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In Piassa, an area many consider to be the heart of Addis Abeba, rests the Ethiopian Federal Police Force Central Bureau of Criminal Investigation, otherwise known by its Amharic name, Ma’ekelawi (Amharic for central). Notorious for the sever torture detainees are subjected to inside its enclosures, Ma’ekelawi is a time defying institution which has been in use for more than half a century in Ethiopia, sadly for the same purpose.
During the dark days of the Marxist Derg regime between 1974 and 1991, Ma’ekelawi served as a place where thousands of dissenters were exposed to cruelties including disquieting torture and arbitrary killings. More than three decades down the line many of those who survived Ma’ekelawi live a life overshadowed by what happened when they were incarcerated, struggling to fully overcome the experience as they carry the burden of the darkest chapters in their lives.
Today nowhere is that history of horror visibly displayed than at the Red Terror Martyr’s Museum around MesqelSquare in central Addis Abeba. The Museum’s motto, “Never Ever Again”, speaks volumes about the atrocities committed inside Ma’ekelawi throughout the 17 years in power of the Derg regime.
The Red Terror Martyr’s Museum was built by the current regime in Ethiopia in honor of the people who perished during its predecessor’s infamous Red Terror campaign of 1977-1978. An estimated number of more than half a million Ethiopians were killed during that brutal campaign; and many of the victims have gone through the terrible experience of life at Ma’ekelawi.
For the survivors of the campaign, the Red Terror Martyr’s Museum is a place where solace and comfort can be sought. Some survivors who were approached by this magazine found talking about the horrendous experience they had gone through inside the fortress of Ma’ekelawi too much to bear, rendering our attempts to get their stories futile.
Fast forward, decades later and a completely different government that has ‘democratic’ written all over it, and that waged a civil war against a regime which partially depended on what happened inside Ma’ekelawi to extend its grip on power, the story of Ma’ekelawi remained intact.
Wofe-Lala – Derg’s favorite torture method
‘Chambers of horror’
Other than its frightening name, a great number of present-day Ethiopians know little about either the physical structure or the torture techniques applied inside Ma’ekelawi. But a 2013 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report titled:“They Want a Confession: Torture and Ill treatment in Ethiopia’s Ma’ekelawi Police Station,” revealed a chilling account. It documented in detail the scale of human rights abuses, unlawful investigation tactics, and detention conditions practiced between the years of 2010 and 2013. It accuses investigators of using coercive methods including several ways of torture to extract confessions, statements, and other information from detainees. Depending on their compliances with the demands of investigators, the report said, detainees are punished or rewarded with denial or access to water, food, light, and other basic needs.They are also subjected to sever physical tortures involving beatings and punishments by stressful positions such as hanging them with their wrists tied to ceilings, or being made to stand with their hands tied above their heads for several hours.
The US State Department’s annual Human Right Report on Ethiopia, which was released in April this year, also admits that “there were credible reports police investigators used physical and psychological abuse to extract confessions inMa’ekelawi. Interrogators reportedly administered beatings and electric shocks to extract information and confessions from detainees.”
Both reports have been corroborated by several detainees (past and present) who were interviewed by Addis Standard for this story. (See selected stories here and here).
Many of them refer to Ma’ekelawi as “chambers of horror.”
“For many of the detainees Tawla Bet is a place of heartache, guilt and moral dilemma”
Inside the ‘Chambers of horror’
Ma’ekelawi has three different blocks with conditions significantly differing amongst them. Based on the locations and the facilities inside; the three blocks are known as Siberia, Tawla Bet & Sheraton.
‘Siberia’
The worst of the three blocks is called Siberia for none other than the cells’ freezing temperature. Siberia alone has between seven and 10 cells at a time, all ranging from 16 to 25 square meters in size. (The number of the cells can go up and down depending on the number of detainees received at a time. And when detainees overwhelm the block, the management converts rooms that serve as storage places or communal rooms into detention centers).
One of the cells in Siberia, cell number 8, is partitioned into four separate cells and is used to keep detainees in solitary confinement. The rooms are just big enough to accommodate a mattress to sleep and a bucket to urinate on. They have no window and no light inside, which is why they are called “Chelema Bet” (Amharic for Dark House).
The rest of the Siberia block hosts communal cells, which are lined up along a long corridor facing one another. They do share similar features with “Chelema Bet”: the rooms are naturally dark except for a dim fluorescent light hanging on a barred, small window near each ceiling. The metal doors have small peepholes, often covered on cardboard, and are kept locked for 24 hours. Detainees inside these communal cells are allowed to have just 10 minutes of access to daylight per day. The only other stuffs in each communal cell are mattresses, a bucket and a few food bowls. Up to 20 detainees (sometimes more) are forced to share each of the communal cells, which are not more than 4X5 square meters in size.
At one end of the corridor there are five filthy toilets and a shower located adjacent the toilets, all for communal use. While showering is allowed once a week, accessing the toilet is restricted to 15 minutes at a time, twice a day; and as if that is not enough discomfort the toilets don’t have doors to give detainees the privacy they need.
‘Tawla Bet’
Tawla Bet (Amharic for wooden house), is where those who are coerced to testify against fellow detainees are kept as prosecutors’ key witnesses. For many of the detainees Tawla Bet is a place of heartache, guilt and moral dilemma; many of them are brought into a point of mental breakdown to testify against fellow detainees under sever duress.
Tawla Bet is also where female detainees are kept. Although most of the regulations are similar with Siberia, the doors in Tawla Bet cells can stay open during daytime, allowing detainees to sit at their doorstep and sometimes move from one cell to the other, a precious asset inside the two blocks.
‘Sheraton’
Named after Ethiopia’s luxurious hotel, Sheraton is a block in which detainees are indulged with a movement as well as access to lawyers and relatives. They can also watch television – mainly broadcast of the state TV programs – at daytime. Detainees who went through interrogations in Siberia and Tawla Bet and are waiting to be officially charged are the primary occupants of the Sheraton block.
The political element
Amha Mekonen, a prominent defense attorney who has represented some of the high profile defendants in recent years – including the much publicized case of Zone9 bloggers – is no stranger to the stories of Ma’ekelawi detailed in the HRW report. “Defendants who are detained at Ma’ekelawi often complain that they are subjected to inhuman treatments,” he tells this magazine. “Some of the defendants even manage to convince courts that they indeed have been abused and assaulted.”
One key problem Amha sees with Ma’ekelawi is that “the division initiates investigation without actually having any real ground to suspect that there is a crime that warrants an investigation. Many say this happens when the case is politically motivated. I am not sure whether that is true or not. What I am sure is the fact that there are instances when the division begins investigation without having sufficient evidence,” he says.
But for the HRW’s report the political element in Ma’ekelawi’s conduct is not easy to miss. The facility is the first stop for the majority of the country’s opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies once all are taken into police custody, the report says.
Article 6/1 of the Ethiopian Federal Police Commission Establishment Proclamation 720/2011 gives the Federal Police the duty to prevent and investigate any threat and acts of crime against the Constitution and the constitutional order, security of the government and the state and human rights offenses. As a result the majority detainees in Ma’ekelawiare suspected of committing Federal offenses.
Furthermore, Ethiopia’s introduction in 2009 of the infamous Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP) has made Ma’ekelawian important site for the detention and investigation of most of the politically sensitive cases, according to the HRW report. The provisions included in Ethiopia’s ATP seriously undermine basic legal safeguards against prolonged pre-charge detentions. Thus, once accused of offenses under this law, the facilities at Ma’ekelawi automatically become home to the majority of detainees in preparation for their trials, according to the report.
As of late the facility is overcrowded, Amha says. “I heard that they are transferring some of the detainees to Addis Abeba Police Commission nearby,” he says. “This shows that they are overwhelmed with cases. It might be criminal cases or something else. It might be something the government wants to suppress. It can be politically motivated,” Amha opines, but Tsegaye Ararssa, a Melbourne-based legal scholar, is unambiguous in his assertion: “the fact that the larger proportion of detainees are political prisoners and prisoners of conscience indicates that something is wrong with the way the politics is run in that country,” he told this magazine in a written interview.
One of the factors that made living conditions inside Ma’ekelawi hellish has always been the disproportionately big numbers of people forced to stay in a single room. “We hear that around 12 sometimes up to 15 people are detained in a cell which is no wider than 4 meter square,” says Amha.
Recently, Bekele Gerba, first secretary general of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) – and who is going through life at Ma’ekelawifor the second time – made a passionate plea at a federal court that he and 21 other detainees were forced to stay at a “4×5 meter cell that included a toilet”.
The Constitution: Ma’ekelawi’s first victim
The operations inside Ma’ekelawi are not only against basic human rights but are at odds with the Supreme Law of the land, the constitution, as well as other laws the country governs itself by, according to Amha. For Tsegaye the essential purpose of Ma’ekelawi is “regime security not human security” and as such it has become an institution that flouts the rights and security of citizens that are otherwise guaranteed in the country’s constitution.
Article 19 (2/5) of the Ethiopian Constitution, for example, asserts that people under police custody should not be forced to make confessions or make admissions which could be “used in evidence against them”. It nullifies any evidence obtained under coercion as inadmissible in the court of law. And article 24 of Proclamation No. 720/2011 prohibits the police from committing, “any inhuman or degrading treatment or act.”
In addition, regulation on the Treatment of Federal Prisoners 138/2007 (art. 3/1) clearly states that “no discrimination on grounds of gender, language, religion, political opinion nation/nationality, social status or citizen,” while art. 3/2 of the same Regulation guarantees “respect to [the detainees’] human dignity unless restricted by the penalties imposed on them.”
Nonetheless detainees at Ma’ekelawi are not only refused access to lawyers and relatives, but are subjected to tortures. “[Similar] tortures we have been hearing in the Derg period such as hanging a bottle of water on male genitals, electric shock, beating, being forced to stand for a long time, and other forms of prolonged interrogations,” are committed against detainees, says Amha, adding that defendants also experience self-incrimination and coercion to testify against co-defendants. “What is more astonishing is the level of details and [organized narratives] we find on those confessions. It is as if they were [composed] by someone with a literary background. No one in his right mind incriminates himself in that manner,” Amha says.
Tsegaye reinforces Amha’s point. “In Ethiopian detention centers fact is not found, or discovered, as such; they are made. They are created in the course of the ‘investigation’”.
Many detainees are brought from remote areas all over the country. For them the pain is twice as much. “They are separated from their social background and support system. There might even be a language barrier. I am not sure ifMa’ekelawi is equipped with proper translation mechanism during interrogations,” says Amha. “And what is worse is after having gone through painful and life-altering months or even years at Ma’ekelawi, they might be acquitted and walk free,” he adds.
According to Tsegaye, “the fact that detainees come from afar disconnects them from their family and their support system thereof. But more importantly such distance from one’s place of residence becomes a barrier to access to justice. Physical distance, cultural distance, and linguistic distance are the three major barriers to access to justice,” Tsegaye said, adding that when a detainee is far removed from his/her own place of residence it “makes it more difficult to gather evidence even for the investigator.” But because the main focus is on “infliction of pain on the ‘suspect’ rather than finding facts, often this fact is neglected.”
To ease this problem, if not to solve it, Amha suggests that other criminal investigation facilities should be established in regional states. Further explaining on this, Tsegaye says that in principle regional states can – and perhaps should – have their own system of criminal investigation. But their power would be confined to the crimes over which they have jurisdiction. (The States have legislative competence over criminal matters that are not covered by the federal criminal code.)
As per Proclamation No. 25/1996 (and its amendments since), the State Supreme Courts have jurisdiction over cases that were meant to appear in the Federal High Court, according to Tsegaye. “State High Courts would adjudge cases that are normally under the jurisdiction of the Federal First Instance Court. This practice suggests that, to this extent, the Ethiopian federal system is merely an executive/administrative federal system. (That is to say, it is a federal system where the federal government has a legislative power whereas the States have an executive/administrative power. The State institutions enforce or execute federal laws), Tsegaye explains.
Back to a lingering past
On February 26, 1977 44 prisoners were picked from Ma’ekelawi and were taken to the outskirts of the city where they were executed and buried in a mass grave, Babile Tola, a survivor of Ma’ekelawi, recounts in his book, “To Kill a Generation: the Red Terror in Ethiopia.” The youngest of the 44 was only 17 while many of them were aged between 17 and 26. The story of the secret mass execution was brought to light thanks to two prisoners who managed to jump and escape out of the police van on their way to their execution. One of them was the young Hilawi Yosef, who subsequently joined the armed struggle against theDerg regime.
After putting the stories during the armed struggle behind him Hilawi Yosef served in several senior positions in the incumbent’s government. Asked by this magazine to relate his story of the Ma’ekelawi Hilawi, who is currently serving as Ethiopia’s Ambassador to Israel, declined to return our email, but his story was narrated in Babile Tola’s historical book, as well as Girmaye Abraha’s “Yemiyanebu Egroch” (Amharic for “The feet that weep”), an apparent reference to the tortures that leave detainees’ feet bleeding.
In addition to Ambassador Hilawi Yosef, several other officials in the current government have been, at one point or another, detained at Ma’ekelawi during the Derg regime. It is a fact that leaves Ma’ekelawi’s current victims mystified and in endless search for answers on the logic of keeping and running an institution that many died fighting against.
So why is Ma’ekelawi still running?
For Tsegaye, the core reason for its existence as the prime source of state terror is the fundamental insecurity of the Ethiopian state. “There lacks to be a political will to demolish this prime example of the apparatus of state repression,” he says. The US state department report revealed that majority of mistreatments happen in “Ma’ekelawi and police stations rather than federal prisons.”
Amha carefully points at the existence of other facilities as a viable alternative to (at least) replace the deteriorating physical infrastructure of Ma’ekelawi, but agrees with Tsegaye that lack of political will is what is holding the change back. “You can find the evidence to that within a walking distance. The newly built Addis Abeba Police Commission has a much better criminal investigation block and facility. If there was a political will, the same improvements could have been done to Ma’ekelawi.”
However, Amha says he doesn’t have any problem with the existence of a Federal Criminal Investigation facility. “My problem is with how it is being operated. [Also] for symbolic reasons, I would prefer it if it is somewhere else because of the horrible memories associated with that place.”
Tsegaye argues that the structure and even the name of Ma’ekelawi should have been altered to “reflect the changed politico-administrative structure of the country. Taking account of the federal set up, the name could have changed into ‘Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation’. That it hasn’t changed even in name already betrays the virtually non-federal political culture and the political practice of the country to date.”
Tsegaye is of the view that if there was a serious thinking into it, such a change – the change from a unitary system to a federal one – would have offered an “opportunity to move away from the dastardly, imperial, and barbaric practices that [Ma’ekelawi] represents and is a symbol of.”
One obstacle that hindered this change, according to Tsegaye, is the fact that Ma’ekelawi has never been put to the light of political and legal accountability. “It has never been publicly criticized (for its misdeeds) in representative political institutions (such as Parliamentary Oversight Committees); its power, finance, and personnel have never been put to a transparent audit system; the legal foundation of that institution, its competence (such as the matters it has jurisdiction over), its jurisdiction, and its responsibility framework has never been publicly accounted for.”
Aside from the visible lack of political will (see our editorial here), lack of skill in crime investigation is yet another factor that contributes to the brutal handling of detainees under police custody, Tsegaye adds. “Criminal investigation is a science, a profession in its own right. Detection requires a distinct set of skills that have to be put to use in the investigation of a particular crime.” From his stint as a lecturer at the Police College, Tsegaye remembers “being told that no one was trained in criminal investigation.”
Tsegaye is under no illusion that judging from its ultimate purpose as a tool of repression, its ideal location in the heart of Piassa (comforted by a general silence), and the total information blackout on the purpose and everyday conduct of the injustice inside its fortress, the current government is, unfortunately, poised to continue running Ma’ekelawi,despite it being a “monument of state barbarity” and a “primary institution that serves as the true face of the repressive regimes – past and present.”
UNPO Side-Events at UN Human Rights Council Raise Awareness of Gross Human Rights Violations in Ethiopia
UNPO, 24 June 2016
Aiming to raise awareness of the gross human rights violations perpetrated by the Ethiopian government against its own citizens, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), in cooperation with the Nonviolent Radical Party (PRNTT), the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa and the Ogaden People’s Rights Organization, convened two side-events to the XXXII Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, on 22 and 23 June 2016, respectively.
On 22 June 2016, a conference entitled ‘Business and Human Rights in Ethiopia: Double-Digit Growth at What Cost?’ looked at the systematic and large-scale violations of human rights committed hand-in-hand by transnational corporations and the Ethiopian government, with particular focus on the Ogaden region.Mr Abdirahman Mahdi, Chairman of the Ogaden People’s Rights Organization (OPRO), provided the audience – comprised of human rights defenders, diplomats, politicians, journalists and academics from all over the world – with an introductory overview of the Ogaden, a region that has recently seen its territory divided into 22 blocks to be then assigned to transnational corporations, with no regard whatsoever to the local inhabitants, who are being forcefully displaced and denied access to their grazing lands. Mr Mahdi reminded the audience that, although the Ethiopian constitution stipulates that the land is owned by the state and the people of Ethiopia, “the Somali people in Ogaden have no say or right in deciding the fate of their land and are never consulted”.
In a region where aid is severely restricted and international NGOs are denied access or operate under direct supervision, “detention, rape, summery execution and torture are rampant”, Mr Mahdi explained. Even the International Committee of the Red Cross has been banned from working in the Ogaden since 2007, while it is allowed in other parts of Ethiopia. Only during the last six months, several civilians in 69 localities were rounded, detained, beaten, looted or killed. On 6 June 2016, 51 people were killed in Jama Dubad, in the Gashamo District On 15 June, more than 400 civilians, relatives of Ogaden diaspora members were detained and tortured in Qabridahar, Dhanaan, Wardheer, Godey and Dhagahbur, after some demonstrations against the regional president had taken place in Australia.
Following Mr Mahdi’s presentation, journalist and director Mr Graham Peebles screened for the first time his recent short documentary “Ogaden: Ethiopia’s Hidden Shame”. The film is based on interviews conducted in Dadaab Refugee camp in Kenya in October 2014 and reveals the state-sponsored terrorism taking place in the Somali Ogaden region of Ethiopia, showing related stories of extreme violence, torture and rape at the hands of the security forces. After the screening of his poignant film, Mr Peebles shared with the audience the experience of shooting and producing the piece. Mr Peebles remarked that, in addition to Ethiopian military and paramilitary being engaged in killings to clear the area for resource exploration, the Ogaden has also been severely affected by drought and famine. “Although the WFP is providing emergency food aid in the Ogaden, the relief programme has been forced to recruit locals who are said to be working for the Ethiopian security services”, he explained. As a result, food aid is increasingly being diverted from WFP warehouses to local agencies, “who reportedly transfer it to the army or government regional administrators, who then divide the food amongst themselves with the purpose of being sold on the black market or given to groups that support the ruling party”.
Scene of the film “Ogaden: Ethiopia’s HIdden Shame’ by Graham Peebles, screened at the UN in Geneva
Followed by a debate, this first conference sought to address the complex relationship between business and human rights in Ethiopia, where the most basic rights of the local population are sacrificed on the altar of major economic interests and so-called ‘development’.
On 23 June 2016, the second side-event, in collaboration the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA), shifted the focus to the Oromo region of Ethiopia where, in November 2015, national security forces responded to largely peaceful protests with excessive and lethal force. The roundtable was entitled “Violations of Freedom of Assembly and Demonstration: Brutal Crackdown on Peaceful Oromo Protests”.
Mr Garoma Wakessa, Director of the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa, opened his presentation by offering a comprehensive overview of the situation of the Oromo, who despite being the largest ethinic group, are largely socially and politically marginalized. Mr Wakessa presented the origins of the protests that broke out across Oromia, in 2015, when civilians took to the streets to protest against the so-called ‘Integrated Master Plan’, the central government’s intention to expand Addis Ababa’s municipal boundary into Oromia regional territory. Mr Wakessa emphasized that the demonstrations were mainly led by Oromo students and while the protests started as an opposition to the ‘Master Plan’, they gradually evolved into a wider Oromo movement levelled against the central authorities.
Mr Felix Horne, Ethiopia Researcher for Human Rights Watch, offered with his most recent report, “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown’: Killings and Arrests in Response to Ethiopia’s Oromo Protests,”, further details of the Ethiopian government’s use of excessive and unnecessary lethal force and mass arrests, mistreatment in detention, and restrictions on access to information to quash the protest movement. His publication was based on interviews with more than 125 protesters, bystanders and victims of abuse, who documented serious violations of the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly by security forces against protesters and others, between the very beginning of these protests in November 2015 and up until May 2016. Moreover, Mr Horne explained that Ethiopian government’s pervasive restrictions on independent human rights investigations and media have meant that very little information has been coming from affected areas. Since mid-March [2016], the Ethiopian government has restricted access to Facebook and other social media, as well as restricted access to diaspora television stations.
The well-achieved goal of convening two side-events to the XXXII Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council was to raise awareness of the dangerous misconception that Ethiopia is ‘an African democracy on the make’ and ‘a beacon of stability in an otherwise troubled region’. Both events informed human rights defenders, diplomats, politicians, journalists and academics from all over the world about the dire human rights’ situation in Ethiopia, firstly by shedding a light on the damage caused by large-scale business operations, notably in areas inhabited by ethnic groups who are already being systematically marginalized and suppressed by the central government. Secondly, by looking at how an authoritarian regime uses brutal and lethal force against peaceful protestors, such as the case of Oromia. The international community clearly has an active role to play in ensuring investigations into the mass atrocities taking place in Ethiopia, to hold perpetrators of crimes responsible and to end the enduring impunity.
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Speakers:
Mr Abdirahman Mahdi, Chairman of the Ogaden People’s Rights Organization (OPRO)
Mr Graham Peebles, Journalist and Film Director
Mr Garoma Wakessa, Director of the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa
Mr Felix Horne, Ethiopia Researcher Human Rights Watch
Ethiopia is often hailed as an African role model and a beacon of stability and hope in an otherwise troubled region. The developmental community is smitten by the country’s alleged progress in areas such as GDP growth, school attendance and provision of public healthcare. As British journalist and filmmaker Graham Peebles points out in his documentary, however, the reality for most of the people in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia is radically different from the sugar-coated image put forth by the Ethiopian government. Scores of Ogadenis flee their home region to escape state-sponsored violence and abuse, while the international community turns a blind eye to their plight.
Ethiopia is regularly cited as an African success story by donor nations; the economy is growing they cry, more children are attending school and health care is improving. Well GDP figures and millennium development statistics reveal only a tiny fraction of the corrupt and violent picture.
What development there is depends, the Oakland Institute relate, on “state force and the denial of human and civil rights”; the country remains 173rd out of 187 countries in the UN Human Development Index and around 40% of the population live below the extremely low poverty line of US-$1.25 a day, – the World Bank worldwide poverty line is $2 a day.
The ruling party, the EPRDF, uses violence and fear to suppress the people and governs in a highly centralised manner. Human rights are ignored and a methodology of murder, false imprisonment, torture and rape is followed.
The ethnic Somali population of the Ogaden, in the southeast part of the country, has been the victim of extreme government brutality since 1992. It is a familiar story of a region with a strong identity seeking autonomy from central government, and the regime denying them that democratic right.
In 2013 and again in 2014 I visited Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya and met a number of people who had fled state persecution in the Ogaden. Men and women told of false imprisonment, murder and torture. All the women I spoke with relayed accounts of multiple rape, and sexual abuse; defected military men confessed to carrying out such appalling crimes.
We filmed the meetings and put together a short documentary, Ogaden: Ethiopia’s Hidden Shame. Most people have never heard of the region and know nothing of what is happening there.
The purpose of the film is to raise awareness, of what human rights groups describe as a genocidal campaign, and to put pressure on the primary donors – America, Britain and the European Union. Countries that collectively give around half of Ethiopia’s federal budget in various aid packages, and whose neglect and indifference amounts to complicity.
The film records the distressing stories of three extraordinary young women, Anab, Maryama and Fatuma.
It looks increasingly possible that Brexit will lead to the demise of the United Kingdom. That may be for the best, as it’s abundantly clear that the four members now have markedly different concerns.
Do you remember where you were on May 1, 2004? I do. I was in Dublin watching the Irish government – which held the rotating European Union presidency – welcome 10 new members to the bloc. It was the single biggest expansion, in terms of population, in the EU’s history. But tellingly, not in terms of wealth.
Make no mistake: that was also the day Britain’s membership of the EU became unsustainable. Because the main reason Brexit has been passed is English anger at the consequences of unfettered mass immigration. Despite a negative fertility rate (1.75 in 2004 vs. 2.41 in 1971), the population of the United Kingdom rose from 59.99 million in 2004 to 64.1 million in 2013. That surge of over 4 million in less than a decade is greater than the entire increase in the 33 years from 1971-2004.
Before the 2004 expansion, which admitted the likes of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Baltic States, internal EU migration was manageable. That was down to the fact that living standards weren’t vastly different across the union. For example, life in Portugal, the then-poorest member, wasn’t that much worse than in wealthier countries like Germany, France and Denmark. However, the gap between wages in Latvia, for instance, and London was astounding. Back in 2004, the average worker in Riga brought home €239 ($265) a month. That was less than 10 percent of Londonincomes which were £2,058 (around €2,900 at the time). Thus, it’s hard to blame east Europeans for seizing the opportunity to move west.
Ill fares the land
Britain’s post-war social democratic consensus has been under pressure since the Thatcher years, but EU expansion collapsed it. Rightly or wrongly, resentment has taken hold at the perception, fueled by the media, that foreigners are abusing the UK benefit’s system. Meanwhile, British workers have endured declines in real wages in the past decade. The reason is easy to understand. The wide availability of cheap labor, unrestricted by visa requirements, has enabled employers to conduct a race to the bottom, heightening inequality. And to make things worse, the population explosion has increased competition for housing, leading to enormous inflation in rent and property prices. Put simply, for common folk, life in England is getting worse.
I say England, rather than Britain, because this is all about England. Or more precisely, England and Wales, (except London of course, which is a different world entirely these days). Scotland and Northern Ireland have overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU. Of course, for reasons of climate and economics, both are far less attractive to migrants than England or Wales and their status as net recipients from the UK budget means they have less at stake than other regions. Yet, things aren’t that simple.
Ulster says yes
Northern Ireland needs the EU because the peace settlement which ended its decades-long civil war, or ‘Troubles,’ was contingent on Dublin and London being legally joined via Brussels. Additionally, Ulster’s economy is heavily-dependent on trade with the vastly richer Irish state. In Scotland’s case, attitudes to ‘Britishness’ differ from those in England. In Scotland, to be British is to face inwards, but to be European is to face outwards. Down south, ‘Englishness’ and ‘Britishness’ are mostly synonymous.
Now, 62 percent of Scots have voted to remain in the EU, but because they are controlled by London, their democratic wishes matter not a jot. With that in mind, it’s hardly a surprise that Scottish Nationalists have already issued calls for a new referendum on independence.
One that even those who passionately supported the survival of the UK in 2014 might support.
In Northern Ireland things are less straightforward.
Pro-Irish republicans were far more likely to support the EU than pro-British loyalists, whose leaders campaigned for Brexit. The (historically mainly-Catholic) nationalists will now hope that moderate unionists (usually nominally-Protestant) can be persuaded to support a united Ireland, sacrificing ethnic tradition for economic reality. However, there is no guarantee that citizens of Ireland itself would agree to accept them at this time. The south has only just recovered from the greatest economic crisis in its history and may feel it cannot afford unity. Unless of course, Brussels is willing to underwrite the project. That is not as outlandish as it seems. Because Eurocrats are angry and may want to ‘punish’ England.
Eurocrat rage
The European Parliament president, Germany’s Martin Schulz, announced Friday morning that there will be “consequences”for Britain so other EU countries are not “encouraged to follow that dangerous path.” Now Shulz’s comments might be mean and vindictive and show contempt for democracy, but they also reflect realpolitik in Brussels.
If the UK, or whatever is left of it, is successful outside the EU, it will be the biggest disaster imaginable for the EU establishment – an elite of unelected rootless cosmopolitans often contemptuous of public opinion. It will show that a brighter future is possible and expose ‘project fear’ as a load of baloney. Brussels has pushed a mantra for nearly 60 years now that European integration makes things better and that there is no alternative. If a country as important as England proves that theory wrong, all bets are off. Actually, maybe they already are.
Let’s be honest, nobody really expected this result. Even UKIP leader Nigel Farage practically conceded defeat for Brexit on Thursday night. When people realized, early Friday morning, that Leave was winning, it was as much of a shock as if England had beaten Germany in a penalty shoot-out. In ice hockey. Even Brexit’s best known exponent, Boris Johnson, looked stunned when he eventually emerged to face the cameras.
We are now in uncharted waters. A member state has decided to leave the EU. A major one at that. Furthermore, the vote has exposed deep divisions inside the UK itself. Discord perhaps profound enough to mean its demise. Nevertheless, in the long term, such an outcome may be better for all concerned.
On 23 June 2016, the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) and the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) will convene a side-event entitled “Violations of Freedom of Assembly and Demonstration: Brutal Crackdown on Peaceful Oromo Protests”. The side-event, taking place on the occassion of the 32nd Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council, seeks to assess the human right situation ine Ethiopia, while giving special attention to the recent crackdown in Oromia, where the Ethiopian security forces responded to largerly peaceful protests with excessive and lethal force.Full article UNPO-HRLHA Statement
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) Oral Statement
June 22, 2016 in
UN Human Rights Council – 32nd Session
13 June – 1 July 2016
Geneva, Switzerland
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June 22, 2016
Presenter: Mr. Garoma Wakessa
Director, HRLHA
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Human Rights Crisis In Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia
Mr. Chairman and Council Participants;
Brutal and often fatal crackdowns by the Ethiopian Government’s special squads against the peaceful protests by Oromo nationals have been going on since November 2015, and have been reported on by several human rights organizations such as AI, HRW, and some western government agencies like the US Department of State, the EU Parliament and UN Human Rights Experts.
So far, over 400 deaths of innocent citizens have already resulted from the shootings by the government’s armed squads and the protests have continued.
Victims of the brutalities of the government’s killing squads, known as Agazi and the federal police, include an eight-year old child, a seven-month pregnant women named Shasitu, and an 80 year- old senior citizen.
Although the country’s constitution provides for fundamental freedoms and respect for the rule of law, Ethiopia is continuously demonstrating its authoritarian way of governance, yet again with no accountability for its actions.
Lawlessness has reigned in the Regional State of Oromia and the state has been placed under the undeclared military rule since February 2016.
Absolute inhuman actions and brutalities have been committed by the federal armed forces deployed in Oromia in the past seven months.
Mr. Chairman
In the face of such a large- scale crisis and countless brutalities, there have been almost no tangible and effective actions taken by international communities.
Over the past 25 years, thousands of Oromos have been killed, disappeared, tortured, and murdered.
Tens of Thousands are languishing in prisons or have been prosecuted under the terrorism law adopted by Ethiopia in 2009 with no fair process
Journalists, bloggers, opposition political party members and, peaceful demonstrators all have been convicted under the terrorist act.
Mr. Chairman
This is the wrong time to remain silent in regards to the human rights situations in Oromia /Ethiopia.
The nations of the world should react to prevent the loss of more innocent lives, mass immigration and the suffering of tens of millions of Oromos before it is too late
Therefore, the HRLHA respectfully asks the UN Human Rights Council to use its mandate to establish a commission of inquiry on human rights in Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia.
Human Rights situations that require the Council’s attention
June 22, 2016
(HRW) — Human Rights Watch is deeply concerned about several human rights situations that have either been inadequately addressed by this Council, or on which the Council has remained largely silent.
Bangladesh has taken an ever-increasing turn to authoritarianism in recent years. The authorities have engaged in mass arrests of opposition members – numbering in the thousands – and have cracked down on civil society groups, opposition media houses, editors, and journalists. Impunity for the security forces remains the norm, as alleged abuses by government forces go unchecked. The government’s initial response to the machete killings of over 50 people was to warn these victims to exercise self-censorship, even going so far as to prosecute four bloggers for “hurting religious sentiment.” In the past week, the authorities have taken a more determined turn in responding to these killings, but instead of investigating and prosecuting in a careful, measured manner, have fallen back on old patterns and arrested 15,000 people, many, it seems, arbitrarily. We urge Member States to raise this concerning situation at the Council and directly with the government.
In Ethiopia, state security forces have killed more than 400 protesters since November 2015, during largely peaceful protests in its largest region of Oromia. Many of those killed were students. Tens of thousands of people have been detained, and many of those remain in detention without charge. More broadly, Ethiopia continues to criminalize peaceful expression of dissent through severe restrictions on independent media, independent civil society, and misuse of its antiterrorism law. Torture and ill-treatment in detention continues to be a serious concern. We call for an independent and impartial investigation into the use of excessive force and other serious abuses by security forces in Oromia. As a Human Rights Council member – and vice-president – Ethiopia is required to cooperate with the Council and its mechanisms. Yet it has not accepted requests by numerous Special Procedures to visit over the past decade. We urge the government to do so as a matter of priority.
In Thailand, since the military coup in May 2014, the ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has carried out policies and actions without any effective oversight or accountability. A current draft constitution, written by a junta-appointed committee, endorses unaccountable military domination of governance even after a new government takes office. Regardless of its pledges to respect human rights, the junta—led by Prime Minister Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha—has banned political activity and public gatherings; made expression subject to criminal prosecution; conducted hundreds of arbitrary arrests; and held civilian detainees in military detention. Public debates and open opposition to the draft constitution, on which a referendum is scheduled for August 7, 2016, are prohibited. Military courts are regularly used to try civilians, particularly dissidents and alleged lese majeste offenders. In southern border provinces, serious abuses by all sides continue unabated in the fighting between separatist groups and security forces. The killing and enforced disappearance of human rights defenders and other activists, as well as reprisals via politically motivated criminal litigation, remain a pressing concern across Thailand. Millions of migrant workers face systematic abuse. Asylum seekers, having no legal avenue to bring their claims, are subject to arrest and deportation.
Finally, the armed conflict in Yemenhas been marked by serious violations of international law and an absence of accountability. The Saudi-led coalition has carried out numerous indiscriminate and disproportionate aerial attacks. Human Rights Watch alone documented 43 airstrikes that killed more than 670 civilians and 16 attacks involving indiscriminate cluster munitions. The Houthis and allied forces have fired weapons indiscriminately into civilian areas, recruited children, and laid anti-personnel landmines. The conflict has taken a terrible toll, with more than 3,500 civilians killed and 82 percent of the population needing humanitarian assistance. The Human Rights Council should establish an international mechanism to investigate violations by all parties to the conflict.
Awol K. Allo is a Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
So much for the “Ethiopia rising” meme which Ethiopian authorities ostentatiously promote to camouflage the repressive nature of the state.
A new report published by Human Rights Watch on the Oromo protests depicts a disturbing picture of a government that thrives on systematic repression and official violence.
The report, which puts the death toll from the seven-month-long protest at more than 400, exposes the “Ethiopia rising” narrative for what it is: a political Ponzi scheme.
Underneath the selective highlighting of Ethiopia’s story of renaissance and transformation lies a Janus-faced reality in which the triumph of some has meant the utter submission of others.
The Oromo protestsare exposing the senseless suffering and brutality that lies beneath Ethiopia’s rhetoric of development and revival.
After 25 years of absolute control over the country’s public life, the ruling party is facing its biggest political challenge yet: an unconventional and innovative resistance to its iron-fisted rule.
What is unfolding in the drama of this increasingly defiant and unprecedented protest is the subplot that producers and cheerleaders of the “Ethiopia rising” myth neither anticipated nor fully understood: the power of the indignant to wreak havoc and paralyse the state even as they were met with murderous official violence.
Though the protest was initially triggered by the threat of displacement by Ethiopia’s development policies – particularly the proposed expansion of the territorial limits of the capital, Addis Ababa, into neighbouring Oromo lands – this is not the sole reason and cannot provide an adequate explanation of the level of defiance on the streets of Oromia.
Rather, the protest is a manifestation of long-simmering ethnic discontent and deeper crisis of representation that pushed Oromos to the margin of the country’s political life.
Despite a rare concession by the authorities to cancel the “master plan”, the protest is still ongoing, demanding genuine political reforms aimed at an equitable reorganisation and overhauling of existing frameworks and arrangements of power in the country.
Protesters argue that the prevailing arrangements with the ethnically mixed morphology of the Ethiopian state, in which ethnic Tigray elites dominate all aspects of public life, are not only undemocratic, they are also an existential threat to the peaceful co-existence of communities in the future.
The Oromo question
As the single largest ethnic group in a multi-ethnic country in which ethnicity is the pre-eminent form of political organising and mobilisation, the prevailing arrangement presents a particularly unique and challenging problem for the Oromo.
According to the 2007 Ethiopian National Census, Oromos constitute34.49 percent of the population while Tigray, the politically dominant ethnic group, represents 6.07 percent of the total population. The real figure for the Oromo people is much higher.
The silence of the international community in the face of consistent reports raising alarms about systematic and widespread atrocities is deafening.
By virtue of being a majority ethnic group, Oromos represent an existential threat to the legitimacy of ethnic Tigrayan rule and therefore have to be policed and controlled to create an appearance of stability and inclusiveness.
In a landmark report titled “Because I am Oromo“, Amnesty International describes a widespread and systematic repression, astonishing in scope and scale, in which the conflagration of ethnic identity and political power gave rise to the unprecedented criminalisation and incarceration of Oromos over the past five years.
Oromos have been the victims of an indiscriminate and disproportionate attack in the hands of security forces. This, protesters argue, had a far deeper and more corrosive effect of rendering Oromo identity and culture invisible and unrecognisable to mainstream perspectives and frameworks.
The government’s response so far has been to dismiss the movement as misinformed, and besmirch it as anti-peace or anti-development elements controlled and directed by external forces – an old tactic used by the government to discredit and criminalise dissent. The most vocal and outspoken members of the movement are being tried for terrorism.
Western influence
The silence of the international community in the face of consistent reports raising alarms about systematic and widespread atrocities is deafening.
The obsessive focus of the West on the “war on terror” and the tendency to define human rights policythrough the lens of the war on terror means that those who abuse their citizens under the guise of the war on terror are impervious to criticism.
In the decade since 9/11, the West went beyond technical and financial support to providing diplomatic cover to abuses of human rights including by creating make-believe stories that Ethiopia is a democracy and an economic success story.
High-ranking government officials, including the United States President Barack Obama, praised the ruling party as “democratically elected“, providing much-needed endorsement and legitimisation to the government.
Ethiopia is a classic case of US counterterrorism policy inadvertently producing the very thing it seeks to prevent: helping to create an Orwellian surveillance state reminiscent of the Stasi in East Germany.
The “Ethiopia rising” narrative and its economic fiction is beginning to unravel. With the IMF significantly downgrading its economic forecast to 4.5 percent from 10.2 percent last year, the exodus of people fleeing its repression, and the droughts that made a fifth of its 100 million people dependent on food aid, Ethiopia’s economic miracle is being exposed for what it is: the benefit of the elite.
The Ethiopian government and its partners in the West are thinking that the outcry will die away, that the outrage will pass. We should lose no opportunity to prove them wrong.
Awol K Allo is Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
Oromo: HRW Report Highlights Ethiopian Government’s Excessive Use of Force in the Oromo Protests
UNPO, 16 June 2016
A report published by Human Rights Watch [June 2016] reveals that the Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 by using excessive and unnecessary lethal force in the peaceful protests in the Oromia region, since November 2015. Many have also been arrested and mistreated in prison, and have been restricted in access to information by the Ethiopian government in order to supress the protest movement. Human Rights Watch urges the Ethiopian government to immediately free those who have been wrongfully detained and to start an independent investigation to hold the security forces accountable for abuses.
(Nairobi) – Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 protesters and others, and arrested tens of thousands more during widespread protests in the Oromia region since November 2015. The Ethiopian government should urgently support a credible, independent investigation into the killings, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses.
The 61-page report. “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown’: Killings and Arrests in Response to Ethiopia’s Oromo Protests,” details the Ethiopian government’s use of excessive and unnecessary lethal force and mass arrests, mistreatment in detention, and restrictions on access to information to quash the protest movement. Human Rights Watch interviews in Ethiopia and abroad with more than 125 protesters, bystanders, and victims of abuse documented serious violations of the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly by security forces against protesters and others from the beginning of the protests in November 2015 through May 2016.
“Ethiopian security forces have fired on and killed hundreds of students, farmers, and other peaceful protesters with blatant disregard for human life,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately free those wrongfully detained, support a credible, independent investigation, and hold security force members accountable for abuses.”
Human Rights Watch found that security forces used live ammunition for crowd control repeatedly, killing one or more protesters at many of the hundreds of protests over several months. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have identified more than 300 of those killed by name and, in some cases, with photos.
The November protests were triggered by concerns about the government’s proposed expansion of the capital’s municipal boundary through the Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan. Protesters feared that the Master Plan would displace Oromo farmers, as has increasingly occurred over the past decade, resulting in a negative impact on farm communities while benefiting a small elite.
As protests continued into December, the government deployed military forces for crowd-control throughout Oromia. Security forces repeatedly fired live ammunition into crowds with little or no warning or use of non-lethal crowd-control measures. Many of those killed have been students, including children under 18.
The federal police and military have also arrested tens of thousands of students, teachers, musicians, opposition politicians, health workers, and people who provided assistance or shelter to fleeing students. While many detainees have been released, an unknown number remain in detention without charge and without access to legal counsel or family members.
Witnesses described the scale of the arrests as unprecedented. Yoseph, 52, from the Wollega zone, said: “I’ve lived here for my whole life, and I’ve never seen such a brutal crackdown. There are regular arrests and killings of our people, but every family here has had at least one child arrested.”
Former detainees told Human Rights Watch that they were tortured or mistreated in detention, including in military camps, and several women alleged that they were raped or sexually assaulted. Some said they were hung by their ankles and beaten; others described having electric shocks applied to their feet, or weights tied to their testicles. Video footage shows students being beaten on university campuses. Despite the large number of arrests, the authorities have charged few individuals with any offenses. Several dozen opposition party members and journalists have been charged under Ethiopia’s draconian anti-terrorism law, while 20 students who protested in front of the United States embassy in Addis Ababa in March were charged with various offenses under the criminal code.
Access to education – from primary school to university – has been disrupted in many locations because of the presence of security forces in and around schools, the arrest of teachers and students, and many students’ fear of attending class. Authorities temporarily closed schools for weeks in some locations to deter protests. Many students told Human Rights Watch that the military and other security forces were occupying campuses and monitoring and harassing ethnic Oromo students.
There have been some credible reports of violence by protesters, including the destruction of foreign-owned farms, looting of government buildings, and other destruction of government property. However, the Human Rights Watch investigations into 62 of the more than 500 protests since November found that most have been peaceful.
The Ethiopian government’s pervasive restrictions on independent human rights investigations and media have meant that very little information is coming from affected areas. The Ethiopian government has also increased its efforts to restrict media freedom. Since mid-March [2016] it has restricted access to Facebook and other social media. It has also restricted access to diaspora television stations.
In January, the government announced the cancellation of the Master Plan. By then, however, protester grievances had widened due to the brutality of the government response.
While the protests have largely subsided since April, the government crackdown has continued, Human Rights Watch found. Many of those arrested over the past seven months remain in detention, and hundreds have not been located and are feared to have been forcibly disappeared. The government has not conducted a credible investigation into alleged abuses. Soldiers still occupy some university campuses and tensions remain high. The protests echo similar though smaller protests in Oromia in 2014, and the government’s response could be a catalyst for future dissent, Human Rights Watch said.
Ethiopia’s brutal crackdown warrants a much stronger, united response from concerned governments and intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said. While the European Parliament has passed a strong resolution condemning the crackdown and a resolution has been introduced in the United States Senate, these are exceptions in an otherwise severely muted international response to the crackdown in Oromia. The UN Human Rights Council should address these serious abuses, call for the release of those arbitrarily detained and support an independent investigation.
“Ethiopia’s foreign supporters have largely remained silent during the government’s bloody crackdown in Oromia,” Lefkow said. “Countries promoting Ethiopia’s development should press for progress in all areas, notably the right to free speech, and justice for victims of abuse.”
(Nairobi) – Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 protesters and others, and arrested tens of thousands more during widespread protests in the Oromia region since November 2015. The Ethiopian government should urgently support a credible, independent investigation into the killings, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses.
The 61-page report. “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown’: Killings and Arrests in Response to Ethiopia’s Oromo Protests,” details the Ethiopian government’s use of excessive and unnecessary lethal force and mass arrests, mistreatment in detention, and restrictions on access to information to quash the protest movement. Human Rights Watch interviews in Ethiopia and abroad with more than 125 protesters, bystanders, and victims of abuse documented serious violations of the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly by security forces against protesters and others from the beginning of the protests in November 2015 through May 2016.
Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 protesters and others, and arrested tens of thousands more during widespread protests in the Oromia region since November 2015.
“Ethiopian security forces have fired on and killed hundreds of students, farmers, and other peaceful protesters with blatant disregard for human life,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately free those wrongfully detained, support a credible, independent investigation, and hold security force members accountable for abuses.”
Human Rights Watch found that security forces used live ammunition for crowd control repeatedly, killing one or more protesters at many of the hundreds of protests over several months. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have identified more than 300 of those killed by name and, in some cases, with photos.
Interview:
Ethiopia’s Bloody Crackdown on Peaceful Dissent, an interview with Ethiopia researcher Felix Horne
The November protests were triggered by concerns about the government’s proposed expansion of the capital’s municipal boundary through the Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan. Protesters feared that the Master Plan would displace Oromo farmers, as has increasingly occurred over the past decade, resulting in a negative impact on farm communities while benefiting a small elite.
As protests continued into December, the government deployed military forces for crowd-control throughout Oromia. Security forces repeatedly fired live ammunition into crowds with little or no warning or use of non-lethal crowd-control measures. Many of those killed have been students, including children under 18.
The federal police and military have also arrested tens of thousands of students, teachers, musicians, opposition politicians, health workers, and people who provided assistance or shelter to fleeing students. While many detainees have been released, an unknown number remain in detention without charge and without access to legal counsel or family members.
Witnesses described the scale of the arrests as unprecedented. Yoseph, 52, from the Wollega zone, said: “I’ve lived here for my whole life, and I’ve never seen such a brutal crackdown. There are regular arrests and killings of our people, but every family here has had at least one child arrested.”
Former detainees told Human Rights Watch that they were tortured or mistreated in detention, including in military camps, and several women alleged that they were raped or sexually assaulted. Some said they were hung by their ankles and beaten; others described having electric shocks applied to their feet, or weights tied to their testicles. Video footage shows students being beaten on university campuses.
Despite the large number of arrests, the authorities have charged few individuals with any offenses. Several dozen opposition party members and journalists have been charged under Ethiopia’s draconian anti-terrorism law, while 20 students who protested in front of the United States embassy in Addis Ababa in March were charged with various offenses under the criminal code.
Ethiopian security forces have fired on and killed hundreds of students, farmers, and other peaceful protesters with blatant disregard for human life.
Leslie Lefkow
deputy Africa director
Access to education – from primary school to university – has been disrupted in many locations because of the presence of security forces in and around schools, the arrest of teachers and students, and many students’ fear of attending class. Authorities temporarily closed schools for weeks in some locations to deter protests. Many students told Human Rights Watch that the military and other security forces were occupying campuses and monitoring and harassing ethnic Oromo students.
There have been some credible reports of violence by protesters, including the destruction of foreign-owned farms, looting of government buildings, and other destruction of government property. However, the Human Rights Watch investigations into 62 of the more than 500 protests since November found that most have been peaceful.
The Ethiopian government’s pervasive restrictions on independent human rights investigations and media have meant that very little information is coming from affected areas. The Ethiopian government has also increased its efforts to restrict media freedom. Since mid-March it has restricted access to Facebook and other social media. It has also restricted access to diaspora television stations.
In January, the government announced the cancellation of the Master Plan. By then, however, protester grievances had widened due to the brutality of the government response.
While the protests have largely subsided since April, the government crackdown has continued, Human Rights Watch found. Many of those arrested over the past seven months remain in detention, and hundreds have not been located and are feared to have been forcibly disappeared. The government has not conducted a credible investigation into alleged abuses. Soldiers still occupy some university campuses and tensions remain high. The protests echo similar though smaller protests in Oromia in 2014, and the government’s response could be a catalyst for future dissent, Human Rights Watch said.
Ethiopia’s brutal crackdown warrants a much stronger, united response from concerned governments and intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said. While the European Parliament has passed a strong resolution condemning the crackdown and a resolution has been introduced in the United States Senate, these are exceptions in an otherwise severely muted international response to the crackdown in Oromia. The UN Human Rights Council should address these serious abuses, call for the release of those arbitrarily detained and support an independent investigation.
“Ethiopia’s foreign supporters have largely remained silent during the government’s bloody crackdown in Oromia,” Lefkow said. “Countries promoting Ethiopia’s development should press for progress in all areas, notably the right to free speech, and justice for victims of abuse.”
The Ethiopian government is engaged in its bloodiest crackdown in a decade, but the scale of this crisis has barely registered internationally. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 400 people, including many children, have been killed by the country’s security forces in Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest region, with lethal force unleashed against largely peaceful, student-led protests.
For the past seven months, security forces have fired live ammunition into crowds and carried out summary executions. While students were first on the streets, many others have joined them, including teachers, musicians, opposition politicians and healthcare workers. Tens of thousands of people have been arrested, some of whom remain in detention without charge, and there are credible reports that detainees have been tortured or beaten – some of them in public. Hundreds of other people have been forcibly disappeared.
In normal circumstances, a crackdown on this scale would generate large-scale media attention and prompt strong international censure. But global media coverage has been very limited, in part because of Ethiopia’s draconian restrictions on media reporting and the difficulties journalists face in accessing the region. The response of governments internationally, including the British government, has also been extremely muted.
The reason for this is not a lack of information: diplomats in the country have a fairly good idea of what is going on in Oromia. Instead, it appears to be a flawed political calculation that the UK’s massive investment in Ethiopia’s development efforts (over 300 million pounds of aid is provided annually) would be undermined by public criticism or greater pressure on the government to rein in its abusive security forces.
The other obstacle is Ethiopia’s acute food crisis, where a severe drought – the worst since the famine of 1984-85 – has left 18 million people in need of aid. Global attention on this issue has led many governments around the world to overlook or downplay the other very urgent crisis unfolding in Oromia.
But these trade-offs are short-sighted and counter-productive. Ethiopia’s repression and its deepening authoritarianism hinder, rather than help, the country to combat food insecurity, promote development and tackle a range of other challenges. And they create the conditions for further instability and polarisation.
Ethiopia Ethiopia is struggling with its worst drought for 30 years, with millions in dire need of life-saving aidGetty Images Indeed, it was the very lack of respect for rights in the Ethiopian government’s approach to development that first triggered unrest in Oromia last November. The early protests were a response to the so-called ‘Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan’, which proposed a 20-fold expansion of the municipal boundary of the capital.
Protesters objected that this top-down initiative from the government, introduced without meaningful consultation or participation of the affected communities, would displace thousands of ethnic Oromo farmers from land around the city. Those displaced by similar government initiatives over the past decade have rarely received compensation or new land on which to rebuild their lives – and protesters feared a repeat of this experience on a larger scale.
Dinka Chala Mersen Chala, brother of Dinka Chala, who was killed by Ethiopian forces for protesting, but his family says he was not involved ,December 17, 2015, Oromia.Getty Images Concerns were also expressed about mining and manufacturing projects in Oromia and their impact on the environment and access to water. In mid-January 2016, the government announced it had “cancelled” the Master Plan. But despite this, the government does not seem to have changed its approach (it is still marketing land to investors, for example), there has been no let-up in the repression, and the protests continue. The government’s violent response and the rising death toll have further inflamed the situation and decades of historic Oromo grievances around cultural, economic and political marginalisation have come to the fore.
With or without the plan, the forced displacement of farmers looks likely to continue – as it has in many parts of Ethiopia – unless the Ethiopian government fundamentally changes its approach to development. That would mean treating communities as genuine partners in the development process, meaningfully consulting them, and allowing them to shape development projects. And it should mean opening up space for peaceful dissent and political opposition, as well as independent media.
In the short-term, the Ethiopian government could ease tensions by releasing all those arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned, establishing a credible independent investigation into the killings and other violations – with those responsible for abuses held to account – and it could start a dialogue with the Oromo community about their legitimate grievances that have fuelled these protests.
But given the awful rights record of the government in Addis this seems highly improbable without stronger international pressure. As a major development partner to Ethiopia – including support for work in the Oromia region itself – the British government should use its leverage more assertively and help galvanise a concerted international response – one which highlights, to the Ethiopian government, the cost of its ongoing repression. And it should press the Ethiopians to pursue a development strategy that respects human rights, rather than tramples all over them.
Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 protesters and others, and arrested tens of thousands more during widespread protests in the Oromia region since November 2015. Human Rights Watch interviews in Ethiopia and abroad with more than 125 protesters, bystanders, and victims of abuse documented serious violations of the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly by security forces against protesters and others from the beginning of the protests in November 2015 through May 2016.The Ethiopian government should urgently support a credible, independent investigation into the killings, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses. – By HRW, Jun 15, 2016
The Blues is said to be based on musical traditions drawn from African roots. The slave trade to Arabia and the east – in total, much bigger than the better-known trade routes west – despatched misery on a similar scale.
Except that Oromo and other slaves taken from and through Abyssinia (up to the 1930s incidentally, and continuing now under the guise of domestic servants) were more likely to become freed women and men, and become political and military leaders. Not so much now.
The majority pay to travel on false papers, often with exaggerated ages, to work, for many in a state of slavery, for Arabian families. They flee from persecution because they have dared to stand up for Oromo rights.
Between November 2015 and March 2016 over 400 Oromo students and civilians have been shot dead on the streets of Ethiopia, where they demonstrated. Or when they opened their doors to the house-to-house searches which followed. Local informants report many more killings. Names, dates and locations of over 250 extra-judicial executions have been given.
Where is the clamour from left and right, complaining about misuse of our generous aid to Ethiopia? This aid amounts to about £300 million yearly – Ethiopia receives more aid from the UK than any other country in the world.
Well, the clamour is not coming because, allegedly, the government is in control and the opposition is weak and divided. Small wonder, that an oppressive regime with western support and intelligence can render an opposition weak and divided
Meanwhile, students bleed on Ethiopian streets and there is martial law in Oromia. Tens of thousands of young people are incarcerated in concentration camps. Is this the sort of stability that the UK wants to encourage?
This picture is of a young woman killed in central Oromia Region, at a place named Galesda. Her name is Nato Guluma. She was shot dead in Jaldu, West Showa, on 14 December 2015.
What do we want the UK’s foreign policy to look like in Ethiopia, East Africa, the Middle East? Like this? An sweeping under the rugs of innocent lives lost in the struggle for freedom from persecution? Then again, so few of us know about these lives. After all, Oromo students being shot dead is sometimes just not media material, and will never make it to the UK’s front pages.
Well, now you know. Dr Trevor Trueman learned about the unfair treatment of asylum-seekers when providing expert witness reports on Ethiopia to immigration appeal tribunals and courts. He has developed an expertise on human rights abuses in Ethiopia as a result of reporting abuses against Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopian publicly since 1994. He trained Oromo health workers in three long field trips from 1988 to 1991. He is now a member of the steering committee of Amnesty’s Asylum Justice Project.
That the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission is not an independent institution and that it is incapable of doing human rights monitoring has long been admitted by the regime itself. So, no report it presents is a result of an independent inquiry. No statement it makes is an impartial statement. What we heard yesterday is not even close to the admission of guilt on the part of the regime made by the Prime Minister and the Spokesperson earlier in the year.
We have yet to see its report, the methods it used, and the personnel it mobilized to conduct its investigation. We have yet to see whom they identified as these “other forces who sought to take advantage of the people”. We have yet to see how “these other forces” are implicated. We have yet to see a full description of who did what so that we can make them responsible. To blame indefinite (and invisible) forces for the people killed (over 500 now), for the people injured (in thousands), and for the people arbitrarily arrested (estimated to be over 50,000), for the destruction of property (through vandalizing and burning of university campuses), for the suspension and dismissal of Oromia’s civil administration unconstitutionally (without even a semblance of legality that could be seen if there were an emergency declaration or a “federal intervention”) is a farce of incredible proportion. And we reject that completely, and we say NO!
Referring to “these other forces” as the responsible bodies without clearly identifying them and without establishing the mode of their involvement is only deflecting responsibility from the regime that acted completely lawlessly (illegally and unconstitutionally) to take “merciless and definitive measures” on protestors and to subject the entire region to military rule. This is simply unacceptable. And we say NO to impunity!
The report claims that the federal army, special forces, federal police, and the entire intelligence personnel was unleashed on Oromia to kill, injure, arrest, and terrorize the people [totally in accordance with the order of the Prime Minister to take “merciless and definitive measures”] on the invitation of the region. However, it doesn’t even care to tell us when was it requested, how it was requested, and according to which rules of procedure (apart from that put in place for a legitimate Federal Intervention in the regions). This is completely illegal and unacceptable. We reject this, and mercilessly and conclusively say NO to that, too!
The report claims that the crisis was caused, among other things, by a misunderstanding of the Master Plan. This suggests that the Master Plan is an appropriate plan. This is utterly unacceptable. We say NO!
By issuing this statement by the EHRC, the regime is now suppressing and displacing the truth of the atrocities it perpetrated on innocent protestors.
We say NO to this suppression of the truth, our truth, just as we say NO to the repression of the protest, and the wider systematic oppression of the Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia by a regime that has rendered itself not just undemocratic but utterly anti-democratic.
The modest road we suggested from the start remains to be the only road the regime has to take in order to restore peace (and survive this crisis as a regime).
We state it to them again:
1. Rescind the Master Plan unequivocally (both in Addis and in the adjacent Oromia Zones). Take a clear, public stance by issuing a Parliamentary Resolution against the Master Plan.
2. Stop the violence and remove the Army, the Special Force, the Federal Police, and the intelligence personnel from all civilian life in Oromia.
3. Release all the political prisoners arrested in relation to the protest, including political dissidents arbitrarily taken captive in the wake of the re-eruption of the protest.
4. Set up a genuinely independent commission with members and/or observers from international organizations to conduct a proper investigation to the crisis and to make efforts to establish responsibility (political, administrative, legal, and moral) for the harm caused in the process.
5. Take political responsibility as a government, apologize to the public officially (with a clear statement written and delivered in a proper forum fully transparently to the media), and take all appropriate measures to restore the dignity of the victims and pay reparations to the same.
6. Remove all officials who are at the forefront of political and administrative responsibilities, for by being implicated in the bloodbath that they caused in the course of the crisis, they have totally lost the moral legitimacy, the legal competence, and the public credibility to govern.
7. Ensure that those who did and caused the killings, injuries, rapes, tortures, and arbitrary arrests be held legally accountable (in accordance with the criminal law of the country) before an independent court of law. Allow a forensic determination of guilt and punishment in proportion to the degree of their participation. Fail to do this, the regime will be haunted by the possibility of being brought before international justice institutions (or at least they will face the inconvenience of having to defend themselves).
8. The Government in Oromia has lost all the credibility and all the legitimacy (which it never had anyway!) to govern the region. It is imperative that the Caffee Oromia dismiss itself and call for an election before the next parliamentary year (leaving the day to day administration of matters to a care taker government of the old cabinet).
9. Stop all acts of eviction of farmers from their land which, to most of them, is their only means of livelihood. Work towards a better (possessory) tenure security over the plots of land they now have. Stop all activities of land grab and consequent displacement of people everywhere (in Oromia and beyond) even in the name of “development.” Work towards a more legally entrenched, fair, just, and consultative mode of development planning where necessary expropriation is done with due, effective, and adequate compensation.
10. Ensure that the ‘Special Interest’ clause of the constitution is implemented urgently. In the determination of the content of the Special Interest, Oromia’s voice must be properly listened to as well as that of the city government of Addis Ababa. Start a comprehensive, inclusive, open, and genuinely participatory discussion with all the peoples of Ethiopia about where to place the federal Capital city. In an act of bona fide cooperation, the Oromia government should take steps towards suggesting another options and modes for relocating the capital city within or outside of Oromia (and its own contribution, as the largest State in the Federation, towards building the new capital–if this be the option).
These things are doable things. These things are easier things to do for the regime. Anything short of this will only provoke a more vehement and persistent resistance. To do anything less, or anything other than these modest suggestions, is an invitation for further crisis.
We will do everything at our disposal to resist this. We keep saying NO!
We keep saying NO to justification and rationalization of State terror.
We keep saying NO to all forms of impunity for the gross violation of human rights in Oromia and beyond.
We keep saying NO to all forms of eviction from land including through the Master Plan.
An Eritrean poses near a tank abandoned during the 1998-2000 border war with Ethiopia in Shambuko Town, Eritrea, December 23, 2005. The two countries have been in a “Cold War” scenario since the end of the conflict.ED HARRIS/REUTERS
Throughout the country’s 25-year history, Eritrea’s border with Ethiopia has been a hotly-disputed region.
Eritrea shares a 640-mile boundary with its Horn of Africa neighbor, from whom it only gained independence in 1991. The two countries fought a bloody two-year war over border boundaries between 1998 and 2000, since which bilateral relations have been characterized by a “no war, no peace” situation.
What’s Eritrea’s history with Ethiopia?Now, Eritrea has blamed Ethiopia for clashes in the Tsorona region, about halfway along the border. The reported clashes have raised the specter of conflict in a region where tension is always high.
Until 1991, Eritrea was considered an autonomous region within Ethiopia. The latter’s decision to attempt to annex the former in 1961 sparked a 30-year independence war. Against a much-larger and better-equipped Ethiopian army, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front won the war and toppled Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam, with the assistance of Ethiopian rebels. Eritrea was recognized as an independent state by the international community in 1993 following a United Nations-backed referendum vote in favor of independence.
Why is the border a flashpoint?
A full-scale war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea in May 1998 and focused on the town of Badme, which both sides claimed belonged to them. Eritrea was found to have triggered the war by attacking Ethiopian troops around Badme, according to a 2005 ruling by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission, a body based in The Hague that was established to deal with the conflict’s fallout. Over the next two years, tens of thousands of soldiers were killed on both sides in a bloody battle that achieved very little in terms of concrete boundary changes.
The conflict ended in December 2000 after a peace accord known as the Algiers Agreement was signed by both parties. One condition of the agreement was the establishment of a boundary commission that in 2002 ruled that Badme was part of Eritrea. While both countries initially accepted the ruling, Ethiopia later said it was dissatisfied with the boundary and Badme continues to be occupied by Ethiopian troops. “Eritrea and Ethiopia have essentially been in a Cold War since the last war in 1998-2000,” says Ahmed Salim of political risk consultancy Teneo Intelligence.
An Eritrean soldier looks through a spyhole on the frontline in Badme, Eritrea, March 2, 2000. Tens of thousands of people died in the two-year border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.SS/CLH/REUTERS
What’s happened this time?
Following reports from residents living on the Ethiopian side of the border of hearing heavy gunfire, Eritrea accused Ethiopia on Sunday of infringing its territory. “The TPLF regime has… unleashed an attack against Eritrea on the Tsorona Central Front,” Eritrea’s Information Ministry said in a statement released overnight Sunday and reported by Reuters. The TPLF refers to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, a member of Ethiopia’s ruling coalition.
Besides the claim from the Eritrean government in the capital Asmara, however, there is very little confirmed detail of what happened. Ethiopia’s Information Minister Getachew Reda told the BBC he was not aware of any fighting, and details coming out of Eritrea have been scant, with the country having a notoriously closed media.
What could the clashes lead to?
If significant fighting has occurred, it is unlikely that either side will want to escalate the conflict, according to Jason Mosley, a Horn of Africa expert and associate fellow at Chatham House. “It’s not in [Ethiopia’s] interest to precipitate the collapse of the Eritrean state. The Eritreans are certainly not in a position militarily to want to escalate to a full-scale conflict with Ethiopia,” says Mosley.
Eritrea is notorious for its conscription program. The compulsory national service program, which can often last for decades, continues to be indefinite,according to Amnesty International, despite the government in Asmara pledging in 2014 to limit national service to 18 months. The program is an oft-cited reason given by migrants and refugees fleeing the country—in 2015, Eritrea was the African country with the highest number of people applying for asylum in Europe. According to Mosley, “episodic reminders” of the “existential threat from Ethiopia” are useful to the Eritrean government in justifying its program. “Whatever the mechanics of what has or hasn’t happened… the Eritrean state will probably try to portray this to the fullest extent it can as evidence of a very aggressive Ethiopian posture,” says Mosley.
Are the clashes connected to Ethiopia’s Oromia crisis?
Since November 2015, Ethiopia has been dealing with large-scale protests among members of the Oromo ethnic group, the country’s majority ethnicity. These have resulted in a crackdown in which hundreds of people have been killed, according to Human Rights Watch. The Ethiopian government has said that Eritrea has backed the protests, which were initially sparked by plans to expand the capital Addis Ababa that would entail relocating Oromo farmer families.
People mourn the death of a man accused of protesting and shot by Ethiopian forces in Yubdo Village in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, December 17, 2015. Ethiopia has blamed the Oromo protests partially on Eritrea.ZACHARIAS ABUBEKER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
But according to Mosley, the Oromia crisis is an internal affair and has nothing to do with Ethiopia and Eritrea’s border disputes. “[The Oromo protests] is the reaction from a certain educated strata of Ethiopian society about being completely blocked out of negotiations around the development planning,” says Mosley. “It’s not an Eritrean plot, this is an Ethiopian ruling party failing.”
People like TPLF leaders are those who never change no matter how much one tries to explain to them about the brutality of their ruling system and barbaric actions of their military and special commandos. This article expose the failed policy of the TPLF and their new destructive plan to slow-down the Oromo people movement for freedom.
Politics of devolution from fibrosis to cirrhosis
By Dr. Baaroo Keno Dheressa
The Oromo people are survived the lethal colonialist rule of previous one (they change the Oromo name from Tolesa and Gemechu to Getnet and Gebremeskel and they change the name of our town namely Finfinnee to Addis Abeba, bishoftu to dabrezeit and adama to nazret). The current colonialist TPLF elite plays in multiple cards and faces (mixing up the definition of Oromo people goal self-determination, statehood, sovereignty, and democracy, and creating dysfunctional organization like OPDO to distract the real goal of the struggle). But We Oromo people have to be proud to be an Oromo by challenging all those obstacles and keeping our determination intact for freedom with limited resources and absence of external assistance.
African countries today face greater challenges to peace and stability than ever before with a volatile mix of insecurity, instability, corrupt political institutions and poverty. Alarmingly, most of these countries lack the political will to make and maintain peace agreements, and thus have fallen prey to continuous armed ethnic conflict. (Monty Marshall, 2003) This is partly due to ineffective conflict management.
The Ethiopian government (TPLF) try to teach us and also try to follow the path of South Africa and Nigeria. South Africa is made up of whites, indigenous Africans, coloreds, and Indians. The blacks form the majority of the population with about 30 million people, the whites 5 million, and the coloreds and Indians share 3 million. The country has about 11 linguistic groups, but English is the official language. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country with about 120 million people. It is home to 250 linguistic groups, but English is also Nigeria’s chosen official language Although most of the ethnic groups are very tiny, three ethnic groups constitute somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the population. The Hausa-Fulani ethnic groups count for 30 percent of the population, the Yorubas about 20 per cent and the Igbos about 18 percent.
Both countries (Both Nigeria and South Africa) bear the responsibility to steer the continent away from the repression of authoritarian governments towards a path of social and economic development and good governance. Interestingly, the two countries are also driven by a similar political strategies to manage conflict through national reconciliation, consensus building and economic development. The dual processes of transition and transformation need nothing less than a vibrant economy in which the basic needs of citizens are taken care of.
TPLF is sending his cadres to Nigeria and south Africa to learn about those political transformation in order to cheat western world to enhance cash flow and internally oppressing all types of opposition, silencing critical voices like Mr. Bekele Gerba, killing, torturing and imprisoning innocent civilians. The TPLF is also try to tell us about the economic growth of the country (I think they are mixing millionaires of TPLF elite with the country) while millions of peoples in Ethiopian empire facing imminent famines. Wake up TPLF leaders it is 21st century (what does it mean is homework for you).
People like TPLF leaders are those who never change no matter how much one tries to explain to them about the brutality of their ruling system and barbaric actions of their military and special commandos. This article expose the failed policy of the TPLF and their new destructive plan to slow-down the Oromo people movement for freedom.
Medical definition of fibrosis and cirrhosis is: Hepatic fibrosis occurs in response to chronic liver injury. The response to liver injury includes collapse of hepatic lobules, formation of fibrous septae, and hepatocyte regeneration with nodule formation. Hepatic fibrosis is reversible. Cirrhosis represents a late stage of progressive hepatic fibrosis characterized by distortion of the hepatic architecture and the formation of regenerative nodules. It is generally considered to be irreversible in its advanced stages, at which point the only treatment option will be liver transplantation or death.
TPLF is now arrived on the top of the decisive treatment option (identical process of cirrhosis). The OPDO and other artificial organization mission is failed, traitors and collaborators are fail to fulfill their mission, military and security forces are demotivated because of fierce resistance from freedom fighters like Qeerroo and WBO, awareness of the people is much greater than TPLF kitchen cabinet policy, international community are fade-up of the pathological lies of TPLF leaders, media information is faster than colonialist destructive actions, innocent civilians are daily the primary victim of the TPLF policy….etc. So the best remedy to save the TPLF from death will be transplantation, but the problem is there is no matched organ is/will found. So, the TPLF is now hospitalized in palliative center and awaiting unpleasant death. Unfortunately the TPLF is still working hard from dying bed to defend his destructive policy through his loyalist (traitors and collaborators) instead of participating in the restoration of historical justice for the respect of human rights for all human beings and to safe his Seoul.
According to my tangible information the TPLF government are investing 40 million dollars to implement his last mission. The main core of the mission is to destroy unity among Oromo’s . According to the insiders the short and long term enemy of the TPLF power is the force behind the unity of Oromo people. Again the insiders expose the taxonomy of government plan to implement his mission.
Strengthen the TPLF messengers by any means possible (in the name of Oromo diaspora, in the name of investment, by recruiting individuals from diaspora through special accommodation like house in the capital city, free movement between foreign countries and homeland ).
Maximizing the destructive propaganda of the Oromo unity through available medias (by hiding their real name behind pal talk, through fake name of Facebook, by sending indirect message through TV and radio to demoralize the real fighters and dedicated individuals).
Eradicating OLF as an organization, as an ideology and as an individual member of the OLF. According to insiders to fulfill this special mission the government is ready to put extra bonus for every single mission accomplished. The government emphasizes again on the protocol of accomplishment (redirecting the goal of Oromo people from freedom fighter to economical survivors, blackmailing their leaders and members, denying any activities of the organization, distributing and exaggerating the failurity of the organization and minimizing their achievement).
Maximizing the economical imbalance between the Oromo people. Supporting by any means possible the trustful individual and force them to influence the poor majority to respect the system and abide by their master colonialist law.
Strict control of all Oromo intellectuals activities inside and outside the country. If they are remain on the uncompromised path they have to be humiliated and destroyed (Bekele Gerba was mentioned as an example-information according to insider).
Creating weak political organizations as much as possible to enhance the confusion among Oromo’s. The content of organization has to be (opportunistic leader without dedication but tendency to individual economic thirsty, record less individuals in the history of struggle against colonialism and malignant opponent of OLF stand).
Full and Faster reaction to the peoples demand to calm the Oromo movement and to create big confusion about the definition of freedom among Oromo’s. But the demand has to be listed in the external-core-category.
Core category demands are:
Military and agazi forces has to leave Oromia.
Our question is full freedom sooner than later, but not remote controlled OPDO state.
Oromo’s has to be the master of their resources and polices and stop importing and expanding shadow Oromummaa in the name of OPDO.
The Doctor of Oromia is Oromummaa but not tigruma.
Stopping harassing Oromo’s in their country, work place and home.
The prisoners has to be free
Stopping hunting Oromo intellectuals and promoting brain drain.
None of us on the earth choose to be born where we are born but once born, for example in my case, as an Oromo, there is no way I can change it. Unlike religion, behavior and attitudes towards nature, ethnic belongingness cannot be changed. That is why I cannot stop reminding at every chance I got the international community, TPLF elite and their puppet collaborators that as an Oromo, I am oppressed and I want my freedom and equality. The collaborators and traitors proposing us to give our left cheek after TPLF slap us on the right, but my answer is first I will never let you slap me and if at all it happens, I will slap you back even harder. That is a simple formula of defending our right but not through mutilated OPDO ways, incapacitated and nihil individual propaganda or buying ground or house around Finfinnee and every year visiting colonialist sky-reach building.
When TPLF fought to colonize Oromo’s and other nations in Ethiopian empire not through investment plan and lousy approach to Mengistu Hailemariam. They colonize Oromo’s and other nations “through total destruction tactic and strategy”, their nick name was “ dildy afrash”. So Yesterday TPLF was master of destruction and currently they call themselves surprisingly champion of development. My message to the traitors of Oromo people and collaborators of TPLF stop sending and propagating enemy destructive message and stand for freedom and equality at any cost.
We the Oromo people are a victim of the system which the TPLF trying to defend at all cost on the international stage and protect by his mechanized military around Oromia and therefore TPLF and their collaborators will be disappointed with my analysis. That is not what I enjoy to do but I have no choice because the TPLF government is violating our fundamental human rights. The Oromo leaders and the Oromo people simply want to enjoy their fundamental human rights be it civil and political, economic, social and cultural among which the right to self-determination is the most advocated.
Let me clear again: Everybody who are defending the TPLF ruling system are our enemy (TPLF itself, collaborators, traitors). While the old elites are trying to restore the dead oppressive system once again and the TPLF is try to protect and prevail the current totally destructive and unhuman oppressive system, the Oromo’s are still fighting for the same question of 100 years ago that is total freedom. Now tell me dear TPLF-junta and collaborators, on what ground could you think the possibility of developing love for this ugly ruling system (killers and torturers) and plan to live with you in peace?
TPLF elite are different from other previous colonialist in the sense that they tried to use spices in contrast to the previous colonialist to justify their democratic nature, allowing afaan oromo as the official language of courts and of instruction at schools and recognition of the Oromia state. For recognition of our country Oromia and using our language (afaan oromo) in our country is not a gift. To accomplish that we Oromo people fought a bloody fight and we sacrifice enormous life of brave sons and daughters of Oromo people. Come on TPLF junta your disease is worsening by confusing you (brain damage), I think you are developing “ammoniacal encephalopathy” because of your decompensated cirrhosis (decaying politics like dealing with mutilated OPDO and nonproductive collaborators).
I and my fellow Oromo people are not against any nation, I am sure in any nation there are a good person, leaders, intellectuals who care for equality, democracy, human rights, loving and a caring family man and women but when it comes to the defence of my right, I will not give you credit for being a good person, leader, intellectuals or family person. No one, including TPLF elite accept domination and exploitation and there is no reason on earth why the Oromo’s should be expected to give up fighting for freedom from oppression and dancing and building house with you on the grave of our hero’s.
The Oromo’s paid a heavy price to build Ethiopia but when it comes to power and money they are the last to touch the desk and when it comes to the human-right and equality they are the first to be victim of the system. But now the time of abuses was passed and Oromo people are getting aware of the reality and starting to build their home (Oromia). We Oromo people have no intention whatsoever to violate anybody rights to the contrary we will fight for them to be respected and we expect the same from other nations those we fight for their freedom.
Victory to the Oromo people!
Dr. Baaroo Keno Deressa,
First medical degree in internal medicine and second medical degree specialized in gastro-hepatology disease
This Map Tracks Where Governments Hack Activists and Reporters
Andy Greenberg, Security, 5 June 2016
IN AN AGE when spies carefully hide their tracks through layers of obfuscation and proxy servers, locating the perpetrators of online surveillance is often nearly impossible. But the victims of these spying campaigns can sometimes be easier to place. And one open-source initiative has set out to map cases where state-sponsored malware campaigns target members of civil society, in an effort to show how governments use digital intrusions to control and disrupt their enemies around the globe.
The Digital Freedom Alliance’s map showing the country of the target—not the origin—of malware attacks against different civil society groups. DIGITAL FREEDOM ALLIANCE
The mapping project was conceived last year, when Citizen Lab malware researcher Claudio Guarnieri gave a talk at the Chaos Communications Camp conference in Zehdenick, Germany about how security researchers need to collaborate more when fighting governments’ digital oppression of activists and journalists. “We always lacked a starting point for people to get an understanding of what is going on…how countries are employing technologies to repress dissent,” he says. “Ideally, this would develop into a place where [we can] reconstruct narratives on what is happening in different regions of the world.”
The country with the most targeted attacks on the map, for instance, is India, with 145 documented attacks. That’s because of the sheer volume of attacks carried out by the Chinese government, Guarnieri explains, against the Tibetan exiles and separatist activists in the Indian city of Dharamsala. The next most targeted country on the map isSyria, where the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad has been using malware to target opposition groups since the country devolved into a bloody civil war.
In addition to tracking victims, the Digital Freedom Alliance’s map also shows the location of companies selling surveillance technology, as well as the resellers of those tools, in an effort to map out the shady supply chain of targeted spying. That data, Guarnieri says, is sourced from surveillance tracking projects like BuggedPlanet.info andWikiLeaks’ Spy Files. The country with the most listed surveillance vendors, unsurprisingly, is the United States, though Guarnieri admits the list’s definition of “surveillance vendor” is rather loose: It includes not only the creators of the malware documented in the group’s map, but also other potentially nasty technologies like passive data collection tools and internet filtering software.
For now, the map’s data is no doubt incomplete. But Guarnieri hopes more researchers will contribute to it, and that it could someday soon serve as a resource for tracking and fighting back against government spying. “[It provides] relevant information to further investigate, identify victims, and perhaps rally campaigning if there are human rights abuses involved,” he says.
Guarnieri also intends the map project to serve as evidence that Western surveillance firms’ technology does in fact fall into the hands of dictators who use it to surveil innocent victims—a rebuttal to the claims of companies like the Italian firm Hacking Team. That Milan-based tech company denied its tools had been used for wrongdoing, but then a hack of its email server exposed that it had sold its products to repressive countries including Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. “I was tired of the Hacking Team-types claiming that there are no solid evidences of abuses, when there are plenty,” says Guarnieri. “You get most of them plotted in that map.”
The Unholy Alliance, Five Western Donors Shape a Pro-Corporate Agenda for African Agriculture, exposes how a coalition of four donor countries and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is shaping a pro-business environment in the agricultural sector of developing countries, especially in Africa. unholy_alliance_web
Five Western donors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the US, UK, Danish, and Dutch governments, are bankrolling the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, implemented by the World Bank. The EBA’s goal is to help create “policies that facilitate doing business in agriculture and increase the investment attractiveness and competitiveness of countries.”1 To achieve this, the EBA benchmarks areas including seeds, fertilizers, markets, transport, machinery, and finance, to determine whether or not countries’ laws facilitate doing business in agriculture. The EBA exemplifies a growing trend in international donors’ aid programs, which have become powerful instruments to impose a market-based, pro-private sector vision of agriculture. Following the 2007-2008 food price crisis, G8 members gathered at L’Aquila summit in Italy and pledged to support country-owned food security strategies. However, it did not take long for this commitment to give way to aid programs that, instead of supporting robust national agriculture policies, favor private sector-led and market-driven food systems. In 2012, the G8 members launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN), an initiative that gives a central place to agroindustry and agrochemical companies, to the detriment of family farmers.2 Africa, the site of NAFSN implementation, is a primary target of the pro-corporate push by several Western donors. The continent is marked by the proliferation of bilateral and multilateral initiatives to support the expansion of agribusinesses and the increased use of industrial inputs (synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, hybrid and genetically modified seeds, etc.). The US, UK, Danish, and Dutch governments are providing direct financing through business grants and other support mechanisms such as loans and insurance to agribusinesses operating in Africa. Often, the recipients of aid money are national companies with an assumed goal to combine aid with commercial interests. In parallel, rising amounts of taxpayers’ money is flowing into multilaterally funded entities such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), active in training, research, and advocacy around the use of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers. AGRA is also a vehicle used to manage multi-donor initiatives such as the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF),3 which is investing in large-scale agricultural projects and industrial production of agricultural inputs. With the creation of the NAFSN, in which the EBA is entrenched,4 donors are increasingly conditioning their aid to African countries to policy reforms and measures that will facilitate the corporate takeover of their agriculture. The five donors of the EBA are spearheading an aggressive campaign, aimed at pushing to expand agribusiness activity in Africa through the takeover of land for commercial agriculture, opening of countries’ input markets, privatizing of seed systems, and reforms of agricultural trade and tax laws to boost corporate profit. The donors believe that an “agricultural transformation” based on global trade and agroindustry will increase economic growth and provide better incomes to farmers.5 But the impacts of such a transformation are likely to be devastating for the majority of African farmers. Rising pressure on land and natural resources; dependence on expensive and polluting agricultural inputs; increased vulnerability to climate shocks; criminalization of seed saving and exchange practices; and weakened government ability to support national agriculture are among the outcomes that the five donors investigated in this report will deliver to the continent.
“But the government – of course, it is not a government, actually – is a group of gangsters and mafias, because if someone is making a group and that group is not representing the majority of the nation or the people, you could not say that that is a government. If the government is not elected by the people, for the people, you could not consider that as a government!”
Poet Caalaa Hayiluu Abaataa about why he wrote poetry about the oromo people who suffers oppression by the Ethiopian government. Caalaa Hayiluu Abaataa was jailed and tortured in Maekelawi, the notorious police station in Ethiopia, for writing poetry about the Oromo people who suffers oppression by the Ethiopian government. He now lives in exile in Sweden. Read his story here.
Filmed during Poesi på liv och död – exilen den verkliga utmaningen (Poetry on life and death – With life in exile as the real challenge), an event by Stockholm University. May 10, 2016 at Fanfaren Kultur Farsta, Stockholm, Sweden. To watch a full video from the event, click here.
Namoonni 51 ol Ogaden keessattii wayyaaneen ajjesamuuni gabaafame. Kan ajjeefamani keessa baayyeen dubartoota fi daa’imman ta’uun beekame.
(ONLF, 8 June 2016) — The Ethiopian Army wantonly massacred 51 civilians in Jama’ Dubad village near Gashamo town on June 5, 2016. The army indiscriminately opened fire on unarmed civilians in the village centre, shooting everybody in sight, not sparing women, children or the elderly. After the army started the massacre, many villagers run to the local mosque, hoping that they may be spared there. However, the Ethiopian army followed them there, shooting and killing them all. Then, the army torched the village, destroying all property, food and the water supplies of the village.
Many wounded civilians who managed to run away to the fields, are scattered and hiding in the fields. Some of the villages and many children are still unaccounted for. In addition, the Ethiopian army has abducted more than ten elders whose whereabouts are still unknown. The Ethiopian army has sent reinforcements and are currently occuppying villages along the border. This is an indication that the army intends to commit more massacres in order to create fear and stem any reaction from the local communities.
Just two months ago, the Ethiopian army massacred civilians in Dhaacdheer and Gaxandhaale villages near Galadi town in Wardheer region, killing scores of civilians. In Febraury 2016, the Ethiopian army and the Liyu Police militia destroyed Lababar village near Shilabo, killing more than 300 civilains and destroying the whole community in order to clear areas near the Jeexdin (Calub) Gas fields. In similar aggression the Ethiopian army killed many civilians near Bur-Ukur, Ferfer, Beledwayne and Hudur areas at the end of last year.
After committing crimes intended to extinguish the spirit and the humanity in Ogaden, Oromia and all communities in Ethiopia, the regime is now increasingly targeting other peoples along its borders and other neighbouring countries, specially those along the Somalia and Kenyan borders.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front categorically condemns the action of the Ethiopian regime and calls upon all peoples and parties in the Horn of Africa and the international community to condemn this heinous act and come to the aid of the affected innocent civilians.
SEC: Ethiopia’s Electric Utility Sold Unregistered Bonds In U.S.
Washington D.C., June 8, 2016 (SEC) — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Ethiopia’s electric utility has agreed to pay nearly $6.5 million to settle charges that it violated U.S. securities laws by failing to register bonds it offered and sold to U.S residents of Ethiopian descent.
According to the SEC’s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding:
Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) conducted the unregistered bond offering to help finance the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Abay River in Ethiopia.
EEP held a series of public road shows in major cities across the U.S. and marketed the bonds on the website of the U.S. Embassy of Ethiopia as well as through radio and television advertising aimed at Ethiopians living in the U.S.
EEP raised approximately $5.8 million from more than 3,100 U.S. residents from 2011 to 2014 without ever registering the bond offering with the SEC.
“Foreign governments are welcome to raise money in the U.S. capital markets so long as they comply with the federal securities laws, including registration provisions designed to ensure that investors receive important information about prospective investments,” said Stephen L. Cohen, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “This settlement ensures that investors get all of their money back plus interest.”
The SEC’s order finds that EEP violated Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act of 1933. EEP admitted the registration violations and agreed to pay $5,847,804 in disgorgement and $601,050.87 in prejudgment interest. The distribution of money back to investors is subject to the SEC’s review and approval. Investors seeking more information should contact the administrator of the distribution, Gilardi & Co. LLC, at 844-851-4591.
The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Carolyn Kurr and Daniel Rubenstein and supervised by C. Joshua Felker. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Department of State.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn (left), walks alongside President Obama during the U.S. president’s visit to the African nation last July. Critics say Ethiopia has cracked down hard on the opposition, but makes modest gestures to give the impression it tolerates some dissent.
SIMON MAINA/AFP/Getty Images
The Oromo Federalist Congress, an opposition party in Ethiopia, represents the largest ethnic group in the country, the Oromo.
Yet its office in the capital Addis Ababa is virtually deserted, with chairs stacked up on tables. A chessboard with bottle caps as pieces is one of the few signs of human habitation. In a side office, the party’s chairman, Merera Gudina, explains why the place is so empty: Almost everyone has gone to prison.
The deputy chairman? Prison. The party secretary general? House arrest. The assistant secretary general? In prison. Six members of the party’s youth league? All in prison.
Critics of the Ethiopian government regularly land in prison. So why isn’t Merera Gudina, the chairman of the party and an outspoken critic of the regime, also behind bars?
The reason, he says, is what he calls “the game of the 21st century.” Less-than-democratic regimes are getting more sophisticated, and instead of completely crushing dissent, they seek to create the appearance of tolerance or even a multiparty democracy, explains Merera. (Ethiopians go by their first names).
In the case of Ethiopia, a strategy was laid out by the late former prime minister, Meles Zenawi, after the 2005 election, in which opposition parties won 32 percent of parliament and appeared poised to challenge the government.
“Wait for the opposition to grow legs,” Meles said in a meeting with top party officials. “And then cut them off.”
Merera says he is the current example of that strategy. He describes himself as a “floating head,” while the legs of his party — all his deputies, his candidates, his organizers — are either imprisoned or threatened.
Criticism On Human Rights
Human rights groups are extremely critical of Ethiopia, but it is a member of the international community in good standing.
“We are very mindful of Ethiopia’s history, the hardships that this country has gone through,” Obama said. “It has been relatively recently in which the Constitution that was formed, and elections put forward a democratically elected government.”
A number of human rights groups criticized Obama, saying he should have pressed much harder.
Shortly before Obama’s visit, Ethiopia released several noted opposition journalists and politicians. The deputy chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, Bekele Gerba, was among those freed, and he promptly flew to Washington to sound an alarm bell.
“Every one of us is in a very high risk,” he told NPR’s Michele Kelemen. “Because anybody who criticizes the government is always a suspect.”
Bekele said his wife, a high school teacher, was also forced out of her job because of his politics. Bekele declined to use this trip to the U.S. to stay and apply for asylum. Instead, he said, he was determined to go back to Ethiopia, no matter what would happen.
Opposition Figure Re-Arrested
Soon after his return, Bekele was arrested again, and remains in prison today. Bekele is considered a moderate and he counsels nonviolence. He used his free time in prison to translate the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Merera, the party leader, says that targeting Bekele has a boomerang effect.
“When you are suppressing the moderate voice, then what you get is the radical voice,” he warns.
The arrest of moderates inside the country may be amplifying more radical rhetoric in the diaspora, such as rhetoric about “government overthrow” that Ethiopian officials are quick to highlight.
Genenew Assefa, a government spokesman, points out that Ethiopian opposition “tends to be extremist,” but also takes his own Justice Ministry to task for arresting so many opposition members.
“And then we put them in jail, and then it’s a vicious circle,” he says with a sigh. “And this is how it works. I personally, you know, would like to deal with this differently.”
He says that he would like Ethiopia to counter criticism with politics, not with police.
But Ethiopian politics appears to be moving away from democratic freedoms, not toward them. In last year’s election, the ruling party won 100 percent of the seats in parliament. Even the “floating heads” no longer have a token parliamentary seat.
Merera says that the Ethiopian strategy isn’t working.
“You can’t arrest everybody,” he says. He says that what is brewing is “an intifada (uprising), an Ethiopian intifada — even now, they don’t need leadership.”
Last November, ethnically Oromo regions of the country erupted in popular protests. Activists say 350 people have been killed, and thousands more arrested. There’s a growing fear that Ethiopia’s “cut off the legs” strategy is splitting the country.
The status of the Oromo students whose US Embassy protest in March was deemed unlawful by the Ethiopian authorities has remained unchanged due to a delay in proceedings. Their dire situation is seen by many as an example of the harsh treatment handed out to the Oromo ethnic minority within Ethiopia, as well as an attempt to crush resistance to damaging policies from the governing body in Addis Ababa, such as the Addis Ababa Master Plan. The protests in Oromia and the authorities’ violent repression attracted some international attention in the past few months and led, among others, to a European Parliament Resolution.
The 20 Oromo students of Addis Ababa University who were arrested for protesting in front of the US embassy last march were brought to court today. The court having been summoned to hear recorded testimonies of witnesses against the students was required to delay proceedings because of the clerk responsible for transcribing the recorded material is on vacation.
Dozens of Oromo students protested in front of the US Embassy in March denouncing the brutal actions of the Ethiopian government against the Oromo protesters who are demanding greater constitutional rights (self-rule, control over resources & democracy) for the last for months.
The students made the demonstrations to bring the situation in Oromia to the attention of the US government, the leading donor to the Ethiopian government. The students were, however, attacked by the security forces, and the demonstration was dispersed. In connection with the demonstrations, 11 Oromo students have been detained and their whereabouts are still not known.
A switch to ecological farming will benefit health and environment – report
The world needs to move away from industrial agriculture to avoid ecological, social and human health crises, say scientists
John Vidal, The Guardian, 2 June 2016
A new approach to farming is needed to safeguard human health and avoid rising air and water pollution, high greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, a group of 20 leading agronomists, health, nutrition and social scientists has concluded.
Rather than the giant feedlots used to rear animals or the uniform crop monocultures that now dominate farming worldwide, the solution is to diversify agriculture and re-orient it around ecological practices, says the report (pdf) by the International panel of experts on sustainable food systems (IPES-Food).
The benefits of a switch to a more ecologically oriented farming system would be seen in human and animal health, and improvements in soil and water quality, the report says.
The new group, which is co-chaired by Olivier De Schutter, former UN special rapporteur on food, and includes winners of the World Food prize and the heads of bio-science research groups, accepts that industrial agriculture and the global food system that has grown around it supplies large volumes of food to global markets.
But it argues that food supplies would not be greatly affected by a change to a more diverse farming system.
The group’s members, drawn from rich and poor countries with no affiliations to industry, say that industrial agriculture’s dependence on chemical fertilisers, pesticides and antibiotics to manage animals and agro-ecosystems, has led to ecological, social and human health crises.
“Today’s food and farming systems led systematically to negative outcomes and vulnerabilities. Many of these problems can be linked specifically to the industrial-scale feedlots and uniform crop monocultures that dominate agricultural landscapes, and rely on chemical fertilisers and pesticides as a means of managing agro-ecosystems,” the group says.
In place of an intensive global food system they propose that agriculture diversifies production and optimises biodiversity to build fertile, healthy agro-ecosystems and secure livelihoods.
De Schutter said: “Many of the problems in food systems are linked specifically to the uniformity at the heart of industrial agriculture, and its reliance on chemical fertilisers and pesticides.” He said that simply tweaking industrial agriculture will not provide long-term solutions and a fundamentally different model was needed.
“It is not a lack of evidence holding back the agro-ecological alternative. It is the mismatch between its huge potential to improve outcomes across food systems, and its much smaller potential to generate profits for agribusiness firms.”
“There is growing evidence that these [agro-ecological] systems keep carbon in the ground, support biodiversity, rebuild soil fertility and sustain yields over time, providing a basis for secure farm livelihoods,” says the report.
Diversified agroecological systems can also pave the way for diverse diets and improved health.
The panel argues that industrial agriculture locks in farmers, subsidies, supermarkets, governments and consumers to the point where food systems are in the hands of very few companies and people.
“Food systems in which uniform crop commodities can be produced and traded on a massive scale are in the economic interests of crop breeders, pesticide manufacturers, grain traders and supermarkets alike,” says the report.
“Industrial agriculture has occupied a privileged position for decades and has failed to provide a recipe for sustainable food systems. There is enough evidence now to suggest that a shift towards diversified agro-ecological systems can dramatically improve these outcomes.”
The panel identifies three disastrous consequences of intensive farming. These include the fact that global food systems linked to industrial modes of farming or deforestation generate one-third of all greenhouse gasses.
In addition, the excessive application of fertilisers and pesticides in crop monocultures, and the waste generated by industrial animal feedlots, have resulted in severe water pollution.
Pesticide exposure in industrial farming systems has been linked to a possible range of human health problems such as Alzheimer’s disease, birth defects, cancers and developmental disorders. Additionally, the preventative use of antibiotics in industrial animal production systems has exacerbated the problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, creating health risks for human populations.
When Ethiopia barred its best distance runner from competing in the 2016 Olympics, many saw it as an act of ethnic discrimination. Another runner from the same ethnic group says he was exiled.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
If you are a betting person – and we’re not endorsing this – but if you are, it’s a safe bet that the gold in middle-distance running in this summer’s Olympics will go to Ethiopia or Kenya. That’s because those two countries dominate the 5K and the 10K. So it was a shock to the running world when Ethiopia announced its main national team will not include the world record holder in both those races. That’s three-time Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele. Bekele says he is being discriminated against because of his ethnicity. Bekele is Oromo. NPR’s Gregory Warner tells us more about why other runners say ethnic discrimination casts a shadow over Ethiopian track.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: The 23-year-old refugee I meet in Nairobi talks quietly as if to conserve energy. He’s thin and nervous. But there’s one name that can put a burst of joy on his face. That name – Kenenisa Bekele.
MOHAMED KEMAL: (Speaking Oromo).
WARNER: In fact, you smile when I even say his name.
KEMAL: (Speaking Oromo).
WARNER: This is Mohamed Kemal (ph). He’s also a runner. And he was 16 years old in 2008 when Bekele won gold medals in the 5K and the 10K races in Beijing.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2008 SUMMER OLYMPICS)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: And the awesome strength – the awesome, awesome speed. He’s untouchable once again. It’s a new Olympic record.
(APPLAUSE)
KEMAL: (Through interpreter) (unintelligible) Kenenisa is my role model. So always I’m thinking to be wise like Kenenisa.
(SOUNDBITE OF PAPERS RUSTLING)
WARNER: Kemal pulls out papers. They’re the finishing times for an Ethiopian half marathon in 2014.
So 1 hour 6 minutes 8 seconds – 86th.
Kemal’s time put him in the country’s top 100 that year. But before the race, he says, the coach of his running club had pulled him aside and told him to throw the race for another runner.
KEMAL: (Through interpreter) We have been told to make others too tired, but, at the finishing, to give the chance for the Tigrinya.
WARNER: Give the chance to the Tigrean, he says. Kemal is not of the Tigrean ethnicity. He’s Oromo.
KEMAL: (Through interpreter) I was discriminated because of I’m Oromo.
WARNER: Kemal refused to throw the race. He was tired, he says, of being passed over for international sponsors or forced to pay bribes for the chance to run just because of his ethnic background. But after he finished so well in the race, the furious coach told him he’d be barred from future competitions.
KEMAL: (Through interpreter) After this, things become serious.
WARNER: In November of last year, Ethiopia erupted in massive civil protest by Oromo, the country’s largest ethnic group. And their complaints were various – that their ancestral land was being taken, that their children were discriminated against in education and employment. They said that Oromo who didn’t adhere to the ruling party ideology were targeted. Thousands of Oromo were arrested, including Kemal. And when he was released, he snuck over the border to Kenya. At 23 he had chosen impoverished freedom over a running career.
So let me ask you – with everything that’s happened to you, will you watch the Olympics? And if you watch it, will you be rooting for Ethiopia?
KEMAL: (Speaking Oromo).
WARNER: Kemal’s answer is complicated. A win for Ethiopia in Rio would reflect positively on a national athletics program that Kemal feels is rotten. And his role model, Kenenisa Bekele, won’t be running. But the other Ethiopian runners are men and women that he knows and admires. How can he not cheer if they win?
KEMAL: (Through interpreter) When my colleagues won that’s – that race, I become excited.
WARNER: So you focus on the face and not on the flag?
KEMAL: (Through interpreter) Yes.
WARNER: But of course the headline, if that happens, will be Ethiopia clinches another gold. Gregory Warner, NPR News, Nairobi.
In terms of MPI measurement, Ethiopia’s 87.3% of the population are identified as MPI poor, by far higher than Africa’s average (54%) and East Africa’s average (70%).
The 2016 Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index was published on 3rd June 2016. It now covers 102 countries in total, including 75 per cent of the world’s population, or 5.2 billion people. Of this proportion, 30 per cent of people (1.6 billion) are identified as multidimensionally poor.
The Global MPI has 3 dimensions and 10 indicators (for details see here and the graphic, right). A person is identified as multidimensionally poor (or ‘MPI poor’) if they are deprived in at least one third of the dimensions. The MPI is calculated by multiplying the incidence of poverty (the percentage of people identified as MPI poor) by the average intensity of poverty across the poor. So it reflects both the share of people in poverty and the degree to which they are deprived.
The MPI increasingly digs down below national level, giving separate results for 962 sub-national regions, which range from having 0% to 100% of people poor (see African map, below). It is also disaggregated by rural-urban areas for nearly all countries as well as by age.
Headlines from the MPI 2016:
There are 50% more MPI poor people in the countries analysed than there are income poor people using the $1.90/day poverty line.
Almost one third of MPI poor people live in Sub-Saharan Africa (32.%); 53% in South Asia, and 9% in East Asia.
As with income poverty, three quarters of MPI poor people live in Middle Income Countries.
This year’s MPI focuses on Africa:
In the 46 African countries analysed, 544 million people (54% of total population) endure multidimensional poverty, compared to 388 million poor people according to the $1.90/day measures.
The differences between the proportion of $1.90 and MPI poor people are greatest in East and West Africa. By the $1.90/day poverty line, 48% in West Africa and 33% in East Africa are poor, whereas by the MPI, 70% of people in East Africa are MPI poor and 59% in West Africa. The MPI thus reveals a hidden face of poverty that may be overlooked if we consider only its income aspects.
Among 35 African countries where changes to poverty over time were analysed, 30 of them have reduced poverty significantly. Rwanda was the standout star, but every MPI indicator was significantly reduced in Burkina Faso, Comoros, Gabon and Mozambique as well.
Disaggregated MPI results are available for 475 sub-national regions in 41 African countries. The poorest region continues to be Salamat in Chad, followed by Est in Burkina Faso and Hadjer Iamis in Chad. The region with the highest percentage of MPI poor people is Warap, in South Sudan, where 99% of its inhabitants are considered multidimensionally poor. The least poor sub-national regions include Grand Casablanca in Morocco and New Valley in Egypt, with less than 1% of the population living in multidimensional poverty.
The MPI registered impressive reductions in some unexpected places. 19 sub-national regions – regional ‘runaway’ successes – have reduced poverty even faster than Rwanda. The fastest MPI reduction was found in Likouala in the Republic of the Congo.
The Sahel and Sudanian Savanna Belt contains most of the world’s poorest sub-regions, showing the interaction between poverty and harsh environmental conditions.
Poverty looks very different in different parts of the continent. While in East Africa deprivations related to living standards contribute most to poverty, in West Africa child mortality and education are the biggest problems.
The deprivations affecting the highest share of MPI poor people in Africa are cooking fuel, electricity and sanitation.
The number of poor people went down in only 12 countries. In 18 countries, although the incidence of MPI fell, population growth led to an overall rise in the number of poor people.
See here for my post on the MPI 2014. I’d be interested in your reflections on what MPI adds to the usual $ per day metrics, in terms of our understanding of development.
The police failed to bring Tesema Regasa and 15 others in the same file to the court
Mahlet Fasil, addisstandard, 3 June 2016
The Addis Abeba prison administration Qilinto prison police have this morning brought prominent opposition figure Bekele Gerba and the 21 others in the same file for a hearing at a court all barefoot. The detainees were also wearing mere shorts and t-shirts when they appeared at the Federal High Court 19th Criminal Bench here in the capital.
Once inside the court room the detainees, through Bekele Gerba, first secretary general of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), told the judges that the police have come to their cells in Qilinto, a prison in the outskirt of south of Addis Abeba, yesterday and stripped them all of their clothes and shoes to prevent them from wearing black upon appearing in court this morning.
On May 11 the police have failed to bring the 22 detainees, all charged with Ethiopia’s infamous Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, ATP, to the court because all them were wearing black to protest their arrest. However, the police have told the court this morning that they didn’t bring defendants during the last hearing because they have not received a letter from the court. The judge told the police at the court this morning that the police officers on duty on May 11 must appear in court to explain the real reason.
Bekele also told the court that he and his co-defendants were subjected to torture and other forms of physical and psychological abuses inside the prison and requested the judge for a change of prison. But the judge denied the request.
The 22 defendants were all arrested between November and December 2015, shortly after the start (and in connection with) Oromo protests in November that gripped the nation for the next five months. Defendants include several members of OFC, students and civil servants who came from various parts of the Oromia regional state.
Prosecutors have charged the 22 with various articles of the ATP. The charges include, but not limited to, alleged membership of the banned Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), public incitement, encouraging violence, as well as causing the death of innocent civilians and property destructions in cities such as Ambo and Adama, 120km west and 100km east of Addis Abeba during the recent Oromo protests in Ethiopia. This morning all of the defendants have presented a written defense statement. The court adjourned the next hearing until June 27.
In a relateddevelopment, the police at Qilinto have failed to bring this morning 16 other individuals, all from the Oromia regional state and were detained in connection with the #OromoProtests, to the court. The 16 detainees, under the file name of Tesema Regasa were first brought to the court on April 26. They were subsequently charged with the ATP and have, last month, presented their defense statements to the court. Today’s court appearance was adjourned to hear prosecutors’ counter response for the defense statements. The court re-adjourned the next hearing until June 15.
Wondimu Ebbissa, who is representing Bekele Gerba et.al, said last month that more than 80 defendants, including Bekele Gerba et al, were held in Qilinto and a further 97 were believed to be either at the Ethiopian Federal Polcie Force Central Bureau of Criminal Investigation, known in Amharic as Ma’ekelawi, or the Addis Abeba police prison facility near it. All of them are detained in connection with #OromoProtests.
In a separate development, the Federal High Court 19th Criminal Bench yesterday adjourned the hearing for Yonatan Tesfaye, former spokesman of the opposition Semayawi (Blue) Party, until June 21. The court received Yonatan’s defense statement in its hearing and adjourned the next hearing to receive prosecutor’s counter statement.
Last month prosecutors have charged Yonatan with ATP and have presented as evidence the defendant’s Facebook status updates during the #OromoProtests. The charges against Yonatan allege that he was posting inciting message on his Facebook, encouraging protesters to loot and destruct properties. Charges also allege Yonatan was calling for regime change through violence.
Guyyaa har’aa Obboo Baqqalaa Garbaa Kaanaateeraa keessaa; Kofoo gabaabduu fi miila duwwaa mana murtiititti dhiyaatan;
” Gaggeessitoonni Bulchiinsa Manneen Sirreessaa hamma hin jijjiiramnetti jiruun keenna rakkoo guddaa keessa jira; beellama itti aanuf nabsedhaanuu argamuu keenna ni shakkina”
” Gara kutaa dukkanaatti fuudhanii nuun deeman. Nu keessaa gartokkee keenya akka malee nu tuman”
” Akka Lammii Biyyattiitti lakkaawwamaa hin jirru”
Obbboo Baqqalaa Garbaa
—————
” Beellama keenna isa dabre irratti uffata gurraacha mana murtiitti dhiyaachudhaaf uffanne baafadhaa nuun jedhan. Nutis hin baafannu jennee mormine. Uffata barbaanne kaawwachuun mirga heera biyyattiittiin nuuf kenname jenneen. Nuti uffata gurraacha kan uffanneef Lammileen Sabaan Oromoo ta’an Kuma 50 ol mana hidhaa keessatti kan argamaniifii dabalataan waggaa kana keessatti qofa lammiilen Oromoo 200 – 300 ajjeefamuu isaaniitiif gadda nutti dhagayame ibsuuf ture. Gochi nuti raawwanne hundi seera fi hojmaata mana sirreessaa haala hin tuqneen ture. Kuni gonkumaa hin ta’u jedhanii nu dhoowwan, nutti dallanan, nu sodaachisuudhaaf yaalan, nu arrabsan.
” Kaleessa sa’aa booda namoonni mana murtiitti dhiyaannu adda baafamne akka dhufnu godhamne. Eddoo jirruu uffata keenya qabannee akka baanu godhame. Uffata keenya keessaa uffata gurraacha barbaadanii fudhatan. Nutis ” uffata keenya hunda isaa nuuf deebisuu qabdu jennee gaafanne. Isaanis gara mana dukkanaa fuudhanii nuun deeman. Nu keessaayis namoota tokko tokko garmalee tumaadhaan dararan. Namootni tumamanis asuma waan jiraniif dhadacha fuulduratti waan irra ga’r kana ibsachuu ni danda’u. Uffatni keenya hundi isaa lafarratti waan bittinneeffameef hidhamtoonni biroo kan barbaadan keessaa fudhatan. Isa hafe fidanii kutaa keenya keessatti darban. Hanga har’aatti midhaan hin nyaanne. Harki keenya hamma ganamaatti Kaateenaadhaan hidhamee ture. Gochi suukaneessaan nurratti raawwatame hundi kan Oromummaa keenyarratii xiyyeffateedha. Lammiin sabaan Oromoo ta’e qofti filatamee garmalee tumamaa jira. Eddoon itti hidhamne kan ilmi namaa sababa sabummaa isaatif qofa itti adabamuudha. Anaanis ‘ Kan kana godhu sihi, si arganna’ naan jedhanii jiru.
Manni murtii eddoo turtii biraa akka nuuf mijeessu ni gaafanna. Ammas yoo gara mana hidhaa Qiliinxootti nu deebistan waan nurra ga’u hin beeknu. Sodaa guddaa qabna. Hoggantoonni mana sirreesichaa hamma hin jijjiiramnetti nabsee keennaaf ni sodaanna. Haala kanaan Beellama itti aanuf nabseedhaan argamuu danda’uu keenyas amantii hin qabnu. Maatin keenya akka nu hin daawwanne dhorgamaa jiru. Har’as erga dallaa mana murtii keessa seennee booda Namootni akka nu hin argine godhameera. Wanti akkanaa kuni mootummaadhaaf maal isaaf godhaa? Akka lammiitti lakkaawwamaa hin jirru.”
ETHIOPIA: The worst drought in 50 years has tripled humanitarian needs since early 2015. More than 2.3 million households need immediate agricultural support. The number of people who need emergency health interventions nearly doubled in three months, from 3.6 million in December 2015 to 6.8 million in March 2016. A total of 10.2 million people still need food assistance, and this number is expected to grow in the second half of the year. There are an estimated 2 million additional ‘ad hoc beneficiaries’ – people needing assistance outside the original plan. Malnutrition rates are staggering, with over one third of Ethiopia’s woredas (districts) officially classified as facing a dire food security and nutrition crisis. A total of 2.5 million children under age 5, pregnant women and nursing mothers need treatment for moderate acute malnutrition . It is estimated that 20 per cent of the expected 435,000 severely malnourished children will develop medical complications that need intensive life-saving medical treatment in hospital-based therapeutic feeding centres….
The humanitarian impact of the 2015-2016 El Niño remains deeply alarming, now affecting over 60 million people. Central America, East Africa (particularly Ethiopia), the Pacific and Southern Africa remain the most affected regions. The El Niño phenomenon is now in decline, but projections indicate the situation will worsen throughout at least the end of the year, with food insecurity caused primarily by drought not likely to peak before December. Therefore, the humanitarian impacts will last well into 2017 . El Niño has affected food security and agricultural production, with cascading effects on livelihoods, health, water, sanitation, education and other sectors. This is due to flooding, disease outbreaks and malnutrition, disruption of health and education services, and overall increased mortality. In Eastern and Southern Africa,¹ some 50.2 million people are food insecure, many due to drought exacerbated by El Niño or due to a combination of drought and conflict. This number is expected to increase significantly towards the end of the year. Drought, flooding and extreme weather events caused by El Niño affect women and girls in particular ways which must be understood and incorporated into humanitarian and development interventions.
This year’s El Niño is taking place in a world already dramatically affected by climate change. More extreme weather events are expected, and climate change may increase the frequency and severity of future El Niño events. These events hit the poorest communities hardest. This means that, in addition to responding quickly to critical food, water, nutrition, health and livelihoods requirements, efforts must be focused on building climate resilience and the capacity to respond to future shocks.
The likelihood of a La Niña developing by September 2016 has increased to 75 per cent². However, some uncertainty remains, as forecasts made at this time of the year typically have less accuracy than those made during the second half of the year. The World Meteorological Organization’s El Niño/La Niña Update3 of 12 May indicates a return to ENSO-neutral conditions in May 2016, with odds increasing of La Niña development in the third quarter. The specific impacts of La Niña are difficult to predict, but it typically brings extreme weather to the same regions most affected by El Niño, where people’s coping capacities have already been eroded. Areas now experiencing drought could face flooding, and areas that have seen excessive rainfall with El Niño could experience drought. This means that La Niña preparedness and early action need to be built into El Niño response and recovery efforts, and development actors should increase risk and vulnerability-reduction efforts in priority areas, including by reprioritizing existing development funding to mitigate the risks.
Several additional countries have finalized costed response plans since the last Global Overview, raising the funding request to almost US$3.9 billion. Response plans with requests for international assistance have been completed by Governments and/or humanitarian partners in 19 countries, with other plans still being finalized. Since mid-2015, the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has allocated over $119 million to 19 countries. Reflecting recent pledges and new funding requests, the current funding gap is almost $2.5 billion. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is expected to issue a regional appeal in June 2016, based on new crop assessments completed in May/June, which is expected to increase the funding request. The food security and agriculture sector is the worst affected by El Niño, with funding requests comprising almost 80 per cent of all national and humanitarian response plans.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
Social Movements and State Fragility in Ethiopia: Lessons from the Oromo Protests and Government Responses of 2015-16
Date:21 June 2016Time: 9:00 AM
Finishes:21 June 2016Time: 7:00 PM
Venue: Russell Square: College Buildings Room: Khalili Lecture Theatre
Type of Event: Symposium
In late July of 2015, President Barack Obama praised Ethiopia as a “model of development,” an example of a young democracy and an effective ally of the West in the war against terror. Three months later, the country was rocked by massive protests in the Oromia region demanding an end to the one-party stranglehold on the political landscape, ethnic discrimination in allocating national resources, and the rule of violence in Ethiopia. In response, the state turned to coercion and violence to put down the uprising.
The dramatic turn of events has exposed a structural weakness in the Ethiopian state, one which John Markakis has called the failure of nation-building. After the #OromoProtests, the Ethiopian state is unlikely to continue business as usual. First, the use of external endorsement as a leverage to seek internal legitimacy has limits. Second, state violence further delegitimizes the state, necessitating further coercion. In this cycle of violence, the state is unlikely to win a protracted conflict against its own population. In time, the state recedes, extra-state entities will step up to supplant the state and provide social services and security for its populations. In this situation, state collapse becomes imminent.
A one-day symposium at SOAS, University of London, will explore how apparently strong state institutions eventually produce weaknesses that in turn initiate tendencies towards coercion, illegitimacy and fragility. By addressing this phenomenon historically and ethnographically the symposium intends to examine new frameworks for understanding the Ethiopian state and the changing contours of political legitimacy.
The Oromo activists achieved yet another spectacular victory by catching the Ethiopian regime off-guard and disturbing the “order” it set for the country’s youth. The leaking of the Ethiopian national examinations prior to the exam date greatly tarnished the self-imagery of the government while at the same time boosting that of its present-day nemesis, the Oromo youth activists. It has now pitted it against its yet another adversary, the Muslim activists.
For one thing, the leaking of the exam proved to be a surprising incident of sudden defeat of a government with a record of accomplishment of ignoring popular demands. It lately learnt the lesson—in the hard way—that the “terrorists” that it despises and over whose demands it was well prepared to ride roughshod can actually force it to submit to their wills (this time, of postponing exam dates).
Incidentally, such a victory could never—as it used to be in the past—provide the government the chance to reclaim its loss as an opportunity (as was the case with the rescinding of the Addis Abeba Master Plan, for instance, which the government tried to portray as a sign of its willingness to respond to people’s demands). The change in the exam dates came very late and only after the eerie leak of the exams and was thus clear manifestation of the government’s not only utter but also un-reclaimable defeat.
Secondly, the leaking of the exams catapulted Oromo activists as reliable co-owners of the destiny of their rebellious brethren in the country. In authoritarian settings, daring non-violent protesters, at least in the short-run, throw their whole lot into the hands of the regime they decry. The consequences for activists of their rebellious activities are to a huge extent controlled by the regime and are very much subject to the coercive apparatus of the state as long as the government has direct access to those activists. Activists do not necessarily own their fate; nor do they necessarily own the fate of their comrades. They plunge themselves gallantly into the unknown (or the bitter known, actually) in order to see something bright in the long-run. That is why we usually hear, among some Ethiopian detractors of the Oromo protests, that “some diasporic Oromo activists lead a happy life in the West and agitate the poor Oromo inside the country to rebel against the government with detrimental consequences to the protesters. The far-away activists do not come to their rescue in the event when the regime takes action against these poor fellows”. That assumption/assertion has now been blown apart. The leading Oromo activists—whether inside or outside the country—have proven themselves to be co-owners (the government still having a share, of course) of the fate of their rebellious comrades-in-protest. These activists do not simply “encourage” the Oromo youth in the country to launch anti-regime protests, only to abandon them later on to be devoured by the regime as and when it likes. By surprisingly forcing the regime to cancel exam dates, the activists have stood out clearly as the students’ reliable protectors of their academic security.
The government thus humiliatingly agreed to set another date for the exam. However, – and this is the third untoward consequence of the exam leak – by doing that, the regime, knowingly or otherwise, clashed not only with a fundamental rights of another section of the population but also with a much-cherished and much-celebrated idea in post-1974 Ethiopia. The secularization of the Ethiopian state and the equality of all religions was one of the few achievements of the otherwise controversial revolutionary turn of events in the country’s recent past. Part of the achievement was the official and equal status given to all religious holidays, including the Muslim ones. By announcing a new exam schedule that flagrantly clashes with an important Muslim holiday, the current government stood to commit an additional crime of historic proportion. It was also poised to clash once again with another major adversary, the Ethiopian Muslim activists, who, just like the Oromo activists, have been protesting government violation of their constitutional rights and had been the torch-bearers of a sturdy show of non-violent social movement before the Oromo protests erupted.
Apparently sensing an impending backlash, the regime once again made a flip flop and excepted the Eid day from the exam schedule. But it insisted that students will sit for exams while fasting and immediately after the holiday. This is, needless to say, in blatant disregard for the interests of Muslim students who wouldbe forced to write exams on an empty stomach and thus with much reduced power of concentration and productivity. The morrow of a major holiday would also not be appropriate for writing exams given the environment of festivity and socialization on that day that are obviously at odds with the atmosphere of tranquility and stability that sitting for exams naturally requires. Moreover, students would not be in a mood to make the most out of their holiday while their minds are preoccupied with exam-related stress and final preparation. Thus, exams dates fixed during periods of fasting and around holidays would no doubt be of grave concernfor Ethiopian Muslims, who most likely won’t allow the exams to come to pass sitting idly. If the regime insists to go by its plan for “Plan B” as it exists at present, it is only paving a more fruitful opportunity for Oromo and Muslim activists to intensify the struggle hand-in-hand towards the realization of free Ethiopia.
Ed’s Note: Yasin Muhe is a Lecturer at the Addis Abeba University (AAU). He can be reached at: tukejigsa@gmail.com
JU hosts the First International Conference on Oromo Studies
Jimma University organized the first international conference on Oromo studies under the grand theme ‘Oromo Knowledge Systems and Practices.’ The conference was held from 21st – 22nd May, 2016 at Jimma University College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine Conference Hall. It was attended by dignitaries, representatives from several government institutions, university presidents, scholars extensively engaged in Oromo studies and Aba Gedas’ from different parts of Oromia National Regional State.
The conference is aimed at bringing together scholars from various disciplines and institutions that are engaged in Oromo studies and also creating the opportunity to identify core thematic research areas, generating scholarly views to identify core activities to be undertaken in the future and indicating directions to policy makers. It is also aimed to serve as an initiative for collaboration among universities in the country and other governmental and non-governmental organizations.
The conference was started by the blessing of all Aba Gedas present at the conference who colorfully expressed their good wishes and blessings as per the Oromo culture. Professor Fikre Lemessa, President of Jimma University, while welcoming all the guest and participants of the conference underscored that initiating a scientific discourse on Oromo studies was pretty well unimaginable a century back while the Oromo people had unfathomable oral traditions and were also farsighted and endowed with hospitality.
He also underlined that the knowledge systems and practices exercised by the Oromo people has not been recognized at national and international level, despite the language is spoken by many other ethnic groups in Ethiopia and the Oromo people practiced a democratic system of governance during the time when democracy was a luxury for significant portion of the world population and western ideals of democracy has not be as ubiquitous as today. It is in line with recognizing these historical facts that JU launched the Institute of Oromo Studies. The community is in the ambit of JU’s philosophy and it fully affirms the very important benefit of taking indigenous knowledge of the community in to account as an engine of scientific exploration. Therefore, according to him, the institute will serve as an interdisciplinary, extra- departmental and interuniversity collaborative institute with the primarily focus on research and outreach making the community as orbit of attention. He has also firmly stated that, the conference will be a landmark in Oromo Studies to open the doors for well-organized and high quality research in the area.
Present on the occasion and guest of honor of the event was Dr. Kaba Urgessa, Minister of the F.D.R.E ministry of Education. He stated that the Ethiopian government has been relentlessly endeavoring and investing huge sum of capital on building facilities and building human resource capacity to ensure access to quality education. Education is the key for the aspired for national development and the government is investing to its highest possible capacity to improve access and quality of education in the country. He further underlined that, Universities are fully mandated in their three major functional areas of teaching, research and community services and as a result should give sufficient attention to reflect the culture, values and practices of their surrounding community. He further stated that, the existing constitution and federal state arrangement has created a fertile political ground and a level field for the representation, refection and practice of the values and cultures of the diverse ethnic groups in the country.
In this regard, according to him, JU has been on the right path and can be exemplary to all other higher education institutions in the country, as it took the initiative to open the department of Afan Oromo in 2002 and yet again pioneered the launching of the Institute of Oromo Studies currently. The institute will definitely play a crucial role in promoting the culture of the Oromo people on the basis of scientific evidences and will also contribute in initiating network of scholars and institutions to expand the efforts with hands joined from all relevant stakeholders. He finally affirmed that the Ministry will fully support JU to strengthen the institute and solicit efforts from other similar institutions.
At the subsequent stages of the conference, forty seven papers were presented by different prominent scholars in the plenary and four parallel sessions. Among the scholars presented lead paper at the conference were Professor Ephraim Issac, Professor Tessema Ta’a, Dr. Taddesse Berisso, Dr. Chikage Oba-Smidt and others.
At the final stage of the conference, Mr. Kora Tushune, V/P for Business and Development of JU chaired the session that discussed on the way forward to glean out outstanding issues which have to be emphasized for the successful accomplishment that aspired for targets of the institute at institutional, national and international level. Mr. Kora presented a comprehensive list of proposals that needs due attention to enrich the institute, sustain its efforts and take it further steps to meet its set forth goals. The points he raised were instrumental in shaping the discussions and later on substantiated by the panelists of the session and the participants. Finally, it was agreed that, the institute should target the production of high quality research outputs and dissemination, ensure scientific and evidence based promotion of the Oromo cultural values and practices, gather all research outputs and books at national and international level to organized an archive of Oromo studies and support future young researchers, form robust network of institutions and scholars to extend the efforts initiated by JU and institutionalize the efforts to a broader level of collaboration to bring international actors on board.
The Conference was wrapped up after certificates were awarded to paper presenters and institutions sponsored the workshop and with a closing speech by Dr. Taye Tolemariam, V/P for Academic Affairs of JU who extended his gratitude for participants from abroad and within Ethiopia and organizers of the workshop. He has also underlined the importance of giving special emphasis on the outstanding issues suggested by participants and panelists to register sustained success by the institute in the country and beyond.
Submission to: Human Rights Council – 32nd Session UN,
13 June – 1 July 2016, Geneva, Switzerland
Item 4 – Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention
May 29, 2016
(HRLHA) – Ever since November of 2015 and still going on are serious human rights violations in Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia. Peaceful protestors against the so-called ” Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan” came to the streets in Oromia in November to express their grievances about the “Addis Ababa Integrated Master plan” and were met with brutal crackdowns. An estimated 500 plus Oromos have been killed by the Ethiopian Government force. The Ethiopian Government deployed its military and applied excessive force against the unarmed civilians to quell the dissent. The Oromo nation protested against the “Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan” because:
It is a plan which did not consult the stakeholders and aimed to annex 36 small towns in Oromia to the capital city to expand it by 20 fold, thereby evicting over two million farmers
In the past 15 years, over 150,000 Oromo farmers from suburban towns of Addis Ababa have been forcefully evicted from their livelihoods and their land has been sold to investors for a low price, and given to the government authorities for free. Land owners have become beggars on the street.
Many farmers in Oromia Regional Zones have been forcefully removed from their ancestral lands and their lands sold cheaply to investors for flower plantations.
The recent deadly violence against Oromo peaceful demonstrators staged against the so called “Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan”- violence that has already claimed over 500 lives, including children and senior citizens along with more than 20,000 – 30,000 imprisoned and more disappeared- has also attracted the attention of many donor countries such as the USA whose Department of State has condemned the excessive military force against the peaceful demonstrators, (see in table 1)
Various organizations, including government agencies ( EU parliament, UN Experts), international, regional and domestic human rights organizations (HW, AI, HRLHA) and international mass media such as BBC, CNN, France 24 have reported on the recent violations in Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia, (see in Table 2)
Recalling that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to life, liberty and security of person, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful demonstration and assembly,
Recalling further that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary arrest and detention,
The HRLHA urges the United Nations Human Rights Council to raise concerns about the serious human rights abuses presently taking place in Oromia.
The HRLHA also calls upon the UN Human Rights Council:
To create an international commission of inquiry to investigate the recent serious violations of international customary law and international human rights law by the Ethiopian Government
To use its mandate to put pressure on the Ethiopian Government:
To immediately bring to justice those military members who cold-bloodedly attacked the peaceful demonstrators
To unconditionally free all Oromo prisoners of conscience and others arbitrarily detained, including those held before for no reason and during the peaceful protests of April-March 2014 and November – December 2015 against the ” Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan “
To refrain from reprisals against aromos who have taken part in peaceful demonstrations
Press Release on the occasion of 14th Commemorative anniversary of Sidama Loqqee Massacre and the Massacre of the other civilians.
May 30, 2016, London
The repeated massacres and genocides of past 25 years that the TPLF’s barbaric regime has committed on unarmed civilians of all regions-and the ongoing indiscriminate massacres it is committing now are likely to continue unabated for a long time if the peoples in Ethiopia remain fragmented, divided and refuse to take the responsibility of confronting and stopping this criminal regime. Failure to do so has already unquestionably contributed to the longevity of the regime.
We, the PAFD member organizations envisage a dynamic and flexible approach with potential of accommodating the interests of all stakeholders without any differences and without actually dictating our own agendas for all the peoples in Ethiopia. This will allow all to move forward in unison in their strides towards justice, democracy and genuine self-determination, which is practically denied by the current regime. Moreover, we strongly believe that this is the only way forward to stop the ongoing genocide, to restore the rule of law, human dignity and pride and democratic order in Ethiopia.
To be able to do so, all the peoples in Ethiopia and their respective organizations must put their differences aside and unite strategically in order to end the suffering of all perpetrated by the TPLF led EPRDF’s brutal regime.
Today’s Sidama Loqqee massacre 14th commemorative anniversary isn’t unique to Sidama nation and isn’t a past history. It has been committed on tens of thousands of civilians in Ethiopia from Amhara, Afar, Benshagul, Hadya, Kambata, Ogaden Somali, Omo, Oromia, Sidama, Shakicho and the rest of regions of Ethiopia. And it is ongoing in Oromia, Ogadenia, Gambella, Konso, Omo Valley and the rest of regional, Zone and district levels.
Unconditionally condemning the past and ongoing genocides and massacres, the PAFD calls upon all organizations and peoples in Ethiopia to be united, move forward and stop the regime brutalizing them all.
PAFD also urges the international and regional communities to stand on the side of the people in order to stop the ongoing blatant human rights violations and hold the perpetrators into account both locally and in the international arena
PAFD salutes the indefatigable and resilient spirits of the Sidama Loqqee martyrs and all the other civilians who have been the victims of past and ongoing massacre by current callous regime in Ethiopia.
Finally, PAFD promises that all those wronged souls may rest in peace and that their valuable lives will be not be lost in vain. It will continue fighting for justice and democracy and righting the wrongs committed against them and the other living multitudes. PAFD will never forget your courageous and honorable sacrifices for generations to come.
The Sidama Nation Globally Marks the 14th Commemorative Anniversary of Sidama Loqqee Massacre
May 30, 2016, London ConferencePress Release by Sidama National Liberation Front (SNLF)
About six dozen confirmed and several dozen unconfirmed Sidama civilians have been indiscriminately gunned down in broad day lights by Ethiopian armed forces on May 24, 2002 in Sidama land whilst peacefully protesting government’s continued denial of constitutionally guaranteed rights to regional self-administration. The Sidama of all walk of lives have staged on a peaceful demonstration in Hawassa’s outskirts village known as Loqqee, on early hours of the aforementioned date after fully satisfying the constitutional requirements rightly stipulated in incumbent’s constitution whilst undertaking such publically guaranteed democratic privileges. Over 300 have been seriously injured and the other several hundreds have sustained minor injuries.
Disallowed to be collected by their love ones’, the dead bodies of the Sidama victims have been left for days to be devoured by by hyenas during the period of 24-48 hours’ strict curfew imposed in entire Sidama land following the Loqqee massacre. Over 15,000 Sidama civilians from all over the Sidama districts and villages have been also rounded up to be indiscriminately mass arrested and tortured; as the military personnel were allowed to roam on the streets and villages -literally terrorizing the entire nation.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF/EPRDF’s) government under the leadership of late PM Meles Zenawi has meticulously planned and centrally coordinated the Sdiama Loqqee massacre. The current TPLF/EPRDF’s PM, Hailemariam Desalegn -the then Southern Ethiopian regional State president has been given the responsibilities of stage-managing of the Sidama Loqqee massacre and has been also ordered to chair a pre-massacre extraordinary urgent meetings of May 23, 2002. Assigned by late PM, federal government officials, regional and Sidama Zone politicians numbering 21 participants have taken part in the said stage-managing meeting of the massacre in the eve of May 24, 2002 Loqqee massacre in Hawassa (the Sidama capital). They all but two Sidama participants have agreed to shoot and kill all Sidama civilians if they go on with demonstration in the following morning. The aforementioned massacre has taken place under such deliberately and clearly targeted killing of the Sidama civilians who have done no wrong but attempted to exercise their constitutional guaranteed rights.
The Sidama nation is globally marking the said 14th commemorative anniversary of the Sidama Loqqee massacre whilst the nation is still languishing under TPLF’s brutally oppressive regime seeking the way out of it with the rest of Ethiopians. The nation commemorates the 14th anniversary of its sons and daughter’s massacre in the midst of further government orchestrated impoverishment, displacements of millions of Sidama peasants, deliberately imposed subjugation, economical and politico-social marginalization. More importantly, the nation is commemorating the 14th anniversary with the rest of subjugated and massacred Ethiopians with renewed sense of hope and determination to bring those who have massacred the Sidama civilians and the other Ethiopian civilians to justice.
The London conference of May 30th 2016 Sidama Loqqee 14th commemorative anniversary and other Ethiopians massacre commemorating event asserts the fact that the future directions of peoples of Ethiopia depends on us all. The massacre is ongoing in Oromia, Ogadenia, Amhara, Gambella, Benshangul, south Omo and the rest of Ethiopia. Therefore, we call upon all Ethiopians to join us in fighting of the repressive regime to bring about lasting and genuine solution beneficial to all Ethiopians.
To date no person from federal to regional and Sidama Zone level has been held accountable for the Sidama Loqqee massacre. Instead, those who have been fully involved in planning, stage-managing and massacring of the Sidama civilians have been uplifted and rewarded with more powers, financial packages and privileges. The SNLF categorically condemns the brutal action of the TPLF’s barbaric regime and calls upon all democracy loving Ethiopia related politicians and the entire peoples of Ethiopia to be united to fight the regime enslaving us all with rigor and determination.
We never forget the Sidama Loqqe massacre victims and the cause for which they have sacrificed their precious lives. We also never forget the Oromo, Ogadenia, Amhara, Gambella, Benshangul and the rest of Ethiopians who have been massacred by TPLF/EPRDF’s brutal regime during its 25 years of reign of terror.
We salute the Sidama Loqqee Massacre Victims and the rest of Ethiopian people’s victims. May your souls rest in peace whilst we fight for justice to prevail on your behalf.
The Digital Freedom Alliance’s map showing the country of the target—not the origin—of malware attacks against different civil society groups. 
Oromian Economist 
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