authoritative sources, Peoples under Threat seeks to identify those groups or peoples most under threat in 2015. http://www.minorityrights.org/13054/attachments/MRG_SWM15_PUTBrief_COMB_8.pdf
Mootummaan Wayyaanee filannoo isaa Caamsaa 24, 2015 Dilbata dhufu geggeeffatuun walqabatee Oromiyaa keessatti iddoowwan Fincilli ummataa ni dhoha jedhee sodaatutti karaa ittiinan dhaamsuu danda’a jedhu humna waraanaatti dabalatee karoora biraa baafatee socho’aa jiraachuun isaa saaxilame.
Filannoon kun filannoo dimokraatawaa, bilisaa fi haqummaa kan hin qabne, ulaagaa filannoo addunyaan beekuu kan hin guutnee fi taajjabdootni idil addunyaa tokkollee kan irratti hin argamne filmaata fakkeessii fi waliin dhahaa tahuun isaa yoo beekamu, mootummaan Wayyaanee filannichaan booda diddaan ummatootaa akka hin dhalanne, addatti ammoo Oromiyaa keessatti Fincilli ummataa fi dargaggootaa ka’uu danda’a sodaa jedhuun diddaa dhalatu dhaamsuuf humna waraanaa, poolisaa fi humnoota tikaa bobbaafatee jirutti dabalee karaa ittiin diddaan kun hin babal’anne tooftaa ittiinan dhaamsa jedhu kan biraa lafa kaawwatee socho’aa jiraachuu Maddeen Oduu SBO saaxilaniiru.
Haaluma kanaan mootummaan abbaa irree fi goolessaan Wayyaanee Oromiyaa keessaa bakkoota fincilli ummataa fi dargaggootaan ka’uu danda’a jedhee sodaataa jiru Dhiha Shawaa, Baha Wallaggaa, Naqamtee fi naannoo ishee, Lixa Wallaggaa D.Doolloo fi naannoo isheetti akkuma adeemsi filannoo xumurameen naannolee kanatti mo’amneerra jedhee labsuun diddaan ummata Oromoo akka hin kaane, bakkoota biraattis fincilli ummataa fi dargaggootaan akka hin qabsiifamne ukkaamsee hambisuuf karoorfatee akka jiru maddeen SBO ifa godhanii jiran.
Filannoo kanaan walqabatee naannolee kanatti mormii ummataa dhalatuu malu tooftaa kanaan ukkaamsinaan bakkoota biratti fincilli hin dhalatu, hin babal’atu, salphaatti filannoo keenya milkii fi injifannoo paartii IHADGn xumurachuu dandeenya jechuun itti amantaan socho’aa jiraachuun isaanii saaxilameera.
Oromiyaa keessattis haa ta’u, naannolee empaayerattii hunda keessatti mootummaan Wayyaanee/IHADG filannoo kana waliin dhahee, korojoo hatee, ummatas doorsisee fi tokko shaneen walitti hidhee akkuma duraanii injifannoo kijibaa labsachuun isaa waan dirree jiru, shakkii tokkollee kan hin qabne ta’uu kan hubachiisan maddeen SBO, karoorri Oromiyaa keessatti fincila ummataa dhaamsuuf Dhiha Shawaa, Baha Wallaggaa, Naqamtee, D.Doolloo fi bakkoota biraatti baafamee jiru kan mul’isu, sagalee ummataa ukkaamsuuf shira olaanaa xaxamaa jiru ta’uun isaa akkuma jirutti ta’ee, mormitootni barcuma lama, shan ykn kudhan argatanii paarlamaa galanii teenyaan isaan gaha jechuu akka ta’e kan mul’isuu dha jedhaniiru.
Kanas ta’e sanas filannoo waliin dhahaa sirna mootummaa Wayyaanee jalatti geggeeffamuun murna shiftaa aangoo humna qawween qabate Wayyaanee aangoo irraa kaasanii sagalee ummataa, waan ummatni fedhu argamsiisuun akka hin danda’amne sabboontotni Oromoo yaada agabaastota SBOf kennaniin mul’isuun, mormitootni maqaa Oromoon jiran barcuma murtooftuu argatanii paarlamaa seenanii taa’uun rakkoo fi gidiraa sirna cunqursaa ummata Oromoo irratti barootaaf jiraate furuu akka hin dandeenye, kaleessas akka hin danda’amiin addeessaniiru.
Kanaaf ummatni Oromoo, ka’imman Oromoo waca filannoo kanaan dahatee deemaa jiruun osoo hin dagamne, keessaa fi alatti irree isaa gamteeffachuun bilisummaa fi mirga abbaa biyyummaa isaa dhugoomfachuuf qabsoo isaa caalaatti jabeeffatee, FDG bifa gara garaan deemaa jirus daran babal’isee finiinsuu akka qabu sabboontotni Oromoo dhaamsa isaanii dabarsanii jiru.
Addi Bilisummaa Oromoo (ABO)n filannoo Wayyaanee kana ilaalchisuun ibsa Caamsaa 18,2015 baaseen, Filannoon Caamsaa 24, 2015nitti baallamamee jiru Wayyaanee aangomsuun alatti faydaa biraa ummatootaaf argamsiisu tokkollee akka hin qabne ifa gochuun, ummatni Oromoo haqa kana hubatuun furaan dhibdee isaa qabsoon malee kan hin argamne tahuu beekee, filannoo kijibaan akka hin dagamne, mirgaa fi bilisummaa isaa qabsoo isaan gonfachuuf jabaatee akka warraaqu ibsa kanaan yaamicha isaa dabarsee jira.
http://gadaa.net/FinfinneTribune/2015/05/sbo-oduu-filannoo-wayyaanee-caamsaa-20-2015/
Oromoon Obbo Gabru G/M Uturaa waliin lafa sochoosuun degersa Kongiresa Federaalawaa Oromoo qaban haala o’aan muli’san.
The Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC/Medrek) campaign tour has continued in south and south western Oromia. On the 19th and 20th May 2015 , the campaign tour made a stop at Beddelle in Illuu Abbaa Boora, South Western Oromia (led by Baqqalaa Garbaa) and in Shaakkiso & Bule Hora in Guji/Borana, Southern Oromia (led by Baqqalaa Nagaa).Yet again, the OFC rally drew massive turnouts in thousands as potential voters, who braved the constant harassment and intimidation of Ethiopia’s tyrannic TPLF regime to express their solidarity with OFC/Medrek. https://www.oromiamedia.org/2015/05/omn-oduu-caamsaa-19-2015/ Here are some of the pictures from Bule Hora viral in social media:- Deeggarsi Caamsaa 19 fi 20 bara 2015 Magaalaa Bulee Horaatti Barreessaa Olaanaa Koongirensii Federaalawaa Oromoo Obbo Baqqalaa Naggaaf Godhamaa Ture Hedduu Kan Nama Gammachiisuu fi Nama Boonsu Dha. 
https://www.oromiamedia.org/2015/05/omn-duula-filannoo-kfoofc-caamsaa-20-2015/
https://www.oromiamedia.org/2015/05/omn-oduu-caamsaa-19-2015/ Godina Wallaggaa Aanaalee Jimmaa Arjoo fi Waayyuu Qilxuu Keessatti Diddaan Uummataa Jabinaan Itti Fufe,Ummannis Wagahii Duula Filatnoo Wayyaanee Guututti Lagate. May 20, 2015 Gabaasa Qeerroo Caamsaa 19,2015 Naqamte
Godina Wallaggaa Aanaalee Jimmaa Arjoo gandoota Waayyuu Qilxuu,Kamisa Beeraa fi aanaa Nuunnuu Qumbaa ganda Bildiimmaa Qexxoo keessatti guyyaa kaleessaa uummati bakkeewwan kana jiraatu Wayyaanee fi jala deemtotashee OPDOtti waaroo salphinaa uffisan Onaa Jimmaa Arjoottis ta’e walii gala biyyattiitti filmaata sobaa geggeessituuf mootummaan Wayyaaneen tokkoshaneen nafiladhaa jedhus falmii jabaan uummata irraa itti ka’aa jira. Jimmaa Arjoo gandoota Waayyuu Qilxuu fi Kamisa beeraatti uumnata bobbaasee wayita Mootummaan Wayyaaneen akka hayyudureen tokko Shane’s isinitti agarsiisutti nufiladhaa yeroo jedhu uummati walgahii harkatti fashaleessuun kaabinoota haalaan naasuun akka rifatan Qeerroo Jimma arjoo gabaasee jira. Oduu walfakkaatuun achuma ollichatti kan argamu aanaa nuunnuu qumbaa ganda Bildiimmaa qexoorraas uumnati biyyi tokko shaneen filannoo geggeessitu addunyaa kanarraa dhaga’amee hin beeku jechuun FDG Wayyaanerratti waan dhageessisaniif yeroo ammaa kana namni bakka bakkatti sosso’uuf rakkoo guddaa keessa akka jiran Qeerroon gabaasa.
Bontu Bekele & other youth predict victory for OFC/Medrek in Finfinne, in the absence of electoral fraud (VOA)
Do not allow TPLF’s electoral fraud.
From procedural violations of electoral law that is to distort results to the outright use of violence against opposition candidates and voters, what TPLF Ethiopia is doing is electoral Frauds. By means of electoral fraud or vote rigging TPLF is illegally interfering with the process of an election. That is to continue in its tyrannic rules.
In free and fair elections citizens each get one ballot and one vote. This is their right and it is their right to vote freely for whoever they want, without anyone doing anything to stop them. That’s how democratic elections work.
However, electoral frauds are the opposite of the free and the fair. As experts in the field demonstrate, electoral fraud is the most serious form of electoral malpractice, which is almost any wrong doing affecting election procedures and materials.
Studies show that electoral fraud is most likely to occur during elections in countries where basic freedoms and rights are not sufficiently guaranteed. As electoral fraud is most likely to occur in countries where freedoms and rights are not sufficiently guaranteed, and the election in TPLF Ethiopia today is being held under these conditions, then electoral fraud is to be expected in many ways. As TPLF is working 100 % to fraud the election, the amount and severity of TPLF’s fraud depends on (can only be minimized by) the ability of the voters (public), the international community, and other social institutions (political parties, independent media, civil rights advocates, monitoring organizations, etc.) to effectively stand to protect the freedoms and rights of voters and candidates. In this completely tyrannic system, independent media and civil right organizations are already curtailed.
It is indisputable that electoral fraud is a violation of some of the most sacred political rights, such as the right to freely vote and to stand for elections. In fact, the most frequent allegations of electoral fraud arose in countries classified by Freedom House as not free or partly free. Freedom House classifies Ethiopia as not free.
Fraudulent electoral commission: The Electoral Authority or Electoral Management Body (EMB) that administering the elections suppose to perform in a neutral manner, regardless of whether its part of the executive branch of government or form an independent electoral commission. The latter is currently the prevailing model worldwide. But in the TPLF Ethiopia’s elections the board is fraudulent appointed by TPLF to serve TPLF tyranny to stay in power contrary to the public’s will.
TPLF is intimidating voters (opposition):If someone is intimidated to vote (or not vote) then this is electoral fraud. The TPLF securities are threatening candidates and voters with terror, injury, damage or harm. TPLF’s Agazi is treating opposition candidates and civilian with violence.
Bribing voters: TPLF also buys voters and candidates.TPLF also has set up many fake parties that pretend as independent. This is electoral fraud.
Voting as someone else (TPLF’s made up cards):The person could be alive, dead or completely made up -if someone pretends to be someone other than themselves in order to vote they have committed electoral fraud.
Treating: Paying for food, drink or entertainment in exchange for voting or not voting. This is identified as being used by TPLF.
Multiple voting: It is illegal to vote on behalf of someone else unless some one is officially appointed as their proxy.
Secrecy: Each ballot paper is secret, asking someone to reveal their ballot paper is an offence. TPLF is forcing people to sign for TPLF through its 1-5 spy structure.
False registration information: It is an offence to deliberately give wrong information when applying to register. All these are in use by TPLF as it controls the elections process.
Political communication, civic education and voter information: Genuine elections allowing for the free expression of the will of the people require a level playing field. This is a precondition for political parties and candidates to be able to convey their programs and platforms to the public on a fairly equal basis in all areas of the country where they compete. A level playing field would also require that voters are given the necessary information to properly handle a ballot paper as well as to make a free choice among different options. As a tyrannic system, freedom of information, communication and expressions are continue to be curtailed in Ethiopia now.
Voting and counting operations: In free and fair elections, voting procedures should be guided by the principles of transparency and equal application for all voters. Standards include: equal access to polling stations (including transportation and accessibility for the disabled); voting booth placement for secrecy of the ballot; neutral and effective polling station staff; safeguards against double voting (voter identification and/or indelible ink); facilitating the completion of the ballot (ballot format, vote by the disabled or the illiterate); and, presence of party and candidate representatives. Except as otherwise dictated by extraordinary security circumstances, the first count of the votes will be made at the polling station level with party representatives and other observers present. More aggregated counts will also be completed and witnessed.by party representatives and other observers. Party representatives should be entitled to receive a copy of tallies. The TPLF/Woyane, in its electoral fraud system is busy all over in putting its garbage in aiming for the garbage outcome.
https://www.oromiamedia.org/2015/05/omn-oduu-amma-nu-gahe-breaking-news-caamsaa-19-2015/
https://www.oromiamedia.org/2015/05/omn-oduu-caamsaa-19-2015/
https://www.oromiamedia.org/2015/05/omn-duula-filannoo-kfoofc-caamsaa-19-2015/
Henok Fente, Eskinder Frew, VOA Afaan Oromoo 18.05.2015
FINFINNEE—
Bakkee Jaan meedaa jedhamutti kanneen argaman deggertootaa fi miseensota paarti MEDREK 200 hin caalle turan. Kanaaf jecha wal ga’iin sun geggeessamuu kan hin dandeenye ta’uu miseensota, deggertootaaf gaazexeessota achitti argamaniif kan ibsan barreessaa paartii medreK obbo Gebru G/Mariyaam turan.
Kanaaf kan itti gaafatamu hiriirri sun waltajjii Masqalaatti akka hin geggeeffamne kan dhorke bulchiinsa magaalaa Finfinnee, IHADEG fi poolisii dha jedhan.
Wal ga’ii nuti har’a waamne akkuma sila jedhame waltajjii Masqalatti ture. Hin eeyamamu jechuu dhaan asitti akka geggeessamu ta’e. Asi immoo naannoon isaa poolisii dhaan marfamee, poolisiinis isa kana duraa caalaa heddumminaan ba’ee uummati akka rifatu godhe jedhan.
Kanneen ofi irra deebi’anis jiru. Kanaaf kaadhimamtoonni magaalaa Finfinnee ofii isaanii beeksisuuf wal ga’ii isaan har’a waaman akka barbaadametti milkaa’uu baatu iyyuu kanneen asitti argamtan uummata keenyaaf ergaa dabarsuuf ni geessu waan ta’eef soda kana bira darbitanii asitti argamuu keessaniif maqaa kaadhimamtootaa fi maqaa paartii Medrekiin isinan galateeffadha jedhan.
Barreessichi Medrek VOAf akka ibsanitti wal ga’iin sun maaliif utuu hin geggeessamin akka hafe dubbataniiru. IHADEG ofii isaatiif wal ga’ii garaa garaa asitti waamee jira. Namoota karaa adda addaan gara wal ga’ii kanaa dhufanis ni dhorku jedhan. Hiriira kana irratti uummata hagamiitu argama jettanii tilmaamtanii turtan isa jedhuuf ennaa deebisan:
Nuti uummata kuma 35-50 oltu argama jennee eegaa turre. Kana immoo wal ga’iilee kutaalee biyyaatti geggeessine irratti arginee jirra. TV irrattis argamee jira. Inni kan Finfinnee waan addaa miti. Garuu dhiibbaa nu irra kaa’ameen ba’iin isaa kana ta’eera. Gama keenyaan ergaan darbeera waan ta’eef hagas waan nu jeequ miti jedhaniiru.
Bulchiinsi magaalaa Finfinnee gama isaan deebii kenneen waltajjiin Masqalaa waan hin eeyamamneef sababi isaa maal akka ta’e ibsee jira.
Bulchiinsa Finfinneetti itti gaafatamaan daayroktreetii kaabinee obbo Feleqee Negaash akka jedhanitti haalli qabatamaan waltajjii masqalaa ifaa dha. Waltajjiin sun ijaarsi daandii baaburaa fi sochiiwwan ka biroon naannoo itti geggeessamu waan ta’eef wal ga’iif akka hin eeyamamne ibsaniiru.
Yeroo dhiyoo wal ga’ii ittisa laga Abayaa ilaallate kanneen geggeessan angawoota mootummaa ol aanoos waltajjii masqalaatti akka hin geggeessine dhorkinee turre jedhan. Obbo Feleqeen akka jedhanitti Medrek wal ga’ii sana akka geggeessuuf garuu JAN MEDAn eeyamameera jedhan.
Paartii Medrek ilaalchisuun komeewwan kanneen biroon dhiyaatan garuu Finfinnee dhaa ala waan ta’aniif raga akka hin qabaanne tuqaniiru. Mana maree bakka bu’otaaf kanneen dorgoman kaadhimamtoota 270 kan dhiyeesse Medrek, naannolee adda addaa keessatti duula filannoo geggeessaa jira. Dura taa’aa paartichaa dabalatee bulchiinsi ol aanaan ka Medrek har’a Jan Meedaatti hin argamne. Paarticha bakka bu’uun kan dubbatan obbo Gebru G/mariyaam garuu filannoon sun kan haqaaf walabaa akka ta’u paartii biyya bulchuuf waamicha dabarsaniiru.
Ka biroo deggeraa Medrek kan ta’an obbo Tesfaye Aberra kanneen hiriira har’a Medrek waame irratti hirmaatan keessaa si’a ta’an paartiin isaanii IHADEG caalaa waan wayyu fidee dhufa jettanii yaaddu isa jedhuuf ennaa deebisan:
IHADEG guddina dinagdee wayyaawaa galmeessisaan jira yeroo jedhaa jirutti filannoon kun geggeessama. Kun sagalee Medrek argachuu male dhabsiisa jettanii hin tilmaamtanii? Obbo Tesfayen akkas jedhan.
http://www.voaafaanoromoo.com/content/article/2776212.html
“Ruling party can’t win in Oromia without electoral fraud,” Dr. Merera Gudina, speaking to VOA
Related: Oromo Youth in Ciroo Town (Harargee, Oromia) During OFC/Medrek’s Campaign
http://finfinnetribune.com/Gadaa/2015/05/video-oromo-youth-in-ciroo-town-during-ofcmedreks-campaign/
The mathematician said that if the glass is equally half full and half empty, then half full = half empty; therefore ½ x F = ½ x E; therefore (by multiplying both sides of the equation by 2) we show that F = E; i.e. Full equals Empty!
Ethiopia Ranks 115 out of 124 countries in Human Capital Index 2015 Rank
Ethiopia ranks at 115 out of 124 countries in the ‘Human Capital Index’ because of its poor performance on educational outcomes, says the Human Capital Report 2015 issued by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The index is dominated by European countries with two countries from the Asia and Pacific region and one from the North America region also making it into the top 10.
Finland topped the ranking of the Human Capital Index in 2015, scoring 86% of its human capital, followed by Norway, Switzerland, Canada and Japan.
Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Belgium also seized the places in the top 10 list. Ethiopia scored 50.25 out of 100.
The leaders of the index are high-income economies that have placed importance on high educational attainment and a correspondingly large share of high-skilled employment.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) released the Human Capital Report 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday 14 May 2015.
The WEF prepared the report in collaboration with Mercer, an American global human resource and related financial services consulting firm.
The report elaborates the status of different countries across the world on the Human Capital Index and provides key inputs for policy makers to augment capacities of human capital in 124 countries it has surveyed.
In the index, WEF highlighted Ethiopia’s scarcity of skilled employees, poor ability to nurture talent through educating, training and employing its people.
“Talent, not capital, will be the key factor linking innovation, competitiveness and growth in the 21st century,” said WEF Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab releasing the report at a news conference in Cologny, near Geneva, Switzerland.
In sub-Saharan Africa, Mauritius (72) holds the highest position in the region. While another six countries rank between 80 and 100, another 17 countries from Africa rank below 100 in the index. South Africa is in 92nd place and Kenya at 101. The region’s most populous country, Nigeria (120) is among the bottom three in the region, while the second most populous country, Ethiopia, is in 115th place. With the exception of the top-ranked country, the region is characterized by chronically low investment in education and learning.
Human Capital Index 2015 regional Ranks
Except Yemen (40.7) all the 10 poorest performers are African Countries: Ethiopia (50.25), Burkina Faso (49.22), Ivory Coast ( 49.02), Mali (48.51), Guinea (48.25), Nigeria (48.43), Burundi (46.76), Mauritania (42.29) and Chad (41.1).
The countries are ranked on the basis of 46 indicators that track “how well countries are developing and deploying their human capital focusing on education, skills and employment”.
The index takes a life-course approach to human capital, evaluating the levels of education, skills and employment available to people in five distinct age groups, starting from under 15 years to over 65 years. The aim is to assess the outcome of past and present investments in human capital and offer insight into what a country’s talent base will look like in the future.
http://reports.weforum.org/human-capital-report-2015/press-releases/
Iodine deficiency and women’s health: Colonialism’s malign effect on health in Oromia region, in Ethiopia
http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=31970#.VVo8N7lVikp
Affiliation(s), Toronto Public Health, Toronto, Canada
ABSTRACT
Objectives: Iodine is an essential nutrient needed for the synthesis of hormone thyroxin. Hormone thyroxin is involved in the metabolism of several nutrients, the regulation of enzymes and differentiation of cells, tissues and organs. Iodine deficiency (ID) impairs the development of the brain and nervous system. It affects cognitive capacity, educability, productivity and child mortality. ID hinders physical strength and causes reproductive failure. The objective of this paper is to explore if the health impacts of ID are more common and severe among women. Design: Using primary data (notes from a visit) and secondary data, this paper examines if the effects of ID are more common and severe among Oromo women inEthiopia. Findings: The health impacts of ID are more common and severe among women. Conclusions: ID is an easily preventable nutritional problem. In Oromia, the persistence of ID is explained by the Ethiopian government’s colonial social policies. Preventing ID should be seen as part of the efforts we make to enhance capacity building, promote health, gender equity and social justice. Implications: Iodine deficiency has a wide range of biological, social, economic and cultural impacts. Preventing ID can be instrumental in bringing about gender equity and building the capacity of people.
KEYWORDS
Cite this paper
| [1] | Dugassa, B. and Negassa, A. (2012) Understanding the ecology of iodine deficiency and its public health implications: The case of oromia region in Ethiopia. Journal of Community Nutrition & Health, 1, 4-17. |
| [2] | UNICEF (2008) Sustainable elimination of iodine deficiency, progress since the 1990. World Summit for Children. http://www.childinfo.org/files/idd_sustainable_elimination.pdf |
| [3] | Iodine Network (2012) Country profiles Ethiopia. http://iodinenetwork.net/countries/Ethiopia.htm#6 |
| [4] | WHO (2007) Iodine deficiency in Europe: A continuing public health problem. In: Anderson, M., De Benoist, B., Darnton-Hill, I. and Delange, F., Eds., France. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9789241593960_eng.pdf |
| [5] | WHO (2010) Ethiopia: Health profile. http://www.who.int/gho/countries/eth.pdf |
| [6] | WHO (2010) Kenya: Health profile. http://www.who.int/gho/countries/ken.pdf |
| [7] | Stewart, G., Carter, J., Parker, A. and Alloway, B. (2003) The illusion of environmental iodine deficiency. Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 25, 165-170. doi:10.1023/A:1021281822514 |
| [8] | Meletis, C. and Zabriskie, N. (2007) Iodine, a critically overlooked nutrient. Alternative & Complementary Therapies, 13, 132-136. doi:10.1089/act.2007.13309 |
| [9] | Hetzel, B. and Mano, A. (1989) A review of experimental studies of iodine deficiency during fetal development. Journal of Nutrition, 119, 145-151. |
| [10] | Ingenbleek, Y. and Jung, L.B. (1999) A new iodized oil for eradicating endemic goiter. In: Abdulla, M., Bost, M., Gamon, S., Arnaud, P. and Chazot, G., Eds., New Aspects of Trace Element Research, Smith-Gordon, London.
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By Terrence Lyons, The Washington Post
Ethiopia, Washington’s security partner and Africa’s second most populous country, is scheduled to hold national elections on May 24. The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and its allied parties won 99.6 percent of the seats in the last round of elections in 2010. There is no doubt that the ruling party will win again.
The party has ruled since 1991 when it seized power following a prolonged civil war. It dominates all major political, economic, and social institutions, has virtually eliminated independent political space, and opposition parties are fractured and harassed. Ethiopia has jailed more journalists than any other country in Africa.
The EPRDF is an extremely strong and effective authoritarian party. Yet Wendy Sherman, the Under Secretary of Political Affairs in the Department of State, recently said, “Ethiopia is a democracy that is moving forward in an election that we expect to be free, fair and credible.” What roles do elections play in authoritarian states and what, if anything, do they have to do with “free, fair, and credible” standards?
Part of the answer is to recognize that elections and political parties in autocratic states play different roles than they do in democratic states. Electoral processes are used by authoritarian regimes to consolidate power and to demonstrate the ruling party’s dominance, as argued by scholars of comparative politics such as Schedler and Gandhi and Lust-Okar. Research by Geddes shows that single-party authoritarian regimes tend to be more stable and last longer than military or personalistic ones. Strong partiesmanage instability by encouraging intra-elite compromise, co-opting opposition, and institutionalizing incentives to reward loyalty. Elections and strong political parties thereby contribute to “authoritarian resilience,” as scholars note with reference to China, Iran and Syria, and Zimbabwe.
Non-competitive elections are common in authoritarian states and incumbents often win by incredible margins. In Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir won 94 percent of the vote in April 2015 elections, Uzbek President Islam Karimov over 90 percent in March 2015, and Kazak President Nursultan Nazarbayev 97 percent in April 2015. Rwandan President PaulKagame, when asked if his 93 percent landslide in 2010 represented the will of the people, reportedly answered: “So, 93 percent – I wonder why it wasn’t higher than that?” The EPRDF’s 99.6 percent victory in 2010 createdcredibility problems in North American and European capitals where diplomats often asked, “Couldn’t they have just won by 60 or 75 percent?” But the point of elections under authoritarian rule is not to obtain a working majority or to win international approval. The purpose is to dominate domestic politics completely and thereby deter any leader from thinking he or she could challenge ruling party successfully. The dramatic, overwhelming victories send an important domestic message of strength and power, even as they strain credibility abroad.
The EPRDF recognizes the dangers it faces from competitive elections and that it democratizes at its peril. In 2005 Ethiopia held competitive elections, complete with significant opposition participation, major rallies, and televised debates. According to official results, the opposition’s share of seats in parliament increased from 12 to 172, representing 31 percent of the total. The opposition parties swept all the seats in Addis Ababa and many cabinet ministers and high-ranking officials lost their positions. This shift represented the potential for an important advance in democratization and a major break in the ruling party’s domination.
Members of the opposition, however, refused to accept the results and claimed that massive fraud had denied them outright victory. Some opposition leaders boycotted the parliament. Post-election demonstrations turned violent and were brutally put down by the Ethiopian military, leaving nearly 200 dead and an estimated 30,000 arrested. The 2005 election began with a democratic opening but ended with what the Department of State characterized as the criminalization of dissent.
In the aftermath of the 2005 crisis, the EPRDF responded by demonstrating its extraordinary strength in using the levers of state power and its considerable organizational capacities to control all aspects of political life. New laws largely eliminated civil society institutions and the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation has been used against journalists and other critics. Just before a visit by Secretary of State Kerry in April 2014, the regime arrested a group of young bloggers who called themselves Zone Nine and charged them with terrorism. Washington recently urged Addis Ababa “to refrain from using its Anti-Terrorism Proclamation as a mechanism to curb the free exchange of ideas.”
As a consequence of its restrictions on politics over the past decade, the ruling party has little to worry about with regard to the opposition parties competing in the upcoming elections. The limits on formal political competition have made social mobilization outside of the electoral process more important. A series of non-violent protests in 2012 by Ethiopian Muslims provided an important model of sustained, peaceful social mobilization. The regime arrested the movement’s leadership and has tried to link the protests to external enemies and terrorism. In 2014, the security services quickly suppressed demonstrations on university campuses by Oromos, highlighting the historical sense of marginalization perceived by many in Ethiopia’s single largest ethnic group. In April 2015, a government organized rally to mourn the killing of Ethiopian migrants in Libya by the Islamic State (ISIS) ended with arrests and clashes between security forces and protestors. The Ethiopian regime has managed each of these challenges without significant difficulty but the underlying grievances remain.
blob:https%3A//www.youtube.com/4b8fffcb-345b-4b23-b7b3-e2a218263c28
Editor’s Note: This video contains graphic content. Clashes broke out in Addis Ababa at a government-organized demonstration against the killing of Ethiopian Christians by Islamic State militants in Libya.
Ms. Mittal describes the situation with regard to land grabs in Ethiopia as “dire”, with evicted farmers and their families facing persecution, intimidation, and arrest if refusing to leave the land which has sustained them for generations or by protesting. While many around the world are under the impression that colonialism in Africa is long-over and a thing of the past, what the Oakland Institute has discovered is a type of “re-colonization” of the African continent has occurred in recent years through land grabs/giveaways to investors looking to extract natural resources. ….Oakland Institute Director Anuradha Mittal believes the land is being stolen and not being paid for, that the practice of land grabs shows the absence in nations of rule of law, and that wealthy corporations/investors are taking the opportunity to re-colonize Africa and get away it.
by Jerry Alatalo
xecutive Director of the Oakland Institute Anuradha Mittal and her team have worked for years on land, food and environment issues in regions around the Earth. Oakland Institute recently joined the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in exposing World Bank actions involving land grabs/acquisitions by foreign investors in Ethiopia which have resulted in tens of thousands of small farmers becoming forcibly evicted from their land.
Ms. Mittal describes the situation with regard to land grabs in Ethiopia as “dire”, with evicted farmers and their families facing persecution, intimidation, and arrest if refusing to leave the land which has sustained them for generations or by protesting. While many around the world are under the impression that colonialism in Africa is long-over and a thing of the past, what the Oakland Institute has discovered is a type of “re-colonization” of the African continent has occurred in recent years through land grabs/giveaways to investors looking to extract natural…
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The following is a statement from the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA), “a non-political and nonpartisan organization which attempts to challenge abuses of human rights of the peoples of various nations and nationalities in the Horn of Africa. HRLHA is aimed at defending fundamental human rights, including freedoms of thought, expression, movement and organization. It is also aimed at raising the awareness of individuals about their own basic human rights and that of others. It has intended to work on the observances as well as due processes of law. It promotes the growth and development of free and vigorous civil societies.”
——-
May 16, 2015
HRLHA’s Appeal to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Mr. Antonio Guterres
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR)
Case Postale 2500
CH-1211 Geneve 2 Depot Suisse
Emails: infoDesk@ohchr.org; GUTERRES@unhcr.org
Attention To:
Mr Amin Awad
Middle East and North Africa Bureau
UNHCR, Geneva
Dear Mr. Guterres,
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa/HRLHA is very concerned about the current humanitarian crisis in the Republic of Yemen following the internal conflicts and political instabilities that have broken down the social services in the country. Many nongovernmental and humanitarian organizations are reporting that the crisis in Yemen has highly affected refugees and asylum seekers who came from the Horn of Africa to Yemen to escape the volatile situations in Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and other places. Among the most vulnerable are Oromo refugees and asylum seekers residing in Sanaa, Aden and other areas in Yemen.
According to the letter disseminated by the Oromo refugee community in Aden-Yemen under the heading “Only Oromo refugees are still caught up under the fire and critical circumstance and also expecting an imminent danger”, Oromo refugees are desperately seeking attention and lifesaving assistance of the UNHCR. The UNHCR’s Middle East and North Africa branch office confirmed its commitment to providing life–saving assistance for the needy people under its strategy’s priority: “UNHCR’s strategic priorities in 2015 are: to deliver innovative operational responses, including lifesaving assistance; to ensure protection for all people of concern with a particular focus on the most vulnerable, especially those in urban areas; to seek durable solutions, including resettlement as a protection tool; and to continue to respond to ongoing emergencies.” (UNHCR, Middle East and North Africa – http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4a02db416.html)
Dear Mr. Guterres,
HRLHA, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported and are still reporting that the Oromos are fleeing their country to escape persecutions by the current Ethiopian government led by the TPLF/EPRDF. The recent research document released by Amnesty International – “Because I am Oromo” – Sweeping Repression in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia – exposes that how Oromos have been regularly subjected to arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions without charges, enforced disappearances, repeated tortures and unlawful state killings since 1991, when the current Ethiopian government came into power, as part of the government’s incessant attempts to crush dissidents.
Dear Mr. Guterres,
Thousands from other nations and nationalities in Ethiopia have also been killed, kidnapped and arrested by the TPLF/EPRDF government because of exercising their fundamental rights or holding political opinions different from TPLF/EPRDF’s political agenda.
Therefore, the HRLHA politely urges the UNHCR to:
1. Provide food and shelter assistance to vulnerable Oromo and other refugees in Yemen
2. Move them to safer neighboring countries in the Middle East or beyond.
Sincerely,
Garoma B. Wakessa
Director, HRLHA
Contact Addresses:
– 994 Pharmacy Avenue, M1R 2G7 Toronto Ontario, Canada
– Tel:- (416) 492 2506 or (647) 280 7062
– E-Mail:- hrldirector@mail.org
– Web site:- www.humanrightsleague.org
Dr. Merera Gudina, Chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC/Medrek), and Ob. Bekele Gerba, former prisoner of conscience and OFC’s top official, jointly campaigned in Gudar, western Oromia, on Sunday, May 17, 2015, for the upcoming General Election, scheduled to be held on May 24, 2015. Thousands of supporters joined the OFC leaders in Gudar. http://gadaa.net/FinfinneTribune/2015/05/photos-dr-merera-gudina-ob-bekele-gerba-jointly-campaign-for-ofcmedrek-in-guder-oromia/
The Global African looks at land theft in Ethiopia & the connection between Belgian colonization and HIV in the Congo.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a columnist, activist, author and labor organizer. He is the executive assistant to the national vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees. Bill is an editorial board member of BlackComentator.com, as well as the chairman of the Retail Justice Alliance. He is also the co-author of “Solidarity Divided”; and the author of the newly released book, ‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty Other Myths about Unions . He is a co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, and has served as President of TransAfrica Forum and was formerly the Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO.
BILL FLETCHER, HOST, THE GLOBAL AFRICAN: Today on The Global African, we’ll talk about the legacy of Belgian colonization in the Congo and a recent report on land grabs in Ethiopia.That’s today on The Global African. I’m your host, Bill Fletcher. Thanks for joining us again. And don’t go anywhere.
~~~FLETCHER: According to a new report from the Oakland Institute entitled We Say the Land Is Not Yours, the government of Ethiopia has been forcibly removing many Ethiopians from their native lands through a so-called village-ization program. The program, supposedly intended to modernize the East African nation, has sold off millions of hectares of land to foreign investors. These investors, often large-scale agriculture companies, are buying very valuable land at a cheap price. Instead of cultivating land and producing food for the people, most of the yields are being used to export to other nations.After being forced off their land, natives are cut off from access to fertile land, health care, and educational opportunity, languishing in poverty.The country’s villagization program has faced allegations in the past of torture, political coercion, imprisonment, rapes, and disappearances against those attempting to form resistance.We’re joined now with our guest from the Oakland Institute in California, Anuradha Mittal, who is the executive director and founder of the institute, which aims to create opportunity for public participation and democratic debates on key issues worldwide. Under her leadership, the Institute has unveiled land investment deals in Africa and around the world.Thank you very much for joining us on the program.ANURADHA MITTAL, EXEC. DIR., OAKLAND INSTITUTE: Thanks for having me.FLETCHER: So I just read this report that you issued concerning land theft in Ethiopia. And I had not seen anything about this in the mainstream media. And I was curious. Let’s start with how did you uncover this situation and what brought it to your attention.MITTAL: Well, in the case of Ethiopia we at the Institute have been working since 2007, 2008, when we were contacted by the communities both within Ethiopia as well as people who are now in the diaspora, people who have been forced to live in exile, who have fled the country because of the political oppression. And what we started hearing about was that in the name of development, vast tracts of land are being cleared where ethnic groups, indigenous communities have been living as agropasturalists, or growing their food, or using the forest for their medicines, for their farms.And with this displacement, you’re seeing large-scale plantations of cotton, of sugarcane coming into being in the name of development, that this will lead Ethiopia to the next century and make it a renaissance state.So we were really concerned by the kind of displacement that is happening. The government plans to give away 7 million hectares of land, leading to the displacement of over 1.5 million people. And there’s no consultation, there is no free prior informed consent. The way communities are being moved is through forced displacement, and we were very concerned about it.FLETCHER: When the Ethiopian regime that currently is in power took over in the ’90s, overthrowing Mengistu, their program seems to be completely antithetical to what we’re witnessing right now, where the regime seems to be serving the interests of global agricultural capitalists.MITTAL: You’re right on, I mean, what had happened earlier, the so-called villagization, when people were forced off their lands and the so-called villages were supposed to be created where better social services would be provided. And that was challenged. But not today. It is the same pretext that is being used that better social services would be provided, better education opportunities would be provided to communities who are being moved. And so this is the whole rhetoric of development. But our research on the ground shows that the lands which have been cleared, actually then given away to foreign investors who are coming in from India, from Malaysia, from Turkey and just about everywhere, especially in areas such as Gambela or Lower Omo, and leading to forcible displacement of people.The other shocking thing, Bill, that–I think it’s important to remember is that this kind of development, which leads to eviction of people against their choice from their homes and lands, is happening thanks to donor countries. It is happening because it has the blessings of financial institutions such as the World Bank.FLETCHER: I’d like you to explain that a little bit more. Why–what are the, what’s the interest of the World Bank in all of this?MITTAL: Well first of all, there is this belief that large-scale plantations, large-scale agriculture will lead to development and the benefits of which will somehow trickle down to those at the bottom. We have seen that trickle-down does not really ever happen.Secondly, you have these loans that are being provided. When you look at Ethiopia, over 60 percent of its budget comes from outside. Some of the key donors are United States, United Kingdom, the World Bank.And also we have another relationship. In the United States, Ethiopia is our closest ally in Africa. It is our ally in the war on terrorism. So we tend to turn a blind eye to the repression that is happening on the ground.FLETCHER: Is there an ethnic side to what’s going on? That is, are there certain ethnic groups in Ethiopia that are disproportionately affected by this? Or is this pretty much across the board?MITTAL: Well, this is happening across the board, and it’s happening to the ones who are in minority. So, for instance, in Lower Omo you have the Bodis, the Suris, the Mursis, the Nyangatoms, the Hamars who are being impacted. In case of Gambela, Anuaks are predominantly targeted. So it is a country which is ruled by a minority, the Highlanders, or the Tigrayans. And their control is being maintained through political and economic repression by displacing people from their lands, which makes their livelihoods even more difficult. And secondly, it helps to control the country politically and stay in power.FLETCHER: There’s two questions here. One is: what is happening to the populations that are being displaced? In similar situations around the world, there’s a tendency for people to move into the urban centers. Is that what’s happening here? Are people leaving the country? And the second question is about resistance. What kind of resistance is building?MITTAL: Well, both are great questions. I think Ethiopia is a little bit unique, because given the kind of political oppression you have, given there is no political space to be able to speak out as you hear from the testimonies presented in the report, which we basically felt we had to do because our fieldwork, when we have put out in reports, has been challenged by the Ethiopian government, and this time we could say it is not some Western NGO challenging the Ethiopian government, these are the voices of people within Ethiopia.So it is a very, very dire situation.In terms of resistance, again, when we look around the world, given we work around the world, we see resistance on the ground, but it is pretty appalling. In Ethiopia, again, because of the lack of civil society, lack of freedom of media, and the fact that you can be arrested, the fact that Ethiopian security forces are not just arresting people within Ethiopia, but taking away people from Kenya and South Sudan who might have challenged government’s policies, we are finding very little resistance on the ground.The resistance is more of having the courage to storytell groups such as Human Rights Watch or tell groups like the Oakland Institute what the reality is on the ground. So the resistance is of people who refuse to give up and refuse to move from their lands. And in return they’re facing persecution, they’re facing arrest, intimidation, beatings. You know, the prisons of Ethiopia are full of people who have challenged government’s development strategy.FLETCHER: Is there any sense of global support for the peoples that are facing these evictions? Or are they pretty much on their own?MITTAL: Well, I think more and more of the world knows what is happening in Ethiopia. There are groups from International Rivers, Human Rights Watch, Oakland Institute, Survival International who have been supporting the communities on the ground who have been putting out information to inform and educate. For instance, the U.S. Congress just recently deferred–UK’s development agency stopped financing PBS, the program for basic services, which was linked to the villagization scheme of the Ethiopian government. So this pressure from outside is resulting in kind of taking away some of the resources from the Ethiopian government that is financing and is facilitating displacement of people.But, of course, a lot of work remains to be done. Because of our research, it was exposed by Channel 4 in Sweden that H&M was sourcing its cotton from Lower Omo, these plantations which have come into being by displacing indigenous agropasturalists from Lower Omo. And because of the pressure, H&M had to announce that they would not source cotton from Lower Omo. So I think it is very important to keep spreading the word, to keep educating, and to keep exposing that development strategy which is based on a denial of human rights–and not just denial, but abuse of human rights cannot be a development strategy for any nation.FLETCHER: Ms. Mittal, thank you very, very much.MITTAL: Thank you. Pleasure to speak with you.FLETCHER: Absolutely. I look forward to it in the future.MITTAL: Same here. Take care. Bye-bye.FLETCHER: Bye-bye, now.And thank you for joining us for this segment of The Global African. I’m your host, Bill Fletcher. And we’ll be back in a moment, so don’t go anywhere.
~~~FLETCHER: One of the greatest holocausts of the 19th century, indeed of all time, was the murder of 10 million Congolese when the Congo, then known as the Congo Free State, was the personal property of King Leopold of Belgium–more than 10 million Congolese murdered in order to enrich this monarch of Europe.The legacy of that holocaust lives with us today and is detailed in an excellent piece by Dr. Lawrence Brown. The impact of that holocaust and the colonization of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in conditions that were fertile for the development of what came to be known as HIV and AIDS. HIV-AIDS first surfaces in what is now Kinshasa, which was at that time, in the 1920s, Leopoldville, in 1920, and spread as a result of the practices that were carried out by the Belgians as they tore the country apart.The Ghost of Leopold Still Haunts Us is the title of an essay written by our next guest, Dr. Lawrence Brown from Morgan State University, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management.Dr. Brown, thank you for joining us again.DR. LAWRENCE BROWN, ASST. PROF., DEPT. HEALTH POLICY AND MGMT, NSU: Absolutely. Pleasure to be here.FLETCHER: Great. I was really struck by this article. It’s the connection that you make between Belgian colonialism and the development of AIDS. I had not seen anything like that before. And it was so different from the conspiracy theory pieces that people read, the utter denial that we see. What inspired you to write it?BROWN: Absolutely. I really had been doing a lot of thinking and studying around colonization, how that impacted health of populations and how enslavement, how these historical traumas impact the health of populations. So when I ran across this article that basically found the authors conducting a genetic analysis of the virus itself and tracking it down, through this sort of forensic process, to Kinshasa in the 1920s, I was really fascinated, because I had been looking at the Democratic Republic of Congo and its history. And so when I ran across the article and I began to read it, I noticed the word Belgium really didn’t come up in the article at all. And I was familiar with Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, and the story of how King Leopold and his Force Publique, this military regiment, had brought such terror and devastation to the Congolese populations, killing up to 10 million of the Congolese people, that I was really fascinated by the sheer absence of the mention of Belgian colonization.So that got my mind to thinking, and I decided I needed to write something to sort of understand, help people understand how the social determinants of health would have impacted the development and the ignition of HIV.FLETCHER: And you’re describing the Congo Holocaust.BROWN: Essentially, yes.FLETCHER: I mean, more people were killed in what was then the Congo Free State, right?BROWN: Right. It started out as the Congo Free State.FLETCHER: ‘Cause it was the personal property of King Leopold.BROWN: Absolutely. King Leopold II of Belgium.FLETCHER: That’s right.BROWN: He owned it for about 26 years.FLETCHER: That’s right. More people were killed there than the Nazis killed in their Holocaust.BROWN: Absolutely. It was terrible.FLETCHER: Now, one of the things that I was struck by then is that there are those that have tried to dismiss the issue of HIV and AIDS as being related to a virus by simply saying that it’s because of poverty.BROWN: Right.FLETCHER: President Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, was one who was very much in that direction. But you’re making a very different argument.BROWN: Absolutely. You know, the World Health Organization defines social determinants of health as the conditions in which we live, play, work, and pray. And so the social determinants of health help contribute to a disease’s spread, how it evolves, how it is able to infect and spread among human populations.And so what happened in the Belgian Congo in the 1920s is that–this article says it started in 1920s in Kinshasa. So it gives us a starting point. So we know, for instance, that the CIA starts in 1947, so the CIA didn’t create this virus. We know that certain things–we can basically say we can rule out some of the conspiracies based on this analysis.But what we do need to know and figure out is that in the ’20s it wasn’t called Kinshasa, it was called Leopoldville.FLETCHER: That’s right.BROWN: This was part of King Leopold’s domain and the Belgians’ domain by the 1920s. They had built an extensive railway system in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as we know it today, using free African labor–or forced African labor of the Congolese. They had thousands and ten thousands of men and women carrying the supplies and materials that were needed to create this railroad. They had folks who lived and died under the strain of the push to create this sort of transportation. And the railroads were used to extract ivory, and then rubber, from which King Leopold II became rich, to extract those resources from the African people.And so in the article it mentions that having this railway was critical to the spread of the virus because it allowed the transportation from places like Kinshasa, as we know it today, to /kəngɑːli/ and different cities within the nation. And so, understanding that the railways did help the spread of the virus is important, but it’s also important to understand the forced African labor that was used to build that railway and to transport the laborers, even later, after the real railroad was built, along those railways, so the transportation of people back and forth, all in the service of colonization.FLETCHER: Let me go back for a second, 1920 Leopoldville, when they say that that’s when HIV-AIDS emerged. It didn’t pop out of the air.BROWN: No.FLETCHER: So what happened?BROWN: Well, you have the animal-to-human transmission. It’s just like we’ve been talking about the Ebola virus recently, a zoonotic disease that emerges out of animal-human contact. So, in this case the theory is that chimpanzee meat in some form or fashion was consumed by an African Congolese, and thereby transmitting the simian form of that virus.Well, how might that have happened? People in that region maybe had been eating that meat on and off for several hundreds of years. They’d known how to eat that meat very properly, cooked it quite well. But under the conditions that the Belgians were putting the Congolese under, they totally disrupted the Congolese food supply to such that witnesses say that laborers were starving because they couldn’t grow their own food. So now they’re importing food from Belgium, they’re importing food so that the Congolese can eat other people’s food to survive, but they’re sending them into the forest to go and extract rubber down from the vines, they’re sending them into the forest, and folks have to climb up the trees to extract this rubber from the tree, many of them falling asleep and dying or injuring themselves in the process. And so, in this environment of extreme hunger, I could see someone saying, I don’t have anything to eat right now, maybe there is a dead chimpanzee somewhere, I’m going to take that and not cook it properly because I’m so hungry under these conditions, and then you have the transmission from animal to human in this case.FLETCHER: Fascinating. So forgive the very basic questions, but I’m not a scientist. Nineteen-twenty.BROWN: Right.FLETCHER: Okay. Then it seems to emerge publicly around 1980.BROWN: Right. So where was the virus hiding?FLETCHER: Where was a virus? Right.BROWN: Well, you know, I think that from what we understand there, really sort of this article gives three primary vectors. We’re talking about the railway that we talked about earlier. It allows for humans to travel up–the host for the virus to travel across the country, transmitting the virus. It talks about–so you have host, you have the transportation.Then you also have another vector they talk about, commercial sex workers, and so what we know as or what people commonly referred to as prostitutes. And so there are Congolese scholars that say, well, even the commercial sex work is rooted in colonization, because the Belgians would take Congolese women and exploit them in various ways. They would exploit them in terms of helping–using them to please the workers in vile ways. They would use women to–they took some of them as their second wives in the Congo Free State and later the Belgian Congo. So they perverted the very being and the spirit of the Congolese women, and as such created a sort of commercial sex work industry that allowed the virus to sort of proliferate originally.Now, in terms of spreading beyond the borders, the analysis basically says that by the ’60s or ’70s there were Haitian workers that were working in the Belgian Congo. And by the ’60s, of course, the Congo becomes Zaire under Mobutu. And so the Haitian workers working there, professionals, they go back to Haiti having contracted the virus, and then maybe a few Haitians go to New York or go to the United States, and the virus sort of emerges there in the 1980s. But it had been sort of percolating all along. I think you see in the medical literature there were people dying that they can sort of trace back and say, this was probably the disease. In the ’60s and ’70s they were starting to see something’s going on and it’s not right.FLETCHER: But what did the Belgians see between 1920 and 1960, when the Congo became independent? Is there any evidence that they even noticed that there was a problem?BROWN: I don’t think they knew that there was a specific problem with this particular disease. Now, they did have public health campaigns to help stop, like, sleeping disease and other diseases that are infectious diseases that were there at the time.Now, the important thing to know is that they were reusing syringes to sort of inoculate people against certain diseases that they knew about at the time. And so, inadvertently, I believe, you’re reusing needles, and that could have helped proliferate the spread of the virus as well at the time. So those are the kind of dynamics that even in terms of the colonial public health system, the Belgians could have played a role in terms of helping to proliferate the virus. So, whether it’s the colonial public health system, whether it’s animal-to-human transmission, whether it’s commercial sex workers or the railroads, the Belgian colonization system, first with King Leopold and then under the Belgian government, played a role in the transmission of this disease.FLETCHER: When the Belgians left the Congo in 1960, they did nothing to help in any kind of transition. They were trying to actually Balkanize the Congo, as you know, the whole fight around the Katanga province and trying to separate it off. There’s no indication that there was–I’m assuming that there was no indication of any effort to deal with any medical issues when they moved out.BROWN: Yeah, not to my knowledge. But the Belgian government did collaborate with the CIA in terms of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. So the Belgian government plays a very powerful role, in terms of even after they leave, determining, charting the future course of the Democratic Republic of Congo, so that it’s much more likely to move in a less Pan-African direction and more so in a much more brutal dictator direction.And why is that important? Of course, if you have someone who’s in your stead managing in a neocolonial arrangement, that continues the facilitation of extracting resources from the country. And so you have critical minerals that are predominant all over the country–copper, diamonds, or coltan that’s in our smart phones and cell phones, right? And so people are fighting over those resources today. There’s been a tremendous civil war that’s been going on. Up to 5 million Congolese people have been killed in this civil war.And you see under King Leopold people’s hands being cut off because they didn’t produce enough rubber. And then in this civil war you see sort of the same thing, people’s hands being cut off as a form of punishment. And it sort of–you know, we look at how people tend to reproduce the trauma that they have experienced under these sort of extreme, harsh forms of brutalization and oppression. And that’s what I think is important to know is that so much of what’s going on in the Congo today finds its root in that period when King Leopold II–.FLETCHER: Dr. Brown, thank you very much for joining us on The Global African.BROWN: My pleasure.FLETCHER: And thank you for joining us for this episode of The Global African. I’m your host, Bill Fletcher. And we’ll see you next time.
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Addis Standard – I would like to congratulate you for being a free man at last. But what was it like to be in prison?
Bekele Gerba – Prison is not a place one appreciates to be. But I think it is also the other way of life as an Ethiopian; unfortunately it has become the fate of many of our people. You will find a lot of students, youngsters, brothers and sisters, sons and fathers, husbands and wives. Especially when it comes to the Oromo, they are there in great numbers. Therefore going there or being there was a very good experience by itself because you will understand the agony and the hardship our people are facing at the moment. There are lots of problems there too, from the type of food people eat to the type of bed they sleep on. But there are a lot of things to learn from them so I think for me it has been a place of training.
What was your everyday life like and what was your biggest challenge?
My biggest challenge was the first one year and two months when I was kept in maximum security in Kality prison. The room was very small and the type of people we were with are regarded as deadly criminals in this country; they fight and even the police are scared of them. Sometimes they use drugs and they fight easily with anybody. It is a very difficult place. After being there for a year and two months I was sent to Ziway. Ziway is a place where people who come from the countryside are always kept; people who are economically not well off, mainly people who are allegedly suspected of having links with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). And most of them are Oromos there.
There is this popular term that says ‘the prisons in Ethiopia speak Afaan Oromo.’ Is it what you are confirming to me now?
Exactly. If you take away the large number of thieves (the most popular crime there [in Ziway] is theft – and say may be out of 5000 or 6000 prisoners there about 3000 or 4000 thieves) and if you take away those people who are suspected of corruption, very few in number in fact, the rest you can say they are all Afaan Oromo speakers.
How did that make you feel as a politician whose party represents the Oromo and as an Oromo?
In one way I am very glad to be there because I felt myself sharing the agony of my own people. How am I different from those people? Those people went to prison because they demanded their rights; I was also there because I demanded my rights. In this country I thought that the Oromos are being excluded from the political and from the economic spheres or participation, something I always object. Therefore I am very glad to be there. I remember the first day I went to the court before my arrest just to see how the court was proceeding when about 500 or 600 Oromos were imprisoned and then taken to the court. I went there as a party member to witness and to see what was going on around. I felt very badly because I saw the prosecutors organizing false evidences; they were calling upon people and they were giving them orientations to testify against people whom they didn’t know at all, whom they have never seen before. I was sad and I called some media that day and gave a brief interview. I think it was after the airing of that interview that the government started following me in order to stop what I was doing. But since I was the spokesman of my party that was the job given to me – to give press conferences or sometimes press releases of what was going on around the party and anything related to the Oromo people. But after I went to prison I was relieved because I had to experience the agony of my people; I had to share their pain and I am glad for that.
Going by your own explanation, if living the pain and agony of your fellow countrymen brought you relief, how did that affect your other life that you stood for? You had a family, you had a political life, and you had a career that you had to leave behind.
Like anybody else, like a human being, when you miss your family of course you feel sad. But my family is no different from other peoples’ family. For example there is a family that I know, the husband was in prison and when he was released the wife was taken to prison. Their children are growing up without a father at one time and a mother at another; my children are no better than these. And if only my family, if only a group of people enjoy normal life and the great majority are not doing the same, I think your happiness or your joy cannot be complete. Of course when I first went there I thought my family would be affected very badly but they are very courageous and they were very supportive psychologically. They were very strong and thanks to many Oromos my children did not quit school and my family has not suffered as such economically.
Your daughter Bontu gave an interview to Afuraa Biyyaa radio station once and told the station you were suffering from ill health. Walk me through that. What happened? How did you maintain your health afterwards?
During the first two three days soon after I was taken to Ma’ekelawi [prison] I started having severe headache and the nurses told me that my blood pressure was high. I had never had that experience before. I was then taken to the Police Hospital and was diagnosed with the same thing; the nurses told me that I looked like a chronic hypertensive patient. I have not had that kind of medical history. Since then until I came out of the prison a few days ago, my blood pressure has been on the rise; I think may be because of the tension, I don’t know. But I am happy that after I was released I am quite okay. I haven’t taken any medication or I have not consulted any physician since my release; I feel I am healthy.
What did help you maintain your everyday sanity when you were there? Was it your interaction with other inmates? Did you have access to books?
The first year was a very difficult time and we have not had enough books and we didn’t know how to smuggle books or any magazines or anything to be read. We have not had any relations with the police; that was a very difficult time until we adjusted ourselves to the prison situations. But later on we started having some books to read that some friends brought for us. We started reading and on a small scale started writing, although it was very difficult to get it out because every three weeks or so the prison police would conduct a search and take away anything that is written; that was the difficult part of it. But after I went to the prison in Ziway I had a chance to meet senior people from the army and from the air force who were accused of staging a coup. Those are people like General Tefera and General Asamenew who were taken to Ziway together. We stayed together and they are very understanding people; they like reading, they like discussions and I enjoyed the discussions. We shared books; we read whatever books we could lay our hands on. That helped me to squeeze through all these bad times.
Moving out of your time in prison, can you tell me what it was like growing up as Bekele Gerba, an Oromo child?
Surprisingly the place I was born and raised is a typical monolingual area. All the people around, all the shop owners or all the government employees and all the school staff speak only one single language, Afaan Oromo. It is a very special place I can say even by Oromia standards. Therefore I didn’t know whether there was any kind of difference between one ethnic group and the other or if there was any kind of oppression elsewhere. But when you go to colleges and universities you will begin to realize there are various ethnic groups and there are various things you will find difficult to tolerate. When I went to the big towns like Addis Abeba and I speak my own language in a taxi or in a bus people turn around and take a look at me; that was when I started to get surprised. And then the consciousness, the social consciousness – not as such political – the reality makes you a bit conscious. However I have not had any bad experience until I graduated from university and went to Wolega again as a high school teacher. And I like speaking languages; I am an outgoing person. I have no problem living with other ethnic group members. But it is later on that I came to understand that there is something wrong going on against the ethnic group I came from.
Is that what drove you to get involved in politics?
Yes. Even in my employment for about 25 years I had never been involved in politics. I was simply an academician and I thought that politics was not a job for everyone. I am a teacher and if I am a good teacher in my profession I thought that will do and that was that. But gradually I found out that my peoples’ grievance is not addressed in a way that it should be. So I thought I could get involved in politics to contribute my share. I don’t know whether I had done anything or had made any change because before I could do anything substantial I was taken to prison. My life experience as a politician is not more than three years.
But within that short period as a politician, I think it was during the 2010 election debate that in a rather succinct argument you spoke about the use and abuse of land distribution and said land was used to advance political causes. What made you take that very strong stand against the ruling party?
You know land is the most important resource in this country, not only in this country but everywhere. It is this resource that everybody who comes to power tries to get control of. If you simply open your eyes and look at what happens around Addis Abeba, then you will see how people are being evicted, and how other people who cannot explain where they get that amount of money from are being catapulted overnight into so much wealth. From my own experience I had a lot of friends who were brought up with me, who had been teachers with me yesterday but who had a lot of money today. That’s okay if it is a legal one.
Realizing that I tried to make a kind of taxonomy, a kind of classification, even though I cannot recall it perfectly now. Accordingly our level of citizenship is divided into various categories. There are people who when they travel around they see a land their eyes fell on and feel like having it and who can have it. Whoever is born and brought there they don’t care. So they can evict everybody and they can sell or hand it over to their friends. I call these people first class citizens. And many of these people are who claim themselves to have liberated us by struggling for 17 years. But what they did not do is liberate these poor farmers; in fact in this regard the Dergue did better for me because it took the land from the landlords and distributed it to the poor farmers, to the tillers. But this time it is the other way round.
And then there are others – regional officials like if you take the Oromia cabinet members, or the SNNPR cabinet members or the Amhara if you like – they can be categorized as second class citizens. They have their power to take any land they wish but there is a power above them. Frankly this power is the power of the TPLF who are the first class citizens. Second class citizens can sell and give but there are others above them who will watch them and who will control them. And then there are the lower hierarchies like the municipalities, for example, or like the Zonal administrators. They have also the same power but above them they know that there are two more hierarchies and may be sometimes they can be accountable. They know that whatever is remaining from the top two, they will get some amount.
And then there are others who do not own anything, who do not own any land but who just look and witness what is going on around, but who are quiet, who are made to become voiceless, who cannot do anything – like the civil servants. And finally the last one is the farmer. He is the farmer who is being looted, who is being evicted, but if at all something happens, like if the country is at war with neighboring countries or with any enemy, these are the people who are called upon to die for this land, a the land for which they don’t have any power on, for the land from which they can be evicted any time. It is the sons and daughters of these people who are going to the warfront and pay with their dear lives. But on the ground they have nothing. For example if you go around Addis Abeba and take a look at someone who is guarding a building and then ask who that man is, he will immediately tell you he was born and brought up there. And he will tell you that it was his land on which that huge building is built. These are mainly Oromos by the way.
Were you speaking that because the majority of this case is happening in and around lands predominantly belonging to the Oromos or was it because it is a trend that represents the rest of the country?
The pattern is all the same. In the name of investment people are being evicted in the South, in Amhara or even in Tigray regions. What makes Oromia very different is that the land is very close to the center and the investors, these high officials and the government representatives, all these wealthy people want to dwell around it; they want the area very much. The land is very nice, the location is very good, and the weather is good. So everyone puts his eyes on it. Otherwise the trend is all the same everywhere.But the government argues it is offering compensations…
What does compensation mean? How much money is enough for someone who is evicted forever? Not only him but his children, his grandchildren and the next generation? What makes this very difficult is these people don’t have any profession other than farming. They don’t have any other skill. So how much compensation is enough for these people?
Speaking of which, last year in May a number of University students were killed, imprisoned and have disappeared, I am sure you have heard about it, because they were protesting against the Addis Abeba Master plan, which wanted to include around eight peripheral localities known as the Oromia Region Special Zone. What was your take on that? How did you react when you heard about it?
This is obviously a crime. A massive crime has been committed, and people must be accountable for it. The students did not die in vain for me. They paid sacrifices in order to protect the constitution of this country which says each of the nine regions and the two city administrations has specific boundaries. Addis Abeba has its boundary too. Even though it has not been demarcated on the ground, it was a boundary which is lesser than what it was during the Dergue and greater than what it was during Hailesellasie regime. This was how it was agreed upon during the Transitional Government [24 years ago]. But today the outskirts have turned into Addis Abeba. On daily basis massive farmlands of the farmers are being included into the boundaries of Addis Abeba. So, when I say these students didn’t die in vain, I meant that it was simply to protect the constitution. The Vatican City State is in Rome but the Vatican City state cannot say I have to expand into Rome. That is not possible.
For me the idea is not to expand Addis Abeba as such; it is not to turn it into a beautiful or into a modern city but to change the social structure of Addis Abeba and its vicinity. By doing this what will happen is the language spoken around those areas will change. If you take Dukem, Legatafo, Burayu, Legedadhi or Sululta not long ago, may be some ten years ago, Afaan Oromo used to be the main language. But this doesn’t exist any longer. That is what I call language shift. There is a shift when you change the population, when you change the social structure, then the culture and the language will be destroyed. This is how the Australian Aborigines lost their languages, lost their identity, lost their history, and lost everything. This is how Red Indians in North America lost their identity, lost their language and lost everything. I think for me this is not different. Even though we live in the same country, and we call ourselves Ethiopians – and for me I call myself as an Ethiopian and as an Oromo at the same time – the idea is grave. Javier Perez De Cuellar, the former UN Secretary General in his writing entitled “Our Creative Diversity” wrote: “Put a people in chains, strip them, plug up their mouths, they are still free. Take away their jobs, their passport, the tables they eat on, the bed they sleep in, they are still rich. A people become poor and enslaved when they are robbed of the tongue left to them by their ancestors, they are lost forever.” No one likes to be lost forever.
But the argument from the ruling party and sympathizers of the plan is that they need to do whatever they are doing because Addis Abeba is also the capital of the federal government, the seat of the AU and of the ECA, you if like. How do you react to that argument?
Why so much focus on developing Addis Abeba only? Why is that? Why not Bahir Dar? Why not Hawassa why not Mekele? Why is the focus on Addis Abeba? And why is Addis Abeba so much concerned about the development of Oromia? When you say it is the capital of the country do you mean it is the seat of the diplomatic community? and the federal government? It is not only because of the diplomats and the civil services in the federal government that Addis Abeba is expanding. It is because of various reasons, one of which is perception – people think they are safe in Addis Abeba than any other cities in the regions. But we can work on that, the government can work on developing other cities. There is no problem in doing that. The other problem is it is not only because Addis Abeba is the capital of the federal government, it is a self-administered, a self-chartered city. It is regarded as having a status of a region. But regions, as I said earlier, have their own borders. That is all. If the constitution is no longer working, then Addis Abeba can expand indefinitely. Otherwise you cannot cut some part of Tigray and hand it over to Amhara and cut some part of Afar and hand it over to the Somali. Constitutionally it has been made impossible. That is it. No single region should be allowed to trespass that. The third is why is Addis Abeba concerned about the plan? Where is the regional government if Addis Abeba is making a plan for Oromia?
Do you think this dilemma traces its root from the very federal system the country says it is following? What, in your opinion, does the federal system currently in use in Ethiopia mean to the ordinary people? Do you think it is losing its relevance beyond being a toll deployed to serve political ends? Or as a famous Oromo legal expert once said, I quote: “beyond dishes, dances and dresses”? What does it represent?
Constitutionally this country is a federal country but as many people think, this is not a gift from the ruling EPRDF. Federalism evolved or it came out of the situation that existed 24 years ago. Twenty four years ago there were about 17 armed groups actively engaged in rebellion, with all their weapons and strongholds. So when the Dergue collapsed there was no way out of the political deadlock except to go for federalism because everyone could have gone home on his own way; the Oromos had the OLF, the Ogadens have the ONLF and so on. So except federalism no other kind of government was possible.
I think it is an argument that Leenco Lataa recently wrote in one of the local newspapers published here. That said how do you evaluate the last 24 years? Has the country lived up to the federalism arrangement? Where did the county perform best, if there is any, and where did it lag behind?
I have not read what Leenco has written. But it is true that federalism was dictated by the situation at the time. But since then what’shappening is its concept and practice is being eroded on a daily basis. If you look at regions I don’t think they are even electing their own rulers. Practically I think the country is as unitary and as centralized as it has been before. There was one big man, the late Prime Minister [Meles Zenawi] who used to appoint regional officials without the consent of the people of the regions, who used to transfer them to the federal government as he likes. That was what was happening and continued to this day. In federalism you plan your own way, levy taxes in your own way, you execute it in your own way; your priority is different from the federal government or other regions. That is not what’s happening now, but if you take Addis Abeba city for example, which is also the seat of the Oromia regional state, in the name of self-administered city its officials singlehandedly decide on the fate of the city and its areas. For them the creation of the Addis Abeba recreational ground in Burayu may be a high priority. But for the Oromia region to which the area belongs to a school of high standard may be its priority. But as things are happening now the federal government plans by itself and executes by its own finance. That is not true federalism.
So you are firmly implying that the federal system the country is following now was dictated by the existing circumstances 24 years ago but fell short of its purpose?
Yes it didn’t serve its purpose. I am saying this because we know so many people who were elected by their constituencies, but who are moved from power by the federal government. To bring another example, in March 2011 about one thousand Oromos were taken to the Ma’ekelawi prison in Addis Abeba but the Oromia regional state didn’t know; they didn’t have any knowledge of the Oromos taken by federal security agents from every corner of Oromia. Here is when one should ask what is this regional government doing? Did the regional government invite the federal government to come and act on its behalf to bring these people to justice? Are they incapable of bringing them to justice in their own region? So what is federalism?
Let’s talk about ethnic federalism. Do you think there is a deliberate misrepresentation and exploitation of what ethnic federalism stands for? An exploitation by the powers that be of deploying the concept as a means to prolong their time in power, and a deliberate attempt by people who advocate for the so called unity using the side effects of ethnic federalism?
People say ethnic federalism doesn’t take us anywhere. But I simply say that the ethnic federalism that came about 24 years ago because of the situation we were in is a necessary evil that we cannot avoid. Because our identity, our language, our culture has been denied for many years before that and it is only through this way that we can promote our language, our culture, and our identity. But it is true that it is a very broad topic but I don’t believe in the idea of the unionists because on party level, for example within Medrek, there were various ethnic based parties like the Arena Tigray. You know if you scratch any party you will find out that the issue of ethnicity is underlined but by the name it implies something else, just like we have the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Does it mean it is federal? Does it mean it is democratic? There is nothing in a name. Therefore for me every party in this country is an ethnic based party. I am not saying it’s a bad thing; it becomes bad when one ethnic group becomes a foe to another.
Politically, it becomes bad when it is used as a tool of repression against others; when it is imposed. When somebody imposes his own agenda on another, then the problem comes. If you say don’t speak your language speak only mine then here comes the problem.
But willingly I can learn your language and you can learn mine. For example people complain that we are not able to work in the regions because we don’t know the language. In the first place you are there because you want to sell your knowledge, your skill and your service, is that not? If I went to Tigray to sell my knowledge, my skill or to sell my expertise then I have to interact with the people who want to be served in the language they understand. Nobody is disallowed to work there. But the only thing is serve these people in the language they understand. Otherwise if I am an Oromo and if I want to go to Tigray and ask all the Tigray people to speak Afaan Oromo, I think that is crazy and it should be addressed. This is a situation that often goes wrong. But people love their language very much, they want to promote their culture, they want their identity very much. If there is another mechanism by which this can be addressed, such as by geographic kind of federalism, that is okay.
Does this reinforce your belief in a just ethnic federalism system that this country has to wake up to one day?
Yes and we have to appreciate our diversity. Look, if we are of the same age, wearing the same clothes, of the same height, of the same color, eat the same food, and dance the same way to the same music this world would be nasty, it would be really ugly! Very ugly! We don’t want to turn this earth into hell. We want our diversity. We want other people to sing in their own way, speak in their own language, to wear different kinds of dresses. I think the idea of trying to bring everything into one is not a sane idea.
I would like to ask you the next question as someone who is an Oromo politician. Currently there are at least two predominant Oromo discourses. The first is the discourse for secessionism, although it’s a discourse that looked as if it was losing ground since the split within the former administration of the OLF, many people think it has surfaced again when the “Oromo first” debate came about in the recent past. The second is the Oromo discourse supporting a greater autonomy within the federal government – a better way of federalism that gives the Oromo a greater say in their affairs. For this group secessionism is no longer the call of the day. Where does Bekele Gerba stand? What do you see as a better way forward for the Oromo people?
Well my stand is very clear in this issue. I always say that first the rights of the Oromo should be respected. The Oromos are located in the middle of this country; they have formed this country, they are part of this country, they will remain in this country. You cannot think about Ethiopia without the presence of the Oromos. They have sustained it and they are in the center of this massive land. Therefore I think what is very important is that their rights is respected; there should be no compromise. If so I can boldly say from what I have seen and experienced that the Oromos are not after secession. But the problem is when the situation continues like it is now; when the exploitation, the eviction, the attempt to assimilate, to destroy their language, to destroy their culture, to destroy their identity goes on in such a way I think people may think otherwise. It is true that people who are following this very closely may assume the situation is getting desperate. But for me it’s not that desperate and I still believe that things can be put in the right track, and the wrongs can be righted. If we start righting the wrongs, then I think the question of an independent Oromia or an independent land will not be a very serious issue.
But it is exactly what many Oromos feel is not happening. For them this very grim situation the country keeps on generating has continued. Reports indicate that the exile of the Oromo has continued en mass as we speak; the jailing, the killing, the mysterious disappearance of University students just a year ago didn’t help either. Don’t you think this makes the secessionism discourse to gain momentum? As someone who has been in the center of the politics in the country do you see there is still hope for peaceful struggle for the rights and respect of the Oromo? Is there a room for that? Does the political space allow for that to exist?
There is a challenge. But I think there is still hope. I always believe that things can change gradually. Because of the culture we were in for hundreds, or may be thousands of years, we used to think changing a government is only possible by violence, or armed struggle. But I think that time has passed now; it is possible to change regimes and to confront governments by peaceful means of struggle. If people are very much committed to peaceful struggle, I think the situation will change and the government must exploit this situation – meaning that, as an opposition,we are very helpful, we can contribute much. Going to the jungle and destroying everything, crashing everything and building it when you come back again as new doesn’t take this country anywhere. And if the current leadership was wise, they could have designed many ways in which armed struggle in the future would not be a possibility. But I don’t think they are smart. The legacy now is that people are still toying with armed struggle. Ten years ago when the opposition, Kinijit, won Addis Abeba and much of the country, things would have changed a lot had they been given what was theirs at that time. People would begin to trust that it is possible to change regimes without war, thorough the ballot box, and the political tradition itself would have been one step forward. But we lost that. We lost that chance because of the power mongering attitude of the ruling EPRDF; we lost that big chance.
But don’t you think the refusal of the opposition to get into the parliament itself has contributed?
But they [the opposition] had pieces of information about Addis Abeba at that time that all the treasury that used to belong to Addis Abeba city administration were handed over to the federal government including transport facilities; the state capital of Oromia was called back again and Oromia was to tax the city. So it was because of what the EPRDF did that the opposition refused to accept the city. I am not saying they did a good job, or the right thing; I think they could have taken the challenge. All I am saying is it was because of what EPRDF did that everything turned into ashes and the possibility of changing regimes and leadership in this country through the ballot box failed.
Ethiopia is about a month away from holding yet another general election. Do you think elections for a country like Ethiopia are a means of sustaining power for those who have it; for the sake of the L word – legitimacy, as many argue? Or do you believe it is a means to change the political order peacefully?
From the experience we have so far I don’t think EPRDF is ready to give power anytime. If you look at what they are doing now in terms of the use of media space, they allocated 500 hours, but they designed it in a way that they can take a bulk or the large share once again. In the last election [in 2010] 10 million ETB was allocated to all the parties out of which 9.5 million went back to the EPRDF and 300, 000 ETB went to EDP. Do you believe if I tell you that we received just 3,600 ETB? That was about 175 Euros. This time they have allocated 30 million ETB and if you ask around you may find out that more than twenty something millions of it went back to the pocket of EPRDF again.
Soyou are saying holding elections is just another way of legitimizing the time in power?
That is it. It is already a foregone conclusion. For me EPRDF has already won. I think there is very little thing we expect from this election.
So what does it mean to be in an opposition party trying to survive under such circumstances? What makes your party decide to exist all together?
The objective of a political party is not only to seize power. If you can get the wrongs to be corrected by the ruling party that is already something; if you can do it yourself that is even better. But if you cannot do it and someone does it then that is also fine. Therefore we will try to contribute our best in this regard, irrespective of the hard situations we find ourselves in; there is no way out. We don’t want to go to armed struggle; we don’t want to show on television Ethiopians killing Ethiopians for power. So even though pursuing peaceful struggle is very difficult I personally always appreciated the likes of Mahatma Gandhi; I have always appreciated the struggles of people like Martin Luther King and I think we have to continue that way. Rome was not built in one day.
How did your prison experience change your political determination? Did it reshape you in any way? Will you go back practicing politics again?
I think I am stronger than I was when I went to prison; I consider myself more prepared and stronger than before. And I can never be out of politics; I don’t want to be out of politics.
When you were handed the eight year sentence back in 2012, you made a speech that became a symbol of the rally behind the ‘free Bekele Gerba’ campaign. In this speech you said that if you were to ask an apology you would ask it from the “Almighty” and, I quote: “from my people for failing to speak to the depth of their suffering in the interest of the co-existence of people.” Don’t you think it’s exactly this attitude of putting the “interest of the co-existence of people” at the expense of the suffering of others that is sustaining repression in this country? That people like you keep silent for the sake of co-existence?
If you see what is happening in this country by members or group of people coming from certain ethnic groups against other ethnic groups you will be very sad. But these people should live together. This peaceful co-existence can be built if I have some share; if you and the others have some share as well. Personally, for example, I cannot speak everything that I saw of what happened to the Oromos at some point in this prison known as Kilinto; it was really very sad. Well coordinated and against one single ethnic group of prisoners, who are not able to defend themselves – both by the police, by the officials, by fellow prisoners, virtually everybody other than members of that ethnic group. But you don’t speak everything and at the same time you don’t generalize too because if TPLF has done something bad it doesn’t mean the whole Tigraians are like that. At the end these people have to live together. The TPLF may not be there after some point, but these people must continue to live together, so we should not put that kind of animosity among people. So there are times when you don’t speak everything. That was the idea; it is only for peaceful co-existence of these people. I did nothing for my own benefit and I am not scared for my life if I have spoken everything; I have not addressed it very well only because I want these people to co-exist. That is it.
Currently there are many political activists who are behind bars, and as many are exiled. Some of these youngsters are the same people who looked up to you as a role model. What do you say to them? How should they continue to be the voice for those who are rendered voiceless? What advice do you give them because many of them are the same young activists who spoke for you when you couldn’t from your prison cell? What words of wisdom do you share with them?
First I would like to thank everyone who supported me, who supported my family, who demanded my release, and who never forgot the cause for which I was there…I would like to thank them all. But at the same time you know doing politics in Ethiopia is a very difficult task, because the politics is, whether we like it or not, geared in such a way that it is ethnically motivated. Everybody tries to see everything from his ethnic group point of view.
Is that a bad thing?
No, it is not bad. It becomes bad when what you want to achieve is at the expense of other ethnic groups. There should not be any hidden agenda that will exclude the other ethnic groups; whether we like it or not every group, every individual wants his right as we want ours. It is only by self-respect that we can maintain peace and brotherhood in this country. Now you may ask if there is peace in this country. The fact that the guns are silent, the fact that there is no war going on in the country doesn’t necessarily mean that it is as such very peaceful. We are carrying around so many things that can ignite any time. So the young generation must think about its future. This young generation should not listen if they hear these old politicians of the 1960s or 1950s who are old professors and who wrote many things and researched around but who do not contribute to the peaceful co-existence of the people of this country. They are gone, their time is gone and their time is going. But the young generation must think about its own future. And that future should be based on the idea that all should respect one another. We should respect one another. The right of one group or one ethnic group or one community depends also on the right of the other ethnic group. If there is injustice somewhere it will affect justice everywhere. When the Amharas are attacked the Oromos, the Tigraians, the Sidamas, the Somalis and so on must act. That’s what I believe in.
Photo: Addis Standard
This article provides photos and personal stories of some of the many migrants risking the Mediterranean crossing to arrive in Europe. This dangerous undertaking would not be attempted if the situation they left behind was not so dire.
Mr. António Guterres,
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Case Postale 2500
CH-1211 Genève 2 Dépôt
Switzerland
Re: Urgent Concern for Oromo Refugees in Yemen, Libya and South Africa
Your Excellency Mr. Guterres,
We, members of the Oromo Community Associations, civic and professional organizations in the United States write this urgent letter to you to bring to your attention and seek your immediate intervention on behalf of the Oromo refugees and asylums seekers currently stranded and exposed to violence in Yemen, Libya and South Africa. We are shocked by the news of barbaric execution of 28 Ethiopian refugees (including many Oromo) by ISIS in Libya on April 19, 2015. We strongly condemn this inhuman act. We are also distressed by the news of hundreds of refugees who died last month while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to southern Europe. Many Oromo refugees are also caught up in the violent conflict in Yemen and the anti-immigrant violence in South Africa at the same time.
Like many immigrants, these Oromo refugees and asylum seekers have no safe place to return to. They fled from their homes in Ethiopia due to political imprisonment and brutal killings. They were seeking relief from repression at home and hoping to reach a safe place. But now many of them are caught in another violent situation and continue to suffer without any support. Many have already died in transition or in refugee camps. Our heart is bleeding by the horror that our brothers and sisters are experiencing in Libya, Yemen and South Africa.
At the same time, their immediate relatives, including children and aged parents, are brutalized by a repressive regime in Ethiopia. The Oromo people have been subjected to widespread and systematic human rights violations and killings at home in Ethiopia for several years. Systematic and sustained repressive actions such as targeted killings, abductions and disappearances, unlawful imprisonments and torture against the Oromo people have been widespread for over two decades. The Ethiopian government denies the Oromo and other peoples the freedom of association, press and free expression, although these rights are enshrined in its constitution. Several members of opposition political groups and journalists, professors and students are routinely detained, imprisoned or ‘disappeared’ (killed in hidden detentions places). Oromo leaders who genuinely defend the rights of the community are marginalized and stifled in political decision-making process or intimidated, arbitrarily detained and subjected cruel treatments. Several international organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and International Crisis Group have widely documented and archived numerous cases of such state-sponsored atrocities over the years.
Dear Mr. Guterres,
We, the undersigned, members of the Oromo community associations, civic and professional organization in the United States, respectfully appeal to you for urgent intervention to save the lives of the suffering Oromo refugees in Libya, Yemen and South Africa. To alleviate their suffering and save their lives,
We would also like to draw your attention to the tragic political repression in Ethiopia that is contributing to the displacement of thousands of young people and their flight to refugee camps. To minimize the displacement of farmers, workers, students and professionals, we call upon you to use the diplomatic and political influence of your office and put adequate pressure on the government of Ethiopia:
We hope you will act promptly and save the lives of many refugees and asylum seekers, and urge Ethiopian government to change its repressive policy that is driving people from their homes to refugee camps.
Respectfully,
C.C:
E. Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General
The United Nations
New York. NY 10017
E-mail: Inquiries@UN.Org
Fax: 212-963-7055
Addis fortune
በኦሮሚያ ክልል ፊንፊኔ ዙሪያ ልዩ ዞን በረህ አለልቱ ምርጫ ክልል ገዋሳ 02 ምርጫ ጣቢያ በአንድ ለአምስት የተደራጁ ‹ካድሬዎች› መራጮቹን እያዋከቡ መሆኑን መራጮች ተናግረዋል፡፡ በምርጫ ክልሉ ለተወካዮች ም/ቤት የሰማያዊ ፓርቲ ተወዳዳሪ አቶ አበበ አካሉ ጉዳዩን እያጣሩ መሆናቸውን አስታውቀዋል፡፡ለመምረጥ የሚመጡት እየተፈተሹ እና ስልክ ይዘው እንዳይገቡ እየተደረገ ነው 
Oromian Economist 
Power: A curse to a nation but A drug to a Leader May 31, 2015
Posted by OromianEconomist in Colonizing Structure, Corruption in Africa, Sham elections.Tags: Africa, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ethiopia's sham elections, Freedom House in response to comments by Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Sham elections, UNPO
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