These rapacious vultures have sold already millions of acres of Oromo lands to foreign speculators and to their own supporters that have come from their desolate land in Tigre province! They are hoodwinking the international community and other citizens of the Empire that Finfinnee/Addis Ababa is becoming overcrowded and congested due to population influx from the far-flung of the decaying Empire and to rectify the growth of the Capital city, they want to evict Oromo Farmers and confiscate their lands outside of the Capital City limits to build, a modern metropolis! They call their devilish scheme “The Integrated Regional Development Master Plan”

The Oromo Youngsters showed them the courage and lessons in honoring the sacred lands by paying the ultimate sacrifices of dying in the fields of battle against the rodents who came to dig into our sacred Dachee (sacred lands) that for centuries has been the inheritances of the Gulalee, Gaalan, Ekaa,Mettaa and other clans of the Oromo Nation!

The brutality and grotesque acts of these intruders eclipses civilized international standard of crowd control! They used live bullets to quell teenagers whose only weapons were their love of their lands and Oromo farmers who have been forcefully evicted from their farms! Wayannee’s vulgar acts of expelling Oromo peasants from their ancestral lands will be defended to the last drops of our blood! The smoldering anger of the Oromo nation will devour Wayannee thugs and their Oromo collaborators, and the inviolability of our sacred lands will be honored by continuous resistance and sacrifices of a new generation of Oromo youth.

In the depth of their protest lies the beauty of their youth and love of their Nation. They had no fear of death—it was and is an honor for them to fight the barbarians who came to claim Oromo lands under various pretexts! They paid the ultimate martyrdom for their country without the privilege to know that they were beautiful young men and women whose promises were to grow-up and be exemplary citizens as well as to love their lands and Oromummaa. They fought a fearless fight with courage and valor!

Their resistance and martyrdom made them the stars of our Oromia sky, the succeeding generation to this struggle will inherit and defend their dignity in martyrdom and our youthful fallen angels will be honored with badge of courage and reverence to and of heroes! Dry your eyes friends, their souls are soaring because they died for unbound freedom of farmers and all other Oromo citizens. We must draw upon their courage and confront the Tigre leeches and their Oromo collaborators who oppressor our Nation!
Brothers and sisters, the vultures whose decaying Empire is crumbling will not stop their ravenous plunder of our lands, we need to be united and confront the barbarians, the dawn of our freedom will come, and the sun will rise on our struggle against these depraved criminals!

For now, we need to reckon with the supreme sacrifices of our best and brightest youth, shut their gazed eyes of death down, and honor them with grace— to die for ones cause is an honor and privilege!

Oromo-American National Foundation (OANF) condemns the vile and gruesome massacres of Oromo Youth by the TPLF regime, we make an earnest appeal to all international community and other citizens of the Empire for solidarity and express their utter disgust and denounce the Wayannee massacres of Oromo youth!

It’s been said that cowards die a thousand times while a hero dies only once—it is the ignoble coward’s fear of the Oromo nation that will die a thousand times ! The Oromo youth’s valiant courage, to confront the Wayannee’s ghoulish act without fear is a testament to the heroic ethos of Oromo élans who continue to confront the Tigre thugs and their Oromo traitors all-over Oromia undaunted!

The revolting massacre of our youth is our anguish, but in any struggle, lives will be lost. The struggle and its glory, like a diamond will sparkle, and the memory will live in the villages, farm fields, valleys, and mountains of Oromia for generation to come! The best, the brightest and the courageous will continue to be martyred for the dignity of our nation. We inherit our courage to confront the enemy from our forefathers and mothers! Oromia with its brave sons and daughters will be defended with a revolutionary zeal! All the spilled blood of Oromo martyrs will soak the fertile farm soil of Oromia to rise up like the seeds of spring to bloom our farm lands, hills and magnificent valleys of Oromia to urge us to fight-on! The Wayannee lunatics and their Oromo collaborators hoped to kill our nobility and the splendor of our youth. Lunatic may kill an Oromo revolutionary, but they cannot kill the revolutionary idea of free Oromia! The idea of free Oromia will never die! A new generation of gallant Oromo youth will pick-up the torch for the next thousand years or till Oromia becomes a freeland!

Hence the struggle to free Oromia will continue and these new generation of Oromo youngsters are willing to pay any price, confront any foe, engage friends and allies of our cause until the political, cultural and social conditions of our people is emancipated! And so, all the Oromo youth and countless Oromo martyrs, we are proud that in this struggle, your valiant life will be celebrated, your heritage be honored.

Today, it is the Oromo people, once they’ve done with the Oromo, other citizens of the Empire will be next! We appeal for solidarity from all citizens of the Empire in general and to the 2nd largest ethnic group of the Empire—the Amhara citizens in particular.

Pastor Martin Niemöller, a German anti-Nazi theologian/activist during WWII, lamented the following observation regarding the complicity of German protestant churches through their silences about the Nazi atrocities:

In Germany they first came for the communist, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist

Then they came for the Jews, I didn’t speak up because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a protestant.
Then they came for me – and by that time no one was left to speak up. !
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the distinguished African American theologian and civil rights activists of the 1950 and 60’s in the Jim Crow South of the United States, said in his letter from Birmingham Jail, “injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere”

William Ernest Henley, an influential British poet of Victorian era wrote an inspirational poem titled “Invictus” or unconquered as testimony to one’s responsibility to one’s destiny and freedom. We dedicate a version of this poem to the Oromo youth who are refusing to be bowed to the Wayannee monstrosity!

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

Oromo-American National Foundation (OANF)

Some version of this statement was issued in May 2014 when the wicked Wayannee slaughtered Oromo Youth.