Scientific System, Mathematics and Ancient Kemetic Traditions November 17, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Culture, Development, Gadaa System, Kemetic Ancient African Culture, Language and Development, Oral Historian, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo Culture, Oromo Identity, Oromo Social System, Oromummaa, Self determination, Sirna Gadaa, The Oromo Library, Theory of Development, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, African culture, African Philosophy, African Studies, Ancient Black People, Ancient Egypt, Gadaa System, Kemet, Kemetic, Mathematics in Ancient Africa, Number Theory, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo people
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Number Mysticism
The netert (goddess) Seshat is well described in numerous titles that ascribe two main types of activities to her. She is The Enumerator, Lady of Writing(s), Scribe, Head of the House of the Divine Books (Archives).The other aspect of Seshat and obviously closely related to it is one where she is described as the Lady of Builders.
The divine significance of numbers is personified in Ancient Egyptian traditions by Seshat, The Enumerator.
The Ancient Egyptians had a “scientific and organic system” of observing reality. Modern-day science is based on observing everything as dead (inanimate). Modern physical formulas in our science studies almost always exclude the vital phenomena throughout statistical analyses. For the Ancient Egyptians, the whole universe is animated.
Animism is the concept that all things in the universe are animated (energized) by life forces. This concurs, scientifically, with the kinetic theory, where each minute particle of any matter is in constant motion, i.e., energized with life forces.
In the animated world of Ancient Egypt, numbers did not simply designate quantities but instead were considered to be concrete definitions of energetic formative principles of nature. The Egyptians called these energetic principles neteru (gods).
For Egyptians, numbers were not just odd and even—they were male and female. Every part of the universe was/is a male or a female. There is no neutral (a thing). Unlike in English, where something is he, she, or it, in Egypt there was only he or she.
These animated numbers in Ancient Egypt were referred to by Plutarch, in Moralia Vol V, when he described the Egyptian 3-4-5 Triangle:
The upright, therefore, may be likened to the male, the base to the female, and the hypotenuse to the child of both, and so Ausar [Osiris] may be regarded as the origin, Auset [Isis] as the recipient, and Heru [Horus] as perfected result. Three is the first perfect odd number: four is a square whose side is the even number two; but five is in some ways like to its father, and in some ways like to its mother, being made up of three and two. And panta [all] is a derivative of pente [five], and they speak of counting as “numbering by fives”. Five makes a square of itself.
The vitality and the interactions between these numbers shows how they are male and female, active and passive, vertical and horizontal, …etc.The Ancient Egyptian mode of calculation had a direct relationship with natural processes, as well as metaphysical ones. Even the language employed in the Egyptian papyri serves to promote this sense of vitality, of living interaction. We see this understanding as an example in Item no. 38 of the papyrus known as the Rhind Papyrus, which reads,
I go three times into the hekat (a bushel, unit of volume), a seventh of me is added to me and I return fully satisfied.
Numbers were animated and personified. Likewise, calculations were personal in Ancient Egypt. We are part of the natural process in the universe. Even in our present-day, we hear the genius among us describe how they feel the subject of their excellence. They live their work in order to excel and exhilarate.Egyptians manifested their knowledge of number mysticism and harmonical proportions in all aspects of their lives, such as art and architecture. The evidence that Egypt possessed this knowledge is commanding. As examples:
The heading of the Ancient Egyptian papyrus known as the Rhind (so-called “Mathematical”) Papyrus (1848-1801 BCE) reads,
Rules for enquiring into nature and for knowing all that exists, every mystery, every secret.
The intent is very clear that Ancient Egyptians believed and set the rules for numbers and their interactions (so-called mathematics) as the basis for “all that exists”.The famous Ancient Egyptian hymn of Leiden Papyrus J 350 confirms that number symbolism had been practiced in Egypt, at least since the Old Kingdom (2575–2150 BCE). It is a rare direct piece of evidence of the Egyptian knowledge of the subject. The Leiden Papyrus consists of an extended composition, describing the principle aspects of the ancient creation narratives. The system of numeration, in the Papyrus, identifies the principle/aspect of creation and matches each one with its symbolic number.
This Egyptian papyrus consists of 27 stanzas, numbered from 1 to 9, then from 10 to 90 in tens, then from 100 to 900 in hundreds. Only 21 have been preserved. The first word of each is a sort of pun on the number concerned.The numbering system of this Egyptian Papyrus by itself is significant. The numbers 1 to 9, and then the powers 10, 20, 30, etc., now come to constitute the energetic foundations of physical forms.
All the design elements in Egyptian buildings (dimensions, proportions, numbers, …etc.) were based on the Egyptian number symbolism.
The Ancient Egyptian name for the largest temple in Egypt, namely the Karnak Temple Complex, is Apet-sut, which means Enumerator of the Places. The temple’s name speaks for itself. This temple started in the Middle Kingdom in ca. 1971 BCE, and was added to continuously for the next 1,500 years. The design and enumeration in this temple are consistent with the number symbolism of the physical creation of the universe.
The Egyptian concept of number symbolism was subsequently popularized in the West by and through the Greek Pythagoras (ca. 580–500 BCE). It is a known fact that Pythagoras studied for about 20 years in Egypt, soon after Egypt was open to Greek exploration and immigration (in the 7th century BCE).
Pythagoras and his immediate followers left nothing of their own writing. Yet, Western academia attributed to him and the so-called Pythagoreans, an open-ended list of major achievements. They were issued a blank check by Western academia.
Pythagoras and his followers are said to see numbers as divine concepts, ideas of the God who created a universe of infinite variety, and satisfying order, to a numerical pattern.
The same principles were stated more than 13 centuries before Pythagorus’ birth, in the heading of the Egyptian’s Rhind Papyrus, which promises,
Rules for enquiring into nature and for knowing all that exists, every mystery, every secret.
Moustafa Gadalla
http://www.egypt-tehuti.org/articles/sacred-numerology.html
http://thesevenworlds.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/kemetic-numerology/
http://thesevenworlds.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/kemet-zulu-yoruba-1/
The Egyptian Sacred Numerology
By Moustafa Gadalla (edited)
Number Mysticism
The netertSeshat is well described in numerous titles that ascribe two main types of activities to her. In Kemet, she wasThe Enumerator, Lady of Writing(s), Scribe, Head of the House of the Divine Books (Archives). The other aspect of Seshat is as the Lady of Builders.
The divine significance of numbers is personified by Seshat, The Enumerator.
Kemet had a “scientific and organic system” of observing reality. Modern-day science is based on observing everything as dead (inanimate). Modern physical formulas in our science studies almost always exclude the vital phenomena throughout statistical analyses. In Kemet, we knew the whole universe was animated.
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Relaunching Africa: The Call For Pro-Poor Growth November 17, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Development, Economics, Economics: Development Theory and Policy applications, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo Nation, Oromo Social System, Self determination, The Colonizing Structure & The Development Problems of Oromia, The Oromo Governance System, Theory of Development, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, African Studies, Developing country, Development, Development and Change, Economic and Social Freedom, economics, Governance issues, Leading Issues In African Development, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo the ancient African Society, Social Sciences, State and Development, World Bank
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“Policies aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity and increasing food availability, especially when smallholders are targeted, can achieve hunger reduction even where poverty is widespread. When they are combined with social protection and other measures that increase the incomes of poor families, they can have an even more positive effect and spur rural development, by creating vibrant markets and employment opportunities, resulting in equitable economic growth.” F.A.O.
“Poor people feeding their babies better and sending their children to school, while also building a new chicken coop. Let governments ensure that there are teachers there to actually teach the children, and you could be on to a really promising combination. It may look less impressive than a new oil platform or a shiny airport, but it will reduce poverty just the same, if not more!”
The new Deputy Chief Economist for the World Bank in Africa in his call for evidence based debate in pursuit of African development states the following arguments and calls for pro-poor development policies:
In 1990, poverty incidence (with respect to a poverty line of $1.25) was almost exactly the same in sub-Saharan Africa and in East Asia: about 57%. Twenty years on, East Asia has shed 44 percentage points (to 13%) whereas Africa has only lost 8 points (to 49%). And this is not only about China: poverty has also fallen much faster in South Asia than in Africa. These differences in performance are partly explained by differences in growth rates during the 1990s, when emerging Asia was already on the move, and Africa was still in the doldrums. But even in the 2000s, when Africa’s GDP growth picked up to 4.6% or thereabouts, and a number of countries in the region were amongst the fastest-growing nations in the world, still poverty fell more slowly in Africa than in other regions. Why is that? Part of the answer is that Africa’s population growth rates are still very high: 2.7% per year, versus 0.7% in East Asia. So a 4.6% growth rate for GDP translates into a much more modest sounding 1.9% growth in per capita GDP – less than the developing country average in 1999-2012. But an even bigger part is that Africa just seems less efficient at transforming economic growth into poverty reduction. That conversion is measured by what economists call the “growth elasticity of poverty”, a number that tells us by how much poverty falls for each percentage point in economic growth. According to a recent (and as yet unpublished) estimate by my colleagues Luc Christiaensen, Punam Chuhan-Pole and Aly Sanoh, that elasticity was about 2.0 in the developing world as a whole (excluding China) during the 2000s, but only 0.7 in Africa. At this rate, even if countries in Africa continue to grow at the same rates as in the 2000s – a period when the external environment was particularly benign, with rising commodity prices and abundant liquidity – poverty in 2030 would be in the 26%-30% range (assuming constant inequality). Under similar assumptions for other countries, somewhere between 60% – 80% of the world’s poor would live in Africa. Why is growth in Africa apparently less pro-poor than elsewhere? And what can be done about it? At first blush, at least part of the answer (beyond rapid population growth) has to do with both levels and changes in inequality. Inequality is relatively high in Africa: seven of the world’s 10 most unequal countries in the latest data in Povcalnet are in the region – despite the fact that African inequality is almost invariably measured for consumption, rather than income, while the opposite is true in Latin America. In addition, inequality has actually been rising in a number of countries. (Although the truth is that infrequent household surveys and changing methodologies are so common that we actually know relatively little about real changes in inequality in Africa – despite the impression you may get from various sources…)This clearly reflects a growth pattern that is less inclusive than we might like. In our latest Africa’s Pulse and in our recent presentation on the State of the Africa Region to the Annual Meetings of the Bank and the Fund in Washington, we reviewed some of these data, and suggested a four-part strategy for better sharing Africa’s growth in the future:
• First, preserve macroeconomic stability. Africa’s growth success in the 2000s reflects policy improvements, but also a benign external environment. During this period, fiscal deficits and current account deficits grew in most countries (Figure 1). While that is understandable, given plentiful capital flows, the risk is that those capital flows cease – or reverse – precisely at a time when commodity prices have stopped rising and are, in many cases, falling. Countries with large fiscal and current account deficits are inevitably more vulnerable to those risks.
• Second, build more – but mostly better – human and physical capital. Of course, alongside increases in total factor productivity – this is what drives economic growth everywhere. Despite progress, the needs in Africa are enormous, in everything from health and education to transport and energy. Our emphasis here is on quality: there have been real gains in access, but children won’t learn unless the teachers show up at school and, in addition, actually teach! Similarly, the costs of power, water, transport and communications remain excessively high. That is partly due to sheer scarcity, and partly to geographic fragmentation, but not only. The way contracts are designed, the way competition is (or isn’t) promoted, and the way subsidies interact with firm incentives all need looking at as well.
• Third, promote growth in the places and sectors where the poor live and work. For most of Africa, that means in rural areas – both by finding better ways to promote higher yields in agriculture, and by strengthening the off-farm economy. Linkages to small and medium-sized towns seem to be an important ingredient. This suggests that “local investments” – in rural roads and electrification, for example – is likely to be as important as big flagship projects. Even if the political economy tends to favor the latter.
• Fourth, harness the power of growth that takes place elsewhere for investments near – or in – the poor. That is particularly pertinent for (the large and growing group of) countries with large natural resource sectors. Oil and mining are not intensive in unskilled labor and could, if left alone, develop almost as “enclave sectors”. The main policy concern with these resources is to invest as much as possible of the rents they generate into other forms of capital, to replace the natural capital being depleted. But countries should be imaginative and comprehensive in their choice of investment portfolio. The portfolio should obviously include infrastructure, health and education projects, to build physical and human capital. But it may also include foreign assets, to help with the risk of exchange-rate appreciation and “Dutch disease”.
And it should also include some cash transfers made directly to poor people. The prevailing evidence is that poor households tend to use the resources from small cash transfers rather wisely. They buy more and better food. They send their kids to school more often. And they even invest some of it in their own (very) small businesses: they buy chickens in Mexico, or goats in Tanzania.
That’s pro-poor growth for you! Poor people feeding their babies better and sending their children to school, while also building a new chicken coop. Let governments ensure that there are teachers there to actually teach the children, and you could be on to a really promising combination. It may look less impressive than a new oil platform or a shiny airport, but it will reduce poverty just the same, if not more!
For more details refer to: http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/sharing-africa-s-growth?cid=EXT_TWBN_D_EXT
Related Articles:
African rule of law declines despite economic gains, Ibrahim index shows
http://ethiofreespeech.blogspot.no/2013/10/african-rule-of-law-declines-despite.html
Global hunger down, but millions still chronically hungry
‘Despite the progress made worldwide, marked differences in hunger reduction persist. Sub-Saharan Africa has made only modest progress in recent years and remains the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment, with one in four people (24.8 per cent) estimated to be hungry. No recent progress is observed in Western Asia, while Southern Asia and Northern Africa witnessed slow progress. More substantial reductions in both the number of hungry and prevalence of undernourishment have occurred in most countries of East Asia, Southeastern Asia, and in Latin America.’
https://oromianeconomist.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/poverty-deprivation-capability-and-economics/
“Terms like ‘peasant farming’ or ‘traditional farming’ evoke for many people the notion of subsistence agriculture, and peasants living in blissful harmony with nature. The truth is that many peasant farmers struggle, many are poor and ironically constitute the majority of the undernourished in the world. Smallholder farmers need what other businesses need—access to finance, markets, infrastructure, technology, the tools and knowledge to grow their businesses, get their product to market and increase their incomes. That is their route out of poverty. It’s important to avoid black-and-white dichotomies between ‘big ag’ and ‘little ag’, industrial or traditional etc. Agricultural research, for example, can be of benefit to small farms as much as large. Small farmers need new technologies, adapted to their farming circumstances. Smallholder farming needs support; the question remains of who’s going to provide that support. There are critical roles for government, the private sector, development agencies and consumers. Integration of smallholders into higher-value market chains calls for a proactive role by national governments in terms of food safety standards, building infrastructure, and making the policy and legal environment conducive. That includes protecting the rights of small farmers—a large proportion of whom are women who face inequality and barriers to access to land, credit, education and advice. Strong producers’ associations managed and owned by small farmers can make working with small farmers more attractive to the private sector and also help safeguard their interests. And the private sector has to come equipped not only with finance but also with respect for rural people and the local context. To achieve food security, a sustained increase in agricultural productivity is required, with more focus on those small farmers who tend to be the most neglected: youth, women, other disadvantaged social groups and indigenous peoples. ”
http://ifad-un.blogspot.it/2013/10/how-to-feed-world_24.html
‘The continent’s burgeoning middle class has driven much of that discourse. Stories about its growth, increasing wealth and expanding expenditure have contributed to portray an Africa on the ascent. Prospects are so promising that Mthuli Ncube, chief economist of the African Development Bank (AfDB), suggested that we recalibrate our development priorities: [Aid and development strategy] will have to concentrate less on the bottom of the pyramid and move to the middle, which means it has to be supportive of private sector initiatives, which then are the way middle class people conduct their lives.This sentiment is echoed regularly by development institutions. Never mind that the middle class is a precarious and expansive category lumping together people spending $2 to $20 a day. Let’s also ignore that the so-called ‘floating class’ at the bottom end of the spectrum represent almost 40% of said middle class, people who contend with questions like affording school fees and medical treatment on a regular basis. If we cherry pick the middle, what happens to the rest? It is one thing to use the middle class to unpack singular depictions of the continent, it is another to pivot all development policies and priorities towards them. On the continent, despite improvements in national economies, technology, and certain human development indicators, almost 2 Africans out of 3 remain affected by poverty. The number of poor people has doubled since 1980s and among the world’s 10 most unequal countries, six are in Africa. In a recent survey of more than 50,000 people in 34 African countries about current economic conditions, half say they struggle to meet daily needs like food, clear water, and medicine.’ http://naiforum.org/2013/11/against-the-gospel-of-africa-rising/
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
Oromo Are The Single Largest And Indigenous National Group In East Africa November 14, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Human Rights, Humanity and Social Civilization, Kemetic Ancient African Culture, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo Culture, Oromo Social System, Oromo the Largest Nation of Africa. Human Rights violations and Genocide against the Oromo people in Ethiopia, The Oromo Democratic system, The Oromo Governance System, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, African culture, African Studies, Gadaa System, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo people, Seenaa Jimjimo
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Oromia map (green)
Independent nation before 1887
Mini Documentary by Seenaa Jimjimo
‘The Oromo Community Association in Chicago was featured on Chicago Public Radio’s Worldviewprogram on Wednesday, October 20, 2010. Listen below the full segment of the program on the Oromo people, the Oromo Community Association in Chicago, and the benefit jazz concert that the Association will hold on October 24, 2010.From the Chicago Public Radio: There are an estimated 40 million Oromo in Ethiopia, which makes them the nation’s largest ethnic group. Their numbers extend into Kenya and Somalia as well. Yet, despite their wide influence in the Horn of Africa, many people have never heard of the Oromo. Seenna Jimjimo of Chicago’s Oromo Community Association and Kadiro Elemo talk with Jerome about the Oromo culture, the struggle for independence and the local Oromo community in Chicago.’ Source: Gadaa.com
Listen:
Related references:
From slavery to freedom:the Oromo slave children of Lovedale, prosopography and profiles
Sandra Carolyn Teresa Rowoldt Shell
Student number: RWLSAN002
A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Historical Studies
Faculty of the Humanities
University of Cape Town
2013
https://www.academia.edu/3760219/From_slavery_to_freedom_the_Oromo_slave_children_of_Lovedale_prosopography_and_profiles
https://oromianeconomist.wordpress.com/?s=twisted&searchbutton=go%21
Ethiopia’s Land Grabs And Endangered Communities: The Indigenous People Excluded from ‘Rapid Growth’ November 11, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Colonizing Structure, Corruption, Culture, Development, Dictatorship, Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure., Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure. Africa Heritage. The Genocide Against Oromo Nation, Land Grabs in Africa, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo the Largest Nation of Africa. Human Rights violations and Genocide against the Oromo people in Ethiopia, Oromummaa, Self determination, The Colonizing Structure & The Development Problems of Oromia, Theory of Development, Tyranny.Tags: Africa, African culture, Economic and Social Freedom, economics, Genocide, Genocide against the Oromo, Human rights violations, Indigenous People, Land grabbing, Land grabs in Africa, Mursi, National Self Determination, Omo, Oromia, Oromo, Oromummaa, People of Omo Valley, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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The ethnic communities living along Ethiopia’s Omo River and depend on annual flooding to practice flood retreat cultivation for their survival and livelihood. Credit
: Ed McKenna/IPS
‘The government already has trouble managing hunger and poverty [among] its citizenry. By taking over land and water resources in the Omo Valley, it is creating a new class of ‘internal refugees’ who will no longer be self-sufficient.’
OMO VALLEY, Ethiopia, Nov 11 2013 (IPS) – As the construction of a major transmission line to export electricity generated from one of Ethiopia’s major hydropower projects gets underway, there are growing concerns that pastoralist communities living in the region are under threat.
The Gibe III dam, which will generate 1,800 megawatts (MW), is being built in southeast Ethiopia on the Omo River at a cost of 1.7 billion dollars. It is expected to earn the government over 400 million dollars annually from power exports. On completion in 2015 it will be the world’s fourth-largest dam.
“We are being told to stop moving with our cattle, to stop wearing our traditional dressand to sell our cattle. Cattle and movement is everything to the Mursi.” — Mursi elder
But the dam is expected to debilitate the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of indigenous communities in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley and those living around Kenya’s Lake Turkana who depend on the Omo River.
The Bodi, Daasanach, Kara, Mursi, Kwegu and Nyangatom ethnic communities who live along the Omo River depend on its annual flooding to practice flood-retreat cultivation for their survival and livelihoods.
But the semi-nomadic Mursi ethnic community are being resettled as part of the Ethiopian government’s villagisation programme to make room for a large sugar plantation, which will turn roaming pastoralists into sedentary farmers. The hundreds of kilometres of irrigation canals currently being dug to divert the Omo River’s waters to feed these large plantations will make it impossible for the indigenous communities to live as they have always done.
“We are being told that our land is private property. We are very worried about our survival as we are being forced to move where there is no water, grass or crops,” a Mursi community member told IPS.
The Omo Valley is set to become a powerhouse of large commercial farming irrigated by the Gibe III dam. To date 445,000 hectares have been allocated to Malaysian, Indian and other foreign companies to grow sugar, biofuels, cereals and other crops.
“The Gibe III will worsen poverty for the most vulnerable. The government already has trouble managing hunger and poverty [among] its citizenry. By taking over land and water resources in the Omo Valley, it is creating a new class of ‘internal refugees’ who will no longer be self-sufficient,” Lori Pottinger from environmental NGO International Rivers told IPS.
Top global financiers, including the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB), have committed 1.2 billion dollars to a 1,070 km high-voltage line that will run from Wolayta-Sodo in Ethiopia to Suswa, 100 km northwest of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The transmission line, powered by Ethiopia’s Gibe III, will connect the country’s electrical grid with Kenya and will have a capacity to carry 2,000 MW between the two countries.
According to the AfDB, it will promote renewable power generation, regional cooperation, and will ensure access to reliable and affordable energy to around 870,000 households by 2018.
According to Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia’s economy is set to maintain a growth rate of 11 percent in 2014. Fully exploiting its massive water resources to generate a hydropower potential of up to 45,000 MW in order to sell surplus electricity to its neighbours is central to Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation plan, a five-year plan to develop the country’s economy.
The Horn of Africa nation currently generates 2,000 MW from six hydroelectric dams and invests more of its resources in hydropower than any other country in Africa – one third of its total GNP of about 77 billion dollars.
According to a World Bank report published in 2010, only 17 percent of Ethiopia’s 84.7 million people had access to electricity at the time of the report. By 2018, 100 percent of the population will have access to power, according to state power provider Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCO).
“We are helping mitigate climate risk of fossil fuel consumption and also reduce rampant deforestation rates in Ethiopia. Hydropower will benefit our development,” Miheret Debebe, chief executive officer of EEPCO, told IPS.
The Ethiopian government insists that the welfare of pastoralist communities being resettled is a priority and that they will benefit from developments in the Omo Valley. “We are working hard to safeguard them and help them to adapt to the changing conditions,” government spokesperson Shimeles Kemal told IPS.
However, there are concerns that ethnic groups like the Mursi are not being consulted about their changing future. “If we resist resettlement we will be arrested,” a Mursi elder told IPS.
“We fear for the future. Our way of life is under threat. We are being told to stop moving with our cattle, to stop wearing our traditional dress and to sell our cattle. Cattle and movement is everything to the Mursi.”
The importance of ensuring that benefits from Ethiopia’s national development projects do not come at a price of endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands pastoralist tribes is critical said Ben Braga, president of the World Water Council. Braga decried governments that failed to compensate communities like the Mursi as displacement of surrounding communities is always an inevitable consequence of major dams that need plenty of advanced planning to avoid emergencies.
“How can we compensate these people so that the majority of the country can benefit from electricity? There is a need for better compensatory mechanisms to ensure that benefits are shared and that all stakeholders are included in consultations prior to construction,” he told IPS.
Read more at the original source:http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/11/ethiopias-indigenous-excluded-from-rapid-growth/?utm_source=ipsnews&utm_medium=twitter
‘Foreign investors are taking as much as they can from an impoverished nation, including its crops, land and the hard work of an Ethiopian population, to serve their own interests above others. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 14.56 million hectares of Ethiopia’s 100 million hectare land mass is arable land, most of it cultivated by small hold, subsistence farmers. International investors have taken note and are rushing to this country, once synonymous with starvation, to take advantage of the government’s new push to improve its agricultural production capacity. But many fear the government’s sale of arable land to foreign nationals will create a modern form of agricultural colonialism. One such arrangement, launched in 2009 under Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah initiative and forming part of a $100-million investment scheme in Ethiopian agriculture, had farmers grow teff (a North African cereal grass), white wheat, maize and white sorghum, among other crops, before these were exported back to the Gulf region. The Economist referred to it as an instance of a “powerful but contentious trend sweeping the poor world”, further saying that countries which export capital but import food are outsourcing farm production to countries that need capital but which have land to spare. According to Human Rights Watch, in less than five years Ethiopia has approved more than 800 foreign-financed agricultural projects. The watchdog group further said that from 2008 to 2011, the Ethiopian government leased out no less than 3.8 million hectares to foreign investors, displacing local inhabitants and resulting in tens of thousands of internally displaced persons who are often forced to migrate to urban areas. The majority of land acquisitions occur in government-to-government deals. In the past, Saudi officials and closely tied sovereign wealth funds negotiated with former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, while presently, such discussions take place with the ruling coalition of his successor, Hailemariam Desalegn Boshe. Supporters argue that such deals increase production efficiency and improve economic outlooks but only if investors are willing to pay a fair price. In 2011, Oxfam reported that Middle Eastern and Far Eastern investors were purchasing plots in developing countries, including Ethiopia, for as little as $1 per hectare. That same year, Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc leased 10,000 hectares for a bargain price of $9.42 per hectare annually for the next 60 years. (Saudi Star, a food company owned by Ethiopian and Saudi Arabian billionaire Mohammed Al Amoudi, and which forms part of the Derba group, produces sugar, rice and edible oil. The company is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.) Advocacy groups from Spain and the US commented that the government sponsored deal had caused human rights violations as well as the forceful relocation of hundreds of thousands of residents, including the Nuek and Anuak indigenous groups. The government retorted by saying that the resettlement plan was acted out voluntarily on behalf of residents. Saudi Star claims that it acted in good faith and that the benefits of the land deal – including improvements to regional infrastructure – outweighed the consequences, despite scepticism. Fikru Desalegn, former State Minister of Capacity Building in the Ethiopian federal government and current CEO of Saudi Star, played down the negative connotations associated with the controversial foreign investment. He said there was “nobody in the 10,000 hectares” and that the company had “not paid any compensation” but that the possibility of employment opening up would “teach the public it is very useful for them”. In July 2012, the Derba Group announced plans for an additional 300,000-hectare development project in the fertile region of Gambela. While no figures have been released, industry experts suspect that the lease was contracted below cost, generating approximately $923 million per annum for the consortium. The company intends to export the majority of the crops harvested, with 45 percent destined for Jeddah.’ http://www.ventures-africa.com/2013/11/land-grabs-in-africa-a-double-edged-sword/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer675be&utm_medium=twitter
‘From Senegal in West Africa to Ethiopia in the Horn, and down to Mozambique in the South, land considered idle and available has changed hands, with profound implications for local people and the environment. With estimates ranging from 56 to 227 million hectares globally (with 60-70% of this in Africa), what is clear is a rapid transformation of landholding and agricultural systems has taken place in the past five to 10 years. Underpinning these deals is the longstanding failure of many African states to recognise, in law and practice, the customary land rightsof existing farming households and communities, and the perpetuation of the colonial legal codes that centralise control over such lands in the hands of the state as trustee of all unregistered property. And it’s not just African land and water that are now so desirable for international investors, but also the growing African consumer market. In the face of growing urbanisation and consumer demand in Africa’s cities, the challenge is to scale up production and connect small farmers to markets, lest the benefits of rising food demand in Africa’s cities be netted by importers and foreign supermarkets. The land grab raises questions not only about land rights and transparency in investment, but also what constitutes inclusive agricultural development and how to bring it about.’ Read further @http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/jan/23/land-deals-africa-farming-investment?CMP=twt_gu
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
How Africans Traditionally Plant: All Crops In One Field November 9, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Culture, Development, Economics, Kemetic Ancient African Culture, Oromia.Tags: Africa, Agricultural Economics in Africa, Development, Oromia, Oromo people
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‘That’s how we plant it, the African way. All crops in one field.’
African Maize Field(Mixed Planting).
http://photoszim.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/african-maize-fieldmixed-planting/
‘The myth of the greater productivity of larger farms stems in part from the confusing use of the term “yield” to measure productivity. Yield is how much of a single crop you can get per unit area — for example, bushels of
soy beans per acre. That’s a measure that’s only relevant to monocultures. A monoculture is when a single crop is grown in a field, rather than the kind of mixtures of crops and animals that small farmers have. When you grow one crop all by itself, you may get a lot of that one crop, but you’re not using the ecological space — the land and water — very efficiently. In monocultures, you have rows of one crop with bare dirt between them. In
ecological terms, that bare dirt is empty niche space. It’s going to be invaded and taken advantage of by some species in the ecosystem, and generally we call those species weeds. So if that bare dirt is invaded, the farmer has to invest labor or spray herbicides or pull a tractor through to deal with those weeds. Large farmers generally have onocultures
because they are easier to fully mechanize.Smaller farmers tend to have crop mixtures. Between the rows of one crop
there will be another crop, or several other crops, so that ecological niche space — that potential — is producing something of use to the farmer rather than requiring an investment of more labor, money or herbicides. What that means is that the smaller farm with the more complex farming system gets more total production per unit area, because they’re using more of the available niche space.’
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/smallfarmsbetter.cfm
Related Articles:
‘Small individual farms in Moldova are more productive and more efficient than large corporate farms.’http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/en/publications/discussion_papers/2006/lerman-sutton.pdf
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Research Validates The Popular Skeptcism About The Africa ‘Rising’ Narrative November 3, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Corruption, Development, Dictatorship, Economics: Development Theory and Policy applications, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo the Largest Nation of Africa. Human Rights violations and Genocide against the Oromo people in Ethiopia, Self determination, The Colonizing Structure & The Development Problems of Oromia, Theory of Development, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Developing country, Development and Change, Economic, Economic and Social Freedom, Economic growth, Governance issues, Horn of Africa, Human rights, Human rights violations, Oromia, Oromo people
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Afrobarometer which is a research project that has been coordinated by institutions in African countries and with partners in thirty-one countries. In its recent survey of public opinion across thirty-four African countries in the continent it validated the popular skepticism about the “Africa Rising” narrative.
In its 1st October 2013 research out come report, Afrobarometer’s data show that 20 percent of Africa’s population often goes without food, clean water, or medical care. More than 50 % of those surveyed think that economic conditions in their country are bad or “very bad.” Some 75% thought their government was doing a bad job in closing the gap between rich and poor. ‘John Allen, writing on AllAfrica.com, suggests that the results indicate that higher benefits of growth are going to a wealthy elite or that official statistics are overstating growth, or possibly both. Morten Jerven, in his recently book Poor Number, has shown the shortcomings of African statistics. In its report on the Nigerian economy, the World Bank observed that Nigeria’s high growth statistics could not be squared by increasing rates of poverty. These, and other inconsistencies, make Allen’s hypothesis on where the majority of Africa’s wealth is directed, look credible.’ For further readings refer to the following original sources:
http://blogs.cfr.org/campbell/2013/10/31/afrobarometer-poll-questions-the-africa-rising-narrative/
Prosperity Index 2013
Ethiopian: 126/142.
75.6% say gov’t is corrupt.
Satisfaction with gov’t efforts to address poverty: 21.2%.
The Governance sub-index dropped two places, to 118th, because of decreases in political rights, political constraints, the rule of law, and regulatory quality.
http://www.prosperity.com/#!/country/ETH
http://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:589071/FULLTEXT03.pdf
It Is Not Only Ethiopia Madagascar crisis Also forces girls into sex work |
Economic hardships prompt girls to take desperate measures with some deciding to sell their bodies. |
The recent and frequent reports on outstanding economic growth in Africa have quickly turned this into mainstream ‘knowledge’, but African economic statistics are very weak. Growing inequality is a key issue that needs to be in focus if all of Africa is to enjoy ‘growth’. Links between social, environmental and economic development are being downplayed. A key issue in today’s discussion on land is that governments consider unfarmed lands to be ‘unowned, vacant, idle and available’, which is completely misleading. Small scale farming in African countries has been persistent, despite efforts to replace it with ‘more efficient’, large scale agriculture.
http://naiforum.org/2013/11/beyond-african-growth/
Another example of the tplf-EFFORT over reach
The Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EEFORT) is known for its over reach way beyond its regional government borders and micro managing and being the exclusive beneficiary of the major resources of the empire.
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
The Precarious Balance of Economic productutivity and Corrupt Governance: Ethiopia Is Amongst World’s Least Competitive Countries October 29, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Colonizing Structure, Corruption, Development, Dictatorship, Economics, Economics: Development Theory and Policy applications.Tags: Africa, Corruption, Ethiopia, GCI, Global Competitiveness Report, Gross domestic product, Nigeria, Oromia, Oromo, Sub-Saharan Africa, World Economic Forum
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The Corrupt Empire is uncompetitive: Ethiopia Is Amongst World’s Least Competitive Countries
Despite its damn statistics of massive long term paper growth of TPLF Ethiopia’s economy, the country is still ranked among the worst performing in the Global Competitive Index (GCI) 2013 -2014, recently released by the World Economic Forum. (see page 163 for the detail summary of the report). According to the report, Ethiopia dropped 15 places from last year’s 106th position to 121st among the 144 countries profiled.
The Global Competitive Index , which was introduced in 2004, measures how the combinations of institutions, policies, and other factors determine the level of productivity of a country. The GCI scores is calculated by putting together the 12 pillars of competitiveness, such as: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation.
According to the ranking, Ethiopia is placed in the poorest pool of economic development possible (see, the following graphics). Ethiopia ranked as a “factor driven” economy which includes Nigeria, Liberia, Lao, Mali and Yemen.There are four stages of development with innovation-driven economies being the best pool of economies.
Ethiopian economic productivity is one of the poorest despite clear advantages of its internal market and economies of scale with population over 85 million compared to other African countries. Due to its population, it has a large internal market size (66 position), only next to Nigeria (the largest internal market size in Africa, also performing poor).
GCI has identified weak basic institutional requirements (118) of Ethiopia that account 60% of the index ranking: corruption, poor infrastructure, poor primary education, poor macroeconomic environment, efficiency enhancers and technological readiness.
The GCI has noticed with Ethiopia’s economy the following among the most problematic factors for doing business:
Access to finance, corruption, inefficient government bureaucracy, inflation, policy instability, tax regulations and inadequate supply of infrastructure.
Technological readiness is also the worst performance:
Availability of latest technologies (132)
Firm-level technology absorption (139)
FDI and technology transfer (128)
Individuals using Internet, % (142)
Broadband Internet subscriptions/100 pop (131)
Mobile broadband subscriptions/100 pop (120)
Ethiopia with a population of over 85 million only produces $31.7 billion GDP with per capita income of $1 per day.
Key indicators, 2011
Population (millions) ……………………………………….85.1
GDP (US$ billions)* ……………………………….. ………31.7
GDP per capita (US$) ……………………………….. …365.2
GDP (PPP) as share (%) of world total …………..0.12
Sectoral value-added (% GDP), 2011
Agriculture …………………………………………………. ..41.9
Industry ……………………………………………………… .12.6
Services ……………………………………………………. ..45.5
Human Development Index, 2011
Score, (0–1) best ………………………………………. ….0.36
Rank (out of 187 economies) ……………………………174
Sources: IMF; UNFPA; UNDP; World Bank and GCI
The report noted that Mauritius has replaced South Africa (53rd) as the most competitive country in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ranked 45th position the country moved up nine places this year.The country’s best performance has supported by “transparent public institutions (ranked at 39th) with clear property rights and strong judicial independence and an efficient government (29th).”
Switzerland, ranked at number one is the most competitive country in the world. For top ten Sab Saharan African countries See:
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2013-14/GCR_Infographic_SubSaharanAfrica_2013-2014.jpg
Click to access WEF_Africa_Competitiveness_Report_2013.pdf
Click to access WEF_Africa_Competitiveness_Report_2013.pdf
www3.weforum.org
Prosperity Index 2013
Ethiopian: 126/142.
75.6% say gov’t is corrupt.
Satisfaction with gov’t efforts to address poverty: 21.2%.
The Governance sub-index dropped two places, to 118th, because of decreases in political rights, political constraints, the rule of law, and regulatory quality.
http://www.prosperity.com/#!/country/ETH
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
Related articles
- Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014 (pacific.scoop.co.nz)
- A prisoner of conscience’s call for sanctions against Ethiopia | Eskinder Nega (theguardian.com)
- Tyrannic Ethiopia bans access to student’s critical article (oromianeconomist.wordpress.com)
Is Economics A Science? October 21, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Economics, Economics: Development Theory and Policy applications, Oromia, Oromo Social System, Uncategorized, Wisdom.Tags: Africa, Economic and Social Freedom, Economic development, Economic growth, economics, Oromia, Oromo
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“Yes, economics is a science”, says Harvard Professor, Raj Chetty.
The point is said Paul Krugman “while Chetty is right that economics can be and sometimes is a scientific field in the sense that theories are testable and there are researchers doing the testing, all too many economists treat their field as a form of theology instead.” and he coined: ” May be economics is a science, but many economists are not scientists.’
Of course, not every science is experiment based. According to Prof. William Easterly of NYU: “Evolution is an example of a non-experimental science; don’t need experiments to defend economics.”
In Chetty’s economics: ‘It is true that the answers to many “big picture” macroeconomic questions — like the causes of recessions or the determinants of growth — remain elusive. But in this respect, the challenges faced by economists are no different from those encountered in medicine and public health. Health researchers have worked for more than a century to understand the “big picture” questions of how diet and lifestyle affect health and aging, yet they still do not have a full scientific understanding of these connections. Some studies tell us to consume more coffee, wine and chocolate; others recommend the opposite. But few people would argue that medicine should not be approached as a science or that doctors should not make decisions based on the best available evidence. As is the case with epidemiologists, the fundamental challenge faced by economists — and a root cause of many disagreements in the field — is our limited ability to run experiments. If we could randomize policy decisions and then observe what happens to the economy and people’s lives, we would be able to get a precise understanding of how the economy works and how to improve policy. But the practical and ethical costs of such experiments preclude this sort of approach. (Surely we don’t want to create more financial crises just to understand how they work.) Nonetheless, economists have recently begun to overcome these challenges by developing tools that approximate scientific experiments to obtain compelling answers to specific policy questions. In previous decades the most prominent economists were typically theorists like Paul Krugman and Janet L. Yellen, whose models continue to guide economic thinking. Today, the most prominent economists are often empiricists like David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, and Esther Duflo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who focus on testing old theories and formulating new ones that fit the evidence. This kind of empirical work in economics might be compared to the “micro” advances in medicine (like research on therapies for heart disease) that have contributed enormously to increasing longevity and quality of life, even as the “macro” questions of the determinants of health remain contested.’ Read the interesting argument on the subject further at:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/on-whether-he-is-a-scientist-by-robert-j–shiller
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
Oromo Political Detainees Tortured: Human Rights Watch’s Latest Document on Ethiopia October 19, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Colonizing Structure, Corruption, Dictatorship, Human Rights, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo the Largest Nation of Africa. Human Rights violations and Genocide against the Oromo people in Ethiopia, The Colonizing Structure & The Development Problems of Oromia, Tyranny, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, East Africa, Economic and Social Freedom, Genocide, Genocide against the Oromo, Governance issues, Horn of Africa, Human rights, Human rights violations, National Self Determination, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo people, Oromummaa, Tyranny, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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The report documents human rights abuses, unlawful investigation tactics, and detention conditions in Maekelawi between 2010 and 2013. Human Rights Watch in this latest document reports that Ethiopian authorities have subjected political detainees to torture and other ill-treatment at the main detention center in Finfinnee (Addis Ababa). The report also calls for the Ethiopian government to take urgent steps to curb illegal practices in the Federal Police Crime Investigation Sector, known as Maekelawi, impartially investigate allegations of abuse, and hold those responsible to account.
The 70-page report, “‘They Want a Confession’: Torture and Ill-Treatment in Ethiopia’s Maekelawi Police Station,” documents serious human rights abuses, unlawful interrogation tactics, and poor detention conditions in Maekelawi since 2010. Those detained in Maekelawi include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies. Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 35 former Maekelawi detainees and their relatives who described how officials had denied their basic needs, tortured, and otherwise mistreated them to extract information and confessions, and refused them access to legal counsel and their relatives.
“Ethiopian authorities right in the heart of the capital regularly use abuse to gather information,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director. “Beatings, torture, and coerced confessions are no way to deal with journalists or the political opposition.”
Since the disputed elections of 2005, Ethiopia has intensified its clampdown on peaceful dissent. Arbitrary arrest and political prosecutions, including under the country’s restrictive anti-terrorism law, have frequently been used against perceived opponents of the government who have been detained and interrogated at Maekelawi.
‘One [police officer] hit me on the back of my head with a long black stick and blindfolded me. They took me to their office. These were interrogators. They slapped me on the cheeks repeatedly…. But these interrogators are not in a position to listen to what I tell them. They beat me again with the black stick and slapped me again. I stayed in that room until midnight. I was exhausted. They took me back to the cell and then took another guy. On the second day of interrogations—the beating was worse. What they want is a confession.’—Journalist held in Maekelawi in mid-2011, Nairobi, April 2012, p. 6.
“Oromo student held in Maekelawi in 2012, said his hand was broken when he was beaten on his hand while being held in this position and that over a year later his hand continues to hurt:’In the interrogation room there was small piece of metal on the wall. They put me on it and locked my left hand to the wall and then my legs didn’t touch the ground. They beat me on my left hand. I think I was there one hour, but I don’t know as I lost my memory,’ ” p. 34.
Read further more from the following sites:
Click to access ethiopia1013_ForUpload.pdf
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/10/18/ethiopia-political-detainees-tortured
Are Oromos Singled Out and Disproportionately Tortured in Ethiopia?
http://oromopress.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/are-oromos-singled-out-and.html
Torture in the heart of Finfinnee (Addis), even as leaders gather in gleaming AU building
“Getachew,” a 22-year-old ethnic Oromo, was snatched from his university dorm, driven hundreds of kilometres to Addis Ababa, and locked up for eight months in Maekelawi. His parents were never informed of his whereabouts; he was never charged or given access to a lawyer; and never appeared before court. He was ultimately released on condition that he would work for the government.Like Getachew, many of the people detained in Maekelawi over the past decade are political prisoners — arrested because of their ethnicity, their real or perceived political opinions and actions, or journalism work. Voicing peaceful dissent or criticism of government policy is increasingly risky.
Copy right © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
Irreecha: The Oromo National And Cultural Holiday Has Been Celebrated With Over 3 million Oromians In The Blessing Festival October 13, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Culture, Development, Humanity and Social Civilization, Irreecha, Kemetic Ancient African Culture, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo Culture, Oromo Identity, Oromo Nation, Oromo Social System, Oromummaa, Self determination, Sirna Gadaa, The Oromo Democratic system, The Oromo Governance System, Theory of Development, Wisdom.Tags: Africa, African culture, African Studies, Democratic African institution, Development, Development and Change, Gadaa, Gadaa System, Horn of Africa, Irreecha, National Self Determination, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo culture, Oromo Identity, Oromo National Day and Ancient Africa Connections, Oromo people, Oromo Thanksgiving, Oromummaa, Social Sciences
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Oromo culture from ancient to present, Irrechaa time
Baga ganna nagaan baatanii booqaa birraa argitan. Good that the rainy season is over for you and that you came to see the spot of the sunny flowering season. The expression signifies the end of one season and the beginning of another season, which incidentally is the beginning of a new year according to Oromo time reckoning. This is not the only expression in Irreecha festival as the event is characterized by vast and varieties of expressions, stories and sequences of cultural displays. Irreecha is the biggest and very beautiful public displays of ancient culture that Africa has performed and continue to perform. Holding the green grass and yellow flower (umama), it is the celebration of the season of blessing and love Oromians experience as Thanksgivings to God (Waaqa) the creator (Uumaa).
Irreecha celebration at Malkaa Ateetee, Burayyuu, Oromia, 6th October 2013
Irreecha is one of the most colorful and beautiful Oromo national cultural events that has been celebrated through out since the last week of August and the entire September and also in October in Oromia and globally where Oromians have been residing (Africa, Australia, Europe and North America). The main Irreecha day was celebrated at Lake Hora Harsadii, Bishoftu, Central Oromia, nearer to the capital Finfinnee on 29th September 2013. According to local news sources from Bishoftuu, over 3 million people attended this year’s Irreecha Malka celebration at Hora Harsadii. “Traditionally, the Oromo practiced Irreecha ritual as a thanksgiving celebration twice a year (in autumn and spring) to praise Waaqa (God) for peace, health, fertility and abundance they were given with regards to the people, livestock, harvest and the entire Oromo land. Irreecha is celebrated as a sign of reciprocating Waaqa in the form of providing praise for what they got in the past, and is also a forum ofprayer for the future. In such rituals, the Oromo gather in places with symbolic meanings, such as hilltops, river side and shades of big sacred trees. …These physical landscapes are chosen for their representations in the Oromo worldview, for example, green is symbolized with fertility, peace, abundance and rain. In Oromia, the core center of Irreecha celebration has been around Hora Arsadi in Bishoftu town, some 25kms to the south of Finfinne, the capital city. Annually, particularly during the Irreecha birraa (the Autumn Irreecha) in September or October, the Oromo from different parts of the country come together and celebrate the ritual. In the past few decades, Irreecha celebrations have been expanded both in content as well as geographical and demographic representations. This short commentary deals with such historical trajectories by contextualizing the changes within political discourses in Ethiopia vis-à-vis Oromo nationalism.”http://gadaa.com/oduu/21320/2013/08/24/irreecha-from-thanksgiving-ritual-to-strong-symbol-of-oromo-identity/ ”
http://gadaa.com/Irreechaa.html
Aadaa fi Duudhaa sirna Waaqeffannaa keessaa inni tokko Ayyaana irreeffannaa ykn irreechati. Sirni Duudhaa irreechaa gosa hedduutti qoodama. Kunis, Irreessa Malkaa, Irreessa Tulluu, Irreessa Galmaa / Gimbii, Irreessa Ujubaa, Irreessa Dakkii, Irreessa Jilaa fi Irreessa Eebbaa ykn Galataa fi kkf. Akkaa fi akkaataan irreeffannaas akkuma sirna isaatti addaa adda. Ammatti kan bal’inaan irraa dubbannu Irreecha yeroo ammaatti biyya keessaa fi alatti beekamee fi kabajamaa jiru, Irreecha Malkaati. Irreechi Malkaa kan kabajamu, ganni yeroon rakkinaa fi dukkanaa dabree birraan yeroo bari’u, sirni Gubaa erga raawwatee booda, ummanni gamtaan Malkaa bu’uun irreeffatee Waaqa galateeffata. Ammaaf Irreecha Malkaa isa biyya keessaa fi alatti bal’inaan beekamaa fi kabajamaa jiru irraa hanga tokko waa addeessuu yaalla. Ayyaanni irreechaa osoo hin gahiin dura waanti raawwataman hedduutu jiran. Kunis seera yayyaba shananii hordofuudhan torban shan dura eegala jechuudha. Ji’a hagayyaa torban sadaffaa keessa birraan bari’uu ykn seenuu isaa kan ibsu, sirna Muka ( korma) dhaabaa kan jedhamutu raawwata. Bakki mukti dhaabaa kun dhaabatu Mijirii jedhama. Mijiriin kun bakka Gubaan itti gubamu ykn bakka ayyaanni ibsaa gubaa raawwatudha. Mukti dhaabbatu 9 ykn 5 ta’an. Kunis hiika mataa ofii qaba. Guyyaa muka dhaabaa irraa eegalee hanga gaafa Gubaatti torban torbaniin waanti godhamu ni jira. Gaafa torban shanaffaa ykn Fulbaana ji’aa dhumaa yeroo ta’u sirna Gubaatu raawwata. Masqala jechuudha. Ayyaana masqalaa kana warri amantii Ortodoksii gara amantii isaaniitti harkisuuf haa yaalan malee gochaa fi seenaan wanti isaan deeggaru hin jiru. aadaa Oromoo fudhatan. Guyyaa gubaa kana ollaan maatii waliin walitti dhufee bakka Mijirii sanatti erga ibsaa gubee dhibaafatee, eebbifateen booda dubartoonni Qunnii (Ingiccaa) guban, dargaggoonni sirba ” Hiyyooko ykn Ya habaab yaa daree ko” jedhamu sirbaa ollaarra naannawanii kennaa fudhatan. Torban isaatti ammoo sirna Ayyaana Irreechaatu raawwata. Gubaan kan dhuunfaa fi ollaati. Irreechi ammoo ayyaana ummanni gamtaan Malkaa bu’ee, dukkana gannaa keessaa gara Booqaa Birraatti nagaan cehuu isaaf kan galateeffatu Guyyaa Galatoo ( Thanksgivings day) jechuudha. Sirni gamtaan Irreeffannaa kun osoo dhiibbaa amantii fi sirna bulchiinsa alagaatiin hin dhorkamiin dura Oromoon naannoo qubatee jiru maratti ni irreeffata ture. Keessumattuu bara mootummaa Dargii sana aadaa ” duubatti hafaa” jedhamee Galma Qaalluu gubuu fi waan Oromoon aadaadhaan raawwatu mara dhorkuun dhabamsiisuuf yaalan. Sababa kanaa fi babal’ina amantii Isilaamaa fi Protestantiin walqabatee bakka hedduutti sirni irreeffannaa fi amantiin Waaqeffannaa ni dhorkame. Dhiibbaa kana irraa damdamtee kan hafe keessaa tokko Ayyaana Irreechaa Hora Arsadii Magaalaa Bishooftuutti kabajamudha. Ayyaanni Irreecha Hora Arsadee qindoominaa fi hirmaannaa ummata bal’aan kabajamuu kan eegale bara 1997 irraa kaaseetu. Isa dura ummatuma naannoo sanaa fi keessattuu warra aadaa Waaqeffannaa hordofaniin ture. Bara 1997 keessa koreen tokko maqaa Guddinaa fi Dagaagina Aadaa Oromoo jedhuun WMT jalatti ijaaramtee Ayyaana Irreecha Bishooftuu kana ummata beeksisuu, barsiisuu fi qindoominaan guyyaa ayyaana kanaa bakka sanatti argamuun qalbii namaa harkisuu jalqabde. Ergasii waggaa waggaan achitti argamuun barumsaa fi dammaqiinsa kennameen sadarkaa har’a ummanni kumaa fi kitilaan kan herreegamu irratti argamee kabaju irraan gahe. Kana malees Oromiyaa gara dhihaatti bakka hedduutti akka kabajamuu fi babal’atuuf karaa saaqe. Baroota hedduu dura jalqabee ammoo biyya alatti walduraa duubaan, USA, Germany, Norway, Canada, Australia, Keenya, Uganda fi Ertriatti kabajamuu jalqabe. Guddinni fi babal’inni kabajaa Ayyaana Irreechaa kun qaama duula Oromoon Aadaa, Eenyumaa fi Oromummaa isaa guddisuuf gochaa jiru keessaa isa tokkoo fi guddicha ta’uu mal’isa. Fuula durallee daran akka guddatuu fi babal’atu Waaqa wajjin abdii qabna.Kabajaa ayyaana irreechaa biyya keessaa fi alatti raawwate ilaalchisee kanaan dura marsaa adda addaatti bahaa turuun ni yaadatama. Dabalataan yaadachiisuu fi bal’inaan kan hin gabaafamiin dabalatee akka armaan gadiitti kan biyyaa keessaa fi biyya alaa bakka adda addaatti kabajamaa ture laalla.”http://waaqeffannaa.org/irreecha/
http://oromoassociationvic.org/2013/10/03/oromians-seek-blessings-and-love-at-annual-oromo-festival/
Irreecha Oromo 2013 Celebration, in Sydney, Australia
Irreecha Oromo, event in London, 12 October 2013
Gubaa fi Irreecha @Galma Calalaqii, Miidaaqenyii
Related references:
https://oromianeconomist.wordpress.com/?s=twisted&searchbutton=go%21
Oromo: The Kushitic People of Africa
| ErechaThe story of Erecha – the celebration of the first harvest of the Ethiopian Spring in September – is a story better told by who else but the late Poet Laureate himself, Blattten Geta Tsegaye G/Medhin.
“….12,000 years ago, ASRA the God of sun and sky of KUSH PHARAOH begotten SETE, the older son ORA the younger of the first and daughter named as ASIS (ATETORADBAR). The older SETE killed his younger brother ORA, and ASIS (ATET OR ADBAR) planted a tree (ODA) for the memorial of her deceased brother ORA at the bank of Nile, Egypt where the murder had taken place, and requested her father who was the god of Sun to make peace among the families of SETE and ORA. Them rain was come and the tree (ODA) got grown. It symbolizes that taken place. Later, at the Stone Age, the tree that had been planted for the memorial of the killed, ORA was substituted by statue of stone that was erected 8000 years ago. This festival has been celebrated in September of every year and when Nile is flow full in NUBLA and BLACK EGYPT. In Ethiopia during the AXUMITE and PRE-AXUMITE period a great festival has been held around the sun’s statue that planted by ASIS (ATET OR ADBAR) the sister of ORA for the memorial of the later, ORA the son of god of sun, who waked up from death (ORA OMO or OR OMO) for the purpost of celebrating the peace made between the two brothers, the great herald, in thanking the good of sun and the sky with CHIBO. Then EYO KA ABEBAYE (the traditional and popular song performed at DEMERA events and new year in Ethiopia) has been started being performed since then. “KA” is the first name of God. The name of God that our KUSH Fathers have inherited to us before the old period, Christianity, and Islam is “KA”. Since then, therefore, especially the OROMO, GURAGIE and the SOUTHERN people of Ethiopia have been calling God as “WAKA or WAQA”. “or WAQA”. WAKA” or WAQA” God When we song EYOKA or EYOHA in New Year, we are praising “KA” of God. “GEDA” or KA ADA” is the law or rule of God. “GEDA” (KA ADA) is the festival by which the laws and orders of God are executed Japan, China, and India are now reached to the current civilization through making the basic traditions and cultures they received from their forefathers (HINDU, SHINTO and MAHIBERATA) be kept and receiving Islam, Christianity, and others especially Democracy and free believes. They are not here through undermining the culture and tradition of their forefathers. Culture is the collection of many CHIBOs or DEMERA. “ERCHA” or “ERESA” one of the part and parcel of GEDA (KA ADA) system is the comer stone and turning point to the new year for which ASIS (ATET OR ADBAR) has put up the dead body of her brother, ORA who was killed by his older brother like ABEL from the place he died at the river bank of NILE on and planted statue“. The Oromo people of beautiful Ethiopia believe in one God since time memorial. Their religion is called “WAKEFENA” which means believing in one God that is the creator of the whole universe. ERECHA means a celebration where people get together and perform their prayers and thanking God. WAKEFENA, the faith being in the GEDA SYSTEM is a religions ceremony that is free from any thing. The fathers of Oromo religion and the people, keeping fresh grass and flowers, perform their prayers and thank their God going to mountains, the sea or a river bank. They move to the top of mountains or bank of seas or rivers not to worship the mountains or rivers and seas; rather to distract themselves from any noise and to worship their God (WAQA) with concentration. And they go to sea and rivers because they believe that green is holy and peaceful where the spirit of God is found. In the Oromo culture, the rainy season is considered as the symbol of darkness. At the beginning of September, the darkness is gone, rivers run shallower and cleaner, and the mud is gone. As sunshine rules the land, the OROMO people of Ethiopia go out to celebrate this great natural cycle with the spirit of worshiping God (WAQA). |
http://www.ethiopians.com/photoessay/Photo_Essay_Eretcha_06.htm
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Tyrannic Ethiopia Bans Access To Student’s Critical Articles And Has Watchers In Class Rooms September 27, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Colonizing Structure, Corruption, Dictatorship, Ideas, Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure. Africa Heritage. The Genocide Against Oromo Nation, Oromia, Oromo, The Colonizing Structure & The Development Problems of Oromia, Tyranny, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Ethiopia–United States relations, Human rights, Oromia, Oromo, Politics of Ethiopia, Tyranny, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
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‘Disguising human rights violations and oppression with positive terminology is not new to Ethiopian legislators, who passed the Freedom of the Mass Media and Access to Information Proclamation No. 590 in 2008. This idealistic-sounding law’s title belies its contents, because it enables the government to bring charges against “any person who is suspected of committing an offence through the mass media.” Such offenses include the publication of statements critical of the legislative, executive or judicial authorities that are deemed false or defamatory. It is up to the attorney general to decide if the accused journalist should be detained on remand.’ http://jurist.org/forum/2011/08/abigail-salisbury-ethiopia-terror.php#
‘Ethiopian education also differs from Western education because, Salisbury said, there could be “watchers” present at any time, in any classroom. Watchers are government representatives on the lookout for those speaking out against the government.’
Cristina Holtzer of Pitt News reports that Abigail Salisbury is an enemy of the state of Ethiopia because of an op-ed column she published online. Salisbury, a student in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, spoke about her article to an audience of about 10 in a “Let’s Talk Africa” lecture on Wednesday in 4130 Posvar Hall from 1:30 to 3 p.m. The Ethiopian government blocked her article, titled “Human Rights and the War on Terror in Ethiopia,” one day after she published it online. While in Ethiopia, Salisbury noticed an extreme lack of freedom of speech and press for Ethiopian people and decided to write the piece, which criticizes the Ethiopian government. Salisbury was working as an assistant professor at Mekelle University Law School, a small college outside of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, when she published the article. After the university administration discovered her article, Salisbury said the university “basically asked [her] not to work there anymore.”
“I was told that, based on what I wrote, that if I had been an Ethiopian person, I would have been put in prison,” Salisbury said. “I don’t think they want me back.” Ironically enough, Salisbury said, she was in the country teaching international human-rights law, a class required for graduation from law school in Ethiopia. Anna-Maria Karnes, a representative of the Africana studies department, also attended the lecture and interjected throughout. Karnes, whose parents live in Ethiopia, has a thorough grasp of the political climate in the country.
“Skype was outlawed two years ago in Ethiopia,” Karnes said. “There were people jailed for using Skype.” When Karnes first discovered the Skype law, she worried that she would not be able to get in touch with her parents because that was their primary source of communication. But Skype was illegal only for Ethiopians, not for foreigners. “As a Westerner, you are treated differently,” Salisbury said. “Better.”
Ethiopians subscribe to a different race and caste system than many Americans are used to. Salisbury said that when African-Americans traveled to Ethiopia, they were treated the same as whites. Ethiopians believe that everyone else in Africa is black but that they, themselves, are red skinned. Salisbury recounted a story of when someone in the street approached her and asked, “Have you seen any black women today?”
Salisbury said she was surprised by the scale of differences between the learning environments in Ethiopia and the U.S.
Because of the country’s limited resources, students learn to memorize verbatim what professors say in lecture. Salisbury said she’s seen students reproduce a lecture right down to the “ums” and “likes.” Ethiopian education also differs from Western education because, Salisbury said, there could be “watchers” present at any time, in any classroom. Watchers are government representatives on the lookout for those speaking out against the government. “What would creep me out if I were in that class?” Salisbury said. “I don’t know if I would be raising my hand with opinions.” In addition to an extreme lack of freedom of speech, Salisbury said Ethiopians also struggle with tough racial tensions and “ethnic federalism,” or preferential treatment for one ethnic group that is officially recognized by the government. With Ethiopia located in a contentious part of the world, Salisbury said U.S.-Ethiopia relations are crucial. “Ethiopia is really instrumental in the U.S. agenda and the global war on terror that we’re engaged in,” she said. Salisbury and Karnes opened the presentation with an activity about African knowledge. They divided the audience into small groups and asked them to label a map of Africa with the names of as many countries as they could. Even with several African students and faculty in the audience, no one was able to label the entire map. “You can’t know the whole of Africa,” Director of Africana Studies Macrina Lelei said. “That’s part of why we have African studies here at Pitt … to share those experiences.”
http://www.pittnews.com/news/article_090b538c-266a-11e3-8d05-0019bb30f31a.html#.UkV1PQONt0w.facebook
http://www.ethiomedia.com/abai/ethiomedia_interviews_abigail_salisbury.html
http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Abigail-Salisbury/1255943349
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Africa’s Land Grabs: An Opportunity Or A New Form of Colonialism? September 25, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Colonizing Structure, Economics, Land Grabs in Africa, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, AlJazeera, Development, Land Grabs, Oromia, Oromo
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‘From hopeless continent to investment darling of the world – are land investments in Africa an answer to worldwide food insecurity or a dangerous new form of colonialism?’ Aljazeera, on its South2North talks to former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, Nigerian politician and Oxfam trustee Nkoyo Toyo and Philippe Heilberg, a land investor from the US. Here is the the details of interesting debates and the video:
‘Escalating energy and food prices have triggered a global scramble for Africa’s land and water resources. Eager to feed their growing populations, countries are buying up prime farmland in Africa at rock bottom prices. Land eight times the size of the UK has already been bought up by hungry investors.Redi asks Chissano if this investment is a new scramble for Africa.”‘The scramble for Africa is never good. We have known that since Berlin and we fought against it. But investment is welcomed if it is done in a win-win situation when people benefit from this investment.” Toyo explains that the trend towards buying land in Africa has come from the 2008 spike in food prices, a concern about global food security as well as an impending energy crisis. However, she warns that investments might not be as good as they seem, and that UN records show alarmingly rapid sales of African land.”The problem with this type of investment is not that we do not want to see investment. It’s that we see investments that are increasingly not addressing the needs of the continent. We hear that at least 33 million square hectares of land are lands which have been acquired in just less than 10 years.”Heilberg argues that the statistics from the UN are highly distorted because they are not closed or officialdeals. He says that his own figures have been doubled in some accounts.”Land is cheap in Africa, but there are many reasons why it’s cheap. In many parts of the continent there is little to no infrastructure whatsoever …. The frontier markets offer incredible risk-reward opportunities. Because when the growth happens it’s exponential.” Toyo disagrees that these deals have always been above-board and that they benefit local communities.’
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/south2north/2013/09/2013920101434517250.html
http://ecadf1.ecadf.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/UPR-Submission-Ethiopia.pdf
RelateCopyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.d articles
- Redi Tlhabi debates the new scramble for Africa (spyghana.com)
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The New Scramble for Africa: Poverty, Guns And The Weapons Market September 15, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Colonizing Structure, Corruption, Development, Dictatorship, Economics, Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure., Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Genocide, Gross domestic product, Human development Index, Human rights violations, Oromia, Oromo, Sub-Saharan Africa, Weapon
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The world OutLine states Africa is going to spend over $20bn on defence projects over the coming decade. ‘As the European defence market becomes ever more bereft of big spenders and Asian markets face strong competition from China, Africa’s 54 states will make the last major geopolitical frontier for defence companies.’ It has been reported that whilst for various reasons there is undoubtedly significant demand for the latest weaponry in the region, large-scale arms contracts do raise questions over the future of a continent already stricken with poverty and permanent violence. It is well known Africa is run by dictators and human rights abusers. Defence contractors with out doubt are always looking to maximize profits and increase their trade, however, it is not clear whether ethical considerations will be in place in providing such weapons in the continent run by unaccountable politicians and unelected tyrants engaging in militarism, e.g Ethiopia, Rwanda and Sudan. It is worrying that scarce public money will continue to be diverted from social and economic investment and wasted into arms deals. ‘The UN has warned that 22 of the 24 lowest Human Development Index nations are in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in some instances GDP per capita is less than $200 a year. However, pumping aid into the region is not necessarily the answer. A 2005 report suggested that a staggering proportion of the $500bn of aid sent to Africa over the last forty years has been embezzled through corrupt institutions; the so-called ‘leaky begging bowl’. It would be interesting to know how much of this will fund armaments over the next decade.’ http://theworldoutline.com/2013/09/africa/
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Oromia of Dhaqabo Ebba: The Cradle of Mankind Is Also A Home of The Oldest Living person Known to Humanity September 10, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Dhaqaba Ebba, Gadaa System, Humanity and Social Civilization, Oral Historian, Oromia, Oromo, The Oldest Living Person Known to Mankind, The Oromo Library, Uncategorized, Wisdom.Tags: Afaan Oromo, Africa, African history, African Philosphy, Dhaqba Ebba, Ebbaa, Finfinnee, Gadaa, Gadaa System, Obbo dhaqabaa Ebbaa, Oldest Living Person, Oldest people, Oldest person, Oral History, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromiya, Oromiyaa, Oromo Calendar, Oromo elder, oromo farmer, Oromo History, Oromo people, The Oldest Living Person, Time in Gadaa
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Dahqabo Ebba, Oromo elder, who is over 160 years is the oldest living person known to humanity.
He is a resident of Dodola town, Oromia.
http://www.unpo.org/article/16351
OTV (Oromiyaa TV)
In interviews conducted in his native language Afaan Oromo Obbo Dhaqabo Ebba counts his age based on Oromo Gadaa system calendar. According to traditional Oromo Gadaa system every member of the society goes through the Gadaa time grade. Obbo Dhaqabo Ebba has lived 4 Gadaa cycles. one Gadaa cycle has 5 stages. One stage is for 8 years. One Gadaa cycle is 40 years, (8*5). Obbo Dhaqabo has already completed 4 Gadaa cycles (4*40) which are 160 years. He involved in the Gadaa system in its full functioning time in all its structures and development stages from Dabballe to Jaarsa. He still living after the 4 cycles means he is actually over 160 years. The Journalist of Oromiyaa TV did not yet ask him how many years since his last 4 Gadaa cycles was completed. Gadaa ways of timing is exact to know own birth years and historical events. In his fascinating life that has touched 3 centuries (from middle 19th century to the present 2nd decades of 21st century which has been over 160 years he remembers all major political, social, economic and environmental events and changes. He remembers from a time when the Ethiopian empire still expanded south to Oromia such as 1880’s the time the Abyssinian Menelik start to occupy the Oromo capital Finfinnee (Abyssinians named it Addis Ababa). At this event and the time of first Italian invasion he used to travel to Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) for his livestock trading. He mentioned that he engaged in farming (crops and livestock) but also in commerce. it took eight days on horseback to cover the 150 miles between his village and Finfinnee (Addis Ababa). In 1895 ( at the time of Italian invasion) he was already a married person of two wives and his first son ( over 100 years old with him at interview) was a young boy and able person to look after his livestock. “When Italy invaded the country, I had two wives and my son was old enough to herd cattle,” he said, referring to Italy’s 1895 invasion of his country. “Not even one of my peers is alive today.” He knows and remembers by naming all Abyssinian rulers, Menelik to present who have been in Oromia (Oromo land) since the occupation of Finfinnee in 1880’s.
Mohammed Ademo of Opride said. “Given that the Oromo like many African cultures are an oral society, ‘each time an elder dies, a library is lost.’ Ebba’s is one such library from which much can still be preserved.”
http://www.voaafaanoromoo.com/content/article/1756208.html
As elaborated in the works of “Oromia: an Introduction,” by Gadaa Melbaa ( book published in Khartoum, 1988), the following is a brief description of how the Gadaa system works and the gadaa Grades: “There are two well-defined ways of classifying male members of the society, that is the hiriyya (members of an age-set all born within the period of one Gadaarule of eight years) and Gadaa grade. The Gadaa grades (stages of development through which a Gadaa class passes) differ in number (7-11) and name in different parts of Oromia although the functions are the same.”
The Gadaa grades:-
1. Dabballee (0-8 years of age)
2. Folle or Gamme Titiqaa (8-16 years of age)
3. Qondaala or Gamme Gurgudaa (16-24 years of age)
4. Kuusa (24-32 years of age)
5. Raaba Doorii (32-40 years of age)
6. Gadaa (40-48 years of age)
7. Yuba I (48-56 years of age)
8. Yuba II (56-64 years of age)
9. Yuba III (64-72 years of age)
10. Gadamojjii (72-80 years of age)
11. Jaarsa (80 and above years of age)
http://www.unpo.org/article/16351
http://now.msn.com/dhaqabo-ebba-ethiopian-farmer-is-160-years-old-reporter-claims
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Interview With Oromo Youth President, Iftu Kassim, Africa Media Australia September 7, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Development, Gadaa System, Language and Development, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo Identity, Oromo Nation, The Oromo Governance System, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa Media AUstralia, Amnesty International, Development, empowerment, Freedom, Human rights, Iftu Kassim, Melbourne, Oromia, Oromo culture, Oromo people, Oromo Youth
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Melbourne Youth Oromo Association’s president Iftu Kassim speaks to AMA about her organisation and a recent event organised in Melbourne
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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ETHIOPIA: IS TPLF GOVERNING OR EXPANDING IT’S CORRUPTIONS EMPIRE? September 5, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Colonizing Structure, Corruption, Dictatorship, Economics.Tags: Africa, Colonizing Structure, Corruption, Dictator, Ethiopia, Ethiopian Government, Oromia, Oromo, Politics of Ethiopia, Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, Tyranny
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The tyrannic TPLF group since seized power in 1991 has clearly engaged in massive corruption and unethical business practices without any constraints by national or international business rules. As a ruling force, it not only owns strategic sectors of the economy and engages in commercial and trading activities, it also puts private sectors those are outside its space of armed robbery in a hopeless no-win situation. The muscled economic dominance through such massive scale corruptions and brute forces has also been used as a political weapon to harass, incarcerate, dominate, weaken and control its political opponents to maintain its corruption empire for ever. The TPLF, the core corruption force in the present Ethiopian government, has transformed the economy from State ownership of the pre- 1991 to TPLF & Tigrayan elite private ownership by buying investment assets formerly owned by the government of Ethiopia. ‘At the same time, the TPLF has also started a huge investment program of its own through sham corporate structures.For example, the TPLF controlled Endowment Fund of Rehabilitation of Tygrai (EFFORT) is a conglomerate with an asset estimated well over a billion Ethiopian Birr involved in business investment in all aspect of the Ethiopian economy.’
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Firehiwot Guluma | Sept 4, 2013
Since the dictator TPLF seized power, it has been clearly engaged in massive corruption and unethical business practices by national or international business rules. As a ruling party, it not only owns strategic sectors of the economy and engages in commercial and trading activities, it also puts competing private sectors in a hopeless no-win situation. This preponderant economic dominance is also used as a political weapon to harass, incarcerate, dominate, weaken and control opposition forces in order to stay in power indefinitely.
The TPLF, the core political power of Ethiopian government, has transformed the Ethiopian economy from State ownership to the private ownership by political parties, mainly the TPLF, by buying investment assets formerly owned by the government of Ethiopia, as prescribed by the World Bank Report and political coercion by the United States Government. At the same time, the TPLF has also started…
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Interview with Prof. Mekuria Bulcha, TVORO September 4, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Afaan Oromo, Mekuria Bulcha, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo Studies, Social Sciences
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Interview with Mekuria Bulcha, author and university professor
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
Poverty, Deprivation, Capability and Economics August 30, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in The Colonizing Structure & The Development Problems of Oromia, Uncategorized.Tags: Amartya, Amartya Sen, Chicago School, Chicago school of economics, Developing Oromia, Developing problems of Oromia, economics, Freedom as a development goal, Income distribution, John Rawls, Karl Marx, Millennium Development Goals, Multidimensional Poverty Index, Oromia and Human Right Issues, Oromo, poverty, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation
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World map showing countries by nominal GDP per capita in 2008, IMF estimates as of April 2009. Sbw01f’s work, but converted to an SVG file instead. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
‘It has to be known that the social structures, the power relations, that have generated and continue to generate poverty.’
In the present world, poverty, particularly as it is experienced in the developing countries, has become the main topic to a great deal of discussion among economists and policy
makers, and there have been various campaigns going on to overcome it: “to make poverty history.” The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) project is for front of these undertakings. In these makings, the issue is absolute deprivation, and the current widely accepted standard defines poverty as living on less than $2 per day and extreme poverty as living on less than $1 per day. The $2 per day and $1 per day figures are in terms of 1990 purchasing power. The World Bank uses these standards to report each year on the number of people living in poverty and in extreme poverty. The definition of poverty in terms of absolute deprivation may make good sense. When people do not have the basic necessities – the food, the shelter, the clothing – that they need to lead a reasonable life, they are living in poverty. Although we might not agree over the exact baseline. There may look nothing wrong with the term.
However, there are problems with this absolute deprivation term of poverty. Primarily, there is the problem of whether or not an income measure can actually handle what we understand by people living in an ‘unreasonable’ condition of deprivation; not all the things that
make for a reasonable existence can be directly transformed to purchasable goods and services. Besides, there is the problem of what we mean by ‘deprivation’. Of course, economic well-being – cannot be properly measured and clearly understood by a single, absolute measure. In particular, the meaning cannot be properly captured by individual’s or a people’s absolute level of income. Actually, this issue has been widely recognized by the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), Sen’s capabilities concept, and to some extent by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) campaign. Achieving an income goal alone does not eliminate poverty. A closely related issue is that poverty (or well-being) cannot be captured properly by any single measure or single combination of measures, such as the HDI. Both the terms of poverty and economic well-being do not take into account issues of inequality in the distribution of income or the distribution of other measures of well-being. This failure to take into account issues of distribution in defining poverty (economic well-being) is conceptually and practically problematic. If poverty is understood in absolute terms without consideration of distributional issues, the social structures that generate poverty tend to be ignored. It has to be known that the social structures, the power relations, that have generated and continue to generate poverty. As Arthur MacEwan of University of Massachusetts Boston argues: ‘To a large extent, the poor are poor because they lack power, and they lack power because they are poor. When power is brought into consideration, the focus of policy shifts towards such issues as land reform and the effective control of state actions – i.e., of the underlying factors that determine spending on health care, education and other social services. The problem of poverty, then, would be approached as a socio-political problem, not simply as a technical problem. (Technical changes can bring about changes in socio-political relations, and that is one of the reasons, in addition to their direct impacts, that they are often good. But technical solutions are less likely to be effective when they are implemented without consideration of power relations.’ For instance, as studies on the Horn of Africa recognize, the colonizing Abyssinian Ethiopian structure has been a very serious development problem in Oromia. In recent debates the UN and other international organizations are taking human rights issues to a center stage in the discussions of eliminating poverty as it is to define the post 2015 actions. Actually, individual human rights and collect (group) rights must be at the center stage in processes of poverty eliminations and achieving development. A person can be socially and economically deprived and made incapable to achieve life goals not only as individual but also because he/she is a member of a group. That is what we have learnt from the experiences and studies on indigenous people such as the Oromo nation under Ethiopian social and political structures.
The discussion of poverty may be as old as disciplines of economics and philosophy. Economists and philosophers including Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and many more have discussed the subject. The capabilities concept of economic well-being has been established and extensively discussed by Amartya Sen. He maintains that “…the right focus for assessing standard of living is … something that may be called a person’s capability…., the capability to function …that comes closest to the notion of standard of living.” The following site is interesting further discussions: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=econ_faculty_pubs&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dpoverty%252C%2520capability%2520and%2520deprivation%253Awhat%2520economists%2520say%26pc%3Dconduit%26ptag%3DADE7BA551541340B0B5F%26form%3DCONOMX%26conlogo%3DCT3210127%26ShowAppsUI%3D1#search=%22poverty%2C%20capability%20deprivation%3Awhat%20economists%20say%22
Another Interesting current economic article on the subject of poverty is rebeloged here with kind acknowledgement to the author:
“How important should the subject of poverty be within the discipline of economics? Some economists appear to think it is a very small issue compared to the magnificent mathematics of general equilibrium theory. Others believe that economics should fundamentally be about the sources of human well-being and misery, and that understanding poverty is absolutely fundamental for economics. How should we try to sort this out? Among the contemporary economists who have given the greatest attention to poverty and deprivation, Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze are particularly outstanding. Their research on well-being, quality of life, and hunger set a standard for the point of viewthat says that life quality and deprivation need to be at the top of the list of economic research goals. Here I’m thinking of books like Inequality Reexamined, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, and Hunger and Public Action. The neoclassical free market purists stand at the other end of the garden. The economists of the Chicago School put primary emphasis on the beneficent effects of untrammeled market behavior, and they give little attention to the “market imperfections” that poverty and deprivation represent. (The word “poverty” does not occur in the index of John Van Overtveldt’s good intellectual history of the Chicago School, The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business.) Poverty seems to be viewed as a normal and fair result of the workings of market institutions: some people make large contributions and earn high income, and others make small or zero contributions and earn low income.” Daniel Little, Rebloged from http://understandingsocietyglobaledition.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/poverty-and-economics/ read more from http://understandingsocietyglobaledition.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/poverty-and-economics/
As disccused in the above sources, poverty is not only a matter of lack of income. And also economic growth alone does not alleviate poverty. As it has been analysed in following sources: “The problem with seeing poverty only through the lens of income is that it leaves economic growth as the only option to remove poverty. The underlying assumption is that the poor will be someday and somehow able to earn enough money to take care of all their needs, starting with having sufficient food. The problem is that the poor also lack skills to earn sufficient money, they are denied credit or loan by the banks, they have no access to quality education and healthcare facilities, and face social discrimination and political marginalization. Therefore, it is rather naive to expect that just because the economy is doing well, they will suddenly start having good income and come out of poverty. Thanks to the efforts of eminent economists such as Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and late Dr Mahbub ul Haq of Pakistan, better ways of measuring poverty and human well-being than income have emerged. If the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) launched in 1990 provided the first global tool to probe the standard of living, a bigger thrust was given in 2010 by the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) that uses 10 different indicators to probe various deprivations the poor face. An application of the MPI analysis on the above two countries reveals an entirely different picture. Ethiopia has 90 percent poverty while Uzbekistan reveals just 2 percent multidimensional poor. What we learn from this is that the society in Uzbekistan looks after its people much better than the Ethiopian society. Therefore, poverty is better understood in terms deprivations, not lack of income. Economic Growth Alone is not “Development.” The real purpose of development is to enhance the well being of people and raise their standard of living, for which economic development is an important tool. However, this tool has been converted into an end in itself. Another popular view sees “development” as technological development; other contemporary concepts of development are industrialization and increasing the GDP growth (and keep doing it forever!). The way international business is being steered through global treaties, it appears that the world is being converted into a big bazaar and people into mere tools of production and consumption. The per capita consumption has emerged as modern measure of development and hence, of the well being of people. Hence, people of “developed” nations are the biggest consumers on the planet. Rest of the world is catching fast to beat them in this competition.” http://goodpal.hubpages.com/hub/Looking-at-Poverty-Beyond-Lack-of-income
‘Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom. Poverty is a call to action – for the poor and the wealthy alike – a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities. Poverty is the state of being without, often associated with need, hardship and lack of resources across a wide range of circumstances.’http://www.fightpoverty.mmbrico.com/poverty/what.html
“Since poverty is often so linked with human development, or lack of it, the 1996 report took a special look at poverty and concluded that income poverty is only part of the picture. “Just as human development encompasses aspects of life much broader than income, so poverty should be seen as having many dimensions,” says the report. As a result, the report introduced a new, multidimensional measure of human deprivation called the capability poverty measure, (CPM). The CPM focuses on human capabilities, just as human development index does. Instead of examining the average state of people’s capabilities, it reflects the percentage of people who lack basic, or minimally essential human capabilities, which are ends in themselves and are needed to lift one from income poverty and to sustain strong human development. The CPM considers the lack of three basic capabilities. The first is the lack of being well nourished and healthy, represented in this case by the proportion of children under five years who are underweight. The second is the lack of capability for healthy reproduction, shown by the proportion of births unattended by trained personnel. The third is the lack of capability to be educated and knowledgeable, represented by female illiteracy. The composite index emphasizes deprivation of women because, says the report, “It is now well known that the deprivation of women adversely affects the human development of families and of society.” Comparing the new capability poverty measure with the income poverty index, the report found that while 21 per cent of the people in developing countries are below the income poverty line, 37 per cent face capability poverty. That is, 900 million people in developing countries are income poor, but 1.6 billion are capability poor.” http://www.womenaid.org/press/info/poverty/cpm.html
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The Tyrannic Ethiopian Regime is Accountable for the Death of a Political Prisoner And Prisoner of Conscience, Oromo National, Engineer Tesfahun Chemeda August 27, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Barack Obama, Development Problems, Engineer Tesfahum Chemeda, Ethiopia, Fascist system, Genocide, Horn of Africa, Human rights, Human rights violations, Kenya, National Self Determination, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo people, poverty, Racism, The genocide against Oromo People, Tyranny
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The tyrannic and minority rule of TPLF Ethiopian government has been conducting genocidal killings against the majority (the Oromo people), nations and nationalities in Southern and Eastern Ethiopia. In its policies and strategies of Nazi and Apartheid style, it has mainly targeting the Oromo who make more than 40% of the population of the Horn of Africa. Engineer Tesfahun Chemada Gurmeessaa is the latest victim of TPLF’s planned and systematic genocide going on. Ethiopian empire (Horn of African) is one of the least developed, economically very impoverished and marginalized in the world. It is the most world food aid dependent region. The tyrannic and corrupt regime in its statistical lies and paper growth has reported that it has registered the fastest economic growth in Africa. Practical observation on the ground indicates the opposite (it is poverty alone that is growing). The politically motivated sectarian regime actually destroys the very scarce and rare resources the region holds and the dynamics of the society (Oromo and other non-Tigrayan) that it has put under its genocidal target : engineers, teachers, graduate students, the writers, the farmers, business men and women, the natural forest (the ecosystem) and the ancient human culture of the region.
The followings are republications among the latest petitions initiated and open letters made by concerned citizens and Oromo human rights advocates in the calls for the reversal of the ongoing crime against humanity. For further details and actions please refer to the original sources as they are acknowledged in this page.
Dear President Barack Obama,
The #Oromo People < http://www.oromo.org/enocide-against-the-oromo-people-of-thiopia.html> are the single largest Nation in the Horn of Africa under the brutal rule of successive Ethiopian rulers nearly for a century & half now. At this very moment, the current EPRDF regime, which controls Ethiopia for the last 22 years, has intensified the killing, detaining, displacing, expelling our people from every sectors of our society, from all corners of our country for no tangible reasons, but simply due to politics of fear and an excuse for extension of its ruling terms under various pretext.
Dear Mr. President,
In history, our people have never had such tactical gross abhorrent human rights violations of the highest order in any past Ethiopian successive governments that parallel to the current EPRDF tyrannical regime in part due to the shielding effect of present day Geopolitical dynamics.
Time and again, many peasants, students, skilled professionals, journalists, Artists, prominent nationalists, even Government ministers, and local and International activists have tried to demonstrate, petition and stage worldwide rallies to the Whitehouse and other Government and NGO institutions in various occasions in several countries to demand on Ethiopian Govt. to stop atrocities, but no concrete response was achieved yet.
There is no particular crime that our people have committed to suffer from such purposefully calculated heinous crimes by the ruling party against innocent civilians. Despite out loud preaches of Modern Democracy all over the world, our people are still well silenced and voiceless under gunpoint not to demand or petition their Govt. and no words from independent major world media outlets to expose these crimes and brutalities committed by this regime.Our people have been denied the right to collect and rest the bodies of their family members, relatives or friends who are victims of the Ethiopian Govt. The very recent cases in point among many others, are the refusal by the Govt. of the bodies of victims of Kofale Massacre & that of Engineer Tesfahun Chemeda, who was subjected to refoulement from Kenya to Ethiopia in few years back and killed this August 2013 in the notorious Kaliti Prison. Instead of allowing the family burry their son, the Govt. agents took his sister to jail accusing her of publicising Engineer Chemeda’s news of death at their hands.
Dear Obama,
We hereby so kindly seeking your urgent support in voicing our strongest objection & hold the Ethiopian ruling EPRDF accountable for all its inhuman actions and atrocities being committed under various excuses and urge this regime to respect the rule of law, human rights & Democracy in Ethiopia. There will be no time that our people seek urgent help from USG and International communities than right now! Enough is better than over, justice, peace and democracy for the Oromo & other nationalities in the Horn of Africa shall prevail.
Therefore; we, the undersigned individuals, would like to request your highest Office and all whom this may concern to influence the Ethiopian Govt. to respect the basic human & constitutional rights, stop genocide on peaceful people & obey rule of law to eventually transition itself from absolute Dictatorship to Democratic form of Government.
Thanks for your precious Mr. President,
Thanks everyone for taking your time to sign, share (on social media) & forwarding to friends.
Sincerely,
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/202/786/158/stop-atrocities-in-ethiopia/?taf_id=9925175&cid=fb_na
The HRLHA Statement
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa strongly condemns the atrocious torture and inhuman treatment by the Ethiopian government against its citizens and hold it accountable for the death of a political prisoner and prisoner of conscience Engineer Tesfahun Chemeda on August 24, 2013 in Kaliti prison.
HRLHA informants confirmed that Engineer Chemed died in Kaliti Penitentiary due to the severe torture inflicted on him while he was in different detentions centers from 2007 until the day he died. We also protest the fact that he was denied medical treatment by the government.
Engineer Tesfahun Chemeda, an Oromo national, was handed over by Kenyan authorities to Ethiopian Security agents in April 2007 from where he had granted a refugee status from UNHCR in Kenya after he had fled to Kenya to escape persecution by the EPRDF government of Ethiopia.
Engineer Tasfahun Chemeda was one of the 15 Oromo nationals who was sentenced to life in prison in 2010 by the Ethiopian court http://humanrightsleague.com/2010/07/a-call-for-the-reversal-of-the-racial-politically-motivated-and-discriminatory-sentence-by-a-court-in-ethiopia/ for his activism and political beliefs that were different from the ruling EPRDF government of Ethiopia.The Ethiopian Government is accountable for Torturing Mr. Chemeda in prison, thereby violating the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, an agreement which Ethiopia signed and ratified in 1994 For denying Engineer Tesfahun medical treatment, violating the rights of prisoners which are clearly stated in international law and International covenants on civil and political rights article 10(1) “. All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person”. and Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Rights of Persons Held in Custody and Convicted Prisoners article 21 (1) “All persons held in custody and persons imprisoned upon conviction and sentencing have the right to treatments respecting their human dignity”.
By handing over the Oromo refugees and others, the Kenyan Government is also breaching its obligations under international treaties as well as customary laws.
Under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1465 U.N.T.S. 185,) the Kenyan Government has the obligation not to return a person to a place where they will face torture or ill-treatment.
Article 3 of the Convention against Torture provides: No state party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds to believe that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa calls upon the Ethiopian authorities to immediately carry out an independent investigation into Engineer Tesfahun’s death, including whether torture played a part in his death, and disclose to the public anyone found responsible and bring that person to justice. The HRLHA also calls upon the Western political allies of the TPLF/EPRDF Government of Ethiopia to exert pressures so that it is forced to turn around and start working on the genuine democratization of the country, halting the systematic elimination of citizens who demand basic rights and fundamental freedoms,
Finally we extend our condolences to Tesfahun’s family and friends in their time of grief as well as all Ethiopians who have been falsely accused, illegally detained or wrongly killed at the hands of a brutal and hypocritical regime. Engineer Tesfahun is just one of thousands of victims of the EPRDF government’s campaign of violence, repression and efforts to curtail basic freedoms and fundamental rights of Ethiopians at all costs.
http://ayyaantuu.com/horn-of-africa-news/ethiopia/ethiopia-the-government-is-accountable-for-the-death-of-a-political-prisoner-at-an-ethiopian-jail/
The following is an open letter of the Oromia Support Group in Australia (OSGA) to Hon. Kevin Rudd, Australian PM, on the death in Ethiopian custody of Engineer Tesfahun Chemeda, after refoulement from Kenya.
——————-
Oromia Support Group in Australia
P.O. Box 38
Noble Park, 3174, Vic
E-mail: info@osgaustralia.com
Date: August 26th 2013
Open letter
Death in Ethiopian custody of Engineer Tesfahun Chemeda, after refoulement from Kenya
To: Honourable Kevin Rudd,
Australian Prime Minister
It is with sadness and anger that Oromia Support Australia Inc. OSGA reports the death of a young Oromo in Kaliti prison, Ethiopia, on 24 August, 2013. Tesfahun Chemeda was a student activist in Ethiopia and a political asylum seeker among refugees in Kenya, where he was granted refugee status by UNHCR. He was arrested with a colleague, Mesfin Abebe, by Kenyan ‘anti-terrorist police’ on 2 April 2007.
Although cleared by the anti-terrorist unit and by the FBI, the men were subject to refoulement to Ethiopia at the request of the Ethiopian authorities. UNHCR, the Refugee Consortium of Kenya and the Kenyan Human Rights Commission were told in court, after their application for habeas corpus that the men had been returned to Ethiopia, whereas they remained in custody in Kenya for at least two more days after the court hearing.
Tesfahun and Mesfin disappeared in detention in Ethiopia until charged with terrorist offences in December 2008. They were sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2010. [1] (Mesfin’s death sentence was later commuted.)
Tesfahun was transferred from Zeway prison to Kaliti, where he had been held in solitary confinement for nearly two years before he was killed. [2]
This is not the first time young Oromo men and women have been killed in detention. For example, Alemayehu Garba, partially paralysed with polio, was shot dead with 18 others in Kaliti prison in November 2005. [3]
Refoulement of UNHCR-recognised refugees from Sudan, Djibouti and Somaliland continues. [4]
How long must we wait for Australian Government and other western governments to stop maintaining the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in power? Over one third of Ethiopia’s budget is in foreign aid. Ethiopia receives more aid from the Australia than any other country in the Africa.
It is a shocking state of affairs and an appalling way to spend Australian taxpayers’ money. Oromia Support Group in Australia Inc. tired of hearing from officials that they take every opportunity to engage with representatives of the Ethiopian government at the highest level to express their serious concerns about human rights abuses and lack of democratic progress in Ethiopia.
We have been hearing this for years. When are we going to see an effective response by those who control Ethiopia’s purse strings?
If Australia is so committed to providing aid to Ethiopia, than at least we should insist on it being contingent on real, measurable benchmarks of human rights and democratisation and not the desk-based studies of government-controlled data which support the status quo in Ethiopia.
This should be backed by effective sanctions so that members of the Ethiopian government are prevented from travelling to Australia and other western countries and investing in property and businesses outside of Ethiopia.
Unless meaningful sanctions are applied, growing disaffection with the west, previously noted by former US Ambassador Yamamoto, is likely to mature further. Under the oppression of the Ethiopian regime, opposition voices are becoming more likely to find expression in the very movements which the support of Ethiopia, because of its cooperation in the ‘war on terror’, is meant to avoid.
The authoritarian regime in Ethiopia is a major cause of instability affecting the whole of the Horn of Africa. Supporting it and investing in it is a short-sighted policy.
Yours sincerely,
Marama F. Qufi
Chairperson,Oromia Support Group in Australia Inc.
(For Dr Trevor Trueman, Chair, Oromia Support Group)
——-
[1] http://www.oromo.org/osg/Report_46.pdf, pp.43-44.
[3] http://www.oromo.org/osg/Report_43.pdf, p.22
[4] For example, Badassa Geleta was among 18 refugees returned to Ethiopia from Djibouti on 31 December 2012 and detained in Dire Dawa. He was awaiting resettlement in Canada. Riyana Abdurahman, a 23 year-old teacher, was abducted from Hargeisa on 23 Novermber 2012 and imprisoned in Jigjiga, Somali Region, Ethiopia.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Dr. Trueman’s Letter to the British Government
Mark Simmonds MP
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs (Africa)
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AH
25 August 2013
Open letter
Death in Ethiopian custody of Tesfahun Chemeda, after refoulement from Kenya
Dear Minister,
It is with sadness and anger that I report the death of a young Oromo in Kaliti prison, Ethiopia, on 24 August, yesterday. Tesfahun Chemeda was a student activist in Ethiopia and a political activist among refugees in Kenya, where he was granted refugee status by UNHCR. He was arrested with a colleague, Mesfin Abebe, by Kenyan anti-terrorist police on 2 April 2007.
Although cleared by the anti-terrorist unit and by the FBI, the men were subject to refoulement to Ethiopia at the request of the
Ethiopian authorities. UNHCR, the Refugee Consortium of Kenya and the KenyanHuman Rights Commission were told in court, after their application for habeas corpus, that the men had been returned to thiopia, whereas they remained in custody in Kenya for at least two more days after the court hearing.
Tesfahun and Mesfin disappeared in detention in Ethiopia until charged with terrorist offences in December 2008. They were sentenced to lifebimprisonment in March 2010. [1] (Mesfin’s death sentence was later
commuted.)
Tesfahun was transferred from Zeway prison to Kaliti, where he had been held in solitary confinement for nearly two years before he was killed.[2]
This is not the first time young Oromo men have been killed in detention. For example, Alemayehu Garba, partially paralysed with
polio, was shot dead with 18 others in Kaliti prison in November 2005.[3] Refoulement of UNHCR-recognised refugees from Djibouti and Somaliland continues.[4]
How long must we wait for Her Majesty’s Government and other western governments to stop maintaining the EPRDF in power? Over one third of Ethiopia’s budget is in foreign aid. Ethiopia receives more aid from the UK than any other country in the world.
It is a shocking state of affairs and an appalling way to spend UK taxpayers’ money. I am tired of hearing from Ministers and officials
that they take every opportunity to engage with representatives of the Ethiopian government at the highest level to express their serious concerns about human rights abuses and lack of democratic progress in Ethiopia.
I have been hearing this for over twenty years. When are we going to see an effective response by those who control Ethiopia’s purse strings?
If the UK is so wedded to providing aid to Ethiopia, than at least we should insist on it being contingent on real, measurable benchmarks of human rights and democratisation and not the desk-based studies of government-controlled data which support the status quo in Ethiopia.
This should be backed by effective sanctions so that members of the Ethiopian government are prevented from travelling to the UK and America and investing in property and businesses outside of Ethiopia.
Unless meaningful sanctions are applied, growing disaffection with the west, previously noted by former US Ambassador Yamamoto, is likely to mature further. Under the oppression of the Ethiopian regime, opposition voices are becoming more likely to find expression in the very movements which the support of Ethiopia, because of its cooperation in the ‘war on terror’, is meant to avoid.
The authoritarian regime in Ethiopia is a major cause of instability affecting the whole of the Horn of Africa. Supporting it and investing in it is a short-sighted policy.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Trevor Trueman, Chair, Oromia Support Group.
1 http://www.oromo.org/osg/Report_46.pdf, pp.43-44.
2 http://www.opride.com/oromsis/news/horn-of-africa/3701-oromo-activist-tesfahun-chemeda-dies-in-prison-while-serving-life-sentence
3 http://www.oromo.org/osg/Report_43.pdf, p.22
4 For example, Badassa Geleta was among 18 refugees returned to Ethiopia from Djibouti on 31 December 2012 and detained in Dire Dawa. He was awaiting resettlement in Canada. Riyana Abdurahman, a 23 year-old teacher, was abducted from Hargeisa on 23 Novermber 2012 and imprisoned in Jigjiga, Somali Region, Ethiopia. Tesfahun-chemeda-dies-in-prison-while-serving-life-sentence
[3] http://www.oromo.org/osg/Report_43.pdf, p.22
[4] For example, Badassa Geleta was among 18 refugees returned to Ethiopia from Djibouti on 31 December 2012 and detained i Dire Dawa. He was awaiting resettlement in Canada. Riyana Abdurahman, a 23 year-old teacher, was abducted from Somali Land. http://qeerroo.org/2013/08/26/death-in-ethiopian-custody-of-tesfahun-chemeda-after-refoulement-from-kenya-open-letter-of-dr-trevor-trueman-of-osg-to-uks-parliamentary-under-secretary-of-state-for-foreign-and-co/
OLF Statement on the death of Engineer Tesfahun Chemeda and His Short Biography
Engineer Tesfahun was born in 1976 from his father Mr. Chemeda Gurmessa and his mother Mrs. Giddinesh Benya at Harbu village, Guduru district, eastern Wallaga, western Oromia. He was lucky enough to get the slim chance of going to school for his likes under the occupation. He completed his school starting at Looyaa, then Fincha’aa and at Shambo in 1996. His remarkably high scoreenabled him to join the university in Finfinne (Addis Abeba) where he graduated with BSc in Civil Engineering in 2001. Subsequently:
1. Sept. 2004–Jan 2005 – he worked as unit manager for the maintenance of Arsi-Bale road project run by Oromia Rural Road Maintenance Authority and Ethio-Italian Company.
2. Worked at Degele-Birbirsa RR50 project in Salle-Nonno District in extreme South-west of Ilu-Abba-Bore Zone
3. Worked on four simultaneous road projects for settlements; Kone-Chawwaqaa, Baddallee-Kolosirri, Gachi-Chate and Yanfa-Ballattii
4. Worked as a project manager for Chawwaqa district head office construction in Ilu-Harari.
5. Oct. 2001–July 2003 site engineer for Siree-Nunu-Arjo Rural Road of Wallaga district.
Because of the policy of persecution andsurveillance imposed on him, like any educated and entrepreneurial Oromo class as per TPLF’s standing policy, he decided to flee to Kenya for his safety. He sought protection from the UNHCR office in Nairobi explaining his position, and got accepted and recognized as a refugee. However, for unknown reasons, he and his colleague in skill and refugee life, Mesfin Abebe Abdisa, were arrested and eventually handed over to the Ethiopian authorities by the Kenyan counterpart on April 27, 2007, due to the agreement between the two countries.
Ethiopia, being a member of the Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force (JATT), formed under the auspices U.S. that includes Uganda and Kenya as well, continues to abduct Oromo refugees from the neighbouring countries where they sought UN protection, under the pretext of anti-terrorism. The two innocent victims Tesfahun and Mesfin were handed over to the Ethiopian authorities who took them handcuffed and blindfolded at 2:00AM local time on May 12, 2007, purportedly to have them investigated for terrorism at the JATT Main Investigation Branch in Finfinne (Addis Abeba).
From Apr. 27 to May 12, 2007, before handing them over, they were interrogated at the Kenyan National Bureau of Investigation near Tirm Valley by American agents and Kenyan Anti-Terror Police Unit. The Kenyan officer Mr Francis, who led the investigation, concluded the innocence of these two victims and requested the Kenyan authority to immediately let them free. However, another Kenyan CID agent Ms. Lelian, who is suspected of having close connection with the Ethiopian agents, opposed the decision and facilitated the handing over of these two innocent victims.
Once in the hands of the Ethiopian agents, they were taken to the notorious dark Central Investigation compound, known as Ma’ikelawii, where they were interrogated under severe torture for a year and a quarter.
Engineer Tesfahun was then presented before a court of magistrates of all Tigrian nationals in Jul. 2008, who passed the life sentence on him on March 31, 2010. The two were subsequently moved from the maximum security prison to an unknown destination for the pretext of planning to escape. They were taken for further torture in another underground location by a squad directly commanded by the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. It was only since last three months that they were returned to Qallitti main prison. The beating was so severe that the engineer repeatedly requested and needed medical treatment which he was of course denied and eventually succumbed to the torture impact yesterday Aug. 24, 2013. He became the latest victim of the vicious systematic genocide against the Oromo.
Regarding the fate of these two engineers, the OLF strongly believes that the way Kenyan authorities have been handing over innocent Oromo refugees to the anti-Oromo Ethiopian criminal regime is against the relevant international conventions. We strongly request the Kenyan government to desist from this practice of the last 22 years of handing over innocent Oromo victims who seek refuge in their country. The Kenyan government cannot avoid sharing the responsibility of such murders of innocent people who they hand over to the notorious regime that is well known for its anti Oromo campaign.
The OLF extends its heartfelt condolence to the family relatives and friends of Engineer Tefahun and calls on the Oromo people to double the struggle for freedom as the only way to be free of such persecutions.
Oromia Times
Godina Dhihaa Oromiyaa bakkotaa gara garaatti sabboontotni ilmaan Oromoo ajjeechaa suukkaaneessaa mootuummaan Wayyaanee EPRDF hayyuu Oromoo Injinner Tasfahun Camadaa irratti raawwatamettii gadda guddaa itti dhaga’amee, ibsachuun
Anotaa gara garaa keessatti Hagaayyaa 25/2013 irraa egaluun reeffaa gooticha Injiner Tasfahun Camadaa eegaa turan. Keessaattuu Magaalaa Amboo, Gudarii , Geedoo fi Hanga Godina Horroo Guduruu Wallaaggaa Anaa Guduruutti sabboontotni Oromoo
reeffaa gootichaa Oromoo walqindeessuun simmannaaf egaa kan turan ta’uu gabaasi Qeerroo naannicha irraa beeksisa.
Awwaalchaa gooticha Oromoo Injineer Tafahun Camadaan walqabatee mootummaan Wayyaanee humna waaraanaa bobbaasuun uummata sodaachisuuf yaaluun, reeffii isaas guyyaa uummataan simatamuuf waan eegamaa tureef mootummaan Wayyaanee ta’e jedhee halkan akka darbuu fi maatii isaan akka dhaqabu taasise.Haalli kunis bakkaa hundatti sammuu uummataa keessaatti hadhaa kana hin jedhamne fi kulkkulfannaa uumee jira.
Sirni gaggeessaa awwaalcha hayyuu fi goota Oromoo Injiiner Tasfaahuu Camadaa Hagayya 26,2014 godina dhalotaa isaa Onaa Guduruu keessaatti ganda Harbuu iddoo jedhamu itti bakkaa hiriyoonnii isaa , sabboontotni Oromoo,Qeerroowwaan,dargaggoonnii Oromoo, Baratootni Oromoo dhaabbiilee barnotaa garaagaraa irraa boqonnaaf galanii jiran bakkoota garaagaraa irraa walitti dhammaachuun sirna awwaalcha gooticha Oromoo Enjineer Tasfahuun Camadaa irraatti argamuun marartoo fi jaalala goota kanaaf qaban agarsiisuun kabajaan aduunyaa kana irraa gaggefame.
Sirna sana irrattis haala sagalee jabaan fi dhadhannoon hangana hin jedhamneen Ummaannii fi sabboontotni dargaggoonnii Oromoo dhadannoowwaan argaman gadii dhageesisan.
1.Tasfaahuun hin dunee ummataa Oromoof jedhetu wareegame,
2. Wareegama hayyuu keenyaan bilisummaan uummataa keenyaa ni mirkana’a!!
3, Qabsoo hayyuun Oromoo Tasfahuun Camadaa irraatti, wareegamee fiixaan ni baafna.
4, Wayyaaneen diinaa uummataa keenyaati!!
5, Gumaan Hayyuu Oromoo Tasfahuun Camadaa irree qeerrootiin ni baafama!!
6, Diinni goota keenyaa qabsaa’aa kuffisuus qabsoon inni egalee hin kufuu itti fufaa kan jedhuu fi Walaloo fi seenaan Hayyuu Oromoo Injiineer Tasfahuun Camadaa uummataaf dubbifamuun haala aja’inbsiisaa ta’een sirni awwaalchaa isaa rawwate.
Walumaa galattii sirna awwaalchaa enjiiner Tasfahuun Camadaa irraatti kutaalee Oromiyaa gara dhihaa fi magaalota Finfinnee Adaamaa dabalatee Uummaannii Oromoo tilmaamaan 10,000 olitti lakkaa’amani tu irraatti kan argamee fi dargaggoonnii hedduun waraanaa Wayyaaneetiin utuu achii hin ga’iin karaattii kan dhorkamuun deebifaman ta’uu odeessii nu qaqqabee jiruu ifaa godhee jira.
Kana malees, Caasaaleen Qeerroo kan Godinotaa Lixaa Shawaa, Jimmaa, Iluu Abbaa Booraa , fi Godina kibbaa lixaa Shawaa erga gootichi Oromoo hayyuun ija uummataa ta’ee kun wareegamuu dhaga’anii gaddaa guddaa isaanitti dhaga’ame ibsachaa guyyaa sirni awwaalcha isaa rawwatamee bakkuma jiranitti maadheewwan walitti dhufuun dungoo qabsiifachuun sirna awwalchaa kana hirmaachuun gadda isaanii waliif ibsuun qabsoo gootni Oromoo kun irraatti wareegamee galmaan ga’uuf waadaa isaanii haaromsan.
Sirna Awwalchaa Gooticha Oromoo Injiineer Tasfahuun Camadaa ilaalchisuun gabaasni Qeerroo Oromiyaa gara gara irraa itti fufa.
Qbasa’an Kufus Qabsoon ittii Fufa!.
VOA Afaan Oromoo News
http://www.voaafaanoromoo.com/audio/audio/319438.html
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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Ethiopia’s Governance And The Current Situation And Management of Natural Resources August 13, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Colonizing Structure, Development, Ethiopia, Governance issues, Natural resources, Oromia, Oromo, Resource Management
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“Despite the change of leadership following the death of Mr Meles last August, there are few signs of any shift away from the prevailing state-led development model. Nonetheless, it is possible that the government could be forced into a policy turnaround if it is unable to secure the financing required to support its ambitious and underfunded five-year economic plan. At present, the plan is largely financed by direct central bank financing and by forcing private banks to purchase Treasury bills (T-bills); however, this strategy is both inflationary and unsustainable.”
‘Ethiopia became a de facto one-party state following the May 2010 general election, which more or less wiped out the opposition, after years of determined progress. The ruling alliance has strengthened its grip on power through a steady erosion of political liberties, including the use of controversial anti-terrorism legislation. However, the death in August 2012 of Meles Zenawi—the long-standing prime minister, who did much to hold the ruling coalition together—has taken Ethiopia into uncharted territory. In line with the constitution, the former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, has been endorsed as prime minister following the death of Mr Meles. Nonetheless, if Mr Hailemariam fails to stamp his authority on the coalition, the risk of ethnic and religious tensions will increase. Ethiopia’s population was nearly 85m in 2011 according to World Bank estimates, making it SubSaharan Africa’s second-most populous nation after Nigeria. Its population grew by an average of 2.7% a year in 1990-2011, and is expected to reach 120m by 2025, according to projections by the UN. There are more than 80 different ethnic groups represented in the country. The population is still overwhelmingly rural, with only 17% living in towns. Economic progress—and, in turn, political stability—will be heavily dependent upon Ethiopia’s continued access to foreign aid. In this respect, the government has faced criticism for its hard-line response to any domestic opposition. Indeed, it seems likely that, for the foreseeable future, the regime will continue to protect its hegemony using restrictive legislation and periodic crackdowns by the security services. At the same time, as the largest country in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia has positioned itself as a bulwark of Western states against Islamist terrorists in the region. This factor is likely to outweigh donor concerns about possible misuse of aid. The impasse with Eritrea over the two countries’ disputed border remains a significant political risk, although a return to all-out conflict (as occurred between 1998 and 2000) is not expected in the near future; Eritrea is unlikely to initiate any hostilities, since it would almost certainly lose, while the Ethiopian authorities are aware of the damage that renewed conflict would do to relations with, and funding from, international donors. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)—an alliance of four main groups—won an overwhelming majority in parliament at the May 2010 election. Following the death of Mr Meles, the 180-member council of the EPRDF gave its unanimous—if belated—endorsement to his deputy, Mr Hailemariam. This suggests that the party wishes the latter to remain in the post, at least until the next elections, due in 2015. However, the longer-term prospects for EPRDF unity are more uncertain. Mr Hailemariam is currently attempting to rebalance the EPRDF—traditionally dominated by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).’
Ethiopia’s country profile by The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2013. To read the details on Ethiopia and other 24 African countries click the following links:
http://www.iag-agi.org/spip/The-African-Markets-Managing.html
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
The Oromo People Need Freedom and Justice:Oromians Gathered in Front of the White House to Protest Against Ethiopia’s Human Rights Violations and Land-Grabbing August 5, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Amnesty International, Developing country, Development and Change, Economic and Social Freedom, Economic growth, Ethiopia, Ethiopian Government, Gadaa System, Human rights, Human Rights and Liberties, Human rights violations, Land grabbing, Land grabs in Africa, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromo, Oromo people, Oromummaa, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, World Bank
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Journalist/Author Abdi Fite Reports for Oromo TV
VOA Afaan Oromo Reports:
Secretary of State of the United States
US Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
Oromo Political Refugees need UNHCR protection
Oromo Political refugees in Egypt who fled tyranny and subjugation in Ethiopia are facing another round of attack and human right abuse from Egyptians, who have been angry at the construction of the renaissance dam on the Nile River by Ethiopia. The UNHCR and Egyptian government couldn’t provide protection to these political refugees per the UN convention. Consequently, on July 6, 2013, one young Oromo was attacked by a knife as he and his friend were looking for dinner. His friend survived the knife attack by running away.
On May 22, 2013 nine Oromo/Ethiopian refugees were arrested in front of the UNHCR Office, Djibouti branch, where they had been for the renewal of their refugee identification cards. The families and friends of those refugees have not been able to see and/or communicate with them since they were arrested and detained. Based on related past experiences and the involvement of Ethiopian security agents in the arrest and detention of those refugees, there is a high level of fear that the government of Djibouti might deport the detained refugees back to Ethiopia exposing them to detention, torture and death. Similar human rights abuses have been reported on Oromo refugees in Yemen.
Pressure Ethiopia to Release Oromo Political Prisoners in Ethiopia
In May 2013 six Oromo civilians and artists were incarcerated by the TPLF security agents from their respective homes and work places. They are Tesfaye Lammuu, Addisu Mengistu/Karrayyu (Artist), Dasse Lamu, Birraa Margaa, Dhaba Abdulqadir, and Shasho Idosa.
On November 1, 2012, two well-respected Oromo opposition politicians, Mr. Bekele Gerba (professor) and Mr. Olbana Lelisa, along with seven other Oromo nationals, Welbeka Lemi, Adem Busa, Hawa Wako, Mohamed Melu, Dereje Ketema, Addisu Mikre and Gelgelo Gufa were convicted and later sentenced to long term imprisonment under the charge of “working underground to secede Oromia from the federal government” and other concocted charges after being kept in jail for more than a year. The two opposition leaders were arrested in August 2011 after speaking with Amnesty International officials.
Dear Honorable Secretary,
Over the past 21 years, the TPLF-led and dominated Ethiopian government, has imprisoned tens of thousands of political opposition and citizens, mainly Oromos. As the result of the government’s repressive policies, thousands of innocent citizens have been languishing in prisons and secret camps, and many have been severely tortured, deformed and/or killed. Others have been abducted and made to disappear. Hundreds have been murdered in broad day-light. Well respected human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and US State Department’s own annual reports have documented rampant arrests, unlawful killings, abductions, tortures and other human rights abuses by the Ethiopian government. These reports are consistent with our own reports and direct experiences. We are frustrated because, despite these glaring facts, Ethiopia’s allies and Western donors are reluctant to restrain the government and halt its flagrant human rights abuses. Some donors even go on record to support the government’s wrong claim that Ethiopia is “on the road to democracy.” It is troubling that despite these well documented human rights abuses, the Ethiopian government continues receiving billions of dollars of aid money every year. Using over one third of its budget from foreign aid, Ethiopia has built one of the biggest and best-equipped armies in Africa, while millions of its citizens seek food aid. In fact, the aid money is used to impose the Tigrayan dictatorship and autocratic regime on Oromos and other peoples in a multinational society.
Observing the painful agony and sufferings of the ordinary people and the political prisoners, we specifically request that you and the US government:
Use your influence and international responsibilities to force the Ethiopian Government to stop the killing of Oromo nationals, bring the violence to end and facilitate the return of the displaced Oromos back to their homes.
Use your influence and international responsibilities to force the minority regime in Ethiopia to stop the politically motivated eviction of Oromo farmers from their ancestral land and illegal selling of Oromo land immediately.
Use your enormous influence to put political, economic and diplomatic pressures upon the Ethiopian government to unconditionally release Mr. Bekele Gerba, Mr. Olbana Lelisa and thousands of Oromo political prisoners.
Influence the Ethiopian government to respect the current Ethiopian constitution and stop the regime’s extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention of innocent people without trial.
Insist on the unconditional release of all political prisoners before providing economic aid to the regime.
Demand that the regime is committed to respecting human rights of the Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia and allow freedom of expression and assembly.
Demand the repeal of all new laws that violate the fundamental freedom of citizens: particularly the so called Anti-terrorism Law, Press Law, the current law that prevents charitable organizations from freely moving in the country and the most recent law that criminalizes the usage of Skype and other media tools.
Demand that the regime respect freedom of religion and stop interfering in religious affairs.
Finally, we believe that unless international donors, mainly the US government, use their leverage and make meaningful pressure, the Ethiopian government will continue with political repression of the Oromo and other nations and nationalities. Therefore, we humbly request you to exert your energy and diplomatic skills to create conducive political environment for establishment of the rule of law in Ethiopia. We earnestly believe that as America’s top diplomat and principal voice on international issues, you have an extraordinary opportunity to alleviate the incredible human sufferings of the Oromo and other peoples in Ethiopia. We thank you for your interest in the wellbeing of the Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia.
Sincerely,
Abebe Etana
Chairman, Oromo Youth Self-help Association (OYSA)
6212 3rd Street NW, Washington, DC 20011
http://washington.gaaddisaoromo.com/
Desta Yebassa, Ph.D.
Board President, Oromo Community Organization (OCO) of Washington D.C. Metropolitan area
6212 3rd Street NW, Washington, DC 20011
http://oneoromo.org/
Mosisa Aga, Ph.D.
President, Oromo Studies Association (OSA)
P.O Box 32391, Fridley, MN 55432
http://www.oromostudies.org/
Garoma Wakessa
Director, Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA)
994 Pharmacy Avenue, M1R 2G7, Toronto, ON, Canada
http://humanrightsleague.com/
Dr. Trevor Trueman
Director, Oromia Support Group (OSG)
60 Westminster Rd, Malvern, WR14 4ES, UK
http://www.oromo.org/
CC
Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Tel: (202) 395-2020
António Guterres,
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Case Postale 2500
CH-1211 Genève 2 Dépôt
Suisse.
Tele: +41 22 739 8111
[1] ”Ethiopia: Loss of Lives and Displacement Due to Border Dispute in Eastern Ethiopia” http://humanrightsleague.com/2013/05/ethiopia-loss-of-lives-and-displacement-due-to-border-dispute-in-eastern-ethiopia/
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/10/ethiopia-forces-human-rights-funding?intcmp=239
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Language and National Development: A tribute in Honour of Haile Fida’s Contribution to the Development of Oromo Orthography August 1, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Language and Development.Tags: Afaan Oromo, African Diaspora, African Heritage, Ancient languages, Cushitic languages, Democratisation, Developing country, Development and Change, Economic and Social Freedom, France, Haile Fida, Mass killings against Oromo, National Self Determination, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo Heritage, Oromo language, Oromo people, Oromummaa
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Dr Haile Fida Kuma has made an outstanding contribution to the development of Oromo national orthography. He was one of the pioneers who attempted to shade fresh on the history of the Oromo, the right of the Oromo people to speak, read and write in Afaan Oromo. He initiated Oromo studies in Europe and has made a major contribution both to our knowledge of Afaan Oromo grammar and to the discussion on how the language should be written 1968-1974. His first research paper was published in 1972, on Tatek, theoretical Journal of Ethiopian Studies in Europe entitled ‘Languages in Ethiopia: Latin or Geez for writing Afaan Oromo.’ He further published in 1973 Oromo Grammar book entitled ‘ Hirmaata Dubbi Afaan Oromo’: Haile Fida, et al. (1973). Hirmaata Dubbi Afaan Oromo, Paris and a literature book :‘Barra Birran Barie, paris,’ using his adopted 35 Latin Qubee alphabet. The books were as a result of his long-time study of the Oromo language and problems of Oromo orthography. In this groundbreaking Afaan Oromo grammar book, he adopted the Latin alphabet to the phonology of the Oromo language by modifying some of the shapes of the letters and adding subscript diacritics. He made distinctions between short and long vowels letters by using single vowels letters (i, e, a, o,u) for the former and double (ii, aa, oo, uu) ones for the latter. He presented the finding of his research to the conference of Ethiopian Student Union in Europe in 1972 and this brought a debate on language issues within the Ethiopian and Oromo students movement abroad (see, Dr. Fayisa Demie. 1996. Historical Challenges in the Development of the Oromo language and Some Agendas for Future Research, Journal of Oromo Studies, Vol.3, no.1 &2, pp. 18-27. Oromia Quarterly. Fayisa Demie. 1999. The Father of Qubee Afaan Oromo: A tribute in Honour of Haile Fida’s Contributions to the development of Oromo Orthography, Oromia Quarterly, Vol.. II, no.3. Pp. 1-5.) His knowledge on Oromo language was so encyclopaedic and his contribution to the Oromo studies in Europe was so well known at the time and his contribution was greatly acknowledge by the Oromians who know him very closely. Oromo national Organisations have started to use Qubee Afaan Oromo from 1970s. Oromo national Convention in 1991 endorsed the use of Qubee all over Oromia. Dr. Haile was assassinated by the Dergue Ethiopian regime before seeing this remarkable achievement in the use of Qubee in Oromia which is the greatest milestone in the history of the Oromo people. Dr. Haile Fida completed his initial primary education at Arjo primary school and junior garde 7-8 at then Haile Selassie I Secondary school in Naqamtee followed with secondary education at General Wingate school in Finfinnee and undergraduate at Finfinnee University (Science Faculty, Geology Department). Haile was an outstanding student while he was in General Wingate secondary school and the university. He completed his secondary education with 10A’s and 2B’s and his Undergraduate University with distinction with GPA 4. After graduation from the Department of Geology he was employed as a graduate assistant and became a lecturer in the same department. He left to France to pursue a postgraduate studies. Haile studied MA in sociology and social anthropology and PhD in philosophy at the Le Palais De L’ Academie Paris. While he was in Europe he was an active member of the Ethiopia students Union in Europe and an Honorary secretary of the French Socialist Party. Dr. Haile was married to Mme Marie and survived with two children.
Haile belonged to a group of generation of Oromo nationalist who embarked on arduous struggle to liberate the Oromo nation from Ethiopian oppression in two different strategies . The first Oromo group were convinced the Oromo question is a colonial question and argued the solution to the Oromo question is the liberation of Oromia from Ethiopian Colonialism. Indeed to show the Oromo identity as a colonial people deprived their right to govern themselves democratically and oppressed by Amhara/ Tigrai colonial settlers, they have put forward historical evidence which support the Oromo case. The second group, in which Haile belonged, argued the Oromo question is a national and it is possible to solve the problem through the democratisation of the Ethiopian state. As part of their struggle against national oppression this group of Oromos have attempted to take forward the national question high in the agenda of the Ethiopian student movement and other Ethiopian organisations that were mushroomed since the Ethiopian revolution in 1974. The first members of this generation were born in the early 1940’s and the youngest in the early and mid 1950’s. It was a generation of Oromo activists who came together to struggle against national oppression. Most of them killed while struggling for the Oromo cause or while attempting to change Ethiopia. Indeed Haile was one of the victims who died while attempting to change the environment of national oppression in Ethiopia. He was killed by Ethiopians while struggling against national oppression and for the right of the Oromo people to speak and write in their language. His early death robs Oromia an enthusiastic, hardworking and committed Oromo professional. The inspiration he provided throughout his life continues to influence Oromo scholars and new generations in the field of Oromo studies.
http://oromodictionary.com/afaanOromoLK.php
http://www.oromian.net/OromoRogaland/Afaan/qube.htm
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Hornet/Afaan_Oromo_19777.html
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oromo.htm
http://www.ethiomedia.com/14store/2025.html
Confession documents under the notorious Derg Military Dictatorial regime interrogation of Haile Fida Kuma confessional-document-of-dr-haile-fida-kuma
http://www.ethiomedia.com/14store/haile_fida.pdf
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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The Hidden Systematic Physical and Cultural Genocide Against the Oromo People: Who Is Responsible? July 22, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure. African Heritage. The Genocide Against Oromo Nation.Tags: African Heritage, African history, Aid, Colonialism, cultural genocide, Development, Dr. Gemechu, Ethiopia, Gemechu Megerssa, Genocide, Genocide against the Oromo, Horn of Africa, Minnesota, National Self Determination, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromo, Oromo Nation, Oromo people, Oromoo, Oromummaa
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Conversation on Oromo Identity, Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure
On July 4th, Oromians gathered in Minnesota to celebrate the 50th Golden Jubilee of artist Ali Birra. As a lifelong friend and compatriot, Dr. Gemechu Megerssa was in the U.S. to be a part of this celebration. He was also the keynote speaker. Prior to the celebration, Oromians and caught up with Dr. Gemechu and engaged him in a conversation about his work and life. He generously shared with them the wealth of knowledge he has gained as an Anthropologist over the last 40 years. Dr. Gemechu discusses effects of State sponsored violence on indigenous Oromo nation, their cultural heritage, legacy of systematized Abyssinian supremacy, and the historical portrayal of the Oromo in the Ethiopian State. http://www.gulelepost.com/2013/07/19/the-year-of-discovery-and-self-recovery/
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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We Appreciate Al Jazeera for Airing Oromo’s Persecution in Ethiopia July 7, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Al Jazeera, Economic and Social Freedom, Genocide, Genocide against the Oromo, Human rights, Human rights violations, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromo, Oromo people, United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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Petitioning Al Jazeera The Stream/English http://stream.aljazeera.com/
Al Jazeera The Stream/English: We Appreciate Al Jazeera for Airing Oromo’s Persecution in Ethiopia
Dawaa Oromoo
Oromo, a single largest [over 40 million population] ethnic group in Ethiopia, is under repression of successive Ethiopian regimes for more than a century. Generally speaking, Ethiopia is a prison of Oromo people. Over the last 130 years, in Ethiopia, the power is under two minority ethnic groups [namely, the Amhara and Tigre]. The Oromo and other southern nations (Ogaden, Gambela, Afar, Sidama, etc) repressed by the northern, better known as Abyssinian [Amhara and Tigre] regimes. The Oromo people are uniquely targeted by consecutive Ethiopian regimes because of its resources, geographic strategy, and fear from its majority in number.
Oromos are languishing countless human right abuses and yet untold stories of persecution. As human right activists, we are advocating for the God’s given right to human being and its dignity as the United Nations identified in its The Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,”
We are witnessing the fate of Oromo under the successive Ethiopian regimes since it becomes our crucial concern. True media like Al Jazeera should be appreciated to show the countless untold stories committed against Oromo people. In Ethiopia, there are more than 25,000 political prisoners, of which 90% are Oromo prisoners.
According to Oromo Support Group (OSG), a non-political organization which attempts to raise awareness of human rights abuses in Ethiopia, as of May 2012, it has reported 4,407 extra-judicial killings and 992 disappearances of civilians suspected of supporting groups opposing the government where most of these are Oromo.
The current regime has sold out more than 3 million hectares of fertile land to the foreigner investors after forcedly displacing Oromo farmers from their ancestral land. These grabbing of land ended the indigenous people without shelter and foods. This displacement of the Oromo people accompanied by limitless human right violations set the Oromo to be the vast number of immigrants in the horn of Africa.
Currently, there are situations that engaged in genocidal cleansing in East Hararge zone of Oromia by the armed forces of the Ethiopian regime. In Central Oromia, thousands of people and their livestock died due to the industrial pollution directly released to rivers and lakes. Forests including a UNESCO’s registered and privileged as diversity of living habitat located in Ilu Aba Bora zone of Oromia are dismantled by the TPLF’s company (EFFERT).
Successive Ethiopian regimes developed lofty discriminations that mainly targeted Oromo people. This trend apparently observed among, both the past and current, Ethiopian regimes and affiliates. Since the current regime is reassuring the subjugation, marginalization and repression policy of the old regime, both systems are incorporate and consent among each other on the Oromo cause.
We very appreciated your recently casted story “Oromo Seek Justice in Ethiopia” on June 25th, 2013.
There are countless human right abuses completed against Oromo. We urge all media like Al Jazeera to dig out and show to the world. We believe Al Jazeera Stream will continue to be the voice of voice less people. We thank all the Al Jazeera teams.
Please, click here to sign the petition:
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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Justice for the people of Oromia: Why is the largest ethnic group (the Oromo) in Ethiopia also one of the most persecuted? June 26, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Oromo the Largest Nation of Africa. Human Rights violations and Genocide against the Oromo people in Ethiopia.Tags: Africa, Al stream, Ancient Africa, Causes of poverty, Collective rights, Democracy, Development, Egypt, Ethiopia, Group rights, Human rights, Injustice, Melbourne, National Self Determination, Oromia, Oromia map, Oromia Region, Oromo Liberation Front, Oromo people, Politics of Ethiopia, Poor governance, Social justice, United Nations, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
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http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201306250132-0022854
http://www.gadaa.com/aboutOromo.html#.UM5ExOw5PV0.facebook
http://www.gadaa.com/OpeningSpeechHRLHA2013.pdf
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- Facts about Oromia (oromocommunityromsdal.wordpress.com)
- Oromia: Untwist the Twisted History (oromoland.wordpress.com)
- The Wonderful Cushitic Oromia: Naming is Identifying (freedomfororomo.wordpress.com)
- Facts about Oromia (oromocommunityromsdal.wordpress.com)
- Oromia: Untwist the Twisted History (oromoland.wordpress.com)
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
Helping Africans or Grabbing Their Resources in 21st Century: Just Like 1884 and After June 12, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Berlin Conference, Committee on World Food Security, Ivory Coast, Land grabbing, Mozambique, Oromia
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‘That African farming needs investment and support is indisputable. But does it need land grabbing? Yes, according to the deals these countries have signed. Mozambique, where local farmers have already been evicted from large tracts of land, is now obliged to write new laws promoting what its agreement calls “partnerships” of this kind. Ivory Coast must “facilitate access to land for smallholder farmers and private enterprises” – in practice evicting smallholder farmers for the benefit of private enterprises. Already French, Algerian, Swiss and Singaporean companies have lined up deals across 600,000 hectares or more of this country’s prime arable land. These deals, according to the development group Grain, “will displace tens of thousands of peasant rice farmers and destroy the livelihoods of thousands of small traders”. Ethiopia, where land grabbing has been accompanied by appalling human rights abuses, must assist “agriculture investors (domestic and foreign; small, medium and larger enterprises) to … secure access to land”. ‘
“One of the stated purposes of the Conference of Berlin in 1884 was to save Africans from the slave trade. To discharge this grave responsibility, Europe’s powers discovered, to their undoubted distress, that they would have to extend their control and ownership of large parts of Africa. In doing so, they accidentally encountered the vast riches of that continent, which had not in any way figured in their calculations, and found themselves in astonished possession of land, gold, diamonds and ivory. They also discovered that they were able to enlist the labour of a large number of Africans, who, for humanitarian reasons, were best treated as slaves. One of the stated purposes of the G8 conference, hosted by David Cameron next week, is to save the people of Africa from starvation. To discharge this grave responsibility, the global powers have discovered, to their undoubted distress, that their corporations must extend their control and ownership of large parts of Africa. As a result, they will find themselves in astonished possession of Africa’s land, seed and markets. David Cameron’s purpose at the G8, as he put it last month, is to advance “the good of people around the world”. Or, as Rudyard Kipling expressed it during the previous scramble for Africa: “To seek another’s profit, / And work another’s gain … / Fill full the mouth of Famine / And bid the sickness cease”. Who could doubt that the best means of doing this is to cajole African countries into a new set of agreements that allow foreign companies to grab their land, patent their seeds and monopolise their food markets? The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which bears only a passing relationship to the agreements arising from the Conference of Berlin, will, according to the US agency promoting it, “lift 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years through inclusive and sustained agricultural growth”. This “inclusive and sustained agricultural growth” will no longer be in the hands of the people who are meant to be lifted out of poverty. How you can have one without the other is a mystery that has yet to be decoded. But I’m sure the alliance’s corporate partners – Monsanto, Cargill, Dupont, Syngenta, Nestlé, Unilever, Itochu, Yara International and others – could produce some interesting explanations. The alliance offers African countries public and private money (the UK has pledged £395m of foreign aid) if they strike agreements with G8 countries and the private sector (in many cases multinational companies). Six countries have signed up so far. That African farming needs investment and support is indisputable. But does it need land grabbing? Yes, according to the deals these countries have signed. Mozambique, where local farmers have already been evicted from large tracts of land, is now obliged to write new laws promoting what its agreement calls “partnerships” of this kind. Ivory Coast must “facilitate access to land for smallholder farmers and private enterprises” – in practice evicting smallholder farmers for the benefit of private enterprises. Already French, Algerian, Swiss and Singaporean companies have lined up deals across 600,000 hectares or more of this country’s prime arable land. These deals, according to the development group Grain, “will displace tens of thousands of peasant rice farmers and destroy the livelihoods of thousands of small traders”. Ethiopia, where land grabbing has been accompanied by appalling human rights abuses, must assist “agriculture investors (domestic and foreign; small, medium and larger enterprises) to … secure access to land”. And how about seed grabbing? Yes, that too is essential to the wellbeing of Africa’s people. Mozambique is now obliged to “systematically cease distribution of free and unimproved seeds”, while drawing up new laws granting intellectual property rights in seeds that will “promote private sector investment”. Similar regulations must also be approved in Ghana, Tanzania and Ivory Coast. The countries that have joined the New Alliance will have to remove any market barriers that favour their own farmers. Where farmers comprise between 50% and 90% of the population, and where their livelihoods are dependent on the non-cash economy, these policies – which make perfect sense in the air-conditioned lecture rooms of the Chicago Business School – can be lethal. Strangely missing from New Alliance agreements is any commitment on the part of G8 nations to change their own domestic policies. These could have included farm subsidies in Europe and the US, which undermine the markets for African produce; or biofuel quotas, which promote world hunger by turning food into fuel. Any constraints on the behaviour of corporate investors in Africa (such as the Committee on World Food Security’s guidelines on land tenure) remain voluntary, while the constraints on host nations become compulsory. As in 1884, powerful nations make the rules and weak ones ones abide by them: for their own good, of course. The west, as usual, is able to find leaders in Africa who have more in common with the global elite than with their own people. In some of the countries that have joined the New Alliance, there were wide-ranging consultations on land and farming, whose results have been now ignored in the agreements with the G8. The deals between African governments and private companies were facilitated by the World Economic Forum, and took place behind closed doors. But that’s what you have to do when you’re dealing with “new-caught, sullen peoples, / Half devil and half child”, who perversely try to hang on to their own land, their own seeds and their own markets. Even though David Cameron, Barack Obama and the other G8 leaders know it isn’t good for them.’george Monbiot.” A fully version of this text can be found at:
Monbiot.com and http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/10/african-hunger-help-g8-grab?CMP=twt_gu
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/u-s-malaysia-lead-worldwide-land-grabs/
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Government Corruption, the Exploitation of Indigenous People and Environmental Disasters: The Case of Yayo Oromia Deforestation May 2, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Horn of Africa, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromo people, UNESCO, Yayu
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While the devastating effects of Abyssinian Ethiopian past and the present TPLF governmental corruption have certainly been not limited to the people of Oromia, as they making the most resourceful land and the largest society,they have been among the most intensely affected and cruely divastated. The government corruption has been manifested not just by the conquest, militarism and the assertion of power over the people of Oromia, but actions that are dishonest in the context of legal system, under its own rules or under international law.This corruption is characterized by illegal exploitation of land, natural resources, labor of the people, land grabbing, evictions and mass killings of the Oromo people. This happens either directly by the brutal actions of the government army, governmental officials or by these officials’ tacit acceptance of such actions by its private agents. The case now in point is the on going destruction of Yayo Arabica coffee forest in the name of development. Research studies indicate that the forest ecosystem of Yayo Oromia is endowed with a variety of plant species. The most common are Hambabessa (Albizia gummifera) Waddessa (Cordia africana), Qararoo (Aningeria adolfi friedertel), Hogda (Ficus varta), Sondi (acacia lahai), and Alale (Albizia grand ibracteata). Hence, the vegetation diversity of Yayo forest is very important for the genetic conservation of Coffea arabica and rare plant species.Apart from Coffea arabica, the Yayo forest is a habitat for different species of animals among which arboreal and species of bird are the most dominant. Anubus baboon (Jaldessaa), colobus monkey (weenni), vervet monkey (qamalee), porcupine (xaddee), fox (waango), hyena (waraabessa), bush buck (bosonuu), duiker (quruphee), birazas monkey (chena’a), several cats (Iyyanii), ant-eater (awaal diigessa, leopard (qeeransa) and bat (simbiro halkanii), are also among the wild animals living in the Yayo forest. Very small numbers of big wild animals such as lion (leenca), buffalo (gafarsa), bush pig (booyyee), and warthog (karkarro) also exist in Gabba-Dogi forest. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2010/2160/2160.pdf
“Yayo Coffee Forest Biosphere Reserve, which is found in the Iluu Abbaa Booraa region in Oromia. The Yayu forest is one of the last remaining rainforest systems in Oromia in particular, and the Horn of Africa in general. The Yayu forest is the center of the origin for the most popular coffee in the world, coffee arabica, which has been growing wildly in the Yayu and adjacent forests for centuries. Due to its ecological signification, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) selected the Yayu forest system as one of its 610 biosphere reserves in the world inJune 2010 together with the Kafa forest system, which is located adjacent to Yayu, and from which the name “coffee” is said to have come from.Today in Yayu, instead of conservation and sustainable development activities, what have dotted the landscapes of this UNESCO-registered forest system are bulldozers to make way for a “fertilizer” factory in the middle of the ecological reserve. The regime of TPLF, which has been militarily occupying Oromia since 1991, says it is building the factory in Yayu since the area has some reserves of coal, from which the fertilizer is to be manufactured. Over the last 21 years, TPLF (the neo-Neftegna group in power) has used “development” and “investment” as reasons for grabbing land in Oromia. In this propaganda video made by TPLF, it boasts of grabbing farmland from Oromo farmers and bulldozing inside the UNESCO-registered biosphere reserve to “construct,” what it calls, a fertilizer factory, which will result in severe environmental consequences to one of the last remaining montane rainforests in Oromia and the Horn of Africa.”http://gadaa.com/oduu/19534/2013/04/24/deforestation-and-land-grabbing-by-the-neo-neftegna-tplf-in-the-unesco-registered-yayu-coffee-forest-biosphere-reserve-illuu-abbaa-booraa-western-oromia/
http://qeerroo.org/2013/05/03/development-and-investment-as-reason-for-land-grabbing/
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The economic Case for National Independence: Catalonia, Flemish, Scotland and Oromia April 25, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Catalan, Catalonia, Convergence and Union, Genocide against the Oromo, Horn of Africa, Madrid, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo people, Spain
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“Conventional wisdom holds that nationalism and separatism are characterized by close-knit bonds and intense allegiance to a common history, lineage, land, and language. This is largely correct, but the current situation in Spain and Belgium paints a slightly different picture. In more prosperous and federal regions, financial concerns, intensified by economic gloom apportioned unevenly, can reinforce nationalist and separatist sentiment. Relative prosperity empowers an already divergent people who wish to garner greater control of their economic destiny. Economic separatism may be the wave of the future in a more developed and globalized.”
As Catalonia or else where the Oromians make the historical, territorial,social and economic cases for their national independence. Oromia is located mainly within Ethiopia and covers an area of about 232,000 square miles (600,000 square kilometers). The 3.5 million-year-old fossilized human skeleton known as “Lucy” (or “Chaltu” in Oromo) was found by archaeologists in Oromia. Present-day Oromos also live in Kenya and Somalia. In the late nineteenth century, Oromos were colonized and mainly by Abyssinian Ethiopia. They lost their independent institutional and cultural development. Oromia has been considered the richest region of the Horn of Africa because of its agricultural and natural resources. It is considered by many to be the “breadbasket” of the Horn of Africa. Farm products, including barley, wheat, sorghum, xafi (a grain), maize, coffee, oil seeds, chat (a stimulant leaf), oranges, and cattle are raised in abundance in Oromia. Oromia is also rich in gold, silver, platinum, marble, uranium, nickel, natural gas, and other mineral resources. It has several large and small rivers used for agriculture and for producing hydroelectric power. Since colonization the Oromian economy has been structured towards serving the interests of the highly exploitative and economically poor Abyssinian colonizers. Oromo’s human rights and civil rights have been violated by one Ethiopian government after another. Oromos do not have control over their lives, lands, other properties, or country. They do not have a voice in the government, and they are not allowed to support independent Oromo political organizations. Oromos have been threatened, murdered, or imprisoned for voicing against economic exploitation and social marginalization. Oromos are not treated according to the rule of law. Today thousands of Oromos are kept in secret concentration camps and jails or being killed just for being Oromo. Their bodies are thrown into the streets to terrorize the rests of Oromo people and to prevent them from supporting the Oromo national movement. Human rights organizations such as Africa Watch, the Oromia Support Group, and Amnesty International have produced evidences upon evidences on human rights violations against the Oromians. The Oromians are voicing: Oromia shall be free! (Oromiyaan ni bilisoomti!). That is the demand for national economic, political and social independence.
‘Catalonia, with an economy the size of Portugal, could be on the brink of breaking away from one of the oldest states in the world. How did it come to this? Home to over seven million inhabitants in a region hugging the northeastern Mediterranean coast, Catalonia has long claimed a language, culture, and history different from Spain. During the Franco years, the Catalan language and even the national dance, the “sardana,” were banned. Since Franco’s death in 1975, and the ensuing democratic transition, Catalonia has received limited self-rule in Spain’s federal system, particularly in areas such as education, health, and policing. The region, up to now, has mainly focused not on outright independence, but on greater autonomy within the framework of the Spanish state. In 1979, almost ninety percent of Catalans approved the original Statute of Autonomy, which granted more powers of self-government but kept Catalonia as a regional entity within the newly democratic Spain. Separatist attitudes for a while polled relatively low, and the primary political party extolling independence, the Republican Left of Catalunya (ERC), has not been a major political force. But this dynamic is changing and rapidly. Pro-independence sentiment is on the ascent. Recent celebrations of Catalan National Day, “La Diada” – unusual in that it commemorates a defeat, in 1714 in the War of Spanish Succession – brought over a million protestors to the streets of Barcelona, the Catalan capital, in a noisy bid for greater autonomy from Madrid. La Vanguardia, an influential Catalan newspaper, published a poll in September of this year that put the independence sentiment at over fifty-four percent, a significant increase from thirty-five percent in 2009. Catalan President Artur Mas seems to be following the people’s lead, if belatedly, by joining the pro-independence bandwagon. Hailing from the mainstream center-right Convergence and Union Party (CiU), an erstwhile supporter of increased autonomy within Spain, Mas has called snap elections for November 25. This election, which many view as a de facto referendum on independence, could then be followed by an actual vote on secession from Spain in 2014. This quest for self-rule would, however, be difficult. The Spanish constitution would need to be amended and the measure would need nationwide approval from all Spaniards, not just those in Catalonia. But if Catalans do indeed vote for and unilaterally declare independence, Madrid would be under severe pressure to at least listen to their demands for fiscal autonomy. The regions of Navarra and the Basque Country already enjoy this right – although not full independence. Under the Spanish federal system – known as “café para todos” (coffee for everyone) – the country is organized into seventeen “autonomous communities,” with each sharing powers with Madrid. This serves partially as a wealth redistribution process, by which more affluent regions send a portion of their revenues, via Madrid, to poorer regions. Catalonia, whose economic success since industrialization in the 19th century has made it one of the wealthiest regions in Spain, currently accounting for roughly a fifth of Spanish GDP, increasingly views this arrangement as unfair. The recent economic turmoil has exacerbated the feeling of being unfairly gouged by Madrid. With rising unemployment and shrinking output, Catalans have called for more funds to help service their own needs. On a net basis, the region currently sends approximately eighteen billion euros, nine percent of Catalan GDP, a year more to Madrid than it receives back in investment. Moreover, Catalonia now maintains the biggest regional debt in Spain, approximately forty-two billion euros, and recently had to go hat in hand to Madrid to request five billion euros in emergency assistance from an eighteen billion euro liquidity fund launched by the government in June to help finance regional debt. The Catalan region is shut out of financial markets because of the overall Spanish fiscal situation and must repay nearly six billion of bond maturities this year. Accordingly, it is no surprise that many Catalans view greater fiscal control as a means to plug the deficit and help alleviate the economic shortfalls. Independence has been transformed into an economic issue, with proponents arguing that such a step would free Catalonia from the burden of aiding the rest of Spain and allow Catalan wealth to remain in Catalonia. President Mas recently voiced this grievance, declaring, “Spain is a backpack that is too heavy for us to keep carrying. It’s costing us our development.” Spain is not the only country in Europe facing a separatist backlash nurtured by economics. Belgium, famous for its communitarian and federalist structures, is also falling victim to this phenomenon. Split between Francophone Wallonia in the south, and Dutch-speaking Flanders to the north, the country faces the prospect of dissolution along economic lines. Walloons were the wealthier Belgians in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, profiting from industrialization. But now the situation is reversed. Flanders, on the back of a burgeoning services sector, is now more economically viable. A University of Leuven study notes that Flanders hands over roughly sixteen billion euros a year to Wallonia. And the Flemish, especially with the current economic turmoil in Belgium and across Europe, are growing more resentful of subsidizing their less affluent neighbors. Local elections in early October confirm the resentment, with the separatist Flemish party, New Flemish Alliance (NVA), sweeping the region. NVA won twenty out of thirty-five districts and its leader, Bart De Wever, was elected mayor of Antwerp, the de-facto capital of Flanders and a commercial hub. De Wever, just prior to his electoral victory, echoed the widely felt condemnation of fiscal transfers to Wallonia, proclaiming, “The Flemish have had enough of being treated like cows only good for their milk.” In the nearby United Kingdom, regional independence for Scotland is a major issue. The dynamic, however, is slightly different from that of Catalonia and Flanders. Unlike in Spain and Belgium, the British Government has already sanctioned a referendum on Scottish independence due to take place in 2014. Moreover, many see Scotland as more dependent on U.K. resources, rather than the other way around, as Glasgow is not the economic engine that is Barcelona and Antwerp. A recent Ipsos MORI poll indicates a drop in Scottish support for independence from thirty-nine percent in January to thirty percent now. One might conclude that independence sentiment would be higher if Scotland was richer than the rest of the U.K. and economics was more of a factor. This larger phenomenon of economic separatism can also be seen in the context of the European Union. In federalist systems, like Spain, Belgium and the EU, different provincial entities share power with a central authority, which transfers wealth among the various parties. Unity in diversity is dependent on economic reallocation of funds from richer to poorer regions to help develop the entire economy. EU Structural and Regional Funds are based on this premise. They inject capital from richer member states into lesser developed, usually new members. Ironically, Spain is often hailed as one of this program’s greatest success stories, as investments from Brussels turned the country’s economic fortunes around to the point that now Spain is a net contributor to the EU budget. Eurozone financial assistance is also based on the same thinking. But just as in Spain and Belgium, there is a backlash against fiscal transfers within the EU and Eurozone framework. Many Germans resent having to use German tax payer money to bail out fellow Eurozone members such as Greece, a country seen as economically irresponsible. Conventional wisdom holds that nationalism and separatism are characterized by close-knit bonds and intense allegiance to a common history, lineage, land, and language. This is largely correct, but the current situation in Spain and Belgium paints a slightly different picture. In more prosperous and federal regions, financial concerns, intensified by economic gloom apportioned unevenly, can reinforce nationalist and separatist sentiment. Relative prosperity empowers an already divergent people who wish to garner greater control of their economic destiny. Economic separatism may be the wave of the future in a more developed and globalized world.’ http://www.fairobserver.com/article/catalonia-and-rise-economic-separatism-europe
http://www.gadaa.com/theland.html
http://www.oromostudies.org/OSA_Apeal_letter_on_landgrab_2013final.pdf
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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Who Owns Africa? The Accelerating Large Scale Land Grabs Across the Continent April 16, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Cameroon, Central Africa, Forest Trends, Land grabbing, Non-governmental organization, Oromia, Oromia Region, World Bank
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Satellite image of Africa, showing the ecological break that defines the sub-Saharan area (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eK2eKJGmaM&feature=youtu.be
‘Large-scale land acquisitions by foreign governments and investors – a phenomenon termed “land-grabbing” by activists – peaked following the 2008 global food price spikes. Governments and venture capitalists from the Gulf States, Asian tiger economies, EU and US rushed to acquire large terrains in developing countries to grow and secure food supplies for their populations and biofuels for expanding markets. But the practice has been increasing for at least a decade. The Land Matrix Partnership estimates that 227 million hectares of land have been ‘grabbed’ worldwide since 2001. And according to the World Bank, 70% of the current demand for forest and arable land is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, with its vast parcels of “cheap” and “unoccupied” terrains. Liberia, for example, has reportedly sold off three-tenths of its territory in five years. “Once seen as marginal, this issue has emerged as one of the development priorities of our different governments”, Cameroon’s Forestry and Wildlife Minister, Philip Ngole Ngwese tells Think Africa Press. Indeed, across West and Central Africa, an escalating number of poverty-stricken men, women and children in rural areas are being chased off ancestral lands they have relied on for generations for farming, grazing and hunting. They are increasingly squatters and low-paid labourers for the incoming foreign investors and local elites. “When the government takes this land and gives it out in a lease for 40, 50 or up to 99 years, the people often lose access to these commons resources”, Michael Richards, Natural Resources Economist with the UK-based Forest Trends, notes. “In some cases, they do allow access for the extraction of certain products. But in other cases, they put great fences which stop communities having access.” Land grabbers also usually obtain unlimited rights to water use, Richards adds, implying curtailed availability for downstream users. Other experts warn of looming threats of hunger, stalled investments and political instability should the land deals continue to be shrouded in secrecy and corruption, lack of accountability and transparency, or negotiated without the informed consent of local communities.On the other side of the argument, advocates of the large-scale land transactions claim they have the potential to improve local infrastructure and services, boost governmental tax revenues, create jobs, and enhance food and energy security. According to them, activists have been exaggerating the negative outcomes of large-scale deals and, by dominating coverage of stories around large-scale land deals, have given a false impression. “There could be a reporting bias in that many of these reports are put together by advocacy groups who want to show the negative effects”, says Richards. However, even if this is the case, it does not explain away instances of human rights violations and the mass displacement of local communities and indigenous peoples. One group at the forefront of a worldwide campaign to reverse recent land grab trends is Rights and Resources Initiative. The organisation has been pressing for government forest land policy reforms that recognise and restore land ownership rights of local communities. RRI warns the tenure crisis is worst in Africa, where only 0.4% of forest land is formally owned by local people, as opposed to around 24% in Asia and Latin America. In 2009, the group summoned stakeholders from across the globe to rethink and propose better tenure rights governance for West and Central Africa at a conclave in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé. Participating government representatives, related sub-regional institutions, NGOs and civil society organisations declared their commitment to lobby and double forest land areas under community ownership by 2015. “We identified problems of deforestation, lack of respect for human rights and the crisis that was unfolding across the region. The meeting generated a lot of recommendations and governments made a lot of commitments about what to do”, says Andy White, RRI Coordinator. But four years down the road, and only two years before the Objective 2015 deadline, not much has been achieved. Reports presented at a follow-up regional dialogue in Yaoundé in March indicate that only half of the 26 West and Central African countries revisited their tenure systems. And those that did only ceded feeble secondary rights to indigenous people, granting them access and usage privileges, but maintaining tight grips on stronger rights to exclude intruders or transfer ownership to a third party. “There’s been some progress. Some governments in the region have initiated new land reforms, but the laws and policies they’re proposing are really inadequate”, says White. “The crisis has become much greater over the last four years than we expected and there’s been far too little action. [There is a] crisis in terms of loss of life, crisis in terms of the systematic destruction of the culture of the forest peoples like here in Cameroon. It’s just alarming.” New recommendations therefore stipulate fast-tracking the implementation of previous policy reform commitments, embracing the full bundle of rights of local communities in land tenure negotiations, and reinforcing the lobbying power of NGO and civil society organisations. “We are calling on the support of RRI and other partners because we want to build a network of traditional rulers to constitute a lobby to defend our rights”, says HM Bruno Mvondo, bureau member of the Council of Traditional Rulers of Cameroon. “For us traditional rulers, the land belongs to the community. But in front of modern law, our customs don’t have any strength. We’re begging the authorities to take into account our traditional law.” For displaced communities and global activists, the fight goes on and debates regarding who owns Africa’s lands are gathering momentum. But at the same time, fresh findings suggest wealthy nationals and elites are keeping busy too and increasingly joining the rush for land.’ http://thinkafricapress.com/cameroon/who-owns-land-cameroon-large-scale-land-grabs
http://www.oromostudies.org/OSA_Apeal_letter_on_landgrab_2013final.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1y5fssKiTw&feature=share
What is happening in Omo valley is also happening in Oromia and Gambella.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eK2eKJGmaM&feature=youtu.be
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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Genocide and the Suffering of beleaguered Communities:Between 1868 and 1900, five million Oromo were killed in Ethiopia and it is still happening with Intensity April 9, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Akbar Ahmed, Brookings Institution, Chechnya, Conakry, Gadaa System, Genocide, Genocide against the Oromo, Human rights, Human Rights and Liberties, Human rights violations, Mass killings, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo people, Police state, State terror, Thistle, Waziristan
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The author’s daughter, Nafees Ahmed, reads at excerpt from “The Thistle and the Drone” at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
‘It is difficult to read about contemporary instances of genocidal behavior, writes Akbar Ahmed, and not think that they belong to some distant, barbaric past instead of the world of today. But, if anything, these instances are occurring with greater frequency and intensity as far as tribal societies are concerned. And yet, much of the world seems indifferent to this suffering. Acts of genocide not only challenge their victims but all those who must contemplate the consequences of these actions. This was evident in the following letter, sent to me from an anonymous author after reading the op-eds in Al Jazeera written by my team and myself about the suffering of these beleaguered communities: “I felt ashamed to not have known about their struggle for existence. I wonder how these people cannot become terrorists or rebels if faced with such inhumane conditions. The question is how would we react if faced with a situation they are in. I can only pray to Allah to protect all of us from this test. For sure, most of us would fail in this test.” The anonymous writer had raised a pertinent question. Genocide had been taking place in history and was again recurring. It is difficult to believe that these are not chronicles of ancient peoples visited upon by demon barbarians, but rather what is happening today. What is new is the increased frequency and intensity of genocide as far as tribal societies are concerned. If every tribal community is like a bounded world of its own, then the obliteration of literally hundreds of worlds becomes possible. The scale of suffering can be illustrated in numerous examples. In the 1860s, Russia killed 1.5 million Circassians, half of their population, and expelled the other half from their lands. In the 1940s, the Soviet government loaded the entire Chechen population of 400,000 on trains to Kazakhstan, killing half in the process. More than 100,000 were killed in the wars after 1994, or 10% of the entire population. In the first four decades of French colonial rule, two million Algerians, two-thirds of the population, were killed. From 1930 to 1933, the Italians killed 50,000 Cyrenaica tribesmen in Libya and, in total, reduced the population by two-thirds as a result of death and displacement. Genocide has been taking place throughout history. Between 1868 and 1900, some five million Oromo, or half the population, were killed in Ethiopia, with an additional half million killed in the Oromo Bale region in the 1960s. In the 1990s the Sudanese government killed as many as 500,000 Nuba, half of the population, and as many as 400,000 Darfuris in the early 2000s. These figures convey a stark reality: If Muslims are an embattled species in the modern world, Muslim tribesmen are an endangered species in it. Because these staggering statistics involve hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, they are numbing and difficult to comprehend. Perhaps individual cases will throw the horror of genocide in sharper relief. Consider the two children in Waziristan who saw their father shot in the head during indiscriminate firing by Pakistani security forces when he took the children shopping at a bazaar: “The children were covered in blood and brains of Yaqub Shah, they saw their beloved father, head shattered, lying in a pool of blood with no one to help them. For hours, the terrorized children sat by the dead body of their father, eyes wide open, not able to cry, not able to speak.” Or consider the Fulani Muslims of the Middle Belt region of Nigeria who became victims of cannibalism by Berom tribesmen making matter-of-fact comments on video while police watched passively: “I want the heart” and “Did you put some salt?” Or hear a Russian soldier describing what his fellow soldiers were doing in Chechnya: “One guy pinned a Chechen to the ground with his foot while another pulled off his pants and with two or three hefty slashes severed his scrotum. The serrated blade of the knife snagged the skin and pulled the blood vessels from his body. In half a day the whole village was castrated, then the battalion moved out.”Or listen to Fatoumata, the brave young Fulani woman, who relived her ordeal at the hands of security forces chanting “We are going to exterminate you, Fulani” in the notorious episode at the stadium in Conakry, Guinea. “A police officer, after raping me, decided to urinate in my mouth, as if it was part of their program,” she recounted. “I received streams of urine all over my face. After, they used sticks to rape me again with these objects. Then, finally, one tried to stab me in front, on the private parts.… The blood began to flow and I was so exhausted that I could not scream or cry.” Or hear the courageous Kashmiri woman recalling the night the women of her village were gang raped by the Indian Army: “The army entered our houses at ten in the evening and left at nine in the morning.… There were screams everywhere — from almost every house in the village.” Or contemplate the bodies of dead Baluch men with lettering freshly carved into their chests declaring “Long Live Pakistan.” It is difficult to believe that these are not chronicles and legends of ancient peoples visited by demon barbarians, but rather what is happening today. People on the periphery have been traumatized beyond imagination in recent years. They have been cooked and eaten. Their women have been gang raped in front of them. Their young men, elders, and religious teachers have been humiliated, tortured and killed. Their houses of worship have been destroyed. They have been relocated away from their homes and their lands stolen from them. They face widespread famine and disease and are voiceless and friendless in a hostile world. They have been called “insects,” “snakes” and “reptiles.” They have been robbed of their dignity and honor. They have seen their young men and women transformed into suicide bombers killing women and children, passengers in buses or worshippers in a mosque in a frenzy of anger. Yet the world seems indifferent to their suffering and is barely aware of its scale. This is indeed the dark side of the soul of man. After the grim and relentless litany of woes I have just related, it is hard not to cry with Joseph Conrad: “The horror! The horror!” It should give everyone pause to reflect on the fate of humans and ask: Is this where they were meant to arrive? In the end, will they be defined by little more than their indubitable capacity to breed and kill?’ http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=9957
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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- American University’s Akbar Ahmed Explains Why Drones Aren’t Winning the War on Terror: The Thistle and the Drone (prweb.com)
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21 Century Social and Economic Apartheid: In the TPLF variant of Apartheid System of Ethiopia, the Oromo are making the Majority of the Prisoners April 6, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Abusive power, Aphartheid, Corruption, Development, Dictators, Economic Aphartheid, economic sabotage, economy, Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, Gadaa System, Human rights violations, Meles Zenawi, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromo, Oromoo, Politics, Poor Goveranance, racial discrimination, Tigray Region, Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, TPLF, Tyranny, Undemocratic System, Underdvelopment
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From the outset TPLF defines itself as a liberator for one specifically racially defined group. And still after two decades on power, irrespective of its ostensible claim that it is under the umbrella of EPRDF, people of the same origin monopolistically has held the whip-hand; and the whole country has been cash cowed by one specific racial group while the majority is being treated as impediments.
The apartheid nature and characteristics of TPLF’s policies and behavior is as covert as possible to throw the majority into total muddle until it is too late. To put it bluntly, the fledgling apartheid system of TPLF is emerging through a frog boiling tactic.
The TPLF’s apartheid system can be described as a subtle state action designed to secure and maintain the Tigrian domination by furthering their Economic and Political interests through control over the majority Non-Tigrian population.
The following categories make the necessary, sufficient, and defining characteristics of the emerging tender-plant apartheid system in Ethiopia:
1. Economic Interest
Furthering the Tigrean economic dominance is mainly achieved through a threefold economic sabotage: i.e.,
Through the creation of Tigrian tycoons in every facet of the economy;
By building extractive business empire;
Through emasculation of Non-Tigrian business firms.
Let’s see each of the above points in detail.
1.1 The incubation of the Tigrian Racketeers: Unlike the loosely dispersed and individualistic Non-Tigrian business men, the Tigrian racketeers are a highly organized kleptomaniacs that are exclusively nurtured by the under-table action of the government in a way that:
– Favoring to get loan from state-owned banks with least or no collateral;
– Facilitating the bureaucratic process in the Custom office with least search procedure while this government office intentionally delays the items that belonged to the Non-Tigrian business men.
– Government toleration for their criminal act of tax evasion.
– For the Tigrian importers, letter of credit will be processed easily and access to hard currency is almost unlimited; whereas the Non-Tigrians must wait a minimum of 4 to 6 months since their application.
– The government has granted them key business sites under low bid.
– The government conducts special training programs and video conferences to create situational awareness among them and update them with first hand information. At this point, we must not forget that nowadays information is equivalent to money.
On top of that, they have been informed /’’trained’’/ and equipped with the following racketeering tactics.
1. Insider Trading: Obviously all key governmental positions are occupied by the Tigrian; which means any policy or information particularly related with business reaches to the Tigrian racketeers before the crowd gets it so they adjust everything in advance to suit to the new condition. And due to such a prior knowledge they net millions from insider trading.
They also have foreknowledge on every government auction however the Non-Tigrians get it lately from news papers. For insider information equals ‘’money’’ in a modern market economy, it is a great power in the hands of people who are the most cohesive and organized criminal group like the Tigrian racketeers. As a matter of fact, insider information is illegal both from moral and law perspective.
2. Dual Set of Ethics: In fact, the Tigrian racketeers have been informed directly or indirectly to practice a dual set of ethics:
I. An altruistic set of ethics for themselves and
II. A predatory one for the rest of Ethiopian people.
– They don’t compete with one another for a single niche of market;
– They don’t interfere with the monopoly controlled by other Tigrian racketeer;
– They are barred from underbidding fellow Tigrian racketeer.
– They are always cooperate with one another so as “not to lose the money of Tigray”
3. Team Strategy: Before we go to how they act in team, let’s see the psychological set up of the Tigrian racketeers and the Non-Tigrian business men.
The Non-Tigrian have been conditioned to think that everyone must be judged on his or her merits and that it would be immoral to be biased for his own race. The Tigrian racketeers, on the other hand, have been conditioned from early time of TPLF to think in terms of the good of their race.
Keeping this fact in mind, what they are practicing is through “Infect to insolvency and then wait to takeover” approach. For example, if they need to monopolize certain business sector they allocate a calculated sum of money to under bid the price of item which certainly makes the Non-Tigrian competitor unable to fight with irrationally low price then put the competitor company into insolvency and finally buy the company itself with a giveaway price and will apply “the abuse of dominance” once they control the sector.
In general, a cohesive and powerful team effort, dual set of ethics along with insider information consistently amasses collective power to the Tigrian racketeers over a scattered and individualistic Non-Tigrian.
1.2 By Establishing Extractive Trade Empire: An acronym EFFORT stands for the TPLF’s multi-billionaire trade empire called Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray. It was established by expropriating capital equipments from different parts of the country and by the infamous defaulted bank debts. Currently there is no business sector that is free from the involvement of EFFORT. It stretched from production to distribution, from finance to insurance, from wholesale to retail, from real-estate to horticulture, from mining to IT. Peculiarly, this trade empire hasn’t ever been audited by external auditor nor repays the loan it borrowed periodically.
Similar to the Tigrian private companies, EFFORT is also privileged in the following manner:
– It is awarded government auctions of big projects;
– Favored to borrow in billions without collateral and it is not subject to repayment;
– Equipped with insider information;
– Granted fertile land at a giveaway price by displacing tens of thousands of indigenous people from their ancestral land;
– Granted key mining sites without open bid;
– Market opportunity will be arranged for it by forcing regional and federal offices to buy products which haven’t a relevant importance or in an exaggerated quantity.
Surprisingly, almost 99.9% of the employees in these innumerable companies of EFFORT are Tigrian; which means that majority of the economy is occupied by either the Tigrian private companies or by the extractive trade empire called EFFORT; and they primarily privileged job opportunity for Tigrians. As the complete cycle of economic dominance and privileged labor market portrays, we are under a severe economic genocide.
1.3 Stifling of Non-Tigrians’ Business Firms: Obviously the playing ground is not level; and the whole situation is an uphill battle for Non-Tigrians’ business firms to survive all the barriers that they faced from the government bureaucracy and from economic sabotage of the highly privileged EFFORT companies and the cohesive Tigrian racketeers. Consequently, especially after election-2005 we have seen that many Non-Tigrian businesses have been either liquidated or down-sized.
2. Political Interest
The foremost plan of TPLF was to secede the Tigray region from the rest of the country and to establish a sovereign republic, as plainly stated in Manifesto-68 which was formulated by the triumvirate of Abay Tsehaye, Sebhat Nega and Meles Zenawi. However, through time they inferred that a sovereign republic of Tigray would be a weak and failed state. Then they changed their program to live together as a state-within-a state and TPLF’s role as a Quasi-Occupying Force.
Similar to the case for economic dominance, TPLF and Tigrians maintain their political dominance using racial solidarity as weapon against the Non-Tigrian Ethiopians in the following manner:
2.1. Surrogate Colonization /Repopulation/: The TPLF apartheid system has also been featured with Depopulation andPopulation-Transfer. The annexation of arable lands of the Amhara region like Humera, Welkayt, Tsegede, Alamata, Korem and so on, to Tigray province and depopulating the indigenous Amharas from those places and then replacing with Tigrians is a case in point of the surrogate colonization of the TPLF regime. The expansion of Tigrians is also continuing in west and north Gondar to annex the North Mountains after they learned that the North Heights are fields of Gold and other Precious metals.
2.2. Expropriation of Land /Landed Property/ Belonging to A Racial Group: As a matter of the truth, the people of Gambella have been denied its natural right of living on its ancestral land. And clearly we know that more than quarter of arable land of the region has been awarded to land grabbers at a giveaway price by TPLF megalomaniacs. But beside to this, more than 2/3 of the remaining arable land has been expropriated by Tigrian Mechanized-Farm owners in which it left more than 70,000 indigenous people for forcible relocation to the place where the soil is dry with poor quality and with no infrastructure. What worsened the situation was that the deployment of the TPLF mechanized army upon the unprotected civilians to enforce forcible relocation of the indigenous people. As a result, they became victim of genocide, rape and conflagration of their villages by TPLF militias.
2.3. Deliberate Denigration of Living Conditions of Non-Tigrian Racial Groups: This includes:
– Demolishing of business areas under cover story of investment which are mainly occupied by Gurage business men in the capital city of Addis Ababa. Particularly after election-2005, the Gurages have been profiled as “Accomplice of Neftegna” and currently as “Ginbot-7 Sympathizers”; and consequently, they are paying the expensive price ever for the alleged charge.
– Internal deportation and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of the Amhara people from different parts of the country by confiscation of their tenure and property is also one of the cruelest repressions of the racist regime of TPLF in order to break the potential resistance from this group by throwing them into absolute destitution and instability.
2.4. Infliction of Serious Bodily and Mental Harm upon Certain Racial Members: Tens of thousands of political and Conscience prisoners are concentrated in three federal and 120 regional major prisons. They are also found in an unofficial detention centers in military camps including in Dedessa, Bir Sheleqo, Tolay, Hormat, Blate, Tatek, Jijiga, Holeta, and Senqele. Majority of the prisoners are racially Oromo; and their alleged charge is “Sympathizers of OLF”. The number of Amhara, Gambella and Ogadenese political and conscience prisoners are also significant.
The condition of these political prisoners is extremely harsh, overcrowded and life threatening. Besides, the TPLF henchmen often use a series of torture and brutal interrogation to extract confessions including whipping on the soles of feet, over stretching of limbs, slow dripping of water on the head, slandering of their race, pulling out of nails, forcible extraction of teeth, weights suspended on testicles, plunging into spoiled water, solitary confinement in dark cell for long period of time, signing a confession, forced self-incrimination, threatening with injection of HIV infected blood, forcing to denounce others, burning with cigarette, insertion of bottle and hot candle into prisoners’ rectum, drowning into ice cold water for long period of time and beating with rifle butt, stick, whip, belt etc.
2.5. Access: No matter how the Non-Tigrians have the qualification for the high post in the army or the security apparatus or for key government offices, they have already been denied by the unwritten law of TPLF. Access to government-sponsored scholarship at the overseas is also highly secured for Tigrians.
In conclusion, Ethiopia is a country of nations and nationalities. So there must not be room for the socio-political and economic dominance of single race. All the people of Ethiopia must be treated as an empowered citizen. The fledgling Tigrian apartheid system must be nipped in the bud before it sparks the bloody genocide.
As a universal truth, no one ever negotiated successfully from weakness, but from strength. It must be our primary target to be strong. And, I do personally believe that awakening to the truth will make us strong. We are now in the middle of life-or-death struggle; if we fail to break the yoke of TPLF’s apartheid system the future of our people, the continuity of our race and the stability of our country will be at stake.
We have left nothing with TPLF; we have been cornered, humiliated, persecuted, harassed, assaulted, exiled, locked-in jail, tortured, expelled, impoverished by design, confiscated and decimated. We must not have room for the source of all these evil, TPLF, anymore!!! We must fight it by all possible means until we regain our freedom!!! We must struggle desperately until we tear apart the reins of the Quasi-Occupiers!!!
On the other hand, the Tigrians must also do their own homework before they are being treated as:
– Accomplice of Criminally guilty TPLF officials;
– Politically guilty as TPLF Supporters;
– Morally guilty as Tigrians;
– And perhaps, metaphysically guilty as Ethiopians.
Facts about Tigree Domination in the Military
High Ranking Military Officials , see http://ayyaantuu.com/horn-of-africa-news/ethiopia/the-tplf-variant-on-apartheid-majority-of-the-prisoners-are-racially-oromo/
By Dawit Fanta
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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The Unravelling of a Colonized Mind by Jana-Rae Yerxa March 24, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Colonizing Structure, Development, Humanity and Social Civilization, Ideas, Irreecha, Kemetic Ancient African Culture, Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure., Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure. Africa Heritage. The Genocide Against Oromo Nation, Knowledge and the Colonizing Structure. African Heritage. The Genocide Against Oromo Nation, Oromia, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo Culture, Oromo First, Oromo Identity, Oromo Nation, Oromo the Largest Nation of Africa. Human Rights violations and Genocide against the Oromo people in Ethiopia, Oromummaa, Qubee Afaan Oromo, Self determination, Sirna Gadaa, Slavery, Uncategorized.Tags: Anishinaabe, Colonialism, Colony, Couchiching First Nation, Human rights violations, Little Eagle, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo culture, Oromo First, Oromo people, Oromummaa, Self determination, Social work, Sub-Saharan Africa, Tyranny, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, University of Victoria
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The Unravelling of a Colonized Mind by Jana-Rae Yerxa.
Sure everybody struggles. But to be born an Indigenous person, you are born into struggle. My struggle. Your struggle. Our struggle. The colonial struggle. There are many layers to this struggle. For the longest time, I didn’t even know what the true struggle was about yet I couldn’t escape it. It consumed me. Colonialism, as I have been forced to discover, is like a cancer. But instead of the cells in your body betraying itself, the thoughts in your mind work against you and eat you up from the inside out. You’re like the walking dead and you don’t even know it because you are so blinded. You can’t see the truth.
Here are some of the perverted ways colonialism infects the mind:
• With a colonized mind, I hate being Indian.
• With a colonized mind, I accept that I am Indian because that’s who the colonizer told me I am.
• With a colonized mind, I don’t understand that I am Anishinaabe.
• With a colonized mind, I believe I am inferior to the white race.
• With a colonized mind, I wish I was white.
• With a colonized mind, I draw pictures of my family with peach coloured skin, blonde hair and blue eyes because I’ve internalized that this is the ideal, what looks good and what is beautiful.
• With a colonized mind, I keep my feelings of inferiority to white people a secret from others and even from myself.
• With a colonized mind, I try diligently to mirror white people as closely as I possibly can.
• With a colonized mind, I desperately want to be accepted by white people.
• With a colonized mind, to gain the acceptance of white people, I will detach myself from all that does not mirror acceptable “white” standards, whether it is how one dresses, one speaks, or one looks.
• With a colonized mind, I feel as though I am swearing when I say “white people” in front of white people.
• With a colonized mind, I believe there is no racism.
• With a colonized mind, I believe that racism does not impact me.
• With a colonized mind, I deny my heritage and proudly say, “We are all just people.”
• With a colonized mind, when discussing issues pertaining to race, I try desperately not to offend white people.
• With a colonized mind, I do not know who I am.
• With a colonized mind, I believe I know who I am and do not understand that this isn’t so because I’ve become the distorted image of who the colonizer wants me to be and remain unaware of this reality.
• With a colonized mind, I could care less about history and think that our history don’t matter.
• With a colonized mind, I do not understand how the history created the present.
• With a colonized mind, I do not see how I have been brainwashed to be an active participant in my own dehumanization and the dehumanization of my people.
• With a colonized mind, I do not recognize how others dehumanize me and my people.
• With a colonized mind, I devalue the ways of my people- their ways of seeing, their ways of knowing, their ways of living, their ways of being.
• With a colonized mind, I cannot speak the language of my ancestors and do not care that this is so.
• With a colonized mind, I am unaware of how colonization has impacted my ancestors, my community, my family, and myself.
• With a colonized mind, I think that my people are a bunch of lazy, drunk, stupid Indians.
• With a colonized mind, I discredit my own people.
• With a colonized mind, I think that I am better than ‘those Indians’.
• With a colonized mind, I will silently watch my people be victimized.
• With a colonized mind, I will victimize my own people.
• With a colonized mind, I will defend those that perpetrate against my people.
• With a colonized mind, I will hide behind false notions of tradition entrenched with Euro-western shame and shame my own people re-creating more barriers amongst us.
• With a colonized mind, I tolerate our women being raped and beaten.
• With a colonized mind, I tolerate our children being raised without their fathers.
• With a colonized mind, I feel threatened when someone else, who is Anishinaabe, achieves something great because I feel jealous and wish it was me.
• With a colonized mind, when I see an Anishinaabe person working towards bettering their life, because my of my own insecurities, I accuse them of thinking they are ‘so good now’.
• With a colonized mind, I am unaware that I was set up to hate myself.
• With a colonized mind, I do not think critically about the world.
• With a colonized mind, I believe in merit and do not recognize unearned colonial privilege.
• With a colonized mind, I ignorantly believe that my ways of seeing, living and believing were all decided by me when in reality everything was and is decided for me.
• With a colonized mind, I am lost.
• With a colonized mind, I do not care about the land.
• With a colonized mind, I believe that freedom is a gift that can be bestowed upon me by the colonizer.
• With a colonized mind, I believe that I am powerless and act accordingly.
• With a colonized mind, I do not have a true, authentic voice.
• With a colonized mind, I live defeat.
• With a colonized mind, I will remain a victim of history.
• With a colonized mind, I will pass self-hatred on to my children.
• With a colonized mind, I do not understand the term “self-responsibility.”
• With a colonized mind, I do not recognize that I have choice and do not have to fatalistically accept oppressive, colonial realities.
• With a colonized mind, I do not see that I am a person of worth.
• With a colonized mind, I do not know I am powerful.
The colonial struggle, as I said earlier, has many layers. I am no longer being eaten from the inside. Yet it is no less painful. What is different today is that I am connected to a true source of power that was always there. It’s like my friend once said, “I come from a distinguished people whose legacy shines on me like the sun.” I now understand this and it is because of this understanding that my mind and my soul are freer than they have ever been. It is because of that gift- that awakening which came through struggle- that I will proudly continue to struggle for freedom. My freedom. Your freedom. Our freedom.
Jana-Rae Yerxa, is Anishinaabe from Little Eagle and Couchiching First Nation and belongs to the Sturgeon clan. Activist. Social Worker. Former professor. Current student. She is committed to furthering her understanding of Anishinaabe identity and resurgence as well as deconstructing Indigenous/settler relations in the contexts of colonization and decolonization. Jana-Rae is currently enrolled in the Indigenous Governance Program at University of Victoria.
http://lateralloveaustralia.com/2013/03/14/the-unravelling-of-a-colonized-mind-by-jana-rae-yerxa/
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2014 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2014. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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Enemies of Human Development: Structural Injustices, the Lack of Social Competence and Human Insecurity March 15, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Activism, Cape Town, Development, Development and Change, Economic, Economic and Social Freedom, Economic development, Economic efficiency, empowerment, Horn of Africa, human, Human development Index, Human Rights and Liberties, India, Institution, John Maynard Keynes, Kolkata, micro finance, Multidimensional Poverty Index, Non-governmental organization, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo people, Oromummaa, poverty, Qubee Afaan Oromo, social competence, social development, Social justice, Social safety net, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, World Bank
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index#Africa
‘The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: Economic Efficiency, Social Justice and Individual Liberty.’ John Maynard Keynes
‘The traditional agendas for reducing poverty recognize but inadequately address its structural sources. Contemporary interventions to promote inclusive growth have tended to focus on the outcomes of development through expanding and strengthening social safety nets. While such public initiatives are to be encouraged, they address the symptoms of poverty, not its sources. The results of such restrictive interventions are reduction of income poverty to varying degrees and some improvement in human development. But across much of the South, income inequalities have increased, social disparities have widened and injustice remains pervasive, while the structural sources of poverty remain intact. Any credible agenda to end poverty must correct the structural injustices that perpetuate it. Inequitable access to wealth and knowledge disempowers the excluded from competing in the marketplace. Rural poverty, for example, originates in insufficient access to land and water for less privileged segments of rural society. Land ownership has been not only a source of economic privilege, but also a source of social and political authority. The prevailing structures of land ownership remain inimical to a functioning democratic order. Similarly, lack of access to capital and property perpetuates urban poverty. Unequal participation in the market With the prevailing property structures of society, the resource-poor remain excluded from more-dynamic market sectors. The main agents of production tend to be the urban elite, who own the corporate assets that power faster growing economic sectors. By contrast, the excluded partake only as primary producers and wage earners, at the lowest end of the production and marketing chains, leaving them with little opportunity to share in market economy opportunities for adding value to their labour. Capital markets have failed to provide sufficient credit to the excluded, even though they have demonstrated their creditworthiness through low default rates in the micro credit market. And formal capital markets have not provided financial instruments to attract the savings of the excluded and transform them into investment assets in the faster growing corporate sector.
Unjust governance:This inequitable and unjust social and economic universe can be compounded by unjust governance. Often the excluded remain voiceless in the institutions of governance and thus underserved by public institutions. The institutions of democracy remain unresponsive to the needs of the excluded, both in the design of policy agendas and in the selection of electoral candidates. Representative institutions thus tend to be monopolized by the affluent and socially powerful, who then use office to enhance their wealth and perpetuate their hold over power. Promoting structural change to correct these structural injustices, policy agendas need to be made more inclusive by strengthening the capacity of the excluded to participate on more equitable terms in the market economy and the democratic polity. Such agendas should reposition the excluded within the processes of production, distribution and governance. The production process needs to graduate the excluded from living out their lives exclusively as wage earners and tenant farmers by investing them with the capacity to become owners of productive assets. The distribution process must elevate the excluded beyond their inherited role as primary producers by enabling them to move upmarket through greater opportunities to share in adding value through collective action. Access to assets and markets must be backed by equitable access to quality health care and education, integral to empowering the excluded. The governance process must increase the active participation of the excluded in representative institutions, which is crucial to enhancing their voice in decision making and providing access to the institutions of governance.
Social competencies, human development beyond the individual: Individuals cannot flourish alone; indeed, they cannot function alone. The human development approach, however, has been essentially individualistic, assuming that development is the expansion of individuals’ capabilities or freedoms. Yet there are aspects of societies that affect individuals but cannot be assessed at the individual level because they are based on relationships, such as how well families or communities function, summarized for society as a whole in the ideas of social cohesion and social inclusion. Individuals are bound up with others. Social institutions affect individuals’ identities and choices. Being a member of a healthy society is an essential part of a thriving existence. So one task of the human development approach is to explore the nature of social institutions that are favourable for human flourishing. Development then has to be assessed not only for the short-run impact on individual capabilities, but also for whether society evolves in a way that supports human flourishing. Social conditions affect not only the outcomes of individuals in a particular society today, but also those of future generations. Social institutions are all institutions in which people act collectively (that is, they involve more than one person), other than profit-making market institutions and the state. They include formal non-governmental organizations, informal associations, cooperatives, producer associations, neighbourhood associations, sports clubs, savings associations and many more. They also consist of norms and rules of behaviour affecting human development outcomes. For example, attitudes towards employment affect material well-being, and norms of hierarchy and discrimination affect inequality, discrimination, empowerment, political freedom and so on. To describe what those institutions can be and do, and to understand how they affect individuals, we can use the term social competencies.Central to the human development perspective is that societal norms affect people’s choices and behaviours towards others, thus influencing outcomes in the whole community. Community norms and behaviours can constrain choice in deleterious ways from a human development perspective—for example, ostracizing, or in extreme cases killing, those who make choices that contravene social rules. Families trapped in poverty by informal norms that support early marriage and dowry requirements might reject changes to such entrenched social norms. Social institutions change over time, and those changes may be accompanied by social tension if they hamper the interests of some groups while favouring others. Policy change is the outcome of a political struggle in which different groups (and individuals) support or oppose particular changes. In this struggle, unorganized individuals are generally powerless, but by joining together they can acquire power collectively. Social action favouring human development (such as policies to extend education, progressive taxation and minimum wages) happens not spontaneously, but because of groups that are effective in supporting change, such as producer groups, worker associations, social movements and political parties. These organizations are especially crucial for poorer people, as demonstrated by a group of sex workers in Kolkata, India, and women in a squatter community in Cape Town, South Africa, who improved their conditions and self-respect by joining together and exerting collective pressure. Societies vary widely in the number, functions, effectiveness and consequences of their social competencies. Institutions and norms can be classified as human development–promoting, human development–neutral and human development–undermining. It is fundamental to identify and encourage those that promote valuable capabilities and relationships among and between individuals and institutions. Some social institutions (including norms) can support human development in some respects but not in others: for example, strong family bonds can provide individuals with support during upheavals, but may constrain individual choices and opportunities. Broadly speaking, institutions that promote social cohesion and human development show low levels of disparity across groups (for example, ethnic, religious or gender groups) and high levels of interaction and trust among people and across groups, which results in solidarity and the absence of violent conflict. It is not a coincidence that 5 of the 10 most peaceful countries in the world in 2012, according to the Global Peace Index, are also among the most equal societies as measured by loss in Human Development Index value due to inequality. They are also characterized by the absence of discrimination and low levels of marginalization. In some instances antidiscriminatory measures can ease the burden of marginalization and partially mitigate the worst effects of exclusion. For instance, US law mandating that hospital emergency rooms offer treatment to all patients regardless of their ability to pay partly mitigates the impact of an expensive health care system with limited coverage, while affirmative action in a range of countries (including Brazil, Malaysia, South Africa and the United States) has improved the situation of deprived groups and contributed to social stability. The study of social institutions and social competencies must form an essential part of the human development approach—including the formation of groups; interactions between groups and individuals; incentives and constraints to collective action; the relationship among groups, politics and policy outcomes; the role of norms in influencing behaviours; and how norms are formed and changed.
The 1994 Human Development Report argued that the concept of security must shift from the idea of a militaristic safeguarding of state borders to the reduction of insecurity in people’s daily lives (or human insecurity). In every society, human security is undermined by a variety of threats, including hunger, disease, crime, unemployment, human rights violations and environmental challenges. The intensity of these threats differs across the world, but human security remains a universal quest for freedom from want and fear.Consider economic insecurity. In the countries of the North, millions of young people are now unable to find work. And in the South, millions of farmers have been unable to earn a decent livelihood and forced to migrate, with many adverse effects, particularly for women. Closely related to insecurity in livelihoods is insecurity in food and nutrition. Many developing country households faced with high food prices cannot afford two square meals a day, undermining progress in child nutrition. Another major cause of impoverishment in many countries, rich and poor, is unequal access to affordable health care. Ill health in the household (especially of the head of the household) is one of the most common sources of impoverishment, as earnings are lost and medical expenses are incurred. Perspectives on security need to shift from a misplaced emphasis on military strength to a well rounded, people-centred view. Progress in this shift can be gleaned in part from statistics on crime, particularly homicides, and military spending.’
According to the United Nations Development, despite the much exaggerated recent economic growth data, Ethiopia is still near the bottom of in its Human Development Index 2013.Ethiopia ranks 173 out of 187 countries in the Human Development Index 2013 compiled by UNDP. The Index is part of the Human Development Report that is presented annually and measures life expectancy, income and education in countries around the world. Since 2000, Ethiopia has registered greater gains than all but two other countries in the world – Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. But it still ranks close to the bottom of the Index. Ethiopia is one of the countries that are known in human rights violations, government waging war against its people, marginalizing communities, political and social discrimination and where the system of structural injustices are the norms than exceptions.
Click to access HDR_2013_EN_complete.pdf
Click to access HDR_2013_EN_complete.pdf
hdr.undp.org
Click to access HDR_2013_EN_complete.pdf
http://www.thisisafrica.me/opinion/detail/19841/the-oromo-and-the-ethiopian-
http://thinkafricapress.com/ethiopia/business-usual-after-meles-human-rights-gambella-world-bank
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The Myth of Development: Ethiopia’s Land loyalties, Displacement and Government Genocide in Oromia and the Omo region March 2, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Ethiopia, Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, Inter Press Service, Omo River, Oromia, Oromia Region, Politics of Ethiopia, United Nations Development Programme, World Heritage Site
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‘In Ethiopia, land sales are occurring in six key areas. Oromia and Gambella in the south, Amhara, Beneshangul, Gumuz, the Sidaama zone, or SNNP and the Lower Omo Valley – an area of outstanding natural beauty with acclaimed UNESCO World heritage status. The Ethiopian government’s conduct in Omo and Oromia, Genocide Watch (GW) considers “to have already reached stage 7 [of 8], genocidal massacres”. A statement that shocks us all, and casts shame upon the government and indeed slumbering donor nations, who act not, who speak not, but know well the cruel methods, which violate a plethora of human rights laws, employed by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). A regime whose loyalties, it seems, rest firmly with investors, corporations, multi-nationals and the like, and who cares little for the people living upon the land, or indeed in the cities. The government proclaims land sales are part of a strategic, long-term approach to agriculture reforms and economic development, that foreign investment will fund infrastructure projects, create employment opportunities, help to eradicate hunger and poverty and benefit the community, local and national. The term development is itself an interesting one; distorted, linked and commonly limited almost exclusively to economic targets, meaning growth of GDP, established principally by the World Bank, whose policies and practices in relation to land sales, the OI discovered, “have glossed over critical issues such as human rights, food security and human dignity for local populations”, and its philanthropic sister, the International Monetary Fund; market fundamentalism driving the exported (one size fits all) policies, of both ideologically entrenched organisations, that promote models of development that seek to fulfill corporate interests first middle and last. Defined in such limited ways, Ethiopia, having somehow achieved impressive GDP growth figures since 2004, (with a dizzy 9.8%, average, similar to that of India) would seem to be in the premiership of development. Inflation, though, sits at 30% and, whilst unemployment in urban areas has dropped to around 20%, over a quarter of young people aged 18-24 remain out of work; high unemployment in urban areas means young women are often forced into commercial sex work or domestic servitude. Statistics compiled by The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), provide a broader, less GDP-rosy picture of the country. They place Ethiopia 174th (from 187 nations) on the Human development index (HDI), with average life expectancy of 59 years and 40% of people living in poverty (on less than $1.25 a day). The 2012 Global Hunger Index makes Ethiopia the 5th hungriest country in the world (IFPRI), with between 12 and 15 million people a year relying on food aid to keep them alive. What growth there is benefits the rich, privileged minority. There is a growing divide between the 99.9% and the small number of wealthy Ethiopians – who, coincidentally, are mainly members of the ruling party trickle down, gushing up’, concentrating wealth with the wealthy; as the Inter Press Service (IPS) 22/08/12 reports, “development has yet to reach the vast majority of the country’s population. Instead, much of this wealth – and political power – has been retained by the ruling party and, particularly, by the tiny Tigrayan minority community to which [former Prime Minister] Meles belonged.” Protagonists laying claim to the all-inclusive healing powers of agriculture and agro-industrial projects, contradict, the OI states, “the basic facts and evidence showing growing impoverishment experienced on the ground”. What about the bumper benefits promised, particularly the numerous employment opportunities? It turns out industrialised farming is highly mechanised and offers few jobs; overseas companies are not concerned with providing employment for local people and care little for their well-being, making good bedmates for the ruling party. They bring the workers they need, and are allowed to do so by the Ethiopian government, which places no constraints on their operations. Such shameful indifference contravenes the letter and spirit of the United Nations (UN) “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework.’ G. Peebles, http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/01/land-loyalties-in-ethiopia/
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/mar/14/why-are-we-funding-abuse-ethiopia/
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Africa: Archaic and colonial boundaries are no longer representative of the peoples living within them March 1, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Archaic colonial boundaries, Balkans, Falkland Islands, Oromia, Oromia Region, Oromo people, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan, United Nations, Yugoslav Wars
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‘The Yugoslav Wars exposed the bitter, entrenched divides between peoples and religions in the Balkans and took almost a decade of continued conflict, numerous international interventions (some more effective than others) and continued UN presence before peace in the region returned. The idea of sub-Saharan Africa ‘Balkanizing’ into nation states is a terrifying thought indeed. The right to self-determination is enshrined in the highest echelons of the United Nations; it is the reason why the Falkland Islands will remain in British hands despite being 8000miles from London; why the Scots will vote in 2014 over dismantling the United Kingdom and why Cataluña are aiming for similar successes in Spain. The Scots and Catalans argue that they are nations distinct and separate from that of the power that rules over them and that they are caught in archaic national boundaries which are no longer representative of the peoples living within them. Africa’s borders remain archaic and colonial; arbitrary lines in the sand sketched by generals and statesmen in London and Paris that serve to divide peoples, communities and nations, forcing them to be ruled by people with whom they share little but who they rely on for everything. Whilst we celebrate separatist movements in Europe we continue to dismiss them in Africa as tribal disputes, or as Jihadist land grabs or anything else that allows other countries to ignore a deep-seated issue. The wholesale redrawing of the African continent along national, ethnic lines is impossible, but if the conflicts of Mali and Sudan can teach us anything it is that the separatist cry across the continent is becoming louder and louder. The further fracturing of the continent seems almost inevitable.’
http://world-outline.com/2013/02/africanborders/
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The South – South Occupation February 25, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Colonialism, Cooperation, Developing country, Development and Change, Human rights, Human rights violations, Land run, Oromia, Oromia Region, poverty, South -south cooperation, State and Development, State and society, The Oromo theory of development, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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‘The idea of south-south co-operation evokes a positive image of solidarity between developing countries through the exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge. It’s an attractive proposition, intended to shift the international balance of power and help developing nations break away from aid dependence and achieve true emancipation from former colonial powers. However, the discourse of south-south co-operation has become a cover for human rights violations involving southern governments and companies. A case in point is the land grab by Indian corporations in Ethiopia, facilitated by the governments of both countries, which use development rhetoric while further marginalising the indigenous communities that bear the pain of the resulting social, economic and environmental devastation. It is against this scenario that international solidarity between communities affected by the insanity of a development model that prefers profits over people is reclaiming the principles of south-south co-operation.’http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/feb/25/indian-land-grabs-ethiopia
http://ayyaantuu.com/horn-of-africa-news/ethiopia/indian-land-grabs-in-ethiopia-show-dark-side-of-south-south-co-operation/
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Recent Popular Reports about Africa’s Explosive Growth are Highly Exaggerated January 4, 2013
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Corruption, Development, Economics, Uncategorized.Tags: Africa, Asia, Economic and Social Freedom, Economic development, Economic growth, Economist, Four Asian Tigers, Gross domestic product, Human rights, Manufacturing industries, Market value added, Oromia, Oromo people, Oromummaa, Sub-Saharan Africa
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“Recent high growth rates and increased foreign investment in Africa have given rise to the popular idea that the continent may well be on track to become the next global economic powerhouse. This “Africa Rising” narrative has been most prominently presented in recent cover stories by Time Magazine and The Economist. Yet both publications are wrong in their analysis of Africa’s developmental prospects — and the reasons they’re wrong speak volumes about the problematic way national economic development has come to be understood in the age of globalization.Both articles use unhelpful indicators to gauge Africa’s development. They looked to Africa’s recent high GDP growth rates, rising per capita incomes, and the explosive growth of mobile phones and mobile phone banking as evidence that Africa is “developing.” Time referred to the growth in sectors such as tourism, retail, and banking, and also cited countries with new discoveries of oil and gas reserves. The Economist pointed to the growth in the number of African billionaires and the increase in Africa’s trade with the rest of the world. But these indicators only give a partial picture of how well development is going — at least as the term has been understood over the last few centuries. From late 15th century England all the way up to the East Asian Tigers of recent renown, development has generally been taken as a synonym for “industrialization.” Rich countries figured out long ago, if economies are not moving out of dead-end activities that only provide diminishing returns over time (primary agriculture and extractive activities such as mining, logging, and fisheries), and into activities that provide increasing returns over time (manufacturing and services), then you can’t really say they are developing. despite some improvements in a few countries, the bulk of African countries are either stagnating or moving backwards when it comes to industrialization. The share of MVA in Africa’s GDP fell from 12.8 percent in 2000 to 10.5 percent in 2008, while in developing Asia it rose from 22 percent to 35 percent over the same period. There has also been a decline in the importance of manufacturing in Africa’s exports, with the share of manufactures in Africa’s total exports having fallen from 43 percent in 2000 to 39 percent in 2008. In terms of manufacturing growth, while most have stagnated, 23 African countries had negative MVA per capita growth during the period 1990 – 2010, and only five countries achieved an MVA per capita growth above 4 percent.”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/04/the_myth_of_africa_s_rise?page=0,1
http://www.vice.com/read/is-this-the-century-of-africas-rise-1
http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles/en_GB/05-09-Szirmai/
http://thinkafricapress.com/development/africa-rising-myth-bring-authoritarian-capitalism-instead
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45jgim/10-saddest-ethiopia/
Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2013 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2013. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/30/the_african_statistics_smackdown_continued
The Economics of Good and Evil December 30, 2012
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Demand and Supply, Economic goods, Ethics and Economics, Fiscal and monetary Policy, Fiscal cliff
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The Political Functions of Land grabbing policies of successive regimes of Ethiopia December 9, 2012
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: Development aid, Human rights, Land grabbing, Non-governmental organization, Oromia Region, Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, TPLF
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“Land grabbing is the major source of military, political, and economic powers of successive regimes of Ethiopia. Each regime distinctively designed land governance system to maintain colonial ownership of land of peoples of Oromia and Southern Ethiopia. After incorporation of South Ethiopia into the Abyssinian (North Ethiopia) empire at end of 19th century the relationship between the Southern and Northern is characterized by inequality, exploitation, and resource extraction by collection of tributes and taxes, and slave and ivory trades (Dereje, 2006 and Donham, 2002). Gebar land tenure system in the South Ethiopia as well as the Rist tenure system of North show some esemblance to the current land tenure system and with some reservations also resemble that of the military regime, with the exceptions that the communal Rist system is replaced by the organs of state, i.e. the peasant associations (Crewett et al. 2008). Power of domestic colonial politics is highly centralized with absolute land ownership right of governance core of Abyssinia to sustain rule of dictatorship through chains of colonial agents at regional, provincial, and local levels. Government of Ethiopia (the TPLF regime) is the owner of land, but the rights of individuals and communities are ‘holding (use) rights’ (Proclamation No. 456/200550). Though ethnic equality is now legally recognized, in practice, emergent regions are still politically marginalized and permitted less autonomy, partly due to the federal development strategy, which requires central control of local land resources and changes in livelihoods (Lavers, 2011). Centralization of Abyssinian land governance politics is manifested by five levels of land use rights: (1) owner-ship, (2) management, (3) sanction, (4) full accessibility right, & (4) limited accessibility right (Table7). Land tenure politics of both imperial and military or TPLF regimes are generally sharing similar political goal, i.e. manipulation of land use rights to maintain monopoly of governance powers. The commercialization of land has served as a political advantage for the state, because it enhances greater concentration of authority in the hands of the governors. A woreda (district) or an urban administration shall have the power to expropriate rural or urban landholdings for public purpose where it believes that it should be used for a better development project to be carried out by public entities, private investors, cooperative societies or other organs, or where such expropriation is decided by the appropriate higher regional or federal government organ for the same purpose (Proclamation No. 455/200558). The TPLF regime is intentionally violating the land accessibility right of rural communities of Oromia and Southern Ethiopia to achieve political goals of suppressing national struggle of colonized peoples. The regime has already institutionalized practices of human right violations through manipulation of constitution. It formulated politically motivated proclamations (1) to limit humanitarian activities of NGOs using charities proclamation and (2) to crash political opponents through manipulation of anti-terrorism law in order to protect its monopolistic ownership of military, political, and economic powers (Mulataa, 2010b). The regime is not hesitated to practice arbitrary arrest, long detention, or extrajudicial killings of tens of thousands, and torturing peoples suspected to be supporters of opposition political organizations to sustain fears in civil societies. As society becomes more fearful, many individuals yearn for the safety and order promised by strong, controlling regime: and that the fears create conditions under which such regime gains control (Alan Hall, 2010). The regime is systematically advancing level of insecurity by aggravating poverty, expanding borders of food insecurity, manipulating conflicts, degrading safety of ecosystem, and advancing violation of human rights in order to produce the poorest of poor peoples. Thus it can easily use victims of poverty as political animal through manipulation of land use right. The regime easily regulates rural communities’ support of opposition political parties by threatening subsistence livelihoods of about 75% of 85 million populations. Therefore the rural communities are directly controlled by the regime and they cannot be free in any means to vote opposition political parties during election. They will loss land use right, if they vote for opposition.
Power of the regime is frequently dependant of external aids. During 1974 – 1991 financial, material, & technical supports of the international donor communities were channeled through political NGOs of the TPLF to areas under its control to support both military and emergency programs (Mulataa, 2010a). The aids were resulted in increase of peasant-based supports, legitimacy expansion among the civilian population, use of aid resources to support organizational structures, and quantitative capability in feeding the armies (URD, 2002). The regime received very huge sum of financial aids since 1991. It has received a sum of US $ 26 billion in development aid as of 2009 (Helen, 2010). Ethiopians remained in the most wretched poverty, despite decades of development policies (The Economist, 2007). The regime is manipulating foreign military and development aids as instrument to suppress peaceful transfer of political power since1991 through marginalization of opposition political parties. The government of Ethiopia used donor-supported programs, salaries, and training opportunities as political weapons to control the population, punish dissent, and undermine political opponents—both real and perceived, that the local officials deny these people (i.e. supporters of opposition parties) to access seeds and fertilizer, agricultural land, credit, food aid, and other resources for development (HRW, 2010). Policies of aggravating poverty through destruction of livelihood of rural communities are systematically implemented by the TPLF regime to sustain political manipulation of aids, because either emergency or development aids are political instrument of the regime to enforce political support. Increasing level of poverty is tactically increasing enforcement of peoples electing the regime. The regime is frequently manipulating food aid distribution to crash supporters of political opponents. It uses food aids as an instrument to achieve political objectives and to protect its governance powers. Land grabbing policy of the regime is systematically intended to increase size of people dependant on food aids in order to secure political support. For example: “Despite being surrounded by other communities which are well fed, a village with a population of about 1700 adults is starving. We were told that in the two weeks prior to our team’s arrival 5 adults and 10 children had died. Lying on the floor, too exhausted to stand, and flanked by her three-year-old son whose stomach is bloated by malnutrition, one woman described how her family had not eaten for four days. Another three-year-old boy lay in his grandmother’s lap, listless and barely moving as he stared into space. The grandmother said, we are just waiting on the crop, if we have one meal a day we will survive until the harvest, beyond that there is no hope for us (BBC, 2011).” The message is clear and simple. It increases climate of insecurity and fear in society that for who depend on food aids they must support the ruling party in order to survive from a threat of systematic assassination. Therefore political loyalty to the state and the ruling party (the TPLF regime) governs the very existence of rural communities of Ethiopia.” Malkamuu Jaatee and Zakaariyaas Mulataa
A final review of land grabbing policies of successive regimes of Ethiopia
Ethiopia: Left to Starve – Zenawi’s Reign of Terror
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDD48Wvemw0
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/07/india-investors-forcing-ethiopians-off-land
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Copyright © Oromianeconomist 2012 and Oromia Quarterly 1997-2012. All rights reserved. Disclaimer.
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Corruption is set to become one of the defining political issues of the 21st century November 13, 2012
Posted by OromianEconomist in Uncategorized.Tags: illegal loggers, Political corruption, Rent-seeking, Transparency International
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The Corruption Pandemic
Corruption has played a pivotal role in determining the current state of the world – from mass poverty in developing countries, to the destruction of natural resources and to the erosion of trust in political parties. Laurence Cockcroft here argues that corruption has to be seen as the result of the interplay between elite ’embedded networks’, greed and organised crime. He shows how the growth of corruption has been facilitated by globalization, the integration of new and expanding markets into the world economy, and by the rapid expansion of ‘offshore’ financial facilities. These facilities provide a home to largely unregulated pools of finance derived from personal fortunes, organised crime and pricing malpractice in international trade. By identifying the main drivers of corruption world-wide and analyzing the current action to control them, this study suggests ways in which the problems caused by corruption can be addressed and ultimately prevented.
“Laurence Cockcroft is worried about global warming. Yes, like many of us, he’s concerned about the implications of rising temperatures. But he’s also aware of another danger that most people have probably overlooked — namely, the link between climate change and corruption. So what could these two things possibly have to do with each other? A lot, it turns out. As Cockcroft points out, many forms of environmental destruction are against the law in the places where they happen, but the perpetrators — illegal loggers, say, in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, or the Congo — often resort to corruption to evade the law.But there’s an even more interesting angle, too. Some of the mechanisms that the international community has put in place to tackle climate change, Cockcroft says, are potentially vulnerable to abuse. Carbon trading has proven notoriously susceptible to fraud. Rich countries are already committing hundreds of billions of dollars to funds that are supposed to compensate poorer nations for the cost of adapting to global warming.The amounts involved, Cockcroft warns, are potentially bigger than all the money currently spent on development aid. So that makes them a tempting target for graft — especially when you consider how much of the money spent on aid projects in the past has been lost to corruption. “If corruption undermines those funds the way it has undermined a lot of aid programs,” he says, “it could prove a big obstacle to restricting temperature rises to less than two degrees before 2050.” One could easily dismiss Cockcroft as just another single-issue advocate cultivating a pet obsession. But I think that would be a big mistake. I believe that he’s entirely right to argue that corruption has become a systemic disease that undermines governance around the world, and that it can cripple the ability of states to function if left unchecked.” Christian Caryl:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/08/the_corruption_pandemic
ethiopia-reflecting-on-corruption-in-ethiopia
rent-seeking-behaviour-of-the-ethiopian-rulers.pdf
Illicit Financial Flows: A Constraint on Poverty Reduction in Africa
Africa Lost 1.6 Trillion in Capital Flight and Odious Debt Over Forty Years
The billion-dollar question: Where is Angola’s oil money?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-baker/illicit-financial-flows_b_2427495.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/africainvestigates/2011/11/20111123131914242861.html
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