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(Amnesty USA) — The Ethiopian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release a prominent opposition politician facing a possible death sentence on trumped-up terrorism charges over comments he posted on Facebook, said Amnesty International.
Yonatan Tesfaye, the spokesman of the opposition Semayawi (Blue) party, was arbitrarily arrested in December 2015 and held in lengthy pre-trial detention for comments he posted on Facebook. The government says his posts against a government plan to extend the capital’s administrative authority to the Oromia region were in pursuit of the objectives of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which it considers a terrorist organization.
“The Ethiopian authorities have increasingly labelled all opposition to them as terrorism. Yonatan Tesfaye spoke up against a possible land grab in Oromia, which is not a crime and is certainly not terrorism,” said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.
“He and many others held under similar circumstances should be immediately and unconditionally released.”
Tesfaye was arbitrarily arrested in December 2015 and held without charge for months on end. It was not until May 4, 2016 that he was charged with “incitement, planning, preparation, conspiracy and attempt” to commit a terrorist act. The state prosecutor charged that Tesfaye’s remarks were in pursuit of the OLF’s objectives.
“Yonatan Tesfaye has no demonstrated links to the OLF. His arrest is just another example of government overreach in the application of its seriously flawed anti-terrorism law. This law is once again being used as a pretext to quash dissent,” said Wanyeki.
The Ethiopian authorities should also promptly, impartially, thoroughly and transparently investigate claims that he may have been tortured or otherwise ill-treated in detention at the Maekelawi Prison, a jail notorious for its widespread use of torture.
Ethiopia: Endless Injustices against Oromo Nation in the Name of Law Enforcement
HRLHA Press Release
May 3, 2016
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) strongly condemns the TPLF/EPRDF Government’s endless manipulations of the justice system to its own political ends, which was once again manifested in the fully fabricated allegations and charges filed against 22 (twenty-two) Oromo nationals. It surprised no one that the TPLF/EPRDF Government, as usual, used the infamous legal tool of the Anti-Terrorism Law, as a result of which thousands of innocent Oromos and other nationals have been victimized, to arrest, detain and take to court another batch of Oromo activists. These newest allegations and attempts of abusing the justice system are taking place following the months-long and region-wide public protests in Oromia; and are, undoubtedly, parts of the heavy-handed crackdown, which included the imposition of martial law in the Regional State in an effort to suppress the public anger and demands for change.
As described by some international legal analysts, the Ethiopian Anti-Terrorism Law “… criminalizes basic human rights, especially freedom of speech and assembly. The law defines terrorism in an extremely broad and vague way so as to give the government enormous leeway to punish words and acts that would be perfectly legal in a democracy”. This is the reality that came into play in the case of these newly made allegations against 22 Oromo nationals.
According to documents obtained by HRLHA, the 22 Oromo nationals, including top political leaders of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress party, such as Mr. Bekele Gerba (Deputy Chairman) and Mr. DejeneTafa (Deputy Secretary General), Addisu Bulala and others have been charged with allegedly conspiring to overthrow the government by means of instigating a public revolt and protests as well as collaborating with other political organization called Oromo Liberation Front. The new creation in this case is that attempts were made to associate the officially registered and legally operating political parties like the OFC with opposition political organizations that were deemed outlaw by the Ethiopian Government in order to criminalize their legitimate existence and activities.
From left to right, Bekele Gerba, Djene Tafa, Addisu Bulala & others
It is so unfortunate that Mr. Bekele Gerba is being subjected to such politically and racially motivated injustice and the resultant sufferings in Ethiopian substandard jails for the second time in a matter of two years.
The HRLHA has ample documents that hundreds of thousands of innocent Oromos and members of other nationalities have already fallen victims of such injustices and dictatorship committed particularly using this Anti-Terrorism Law, described by some as “a tool to stifle dissent”, as a legal weapon.
Local, regional and international communities have repeatedly witnessed over the past twenty-five years that the TPLF/EPRDF Government of Ethiopia misuses the political power, the justice system, and other public resources to silence and/or eliminate all forms of oppositions and political descents, despite the constitutionally declared democracy, in order to ensure monopoly and lasting partisan political goals. But, no tangible and effective actions are taken so far to make the Ethiopian Government refrain from punishing its own citizens just for exercising or attempting to exercise some of their basic and constitutionally provided democratic rights.
The HRLHA, first of all, calls upon the Ethiopian Government to unconditionally release these Oromo nationals detained and charges for allegedly committing acts of terrorism; as their words and/or acts are undoubtedly legal and, above all, constitutional. HRLHA also calls upon the international community’s so that they condemn the Ethiopian Government, acts of injustices against innocent citizens, and request that these unjustly detained and falsely charged Oromos are freed unconditionally.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to the Ethiopian Government and its concerned officials as swiftly as possible, in English, Amharic, or your own language expressing:
For the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners illegally detained
Urging the Ethiopian authorities to ensure that these detainees would be treated in accordance with the regional and international standards on the treatment of prisoners,
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Debre Mekuria breastfeeds her malnourished baby in Seriel health centre in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, Feb. 13, 2016. REUTERS/Tristan Martin
NAIROBI, May 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation, 4 May 2016) – Over the years, Ethiopian mother-of-three Hana Mekonnen has received all sorts of aid designed to free her from the bitter trap of poverty and hunger: goats, cash transfers, resettlement and, of course, sacks of grain.
None has worked.
Hana’s one-year-old son was diagnosed with malnutrition in October, usually a time of plenty in Ethiopia’s mountainous Amhara region, when the main harvest starts to come in.
The Horn of Africa nation’s worst drought in 50 years has left her destitute, reduced to arguing with neighbors over the allocation of aid rations.
“Because of the drought, we are all poor,” she said, seated in her dimly-lit hut with her child on her lap.
“No one in this village has anything to give their children. We all live on food aid.”
Hana blames God for failed rains, but development experts say her chronic poverty is the result of traditional farming methods, a soaring population and a lack of alternative sources of income.
Millions of farmers and herders across Africa have been pushed into crisis by drought this year, raising questions about the ability of aid to break the hunger cycle, despite a resolve to do so after famine killed 260,000 people in Somalia in 2011.
How to make people less vulnerable to natural disasters, and improving the aid response when they do strike, are key themes of the World Humanitarian Summit on May 23-24 in Istanbul.
SAFETY NET
Hana receives cash and food six months a year, in exchange for environmental work, like digging ponds and planting trees.
Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), set up in 2005, helps her through the ‘lean season’ between harvests, while also rehabilitating land and building roads, health posts and schools to tackle some of the underlying causes of poverty.
The scheme, administered by the government and largely funded by international donors, was set up to end the annual scramble for emergency funding to feed hungry Ethiopians, averaging 5 million a year in the decade before its launch.
It has made the provision of food aid more predictable and cheaper, helping to prevent the terrible famines that tarnished Ethiopia’s international image in the 1970s and 80s.
But it has not ended hunger.
“Ethiopia is, and has demonstrated itself to be, very effective at response,” said Laura Hammond, who heads the development studies department at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
“But there’s still this level of vulnerability and poverty that is persistent and that’s harder to turn a corner on.”
This year, one in five Ethiopians need food aid, with 8 million receiving support from the PSNP and another 10.2 million from a $1.4 billion humanitarian appeal.
By 2020, the project – Africa’s largest social safety net – will have cost donors $5.7 billion, raising questions about its sustainability.
“Ultimately, there does need to be a vision for this not being a donor-financed safety net,” Greg Collins, director of the Center for Resilience at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“We more and more need to be investing in creating opportunities that allow those who are able to graduate from the PSNP.”
Initial optimism about a rapid shift to self-sufficiency has been replaced with an acceptance that some Ethiopians will be dependent on aid indefinitely.
GROWTH STORY
The busy roads, endless construction sites and new light railway snaking over Ethiopia’s capital are testament to the double-digit growth it has enjoyed for the last decade.
This growth has led to a dramatic drop in poverty rates, with the share of the population living below the poverty line falling from 56 to 31 percent between 2000 and 2011, according to World Bank data.
“Ethiopia is the darling of Africa at the moment,” said Lindsey Jones, a researcher with the London-based Overseas Development Institute. “Its economy is expanding massively.”
But deeper structural changes, like urbanization and industrialization, are needed to end poverty, experts say.
From the early 1990s, Ethiopia pursued an agriculture-led development strategy, under visionary strongman Meles Zenawi.
Increased use of fertilizer, better seeds and expert advice produced sharp increases in yields, benefiting the 92 percent of Ethiopians who, according to the World Bank, own land.
As Ethiopia’s population has doubled since the early 1990s, many people’s farms are often only half a hectare.
“There is no means to increase the landholding size,” said Mitiku Kassa, head of Ethiopia’s National Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Committee. “The only option is to increase the productivity of the land by using agricultural technologies.”
Each ward has three development agents, graduates in crop and animal sciences, who demonstrate to villagers how to increase their yields, he said.
But farmers remain vulnerable to poor rains, unlike workers in manufacturing and services jobs, which have proven critical in reducing poverty in countries like Bangladesh and Rwanda.
Ethiopia’s recent investment in the food processing, textile and flower industries is a step towards diversifying the economy away from its heavy dependence on farming, said SOAS’s Hammond.
ACT BEFORE DROUGHT
The most popular buzzword among aid workers after the 2011 drought across the Horn of Africa was “resilience”, which means boosting people’s ability to bounce back from shocks like a failed harvest or a death in the family.
Projects that provide families with alternative sources of income, such as livestock, or loans to set up small businesses, can make them less vulnerable when disaster hits.
“What’s needed is more investment in action before droughts strike,” said Michael Mosselmans, head of humanitarian policy and practice for Christian Aid.
Every dollar spent on preparedness saves seven dollars in disaster aftermath, the United Nations says, but it is harder to generate enthusiasm for preventative projects than tackling visible crises, like starving children.
At the World Humanitarian Summit, Christian Aid is calling for 5 percent of aid to be spent on resilience and disaster preparedness, up from the current 0.4 percent.
Ethiopia is not holding its breath.
The government’s Mitiku says efforts to end hunger for women like Hana must be driven by Ethiopia itself.
“Emergencies will continue, in my view, as long as we are living with adverse climate change,” he said, drawing comparisons with drought-hit California.
“They are not appealing (for funds) because they have the capacity to respond. We expect Ethiopia to have such capacity to respond by itself… when we reach lower middle-income (status),” he said, a target it has set for 2025.
During my recent visit to Addis Ababa, one thing caught my eyes: the increased number of people on the streets begging for food and money. This is not the same Ethiopian capital I visited last year. It is very different due to a severe drought, and the government is trying hard to keep word from getting out.
Ziway Dugda district communities waiting for food distribution at Ogolcha food centre in a drought stricken area in Ziway Dugda district, during UN Secretary General, Ban Ki moon’s visit to Ethiopia, on 31 January, 2016.(AP/MulugetaAyene)
I asked a fellow journalist from Ethiopia – I will not mention his identity for security reasons – if I could take a photo.
“The government doesn’t want us (media) to write about this, and especially if you are a foreign journalist, you will be in much trouble. Most of the local journalists here are in jail for reporting the hunger stories and other stories that the government is against.
“The government thinks by telling the hunger stories, it is an embarrassment to the country,” he says, echoing what I hear from other journalists as well as NGOs.
Ethiopia is facing its worst drought in at least three decades, with devastating effects on agriculture and livestock, whilst millions of people face food insecurity. More than 10 million people – one in ten Ethiopians – are said to need emergency aid due to failed rains.
The Ethiopian government and humanitarian agencies have said that Ethiopia needs nearly US$600 million in international humanitarian assistance. But critics say the government’s new leasing law for foreign concerns is aggravating the crisis by blocking livestock from grazing in areas less-affected by the drought.
One-quarter of all districts in Ethiopia – mainly in the north of the country – are officially classified as facing a food security and nutrition crisis after the drought cut production by up to 90 per cent in some areas. That has caused a flight to the cities.
“Whenever the drought occurs in these areas, people migrate to areas less affected to look for food, and Addis Ababa is one of the areas they move to, especially those just in the outskirts of the city,” said Mitiku Kassa, the Commissioner in charge of Ethiopia’s Disaster Risk Management and Food Security Agency, in an interview with Equal Times.
According to the NGO Save the Children the number of those affected could be higher, considering that 7.9 million people are supported by the government’s safety net program that provides wheat, cereals and cooking oil. It says at least 6 million children are hungry.
Worst seen since the 1980s
The nation has historically struggled with hunger, including in the 1980s, when famine and civil war left hundreds of thousands of people dead.
Experts are predicting that Ethiopia will experience the worst drought in generations, one that will surpass the 1984 famine that killed one million people.
United Sates Department of Agriculture reports that Ethiopia sought 1 million tons of wheat late last year – more than what it bought last season. The government also purchased 500,000 tons more last month through the port of Djibouti, as Ethiopia is a landlocked country.
It is estimated that imports will jump to 2.5 million tons this year, up from the 900,000 tons purchased last year. And USAID, which has deployed a disaster response team to Ethiopia, last month announced that it would provide nearly US$4 million in maize and wheat seed for more than 226,000 households.
“The Ethiopian government is building distribution points and temporary warehouses for the food delivery,” Mohammed Said, the Ethiopian government Director of Communications and Media, tells Equal Times.
“All the centres in the drought-affected regions have been equipped with food they need, and focus is now shifting to providing seeds and fertiliser to farmers so they can start planting following the start of rains.”
He said that the government has a budget of US$381million to cater for those affected by drought, including their animals.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) early this year announced an emergency US$50 million aid to help drought-hit Ethiopians.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said Ethiopia has launched emergency food delivery and supervision system that helps provide food for the drought affected areas before the onset of the rainy season. He also called for more international assistance.
The United Nations also says that 5.8 million people in the country are in need water, sanitation, and hygiene services while the total assistance required in 2016 is US$1.4 billion.
The predicted number of children at risk from suffering from severe malnutrition this year is 430,000.
Paul Handley, Head of the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia, said that by the end of the first quarter of 2016, 546,257 moderately malnourished children and pregnant and breastfeeding women were treated through the Targeted Supplementary Feeding (TSF) Programme. This represents 82 per cent of the first quarter target of 665,000 people.
“Food overall will become harder to access if we continue to see prices rise, food stocks deplete and livestock become weaker, less productive, and perish,” says FAO representative for Ethiopia, Amadou Allahoury.
“As soon as the rains start, FAO plans include distributing seeds and animal feed, vaccinating animals, delivering 100,000 sheep and goats to vulnerable households and giving farmers cash for bringing weakened and unproductive livestock to slaughter.”
He says that the current drought is not just a food crisis – it is above all a livelihood crisis.
Under Ethiopian law, land is government-owned but occupants have customary rights. In 2010, Ethiopia passed a new farm policy to which the government is leasing 3 million hectares to foreign agricultural investors who mostly include Chinese, Indians and Saudis.
According to the government, the foreign investors will have to satisfy domestic food needs before they can export, while at the same time improve the social welfare of people in the rural areas.
“You cannot speak about land issues now especially with the food insecurity in the country. You will be arrested for that,” says one official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The vast majority of land is being used by foreigners for agriculture, especially rice cultivation in the southwest region,” he says.
Although not as affected by the drought as the northern region, the southwest is where most of the food for the country comes from.
“Pastoralists would also move to this region whenever there is drought in the north, to graze their animals, but now they can’t,” the official says. “This is one of the reasons we are witnessing the worst hunger in the country.”
U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken condemned the lethal violence used by the government of Ethiopia against hundreds of Oromo protesters. #OromoProtests
HRW: Foreign Policy In Focus: Deafening Silence from Ethiopia:The Ethiopian government is cracking down on journalists and NGOs. Where’s the outrage from the international community?
Why Have Oromo People Been Clashing With The Ethiopian Government For So Long? http://www.afrizap.com/en/why-have-oromo-people-been-clashing-with-the-ethiopian-government-for-so-long
France 24: Focus: Anger among Ethiopia’s Oromo boils over.
Growing public dissatisfaction with ‘rent seeking’ and corruption in the ruling party and government culminated recently in the unprecedented Oromo protests.
Oromia & Ethiopia: #OromoProtests: With whom are the European Union, the United States, and the African Union Officials meeting to discuss and end the exclusion and marginalization of the Oromo people in Ethiopia? April 8, 2016
This is a hand written defense statement of Okello Ukuay, former president of Gambella region who was recently sentenced to 9 years imprisonment. In this defense statement he explains that he left his presidency in 2004 because Meles Zenawi and his regime pressured him to lie saying the massacre of over 400 people in the region was caused by enter-ethnic conflict between Agnuak and Nuer groups.Instead he asserts that the massacre was planned by TPLF leaders and carried out by the army. Okello also claims that the Ehtiopian regime was able to capture him in Juba ( South Sudan) by paying 23 million dollars to buy him and 6 Oromo refugees. This is an interesting read which gives us some insight about the ongoing conflict and mass killing in Gambella region. Source: Social Media and Jawar Mohammed
(SBO Bitootessa 19 Bara 2016) Koongirasiin Amarikaa Dhimma Dhiitamiinsa Mirga Dhala Namaa Oromiyaa keessatti geggeeffama jiru irratti bakka ummatin oromoo BiyyaAmarikaa Kutaa Bulchiinsa gara garaa, Biyya Kanadaa kutaa Ontaarihoo Magaalaa Ottawaa fi Torontoo argamanitti rakkoo Saba oromoo irra mootummaa TPLFn gahaa jiru dhaggeeffachuun mootummaan Amarikaa dhimma kana kan yeroo kamii caalaa xiyyeeffanaa itti kennuun akka faana bu’anu Kongiras Tom Lantos dubbatan.ummatin kumaatamaan waltti dhufe kun Daandiiwwan Washington DC gurgguddoo cufsiisuun Hiriira Nagaa guddaas geggeeffataniiru.
“There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come. The Oromo’s time has come. What the Oromo did yesterday in Washington honored the sacrifices of the #OromoProtests in Oromia.”
Bonnie Holcomb
https://www.oromiamedia.org/2016/04/07/omn-oduu-ebla-7-2016/https://youtu.be/uwHhhlkGwBg#OromoProtests in Limmuu Saqaa, Jimmaa, Oromia, 7 April 2016#OromoProtests, 8 April 2016The administrative harassment of Oromo university students continues. Here is a notice in Amharic to a number of Jimma University Oromo students. Intimidating students into submission by threatening to dismiss them on political grounds is an old tactic used by authorities.
And yet THE RESISTANCE CONTINUES. Source: Tsegaye Ararsa, on social media
Qeerroon biyaa ambaa Bosaaso jiran mormii sanii dhageessisan. #OromoProtests 7 April 2016#OromoProtests, 7 April 2016 in Hirna, West Hararge, 3 people including Beyan Abas were shot and wounded. The people protested and disrupted celebration of OPDO’s 26th founding anniversary. Similar protest have been taking place all across the province in towns and rural areas of Xullo, Dobba, Daro Labu, Miesso and Burqa Tinitu districts.
Mormii Ebla 7 bara 2016 aanaa xuulloo magaalaa Hirnaatti godhamerrati namooni hedduun miidhamani akka jiranii fi kanis hidhamani akka jiran beekamee jira. Warra rasaasaan rukutame keessaa tokko Bayaan Abbaa kan jedhamu yoo ta’u yeroo ammaa kana hospitaal Ciroo keessatti waldhaanamaa jira. Mormiin kun ayyaana OPDO kan 26 hin feenu jechuun kan ka’e yoo ta’u aanaalee godinachaa hedduu keessatti godhamaa jira. Jiraattonni anaanalee Xuulloo, Mi’eessoo, Daaro Labuu, Doobbaafi Burqaa Tindhitu keessatti mormiin akka jiru gabaasni nu gahe ni garsiisa.
“Banned and forced out of Transitional Government”: Struggle for National Rights and Democracy, in the Era of a “New World Order” – the Case of OLF by Dr. Shigut Geleta full speech.
Dear Mr. Chairman,
Esteemed members of the Swedish Parliament,
Dear Honourable guest speakers,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
First of all, I would like to thank and convey my deepest gratitude to the organizing committee for inviting me to present a paper on this seminar on behalf of the Oromo Liberation Front, OLF. It is a great privilege and honour for me and my organization to be here today representing the Oromo people.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The topic on which I am going to speak is “Banned and forced out of Transitional Government: Struggle for National Rights and Democracy – the Case of OLF”. My presentation is organized in five main parts:-
I will give some background on the Oromo people and Ethiopia.
I will elucidate the birth and grand objectives of the OLF and its formidable role in the past, today, and the future politics of Ethiopia.
I will try to indicate how the vision of “New world order” challenged by Global War on Terror (GWOT).
I will skim over the current situation in Oromia/Ethiopia, and finally,
I offer my organization’s view on the way forward.
The United States is deeply concerned by the Government of Ethiopia
On Ethiopia’s Charges of Terrorism Against Political Leaders
Press Statement
John Kirby Assistant Secretary and Department Spokesperson, Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, DC
April 29, 2016
The United States is deeply concerned by the Government of Ethiopia’s recent decision to file terrorism charges against Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) First Vice-Chairman Bekele Gerba and others in the Oromia region who were arrested in late 2015.
We again urge the Ethiopian government to discontinue its reliance on the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation law to prosecute journalists, political party members, and activists, as this practice silences independent voices that enhance, rather than hinder, Ethiopia’s democratic development.
We commend Ethiopian officials for pledging to address legitimate grievances from their citizens and acknowledging that security forces were responsible for some of the violence that took place during the protests in Oromia; however, the government continues to detain an unknown number of people for allegedly taking part in these protests and has not yet held accountable any security forces responsible for alleged abuses. This undermines the trust and confidence needed to produce lasting solutions.
We urge the Ethiopian government to respect due process of those detained by investigating allegations of mistreatment, by publicly presenting the evidence it possesses against them, and by distinguishing between political opposition to the government and the use or incitement of violence. We reaffirm our call on the government to protect the constitutionally enshrined rights of its citizens, including the right to participate in political parties, and we urge the Government to promptly release those imprisoned for exercising these rights.
Aspiring to Assist
Amane Wako, a UMD junior double majoring in accounting and international studies, is one of those students who has the desire to help others.
Lessons in Duluth
Amane has volunteered at the Damiano Center, a social services organization in Duluth, for years. She tutors children in math and reading at their Kid’s Café and she helps out homeless and low income people by serving meals in their kitchen.
She was impressed by the organization’s philosophy, and she wants to start her own non-profit organization, so she can help those in need someday.
That day came sooner than she ever imagined. This past winter, Amane helped 47 households in the Oromia region of Ethiopia.
Amane is originally from Oromia. She moved to United States with her mother and attended Cooper High School in Minneapolis. However, most of her relatives are still in Oromia, and she visits them regularly.
In December 2015, Amane watched television news and saw a protest by Oromo farmers and residents who wanted the government to stop taking their land. Security forces killed at least 40 people, hundreds were wounded, and thousands were detained during the three weeks of uprisings in Oromia.
Amane was upset and worried about the Oromo people. “I wanted to do something to help families back in my home region.”
Immediately she looked for ways to help get food and water to the people in Oromia. Amane talked with her professors and asked for a few minutes of class time to give presentations. UMD students donated hundreds of dollars to the cause.
When Amane went back to Minneapolis on weekends, she gave a presentation at a church and talked to friends to raise even more money.
By the time she went back to Oromia during the winter break, she had gathered over $1000. Amane was joined by her friends in Oromia to make deliveries. In spite of the dangers, she and her friends bought food and water to those most in need. They listened to the stories of the families affected by the violence.
“People in my home region suffered. Many were hungry, thirsty and homeless,” she said. “I want to do more to help them, but as a student, the only thing I can do now is to study harder.”
Amane has a plan though. “In the future, I want to build a place to serve free food, just like the Damiano Center does in Duluth,” she says.
Amane listened to stories of people affected by violence.
The following is a statement of the Oromo Federalist Congress International Support Group (OFC-ISG)
OFC-ISG Press Release No. 4 – April 27, 2016
“Ethiopian Prosecutors Charge Oromo Opposition Leaders under Anti-Terrorism Proclamation”
On April 22, 2016, Ethiopian federal prosecutors charged 22 individuals, including Mr. Bekele Gerba, First Secretary-General of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), with violations of various articles of Ethiopia’s notorious Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP). The charges include – but are not limited to – alleged communication with the banned Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), public incitement, encouraging violence, causing the deaths of innocent civilians as well as property destruction in cities, such as Ambo and Adama, during the recent protests in Oromia, Ethiopia. All prisoners were previously transferred from Makalawi to Qilinxu jail without any notice to their families or lawyers.
“When they arrived at Qilinxu prison, they were offered to take pills by prison administration – which all the 22 prisoners refused,” according to Bekele Gerba’s daughter Bontu in an interview she gave to Oromia Media Network (OMN) on April 23, 2016. “Then, the prison police took 4 of the prisoners – Bekele Gerba, Dejene Tafa, Addisu Bulala and Gurmessa Ayana – to a dark room and they are no more with the 18 others,” she added. “We, family members, were no more able to visit them this weekend,” said Aynalem Debelo, the wife of the Deputy Secretary of OFC, Dejene Tafa. “When we request their whereabouts and demand to visit them, the police has no answer. They told us to communicate with the prison administrators who are not willing to talk to us,” they told OMN.
Even when they were in Makelawi, prison conditions were harsh and dangerous. Bekele explained this in his own words in the court the following way:
“Imprisonment is not a big deal. Violating prisoners’ human rights is rare in the world. No one is cruel like the Ethiopian government. We share a room of 4-meters by 5-meters with 23 prisoners. We put our clothes and a bucket for emergency in the same room. When we protested this by hunger strike, they told us, ‘You can die if you want to.’ We too are ready to die”.
– Bekele Gerba, Deputy Chairperson of Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), March 18, 2016, at his third remand hearing.
Mr. Gerba appealed to the court about the inhumane and degrading conditions in the prison cell, but to no avail. During his fourth appearance in court on April 15, 2016, he showed his lawyer the rashes on his body resulting from insect bites, mainly bedbugs and fleas. Such detention conditions violate Article 18(1) of the Ethiopian Constitution, which reads: “Everyone has the right to protection against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Mr. Gerba and others committed no crime, neither were they informed about all the charges against them. Above all, Mr. Gerba believes that only a peaceful and nonviolent struggle can guarantee real change and build a truly democratic society in Ethiopia. Mr. Gerba rejects violence and has stated as much in several interviews. He believes in Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolent political resistance and has translated one of Dr. King’s books into Oromo so as to better spread this message. The EPRDF government’s accusations of terrorism against these Oromo political leaders are baseless. Rather, these charges are being used to suppress the basic human rights of Oromos and other Ethiopian peoples who are struggling to bring democracy, freedom and justice to Ethiopia. Such acts by Ethiopian government violate Articles 29, 30, and 31 of the Ethiopian Constitution, which guarantees the “Right of Thought, Opinion and Expression; The Right of Assembly, Demonstration and Petition and Freedom of Association.”
The Oromo Federalist Congress International Support Group (OFC-ISG) is saddened by the magnitude of charges brought against Mr. Gerba and other political prisoners. We would like our supporters, friends and the world to know that these charges are false allegations. As stated by the Chairperson of the OFC-ISG, in an interview with Oromo-TV, “What worries OFC-ISG most is the fate of that country. If such acts of absolute repression crush every peaceful movement and produce radicals, it is advantageous neither to Ethiopia nor to the West. Therefore, we ask the international community to stand by our side and put pressure on the Ethiopian government to unconditionally free all Oromo political prisoners since the government has already taken accountability for the poor governance that ignited the Oromo protests in Oromia.”
The Oromo Federalist Congress International Support Group (OFC-ISG) is a non-profit organization established in 2010 with the mission to bring an end to the brutal oppression, injustice and inequality with a view to advancing human rights, rule of law, good governance, protection of the environment and sustainable development in Ethiopia by supporting the struggle of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) through advocacy, education and financial contributions.
Oromo Federalist Congress International Support Group
Minneapolis MN
Klobuchar, Franken Condemn Ethiopia’s Lethal Violence Against Protesters
April 27, 2016
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Colin Milligan (Klobuchar), 202-228-6317
Michael Dale-Stein (Franken), 202-224-2916
The bipartisan resolution calls for the Secretary of State to conduct a review of U.S. security assistance to Ethiopia in light of allegations that Ethiopian security forces have killed civilians;it also calls upon the government of Ethiopia to halt violent crackdowns, conduct a credible investigation into the killing of protesters, and hold perpetrators of such violence accountable
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken today condemned the lethal violence used by the government of Ethiopia against hundreds of Oromo protesters. The bipartisan Senate resolution calls for the Secretary of State to conduct a review of U.S. security assistance to Ethiopia in light of allegations that Ethiopian security forces have killed civilians. It also calls upon the government of Ethiopia to halt violent crackdowns, conduct a credible investigation into the killing of protesters, and hold perpetrators of such violence accountable.
“I am deeply concerned by continuing reports of violence and restrictions on civil liberties perpetrated by Ethiopian security forces in the Oromia region of Ethiopia,”said Klobuchar. “Minnesota is proud to be home to the largest Oromo community in the United States. My thoughts are with the families of those who have been victims of violence in Ethiopia. I call on Prime Minister Desalgen to restore confidence in the government by putting an end to the violence and intimidation from Ethiopian security forces against peaceful protestors.”
“Around 40,000 Oromo people live in Minnesota, and I’m proud that our state is home to so many vibrant immigrant families,” said Franken. “I stand with our local Oromo community against the terrible violence that’s affected their loved ones who are still in Ethiopia. For years, the Ethiopian government has been accused of serious human rights violations—unprovoked arrests, torture, and oppression—and in recent months, reports indicate that at least 200 people have been killed by Ethiopian security forces. Our bipartisan resolution will help bring much-needed awareness to a terrible tragedy that can no longer go overlooked.”
The protests in Ethiopia, which began last November, were prompted by concerns about lack of grassroots consultation with affected communities in advance of the Ethiopian government’s plan to expand the capital, Addis Ababa. At least 200 people are believed to have died at the hands of security forces during the course of the protests, and hundreds more have been jailed, including journalists reporting on the demonstrations. In February, Klobuchar and Franken sent a letter to Secretary Kerry urging the administration take action to address escalating violence against civilians in the Oromia region of Ethiopia. Minnesota is home to the largest Oromo population in the United States.
The United States works closely with Ethiopia on Administration initiatives including Feed the Future and the African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership.
How Konso people’s demand for constitutional self-determination was met with state violence
Abate Seyoum, from Konso, Addis Standard, 25 April, 2016
Undoubtedly, Ethiopia is going through nervous times. The much publicized massive anti-government protests by the Oromo, the country’s largest ethnic group, since the last five months reveal the depth and length of the government’s intolerance for dissenting voices.
But unconcerned by a potentially similar response of killing and jailing by the government, the Konso community in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR), located south of the famous Lake Chamo, have been protesting against the regional administration.
Although the protest has attracted little media attention, the Konso people have staged peaceful protests for ten consecutive months before cal has returned as of end of last month. During the period of protest tension has escalated and deescalated time and again. Several members of the Konso community faced mass arrests, releases, and re-arrests. On Sat. March 5th confrontation between the community and a federal police force resulted in the later firing live bullets against unarmed people, injuring one. Security forces have also detained the chief traditional leader Kalla Gezahegn (who is now released after so much pressure). In jail, Kalla joined several other detainees who were accused of being motivated by outlawed armed groups including the banned Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and the Patriotic Ginbot 7.
Why were the Konso protesting?
The fundamental cause of the conflict between the regional administration and the Konso Community lies in the making of the newly established Segen Area Peoples Zone in March 2011. In a bid to provide an administrative solution to the recurring quest for self administration and autonomy by the Alle ethnic minority, the regional government granted District (Woreda) status to Alle Community, unifying several districts (Kebeles),which, until then were administered by the Derashe and Konso Special Districts.
It soon appeared that the newly created Alle District needed a linking administrative tier below the regional government to be attached to. (The reason being as a mere district it cannot have direct link with the regional administration). The easiest way out for the then regional authorities was to create a new zone in the region by combining Konso, Derashe, Amaro, and Burji Special Woredas to the newly created Alle Woreda. In haste and without any sort of public consultation, as the Konso People claim, the regional administration created a zone called Segen Area Peoples Zone, with its capital at Gumayde town. The regional government sought to solve the single problem of Alle Community by creating four more problems for other communities.
The creation of the new zone means the demotion of Konso, Derashe, Burji, and Amaro from Special District status to District status, which has budgetary, economic and political implications, Konso being at the worst end point. The combining of these special districts also means the revoking of their constitutional administrative autonomy which they have exercised for the last 20 years.
But for Konso, the problem is not just economic one; it has a political under layer. The base of the zone administration is in the Gumayde town of Konso, which means moreKebelesneed to be taken from Konso District to make up yet another administrative tier with the name of Gumayde Town Administration under the zone. The Konso people are vehemently opposed to this move as it arguably impedes their constitutional right to self-administration, and their right to advance their culture, language and national identity, enshrined in the constitution. Thus, from the very beginning the Konso have been exercising a subdued form of protest claiming that it has led to political, administrative, and economic injustices.
Triggers of the latest protest
The new protest broke out when the newly created Segen Area Peoples Zone Administration took the hitherto shelved Segen Town Administration establishment plan and started to implement it in June 2015, taking land from the five Kebeleadministrations from Konso Woreda without public consultation. Angered by yet another move of impunity by the regional and zonal administrations, the Konso people have decided to use their constitutional right to self determination and self administration: they have requested to separate from the Segen Area Peoples Zone, and establish their own new zone.
First, led by traditional clan leaders the Konso people have held several mass rallies between July and October 2015 calling on the regional government to halt the implementation and hold public consultations. Having been angered by the administration’s indifference and refusal to organize public consultations, the elders and prominent community leaders called yet another big rally. On Friday October 9th 2015 more than 50,000 people staged a silent walk through the town.
Second, the elders, following traditional rites, rebuked zonal administration members of Konso origin, declaring their total disrespect for the elders, the community, the culture and even to the constitutional values. They declared to the mass that the zonal government structure and their district collaborators were irrelevant to the community. Since that day a strong peaceful social disobedience is being applied by the community to keep the rogue leaders at bay. The community also called on the district council not to approve the budget for the current Ethiopian Fiscal year, as it is unfairly distributed by the zonal administration.
Third, the mass rally elected a 12 member committee to prepare, submit and follow up a written request to relevant government organs declaring the Konso decision to separate from the Segen Area Peoples Zone and requesting the regional government to grant Konso a zonal status of its own. Elders and representatives then submitted the communities’ request to regional and federal government organs. The sovereign councils in 38 of the 43Kebele administrations in the district approved the Konso community’s decision to separate from the Segen zone. This was followed by the approval and endorsement of the community’s decision by the principal district government legislative organ, the sovereign district council. The council fully approved the decision to separate from Segen Area Peoples Zone, which is the ultimate precondition for self determination as stated in the regional constitution.
In came excessive force and subversive tactics
The regional government which hitherto underestimated the depth and breadth of the Konso Protest realized that things were getting out of its hands in the district. In anticipation of yet another large rally, and in a bid to subvert it, the regional government has deployed the regional Special Forces and hastened to make arrests. So far the district police commander, three members of the peoples committee, and the district deputy chief administrator along with a dozen others are placed under police custody.
In reaction to the disproportional state violence, a general strike was staged by schools and government offices. Although several provocations were conducted by the security forces (in one incident at Fasha on Sunday Nov. 15th 2015, for example, the Special Forces randomly fired 200 rounds of tear gas into people’s houses and the market place). However their violence did not beget violence as the community kept its discipline and order.
Following talks between the SNNPR Chief Regional Administrator and the elders from the community, those who were arrested were released and the Special Forces were withdrawn. Offices and schools were also re-opened.
But the regional government continued intimidating the Konso community with a frequent visit and use of heavy words by its officials including Kifle G/Mariam, head of the regional health bureau; Lemma Gezume, Speaker of the Council of Nationalities of the regional government and Fiseha Garedew, Commissioner General of the regional Special Forces as well as zonal government administrators.
Unfortunately, as of late, the regional government has resorted to more violent tactics by deploying more troops from the regional Special Forces. So far more than 1200 members of the regional Special Forces have been deployed to the district and to stations close to large traditional community settlement compounds, establishing check points at every village entrances, subjecting innocent citizens to daily searches. They have also disarmed the district police and confiscated motorbikes and other property belonging to community members.
On February 28 this year under the pretext of conducting the regular political evaluation, the regional authorities have taken all Konso district cabinet members to Arbaminch city and arrested five of them including Solomon Galita, the district’s chief administrator.
Currently, there remains a high presence of Special Forces in the area creating an atmosphere of fear and tension. Afraid of repercussion including arbitrary beatings and arrests, schools and government offices remain closed and roads are deserted.
Ways out of the impasse?
The Konso people appear to possess a very strong commitment to the Constitutional order. They, in fact, have reaffirmed their commitment in a written statement. However, subversive tactics of the regional and zonal administration which resort to criminalizing genuine demands rather than addressing them properly are highly unlikely to yield positive results. Nor will the use of military means produce a lasting solution. But several members of the Konso community say there are a few things the regional government can do to diffuse the tension and find a lasting solution to the problem.
First and foremost, all those incarcerated without charges and without due process must be released immediately or should be given immediate access to justice. The government should re-arm the district police and should immediately reduce the number or withdraw the Special Forces on the ground. It requires genuine effort on the government’s side to regain public trust.
Second, the regional government must realize that it cannot always continue to be both the referee and the player in the game. It must make itself ready to listen to and understand the community’s genuine constitutional demands. Subversive tactics will only end up widening the rift between the government and the public.
Third, any mediation effort by the zonal administrators, who have lost their traditional statuses in the eyes of the wider community, cannot result in a productive outcome. The Konso are very conservative in that regard; the elders demand respect for their culture.
Fourth, the government should stop recycling and reappointing officials who were once or twice purged by the party for various reasons including corruption and incompetence.
The Konso protests have drawn the SNNPR authorities to a new realm of conflict, a realm of peaceful disobedience which they are not well acquainted with. It has taken more time, resources, and energy, from them. And yet there is no foreseeable end to it. Unless they learn from their failed tactics so far, they will not have the resource, energy and time to deal with such non violent protests if they erupt simultaneously in just two or three of the districts in the region.
Konso Democracy#, peaceful demonstration in October 2015
ED’s Note: the author is a resident of Konso and member of the community. This commentary was first published on March edition of the magazine.
Since then, according to the author, the following developments have occurred in the area:
“As is rightly recommended in the [article], the government has finally submitted to a peaceful negotiated solution to the problem. The federal government intervened by releasing the chief traditional leader on 21/03/2016 from Arbaminch Prison to hold meeting with community.
“Subsequently, they held a weeklong series of meetings with the community led by SNNP Chief Administrator, Dese Dalke, Federal Police Commissioner, and Defense Ministry representative. They agreed on 12 point issues to be resolved. Nine are agreed upon. Three points, the main political demands of the people remain unresolved. But normalization steps have already started. The community and the regional government are now negotiating on action plans to resolve the issues agreed up on. All the 200 prisoners are released and only four people remain jailed.”
FOUR MISSING OROMO FEDERALIST CONGRESS MEMBERS, CO-DEFENDANTS APPEAR IN COURT THIS MORNING
ADDISSTANDARD, APRIL 26, 2016
Twenty two defendants, including four missing senior members of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) have appeared at the Federal High Court 19th Criminal Bench this morning. The court adjourned the next hearing, which will be a defense hearing, until May 10th.
Federal prosecutors have charged 22 members of the OFC on Friday April 22nd with several articles of Ethiopia’s infamous Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP). On the same day the court ordered the police to transfer all the 22 detainees from the notorious Ma’ekelawi, where they have been kept incommunicado for most of the last four months, to Qilinto, a prison cell south of the city’s outskirt under the administration of the Addis Abeba Prison Authority.
Following their transfer on Friday, however, news emerged that four of the 22: Bekele Gerba , first secretary general of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), OFC members Adisu Bulala, Gurmesa Ayano and Dejene Tafa, have disappeared after refusing to take “unknown pills” administered to them by prison authorities upon their arrival in Qilinto.
This morning, Bekele Gerba told the court that the four of them were “kept in an isolated, dark room for the last four days for refusing to take pills which we didn’t know about.” Bekele also told the court they have been denied access to their family members and legal counsel. He then requested the court to arrange for public hearing as per their constitutional rights so that “journalists and family members can attend court hearings.” Dejene Tafa on his part said that he now fears for his safety and the safety of the 21 co-defendants.
This morning a further 16 individuals, all from the Oromia regional state, and were detained at Ma’ekelawi were also brought to the same court. The court adjourned the hearing until this afternoon. It is expected that like the 22, the 16, under the file name of Tesema Regasa, will be charged with the ATP. According to lawyer Wondimu Ebbissa, who is representing the 22 defendants, so far 83 defendants, including Bekele Gerba et al, are held in Qilinto and a further 97 are believed to be either at Ma’ekelawi or the Addis Abeba police prison facility near Ma’ekelawi.
Among the charges the prosecutors have brought on defendants include statements that the defendants have participated in the recent #OromoProtests against the implementation of the Addis Abeba Master Plan, the immediate cause for the widespread protests within the Oromia regional states, the largest of the nine regional states that constitute Ethiopia.
However, a month after protests have erupted, in a rare gesture of concession to public demand, both the federal government and the Oromia regional state have said they withdrew the plan, something the federal prosecutors seem to negate with some part of their charges that indicted defendants for participating in the protest.
Contact: Jean Heyer (612) 701-3874 / heyerjeanmarie@gmail.com
Web: www.ilhanomar.com
April 25, 2016 – Ilhan Omar strongly condemns the brutal crackdown on innocent unarmed peaceful protestors during the previous and current Oromo Protests.
“I stand with the Oromo struggle for freedom, justice and democracy in Ethiopia,” said Omar. “I urge the United States Government to stand by peaceful protestors and sanction Ethiopia, in the event it continues the current state-led violence in Oromia.
“The current protests in Oromia are not new. In April 2014, students from the Oromia region began protesting against the new Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan, which incorporates smaller towns surrounding Addis Ababa, displacing millions without compensation and endangering the economic livelihood of ethnic Oromo people in Oromia. This plan will ensure that millions of people in Oromia will be disposed of their land, their survival both in economic and cultural terms will be threatened. The Master Plan intends to expose Oromia’s natural habitat to risk, threaten economic livelihood and violate the Ethiopian constitution. As a result of the 2014 peaceful protests, over 140 people, mainly students, were mercilessly killed by Ethiopian security personnel. No independent investigation was conducted and civilians in Oromia were left burying their dead without any guarantee of justice.
“In November 2015, protests erupted again in the Oromia region. As a result, over 400 people have been killed in the past five months, thousands taken to detention camps, opposition leaders arrested and Martial Law was declared as a tactic to silence dissent. Ethiopia is an important strategic ally to the United States, but we must be wary of supporting governments that conduct in various human rights violations and condemn actions that equate to crimes against humanity.
“I call on public officials, the United States government and the international community to condemn the atrocities being committed against innocent unarmed civilians in Oromia, Ethiopia.”
In his recent article, the veteran Oromo political leader Ob. Ibsaa Guutama wrote, the “Oromo rage, that was suppressed for ages, started to erupt with thunderous sound from November 2015. Never in the history of Oromo since 16th century had such great number rose together to determine its own destiny. Such a civilian tide has never been seen rising at the same time empty-handed in the history of the region to challenge an enemy – armed to the teeth with modern weapons …”
Here are the videos of the Oromo Protests: the Greatest United Action by Oromos since the 16-Century – the Oromo people protesting against the Ethiopian Federal government’s Master Plan with unflinching determination. This 5-part video series covers the period of the Oromo Protests from November 29, 2015 to January 4, 2016.
Currently, the Afar people in Ethiopia are facing disastrous, appalling and unprecedented dreadful famine catastrophe. The famine was not only caused by lack of rain, drought, climate change and effect of El Niño weather conditions as they claim but, it was a result of TPLF/EPRDF corruption, failure of strategies and policies, bad governance, human rights violations, unlawful land grabbing, forcible removal and eviction of Afar People from their traditional grazing land. They were driven away from the banks of Awash River which has been the lifeline of the Afar population that depend on it for survival since time immemorial to make place for the sugar plantations and large-scale agricultural projects owned by TPLF and foreign multinational corporations, companies and investors.
First, the Afar people saying that since 2012, they have been calling on the Federal and Regional Governments to find solution for the water shortages, environmental degradation, destruction of pastors and grazing resources, drying up of the Awash River problems that caused by damming of the Awash River by the regime, nevertheless their appeal and call fell on deaf ear.
Second it is a well-documented fact is that both the Ex-President and the current President of the Afar region, Ex- and current Federal Communication Affairs Office Minister have deliberately and blindly denied the existence of the famine in Ethiopia during 2013-2015.
Third, it is irrefutable fact is that TPLF/ ANDP or “ADE as it is known locally” purposely failed to recognise, acknowledge and to declare the famine on time. They even refused to call publically on the international Community for emergency humanitarian assistance to help the affected peoples in the country.
Additional fact is that, instead of helping the affected peoples by the famine, Federal Government Communication Affairs Office Minister Redwan Hussein blamed and accused the Afar pastoralists for the death of their livestock in order to cover his Government’s forcible removal of Afar pastoralists from their traditional grazing land on the Awash River banks to make away for TPLF, Foreign Multinational Corporations’ and Investors owned large scale Projects. The famine created by TPLF/EPRDF has already caused too many catastrophic problems for the Afar, such as food insecurity, water crisis, widespread malnutrition, health problem and unprecedented death of their livestock. As a result, the Afar have severely suffered.
In addition to the unprecedented famine that was worsened by the policies of the regime the TPLF has developed the following plans to systematically exterminate the Afar in Ethiopia:-
Unlawful land grabbing and enforced eviction from their land
Removing them from the Awash River banks forcibly
Transferring parts of Afar land to the Somali tribe called Issa to create endless conflict between them in coordination with Issa dominated regime of Djibouti for its interests.
Instigating conflicts between the Afar and their neighbouring peoples
Removing Afar from all mineralised areas of Afar land
Appointing uneducated, unskilled, inexperienced and corrupted individuals as Afar region officials to serve the interest of TPLF.
Creating tribalism, mistrust and division between the ruling mafia and the Afar society;
Controlling Afar region economic, political, social and cultural affairs by appointed Tigray Security Advisors or Counsellor, locally known as Ammakari
Any person who disagrees or rejects ANDP (QADE) TPLF (WAYANE) order is called anti peace element and sympathizer with ARDUF then; he/she is arrested and imprisoned arbitrarily. Today, the Afar region does not have a legitimate political authority accountable to the Afar. It is ruled by TPLF former fighters who are member of the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF). Their main duty, obligation and responsibility is only to serve their master not the Afar people, as they appointed by TPLF not by the Afar people, they are only accountable and answerable to the TPLF.
As a result of TPLF racially motivated discriminatory politics and policies the Peoples of Ethiopia in all regions are all facing increasing political oppression, economic marginalisation, and social exclusion, gross violation of human rights, horrible famine and internal displacement. The regime continues to unlawfully kill, systematically repress and arbitrarily arrest people in the regions of Oromia, Ogaden, Sidama, Amhara and Gambella in general and in the districts of Konso, Qimant, Humera, Tsegede and Wolkait in particular who fight for their basic human rights.
ARDUF condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrifying famine crimes of killings, displacement and forcible removal from their ancestral land committed by TPLF regime on the Afar people in particular; and against other peoples in Ethiopia in general.
ARDUF calls on all Ethiopian opposition forces, civil societies, human rights defenders and journalists to reject and denounce the politics of divide and rule by an iron fist and oppression of TPLF/EPRDF and support a democratic armed struggle to eliminate the fascist regime and to establish a genuine Democratic Federalism based on the rule of law in Ethiopia.
Long live the Victory of ARDUF & Ethiopian Peoples
Military Command Centre (MCC)
Information Desk of ARDUF
Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF)
A lot is happening in our part of the world. The last five months have been immensely eventful. We witnessed a series of tragic events unfolding successively one after the other, each more saddening than the one preceding it. These are truly hard times. Such times signal the urgency of prudent action. Reflexive action is the imperative of the time.
Over the weekend, when I was asked to comment on the ongoing Oromo protest in Ethiopia, I chose to reflect on the Oromo pursuit of social justice and political freedom, the pursuit of what Etienne Balibar calls ‘Equaliberty.’[1] In particular, I chose to reflect on the four critical phases of the Oromo struggle for national emancipation in order to express, if I can, solidarity with the national awakening we see in Oromia today. Specifically, I focused on the phases of survivance,[2] resistance, recovery, and reconstruction.
The primary aim for me personally is to pay attention and to remember and re-member. It is to pay tribute to the people, young and old, who have given and are giving their all in this most recent iteration of the Oromo national struggle for emancipation. The broader aim is to encourage all of us to look ahead into the future, where the Oromo will build walls of connection serving as a force for good in the region. It is aimed at encouraging us into the redemptive work of transformation of the entire Horn of Africa Region through a just peace, a peace that honours the ideals of Equality and Liberty (social justice and freedom). It is directed towards invoking what Ruti Teitel calls ‘Humanity’s Law,’[3] the law that emerged in consideration of the global inter-connectedness in the 21st century – and the law that enhances accountability for one’s actions in all corners of the world. I will argue that the success of this ongoing resistance, which some rightly call ‘Oromo National Awakening,’[4] depends on its capacity to engage with the world responsibly and re-constructively within the framework of Humanity’s Law.
Phases of the struggle for National Emancipation
Since the time of their incorporation into Ethiopia in the 19th century, the Oromo have undergone four phases in their expression of indignation and resentment to the hegemony of the Ethiopian state nationalism. These phases can be summarized as follows: a) Survivance; b) Resistance; c) Recovery; d) Reconstruction. I hasten to add that there is hardly a clear demarcation between these phases as they not only flow into one another but also overlap. At times, they occur simultaneously. When they do so, or whenever any two of these happen together, as in the current Oromo awakening, the more successful they become, the more explosive in their intensity, the more powerful in their impact. When they come coevally, they tend to birth a rupture, even a revolution.
Let us have a quick look at what each stage involves.
Survivance: Insisting on Presence
At this stage of reckoning with loss and lamenting humiliation, the Oromo was engaged in a quiet performance of Oromumma in the privacy of their homes and/or in the non-penetrated spaces of the rural environment. Among other things, this stage is marked by a quiet resistance to cultural and physical extermination. It was a season of adaptation and adjustment, a season of quiet retreat into one’s own way of life. It is a season of practising Oromumma in the non-public space (in the privacy of the home and in the isolated corners of unpenetrated Oromo hinterland). In urban areas, the Oromo tried to resist assimilation even as they performed a politics of passing and invisibility, making a gesture towards assimilation. In the rural areas, where the State was unable to penetrate the society, the resistance took the form of distancing oneself from the state. A typical practice in this regard is avoiding state schools for fear of being subjected to a repressive pedagogy of assimilation and erasure of their Oromo identity. The time from incorporation into the Ethiopian imperial state in the late 19thcentury to the 1960s can be characterized as a time of survival and of practising survivance.[5]
Resistance
This is the stage of refusal to be governed. This is the stage of saying NO, overtly and covertly. In its covert form, it sought to disperse the benefits of modern education and basic infrastructure among the Oromo without calling it an Oromo movement. This is what one sees in the early activities of the self-help association known as the Matcha-Tulama Association (MTA). Of course, this kind of covert resistance is undergirded by a keen sense of awareness of oneself as an Oromo and of appreciating the uneven distribution of basic social services in the empire.
The most overt form of resistance started in the acts of rebellion and organized armed resistance in the 1960s. The age of resistance that started with the MTA movement in urban areas of the centre was corroborated by the Bale Oromo resistance also charting out the route (also in part contributing) to the subsequent Ethiopia-wide social upheaval and revolution of 1974. The more mature phase of resistance, of course, took shape only after the formation of the Oromo Liberation Front in 1974 to launch an armed struggle.
Fast forward, when the military regime was eventually toppled by forces of the periphery in 1991, this phase of overt resistance came to a close only to start after a season of recovery. The Oromo self-assertion as a self-determining agent to have a role in the reconstitution of the Ethiopian state as a democratic, human rights-sensitive, caring and compassionate polity committed to multi-foundationalism, plurinationalism, and just peace[6] was met by a military reprisal under an insecure Ethiopian regime that was reluctant to lose power for the sake of transforming the polity on democratic and humanitarian bases. The transition to democracy faltered and ultimately got derailed altogether. The politics remained militarized. The state crisis continued to deepen. When the OLF left the transition, the transitional pact signed among various liberation fronts collapsed. The hope of transformation was deferred.
The Oromo self-assertion came to be viewed as a threat to the national security of Ethiopia. Oromumma became a securitized identity. The Ethiopian prisons and detention centres started to be congested byOromos charged with the non-existent crime of being ‘anti-peace elements’ (the incipient form of what later became the discourse of terrorism). The politics of co-optation and patronage had led to the creation of the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) to rule Oromia on behalf of the Ethiopian regime, which was now under the tight grip of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). In order to secure a semblance of legitimacy in Oromia, however, the regime adopted the OLF’s program of recovering the Oromo language (Afaan Oromo), Oromo identity, Oromo culture, Oromo history, and all there is in between.
The seeds of recovery were already in the phase of resistance. However, the actual work of recovery started to bear fruit as it was intensified even in the midst of a violent repression unprecedented in a long time. While the Ethiopian regime utilized its good relations with the international community to malign the Oromos as terrorists and to exclude them from the public space, the Oromo took solace in the possibility of using their language, practising their culture, and manifesting their identity in public—albeit only to a limited extent. Later on, this act of taking comfort and pride in using language, expressing culture, and manifesting identitycame to express itself in the cultural turn the Oromo resistance took in the face of the increasing closure of the public (political) space.[7]
Recovery
This phase was a stage of ‘drawing breath.’[8] Although at first it appeared a moment of loss and defeat, it actually became a moment of recovery. It is amoment of finding our way back to our Oromo selves. It proved to be a moment of experiencing resilience in its full bloom. Almost like a national recess, it served as a season of rehabilitating the Oromo self, recovering and projecting Oromo subjectivity. It was a moment of reclamation of voice for the Oromo.
In particular, it was a season of recovering the language, the identity, the history (the narrative, the memories, and the stories), the culture, and the cultural institutions of the Oromo. It was a season of refurbishing our way of being in the world, a moment of re-presenting ourselves, counteracting the forced absence of the Oromo from the Ethiopian public scene. It was a moment of imagining home from exile. In short, it was a season of restoring dignity to the Oromo (even in the darkness of the unprecedented state terror from 1992-todate).
Reconstruction
The fourth phase is probably the most critical of all. This stage marks the season for the Oromo to take their legitimate place in the world. It is a stage of reconstituting the Oromo self in the context of a globalized world infinitely interconnected with other peoples. It is a season of reconfiguring the Ethiopian state. The work at this stage can be nothing but transformative. It is a work of engaging with Ethiopia, the horn region, the African Union, the middle-east, and the wider world. It is a moment of projecting an Oromo self that intervenes in the world as a force for good, as a responsible regional actor, as a responsible ‘international citizen.’
At this stage, as a people, the Oromo shall hopefully overcome the brokenness of our past, the deep fractures in our relations with the other peoples of Ethiopia and the Horn. In particular, the Oromo must pay attention to the Ethiopian State with a view to engagement for its genuine transformation. The Oromo pursuit of justice must be complemented by a responsible pursuit of democracy, if only to harness the political power needed to transform the state. Oromo pursuit of equality in citizenship can be a rallying point for all of the ‘other’ peoples (who inhabit the Southern and the peripheral half of Ethiopia). This demand for equality is at its root a question of justice, but we have now learnt the bitter lesson that justice is the function of (mainly legislative and judicial) power. The task of reconstruction cannot be done without pursuing some form of transformative power. The Oromo quest for equaliberty becomes a synthesis of individual rights on the one hand and the right of collectivities (as well as classes and other categories) to universal social equality. In a sense, this self-conscious and reflexive pursuit of power is a pursuit of a ‘strong democracy.’[9] Pursuing a strong democracy in a country such as Ethiopia, pursuing transformative power in this context, requires a huge sense of responsibility to reckon with the other (all the Ethiopian others) with an eye on reconfiguring the terms of citizenship, to reconstruct the state, and to transfigure the state-society relationship. This process of pursuing and achieving transformative power is an engagement in the task of redemption (a process of turning the essentially illegitimate into legitimate). [10]
Granted, it is a painful task. It requires looking at historical evil squarely in the eye, reckoning with its impacts, accounting for it, remembering it, but choosing to forgive.[11]It requires an agonistic engagement with our plurinationality and the complexity thereof. It comes with cost and sacrifice. For the Oromo, the price of equaliberty is a sense of national responsibility. This is because the work of reconstruction in Ethiopia demands nothing less than redemption. From theological discourses, we know that redemption requires sacrifice that invests in the belief that the future will be different from the past. It is a process that unleashes anguish as we try to undo injustices of the past and hope for a fairer and more just future.
Transformative engagement with Ethiopia requires consideration of several concrete political realities such as international debts, borders, and military engagements in the neighbouring countries and in the UN Peace-keeping mission fields. More importantly, it requires a serious look into the trade, investment, and development partnerships that Ethiopia has gone into and the obligations that flow therefrom. The Oromo also needs to engage creatively and imaginatively with the institutions of the Ethiopian empire. One has to have a clear idea of what to do with its repressive security, intelligence, military, police, and prison institutions. One also needs to have a clear idea of what to do with abused constitutional institutions and arrangements (parliaments, elections, federalism, self-determination rules, constitutions, ‘rule of law,’ etc). The most urgent and pressing challenge that the Oromo needs to counter directly is the arrest and eradication of the intermittent famine that is caused and mismanaged by successive Ethiopian regimes.
In the endeavour to transform the state-society relation, the Oromo needs to change the hierarchic, centralized, and authoritarian political culture of the country. When it comes to the issue of handling plurinationality and the demand for ethno-cultural justice, the Oromo needs to appreciate that there will be no post-EPRDF moment in some ways and find more practical and just ways of satisfying legitimate national aspirations at all levels. For this, the Oromo needs to empower citizens, preparing them for the democracy to come both within Oromia and in the wider Ethiopia. One needs to prepare people for making an informed sovereign choice in the deliberations on sensitive issues of self-determination and constitutional secession. Throughout, one needs to beware of what we inherit: huge amounts of international debts; an interlocked and inter-dependent but conflicting and volatile neighbourhood; chronic poverty; malfunctioning institutions; budding corruption in a bubble economy;a generally neo-liberal-capitalist global society; a US-driven civilizational cleavage in the ‘war against terrorism’; a deeply divided society; a society that is traumatized by decades of state terrorism; etc.
In the work of reconstruction, the Oromo ought to enact wholeness, connectedness, into the future. The Oromo now ought to become the people of promise, the people of hope. The Oromo ought to draw on their traditional values and institutions to actively pursue justice. They only need to remember that they are a people of legality (seera and safuu), a people of egalitarian rule (Gadaa), a people of peace (nagaa), a people of substantive justice (sirna dhugaa fi haaqaa), and a people of reconciliation (araara). In all this, they act from the space of brokenness they inhabit as a people who know, from lived experience, what it means to be oppressed. In engaging with the world from the position of brokenness and suffering helps the Oromo create that moment of inter-subjectivity, the space in-between, born out of the historic vulnerability.As Hannah Arendt reminds us, this place in-between is where the world is constituted. “The world is between people,”[12] she once said.
At this stage of the national struggle, the Oromo engage in the act of rebuilding. We build walls of connection, solidarity, humanity, and co-equal/human responsibility. It is at this historical stage that the Oromo takes advantage of the contemporary world’s law. Ruti Teitel calls this body of global law ‘humanity’s law.’[13] It is composed of the trinity of international human rights law, the law of war (humanitarian law), and international criminal justice. The first is chiefly a protective body of law (firmly rooted in the fundamental human dignity and worth). The second is more a remedial type of law that gets activated in times of crisis as people conflict (going to war or engaging in other forms of political violence) and mistreat each other (in the context of war). The third is focused on ensuring responsibility for atrocities beyond one’s national borders. In this third category of law, the Oromo sees the International community as a truth bearing witness and a potential ally in the pursuit of their equaliberty. The third category, being mainly a post-sovereignty regime of law, also helps us overcome the weaknesses of traditional state-centred institutions of human rights and humanitarian law. It is this nature that makes it suitable to the concerns of sub-national entities that were routinely ignored or abused by the complicity of the national and the international actors whose conducts are anchored in the notion of sovereignty.
The Oromo of the 21st century, the brave new generation that is living this moment of awakening, has the task of reconstruction by paying attention to and taking advantage of the contemporary humanity’s law. Humanity’s law helps us achieve human rights, peace, and justice, all three of them together. This in turn consolidates just peace in the entire region. For the Oromo, apart from allowing us to engage the international (which was often neglected in the struggle although the latter was always attendant to our oppression from colonial times to cold war, and further on to this neo-liberal ‘global-capitalist’ age), helps us pursue equaliberty, i.e., both equality and liberty. The historic Oromo quest for freedom and social justice will then be achieved within this framework.
In the course of reconstruction, the Oromo engage in self-transcendence. They live out the imperative of paying attention as an act of solidarity with all oppressed people around them. They reach out to all their neighbours, especially the humble and the lowly. And these are in abundance in the region, be it in Ethiopia or in the wider Horn region. Without reaching out to these and working together with them, Oromia can hardly achieve freedom, justice, or peace.
Pursuing Equaliberty: The Imperative of Resistance, Recovery, and Reconstruction
The Oromo pursuit of equaliberty in the framework of humanity’s law, unlike what its detractors maintain, is not a quest for power. Nor is it just a quest for thin democracy as experienced in electoral practices. It is primarily a quest for social justice in a democratic environment that is grounded in a sense of responsibility for the protection and elevation of human dignity. In this process, the Oromo is going to go beyond resistance and self-recovery to achieve reconstruction with an eye on reconciliation. This is necessitated by the fact that both freedom and justice, both liberty and equality, are intensely relational. No time is more suited than now for us to proclaim, in the spirit of Ubuntu, that “I am because we are.” No place needs this spirit in abundance more than do Oromia and its neighbourhood.
After the Oromo Protest: the Imperative of Reconstruction
In the past few years, we have witnessed among the Oromo the simultaneous operation of the logic of recovery and resistance–sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously. The stronger the repression, the more powerful the momentum of the resistance. The generation that benefitted from the cultural rehabilitation has come of age to demand their right in their own terms. In the last five months we have become fortunate to see a generation that is mentally emancipated, a populace that knows how to conduct itself in the face of adversity, a people who act cohesively with a unity of purpose. We have seen the persistence in resistance.
We have seen a people determined to insist on justice. A people who turned (economic and electoral) despair into hope, loss (of land and livelihood) into gain, (electoral and military) defeat into (a genuinely substantive political) victory.
We have witnessed a people who, with their resilience, exposed the moral and political bankruptcy of a conceited regime. We observed a self-mobilized, self-directed, grassroots movement that virtually shamed and humiliated a seemingly invincible regime. We have seen people expose the limits of deceptive politics whose legitimacy is shored up through using election as a war by other means. We have seen a people who tested the limits of political double-speak. We have seen a people who exposed the true nature of the regime. They have rendered a region totally ungovernable. They have forced the regime to impose a military rule.[14]
We have seen a movement that conducted itself responsibly vis-à-vis other peoples even in the face of provocation and manipulation by the regime to foment horizontal conflicts.
This is an indication of the fact that the Oromo public is now ready to engage the wider Ethiopia, the entire region, and the world re-constructively, transformationally, redemptively within the framework of humanity’s law. The success of this National Awakening is to be completed when its leaders demonstrate thecapacity to make the generation to begin again, to start afresh, to remake the neighbourhood, to build new walls of interdependence, even from the ravages of our oppressed Oromo lives. The success is said to be complete when the Qubee Generation demonstrates its capacity to write a new history by emulating the Phoenix that “rises out of the ashes”, to go beyond the ruins imposed on it by a century of injustice to make a difference in the region.
For this, we need to start paying attention to connectedness, inter-dependence, and the need for acting in solidarity with others. After all, as Simone Weil reminds us, paying attention is an act of grace, the ultimate expression of solidarity. Like all the other peoples in Ethiopia, the Oromo ought to start learning to see through others’ lens. We have a fear to dispel. We have a trust to build. We have the responsibility to enchant the generation into hope and a better future.
Conclusion
The current Oromo awakening reminds us that the Oromo have survived. The age of being seen as an unwanted presence, as a vestige of a regrettable past in Ethiopia, is substantially on the decline. The work of national self-recovery has borne fruits.TheQubee generation is already here to make a difference.The children have arrived. Resistance has matured, especially in the way it conducts itself horizontally. But in the main, it has restored agency to the Oromo public, who in turn have made Oromia totally ungovernable to the regime. Mental emancipation has been achieved.
People now know how to act, and can act, even in desperate conditions. What remains now is to start engaging wisely with the world around us in the task of reconstruction. Prudence suggests that we can take advantage of humanity’s law. Prudence also suggests that we be mindful of the fact that in our times, lawful engagement is a necessity. Yes, law, too, can be effectively—albeit discerningly—be used as a spectre of resistance and a useful means of reconstruction. We need to remember that more often than not, law is deployed as ‘war by other means.’ It is this interlocked deployment of law in/and war that David Kennedy calls lawfare[15] (war by legal means), and perhaps rightly so. The flip side of this is that law can be deployed to build connections, relations, and peace thereof. I hope the Oromo national awakening will make optimal use of thislawful form of engagement with the world.
ED’s Note: Tsegaye Ararssa is from Melbourne Law School. He can be reached at:tsegayenz@gmail.com. The article was prepared as a remark for the ‘RIGHT TO FREEDOM’ event organized by Oromo Support Group Australia, 16-17 April 2016, Melbourne Australia
End Notes:
[1] Etienne Balibar, Equaliberty:Political Essays, Tr. James Ingram. (Duke University Press, 2014).
‘Survivance’ is used among scholars working on the issues of First Nations (also known as indigenous peoples). I came across the term for the first time in the work of Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Nebraska, 1999). The term means a lot more than mere survival. According to Vizenor, “Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy and victimry.” In Derridan sense, survivance of course refers to “a spectral existence that would be neither life nor death.” The Oromo struggle in its first iteration soon after the conquest was more like survivance, especially in its quest for active presence in the Ethiopian polity.
[3] Ruti Teitel, Humanity’s Law (Oxford University Press, 2011). Teitel identifies three important components that constitute ‘Humanity’s Law’: International Human Rights Law; Laws of war (traditionally known as humanitarian law, i.e., the law IN war and the law OF war); and International Criminal Justice (following the creation of the International Criminal Court via the Rome Statute). Humanity’s Law, Teitel argues, is the new framework of understanding ‘transitional justice’ in the context of changing global relations. I follow her tack and suggest that this law lays the framework for solidarity and responsibility in an increasingly interdependent world.
[4] I am indebted to Nageessaa Oddo Dube for this phrase. Nageessaa used the phrase in his recent speech televised by Oromo TV on 16 April 2016, also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF4SskY660A.
[5] One notes, however, that the formation of the Western Oromo Confederation in 1936 and its act of approaching the League of Nations for membership, or alternatively seeking a British Protectorate instead of submitting to the Italian invaders, was an early and short-lived expression of overt resistance to the hegemony of the Ethiopian empire and an assertion of Oromo subjectivity in the international system of the time. See Ezikiel Gebissa’s ‘The Italian Invasion, the Ethiopian Empire, and Oromo Nationalism: The Significance of the Western Oromo Confederation of 1936,’ 9 Northeast African Studies 3 (2002), 75.
[6] A commitment also inscribed in the 1991 Transitional Charter of Ethiopia and later in the preamble of the 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia. To an extent, this undelivered promise of the constitution was what made the political elite of Ethiopia’s South (including the Oromo) ambivalent in their reaction to the constitution. It was also this promise that TPLF used to co-opt several Southern nationalists.
[7] This increasing use of songs, cultural events (such as Irrecha), exhibitions, etc to express political disaffection is recently referred to as the ‘cultural turn’ in the trajectory of Oromo national struggle. See Ezekiel Gebissa, “Land, Life, and Leadership” [?] (Dec 2015, OSA Extraordinary conference on the Master Plan).
[8] Alison Phipps, ‘Drawing Breath: Creative Elements and their Exile from Higher Education’ Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9(1) (2010), 43.
[9] Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (20thanniversary ed) (University of California Press, 2004).
[10]This is inspired by a thought in Richard Dehmel’s poem, Transfigured Night (Verklarte Nacht) (1998) in which the conception of a child by an adulterous wife is transfigured by the light of love, also represented by the moonlit night, to bring infinitely more joy and rejuvenation to the husband. I like to suggest that this kind of redemptive transfiguration helps us overcome ‘constitutional original sins’ in order for us to go beyond the original constitutive wrong.
[11] An imperfect but useful institutional model in this regard is presented to us in the example of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
[12] Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (Harvest Publishers, 1970).
[13] Ruti Teitel, Humanity’s Law (Oxford University Press, 2011). See also her ‘Humanity’s Law: Rule of Law for the New Global Politics,’ (2002) 35 Cornell Journal International of Law(2), 356. Teitel tries to work out a new framework of accountability at the global level by going beyond her earlier work on Transitional Justice (Oxford 2000). This framework, I hope, will be useful for the Oromo both to pursue justice for the atrocities experienced and to engage with their neighbours responsibly. Coming as they do out of a long and deep crisis situation, the Oromo can also use this framework for building a sustainable peace grounded in justice and truth.
[14] Contrary to what many people assume, what exists in Oromia now is not Martial Law. It is a pure military rule devoid of any semblance of legality that one sees even in Martial law (a rule under the command of the highest military official that suspends or deposes political leaders because of a constitutional crisis or utter incompetence on the part of civilian political governance). In Ethiopia, what we see is an illegal dismissal of the state’s civilian administration by a Command Post chaired by the Federal Prime Minister who ordered, again illegally, eight divisions of the Army to “take a merciless and final measure” on protestors.
[15]David Kennedy, ‘Laware and Warfare’ in Cambridge Handbook of International Law, eds. James Crawford and Martti Koskenniemi (2012), 159, and David Kennedy,Of War and Law (Princeton University Press, 2006).
U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a resolution with 11 other Senators today condemning the lethal violence used by the government of Ethiopia against protestors, journalists, and others in civil society for exercising their rights under Ethiopia’s constitution.
The resolution calls for the Secretary of State to conduct a review of U.S. security assistance to Ethiopia in light of allegations that Ethiopian security forces have killed civilians. It also calls upon the government of Ethiopia to halt violent crackdowns, conduct a credible investigation into the killing of protesters, and hold perpetrators of such violence accountable.
“I am shocked by the brutal actions of the Ethiopian security forces, and offer condolences to the families of those who have been killed. The Ethiopian constitution affords its citizens the right to peaceful assembly and such actions by Ethiopian government forces are unacceptable,” Senator Cardin said. “The government’s heavy-handed tactics against journalists and use of the 2009 Anti-Terrorism and Charities and Societies Proclamations to stifle free speech and legitimate political dissent demonstrate a troubling lack of respect for democratic freedoms and human rights.”
“Peaceful protestors and activists have been arrested, tortured and killed in Ethiopia for simply exercising their basic rights,” Senator Rubio said. “I condemn these abuses and the Ethiopian government’s stunning disregard for the fundamental rights of the Ethiopian people. I urge the Obama Administration to prioritize respect for human rights and political reforms in the U.S. relationship with Ethiopia.”
Joining Cardin and Rubio as cosponsors of the resolution are Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).
The United States works closely with Ethiopia on signature Administration initiatives including Feed the Future and the African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership. It also provides funding for Ethiopia’s participation in the African Union Mission in Somalia.
“Given the challenges posed by the devastating drought and border insecurity, it is more important than ever that the government take actions to unify rather than alienate its people. It is critical that the government of Ethiopia respect fundamental human rights if it is to meet those challenges,” Cardin added.
Why Are Oromo Refugees Getting Sent Back to Ethiopia?
APRIL 19, 2016
Tariku Debela, in jeans, walks carefully through the streets of Eastleigh, Nairobi. Photo by Ebba Abbamurti.
On a warm evening last month, Tariku Debela was walking home from dinner in the immigrant enclave of Eastleigh, Nairobi, when he was jumped by four men who took his phone and more than $200 in cash. Getting mugged is bad enough, but what happened next is seared in Debela’s memory.
Debela is an Oromo political leader residing in Kenya as a refugee. The men who robbed Debela delivered a message in Amharic—a verbal threat from across the border—”side with the Ethiopian government or only death awaits you.”
When Debela decided to flee Ethiopia, after years of brutal political persecution, including torture and imprisonment, he expected to be protected as a refugee in Kenya. Indeed, under international law he is. But, Debela and thousands of other Ethiopian refugees who enter neighboring countries have found themselves still within reach of the Ethiopian state, resulting in mistreatment from local governments and neglect from the international organizations ostensibly meant to protect them.
Amnesty International confirmed from sources on the ground that in early January 2016, Kenyan security forces deported 25 Ethiopian refugees from Kenya. This is disputed by Stanley Mwango, spokesperson for the Kenyan government’s Department of Refugee Affairs, who denies the deportations, telling Okayafrica that “Kenya is not sending away anyone who is legally seeking asylum.”
But Amnesty’s account corresponds to reports from Oromo community leaders in Nairobi that Ethiopian refugees are routinely subject to surveillance, harassment, violence and deportation from Kenyan police and border authorities, who they say work in close collaboration with the Ethiopian government.
The border crossing between Kenya and Ethiopia’s Oromiya region. Creative Commons photo courtesy of Andrew Heavens.
The outgoing Oromo community leader in Nairobi, Shaga Arado, 38, says most of the Oromos forcibly returned to Ethiopia are detained in military barracks near the border where they are interrogated and in some cases tortured. There are also incidents of Oromo refugees in Kenya disappearing—such as the case of Dabassa Guyo Saffaro, a well known Oromo oral historical and cultural leader who vanished off Nairobi’s streets in late September 2015. He has not been heard from since.
Although Ethiopians have consistently sought asylum for years on the basis of political persecution—UNHCR estimates there were 160,427 Ethiopian refugees in 2015—human rights organizations say they expect the number to grow in light of the ongoing Ethiopian government violence against Oromo protesters.
Peaceful protests began in November 2015 after the Ethiopian government announced plans to expand the municipality of Addis Ababa into the bordering Oromia region. The government has since abandoned the plan, but Human Rights Watch reports that over the past five months, Ethiopian security forces are suspected of killing over 200 protesters and detaining thousands without cause. Oromos, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, have consistently faced persecution and discrimination from the rulingEthiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front(EPRDF) party, which has been in power since 1991. The Ethiopian government did not respond to a request for comment.
Debela nostalgically shows off a photo of him with the OFC party leader—Merera Gudina at a past function.
Debela, 33, is a member of the Oromo Federalist Congress, a political party that is constantly monitored and harassed by the Ethiopian government. In 2005, following Ethiopia’s disputed national elections, Debela was arrested and accused of inciting violence against the government. He spent nine months in prison. Debela was later released on conditions that he should support the government, withdraw his support for the opposition party and refrain from any political activities. But for Debela, abandoning his political activism wasn’t a choice.
“It was hard for me to wrench my mind away from the reality,” he says. “Seeing the Oromos being dispossessed and systematically impoverished while their land is stolen and dished out to politically correct individuals from the ruling class was what made me speak my mind.”
Debela continued his political organizing, and in February 2009 he was arrested and taken to Maikelawi prison. Debela’s second prison sentence was much worse than the first. In Maikelawi, Debela says he was regularly beaten and tortured. After some of the beatings, often with electrical wires, the prison guards poured ice-cold water over his bleeding body. The pain reverberated in his bones; he slept naked on his cell floor in the water. At times he was interrogated at gunpoint, blindfolded and threatened with execution. Other times bottles were tied on his penis and testicles. Debela lost track of his location, and of time.
Left: Debela showing some of the scars he acquired in Ethiopian detention. Right: Some of the documents and photos he carried with him. Photo Ebba Abbamurti
Human Rights Watch has documented political prisoners being taken to Maikelawi and tortured to try and coerce confessions. Since the recent Oromo protests, the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa issued a brief that Oromo activists arrested and imprisoned in Addis Ababa’s Kalitti Jail have also experienced torture that lasted over ten hours and resulted in life-threatening injuries.
Debela was released in July 2009; he would later be again arrested and imprisoned three times. In October 2015, Debela decided he could no longer stay in Ethiopia and expect to survive—he was receiving death threats. In November 2015, Debela traveled from Mandi, Oromia to Addis and then onward to the border towns of Moyale and Hiddi Lola. He then crossed into Kenya and passed through Marsabit and Isiolo before reaching Nairobi.
Arado says other refugees who crossed into Kenya since the beginning of 2016 report paying smugglers to help them evade border guards and make it to Nairobi safely. But their safety is not guaranteed—at least two Ethiopian women refugees who recently arrived in Nairobi via smugglers said they were raped on the journey.
Debela is now registered with the UN Refugee Agency; he was given an appointment for a refugee status determination interview in November 2017. Although Debela has yet to make his case for asylum in Kenya, there are indications that many Ethiopians do not receive fair asylum hearings in other countries, making it more difficult for them to receive legal protection and putting them at risk. The United Oromo Refugees Association in Egypt staged a sit-in this month in front of UNHCR’s office in Cairo to protest the low rate of asylum granted to Oromo refugees.
UNHCR, which normally produces guidance for decision-makers who are assessing asylum claims, has not issued guidance for Ethiopian asylum-seekers. As a result, countries may rely more heavily on information from their own sources, which experts say are often flawed. UNHCR’s Kenya office did not respond to a request to comment.
“The biggest problem is that countries do not follow an asylum policy for Ethiopia based on reality,” said Victor Nyamore, Amnesty International’s Refugee Officer in Nairobi. “They prefer to believe the success stories of the Ethiopian government about development and human rights in the country.”
In 2015, Ethiopia received $3 billion in development and aid funding, the majority from the U.S. and Europe, despite that some of its development programs have been documented violating the human rights of local communities. Despite these abuses, donors have not changed their levels of funding. Ethiopia remains a key Western ally in the region on counter-terrorism efforts, including against Al-Shaabab.
Transitional housing for Somali refugees in Dolo Ado, Ethiopia. Creative Commons Photo courtesy of UNICEF Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is also one of the largest refugee hosting nations in the world for over 700,000 Eritrean, Somali and South Sudanese refugees—which may explain why some governments and international organizations are hesitant to speak out on behalf of the plight of Ethiopian refugees for fear of jeopardizing their existing programming in Ethiopia.
For now, Debela must find a way to survive the waiting period until his case is reviewed. He says he cannot receive any social services for refugees, and he is afraid to call or visit friends in case it compromises their safety. In the meantime, Debela lives alone like a fugitive, skirting shadows on the street and watching for the Ethiopian security forces he believes are still watching him.
Congresswoman McCollum addresses the Minnesota Oromo community.
WASHINGTON — This morning, Congresswoman Betty McCollum addressed a large delegation of the Minnesota Oromo community visiting Washington today to attend a briefing held by the United States House of Representative’s Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. In her address, Congresswoman McCollum reiterated her concern about human rights abuses against the Oromo people in Ethiopia.
Congresswoman McCollum delivered the following remarks:
Greetings and welcome to Washington! Thank you for being here today in the U.S. House to add your voices to the cause of human rights in Ethiopia.
The Lantos Human Rights Commission briefing today is an important step to informing and educating Congress about the unacceptable treatment of Oromos in Ethiopia. The current situation in Ethiopia must not be allowed to continue. The Oromo people are suffering and I share your concern. Peaceful protesters are being imprisoned, they are being tortured, they are being killed.
The Ethiopian Government must be held accountable and it will take pressure from Congress and the Obama Administration to end the repression of the people of Oromia. Later this week I will be meeting with Ethiopia’s ambassador to the U.S. and the message that I will deliver is – stop the detentions, stop the repression, stop the killing – and respect human rights!
Ethiopia benefits greatly from its relationship with the United States. The American people provide hundreds of millions of dollars of food aid, health care funding, and agriculture assistance to Ethiopia. We must demand in return that human rights be respected. We must demand human rights for the Oromo people!
Friends, I am proud to represent so many Oromo Americans who live my district in Minnesota. Thank you for sharing your strong voices! Thank you for fighting for human rights!
Ethiopia: The TPLF Hidden Agenda of Reducing the Oromo Population Must be Stopped
HRLHA Appeal and Request for Immediate Action
Ethiopia: The TPLF Hidden Agenda of Reducing the Oromo Population Must be Stopped
HRLHA Appeal and Request for Immediate Action
For Immediate Release
April 17, 2016
Terrorist and Criminal attacks targeting Oromo youth, and children, and even pregnant women have continued unabated since the peaceful protest for justice and freedom began on 12th November 2015 In Oromia.The peaceful and legitimate protests against the injustices in Oromia, in which Oromo people of all walks of life have participated, had a simple and clear demand at the beginning: ” Stop Addis Ababa”s Integration of the Master Plan, and stop land grabbing in Oromia”.
Instead of responding justly to the protestors’ legitimate grievances and restoring their domestic and international rights, the Ethiopian government has chosen to deploy its special squad “Agiazi” and mercilessly crack down on the peaceful protesters. The ruthless Agiazi force used excessive force, killed many promos, beat and detained thousands to stop the protest, which spread to all corners of Oromia Regional State in a few weeks. Oromia towns and villages were turned into war zones as the special Agiazi force continued its random killings of students, children, men and women. During the first two months of the peaceful protests, more than two hundred (200) Oromos were murdered[1], including infants and pregnant women.
In violation of the “Convention on the Rights of the Child” and other international treaties [2]the current government of Ethiopia ratified on 14th May 1991,(see the other treaties ratified by the current of Ethiopian government from the link)[3]Oromo children, including non-schooled children, have been killed by the Agiazi force. Aliya,15 and her brother Nagassa, 8 (photo on right side) were shot in the leg on March 25, 2016[4] on the streets of Ambo town. Many minors/teenagers were killed and others wounded. by the Agiazi force in different parts of Oromia. Some are listed in the following table.
No
Name
Sex
Age
Place of Birth
1
Burte Badhadha Dabal
F
15
Jaldu district, West showa, Oromia
2
Tsegaye Abebe Imana
M
14
Jaldu District, West Showa, Oromia
3
Dereje Gadissa Taye
M
12
Chalia,District, East showa, Oromia
4
Dejene Chala
M
14
Gindeberet, West Showa, Oromia
These cruel and inhumane actions of the Agiazi force against Oromo did not stop the angry protesters from demanding their fundamental rights and freedoms.
Ethiopia Military Generls
The Oromia Regional State president Muktar Kedir and the TPLF security intelligence officer generals removed the civil administration and declared the unofficial martial law as of February 26, 2016. The Oromia Regional State has been subdivided into eight (8) military zones, each to be led by military generals
The merciless Agiazi force has been allowed officially to quell dissents in Oromia by force. On the day following the martial law declaration, the Agiazi squad started breaking into private homes and savagely started to kill and beat children, men and women, including pregnant women. On February 27, 2016 a seven- months pregnant mother of six, living in the West Arsi zone in Oromia state in Ethiopia, was shot down in her home by security forces who had come to her home looking for her husband. Another six- months pregnant woman Shashitu Mekonen was also killed and thrown into the bush in Horro Guduru Wallega, Oromia.
Schools and universities have served as military camps and battle grounds. The merciless Agiazi force broke into university dormitories, savagely killed, raped, beat and detained students (Wallaga University)
The Agiazi murderers intensified their repressions in all corners of Oromia. Since the November 2015 peaceful protest began, over 400 Oromo nationals have been killed, over fifty thousand (50,000) arrested and placed in different police stations, concentration camps, and military camps. Unknown numbers of students have been confined in the Xolay concentration camp where they are exposed to different diseases because of poor diets and sanitation. No medical attention has been given them and a number of prisoners are dying each day, according to information leaked from Xolay concentration camp. This represents the systematic elimination of the Oromo young generation. The late prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the architect of the current TPLF Empire, in 1992 vowed to destroy those he considered major threats to his rule, particularly the most populous nation in the country, the Oromo. He vowed to reduce Oromos to a minority and take over their natural resources.
Bedhadha Galchu
The longest protest (in terms of weeks and months) in the history of Ethiopia has been slowed down by the military crackdowns. When protestors returned home from the street, they started facing another form of atrocity. They were forced day and night to stay indoors, in a kind of house arrest. At night, the Agiazi force would walk into individual homes and pick up youth and kill them, leaving their dead bodies in front of their doors. On April 14, 2016, a university engineering department graduate from Gonder University was cold bloodedly murdered in the Oromia Gujii zone in Oddo Shakisso where he used to live with his parents.
Since Oromia is now under martial law, information, coming out of the Regional State of Oromia is restricted. All social media are being monitored by the military administration.
A number of cell phone users were arrested and their phones taken. Gross human rights abuses, killings, arbitrary arrests, torture and other human rights atrocities are happening in Oromia every day and night.
However, the information about these atrocities is not getting out, because the military has monitored almost all information outlets. The Ethiopian people hear only the well- crafted stories about Ethiopia being on the path to democracy. These stories come from the government mass media.
International and domestic human rights organizations have been reporting the atrocities, although their access to information in Ethiopia is very limited due to their researchers being banned from entering the country. But undercover investigative journalists still bring out the news of the genocide and ethnic cleansing committed in the name of development.
The current human rights atrocities in Oromia have been condemned by some western governments and government agencies, notably the EU and the USA, and UN experts/researchers. But still no meaningful action has been taken to stop the atrocities in Oromia.
When the regime has been pressured enough, they do make concessions and acknowledge the legitimacy of the protestors’ grievances. Indeed the Prime Minister, Hailemariam Dessalegn, has been known to apologize to the people. However, all this seems to be political posturing to deceive the world that is becoming increasingly aware of the atrocities. On the ground, there is no sign of the atrocities abating. There have been no gestures of conciliation. The regime’s force has actually stepped up its mass murders, mass incarcerations and mass rapes.
What is puzzling is that after all these tragedies, the world donor countries and organizations are still silent. It seems surreal. How many people must die before the world responds? How many millions must be jailed and tortured, how many must be gang- raped before this deafening silence is broken?
Can’t the world community learns from what happened in the past, in Rwanda in 1994, in Bosnia, in 1998 and what is happening in Syria ever since 2011? The genocidal act of armed force should not continue and must be stoped by someone, somewhere.
HRLHA is deeply concerned that if International Communities fail in responding to the merciless killings presently taking place in Oromia Regional State as soon as possible , this could lead to a genocide comparable to those in Rwanda (1994), in Yugoslavia (1998) and in Darfur, Sudan (2003).
Therefore, the HRLHA respectfully demands that governments of the west, especially who allies with the Ethiopian government to break their silence about the TPLF hidden agenda of promoting systematic genocide against the Oromo and other nations in Ethiopia and act swiftly as possible to halt the atrocity in Ethiopia.
Recommendations:
The World community must condemn the imposition of Martial Law in Oromia
The United Nations must intervene in Oromia to stop the unprecedented killings, torture and rape by the TPLF squad Agiazi force deployed under martial law
The US government, EU member states and UN must take meaningful measures against the Ethiopian government to stop it committing systematic genocide in Oromia, Ogaden, Gambela, and other southern Ethiopia regional states
Intervene to stop the killings in Oromia using the mandate of the three pillars of the responsibility to protect, as stipulated in the Outcome Document of the 2005 United Nations World Summit (A/RES/60/1, para. 138-140) and formulated in the Secretary – General’s 2009 Report (A/63/677) on implementing the responsibility to protect.
The State carries the primary responsibility for protecting populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and their incitement;
The international community has a responsibility to encourage and assist States in fulfilling this responsibility;
The international community has a responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other means to protect populations from these crimes. If a State is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take collective action to protect populations, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
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The following Sidama scholars and businessmen have been kidnapped by the security forces of the TPLF led government of Ethiopia and are currently languishing in the most notorious prison of the country known as ‘Maikelawi’ in the country’s capital Finfinnee (Addis Ababa):
1) Solomon Naayu (A Business Person)
2) Desalegn Meessa (A Professor at Wolayita Sodo Univeristy)
3) Girma Dishe (A Busienss Person)
4) Shura Kachara (A Business Person)
5 Debebe Daaka (A Business person)
In stark violation of their human rights, some of them have been in detention since November 2015 while others have been incarcerated since early 2016 without any trial. They have been tortured repeatedly to extract confession on crimes they never committed. The reasons given by the Ethiopian security forces for their detention and torture are extremely bizarre. They range from visiting the Oromia region repeatedly during the Oromo protests to receiving telephone calls from their relatives in Diaspora and having some anti-government ideas in their minds.
The TPLF/EPRDF led government of Ethiopia continues to grossly abusing the human rights of the Sidama people and other citizens with impunity for two decades and a half in contempt to its international commitments and the constitution of the country drawn by the regime itself. The aforementioned Sidama people had never committed any crime. Their only crime is being the members of the Sidama society.
The Sidama people and the Sidama National Liberation Front (SNLF) categorically condemns their unlawful detention and torture and demands their immediate and unconditional release.
The SNLF also calls on the international community, the United Nations, the African Union and all human rights organizations to put pressure on the TPLF led regime of Ethiopia to respect basic human and democratic rights of the citizens of the country. The SNLF also calls upon all subjugated nations’ and peoples’ opposition groups and peoples of Ethiopia to be unconditionally united to fight the regime collectively oppressing all with varying degrees.
OROMO STUDENTS SOLIDARITY PROTEST IN WASHINGTON, D.C. COURTESY OF CREATIVE COMMONS @CTJ71081.
“My name is Desta Edosa. I am 33 years old, married and a father of two sons. I am originally from Ethiopia, specifically from Oromia. I came to the United States in 2009 through a visa lottery, and I won. In February 2016, Caren Bedsworth from the American Red Cross called me and left me voice message saying I had a message from relative in Ethiopia. Listening to her voice message, I could not believe at first it was true as I did not know Red Cross gave such services. As Caren provided the office’s address, I looked on the internet and verified that the address mentioned was American Red Cross’s address. I called back Caren and asked who the person was. She delivered the letter to my home and I was so excited when I saw his handwritten letter. It had been about seven years since I last saw him.
“The name of my relative is Galataa Bazzaa. Galataa had just graduated from high school when he was captured by Ethiopian security forces and taken to a prison. He was a very outstanding student who was always known among his classmates and teachers as a straight A’s guy in his academics. By the time he was taken to prison, he had just been admitted to Addis Ababa Medical School to pursue his higher education. Only students of high caliber are given an opportunity to study medical sciences in Ethiopia and Galataa was one of the top.
“To understand the case of Galataa and why he was taken to prison, it is very important to know a little about Oromo people in Ethiopia. Oromo are the largest ethnic majority in Ethiopia which comprises about one third of the total population. Even though Oromo are the majority in Ethiopia, they have been marginalized both economically and politically since the establishment of the country. There was even a time when Oromo language was banned from state media and people were forced to change their Oromo name.
“As a result, Oromo people have been protesting this injustice for almost a century. Even at this time, the Ethiopian government has killed more than 400 Oromo people including kids, pregnant woman and elders because people peacefully demonstrated against land grabs and removal of Oromo farmers from their land due to the expansion of the capital city Addis Ababa (for more information on the Oromo protests, please click here or here).
“Galataa’s story is not different from thousands of Oromo students who are unjustifiably languishing in Ethiopian prison. He was just active both in his academic and among his society and communities. That’s the only reason he has been thrown into jail and sentenced to eight years. The Ethiopian government labels students who protest against it as anti-piece, anti-development and even terrorists if it wants to make the punishment sever. It is very common for Oromo students to be taken to prison in Ethiopia even for just speaking of their mind; that was what happened to Galataa.
“It had been about seven years since I heard from Galataa. I have been informed about his wellbeing by his sisters and brothers but never heard a word directly from him. Even though technology brought the world together these days, it’s still hard to be connected with loved one in a prison cell. The American Red Cross has done such excellent job connecting me directly with a person I care about a lot. I appreciate their service and their team a lot for connecting family over the globe when there is no other possible way. I hope they will keep doing such excellent job and help more Oromo families who lost track of their loved ones.”
Please join the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission for a briefing on the current human rights situation in Ethiopia.
Home to the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the region of Oromia was witness to mostly peaceful student protests in November of 2015 against the Ethiopian Government’s plan to take over territory to expand the nation’s capital. However, this spontaneous outcry has developed into the country’s longest and most widespread protest movement since the ruling party took power in 1991. The government has since ceased border expansion plans, but the discontent has proven to transcend land rights and to extend beyond any one particular ethnic group. The government’s authoritarian structure and tight controls on the media have led many to feel that they have no voice. Peaceful opposition is frequently met with arrest and detention (using the country’s draconian anti-terrorist law) and police brutality too often results in death. Human Rights Watch has received reports of over 200 people killed and several thousand arrested (including many whose whereabouts are unknown), since protests began. Although the documented turmoil threatens to disrupt Ethiopia’s fragile political stability, Ethiopia’s strategic state partners have been relatively quiet.
This briefing will examine Ethiopia’s current human rights situation in light of the recent events in Oromia. Speakers will provide an overview of the human rights situation and challenges, including how Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law is misused to stifle dissent, and will make recommendations as to what role the U.S. government can play in promoting stabilization by advancing and protecting human rights.
This briefing will be open to members of Congress, congressional staff, the interested public and the media. For any questions, please contact David Howell (for Rep. McGovern) at 202-225-3599 orDavid.Howell@mail.house.gov or Isaac Six (for Rep. Pitts) at 202-225-2411 orIsaac.Six@mail.house.gov.
Hosted by:
James P. McGovern, M.C.
Co-Chairman, TLHRC
Joseph R. Pitts, M.C.
Co-Chairman, TLHRC
Participants
Panelists
Anuradha Mittal , Founder and Executive Director of the Oakland Institute
Mohammed Ademo, Journalist formally with Al Jazeera America
Adotei Akwei, Managing Director, Amnesty International USA
Moderator
Lauren Ploch Blanchard, African Affairs Specialist, Congressional Research Service
Opening Remarks
Rep. Keith Ellison, Executive Committee Member, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commissio
INTERNET messaging applications such as WhatsApp haven’t worked for more than a month in parts of Ethiopia that include Oromia region, which recently suffered fatal protests, according to local users.
Smartphone owners haven’t been able to access services including Facebook Messenger and Twitter on the state-owned monopoly Ethio Telecom’s connection, Seyoum Teshome, a university lecturer, said by phone from Woliso, about 115 kilometers (71.5 miles) southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa.
“All are not working here for more than one month,” said Seyoum, who teaches at Ambo University’s Woliso campus. “The blackout is targeted at mobile data connections.”
A spokesman for Twitter Inc. declined to comment on the issue when e-mailed by Bloomberg on Monday. Facebook Inc., which bought WhatsApp Inc. in 2014, didn’t respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
Protests that began in November in Oromia over perceived economic and political marginalisation of Ethiopia’s most populous ethnic group led to a crackdown in which security forces allegedly shot dead as many as 266 demonstrators, according to a March report by the Kenya-based Ethiopia Human Rights Project.
The government has said that many people died, including security officers, without giving a toll. One social-media activist, U.S.-based Jawar Mohammed, disseminated information and footage from protests to his more than 500,000 followers on Facebook.
No explanation
Restricting access isn’t a policy and may be because of “erratic” connections, according to government spokesman Getachew Reda. “We have not yet found any explanation,” he said by phone from Addis Ababa on Monday.
The government has the technology to “control” the messaging applications, the Addis Ababa-based Capital newspaper reported on April 10, citing Andualem Admassie, Ethio Telecom’s chief executive officer. Andualem didn’t answer two calls to his mobile phone seeking comment.
Hawassa city in Ethiopia’s southern region has suffered similar difficulties in accessing applications for more than a month, said Seyoum Hameso, an economics lecturer at the University of East London. “We couldn’t communicate with relatives,” he said in an e-mailed response to questions on Monday.
Peoples Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (PAFD) public meeting hosted by Oromo Student Union and Ogaden Community in Germany was held on 9th of April 2016 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
It was attended by two Executive committee members of PAFD, human rights advocators, invited guests, Veteran members of successful liberation movement, representatives of youths and Women and generally by the peoples and nations of member organisations of PAFD.
On this meeting, paper was presented by the officials of PAFD on the current political situation in the Horn of Africa with special emphasis on Ethiopia. The objectives of the PAFD were also explained. The atrocious nature of EPRDF across the empire, images and videos of the ongoing protest and public resistance from Oromia have been presented. Artists have entertained with cultural music in between discussions.
Member Communities and other peace loving friends in Germany all gathered on this occasion have expressed their unflinching support and solidarity for the Alliance. They noted that the oppressed peoples in Ethiopia have now reached a tipping point where the outcry of the peoples under Occupation of the Ethiopian regime cannot be ignored any more.
After thorough discussions and comments on the presentations during the meeting the participants continued discussions on the various issues. Finally the participants concluded the meeting upon passing political resolution.
The Political Resolution of this public meeting in Germany: –
Hereby in unison we convey our unflinching support for PAFD in its struggle against the TPLF/EPRDF-led Ethiopian regime, to regain the legitimate national right for the Nations and peoples. We also appreciate the outcome of PAFD congress that brought member organisations under one umbrella leadership to forge stronger bond of unity among member organisations which allowed them to strengthen their combined effort on diplomatic, political and armed struggle against TPLF. The participants of the meeting also summoned all nations and Nationalities in Ethiopia to create a firm ground for a unity of purpose and mutual respect. In the last twenty plus years TPLF/EPRDF has been tactically engaged in instigation of ethnic discord. We call up on our peoples to be aware of “divide and rule” colonial principle and resolve their conflict in a manner they used to live in it.
The Ethiopian government is currently playing a destructive and destabilizing role in the Horn of Africa in general and on the peoples under its rule in particular. The Dictatorial regime run by the TPLF is currently using every means at its disposal to silence the quest of people for justice. Freedom of press, civil Societies and independent judiciary are non-existence in this country. The Regular army and Agazi militias are using brute force against innocent Oromo protesters with complete impunity; extra-judicial executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary mass detentions and harsh prison terms under dubious laws are practiced beyond imagination. People are evicted from their ancestral land under the pretext of “Development” and “master plans”. We strongly condemn such belligerent act of Ethiopian regime.
The partnership of EU with Ethiopia is aimed to bring a political environment guaranteeing peace, security and stability, which are the solid ground for sustainable economic policies and developments. Respect of human right violations, sustained economic growth, developing the private sector, increasing employment, good governance and etc. are the main witness and visible criterion for the objective of the partnership. Concerning the current Tigryan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) led regime of Ethiopia, there is massive evidence, which demonstrates beyond any doubt that the government is intensifying the persecution of Ogadeni, Oromo, Sidama, Gambella, Benishangul and other nations and nationalities in the empire. We appeal to the international communities in general and EU to implement ACP-EU agreement and its resolution passed on 21st January 2016.
The public meeting appreciated Resolution of EU, Concerns of some democratic governments and honours Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human rights League Horn of Africa, Oromia Support Group, Ethiopian Human Rights Council and International Commission of Jurists for their principled and responsible activities in exposing the atrocities of TPLF government behind the curtail. Although the effort of these humanitarian organisations are limited to exposure, as it ought to be as a matter of rule, the participants of this public meeting values this contribution to be immense in bridling the militant and aggressive nature of the TPLF regime.
It is clear that the EPRDF force’s violent manoeuvre is intensifying from day to day. People are being denied to lead peaceful life. Such deplorable act has to be unequivocally condemned by all peace-loving forces. Therefore, we call upon all peoples in the empire of Ethiopia to join us in the struggle against the EPRDF regime.
We also call USA, EU and AU to refrain themselves on current deal with TPLF’s regime about the Oromo protest behind the curtail without the consent of peoples in Ethiopia and particularly in this case the Oromos.
(National Helm) — Two Chinese migrant workers found $356,246 cash in airport and returned it to three travelers from Ethiopia. The migrant workers who were working on a construction project in southern China‘s Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport Friday found a white paper bag containing bulks of US dollar bills unattended.
The workers reported the situation to the police and later on met three Ethiopian travelers who came to claim the lost. The migrant workers’ move won lots of praises after the story went viral.
By James Jeffrey, Inter Press Service, April 11, 2016
The Ethiopian government’s most serious domestic political crisis in more than a decade began over a scruffy football field appropriated by local officials for development.
After students responded by taking to the streets of Ginchi, a small town 80km from the capital, Addis Ababa, their protest was quickly quelled. But a spark had been lit for what has turned into an outpouring of grievances by the Oromo—Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, accounting for about a third of the country’s 95 million population.
As protests spread, they ostensibly focused on a plan to expand the Ethiopian capital’s city limits into Oromia—the largest of the federal republic’s nine regional states and two city states—which encircles Addis Ababa.
Land in Ethiopia—all of which is government owned—has become an increasingly contentious issue as Ethiopia has opened up to the world, reflecting a worldwide trend particularly effecting developing countries such as Ethiopia.
Globally, investors are increasingly looking to investments not linked to volatile equities and bonds: other countries’ land. And few have attracted as much attention as Ethiopia, with its lowlands watered by the tributaries of the Blue Nile, a particularly bountiful draw.
The Ethiopian government has been on the front foot and quick to respond to such interest, and since around 2009 has leased about 2.5 million hectares to more than 50 foreign investors, from the likes of India, Turkey, Pakistan, China, Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
The so-called Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan was seen as fitting a disturbing trend by the Oromo—many of whom are smallholder farmers—and they weren’t having any more of it. Ethiopia’s security forces are well equipped to deal with protests and unrest, although such has been the scale of the Oromo protests that security forces have been stretched. But even after the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation—the regional arm of the Ethiopian government—shelved the plan, a government back down described as historic by many, protests continued.
“The widespread, sustained and recurring protests are clear messages of no confidence by a young and restless segment of the population which is driven by a feeling of marginalization,” stated a February editorial in Addis Ababa-based Fortune newspaper.
Many observers in Ethiopia, local and foreigners alike, note that although protests have taken an ethnic-based identity and focused on land, other deeper issues behind them—corruption, unfair elections, political and socioeconomic marginalisation—are familiar to many disenchanted Ethiopian voters.
Numbers of those killed since November given by international rights organisations, activists and observers range from 80 to 250-plus.
Some Addis Ababa residents suggest such numbers are preferable to even higher numbers if the government lost control of a situation that could, they argue, spiral into anarchy.
For against the narrative of a typically brutal Ethiopian government crackdown that brooks no dissent, there have been reports of looting, and organised armed gangs attacking foreign-owned factories, and private and governmental buildings. Even churches were damaged during a particularly violent flare up in the south in February.
Ethiopian citizens had a right to question the master plan but protests were hijacked by people looking to incite violence, according to Getachew Reda, a government spokesperson.
“You shouldn’t define a largely peaceful movement by this,” says a security analyst who focuses on Ethiopia for an Africa-based research organisation.
Despite February’s trouble in the south, many observers in Ethiopia say the majority of protests were peaceful, involving Oromo from across the demographic spectrum airing widely held grievances.
“It is also about competent government structure,” says Daniel Berhane, a prominent Addis Ababa-based political blogger, covering Ethiopia for the website Horn Affairs. “You have got ministries next door to each other not talking, and at every level—regional, zone or district—governmental staff arguing about who is responsible while criticising each other.”
“People have a perception of lack of competence in governance on the ground,” Daniel adds.
The government heeded the call of the people, according to Getachew, and observers say the government deserves credit for listening about the master plan.
But, more importantly, these same observers add, the government must allow Ethiopians to exercise their constitutional right to protest, and handle events in a way that does not escalate.
Protests have often resulted in deployment of military forces to support federal police, both regularly accused of ruthless suppression, with the perceived unaccountability of Ethiopia’s security forces added to the list of grievances, the analyst says.
There have even been reports of police taking head shots and shooting people in the back. But such alleged actions by police in remote locations, with backup often hundreds of miles away, defy logic as they would result in such a ferocious backlash by the local populace, according to a foreign politico in Addis Ababa.
This individual also suggested that some local militia, ostensibly part of state security but who sided with protestors and turned against federal forces, fired from behind women and children at police. Numbers of state security forces killed haven’t been released.
Nevertheless, shooting at protesters, as well as arbitrary arrests, especially of students—who initially formed the body of protests—have a long track record in Ethiopia, preceding this government back to during the brutal military dictatorship that ruled between 1974 and 1991.
Many who fled that period now compose part of the large Ethiopian diaspora, with the government claiming foreign-based opposition bolstered by US-based social media activists is manipulating the situation to its own ends.
“The diaspora magnifies news of what is happening, yes, but no matter how much it agitates it cannot direct at village level in Ethiopia—this is about dissatisfaction,” says Jawar Mohammed, executive director of US-based broadcaster Oromia Media Network, strongly criticised by the government and some non-government observers for fomenting conflict.
Imprisonment of leaders of the Oromo Federalist Congress party, Oromia’s largest legally registered political party, along with thousands of other Oromo political prisoners, makes negotiating a lasting solution a tall order, Jawar says.
Governance in today’s Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia—to use its full title—exhibits an inherent tension.
A decentralised system of ethnic federalism jars with the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front ruling party’s authoritarian one-party developmental state style of leadership, similar to China’s.
“The political space has increasingly narrowed, becoming uneven, non-competitive and unwelcoming…contrary to the diversity of desires and interests in Ethiopian society,” states the same editorial.
It is a long way from the heady hopeful days of Ethiopia’s new federal constitution after the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1991.
“The ruling government is a victim of its own success—the constitution it developed made promises and people trusted the EPRDF,” the analyst says. “Now people are demanding those rights and the government is responding with bullets and violence.”
The analyst acknowledges the government deserves credit for creating a constitution that is the best fit for an ethnically diverse country like Ethiopia, and for expanding basic services, infrastructure, respecting different cultural and ethnic identities, and better integrating Ethiopia’s large Muslim population.
But, the analyst adds, this federal constitution espouses a liberal philosophy that the government appears unable to reconcile with its decision-making processes.
The government’s hitherto successful job of holding together this particularly heterogeneous federation is not about to crumble tomorrow, observers note.
But things may get worse before they get better, unless underlying sources of friction and frustration are addressed.
The government has since acknowledged there was insufficient consultation with those likely to be effected by the master plan.
And during his latest six-monthly performance report to Parliament in March, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn apologised to those who lost family members during protests, while the government has suggested there will be investigations into allegations of police brutality.
What is happening in Ethiopia could be a foretaste of what is to come elsewhere, as forces of global markets—including a growing global urban population in more developed nations that eats more than it farms—clash with indigenous desires to protect historical homelands.
“A fundamental tenet of the ruling party at its creation was its social democratic focus on farmers, who still make up 80 per cent of the country,” Daniel says. “It cannot suddenly become capitalist.”
Oromo Refugees in Egypt need your immediate protection To: The United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Geneva,
Australian Oromo Community Association expresses its deep concern about the rejection of Oromo refugee appeal for protection and resettlement case. We appeal to request your immediate action on a very urgent demand, particularly, that involving Oromo refugees living in Cairo, Egypt.
Oromo refugees fled their homeland to various neighboring countries to rescue their lives and their families. Majority experienced years of detention, torture and suffering behind bars while others escaped due to fear for their lives as the results of occurrences of unbearable human right violations in Ethiopia. Commonly, Oromo refugees have fled from the extra-judicial killings, removal from their properties and land confiscation, illegal arrests, trials without evidence, torture, and constant humiliations.
Therefore, rejection of their refugee case appeal for resettlement and protection means not only making them hopelessness and darken their futurity but also devastating for them as they are left without a guarantee from not to be deported back to Ethiopia that certainly exposing them to detention, torture, and possible death.
The Australian Oromo Community Association intensely concern for the physical and emotional well-being of these refugees and their families. We utterly believe these genuine Oromo refugees are forced to flee persecution and desperately search for safety and protection from violence and intimidation. They are in an extreme situation that needs your prompt action.
Regarding this urgent matter, the Australian Oromo Community Association appeals for your supportive action, and sincerely request to consider their case and continue processing their protection status and resettlement process in third countries. Please show your kind sympathy instantly to save these very vulnerable innocent Oromo refugees’ life in Cairo, Egypt.
Thank you for consideration of our concern and this urgent matter.
VIDEO: Oromo refugees protest for registration outside UNHCR Egypt
By Belen Fernandez, Green Left Weekly, Saturday, April 9, 2016
Members of the Oromo community in Melbourne protest against the Ethiopian regime, Photos: Ali Bakhtiarvandi.
“This government is at least better than previous ones,” remarked a 74-year-old Eritrean man to me last month in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, his longtime residence.
As it turned out, his assessment of the relative superiority of the current Ethiopian administration was for good reason: two of his children had been killed by a previous ruling outfit, the Derg military junta that took power in 1974 and began eliminating suspected opponents in droves.
Although that particularly bloody epoch came to an end in 1991, many a resident of Ethiopia might nowadays still have cause to complain about homicidal activity by the state.
In the Oromia region surrounding Addis Ababa, for example, there are claims that more than 200 people have been killed by Ethiopian security forces since November 2015, when protests broke out in response to the government’s so-called “Master Plan” to expand the boundaries of the capital by a factor of 20.
As a Newsweek article explains, the Oromo inhabitants of the region viewed the plan as “an attempted land grab that could result in the forced eviction of Oromo farmers and the loss of valuable arable land in a country regularly plagued by drought.”
This was no doubt a valid concern given the government’s established tradition of wantonly displacing Ethiopians in the interest of “development” — that handy euphemism for removing human obstacles to the whims of international and domestic investment capital.
Apparently, torture has also been a difficult habit for security forces to break.
Comprising some 35% of the population, the Oromo are Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group and have regularly decried discrimination by the ruling coalition party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which is dominated by ethnic Tigrayan interests.
Politically motivated detention, incarceration, and other abuses have long characterised the landscape in Oromia, and the current protests have seen children as young as eight arrested.
And while the government has opted to shelve the Master Plan for now, protests in Oromia have continued. When I recently visited the town of Woliso, one of many protest sites in the region, residents pointed out that cancelling the plan wouldn’t bring back the dead people.
Events in Oromia have been described as the worst civil unrest in a decade.
Even without the Master Plan, meanwhile, the government is doing a decent job of courting investors. As I travelled west from Addis Ababa toward Woliso – a journey of about two hours — I passed sprawling factory complexes, including one featuring a Turkish flag flying alongside its more indigenous counterparts.
Launched in 2010 with a price tag of US$140 million, the Turkish-owned Ayka Addis factory is said to occupy several hundred thousand square meters of land.
The website of the Ethiopian Investment Commission furthermore lists Ayka Addis as one of “a number of private Industrial Zones” in Ethiopia, described as “success stories.”
Indeed, the EPRDF can point to double-digit economic growth over recent years to justify plowing ahead with its development model. But there’s more to life than GDP – as sizable poverty-stricken sectors of the Ethiopian population can presumably confirm.
About 200,000 people were reportedly in danger of trachoma-induced blindness in Oromia alone.
We might also take a look at the estimated 10.2 million Ethiopians currently “in need of urgent food assistance” — as reported, perhaps ironically, in a March edition of the English-language Ethiopian newspaper Capital, “the paper that promotes free enterprise.”
Additional troublesome statistics are contained in a 2014 BBC dispatch titled “The village where half the people are at risk of blindness.” The village in question is Kuyu, located in the Oromia region; the risk is due to infectious trachoma, “the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness.”
In the end, a lot of people in Oromia and beyond might have greater priorities than, say, income tax immunity for international developers.
Multidimensional Poverty Index: Ethiopia has the second highest percentage of people who are MPI poor in the world: of Ten Poorest Countries in The World (All in #Africa) – MPI 2015 Ranking
‘Human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices—as they acquire more capabilities and enjoy more opportunities to use those capabilities. But human development is also the objective, so it is both a process and an outcome. Human development implies that people must influence the process that shapes their lives. In all this, economic growth is an important means to human development, but not the goal. Human development is development of the people through building human capabilities, for the people by improving their lives and by the people through active participation in the processes that shape their lives. It is broader than other approaches, such as the human resource approach, the basic needs approach and the human welfare approach.’ -UNDP 2015 Report
Ethiopia’s HDI value for 2014 is 0.442— which put the country in the low human development category— positioning it at 174 out of 188 countries and territories.
In Ethiopia 88.2 percent of the population (78,887 thousand people) are multidimensionally poor while an additional 6.7 percent live near multidimensional poverty (6,016 thousand people). The breadth of deprivation (intensity) in Ethiopia, which is the average of deprivation scores experienced by people in multidimensional poverty, is 60.9 percent. The MPI, which is the share of the population that is multidimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations, is 0.537. Rwanda and Uganda have MPIs of 0.352 and 0.359 respectively.Ethiopia, UNDP country notes
(Sunday Adelaja’s Blog) — When Poverty and non-existent double digit growth met face-to-Face at a dumpster site called KORA in Ethiopia. As we speak, thousands of people in Addis Ababa survive from the leftover “food” dumped in such dumpsters. People, in fact, used to call them “Dumpster Dieters”. They are either the byproducts or victims of the cooked economic figures. You be the judge!
Yet the new measurement known as the Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, that will replace the Human Poverty index in the United Nations’ annual Human Development Report says that Ethiopia has the second highest percentage of people who are MPI poor in the world, with only the west African nation of Niger fairing worse. You probably heard that Ethiopia has been a fast growing economy in the content recording very high growth rate not just in Africa but the world as well.
This comes as more international analysts have also began to question the accuracy of the Meles government’s double digit economic growth claims and similar disputed government statistics referred by institutions like the IMF. The list starts with the poorest.
Niger
Ethiopia
Mali
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Somalia
Central African Republic
Liberia
Guinea
Sierra Leone
What is the MPI?
People living in poverty are affected by more than just income. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) complements a traditional focus on income to reflect the deprivations that a poor person faces all at once with respect to education, health and living standard. It assesses poverty at the individual level, with poor persons being those who are multiply deprived, and the extent of their poverty being measured by therange of their deprivations.
Why is the MPI useful?
According to the UNDP report, the MPI is a high resolution lens on poverty – it shows the nature of poverty better than income alone. Knowing not just who is poor but how they are poor is essential for effective humandevelopment programs and policies. This straightforward yet rigorous index allows governments and other policymakers to understand the various sources of poverty for a region, population group, or nation and target their humandevelopment plans accordingly. The index can also be used to show shifts in the composition of poverty over time so that progress, or the lack of it, can be monitored.
The MPI goes beyond previous international measures of poverty to:
Show all the deprivations that impact someone’s life at the same time – so it can inform a holistic response.
Identify the poorest people. Such information is vital to target people living in poverty so they benefit from key interventions.
Show which deprivations are most common in different regions and among different groups, so that resources can be allocated and policies designed to address their particular needs.
Reflect the results of effective policy interventions quickly. Because the MPI measures outcomes directly, it will immediately reflect changes such as school enrolment, whereas it can take time for this to affect income.
In Mount Vernon, Moussa Ali conducts a one-man protest for the Oromo People
It’s a bright, breezy Saturday in Mount Vernon with little else happening, making it even harder to miss Moussa Ali. Dressed in all-black and wearing a T-shirt that reads “I stand with the Oromo People,” Ali stands in front of the Washington Monument and nods at drivers passing him by on Charles Street. He raises his fist above his head and conducts a one-man demonstration.
“I’m protesting,” Ali, a 56-year-old Charles North resident and BP gas station manager, says, keeping his arm raised the whole time. “I’m standing with the Oromo students back home, which is in Ethiopia. The Oromo people are the majority in Ethiopia. In large numbers they are being killed. All young.”
Ali, who is ethnically Oromo, says a minority tribe, the Tigrayans, has had control of the Ethiopian government for over 20 years and oppress, disenfranchise, and take land from the other tribes, especially the largest tribe, the Oromos. According to Human Rights Watch, “Ethiopian security forces are violently suppressing the largely peaceful protests in the Oromia region that began in November 2015.”
Ali says: “They go to the students dorm, break into their rooms and because of this, the students cannot even go to school right now. Some of the students started escaping out of the country into the sea, trying to immigrate to Europe. And that struggle is still continuing right now! I want freedom for my people… this is part of me.”
Ali came to American from Ethiopia as a student 35 years ago, barely slipping the grip of government forces himself.
“[Back then] they started rounding up the students!” Ali says. “I was one of them marching. I used to go around doing the same thing I’m doing right now. I used to have my slogans, march in the towns, underground. Then they found out. They had their own spies. They give my name away. [My friends] told me, ‘The government’s looking for you! You better leave the country.’ That is how I left the country.”
Ali believes Americans should have an interest in this issue too. He says that American tax money in the form of military assistance is used to crush Oromo protests.Foreignassistance.gov shows that the U.S. Department of Defense has given the Ethiopian military $31 million in aid in 2015 alone. This is in addition to veteran American forces training the Ethiopian military.
“The interest for Obama and the United States is just to go after Al Qaeda in Somalia,” Ali says. “They get… cash. They train them. The Ethiopian government go into Somalia and fight for America.”
He shares the experience of his tribe back home with the hope that Baltimoreans can imagine the kind of freedom for his tribe that we have here: “Look at the freedom I have here. I’m talking to you right now. Nobody’s coming, arresting me, threatening me or going to take me to jail or torture me. No fear!”
He says he is “a representative of Baltimore City” who’s doing his part.
“There is no Oromo news except [what you hear from] the Ethiopian government, they choose it,” Ali says. “All over the globe, Oromos, no matter where they are, we are doing this.”
“It’s happening all over,” he continues. “Oromos are protesting in Sweden, France, Australia, England, Oromos are protesting everywhere. We are a strong community in Washington D.C., [but in Baltimore] communities are not large.”
Though he stands alone, he says he’ll “come back again” and be here this upcoming weekend as well for a couple hours.
“We welcome everybody [to stand with us],” Ali says. “I will provide s [t-shirts] if they’re coming.”
@OSA London Conference @London School of EConomics on Violation of Oromo Human Rights in Ethiopia, by Patricia Bartley, Amnesty International UK, Ethiopia Country Coordinator; 3rd April 2016.
Ethiopia’s clampdown on dissent tests ethnic federal structure
Protests sparked by the arrest of Konso leader Kala Gezahegn underlined growing tensions between Ethiopia’s central government and many ethnic populations
BY William Davison, The Guardian, Global development, 8 April 2016
Kala Gezahegn, the traditional leader of Ethiopia’s Konso people. Kala Gezahegn, the leader of the Konso people, addresses a crowd. His arrest highlighted growing tensions in Ethiopia between state power and ethnic groups’ desire for autonomy. Photograph: Courtesy of Kasaye Soka
Nothing seemed amiss when an Ethiopian government vehicle arrived to collect the traditional leader of the Konso people for a meeting in March. But instead of being taken to discuss his community’s requests for more autonomy, Kala Gezahegn was arrested.
Kala’s detention marked a low point in fraught relations between the Konso in southern Ethiopia and the regional authorities in the state capital, Hawassa. Five years ago, the Konso lost their right to self-govern, and growing tensions since then mirror discontent in other parts of Ethiopia.
The 1995 constitution in Africa’s second most populous country allows different ethnic groups to self-govern and protects their languages and culture under a system called ethnic federalism. The largest ethnicities – such as the approximately 35 million-strong Oromo – have their own regional states, while some smaller groups administer zones within regions, as the Konso effectively used to do.
Many of Ethiopia’s ethnic identities, which number more than 80, were suppressed during the imperial and national-socialist eras that preceded the federal system.
What happened in Konso followed demonstrations and killings by security forces in Oromia, the most populous region. A rights group says 266 people have been killed since mid-November during protests over injustice and marginalisation.
Demonstrations were sparked by a government plan to integrate the development of Addis Ababa and surrounding areas of Oromia. After fierce opposition from the Oromo, that scheme was shelved in January, but protests have continued, fuelled by anger over alleged killings, beatings and arrests.
In Amhara, a large region north of Addis Ababa, there was violence late last year related to the Qemant group’s almost decade-old claim for recognition as a group with constitutional rights. The fact that the Qemant rejected a territorial offer from the authorities, saying it was too small, may have provoked local Amhara people. In December, federal security forces were dispatched to contain escalating communal violence.
In Konso, after Kala and other leaders were locked up, thousands took to the streets to protest. During clashes with police on 13 March, three people were killed, and now the dispute seems entrenched.
Women at Fasha market in Ethiopia’s Konso region. Photograph: Grant Rooney/Alamy
The crux of the issue is a 2011 decision to include the Konso – which is in the multi-ethnic Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) and has 250,000 people – in the newly created Segen zone, thereby removing their right to self-rule. That decision was taken without consultation and resulted in worsening public services and unresponsive courts, says Kambiro Aylate, a member of a committee chosen to represent the community’s demands.
The budget for Konso’s government was reduced by 15%, says Orkissa Orno, another committee member. “The Konso people used their rights to ask for a different administrative structure,” he says.
In a recent interview, prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn blamed the unrest in Oromia on high youth unemployment and a “lack of good governance”, a line echoed by officials in other regions.
Kifle Gebremariam, the deputy president of the SNNPR, said the Konso leaders were arrested on suspicion of maladministration and corruption, issues “completely different” from the political question.
Kifle added that discussions had been held with residents about the status of the administration. “The regional government, including the president, gave them the right response, but they are not peacefully accepting this.”
Kala’s supporters dispute that account, although there have been signs of compromise, with the traditional leader permitted to take part in recent negotiations.
Concerns over the federal system’s ability to withstand such strains are not new. For example, southern groups such as the Wolayta were involved in violent clashes before they were granted their own zone in 2000.
In 2009, the International Crisis Group wrote in a report (pdf): “Ethnic federalism has not dampened conflict, but rather increased competition among groups that vie over land and natural resources, as well as administrative boundaries and government budgets.”
Officials have argued for decades that the focus on minority rights has been integral to an unprecedented period of peace and development.
Assefa Fiseha, a federalism expert at Addis Ababa University, agrees the system has brought stability to a country threatened with fragmentation in the early 1990s after ethno-nationalist rebellions overthrew a military regime.
But a lack of democratisation and centralised economic decision-making works against local autonomy and exacerbates grievances, according to Assefa.
“The regional states, as agents of the regional people, have to be consulted on whatever development project the federal government wants to undertake,” he says.
In fact, the government appears to have been moving in the opposite direction, as its legitimacy depends on economic growth and improving social services and infrastructure.
National projects – 175,000 hectares (430,000 acres) of state-owned sugar plantations in the ethnically rich south Omo area, for instance – are designed, implemented and owned by federal agencies.
The now scrapped integrated Oromia-Addis Ababa plan is another example, as it was developed without scrutiny by “key stakeholders” in the Oromia government, Addis Ababa city and the federal parliament, Assefa says.
One reason for quick decisions in a devolved federation is that the political positions of Ethiopia’s diverse communities are filtered through a rigid ruling coalition.
Along with allied parties, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front won every federal and regional legislative seat in May’s elections, extending its control of all tiers of government.
The EPRDF has held power for 25 years, partly by building a popular base of millions of farmers and demanding strict obedience to party doctrine and policy, but some say this is now changing.
The wave of protests, so soon after the landslide election victory, shows that the “dominant party system is facing problems”, Assefa says.
“Growing ethno-nationalism, centralised policymaking and the failure to provide space for political dissent combined together make a perfect storm for violence.”
Ethiopia: Double Digit Growth or Collapsing Economy?
Analysis by Andualem Sisay, All Africa, 8 April 2016
Ethiopian government’s increasing reliance on foreign loans is posing a serious risk of economic collapse, a renowned economist has revealed.
“Take for instance China, which has loaned over $17 billion to the Ethiopian government for infrastructure projects. Our total investment is 40 per cent of the GDP. Our saving is between 10-20 per cent of the GDP.
“We import $13 billion and export $3 billion. They are the ones who are filling all these deficit gaps,” said Dr Alemayehu Geda.
The Addis Ababa and London universities don was presenting his paper on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Ethiopia and Credit Financing.
“What will happen if they stopped such financing tomorrow? What if, for instance, the Chinese government tomorrow says sell for me Ethio Telecom or sell to me Ethiopian Airlines or give me some share or buy my aeroplanes, or I will stop such credit financing?
Strategic items
“The country will collapse, I guarantee you,” he said.
Dr Alemayehu went on: “About 77 per cent of our imports are strategic items. Fuel only has 25 per cent share of the total import. As a result, even if we want to reduce these imports, we can’t. Ethiopia needs to minimise strategic vulnerability.”
The don elaborated giving the example of how the Koreans mitigated against such dependency risks when they used to source 75 per cent of their imports from the US some decades ago.
Dr Alemayehu presented his paper in Addis Ababa at the launch of a two-year 12 series of public dialogue by the Forum for Social Studies – a local civil society, partially financed by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID).
“The Koreans came out of such vulnerability risk after analysing their situation properly, discussing the issue with their intellectuals and setting long term plans,” he said, advising the Ethiopian government to invest in quality education, skilled labour and improve the negotiations capacity as well as have in place a well-designed policy.
Last decade
Official estimates have shown the Ethiopian economy growing by double digits annually for about a decade now, a figure that has highly been doubted by independent scholars.
The Addis government has been applauded for growing the country’s GDP by around 10 per cent per year for the last decade.
In his paper, Dr Alemayehu indicated that Ethiopia’s external loan included $17.6 billion from China for various infrastructure developments, around $3 billion from Turkish and close to $1 billion from Indian governments.
The World Bank’s data shows that from 2012 – 2016, Ethiopia has taken a total loan of close to $6 billion from the global lender. Last year, Ethiopia for the first time, joined Euro Bond and accessed $1.5 billion.
In addition to loans, reports show that some $3 billion annually came to the country in the form of aid from donors.
Have declined
Ethiopia’s exports have declined from around $3 billion last year to around $2.5 billion this year, as revealed in the recent six-month report of the prime minister to the parliament.
Even though tax collection has been growing by an average of 20 per cent annually over the past five years, Ethiopia’s tax to GDP ratio still stands at 13 per cent, which is less than the around 16 per cent of the sub-Saharan average.
Last year, Ethiopia collected around $6 billion from tax, including $25 million recovered from contraband traders. The figure could have been raised by at least $3 billion had it not been for the generous tax incentives the country has provided to investors, according to latest report of the Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (ERCA).
In only nine months of Ethiopia’s last budget (July 8, 2014 – July 7, 2015), the country provided tax incentives of around $2.4 billion to investors, by exempting them from customs and excise duties and withholding, VAT and surtaxes, according to ERCA’s report.
Financial integrity
A financial integrity report last December indicated that around $2 billion was leaving Ethiopia every year through mis-invoicing and other tax frauds.
When it comes to the FDI coming from China, India and Turkey, close to 71 per cent of their investments in Ethiopia were in the manufacturing sector.
However, job creation, technology transfer and export contribution were insignificant for Ethiopia, which has over an 90 million population dominated by the youth. The country has about 16 per cent unemployment rate, according to Dr Alemayehu.
Between 2003-2012, there were 93 Chinese companies that had reportedly invested $600 million, creating around 69,000 permanent and 79,000 temporary jobs for Ethiopians. There was little contribution to technology transfer and foreign currency generation through the exportation of their products.
According to Dr Alemayehu’s paper, during the same period, Indian investments in Ethiopia created 24,000 and 26,000 permanent and temporary jobs respectively, while 341 Turkish companies operating in Ethiopia created a total of 50,000 jobs.
Though much was being talked about Chinese investments growing in Africa, the Asian giant had less than 4 per cent of total share of FDI on the continent, out of the total stock of $554 billion worth in 2010. Most of the investments in Africa were still dominated by the Western companies, according to Dr Alemayehu.
Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn recently told the local media that Ethiopia’s GDP growth was not expected to record a double digit this year and would likely drop to around 7 per cent.
However, his special economic adviser with a ministerial docket, Dr Arkebe Equbay, reportedly told Bloomberg media that the economy was expected to grow by 11 per cent this year.
Foreign debts
The government was now expected to deal with puzzles such as why the economic performance was not as good as in the previous years, with all the generous incentives to investors and huge infrastructure investments mainly dependent on local and external loans?
How to repay its local and foreign debts before the lenders force the government to cede shares in its highly protected businesses, such as, Ethio Telecom, Ethiopian Airlines, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation and Ethiopian Shipping Lines is, for sure, the elephant in the room.
But the big question is: How soon will these issues get the attention of a government pre-occupied with trying to feed about a dozen million people affected by drought and dealing with political unrest and conflicts mainly in Oromia and Gondar area of Amhara Region?
Ebla 6,2016/ Godina Wallaggaa Bahaa Aanaa Nuunnuu Qumbaa magaalaa Adaree irraa qabamanii ji’oota lamaa oliif mana hidhaa Wayyaanee keessatti kan daraaramaa jiran hawaasa bal’aa yeroo ta’u Wayyaaneen namoota kudha sadii qofa gadi lakkisuun kaan isaanii bakka garaagaraatti hidhaaf fuutee deemuuf akka sanganteeffatte beekameera
Oromian Economist 
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