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The irresponsible and minority regime in Finfinnee/Addis Ababa that had declared the scrapping of the so-called ‘Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan’ a year ago is again doing its best to test the strength of the Oromo people by making another systematic move to implement the deadly ‘Master Plan’ that has caused the death of more than 2,000 Oromo protesters in all over Oromia since Nov. 2015.
TPLF and its puppet OPDO, had been forced to scrap the plan months after the outbreak of Oromia wide protest against the ‘Master Plan’ and the mufti-faceted subjugation against the Oromo people for over a century. The Oromia wide protest that was the first in its kind in Africa, had a profound and shaking impact on the failing Ethiopian empire as it was a revolution that originated from rural grass root Oromo farmers that have been highly affected by the corrupt TPLF led regime.
Even if the Master Plan was declared scrapped a year ago, the Oromo protest has been going on opposing the systemic political, economic, social and cultural marginalization of the Oromo people by the successive Ethiopian rulers.
Due to the indiscriminate and disproportionate attack by Agazi force against the Oromo protesters simply because they have been requesting legitimate and basic rights, more than 2, 000 Oromos have been killed, more than 10, 000 injured, and close to 250, 000 are detained and are being tortured by the TPLF security forces in different detention centers in Oromia.
The current move by TPLF is another round of attempt to implement the ‘Master Paln’ to displace Oromo from their ancestral land with the help of a UN agency called UN – Habitat; However, this must be the last call for all Oromo to renew their resolve to get ride of this brutal minority regime once and for all.
This is one of the modern Industrial Parks, dubbed as Light Industrial City, to be built in Ethiopia as part of the larger plan for industrialization. It is situated at the southern outskirts of Addis Ababa, known as Jamo area. The local farmers were involuntarily removed. Now, it is turned into a Killing Park.
Credible reports indicate that the security forces are detaining a large number of people in large business storehouses affiliated with the regime and factory buildings built by the regime under the guise of “Industrial Park Development Corporation” around the cities of Addis Ababa, Bushoftu, Adama and Dire Dawa.
Reports also indicate that these parks are becoming killing parks where Oromos are killed and buried in mass graves in the compound of these parks.
It is to be noted that the so-called “Industrial Park Development Corporation” is one of the institutions of land grab that is evicting tens of thousands of Oromo farmers from around these cities and many parts of the country.
Similarly, reports indicate that victims of the government brutality are being denied medical assistance in government run healthcare facilities. In Addis Ababa, hundreds of the participants of the Grand #OromoProtests on Saturday, August 6, 2016, who were seriously injured but not detained were denied access to medical services at the order of the regime’s security forces across the city.
In cases where the victims get admitted to hospitals, the regime’s security forces are removing the medical files of the victims, particularly of the dead, from Hospital records in many Hospitals across Addis Ababa in an attempt to hide the identity of the victims and absolve the perpetrators of the crime from future persecution.
Reports coming from Zewditu Memorial Hospital in Addis Ababa indicates that the medical file of an Oromo Protester by the name Tarekegn Deressa who died at the Hospital of brain concussion after being seriously beaten by the security forces in Meskel Square on Saturday, August 6, 2016, was deleted from the hospital computers and hard copy paper files taken from the Hospital records to hide any trace of what happened to this brave man.
Hospital sources indicate that deleting and hiding the medical files of those killed from hospital records are becoming the operating procedure the regime security forces are using to hide the identity of the victims and absolve the perpetrators of these crimes from future persecution.
Ethiopia is in a serious national crisis. It needs a national solution. An alternative political solution must be immediately thought-out. The government must immediately stop this state of terror and the killing sprees across the country by reigning over the security and military forces carrying out this brutality and heinous crimes.
The international community, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom, European Union, Japan, India, China, World Bank and IMF must immediately take concrete measures to halt the bloodshed and prevent the country from descending into further crisis by lending diplomatic, financial and technical supports for an all-inclusive national political solution. #OromoProstes + #AmharaProtests =#EthiopiaProtests!
That the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission is not an independent institution and that it is incapable of doing human rights monitoring has long been admitted by the regime itself. So, no report it presents is a result of an independent inquiry. No statement it makes is an impartial statement. What we heard yesterday is not even close to the admission of guilt on the part of the regime made by the Prime Minister and the Spokesperson earlier in the year.
We have yet to see its report, the methods it used, and the personnel it mobilized to conduct its investigation. We have yet to see whom they identified as these “other forces who sought to take advantage of the people”. We have yet to see how “these other forces” are implicated. We have yet to see a full description of who did what so that we can make them responsible. To blame indefinite (and invisible) forces for the people killed (over 500 now), for the people injured (in thousands), and for the people arbitrarily arrested (estimated to be over 50,000), for the destruction of property (through vandalizing and burning of university campuses), for the suspension and dismissal of Oromia’s civil administration unconstitutionally (without even a semblance of legality that could be seen if there were an emergency declaration or a “federal intervention”) is a farce of incredible proportion. And we reject that completely, and we say NO!
Referring to “these other forces” as the responsible bodies without clearly identifying them and without establishing the mode of their involvement is only deflecting responsibility from the regime that acted completely lawlessly (illegally and unconstitutionally) to take “merciless and definitive measures” on protestors and to subject the entire region to military rule. This is simply unacceptable. And we say NO to impunity!
The report claims that the federal army, special forces, federal police, and the entire intelligence personnel was unleashed on Oromia to kill, injure, arrest, and terrorize the people [totally in accordance with the order of the Prime Minister to take “merciless and definitive measures”] on the invitation of the region. However, it doesn’t even care to tell us when was it requested, how it was requested, and according to which rules of procedure (apart from that put in place for a legitimate Federal Intervention in the regions). This is completely illegal and unacceptable. We reject this, and mercilessly and conclusively say NO to that, too!
The report claims that the crisis was caused, among other things, by a misunderstanding of the Master Plan. This suggests that the Master Plan is an appropriate plan. This is utterly unacceptable. We say NO!
By issuing this statement by the EHRC, the regime is now suppressing and displacing the truth of the atrocities it perpetrated on innocent protestors.
We say NO to this suppression of the truth, our truth, just as we say NO to the repression of the protest, and the wider systematic oppression of the Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia by a regime that has rendered itself not just undemocratic but utterly anti-democratic.
The modest road we suggested from the start remains to be the only road the regime has to take in order to restore peace (and survive this crisis as a regime).
We state it to them again:
1. Rescind the Master Plan unequivocally (both in Addis and in the adjacent Oromia Zones). Take a clear, public stance by issuing a Parliamentary Resolution against the Master Plan.
2. Stop the violence and remove the Army, the Special Force, the Federal Police, and the intelligence personnel from all civilian life in Oromia.
3. Release all the political prisoners arrested in relation to the protest, including political dissidents arbitrarily taken captive in the wake of the re-eruption of the protest.
4. Set up a genuinely independent commission with members and/or observers from international organizations to conduct a proper investigation to the crisis and to make efforts to establish responsibility (political, administrative, legal, and moral) for the harm caused in the process.
5. Take political responsibility as a government, apologize to the public officially (with a clear statement written and delivered in a proper forum fully transparently to the media), and take all appropriate measures to restore the dignity of the victims and pay reparations to the same.
6. Remove all officials who are at the forefront of political and administrative responsibilities, for by being implicated in the bloodbath that they caused in the course of the crisis, they have totally lost the moral legitimacy, the legal competence, and the public credibility to govern.
7. Ensure that those who did and caused the killings, injuries, rapes, tortures, and arbitrary arrests be held legally accountable (in accordance with the criminal law of the country) before an independent court of law. Allow a forensic determination of guilt and punishment in proportion to the degree of their participation. Fail to do this, the regime will be haunted by the possibility of being brought before international justice institutions (or at least they will face the inconvenience of having to defend themselves).
8. The Government in Oromia has lost all the credibility and all the legitimacy (which it never had anyway!) to govern the region. It is imperative that the Caffee Oromia dismiss itself and call for an election before the next parliamentary year (leaving the day to day administration of matters to a care taker government of the old cabinet).
9. Stop all acts of eviction of farmers from their land which, to most of them, is their only means of livelihood. Work towards a better (possessory) tenure security over the plots of land they now have. Stop all activities of land grab and consequent displacement of people everywhere (in Oromia and beyond) even in the name of “development.” Work towards a more legally entrenched, fair, just, and consultative mode of development planning where necessary expropriation is done with due, effective, and adequate compensation.
10. Ensure that the ‘Special Interest’ clause of the constitution is implemented urgently. In the determination of the content of the Special Interest, Oromia’s voice must be properly listened to as well as that of the city government of Addis Ababa. Start a comprehensive, inclusive, open, and genuinely participatory discussion with all the peoples of Ethiopia about where to place the federal Capital city. In an act of bona fide cooperation, the Oromia government should take steps towards suggesting another options and modes for relocating the capital city within or outside of Oromia (and its own contribution, as the largest State in the Federation, towards building the new capital–if this be the option).
These things are doable things. These things are easier things to do for the regime. Anything short of this will only provoke a more vehement and persistent resistance. To do anything less, or anything other than these modest suggestions, is an invitation for further crisis.
We will do everything at our disposal to resist this. We keep saying NO!
We keep saying NO to justification and rationalization of State terror.
We keep saying NO to all forms of impunity for the gross violation of human rights in Oromia and beyond.
We keep saying NO to all forms of eviction from land including through the Master Plan.
Students mourning at Haromaya University. Photo shared widely on social media.
Over the past two weeks, students in Ethiopia’s largest regional state, Oromia, have been protesting against a government plan to expand the area of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia. Reports suggest security forces used violence including live ammunition to disperse crowds of peaceful demonstrators in the compounds of universities in Oromia.
According to Human Rights Watch, at least three students were killed and hundreds were injured across the region as security forces used excessive force to disperse student protesters. Other reports put the number of students killed up to ten. Although protesters are primarily university students, in some instances, high school and primary school children were also reportedly involved in intense confrontations with government forces.
At least nine students were killed by government forces in May 2014 while protesting over the same issue.
The persecution of Oromo people
The students argue that the controversial plan, known as “the Master Plan”, to expand Addis Ababa into Oromia state would result in mass evictions of farmers mostly belonging to the Oromo ethnic group.
It wouldn’t be the first time the government has uprooted members of an ethnic group. Thousands of ethnic Amharas in western Ethiopia were expelled from the country’s Benishangul Gumuz region in 2013 in what critics called “ethnic cleansing”.
The students have other demands such as making Oromo a federal language. Oromo, the language of the Oromo people, is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia and the fourth largest African language. However, it is not the working language of the federal government.
According to Ethiopian Constitution, Oromia is one of the nine ethnically based and politically autonomous regional states in Ethiopia. Oromo people make up the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia. However, the group has been systematically marginalized and persecuted for the last 24 years. By some estimates, there were as many as 20,000 Oromo political prisoners in Ethiopia as of March 2014.
A 2014 Amnesty International report on repression in the Oromia region noted:
Between 2011 and 2014, at least 5000 Oromos have been arrested based on their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government. These include thousands of peaceful protestors and hundreds of opposition political party members. The government anticipates a high level of opposition in Oromia, and signs of dissent are sought out and regularly, sometimes pre-emptively, suppressed. In numerous cases, actual or suspected dissenters have been detained without charge or trial, killed by security services during protests, arrests and in detention.
The ruling elite of Ethiopia are mostly from the Tigray region, which is located in the northern part of the country.
Social media fills in the gaps
Even as the Ethiopian drought and impending food crisis makes a rare appearance in local—and some international—headlines, little attention is being paid to the student protests in Ethiopian media. But despite Ethiopia’s highly controlled online environment and the government’s firm grip on communications infrastructure, social media users are reporting on the issue, particularly on Facebook, with additional coverage coming from diaspora-based media.
Photo widely circulated on social media, taken from the Facebook page of Jawar Mohammed.
One Facebook user, for example, hopedfor the world to hear stories of the student protesters’ inspiring actions:
The silence has truly been deafening. We need to see and hear the inspiring actions undertaken by huge numbers of #Oromo in #Ethiopia. Tell their story, enable the world to be swept up in their story.Considering the complete absence of freedom to criticize the government or report opposition stories from within the country, people around the world reading about it can help greatly by doing everything possible to amplify this story.
Another Facebook user, Aga Teshome,took note of the political power of Oromo youth:
…#OromoProtests a call for all oppressed people in #Ethiopia to support the ongoing protest against #landgrabing
….the Oromo youth are a powerful political entity capable of shaking mountains. This powerful political entity is hell bent on exposing the [ruling party] EPRDF government’s atrocious human rights record and all round discriminatory practices.
We call upon the media to investigate the conditions that these students died trying to expose and resist, to draw attention to these concerns. Oromia needs a new kind of reporting by the international media, which gives voice to the voiceless Oromo people, who for a very long time have been killed, mistreated, abused, neglected and repressed in Ethiopia. Going forward with the current plan, which ends up displacing tens of thousands of poor farmers, destroying their livelihood and depriving their identity, is a tragedy. It deserves attention. These students put their lives on the line to draw attention to the farmers’ plight.#OromoProtests
Although social media reports are pivotal in letting the world know about the protests, they miss a huge chunk of nuance that would help observers understand how this dispute is unfolding. Notably, the fact that the student protests combine delicate ethnic politics, urban land grabbing and Ethiopia’s diaspora community’s involvement in home country politics.
Given Ethiopia’s highly controlIed environment, one might wonder how the students managed to get organized to express their grievance in the mid of highly controlled environment. Despite the firm grip on communication infrastructure there are constant update on Facebook and Twitter about the protest.
Dubious development practices
The story is unpleasantly familiar, as students are protesting for the second time in less than two years.
In April and May 2014, the protests began in response to the government’s plan to implement the “Integrated Masterplan for Addis Ababa”. As Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, is an enclave within Oromia regional state, students primarily from Oromia state accused the Ethiopian government of attempting to take over land owned by local farmers in the name of integrating adjacent Oromia towns into the sprawling city of Addis. The students further alleged that if implemented, the Masterplan would result in Addis Ababa further encroaching into the territory of Oromia.
The government rejected the accusation, claiming that the Masterplan was intended only to facilitate the development of infrastructure such as transportation, utilities, and recreation centers.
When the protests began the students’ main demand was the complete halting of the Masterplan. In May 2014, the government did momentarily halt the plan in order to abate the protests after at least nine were killed and hundreds of ethnic Oromo students were imprisoned. But when the government decided to resume plans to implement the Masterplan in November this year resentment boiled over again, resulting in the currently two-week-old student protest leaving at least ten people dead and many injured.
Since the highly contested 2005 national election, forceful evictions and urban land grabbing have become frequent in Addis Ababa. The capital city’s rapid growth has resulted in increasing pressure to convert rural land for industrial, housing, infrastructure, or other urban use.
Diaspora-based advocates say the unrest in Oromia is just a part of the general unhappiness that prevails in the country. They accuse the government of working for the benefit of a few people at the expense of others. They even suggest that the Ethiopian government covertly encouraged informal settlement on the outskirts of Addis Ababa so that they could later find a way to intervene under the guise of rebuilding the slums and lease the land to real estate developers.
Ermias Legesse, a high profile government defector, traces the cause of the Oromo student protest to events that took place 15 years ago. In his book, “Addis Ababa: The Abandoned City”, Ermias notes that since 2000 the Addis Ababa city municipality, with the support of the federal government, enacted five different pieces of legislation to “legalize” the informal settlements, and then sold the “legalized” lands to private property developers.
Most informal settlers on the outskirts of Addis Ababa manage to establish themselves for a period of time until they are displaced by government. “Sometimes the informal settlers are given only a few days’ notices before bulldozers arrive on the scene to tear down their shabby houses and lay foundations for new investors,” Ermias said in an interview with a diaspora-based television channel.
“Ethiopian police have moved in to suppress this united demonstration of protest. Government sharpshooters are firing into crowds and killing students again.”
Protesters say the central government is trying to evict Oromo farmers from their land under the auspices of urban development, with little or no compensation, essentially turning them into street beggars and daily laborers.
Tensions rise as students in Oromia accuse government of land grab
Activists claim security forces have killed at least seven students in more than two weeks across Ethiopia’s Oromia state, where students have been protesting a government plan to expand the area of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia.
Oromia police have confirmed three fatalities in what it termed provocations by “anti-peace elements.”
Images of severely injured students have been posted on social media, and hundreds of other protesters have reportedly been rounded up in a crackdown on those demonstrating against several state-led development projects.
Oromo students, the opposition and diaspora activists liken the proposed Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Plan, or the Master Plan, to a land grab. They fear that it will displace Oromo farmers and undermine Oromia’s interests by expanding Addis Ababa’s boundaries.
Addis Ababa is in the state of Oromia and serves as the regional and federal capital. In theory, the Ethiopian constitution protects Oromia’s “special interest” in Addis Ababa in the provision of social services and use of natural resources and on joint administrative matters.
While the city, home to 4 million people, has experienced massive growth over the last decade, Oromo activists have long decried the lack of social facilities for its Afaan Oromo speakers, including schools, hospitals and cultural institutions.
The protests broke out in November Ginci, a town about 50 miles west of Addis Ababa. Students from universities, high schools and even some primary schools continue to stage sit-ins and demonstrations around the country.
Oromia, the largest of Ethiopia’s nine ethnically based states, is home to close to half the country’s population of 100 million. The Oromo people have long had a contentious relationship with the national government.
“Many Oromos have felt marginalized and discriminated against by successive Ethiopian governments and have often felt unable to voice their concerns over government policies,” Felix Horne, the Horn of Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch, wrote in a Dec. 5 blog post.
He called for an immediate halt to the excessive use of force by security personnel, an independent and impartial investigation into the killings and the prosecution of security forces involved in the violent crackdown.
‘Long-simmering grievance’
Protesters say the central government is trying to evict Oromo farmers from their land under the auspices of urban development, with little or no compensation, essentially turning them into street beggars and daily laborers.
The government says its plan is mutually beneficial, will enhance cooperation and will make the area globally competitive by remedying its disorganized spatial growth.
Addis Ababa serves as landlocked Ethiopia’s primary gateway to the outside world. Last year the New York–based consultancy A.T. Kearney named Addis Ababa “the third-most-likely city to advance its global positioning,” adding, “the Ethiopian capital is also among the cities closing in fastest on the world leaders.”
Modest economic growth and the lack of opportunities in rural areas have fueled massive rural-to-urban migration. The Master Plan is part of an effort to mitigate the city’s resulting rapid expansion. But critics contend that the proposal focuses mostly on attracting investors and will ensure the continued erasure of Oromos’ historical and cultural values from the city.
The Oromo students’ protests are not new. They been demonstrating against the central state for most of the last two decades.
In April and May 2014, Ethiopian security forces fired live ammunition at unarmed protesters, killing dozens of students and wounding many others. Hundreds of students were arrested and charged under Ethiopia’ssweeping anti-terrorism law, and many remain incarcerated.
A federal court last week convicted five students for participating in those protests. In the early 2000s, Ethiopia saw similar protests and violence over a government plan to move Oromia’s capital from Addis Ababa. The decision was reversed in 2005 amid a public outcry.
There has been limited media coverage of the ongoing protests. There are strong restrictions on the free press in Ethiopia, one of the most censored countries in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Government critics and the independent press face increased scrutiny.
Analysts warn that continued violent responses to peaceful protesters could bode ill for Ethiopia’s future.
“The Oromo have long been humiliated with their still marginal status in Ethiopia’s power arrangement,” said Hassen Hussein, an Ethiopian-born university professor in Minnesota. “These almost annual student protests give voice to these long-simmering grievance and perhaps a harbinger of what is to come. The authorities cannot forever count on an aggrieved nation remaining docile.”
Oromo activists and community leaders in North America, Western Europe and Australia are planning solidarity rallies for next week, when more violence is anticipated.
Bonnie Holcomb, an author and anthropologist based in Washington, D.C., said the current situation mirrors the violence of 2014. “The international media were silent when Ethiopian police opened fire into crowds, killing 68, permanently disabling hundreds and arresting thousands. Now the next stage of the Master Plan is being implemented,” she said.
“Ethiopian police have moved in to suppress this united demonstration of protest. Government sharpshooters are firing into crowds and killing students again,” she said.
The public meeting convened by Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) in Finfinne Sunday, October 18, to discuss the so-called Addis Ababa and Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Master Plan has ended adopting a 9-point resolution.The meeting concluded that the Master Plan is a land grab policy disguised as a development plan and called on Ethiopian authorities to halt it, and on the public to continue rejecting it.
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Walgayiin ummataa Kongreseii Federaalawaa Oromootiin Finfinneetti har’a (Dilbata, 18/10/15) geggeeffamee ture ejjennoo qabxii 9 qabu irratti waliigaleetee uummachuun xumurameera. Walgayichi maqaa Maastar Pilaan jedhuun karoorri mootummaan Itoophiyaa Finfinnee fi Godiina Addaa Oromiyaa keessatti hojiirra oolchuuf qophaawaa jiru karoora saamicha lafaa akka ta’e hubachiisee hatattamaan akka dhaabu gaafateera. Ummatis mormii isaa akka itti fufu dhaamsa dabarseera.
Maqaan Magaalaa tokkoo fedhii fi waliigaltee jiraattota magaalichaatiin jijjirama inni jedhu aangoo Caffeen Oromiyaa kan dhiibuu fi Caffeen Oromiyaa labsii heera naanichaa fi mirga caffee dhiibu akka baase illee tumaan labsii kanaa ni mullisa.
Miseensonni Caffee Oromiyaa haara filatamanii seenaan danbii fi seeraa Caffichaa utuu hin hubatin jalqabumaan murtii bara dheeraaf lafa irra harkifachaa ture fi Oromiyaa guutummaatti mormamaa jiru murteesisuun bulchiinsa naanichaa jeequmsa keessa akka galchu danda’u fi ummanni ija shakiin akka ilaalu kan godhee ta’uumis beekameera.
Hundreds of Oromo (and friends of the Oromo) Facebook and Twitter users have changed their ‘profile pictures’ to the “Say No” graphic asnews broke out earlier on September 30, 2015, that the Tigrean-led Ethiopian government was advancing to finalize the “Addis Ababa Master Plan” through its agent OPDO. The “Addis Ababa Master Plan” aims to evict millions of Oromo farmers from the Oromia Federal State’s localities around Finfinne (Addis Ababa) in order to take the land for Tigrean investors, Tigrean real-estate developers and Tigrean commercial farmers while Oromo farmers will become day-laborers (unskilled workers), guards, housemaids, etc. (i.e. low-wage earners) on the Tigrean investment hub (called “Industrial Zone”) in Central Oromiyaa. In addition to Central Oromiyaa, these Tigrean “Industrial Zones” are to be built all over Oromiyaa near major cities/towns, such as the Dire-Dawa Industrial Zone near Dire-Dawa, the Jimma Industrial Zone near Jimma city, and so on – more details can be read here.
Target: Federal Government of Ethiopia, National Regional State of Oromia, City Gov’t of Addis Ababa
Petition Background (Preamble):
We, the Oromo people in Ethiopia, the Oromo diaspora across the globe, friends of the Oromo people in and outside of Ethiopia, all other progressive forces in Ethiopia and beyond, and all forces dedicated to the ideas and ideals of justice and democracy, and those of us committed to the principles of liberty and equality of all peoples everywhere, stand together in protest to the proposed Addis Ababa Integrated Regional Development Plan (otherwise known as the Master Plan).
In particular, we request the Federal Government of Ethiopia, that of the National Regional State of Oromia, and of the City of Addis Ababa to immediately stop the implementation of the Master Plan. As the Caffee Oromiyaa meets to adopt the Urban Development Bill of the Region (Wixilee Labsii Magaalota Motummaa Naannoo Oromiyaa Hundeessuf [dhiyaate]), a bill in which the matter of the Master Plan is to be passed in disguise, we like to remind the members that they are at a rare historical moment, a moment when each of them should try and align the call of their conscience and their constituency to that of their party. We urge them to vote the bill down and stop the implementation of the Master Plan. We urge them to start wide-ranging, consultative, and participatory meetings directly with the people in order to address discontents that emerged in relation to, and triggered by, the release of the Master Plan.
So doing is of utmost urgency to the people of Oromia (whose human rights are being violated), the Government of Oromia (whose right to self-governance is defied, whose territorial jurisdiction is bypassed, whose special interest is ignored, and whose stability is endangered), and the government of Addis Ababa (whose people’s rights and interests are ignored, whose right to just administration is repeatedly violated, and whose peace and stability is increasingly at stake).
We demand the interruption of the implementation of the Master Plan and a reconsideration of its process, content, and consequence anew. We do so fully aware of the fact that, as it stands now, the proposed Master Plan lacks legitimacy in the process of its making, in its content, and in its consequence. We believe that the process was not consultative, transparent, and participatory. Its content violates the right of Oromia to self-governance, the rights of the inhabitants to socio-economic rights (such as the right of farmers to subsistence, of people to adequate standard of living, of the Oromo inhabitants to cultural rights such as language, education, and other social services), and the power of Oromia to co-equal administration of the city as its capital. Moreover, its content illegally excises the towns and Woredas of the Special Zone out of the jurisdiction of Oromia and unconstitutionally unites them with the city of Addis Ababa. In short, it expands the territorial and jurisdictional extent of the city to Oromia. In its consequence, it is neither legally defensible nor morally justifiable.
We believe that it will have, as it already had, a negative impact on the people and governments of Oromia and the inhabitants in the area. Thousands of farmers are, and will be unjustly deprived of their only means of subsistence. They are, and will be, removed from their ancestral land and displaced by the wealthy few that favour the regime in power. These farmers and their families are and will be dispossessed, homeless, and unemployed urban poor. The development the regime claims to bring about are not development of the people but an illegal and unjust enrichment of the few. To the Oromo people, its result is eviction en masse through a systematic state act of ethnic cleansing. Its result is the unconstitutional usurpation of the region’s power. It is a forced incorporation of the Oromo territory and people into a city administration that is illegally made already outside of the administrative jurisdiction of Oromia, an administration to which the hosts, i.e., the Oromo, are made the guests. The implementation of the Master Plan exacerbates the already grave conditions in which the Oromo of the area live. It dissolves the constitutionally recognized special interest of Oromia in the city. It imposes a forced cultural assimilation of the Oromo mass by marginalizing their language, invisibilizing their culture, and misrecognizing their identity. It poses a major threat to peace by intensifying conflict between investors and the local inhabitants. It poses a major threat of pollution caused by liquid waste and other acts of environmental degradation. (This, too, is against the constitutional right to a clean and pure environment.)
The implementation of the Master Plan has provoked an Oromia-wide mass protest in 2014. In response, the government brutally murdered over 70 Oromos, wounded hundreds, and illegally detained many more. Not a single one of the perpetrators have been brought before justice to date. To continue to implement the plan now is to invite another round of protest that may result in an even worse violence that might in turn result in a more intensely violent clash between the government and the people and among interest groups in the area.
Petition:
Therefore, we the undersigned seek to draw the regime’s attention to these flaws in the process, content, and consequence of the Master Plan and we urge the government to stop causing an imminent disaster even as it disguises the issue in the new Urban Development Bill. We stand united as a voice of the underprivileged and silenced poor. We stand as a voice of conscience, a voice for justice.
We demand an immediate cessation of the implementation of the Master Plan because we believe it is legally indefensible (as it violates the constitution and other laws of the country), politically implausible (as it has been comprehensively rejected by the people, even through sacrifice in lives, limbs, and futures), and morally unjustifiable (as it is an unfair eviction of poor farmers from their land, denial of their right to the only means of subsistence, deprivation of their identity, a systematic act of mass displacement, and a blunt attempt to cleanse of the land of its Oromo inhabitants).
We also urge that the government starts to enforce the special interest of Oromia over Addis Ababa in accordance with the constitutional imperative in Article 49. We demand that the governments of FDRE, Oromia, and the city of Addis Ababa to establish, jointly or separately, independent and impartial commission(s) to inquire into the government’s violence unleashed on the protestors in 2014 and to address the discontents around it.
Hiraarrii fi cunqursaan saba Oromoo irra sirna abbaa irree wayyaaneen geessifamu har’allee babal’atee dameelee hedduu yaafatee gidiraa fi dhiphuu ummata Oromoo akkaan hammeessee jira. Hidhaan, ajjechaanii fi baqi akkuma jirutti ta’ee, maqaa guddina biyyaa, misoomaa fi investimentii jedhuun qonnaan bultootni Oromoo lafa isaanii irraa buqqaafamanii maatiin diigamaniiru. Duulli maqaa misooma biyyaa fi investimentiin geggeeffamaa jiru jireenya Oromoo hundee irraa kan qoree fi lafa akaakilee fi abaabilee irraa buqqisee ilmaan Oromoo hedduun kadhattuu fi harka ormaa ilaaltuu akka ta’an taasisuun dhugaa dirreetti mul’atuu dha.
Gartuun TPLF/EPRDF sirna cunqursaa fi saaminsaa itti fufsiisuuf Oromiyaa dhabamsiisee ummata Oromoo biyya dhablee taasisuuf karoora diinummaa bal’aa lafaa akka qabu dhokataa miti. Karoora isaa keessaa tokko kan ta’ee fi bara 2014 keessa hojii irra oolchuuf yaalee kan dura dhaabbannoon ummata Oromoo isa mudachuu irraa yeroofis ta’u jalaa gufatee ture Karoora Master Plaanii Magaalaa Finfinnee fi naannawa ishee ti.
Karoorri Master Pilaanii Magaalaa Finfinnee fi naannawa ishee jedhamu dhuguma akka sirnichi ololu Oromoo lafa isaa irraa kan hin dhiibnee fi hin buqqisne, jiruu fi jireenya isaa kan hin gaagaane, aadaa, seenaa fi afaan isaa irratti gaaddidduu kan hin buusne osoo hin taane, dhugaa qabatamaan lafa irraa mul’atu Oromoota Finfinnee fi naannawa sana marsanii jiran, kanarra iyyuu darbee haga fageenyaa irratti argaman kan buqqisuu fi diigu, aadaa, seenaa fi afaan Oromoo kan dhabamsiisuu fi bulchiinsa alagaa kan warra gita bittootaa Oromoo irratti kan goobsu akka ta’e qabatamaan mul’ata. Alagaa investara taasisee Oromoo kumoota dhibbaan kan hiyyeessa gadadaawee fi kadhataa taasisuu dha.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (The Post Post)–France with the help of the World Bank has embarked on missions that destroyed many lives in some African countries. One of those countries in which this duo operates is Ethiopia. Mali, Burkina Faso and Benin are the other victims of the “urbanization for the 21st century,” which mainly advocates building cities around public transportation.
In May 2014, university student protesters of Oromo ethnic origin took to the streets of Ethiopia in opposition to the “Integrated Development Master Plan.” Some student protesters quoted by social media activists dubbed it “a master killer,” because dozens of students and people who protested were gunned down by Ethiopian security forces. Some of them pointed to its “unconstitutionality,” saying it encroaches on Oromia’s land. Ethiopian government security forces effectively silenced the protesters.
However, the real victims of the urbanization projects were the low-income families who lived in Addis Ababa and vicinity. Bekele Feyissa, a farmer in Sebeta, complained to Bloomberg’s reporter in 2014 that he got paid $36 for 1.5 acres of land. Even though the government owns the land, Mr. Feyissa, a father of six has customary rights to the land. He has at least eight people to feed. People like Fayissa are the ones who have gotten the short end of the stick.
It all started with the 1999-2000 urbanization projects. There were multiple moving parts—lender [World Bank Group], contractor [Lyon Town Planning Agency], Addis Ababa city government, French government agencies and German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ).
A document detailing the zenith of a 15-year-old mission is buried in the deep web pages of UrbaLyon—The Planning Agency of the Lyon metropolitan area. Coincidentally, “Mission from 19-26 May 2009” is displayed in bold letters under a picture of Addis Ababa on a cloudy day. According to the header, the document was a result of a collaboration of three organizations. They were Addis Ababa City Government, Lyon Town Planning Agency, and Ville de Lyon—city municipal of Lyon—France’s second-largest city after Paris. The page after the agenda for the seven-day mission, splashes a photo of Ethiopian Herald, with a title that reads, “Officials of Ville De Lyon keen to work with Addis.”
Ethiopian Herald’s title was misleading as it implied working with Addis was a new venture. The “technical cooperation” started ten years before, and the May 2009 mission was to transform it into “city to city cooperation.”
In the historical background section, the document emphasizes the cooperation of Addis Ababa city government and the French (Grand Lyon and the French Embassy). It further states the decision by the French to fund the revision of the 2002 master plan was to establish pre-operational project processes, implying they were there to collect the return.
This rich French city also has other contracts with other African cities like Bamako, Ouagadougou, Porto-Novo and Rabat, whose stories are not too far from that of Addis Ababa. Some of those countries were a little generous to their displaced people due to urbanization planned by Lyon Urban Planning Agency, even though the displaced still suffered consequences.
The most significant part of this document shows the involvement of the World Bank, which is not a surprise by any stretch. However, investigative reports showed the organization’s involvement in projects which ruined at least 3.4 million lives worldwide. These contracts Grand Lyon signs with sub-Saharan cities, do not seem to involve financial planning even though it appears they often made sure the World Bank funded the projects. Three World Bank officials were listed in this document among the contacts: Abebaw Alemayehu (senior development specialist), Yoshimichi Kawasumi (senior highway engineer), and Yitbarek Tessema (senior water and sanitation specialist).
Reports by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, The Huffington Post, and The Investigative Fund found that The World Bank Group repeatedly failed to enforce own rules to protect communities in its projects’ path. One of the stories featured by these reporters includes Ethiopian Anuak family who were beaten, raped, and displaced from their land as a result of The World Bank Group funded Ethiopian government villagization program.
The disconcerting and destructive quote to The World Bank’s mission came from the World Bank’s Ethiopia program director, Greg Toulmin. “We are not in the physical security business,” ICIJ quoted him saying at the time. Despite his dismissive quote towards human rights and his contradicting of the World Bank Group’s mission, Mr. Toulmin is currently the acting Country Director for Ethiopia.
The World Bank, whose private lending arm, International Finance Corporation (IFC) is a defendant in a class action lawsuit filed in District of Columbia, sent a link to a press release in response to The Horn Post’s request for a budget document showing financial compensation for the displaced people in the outskirts of Addis Ababa. In the press release, in March 2015, the World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said, “We took a hard look at ourselves on resettlement and what we found caused me deep concern.” He also goes on to acknowledge failures in overseeing projects involving resettlement, implementation and enforcement of own policies.
The World Bank’s Operational Policies (OP 4.12) clearly states involuntary displacement needs special attention in paragraph 2.
“Involuntary resettlement may cause severe long-term hardship, impoverishment, and environmental damage unless appropriate measures are carefully planned and carried out. For these reasons, the overall objectives of the Bank’s policy on involuntary resettlement are the following:
Involuntary resettlement should be avoided where feasible, or minimized, exploring all viable alternative
Where it is not feasible to avoid resettlement, resettlement activities should be conceived and executed as sustainable development programs, providing sufficient investment resources to enable the persons displaced by the project to share in project benefits should be meaningfully consulted and should have opportunities to participate in planning and implementing resettlement programs.
Displaced persons should be assisted in their efforts to improve their livelihoods and standards of living or at least to restore them, in real terms, to pre-displacement levels or to levels prevailing prior to the beginning of project implementation, whichever is higher.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, the press release came after both the ICIJ report and the lawsuit accusing International Finance Corporation of irresponsible and negligent conduct in appraising, financing, advising, supervising and monitoring a coal-fired powered plant in India.
Countries like China and Turkey are operating in Ethiopia, but France takes the lead in displacing the poor with near zero compensation in the outskirts of Addis Ababa.
An email from The Horn Post to Lyon city officials seeking comments regarding Addis Ababa Master plan did not get a response at the time of this publication.
Say no to the master killer. Addis Ababa master plan is TPLF’s grand genocidal plan against Oromo people.
”As we have heard #TheMasterKiller implementation is just around to evict thousands of Oromos from their land and homes. More then that to destroy Oromummaa as well. In addition also The So Called Master Killer will cut Oromiyaa into two like Gaza and West-bank. Guess what will happen then?. We must all stand together and stop this, remember last time mostly students were participated but this time around we must all prepare for inclusive resistance (all of us) to save guard Oromiyaa and Oromummaa. Remember without OROMIYAA NO OROMOS!” OFC
Prepare for another bigger and bitter resistance- Jawar Mohammed
Mr Hayelom is saying the Addis Ababa Master Killer will be endorsed this coming year. He must be joking. The Oromia government should not even think about this unless its prepared for another even bigger and bitter resistance. We shall prepare for an all out confrontation should they move forward with this plan that is aimed to uprooting 2 million Oromo farmers from their ancestral homeland.
———–
Tigrichi Hayaloom Xaawiyee jedhan Master Pilaannin Finfinnee bara kana hojirra akka oolu dhaadataa jira. Bulchiinsi Oromiyaa karoora qonnaan bultoota miliyoona lama qe’eerraa buqqaasee dhabamsiisuuf baafame kana ammas irra deebi’een raggaasisa jedhee yaadnaan balaaf of saaxilaa jira. Oromooni hundi bakka jiranii tokkummaafi murannoon karoora kana dura dhaabbachuuf of qopheessuu qabna.
In 2007, the population census put the city’s population at 3.38million. It was expected to grow at a rate of 3.8% per year – which would put the total population today at 4.5million. This may not seem so far-fetched considering there were estimates that said that by 2020 it would have a population of 8 million. But this fast and vast growth has come at a high price. First, it is creating divisions between the government and already marginalised population groups. Addis has always been a sprawling city, from when it originated in 1886 as a military settlement, part of Emperor Menelik II’s campaign in taking over Oromo territory. Throughout its history it continued to sprawl due to its spontaneous and unplanned nature. As the city expanded from 1994 – 2007, research showed that many farmers on the peripheries lost their livelihoods and were forced instead to turn to other forms of casual labour within the city. This spurred the development of the Oromia Special zone that was created in 2008 in order to ease the co-operation and development of the surrounding areas of Addis Ababa and to control the urban sprawl of this city on the lands of the Oromia people. However, more recently, there were further calls that the government was perpetuating inequality along ethnic lines when it announced a master plan titled “the Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Integrated Development Plan”. This area structure plan was intended to create special zones surrounding Addis that were divided into industry, service and settlement zones, based on their existing potential, economic base and geography. But it has become a contentious issue, met with opposition by Oromo residents who would lose an additional 36 towns and cities to Addis Ababa. According to researchers, the city’s expansion in the past has led to forced evictions and displacement of local Oromo residents and protesters of this new master plan fear that ceding Oromo lands to Addis Ababa would lead to more losses in Oromo identity and culture. The fast rate of urbanisation has also perpetuated levels of inequality and fragility which are highly visible on some of the streets and areas of Addis and, intentionally or not, this seems to have been moved to specific areas. One example is in the neighbourhood of Mercato – named so because it is home to the largest market areas in the city. Everything can be found here from steel pipes to spices and kitchenware. It is also where the hidden face of poverty of the city becomes most apparent. Here people are struggling to survive, making a living by whatever means possible – as this is the time of year when the rains come heavy and fast almost every afternoon, there are countless young men taking advantage of it. They will clean shoes, the bottoms of trousers or sit on old buckets fixing broken umbrellas. Government is trying? The government does believe it is trying. In a recent statement it said that more than half a million citizens have benefited from housing schemes over the past 10 years. One of these is the ambitious government-led low-and middle-income housing programme launched in 2005: The Integrated Housing Development Programme (IHDP). The initial goal of the programme was to construct 400,000 condominium units, create 200,000 jobs, promote the development of 10,000 micro – and small – enterprises, enhance the capacity of the construction sector, regenerate inner-city slum areas, and promote homeownership for low-income households. However, this programme may have inadvertently perpetuated inequality. A major challenge has become the affordability of the units for low-income households, with the cost increases in the price of condominium houses deeming them no longer an option for many low-income households. Furthermore, the inability to pay the monthly mortgage and service payments forces many households to move out of their unit and rent it. Also, many of the condominium sites are located on the periphery of the city and do not acknowledge the need for employment opportunities for residents, despite there living up to 10,000 households in some sites. This places further financial strain on beneficiaries in the form of daily transport costs.- Mail and Guardian Africa
Federal government plans to take over the entire corridor of 25km between Hawasa and Shashamene. Both Sidama Zone or SNNPR and Oromia have not been consulted yet.
Major cities in Oromia are administered in what is termed as “special zone.” Jimma and its surrounding is special zone; Addis Ababa and its surrounding is special zone; Adama and its surrounding is special zone. Now the federal government of Ethiopia is considering to create one for Shashamane because, sources disclose, the city is becoming home for ”nations and nationalities” and economically very significant to be left for the regional government. In fact, the federal government wants to take over the entire corridor of 25km between Hawasa and Shashamene. And both Sidama Zone or SNNPR and Oromia have not been consulted yet. The plan will land on table presumably after 2015 election and EPRDF secures majority in the house that is already decided at the council of ministers in their last successive meetings.
As a tradition, top-down orders from the Government of Ethiopia (GoE), which is mostly controlled and manipulated by the Tigrayan minority group TPLF, would not be questioned by the regional states and the ruling regional “allies.” Any form of divergence from what the GoE says would not be tolerated and often officials are intimidated. The Addis Ababa master plan for example faced stiff resistance and after about months of “mediation,” the GoE via Addis Ababa city administration is bracing for what is thought to be a potential escalation of dispute with Oromia when the plan is once again put for test in January 2015. The exact terms reached between Addis Ababa and Oromia with more arbrating than mediating role of Federal officials will never be known until documents are available for media and public. As to Diriba Kuma himself, he is nervous because he wants to return back to Oromia with his little left reputation. Aafter all Oromia is much formidable place for officials than the federal government, and this master plan is not making things easy for him. Again, he also wants to stay and turn things around, and that would risk him for intimidation by GoE.
The word ‘’federalize’’ is only used in this context to describe the intention of the Federal government. As it is dictated by the constitution and other bylaws, federal government can’t own land. However, the GoE acts as if it owns everything in the empire amplifying the stark reality and difference between what is on paper and what is being practiced. In fact, the creation of special zones can be taken as a strategy of weakening the regional governments by snatching economically viable and productive areas, at the same time, strengthen the much talked about TPLF’s economic empire.
Creating a special zone is not new thing in developing countries. The noble motive of creating such geographic and administrative demarcation is to facilitate development and ensure smooth and dynamic rural-urban divide, and reduce the negative impacts of emerging industries on the the environment and the society. However, the case of Oromia is quite different, or perhaps as the source indicates, disastrous.
In Addis Ababa, rampant mismanagement and corruption of land is source of fortune for few and destitution for most. Although rarely, this has been acknowledged by the city government itself. The last wave of urban land grab was right after the 2005 election. The so called Land Bank was fabricated to ration land to Tigrayans; following that campaign, Ex-Minister Ermisa Legese tells, over 150000 Oromo farmers and their families were displaced in what is now understood as systematic genocide. The second wave of land grab, this time deep into Oromia, is an ongoing project since 2012 right before Mele’s death. And many believe this Adds Ababa master plan legitimizes what has been done under the radar for the last 10 years. We should be afraid that It might take another 15 year but a complete social and economic Abyssinianization of Jimma, Adama and Shashamane is quite possible within this regime unless change is pending.
As smooth as it looks from outside falsely to handle investment and industries, the creation of special zone is an administrative hurdle because it is a redundant procedure. Creating a zone within Zone, society within society, economy within economy, is not sustainable and fair. There are experiences from other federal countries how to develop both social and economic sectors of the population without adversely impacting the livelihood of the people and the ecology. And the best way to do that is not to disconnect the rural surrounding from its urban epicenter.
Special zone model is attentively and particularly geared to be applied in Oromia as neither in Amhara nor in Tigray regions that they have special zones in a way they are in the former. In the later two regions, there are Mekele zone and Bahirdar zone but it is only purely for economic reasons since they have a smooth and consistent social transition from urban to rural settings. Without bold social and economic policy changes, my source thinks, these cities such as Jimma or Adama are administratively would soon be out of Oromia. because of their economic and administrative model and their social mix, which are not according to the interest of the Oromo people, just like Addis Ababa.
Apart from serving as a new hotbed for corruption and mismanagement, the new special zone around Shashamane and its link with Hawasa is intended to create an ‘’atmosphere of cooperation’’ between the two regional states. The increasing hostility between regional states were an intense topic during several federal security meetings. Most of these disputes are over land and border. Tigrayan controlled GoE, heavily influenced by Amhara individuals (not ANDM persei), wants to check and demise the little autonomy of regional state in pretext of ‘’creating one socioeconomic community’’ rhetoric of the constitution thereby pleasing the assimilative and border-phobic motives of some influential Amhara elites to restore their nostalgic interest of the empire and at the same time ensuring the continuous economic hegemony of Tigrayan minority.
Federal government plans to take over the entire corridor of 25km between Hawasa and Shashamene. Both Sidama Zone or SNNPR and Oromia have not been consulted yet
Why Resist the Master Plan? A Constitutional Legal Exploration
Tsegaye R. Ararssa
When the Ethiopian government announced its readiness to implement its “Integrated Regional Development Plan” (the “Master Plan” for short) in the middle of April 2014, it provoked an immediate reaction from university students across the National Regional State of Oromia. Through the instrumentality of its security forces (such as the Federal and State Police, the Army, and the Special Forces), the Ethiopian government responded with brutal repression of the protests. In a series of campus-based and street protests that barely lasted for two weeks, over a hundred innocent Oromos are killed and thousands are jailed. To date, sporadic and spontaneous protest demonstrations continue to erupt in various parts of Oromia. Fuelled by anger triggered by the reckless words and utter disdain expressed in the course of a televised discussion between the Addis Ababa City Administration and the mayors and other executive heads of the surrounding towns over the Master Plan, and informed by history of killing, mutilation, dispossession, and political marginalization (all of which continue unabated), the protests were more a spontaneous reaction than a planned resistance.
Ignored by the state and local government, lied on by the national propaganda machine, neglected by international media and NGOs (with few exceptions), the students continue to resist. Diaspora Oromo communities, in a gesture of solidarity, voiced the plights of the students at home, and they took the occasion to ‘witness’ the violence once more. The non-Oromo Ethio-political elite, which always finds it difficult to speak out on atrocities perpetrated on Oromos, rather characteristically, is still struggling with itself on how to express anger at the mass killings without siding with the cause of the Oromo. (Basking on the nation-wide challenge to the regime as a fertile political moment, they sought to make gestures of solidarity in the hope that they won’t be left out in the event that the tide gets traction thereby leading to the eventual crumbling of the regime.) But very few groups came out in public and condemn this state-orchestrated terror. To be fair, they did well in voicing the plight of the six bloggers and three journalists arrested in the weeks following the start of the unrest. And that is to be appreciated. But the contrast was nothing less than disheartening to those who expected more than gestures of solidarity and had hoped that Oromo lives and rights would be valued as any other lives and rights in Ethiopia.
In this piece, I seek to make a close reading of the constitutional-legal frame within which to situate the master Plan. Accordingly, first, I seek to explore the constitutional-legal context within which the Master Plan should be considered and analysed. Next, I will present a summary of four major constitutional-legal arguments against the Master Plan.
2. Constitutional Context
The point of departure is the assumption that—the important debate about legitimacy aside—the constitution is ‘the supreme law of the land’ against which the validity of all laws, decisions, and practices is measured (art. 9). According to the constitution, the Ethiopian state is federal in structure (arts 1 and 50-52). Ethiopia is a ‘nation of nations’ (Fasil 1997) that can be considered a multinational federation. In the language of the constitution, ‘Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ are the locus of sovereignty (art 8) and have the right to self-determination (art-39). As sovereign entities, they are the ‘building blocks’ that have a co-equal share in the founding of the contemporary Ethiopian polity. As subjects with the right to self-determination, they have, inter alia, the right to a ‘full measure of self-government’ (art 39(3)). Accordingly, most of these ‘nations,’ based on the four-fold criteria of settlement pattern, language, identity, and consent of the people concerned’ (art 46(1)), have established the nine states that constitute federal Ethiopia (art. 47), one of which is the state of Oromia (art.47(1)4))).
Addis Ababa (which Oromos call Finfinne) is designated as the “capital city of the federal” government (art 49(1)) whose ethnically diverse people have a right to self-government (art 49(2)) that is ultimately responsible to the federal government (art 49(3)). Being an Oromo city (albeit the constitution talks only about its ‘location’ in Oromia), it is also the capital city of the state of Oromia. This was stated in both the old and revised constitutions of Oromia (i.e. Art 6 of the 1995 constitution and Art 6 of the revised 2001 Constitution as amended in 2005). Owing to its being an Oromo city, the constitution clearly recognizes Oromia’s ‘special interest in Addis Ababa’ particularly in relation to social services, natural resources, and joint administrative matters (art 49(5)).
The articulation of the content of this special interest has been a matter of quiet controversy between the two governments on the one hand and between the Oromia government and the federal government on the other. The law envisaged to come to effect in order to articulate it was never made. Oromia’s request for the law fell on deaf ears. Oromia’s formal request for interpretation from the constitutional interpreter (the House of Federation cum Council of Constitutional Inquiry) was rejected by the latter on the ground that they do not give ‘advisory opinion’ in the absence of ‘case and controversy’. In the meantime, the formal and informal land-grabbing continued to spread into the neighbouring towns and districts. There being no formal institution that regulates inter-governmental relations—and the federal government being indifferent to the concerns of Oromia and the city government virtually absent from the scene since 2005—the matter became increasingly irritating to the Oromia officials. Frustrated, in 2009, the legislature of Oromia, the Caffee, established a ‘Special Zone’ of towns and districts that surround the city of Addis Ababa. This, they hoped, would give them a focused mode of operation in relation to the specific problems of these towns that are hard hit by the spill over effect of Addis Ababa’s problems (such as wanton destruction of the forest, environmental pollution due to emissions from factories and flower farms, illegal constructions and settlements, all of which was buttressed by absence of governance and corruption).
The boundary of the city was long agreed to be the boundary of the city as circumscribed in 1992 (as per Proclamation No.7/1992 which identified the city as one of the 14 Regions). According to the constitution, the boundaries of states is subject to review either through referendum organized in relation to self-determination (art 39), or through a formal constitutional amendment process (art 105(2)). To date, no such referendum was held[1] nor was there any attempt to amend the constitution.[2]
3. Four Legal Arguments against the Master Plan:
The whole thrust of this piece is to argue that the Master Plan is legally indefensible. Contrary to what government lawyers claim (arguing that the plan is part of constitutional mandate to create one ‘economic’ and ‘political’ community),[3] the plan violates the letter and the spirit of the constitution on many levels. In this section, I present four arguments that indicate that the plan is unconstitutional. As I do so, I will touch upon the content, process, and consequence of the plan and its political implications.
3.1. Argument from Federalism
The plan violates the principle of federalism. In particular, it violates the principle of comity and mutual respect (art 50(8)) and the proper mode of managing intergovernmental relations pertaining to cities. This seems to emanate from a fundamental misunderstanding of federalism. In an unending turn of irony, the government is blaming the Oromo public for misunderstanding the ‘true goal’ of federalism. This misunderstanding is also compounded by the belief held among many that Addis Ababa belongs to the federal government. It also stems from mistaking the federation for a decentralized unitary system. Nothing typifies this more than the heavy reliance on the Master Plans of cities in a unitary country, namely Paris and Lyon of France.[4]
As indicated above, the Master Plan also wrongly conceives Addis Ababa as a federal territory when what it actually is, is the seat of the federal government. In other words, it is wrongly thought that Addis Ababa is the territory of the federal government. In reality, Addis Ababa is not a federal capital territory. It is an Oromo city which serves as the capital city of both the federal government and the government of Oromia.[5] That this has not been clearly spelt out in the constitution has caused an immense sense of insecurity and agitation among Oromos for a long time. The fact that the constitution speaks about it in terms of its ‘location in Oromia’ makes the issue of ownership ambiguous thereby reinforcing the sense of insecurity among Oromos. The ambiguity has also caused the confusion as to who the host is and who the guest is.
As a self-governing city ultimately accountable to the federal government, Addis Ababa is governed through its own city charter (which, legally, is expected to be revised every ten years). The city’s charter defines the powers and responsibilities of the different organs of the city government (the council, the Mayor and the Executive (the Cabinet/the Bureau Heads, and the General Managers), and the Municipality Court. It also defines the powers and responsibilities of the sub-cities (alias Kifle-Ketema) and districts (Kebeles). The city’s territorial limit is defined and the competence/jurisdiction of the city government has been clearly established. The boundary of the city ends at the outer limits of the ten Kifle-Ketemas.
As one of the nine constituent states of the Ethiopian federation, it has its own jurisdiction over its own bounded territory, with its own government that operates (ideally) in accordance with its own constitution. The powers of the states (exclusive and shared as concurrent) are clearly defined in the federal constitution (arts 51-52). The Constitution of Oromia is the supreme law of the territory of Oromia (art 9). Caffee Oromia is the legislature and the supreme political organ in the parliamentary system of government that the state has adopted for itself (art. 50(3) of FDRE and art 46 of the Oromia Constitution). As such, theCaffee is responsible for making any decision (legislative, financial, and political) over matters in its territory within its jurisdictional competence. Needless to say, it does not involve in the administration of the city of Addis Ababa—although one expression of its special interest is its involvement in joint administration of the city.[6]
Imposing a Master Plan designed by the Federal Government[7] on the towns of Oromia and incorporating these towns into Addis Ababa violates the principle of federalism. Ideally, if the city seeks to coordinate its development with the adjacent territories and townships, then it initiates a formal intergovernmental coordination of city development. It can invite the government of the State of Oromia to make a similar effort to raise the level of development of the surrounding cities so that necessary linkages are created in accordance with agreed terms of reference and agreed set of logistical and financial responsibilities. A joint inter-governmental body that oversees the legality, political propriety, financial efficiency, and administrative effectiveness of the project is established. This body could be an ad hoc bilateral inter-governmental relations (IGR) body or it could be a permanent and multilateral body that manages the intergovernmental relations under a pre-existing set of principles and rules. In Ethiopia, the latter framework does not exist. The Master Plan under discussion now is prepared entirely by the Addis Ababa City government, to be run by a project team of the city overseen by a Board of senior officials of the two governments. That it is the city officials that train the Oromia officials about the implementation of the plan betrays the truth about who is in charge of the plan. The fact that some of the Oromia mayors raised questions about the need to consult the government and people of Oromia regarding the matter, even at this late stage, is another indication of how the task is an exclusively Addis Ababa business that is conducted at the expense of the excluded Oromia.
The fact that the plan speaks of incorporating 36 towns and 17 Woredas of Oromia to make them part of the Greater Addis Ababa territory is also a blatant attempt at modifying the territory of the state of Oromia unilaterally. This act of altering boundaries cannot normally happen without a formal constitutional amendment or through the self-determination act that is overseen by the house of federation under article 39(1) & (4) cum arts 62 of the Federal Constitution. Moreover, by subsuming these towns and Woredas of Oromia under Addis Ababa administration, the plan submerges and liquidates the long-demanded special interest of Oromia in the city. Instead of answering the question, this plan now makes the special interest irrelevant by further peripheralizing the state of Oromia from matters concerning the city or the wider country.
In short, the Master Plan is constitutionally indefensible because it: a) violates the principle of federal comity (mutual respect of the different orders of government); b) usurps the power/jurisdiction of the state of Oromia; c) alters the boundary of Oromia by incorporating 36 towns and 17 Woredas of the regional state of Oromia into Addis Ababa and subordinating their jurisdiction under the city government; and d) eliminates the special interest of Oromia and makes the question irrelevant.
3.2. The Master Plan violates the Procedure for Constitutional Amendment
In altering the boundaries of the state of Oromia and the city administration of Addis Ababa, the plan delves into measures that necessitate constitutional amendment. According to the constitution (arts 46-47), states are formed on the basis of settlement pattern, language, identity, and consent of the people concerned. In theory, this act of carving the constituent units is completed when the constitution was adopted in 1995. Presumably, it is based on these criteria that the units were established. The imperative of self-determination allows the possibility of forming a new unit in the federation and/or a separate state (outside of the federation). But when that happens, that effects a constitutional amendment. In order to change the boundaries of existing states, like the one that the Master Plan is forcing upon the State of Oromia, however, one needs to initiate a constitutional amendment in which one either changes the criteria of unit formation or just injects a clause that takes note of the boundaries of the concerned states in article 46-47. To do so without such an amendment or through an act of self-determination will challenge the integrity of the constitution. This Master Plan, by incorporating the new towns and woredas into Addis Ababa, alters too much without a formal constitutional amendment and as such is unconstitutional. This by passing of procedures of amendment will ultimately affect the integrity of the constitution and the order thereof. But in an ‘authoritarian constitutional system’ in which the text of the constitution is invoked more to legitimize sinister political goals than to advance just ideals, subverting the constitutional ideals through other laws and/or policies does not come as a surprise.
3.3. The Master Plan Violates Human Rights
More importantly, the Master Plan leads to the violation of individual rights of Oromo farmers, the collective rights of Oromos qua Oromos, and the rights of the State of Oromia. To begin with, the Master Plan violates the rights of Oromo farmers to socio-economic benefits. Accordingly, the Oromo farmers’ “right to obtain land without payment and the protection against eviction from their possession” (under art 40(6)) will be violated by the evictions that this Master Plan entails. Similarly, their right to livelihood, adequate living standard, chosen work, or generally, access to economic facilities (e.g. land) and social opportunities (including mother-tongue education) will be at risk in the event that this master Plan is implemented. All these rights, one notes, are elaborately stated in art 41 of the FDRE constitution. The right of these farmers to participate in the design of development plans (arts 89(6)), is also affected by the master Plan. Moreover, the cultural rights of Oromos under art 41(9) such as preservation of historical and cultural legacies will be compromised in a city that has historically neglected and/or actively denigrated the Oromo culture and identity. Depending on the aim and content of the Master Plan (which is not clear so far in spite of the insistence of the officials to the contrary), the right of Oromo farmers to a “clean and healthy environment” (under art 44(1) cum art 92(1)) may be adversely affected. The right of displaced persons or those “whose livelihoods have been adversely affected as a result of programs” to “commensurate monetary or alternative means of compensation, including relocation with adequate state assistance” will be violated. This is because past experience shows that the state neither paid compensation nor provided relocation funds. The token of ‘compensation’ investors paid was neither adequate nor voluntary. If experience is something to go by, there is hardly a reason for anyone to expect that the displacements that come about because of the implementation of this plan will be any different. The fact that the “right to administrative justice” and the right to remedies is not explicitly recognized in the constitution compounds the problems that might arise in the event that the Master Plan is implemented.[8]
The second category of rights that the Master Plan violates pertains to the collective right of Oromos. If land is jointly owned by the “Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples” and the State (as per art. 40(3) cum 40(6)), the Master Plan defies the right of the Oromos as Oromos to their land. In addition, the right of Oromo communities to development (art 43) and environment (art 44) in their own state will be violated. Moreover, as a matter of state policy objectives, the constitution also considers ‘peoples’ right to participation in policy formulation (art 90(6)) and to “consultation and expression of views” (art 92(3)). The fact that the process so far lacked participation of the public makes it evident that these rights of the Oromo are already violated and/or are exposed to violation. The Master Plan also continues the decades-long neglect of the special interest of the State of Oromia. In fact, it renders it irrelevant.
The principle of direct democracy in art 8 (3) demands that citizens not only engage in consultation but also protest government policies when they disagree with them. The students’ and the peoples’ protest should not have been met with killings, shootings, and arrests and detentions. The junior Oromo officials’ objection to the Master Plan in the training sessions shouldn’t have been met with reprisals. That the protest to resist the implementation of the Master Plan has led to arbitrary killings, injuries, arrests, and detentions implicates it not only in a blatant defiance of peoples’ voices but also in a gross violation of human rights of Oromo citizens.
3.4. The Master Plan Ignores State Duty to ensure Good Governance
Transparency and accountability are the epitome of good governance. The Ethiopian government officials make a frequent use of the term to justify almost any measure they take. In fact, most of their policies are justified in the name of enhancing development and ensuring good governance.[9] Constitutionally speaking, the state has the obligation to conduct its affairs in a transparent and accountable manner. Thus, according to article 12 of (both the FDRE and Oromia) constitution, “the conduct of government shall be transparent (1). Any public official or an elected representative is accountable for any failure in official duties (2).”That is to say that, first, the conduct of government (i.e., its deliberations, decisions, and actions) is done openly before a watching public. Policies, laws, programs, and measures adopted by state are expected to be made available to the public. To ensure accountability, the officials are expected to listen to the peoples’ views, be responsive to the public’s demands, and take responsibility for such policies, laws, programs, and measures (especially if they have adverse consequences for the people).
The Master Plan’s design is shrouded in secrecy. To date, despite all efforts, I could not trace the authoritative version of the Master Plan document that also explains the goals and objectives, the rationales, the enabling/disabling legal environment, etc. Nor could I find a person who is in possession of the document. My attempt to make a close reading of the Master Plan and to make a comprehensive content-context-process analysis is compromised because of the unavailability of the document.[10] The process was thus hardly transparent.
To date, the government did not assume responsibility for the adverse consequences that flew from the Master Plan. After brutal repression of the protest by the security forces, the officials have been trying to persuade the public about the “supreme importance” of the plan and to demand that people should not listen to the distraction by “some external forces seeking to make political gains” out of this unrest, forces that want to disrupt “our development”. The government officials repeatedly suggested that the Oromo public are misinformed and agitated by ‘others’. They are thus conducting a series of meetings “to correct the public’s misunderstanding of the matter.” No measure is taken to bring to justice the security forces that went on a rampage of shooting. Not even a commission of inquiry is instituted. No government official expressed regret[11] or apology for the death of innocent students, children and other protestors. No government official came out to make any statement showing a willingness to rethink the Master Plan. This refusal to take responsibility and to be accountable to the public may exacerbate the tension impacting negatively on the peace and stability of the country in general. While that does not come as a surprise to people constantly living in an overly securitized state, to legal professionals, the absence of any gesture in the direction of ensuring accountability suggests the need for us to consider international tribunals before which the officials should be held accountable personally as individuals and collectively as a government.
4. Conclusion
In this piece, an attempt is made to make a close reading of the constitutional frame within which to analyse the Master Plan fiasco and the deadly consequences that emerged therefrom. By showing how the plan is against the principle of federal comity and by demonstrating its incompatibility with the federal structure of the contemporary state; by showing how the Plan destabilizes the integrity of the constitutional order by neglecting the procedural rules for constitutional amendment; through identifying the human rights (individual and collective) that the Master Plan will put at risk; and by discussing how the design and implementation of the plan is shrouded in secrecy and the consequent defiance of the constitutional principle of transparency and accountability, an attempt is made to present an argument that the plan is constitutionally-legally indefensible. It is important to note that the invocation of development as an overarching goal does not justify the inappropriateness of the plan or the massive violation of the rights of the displaced farmers and of the protestors that held demonstrations to resist the implementation of the master plan. In a ‘constitutional’ order that supposedly recognizes the importance of the voice and votes of the peoples of Ethiopia (let alone in one where they are sovereign), to protest a policy would be a mere exercise of a right, one that helps to overcome the democratic deficits of a representative government, not a condition that will render a citizen an enemy to be eliminated by all means necessary (including murder and torture by Special Forces of the Ethiopian army).
The announcement of the Master Plan has led to another round of killing and arrests of the Oromo youth. Ethiopian jails are beefed up yet more. Oromia is subjected to a continued state terror. Ethiopia is fast becoming a concentration camp of Oromos. But Oromo national resistance is also taking a national scale and continuing to haunt Ethiopia once more. Coming back in resilience, Oromo nationalism refuses to die, defies the repression, and returns to the Ethiopian scene once more.
The protest has brought to light several other questions that were simmering underground. The demand for legal articulation and enforcement of Oromia’s special interest in Addis Ababa was raised. The long-held demand to make Afaan Oromo a co-equal working language of the Federal government was also raised. The call for the demolition of the statue of Emperor Menelik II, the demand to bring Tewodros Kassahun (Tedy Afro) to justice for his controversial claim that Menelik’s war of conquest was “a Holy war made to unite the country”, the demand to see those who denigrated the Oromo people and abused the Oromo athletes in the All-Ethiopian Sports tournament in Bahr Dar brought to justice, and other demands were aired in the course of these protests. The fact that these and other issues are expressed with this intensity and rage should spell out to the government that Ethiopia has yet to adequately respond to “the question of nationalities” especially to the question of the Oromos. As ever, in its response to the protests, Ethiopia demonstrated that it did not know how to handle peoples’ demand politically. Of course it does know how to handle it militarily. But then, one needs to ask: when will these men in the uniform (the soldiers) face and bow to the men in robes (the judges)? When will the men in suits (the politicians) face and bow to the men in robes (the judges)? When will the law (with all its limitations and its embeddedness in politics) take precedence over politics as policing? Only time will tell.
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References
* Fasil Nahum, Constitution for a Nation of Nations. Trenton: Red Sea Press, 1997.
* Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) Constitution, Negarit Gazetta, Proclamation No. 1/1995,1995.
* The Constitution of the State of Oromia, Magalata Oromiya Labsii Lakk.1/1995.
* The Revised Constitution of the State of Oromia, 2001 (as amended in 2005).
[1] The closest we came was when the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) was rumoured to want to hold a referendum about the identity of the city (politically aimed to delink it from Oromia) in the wake of its electoral success in 2005.
[2] No constitutional amendment was considered so far save the one (in 2004/5) pertaining to Parliament’s power to postpone the year of census whenever it coincides with election year.
[3] In a televised interview of a lawyer (named Tesfaye Neway) in May 2014, it was argued that the ultimate goal of the federalism is to build one economic and political community. (Seehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKsseT1KtJw, accessed on 3 June 2014). The preamble of the constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) indicates, among other things, that the nations, nationalities, and peoples of Ethiopia, exercising their right to self-determination, have agreed to build one political community based on rule of law, peace, democracy and socio-economic development in the context of the right to equality and non-discrimination. Note that self-determination is the organizing principle that is constitutive of the polity and its foundational principles identified above. The Preamble also talks about the need to build ‘one economic community’ that can enhance mutually supportive relations to effect respect for human rights and to pursue collective interest. These provisos of the preamble are conveniently used by government officials to claim that the overarching goal of the federal dispensation is to consolidate political unity and to create one big market that is indifferent to ethno-national diversity and the federal structure that seeks to respond to the challenge of diversity. This is a misreading of the constitution. This is aside from the putative argument one can make by insisting on the cardinal principle of constitutional interpretation: preambles are not part of the constitution. As such, the principles therein cannot be invoked as legally binding rules. At best, they can only serve as a framework of understanding the constitution.
[4] A government power point prepared for training purposes in June 2013 indicates that the foreign experience shows the same trend in Western Europe, in some regions in China (i.e., Hong Kong, Macau, and Hunan) and some cities in Africa such as Greater Lagos, Greater Johannesburg, and Greater Cairo.
[5] From 1991-2003, Addis Ababa was the capital city of Oromia. In 2004, the Federal Government forced the government of Oromia out of Addis Ababa and the government was relocated to Adama. In the wake of the 2005 election, the Federal Government decided that the Oromia Government relocate again to Addis Ababa. From 2005 to date, Addis Ababa serves as the capital city of Oromia. The constitutional provision relating to the capital city of the State of Oromia has been amended twice.
[6] Article 49 (5) of the constitution reads as follows: “The special interest of the State of Oromia in Addis Ababa, regarding the provision of social services or the utilization of natural resources and other similar matters, as well as joint administrative matters arising from the location of Addis Ababa within the state of Oromia, shall be respected. Particulars shall be determined by law.”
[7] Contrary to this, a series of interviews by the political leaders (e.g. Kumaa Dammaqsaa, Abba Dulaa Gammadaa, Muktar Kadir, Abdulaziz Mohammed, etc) and the architect involved in the design, Matheos Asfaw, insist that the Master Plan is a joint project designed by the two governments. Even if that is the case, how can one ignore the asymmetry of power between the two? We should also note that this new raft of interviews was given to quell the unrest and dampen the resistance staged by the Oromo public.
[8] Not, however, that there is the general right of access to justice under Article 37 of the Federal Constitution and its State equivalent.
[9] Even the massive constitutional revisions of the National Regional States between 2001 and 2002 were justified on these two grounds. Of course the political motivation for this is rooted in the splinter that happened within the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF), during which time the ‘Splinter Group’ exploited the absence of the principle of separation of powers in the State Constitutions to easily bring some of the States Presidents to their sides. Between 1995 and 2001, the State presidents were also chairmen of the State Legislatures. At the time, there was no office of the Speaker. The result was that whoever has managed to woo the presidents to her/his side will have taken the state. And some of the members of the Splinter did in deed manage to woo Presidents Abate Kisho of the SNNPRS and Kumaa Damaqsaa of Oromia to their side.
[10] Even for the purpose of this analysis, I had to depend on a set of Power Point presentations prepared in June 2013 to help facilitate a training conducted on the Master Plan. The slides are available with the author.
[11] Abbaa Duulaa Gammadaa came close to expressing regret in radio interview he gave to the Voice of America (VOA), Amharic service.
Read orginal article @ Gulele Post, June 4, 2014, titled “Why Resist the Master Plan?: A Constitutional Legal Exploration”, authored by Tsegaye Regassa Ararssa (LL.B, LL.M), former lecturer at Ethiopian Civil Service University and Addis Ababa University, is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne Law School.
However, more recently, there were further calls that the government was perpetuating inequality along ethnic lines when it announced a master plan titled “the Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Integrated Development Plan”. This area structure plan was intended to create special zones surrounding Addis that were divided into industry, service and settlement zones, based on their existing potential, economic base and geography. But it has become a contentious issue, met with opposition by Oromo residents who would lose an additional 36 towns and cities to Addis Ababa. 
Everything can be found here from steel pipes to spices and kitchenware. It is also where the hidden face of poverty of the city becomes most apparent. Here people are struggling to survive, making a living by whatever means possible – as this is the time of year when the rains come heavy and fast almost every afternoon, there are countless young men taking advantage of it. They will clean shoes, the bottoms of trousers or sit on old buckets fixing broken umbrellas. Government is trying? The government does believe it is trying. In a recent 
OromianEconomist 
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