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#OromoProtests: International Community Alarmed as Ethiopia Crisis Worsens
DW NEWS:NGO highlights plight of Oromo in Ethiopia
Human Rights Watch says security forces are continuing to persecute members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo. Hundreds have allegedly been killed in recent protests over a government plan to expand the capital Addis Ababa into Oromo land.
The Oromo people see the government’s violence as part of a systematic attempt to oppress and marginalise them. As Amnesty International (AI) states in its report ‘Because I am Oromo’: “thousands of Oromo people have been subjected to unlawful killings, torture and enforced disappearance.” People without any political affiliation are arrested on suspicion that they do not support the government – “between 2011 and 2014, at least 5,000 Oromos have been arrested”. Amnesty asserts that recent regime violence was “the latest and bloodiest in a long pattern of suppression”. This description of government intimidation and brutality will sound familiar to most Ethiopians.’http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/19/ethiopia-unity-in-opposition/
ETHIOPIA: FURTHER INFORMATION: DETAINED OROMO PROTESTERS MUST BE RELEASED
By Amnesty International, 17 February 2016, Index number: AFR 25/3437/2016
The Ethiopian authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained a number of peaceful protesters including journalists and opposition party leaders in recent brutal crackdown on protesters in the Oromia Region. Those detained remain at risk of torture and other illtreatment and should immediately and unconditionally be released. Amnesty International considers the peaceful protesters arrested to be prisoners of conscience detained solely for peacefully exercising their right to peaceful assembly. They continue to be at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
Read more at:-https://oromianeconomist.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/ai-urgent-action-detained-oromo-protesters-must-be-released/
“Every social injustice is not only cruel, but causes economic waste and generational loss. Equality, free expression, justice, peace, and freedom are key for the generation’s continuation and for changing the world.”
n a letter written to the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry [equivalent to the Minister of Foreign Affairs], U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken (both from the State of Minnesota) requested Sec. Kerry for a full review of the situation in Ethiopia in order for the U.S. Congress to take “immediate actions” to protect innocent Oromo civilians in Ethiopia. The full 2-page letter is attached below.
News Fulton County (#OromoProtests Global Rally) : Oromians in SA protest in Pretoria over killings at home. Demonstrators say government scheme to expand capital Addis Ababa endangers farmers
European Parliament resolution on the situation in Ethiopia (2016/2520(RSP)). European Union strongly condemns the mass killings in Oromia. January 19, 2016
Appeal of Oromo Student’s Union (OSU) to International Community
February 10, 2016, Finfinne (Addis Ababa), Ethiopia
To:
Multinational organizations (UN, EU, AU, and others)
Countries supporting the Ethiopian regime in the name of development, peace and security, education, science and technology (USA, European countries, Canada, Australia, and others)
Human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa, and others)
Oromo political organizations
Oromo studies Association (OSA)
Oromo community organizations all over the world and all other concerned bodies
We members of Oromo Student’s Union (OSU) appeal to the international community that we are currently living under difficult conditions. It is evident that the Ethiopian regime is committing genocidal crime on the Oromo people in general and the Oromo students in particular by deploying its military and police force and terrorizing us for peacefully protesting demanding our rights asking the legitimate and rightful questions of our people. Our questions are the questions of our people. Our demands are the demands of our people. Our demands can be divided into two major categories:
Basic human rights must be respected. While the Oromo constitute the majority of the Ethiopian population, Oromia constitute the largest territory, and the region is the economic backbone of Ethiopia, the Oromo people have been marginalized in every arena. Over the past 24 years the Oromo people do not have proportional power and economic share in the country and have been ruled under the EPRDF which in essence is maneuvered and completely controlled by the TPLF party. Since the mass base of the TPLF/EPRDF is the minority Tigrean population, it has been in constant conflict with the Oromo people in Oromia. The Oromo people are ruled under the barrel of the gun being constantly killed, arrested, tortured, students dismissed from schools, civilians kidnapped and disappeared, are forced to leave their country and become refugees in several countries around the globe. Therefore we demand that the basic human and democratic rights of the Oromo people be respected and a system based on equality, justice, democracy, and a government based on the needs of our people be established.
Master Plan must be stopped. Starting from 2014 we protested against the so called Master Plan of the TPLF/EPRDF regime, a plan which incorporates several Oromian towns into the capital Finfinne (Addis Ababa), evicts Oromo farmers from their ancestral land, eradicates Oromo culture, language and identity, planned to sell Oromo land and plunder Oromia’s natural resources, divide the map of Oromia into two, and causes pollution and environmental degradation. We presented our appeal in writing several times requesting that the Master plan be stopped. Instead of answering our request to stop the Master plan, the regime announced another plan to incorporate major Oromian towns which is another plan to incorporate the entire of Oromia under the jurisdiction of the federal government which on the other hand is controlled by the TPLF. When our requests fell into deaf ears we protested peacefully. The answer to our peaceful protest has been brutal killings, beatings, mass arrests, kidnappings and disappearances, inhuman torture by the regime’s so called Agazi troops. In addition to some 80+ people who were killed in 2014, more than 200 peaceful citizens, mostly students have been killed since November 2015. Thousands others have been wounded. Countless others have been jailed and are under severe torture. Read More:- Oromo Student Union appeal to International Community Feb 2016 (1)
UNDSS internal memo regarding the situation in West Arsi formerly known as East Shewa. 16 Feb. 2016
UNDSS: CLASHES IN EAST SHEWAS – WEST ARSI / OROMIYA
At least two protesters and five police officers were killed in the latest clashes in East Shewa, Oromiya.
First reports of protests date back from 8 February in the village of Amaro. Yesterday, a UN road mission was blocked by heavy clashes in Aje. In nearby Loke Kecha a bridge was destroyed and in Siraro a court office was damaged.
The town of Shashamane on the main road is tense and people fear violent protests could spread to their town.
The cancellation of the Addis Ababa Masterplan has not removed the underlying grievances that lead to the protests in Oromiya between November 2015 and Jan 2016. The volatility continues and one event or overreaction of police officers can trigger chains of retribution by angry protesters.
We currently recommend to avoid any private road travel any further south than Langano Lake. For official UN road missions please check situation with local counterparts. However, when planning road missions bear in mind that reliable real time situational information is not available. Police will usually block roads to protest sites and you should know the return time or nearest safe havens for your road trip when you are blocked from continuing your travel.
Oromo Protests have spread to southern Oromia since last week to “stop the leeching tycoon and monopolist Alamoudi,” according to the protesters. Al Amoudi is a famous monopolist of many businesses in Oromia – including gold mining, cement factory (Derba query), tanneries and farms. Al Amoudi is one of the richest persons in Africa and the world, according to the U.S.-based Forbes magazine.
Al Amoudi’s companies are criticized for failing to share profits with indigenous communities they work around (especially, in the gold mining in Guji Zone and the Derba cement query in Shawaa), and for failing to give back to the community in general; other business owners in Oromia, especially local small-business owners, also accuse Al Amoudi’s companies for receiving preferential treatments from the government and for engaging in predatory business practices to monopolize sectors of the economy. No where is this predatory practice evident than the dairy business; Oromo smallholding dairy farmers in Shawaa, especially those around Finfinne/Addis, were recently attacked in a vicious way by falsely propagating, through state-owned and government-affiliated media, that the milk from these smallholding dairy farmers causes cancer – this was done, in part, to promote Al Amoudi’s dairy company, Shola Milk, and also to drive the Oromo smallholding farmers out of their land through bankruptcy. Oromo Protesters say such abusive and predatory business practices must stop.
The government is also blamed for evicting thousands of Oromos, without compensations, to make land available to Al Amoudi’s companies whenever they request for it – especially in the gold mining region in Guji and the Derba query in Shawaa. In addition, Al Amoudi’s companies are said to have no regard for the environment; for instance, the leather/tannery and flower/horticulture companies in Oromia release toxic cancer-causing chemicals without any environmental treatment.
In many ways, Al Amoudi epitomizes what’s wrong with the current federal arrangement of Oromia in Ethipia, according to the Oromo Protesters; Al Amoudi is given the green light to “develop” in Oromia by the Federal Government in Addis Ababa – which itself is controlled by Tigrean elites of the TPLF/EPRDF ruling party; in many, if not all, cases, the business arrangements between the Tigrean-headed Federal Government and Al Amoudi are not transparent to the Federal Regional State authorities of Oromia.
The following is a report on the ongoing Oromo Protests against the “leeching tycoon and monopolist Alamoudi” in the gold-rich Guji Zone of Oromia; the protests have been staged since the mid of last week (starting around February 4, 2016, according to media reports). The government, as usual, relied on brute force to respond to the protests; the latest report says at least 1 Oromo person was killed, and 3 Oromo persons were critically wounded by the government’s special force, Agazi. Read more at:-
#OromoProtests: February 5, 2016 Oromo Protests continues in various districts of Guji Zone against Medroc Exploitation. Farmers from various villages march to the town chanting ” Okkote is our land, Al Amudin is our enemy”. Okkote is one of the mineral deposit sites that is to be given to Medroc/ Al Amudin.
Ummanni Godina Gujii mormii saamicha albuudaa jabeessee itti fufee jira. Kan agartan kun yeroo ummanni baadiyyaa dhaadannoodhaan gara magaalaa bayaa jiruudha.
Okkoteen lafa teenya Alaamuddin diina keenya
Lagi Dambi lafa teenya, Alamuddin diina keenya” jechaa deemaa jiran.
On February 5, 2016 fascist TPLF security forces and Agazi were terrorizing people of Ginici (Ginichi) town in fear of protests; every corners was under military siege.
Suuraan armaa gadii kun kan magaalaa Gincii kan Shawaa Lixaa keessatti argamu irraati . Guraandhala 5 bara 2016 humni waraanaa fi agaazii egumsaa cimaa magaalicha keessatti gochaaoole; humni dbalataas ergamee jira.
#OromoProtests in Girawaa (Doguu town), E. Hararghe, Oromia, 5 February 2016Oromoonni Harargee Bahaa, aanaa Gurawaa, magaalaa Doguu dabablloota OPDO qaanessan. Akka dabablleen OPDO olola jalqabdeen ummanni walgahii dhiitanii bahan; dargaggoo fi baratoota magaalaa wajjiin waliti makamuunis mormii qaban dhagesisan.Ummati Oromoo jajjaboo kunneen walgahii gaafa Guraandhala 4 bara 2016 DhDUOn waamte irratti diddaa fi mormii isaanii mul’isuun ololli fi sobni OPDO akka fashalu godhan.
#OromoProtests, (3 February 2016, Gujii, Oromia)
#OromoProtests in Sabbaa Boruu district of Guji zone, Oromia. In addition to the national agenda, protesters are marching exploitation of minerals by Al Amudin without no benefit to locals.
#OromoProtests ,Nuunnuu Qumba, Waamaa Adaree, East Wallaggaa, Oromia.
3rd February 2013
Last evening around 11 PM local time,Agazi soldiers raided a wedding in Adare town, Nunu Qumba District in East Wallaga and attacked youngsters who were partying during weeding. They told them not to sing particular song. Clash erupted Agazi soldirs shot one young man who is in critical condition and villagers destroyed vehicles that brought the Agazi’s. Tense situation remains in the town as farmers have closed all roads leading to the town.You might recall the news about Agazi raiding a wedding in Arjo Gudetu near Naqamte wounding three people one of whom died later. Similarly in Elu ababor, they shot Fitsum Abate on the eve of his wedding for playing music to entertian his groomsmen. Groom survived the headshot but reportedly blinded.
The person who was shot in Adare town, Nunu Qumba district of East Walaga has been identified as Desalegn Fikadu. Currently the Agazi is terrorizing people forcing residents to vacate the town seeking refuge in neighboring rural villages.
Amajii 27/2016
Arsii Bahaa magaala Asallaatti mootummaan wayyaanee Qeerroo dargaggoota lama ilmaan isaa ajajuun barattoota lama kana irratti gocha suukkanneessaa raawwatee kan jiru Qeerroon kan gabaaseedha.
Akka Qeerroon gabaasetti barattootni Yuunivarsitii Asallaa Amajji 21,2016 halkan 5:00tti barattoota lama: Isaanis
1.Kamaal Abubaker barataa saayinsii fayyaa waggaa3ffaa fi dhalataa harargee bahaa naannoo Dadarii kan tahee fi
2Tasfaayee Tashoomee barataa saayinsii fayyaa waggaa 1ffaa fi dhalataa Arsii Bahaa naannoo Boqojjii kan ta’an namoonni 4 ol tahan hucuu civil uffachuudhaan eeggatanii yeroo ijoolleen kun lamaan mana fincaanii seenan achi keessatti cuubeen waraananiinii gatanii erga deemanii booda barattoonni kun hospitaala seenuun yaalamaa jiru.
Wallaggaa lixaatti manneen barnoota sadarkaa 1ffaa irraa kaasee hanga qophaayinaatti cufamee jiraachuun Qeerroon gabaasee jira.
Maddeen oduu Qeerroo irraa akka hubannutti wallagga lixaa Aanaa Boojjii Birmajjii magaalaa Biilaa mana barumsaa sadarkaa lammaffaa Biilaatti barattoonni Amajji 22,2016 sa’a3 irratti Fincila Xumura Gabrummaa (FXG) kaasuun ni yaadatama. Yerooma sana irraa kaasuun wayyaaneen humna ishee gara barattootaatti ergiteen barattootni barumsa dhaabuun gabaafamee ture. Guyyaa kanaa kaasuun barattootni mana barumsaa akka hin deebine yoo tahu akka walii galaatti godinicha keessatti barattootni barumsa dhaabuu irratti argamu..
Magaalaa Najjootti barattoonni man barumsaa sad.2ffaa Amajji 25,2016 FXG haaressuuf gara mana barumsaatti wal gahanii turan, barattootni hunduu hirmaanna barumsaa dhaabuudhaan yaadaa fi ejjennoo tokkoon FXG itti fufna malee barumsa hin barannu jechunis barumsi hanga har’aa hin gaggeeffamin jira.
#OromoProtests 26 January 2016: Oromo political prisoners are on a hunger strike in Ma’ekelawi
According to media reports, Bekele Gerba, other imprisoned leaders of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), and other Oromo political prisoners are on a hunger strike in Ma’ekelawi, the notorious prison in Addis Ababa. The report said the political prisoners started their strike on Friday, January 22, 2016, and have vowed to continue the strike until their demands are met. Some of their demands, which they have communicated to the prison’s officials, include:
1) access to legal counsels and visitations by family as guaranteed by the Constitution and internationally accepted rights of prisoners;
2) cessation of torture of political prisoners in Ma’ekelawi;
3) access to proper medical care for all political prisoners.
It has not been possible to verify how many political prisoners are taking part in the strike. However, it has been confirmed that the following leaders of OFC are part of it: Bekele Gerba, Dejene Tafa, Desta Dinka, Addisu Bulala and others. Since November 2015, thousands of Oromos have been taken to Ma’ekelawi in connection with the ongoing Oromo Protests against the lack of adequate self-rule for Oromia (of which the Master Plan is an example), and the decades-old marginalization of the Oromo people in the political, economic, social, linguistic and cultural spheres in Ethiopia as a whole. In addition to those thousands arrested in prisons and concentration camps across Oromia and Ethiopia, more than 160 Oromo persons were killed, and thousands of Oromo persons have been wounded by the Ethiopian Federal armed forces – including tens of Oromo children.
It is to be remembered that the Ethiopian government brought Bekele Gerba, Dejene Tafa, Addisu Bulala and others to a federal court in central Addis Ababa on January 22, 2016 (listen to the report in Amharic below) – this date is the same date on which the hunger strike reportedly began; many human rights organizations, such as the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, accuse the Ethiopian government of using draconian laws to prosecute peaceful and legitimate political dissidents in biased courts to silence voices critical of the government’s violations of human rights and unjust policies.
#OromoProtests Support Group in Switzerland organized a successful rally at the UN Office in Geneva on January 25, 2016.
The rally was attended by Oromo peace activists in Switzerland as well as other Ethiopian Nationals concerned about the deteriorating human rights violations in Oromia and across Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government’s response to the peaceful Oromo Protests has so far been violent, which has negatively contributed to the increasingly unstable political and security conditions in Ethiopia in the fragile Horn of African region. In an attempt to calm the peaceful Oromo Protests through military means, the Ethiopian government has, over the last two months alone, gunned down more than 160 Oromo persons who took part or had been suspected of taking part in the Oromo Protests, which have been staged in Oromia since April 2014, and quite intensely since mid November 2015, against the lack of adequate self-rule for Oromia (of which the Master Plan is an example), and the decades-old marginalization of the Oromo people in the political, economic, social, linguistic and cultural spheres in Ethiopia as a whole. At least 17 of those killed and wounded are Oromo children.
The following are some photos from the Geneva solidarity rally (reported byOromiaTimes.org).
In East Walaga, Digga district, Arjo Gudetu village, Agazi soldiers have fired on protesters wounding the following people last night
1) Gamachu Alamu Tasama, shot on his back
2) Zerihun Jiregna Bayana, shot on his stomach
3) Birhanu Kebede Sando, shot on his leg
These victims are currently being treated at Naqamte Hospital. Two of them are in critical condition.
https://www.oromiamedia.org/2016/01/24/omn-gabaasa-oolmaa-oromiyaa-ama-23-2016/Oromo youth and families in Gincii (Ginchi) conveyed their remembrance to Aschalew Worku Bayi. #OromoProtests, 24 January 2016.A commemoration of Aschalew Worku Bayi who was killed in Ginchi on 13 December 2015 and his remembrance service took place on 24 January 2016 at the presence of tens of thousands of people near Cillimo.Amajii 24 bara 2016 ummanni Oromoo Aanaa Giincii yaadannoo sabboonaa Oromoo Aschaaloo Warquu Bayii geggeessan. Aschaaloon Mudde 13 bara 2015 humna Wayyaaneen Gincitti wareegame. Amajii 24 bara 2016 wayita siidaan yaadannoo isaaf dhaabbate eebbifametti ummati hedduun argamuun yaadannoo kana irratti mallattoo diddaa Oromoo agarsiisaa oolan.
The PAFD extends its most sincere gratitude to the EU Parliament in general and to those who were the sponsors of the Ethiopian resolution, including members from the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and Greens/European Free Alliance (G/EFA) of the EU parliamentary groups in particular.
The resolution the European Parliament has adopted on 21 January 2016 offers great support to the millions oppressed in all parts of Ethiopia and gives them courage for a better democratic and just future.The multitude of committed genocides and unfolding atrocities in Oromia, Ogaden, Gambella, Sidama, Omo, Benishangul and other parts in Ethiopia will continue, unless the international community takes some urgent practical measures to stop them. The Ethiopian government has often ignored international calls for remedy of its human rights violations, knowing that there would be no follow up or significant repercussions. In 2007, for example, the UN called for an urgent investigation into the Ogaden war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, the Ethiopian government embarked on an all-out campaign of extermination and collective punishment of civilians in the region and the international community looked the other way. Similarly, the killings in Gambella and Sidama, as well as those in Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) were also condemned by the international community, while the regime shrugged its shoulders and continued its massacres and curtailment of all democratic rights, while being rewarded with more money under the pretext of development.
History has shown that development at the expenses of democratic rights has ended in disasters and grave consequences. The Ethiopian situation is much more complex than other areas which aggravates the matter further because of unresolved historical injustices.
The PAFD calls upon the UN, AU and EU to follow up to their own resolutions and send independent commissions of inquiry to look into the massive human rights allegations that have been and are being perpetrated by the Ethiopian government against the civilian population and take appropriate measures to stop any further acts. All types of Ethiopian security forces must immediately withdraw from Oromia, Ogaden, Gambela and other areas into their barracks.
The PAFD calls upon all peoples in Ethiopia to stand together and act in unison against the atrocities committed by the regime, in order to regain their denied rights to democracy and true self-determination.
Issued by The Peoples Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (PAFD)
January 23, 2016
OFFICE OF PRESIDIUM
Breaking news: there has been reports of heavy gun fire exchange in Waddessaa area near Ambo since yesterday
January 23, 2016
(Oromia Press) — There has been reports of heavy gunfire exchange in Waddessaa area near Ambo since yesterday. Particularly localities such as Haro-Xirro, Wadessa-Galan, Xulle are said to be like war zones. Civilians have been trying to escape the fighting. Residents in nearby districts confirm Agazi special forces have been moving into the area in tens of cars since the night before yesterday. It is not clear who they are fighting or firing at as network in the area is down. Source claim the clash might have been caused when the army tried to disarm local government militia suspected of being disloyal. The conflict is said to have been intensified today and heavy casualties are feared. The military has prevented ambulances that tried to reach the area from nearby towns.
Amajjii 19,2016 , Barattooti kun yeroo jalqabaaf 24 ka ta’an yoo ta’u,amma barattoota shan kan himataa jiru yeroo ta’u, adeemsi heeraa fi Seeraa kan hin eegamneefi maqaa Oromoo fi ABOtiin yakkamanii murna bicuu TPLF Tigiraayin humatamaa jiru. Barattooti kun amma mana yaalaa dhirkamuun,baay’ee kan miidhaman yoo ta’e illee haamileen oromummaa isaanii mana hidhaa maa’ikelaawwi fi Qilinxootiin utuu hin cabin mana Murtii Wayyaanee kanatti sodaa tokko malee uffata aadaa Oromoo uffatanii dhiyaatan
Himatamtoota Wayyaanee kana keessaa Barataa Magarsaa Warquu dhukkubaa fi dararaa irratti raawwatameen baay’ee hubamee kan jiru yeroo ta’u, Afaan Wayyaanee abbaa alangaa ka ifiin jettu himata irratti dhiyeessite gocha isaanii akka hin taane ibsaniiru.
Rage in Miesso following the killing of 6 peaceful protesters on 17 January 2016. has erupted in Asabot town West Hararge. #OromoProtests also in Asabot town West Hararge. Farmers from the region have moved to the city condemning the killing in neighboring Miesso town.
The 6 people killed in Miesso has been identified as:
1) Yasino Abdala Ali
2) Abdella Hassan
3) Mussa Hassan
4) Abdulhakiim
5) Ahmad
6) The six person has been badly disfigured as he was hit with grenade and hard to conclusively identify at this time.
The attack was perpetuated by TPLF’s mercenary in Somali region, the notorious Liyu Police. On Friday TPLF’s chief os intelligence for the Eastern region warned administrators of the two Hararge provinces that he will deploy Liyu police if they cannot stop the ongoing protest. As promised following yesterday’s march of farmers on Miesso town, 7 truck loads of Liyu police entered Western Hararge. This morning they invaded Miesso attacking peaceful protesters. You might recall that Liyu police attacked protesters last week in East Hararge as well.
The United States is increasingly concerned by the continued stifling of independent voices in Ethiopia, including the detention of Oromo political party leaders. These arrests have a chilling effect on much needed public consultations to resolve legitimate political grievances in Oromia.
We support the Government of Ethiopia’s December commitment to public consultation with affected communities. For these consultations to be meaningful, all interested parties must be able to express their views freely.
We reaffirm our call on the Ethiopian Government to refrain from silencing dissent and to protect the constitutionally enshrined rights of all citizens, including the right to gather peacefully, to write, and to speak freely as voices of a diverse nation. We call for the release of those imprisoned for exercising their rights, such as political party leaders and journalists.
#OromoProtests: Ethiopian Protesters Use Social Media to Bring Attention to Deadly Government Crackdown on Dissent – Atlanta Blackstar, 9 January 2016 https://shar.es/16IaqD
#OromoProtests January 10, 2016, Al Jazeera English: Holonkomi, Oromia (Ethiopia) – Security forces have killed at least 140 people during a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in Ethiopia in recent weeks, activists and rights groups say.
The merciless fascist TPLF forces destroyed students dormitories at Madda Walabu University 9 and 10 January 2016, in the night. Soldiers have also taken away hundreds of students on the night to unknown places.
EU called emergency meeting for Monday to discuss the unrest in Ethiopia & the dire case of the Oromo people
January 7, 2016
Breaking news! Sources from European External Action Service (EU Foreign and Security Policy Branch) has indicate that European Union will convene a meeting to discuss Ethiopia with regard to ongoing #OromoProtests on January 11 (Monday) 2016. Representatives from all 28 EU member countries will attend the meeting. Fascist TPLF juntas representatives have not been invited to the meeting.Gamtaan Awurooppaa(European Union) walgahii hatantamaa waa’ee dhimma Oromoo irratti guyyaa wiixataa, 01/11/2016 waamuu beeksise!Waa’ee Oromoo irratti walgahii akkasii waamuun yeroo jalqabaa ta’us, Gamtaan Awurooppaa gochaan duguuggaa sanyii mootummaan woyyaanee ummata oromoo irraatti gaggeessaaru akka daraan isaan yaaddesseefi falmitootni mirga dhala namaa kan Akka Amnesty International walgahicha irraa qooda akka fudhatan beekameera.INJIFANNOON UMMATA OROMOOF! Falmattu malee Adunyaan dantaa kee hin qabdu..
#OromoProtests, Participants of study seminar from USA and other Philipino friends show solidarity with Oromo Student protest going on in Ethiopia here in Manila. ‘Injustice any where is injustice every where.’ 7 January, 2016.
China Town Manila, Philippines. Credit: Asefa M.Wakjira, Green Movement through social network.
#OromoProtests, Asabot ( West Hararage) Jan 7, 2016.
A 4th year Food Science Oromo student at Wallaggaa University, Horaa Banti Irranaa, was arrested on Monday January 4, 2016 by Agazi from campus. His body was found in Hadiyya on January 6, 2016. He was taken to Nekemte hospital for autopsy then his body was sent to his birth place which is Gachi, near Baddalle in Ilu Abbaabooraa.
Maqaan isaa Horaa Bantii Irranaa Yunivarsitii Wallaggaatti barataa Food Science waggaa 4ffaa tureeyyuu. Gaafa Amajjii 4 bara 2016 mooraa irraa poolisootaan fuudhamee guyyaa Amajii 6 bara 2016 ajjeefamee laga keessatti reeffi isaa gatamee argame. Horaan dhaloonni isaa Godina Ilu Abbaa boor magaala Gachii ti.Reeffi isaas garas geeffamaa jira.
Daraje Tsegaye Kitaba, Oromo teenager, kidnapped by TPLF (Agazi) forces on 26 December 2015. His whereabout is unknown. He is from Central Oromia (Xiqur incinni).
Mucaan kun Muddee 26 bara 2015 agaaziin ukaafame hangaa har’aati gara inni jiru hin beekamu. Maqaan isaa Daraje Tsegaye kitaba jedhama. Lixa shawwaa, annaa xuqur incinnii irraati.
OromoProtests: 5 January 2016 in Awaday, E Hararge, Oromia students at all levels ( elementary to preparatory) have have walked out of school informing school administrators they will not return until the military leaves school compounds, arrested students are released, those who killed students brought to justice. Students who come out of town have returned to their villages.
Amajjii 5 Bara 2015, Awwadaayii, Hargee Bahaatti Barattoonni sadarkaa hundaatu ( elemantarii hamma piripaaratorii) barnoota dhaabuun gara maatii isaanii deemanii jiran. Hamma waraanni mooraa mannaan barnootaafi araddaalee keessa bahuu, gaafiin ummataa deebi’uu, warri hidhame hiikkamuufi warri nama ajjeese seeraan gaafatamuu hin dachaanu jechuun bulchiinsita manneen barnoota hubachiisaanii jiran.
#OromoProtests, Masalaa town, West Hararghe, Oromia. 5 January 2016.
#OromoProtests continues, on 3rd January 2016 at Ambo University Waliso Campus.
Barattoonni Amboo Universitii, Kampaasii Walisoo mormii fi gadda obboleewwan isaanii kan wayyaaneen dhumaniis nyaata lagachuun yaadatan.
#OromoProtests, students in Shashamene Say No to the Master Plan and the Mass Murder, 2nd January 2016
The main road connecting Finfinnee with Eastern Region ( Harar, Dire Dawa, Jigjiga) has been closed at various villages near Hirna. 2nd January 2016, #OromoProtests
Daandin Finfinnee irraa baha biyyatti geessuu naannawa Hirnaatti araddaalee hedduu keessatti bifa kanaan cufamee jira, Amajjii 2, bara 2016
OromoProtests 2nd round continues January 1, 2016: Fichee (Salaalee), Shambuu, Dire Dawa city (LegaHarre High school), Sibuu Siree, Rift Valley University Gulale Campus, Burka Dhimtu ( East Hararge), Gimbi
Hanna Doja, Oromo child, 7 years old, 1st grade student in Kombolcha town, Horroo Guduruu, Oromia. Attacked by fascist Ethiopian regime forces ((Agazi) on 31st December 2015.
The Agazi are armed recruits from rural Tigray, TPLF’s rocky homeland. The Agazi are uneducated fascist forces trained from young age to hate, attack and kill people of non Tigray nationalities
Read more on Reports on OromoProtests in Nov./Dec. 2015 at:-
About 200 members of Minnesota’s Oromo community rallied at the State Capitol on Monday to protest treatment at the hands of the Ethiopian government.
The protest was in response to a crackdown on Oromo protestors in Ethiopia, who have opposed government plans to evict farmers from their land to expand Addis Abba, Ethiopia’s capital city.
Hundreds of Oromo — the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia — have been killed by the Ethiopian government since last November, protestors say, and thousands more have been imprisoned for opposing the government.
More recently, march organizers said, the Oromian region of the East African nation has been under martial law.
To put pressure on the Ethiopian government, protestors called for the United States to withhold aid to the Ethiopian government until the violence stops.
“We’re frankly upset over our government not caring enough to stop this,” said Najat Hamza, a community activist and member of Oromo Womens Organization of Minnesota. “We always felt the United States stands for human rights and in this instance their not.”
This was the fourth time Minnesota’s Oromo community. Monday’s march coincided with others nationwide, said Urgo Shanka, one of the event’s organizers and a youth coordinator with the Oromo Womens Organization.
Aadland is a University of Minnesota student on assignment for the Star Tribune.
#Oromoprotests this mother is a 7 month pregnant and has 6 kids, lives in the West Arsi zone ofthe #Oromia state in #Ethiopia. When the Tigreans led security forces came to her home searching for her husband, she came out of her home and falled, kneeled down to his legs and begged him, not to kill her and her kids. Other militias went to her home to search for her husband and couldn’t find him. She kept begging them in #AfaanOromoo and #Sidamalanguages, as she doesn’t speak Amharic. The militias don’t speak either of these languages. Finally, they have mercilessly killed her firing five bullets to her. It is a very painfully to see such a tragedy, and her kids are now orphans. That’s how #democracy is being built in #Ethiopia by#TpLF. #ያማል
Ethiopia: Civil society calls upon Human Rights Council to investigate government crackdown on Oromo protest
Front Line Defenders, 24 February 2016
To Permanent Representatives of
Members and Observer States of the
UN Human Rights Council
Geneva, 24 February 2016
RE: Addressing restrictions on freedom of assembly and civil society in Ethiopia
Your Excellency,
The undersigned civil society organizations (CSOs) write to express our serious concerns about the Ethiopian Government’s grave restrictions on fundamental human rights, exemplified by the recent crackdown on largely peaceful protests in the Oromia region. As the UN Human Rights Council (UN HRC) prepares to release its landmark recommendations for the proper management of assemblies, we urge your delegation to address the rapidly deteriorating environment for independent dissent and violations of the right to freedom of assembly in Ethiopia at the upcoming 31st UN HRC Session.
Since December 2015, Ethiopian security forces have routinely used excessive and unnecessary lethal force to disperse and suppress peaceful protests in the Oromia region. The protesters, who have been advocating against the dispossession of land without adequate compensation under the government’s Integrated Development Master Plan, have been subjected to widespread rights violations. According to international and national human rights groups, at least 150 demonstrators, including scores of children and university students, have been killed during the protests. It is also widely reported that hundreds of people have suffered bullet wounds and beatings by the police and military.
The authorities have also arbitrarily arrested thousands of people throughout Oromia for participating in or supporting the protests. Many of those detained are being held without charge and without access to family members or legal representation. Numerous human rights activists, journalists and opposition political party leaders and supporters have been arbitrarily arrested and detained in Oromia. Among those arrested and still in detention are Bekele Gerba (Deputy Chair, Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC)), Dejene Tufa (Deputy General Secretary, OFC), Getachew Shiferaw (Editor-in-Chief of the online newspaper Negere Ethiopia), Yonathan Teressa (a human rights defender) and Fikadu Mirkana (reporter with the state-owned Oromia Radio and TV).
The government also continues to misuse the abusive 2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation to silence independent reporting and support of the protest movement. Specifically, on January 22, 2016, opposition leader Bekele Gerba and 21 other individuals were arraigned at the Federal First Instance Court, Arada Branch, which granted the prosecutor’s request for 28 days remand to police custody under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation.
Moreover, weeks earlier, on December 15, 2015, the government publically described the protesters as “an organised and armed terrorist force” in a cynical and disturbing attempt to conflate their legitimate exercise of fundamental civil liberties with acts of terrorism. We remain deeply concerned that this description of the mostly peaceful protesters has also contributed to greater use of excessive force by security personnel.
Prominent human rights experts and groups, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have repeatedly condemned the deliberate misuse of the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation’s overbroad and vague provisions to target journalists and activists. The law permits up to four months of pre-trial detention and prescribes draconian prison sentences for a wide range of activities protected under international human rights law. Dozens of human rights defenders as well as journalists, bloggers, peaceful demonstrators and opposition party members have been subjected to harassment and politically motivated prosecution under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, making Ethiopia one of the leading jailers of journalists in the world.
There are no effective avenues to pursue accountability for abuses given the lack of independence of the judiciary and legislative constraints. During the May 2015 General Elections, the ruling EPRDF party won all 547 seats in the Ethiopian Parliament. In addition, domestic civil society organizations are severely hindered by one of the most restrictive NGO laws in the world. Specifically, under the 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation, the vast majority of Ethiopian organizations have been forced to stop working on human rights and governance issues, a matter of great concern that has been repeatedly raised including at Ethiopia’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
This restrictive environment means that there are few avenues available for accountability and independent dissent in the country. It is essential that the UN Human Rights Council takes a strong position urging the Ethiopian Government to immediately end its systematic campaign to suppress peaceful protests and legitimate human rights activism.
Amid a growing chorus of concern, a number of intergovernmental bodies, including the European Parliament, have called on the Ethiopian government to immediately cease its political intimidation and persecution of peaceful protesters and human rights defenders. Recently, on 21 January, four UN Special Rapporteurs and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances issued a joint statementcondemning the ongoing crackdown and further called on the Ethiopian Government to “immediately release protesters who seem to have been arrested for exercising their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression, to reveal the whereabouts of those reportedly disappeared and to carry out an independent, transparent investigation into the security forces’ response to the protest.”
During the upcoming 31st session of the Human Rights Council, we urge your delegation to make joint or individual statements (for example during the high-level segment, in interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner, and under other relevant agenda items), reinforcing and building upon the concerns of these and other international bodies.
Specifically, we respectfully request your delegation to press Ethiopia to:
immediately cease the use of excessive and unnecessary lethal force by security forces against protesters in Oromia Region of Ethiopia and elsewhere in Ethiopia;
immediately and unconditionally release journalists, human rights defenders, political opposition leaders and members as well as protesters arbitrarily detained during and in the aftermath of the protests;
urgently establish a thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigation into all of the deaths resulting from alleged excessive use of force by the security forces, and other violations of human rights in the context of the protests;
ensure that those responsible for human rights violations are prosecuted in proceedings which comply with international law and standards on fair trial and without resort to the death penalty;
and fully comply with its international legal obligations and commitments including under the, ICCPR, African Charter and its own Constitution.
Sincerely,
Article 19
Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE)
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
Civil Rights Defenders
Defend Defenders (East and Horn of Africa Human Right Defenders Project)
Oromo Protests: Why Ethiopia’s Largest Ethnic Group is Demonstrating
(Newsweek, 26 Feb. 2016) — Since the Ethiopian government announced plans to expand the territory of the capital Addis Ababa in April 2014, the country’s largest region, Oromia, has been racked with protests that have led to hundreds of deaths.
Oromia, which completely surrounds the capital of the Horn of Africa country, is home to the Oromo ethnic group. Oromos constitute the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, yet members of the community claim to havesuffered systematic discrimination and oppression at the hands of Ethiopia’s federal government.
Newsweek explains who the Oromo are, why they are protesting and how the Ethiopian government is responding.
Who are the Oromos?
More than one in three Ethiopians hails from the Oromo ethnic group: Oromos constituted more than 25 million of the total 74 million population at the last census in 2007 (the population of Ethiopia has since grown to almost 100 million). The Oromo have their own language and culture distinct from the Amharic language, which is employed as Ethiopia’s official dialect.
The Oromo have been subject to human rights violations and discrimination under three successive regimes in Ethiopia, according to a 2009 report by U.S.-based Advocates for Human Rights group: the Abyssinian Empire under Haile Selassie, dissolved in 1974; the Marxist Derg military junta that seized power in 1974 and ruled until 1991; and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, established in 1991 and existing until the present.
Oromo language was sidelined and not taught in schools for much of the 20th century and Oromo activists were often tortured or disappeared. A 2009 report by the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated that 594 extra-judicial killings and 43 disappearances of Oromos were recorded between 2005 and 2008 by an Oromo activist group. The ethnic group have clashed with the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), in power since 1991; an Amnesty International report in October 2014 stated that at least 5,000 Oromos were arrested between 2011 and 2014 on the basis of opposition to the government.
Why have Oromos protested against the Addis Ababa master plan?
According to the Ethiopian government, the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan proposed to expand the capital’s territory in order to bring better services and greater economic opportunities to the rural areas surrounding Addis. For the Oromos, however, the plan constituted 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.
Protests began in Oromia immediately after the plan was announced—at least nine students were killed in April and May 2014, according to the government, although eyewitnesses said the total was at least 47. The most recent round of protests began in November 2015 and have spread across the entirety of the vast Oromia region. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in January that at least 140 protesters had been killed in demonstrations after heavy-handed crackdowns by security forces.
The Ethiopian government announced later in January that it was abandoning the Addis expansion plans after the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO)—the ruling party in Oromia and a member of the governing EPRDF coalition—dropped its support for the scheme. Yet despite that, the crackdown has continued: HRW’s latest update on February 22 cited claims from activists that more than 200 protesters had been killed, with security forces allegedly firing on peaceful protesters and thousands detained without trial.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, pictured addressing a U.N. summit in New York, September 25, 2015, has vowed to crack down on “destructive forces” the government says are hijacking Oromo protests.ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS
How have the government responded to Oromo protests?
The EPRDF has come down hard on protesters, claiming that “destructive forces”—including groups designated as terrorist organizations by the Ethiopian government—are hijacking the protests for their own means. Hailemariam Desalegn, the Ethiopian prime minister, said in December 2015 that protesters had burned down government properties and killed security forces, and that “merciless legitimate action” would be taken against those causing disorder.
In a statement sent to Newsweek on February 23, the Ethiopian embassy in London said that the claims made in HRW’s February report were based on “malicious statements, false accusations and unsubstantiated allegations from opposition propaganda materials.” The embassy claimed that the Addis expansion plans were dropped after “extensive public consultations” and an investigation into killings and destruction of property was underway.
Are Oromos seeking secession from Ethiopia?
One of the designated terrorist organizations accused of involvement in the protests by the Ethiopian government is the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). The group wasestablished in 1973 to campaign for the Oromo’s right to self-determination. The OLF is now based out of Washington, D.C. and any accusations of its involvement in the Oromo protests is a means of “criminalizing protesters,” according to Etana Habte, Ethiopian author and PhD candidate at SOAS University of London. “I don’t believe the OLF has very significant influence on this protest,” says Habte. “[Claims the OLF is involved] have not any relevance or grain of truth within itself. Oromo protests are fundamentally peaceful and it carries a legitimate question.”
Habte claims that what the Oromo are seeking is self-determination, not secession.Article 39 of Ethiopia’s 1994 constitution affords “every nation, nationality or people in Ethiopia” the “unrestricted right to self-determination up to secession.” What the Oromo are asking for, says Habte, is a greater say in how their region is governed. “Oromos understand Oromia as their own territory where they have an absolute and constitutional right to self-rule,” says Habte. “The Oromo protests don’t ask for anything more than [what is provided by] the constitution.”
The Ethiopian government may have backed off its planned capital expansion after deadly protests last fall, but ethnic Oromo in Minnesota say violence and arrests continue. Here, people mourn the death of an alleged protester shot dead by Ethiopian forces. Zacharias Abubeker | AFP | Getty Images 2015
On Thursday, members of the community — around 40,000 Oromo people live in the state — came together for a daylong forum in Minneapolis to discuss the human rights violations in the East African nation.
In the last few months, clashes between state security forces and students in the Oromo region of Ethiopia have been deadly. Activists say more than 200 people have been killed, but Human Rights Watch said it couldn’t verify the number. And it’s unclear how many Oromos, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, have been arrested and imprisoned.
Teshite Wako Doualy Xaykaothao | MPR News
Teshite Wako, president of Oromo Community of Minnesota, said Oromo people are being targeted.
“By the name of development, and investments in the country, Oromos are evicted from their land, and students started to protest against that, and the response they got was to be killed,” Wako said.
Ethiopia’s prime minister said he regretted the loss of life during November’s demonstrations, and since then the government has ceased its plan to develop beyond the capital. However, daily killings and arrests have continued, said Wako.
“It’s an urgent matter that we need to pay attention to,” he said. “We would like, really, for genocide not to happen in our country. We are not against developments, investments, but what we are against is developments and investments that marginalize our people.”
Among those featured at the forum was Anuradha Mittal, executive director of The Oakland Institute, who spoke about human rights violations that her California nonprofit has been reporting about in Ethiopia since 2007.
Anuradha Mittal Doualy Xaykaothao | MPR News
“What is horrifying is a very systematic violation of human rights toward all communities that are not in political power,” she said. “This is based on so-called development schemes, which will result in the renaissance state of Africa, grand highways, the largest dam. But all of those schemes are being carried out through land-grabbing, taking away farmlands of communities without their consent, without compensation.”
Mittal added that when people protest, as young students apparently attempted to in November, there’s violence.
“They’ve been tortured, they’ve been intimidated, arrested, there’s no rule of law,” Mittal said. “There’s a complete misuse of the anti-terrorism law, which has become a tool to lock up people (and) not have them face charges for years. It is shameful for us to keep quiet.”
When President Barack Obama visited Ethiopia last year, he reportedly discussed greater business developments with officials, as well as human rights in the state. But Oromo Minnesotans say that’s not enough and many are urging Obama to help the Oromo before he leaves office.
From: The Union of the Oromo Gadaa Councils
Re: Announcing Resolutions of the Union of the Oromo Gadaa Councils
Date: February 24, 2016
The Union of the Oromo Gadaa Councils, Alarmed by of the recent disturbances in the Oromia Regional State, Cognizant of the need to find solutions to the causes of the disturbances, Deeply disturbed that the lives of our compatriots were lost and properties damaged in connection with the unrest and disturbance of the peace in Oromia, Having deliberated on the matter as representatives all Gadaa Councils sitting together in Finfinnee on February 23-24, 2016, we
Call for the immediate cessation of the ongoing conflict; financial compensation to be paid for loss of life in accordance with Gadaa tradition; and release of all those imprisoned without any charge against them,
Request the government to address the demands of the people immediately,
Encourage our people to continue to present their demands peacefully; we plead for everyone to refrain from damaging property while doing so,
Demand an immediate halt to the practice of evicting farmers from their land without their consent and without adequate compensation. We call upon the government to look into the damage created by past mistakes and ensure that the victims are made whole,
Announce that the Union of the Oromo Gadaa Councils is ready to discuss and seek solutions to the crisis that has now disrupted the peace of our country,
Have decided that the upcoming Irreecha (Thanksgiving holiday of the Oromo people) festival be celebrated in the City of Finfinnee,
Have resolved to create an independent source of income for the Councils in order to strengthen the Gadaa system,
Have resolved that henceforth the Spring Irreecha festival be celebrated at Tullu Bossettii, Bossettii District, East Shawa and a week later at Tullu Sirree, Iluu Galaan District, East Shawa,
Call upon people with no affiliation with the Gadaa councils who are now interfering in Gadaa affairs to refrain from engaging in Gadaa-related acts for which they have no representation; and strongly urge government and media agencies not to extend any assistance to anyone who do not have the authority of the Gadaa Councils,
Demand that Oromo cultural centers and sacred sites be respected and the sites be legally-protected with issuance of title deeds; and declare that the Union of the Oromo Gadaa Councils is prepared to work with the appropriate agencies to implement this resolution,
Resolve to strengthen Waaqeffanaa, the Oromo traditional religion, in accordance with the Gadaa System, the religion’s original tenets and the Oromo moral system of safuu,
Resolve to do our part to protect our natural resources everywhere in our regional state.
The Union of the Oromo Gadaa Councils Agreed upon in Finfinnee February 24, 2016 Gadaa Will Flourish in Peace Developing a Self-Sufficient Nation
Human Rights Watch says security forces are continuing to persecute members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo. Hundreds have allegedly been killed in recent protests over a government plan to expand the capital Addis Ababa into Oromo land.
Human Rights Watch Reports Daily Killings As Ethiopian Government Continues Oromia Crackdown
By Manny Otiko, The Atlanta Black Star, February 23, 2016
Photo: Women mourn during the funeral ceremony of a primary school teacher who family members said was shot dead by military forces during protests in Oromia, Ethiopia in December 2015. (Reuters)
The Ethiopian government is reportedly continuing its crackdown on the Oromo people.
According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, about 200 protesters have been killed in the latest government operation. Oromia, home to the Oromo people, is Ethiopia’s largest region. Demonstrations in the region broke out when the government attempted to clear a forest for an investment project. Protests escalated when the government decided to expand the borders of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to incorporate surrounding towns in Oromia, according to The International Business Times.
Government forces have used heavy-handed tactics to squash the protests, including rounding up and detaining protesters, torture and even extra-judicial killings, according to The Atlanta Blackstar. Many of the early protests were led by students, but that has not stopped the violence from security forces.
“They walked into the compound and shot three students at point-blank range,” said a 17-year-old student in a Human Rights Watch report. “They were hit in the face and were dead.”
The IBT said there are almost daily reports of killings.
“Things have become considerably more violent in the last few days,” said Felix Horne, Horn of Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government needs to back down and stop the brutal crackdown.”
It’s difficult to get accurate information about what’s going on because Ethiopia does not have a free media. Human Rights Watch says it is relying on information leaking out via social media posts. The foreign-based Oromo Media Network is also reporting on the situation. However, its signals have been jammed by the Ethiopian government. Government forces have also reportedly smashed OMN satellites and jailed people who have shown their broadcasts.
However, the Ethiopian government denies there is a problem and dismissed Human Rights Watch’s latest report.
Getachew Reda, Ethiopia’s communications minister, told the BBC the report was an “absolute lie” and questioned how Human Rights Watch could report on the situation from New York. He also blamed the latest violence on armed gangs “who are trying to stir up emotions in the public.”
According to The IBT, the European Parliament passed a January resolution condemning the government’s crackdown on largely peaceful protesters. However, the U.S. government has not criticized the Ethiopian government, and has called for dialogue. According to The IBT, Ethiopia received $580 million in aid from the U.S. in 2012. Additionally, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. government uses Ethiopian bases to fly drone missions against terrorists groups in Somalia.
Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said countries that donate money to Ethiopia should pressure the government to stop the killing.
“Ethiopia’s donor countries have responded tepidly, if at all, to the killing of scores of protesters in Oromia,” said Lefkow. “They should stop ignoring or downplaying this shocking brutality and call on the government to support an independent investigation into the killings and other abuses.”
Oppressed and marginalized people have a shared experience: their oppressors invent a “mythical portrait” of the oppressed . Through this “mythical portrait”, the oppressed is depicted as uncivilized, savage, lacking self-control, irrational, unable to govern themselves, dangerous to themselves and to those in their midst, etc. On the other hand, the oppressor invents the opposite “mythical portrait” for itself.
This ugly portrait of the oppressed creates a mythical basis to keep the oppressed in perpetual misery. It creates a sense of fear that separates one oppressed group from another. This “mythical portraits” also helps garner support for the oppressive system from its base and outside the base as it makes the system as guarantor of the societiy’s well-being.
The successive Ethiopian government, particularly in the last 25 years, have created Oromo-phobia by inventing a mythical portrait of the Oromo. Consequently, the emancipation of the Oromo from their oppression is seen as destabilizing to Ethiopia and detrimental to the very existence of non-Oromo people in Ethiopia. Such a portrait has worked so well in the last 25 years that even those who are marginalized under the current government are unable to align their common interest with the Oromo people. The oppressive minority regime creates conflicts between oppressed groups and then portrays itself as the only rational and arbiter, thereby deserving to rule the “barbaric” others. This machination of the Ethiopian government, however, seems to be falling apart recently.
Since the eruption of the current Oromo revolution (#OromoProtests), the oppressive Ethiopian government left no stone unturned to further distort the “mythical portrait” of the Oromo people. The Communication Minister Getachew Reda called the peaceful #OromoProtests “devils” that must be dealt with , and the Prime Minister threatened to take “merciless action” labeling the unarmed and peaceful protesters “terrorists”. Once this “mythical portrait” is created, they not only justify their actions but leaves them with no choice but to intensify the repression. That is exactly what the regime has been doing since Novermber 12, 2015. What they did not manage to do this time around is to incite inter-ethnic and inter-religion conflict- despite their best effort.
Why is the Ethiopian oppressive minority regime failing to incite conflict between Oromo and others, and to incite inter-faith conflict in this time of revolt? A lot of credit should go to the tactics employed by the #OromoProtests movement, and their pre-emptive outreach to all Ethiopians and their transparent revolution.
True to the Oromo culture, the elders gathered the revolutionary youth to undertake an Oath taking ceremony during which they promulgated:
The minority groups living in Oromia should not be harmed/should be protected. They emphasized that no one but the regime is their enemy. They admonished the youth that if any one considers others as enemy because of their ethnicity, it will tarnish the good Oromo name and goes counter to the principle of Oromummaa (Oromoness)
No properties should be damaged
Any one who harms minorities and/or damage properties, is in violation of Oromo-norms and is considered enemy of the Oromo people and obstacle to the peaceful struggle against tyranny.
We have heard the same voice of reason during the early weeks of the protest in West Shewa. Obviously this expression of tolerance is not a culture that just emerged now; it’s centuries old culture that is simply captured on video at this historical time. I share this video with pride to other Ethiopians and I hope it gives them hope and understanding about the Oromo people.
The #OromoProtests movement is shattering the “mythical portrait” of the Oromo people and replacing it with a true portrait of the Oromo people that is loving, caring and welcoming. The time when the rest of Ethiopians and the Oromo people join hands in good faith is the beginning of the era for the true liberation of the multi-nation federation we call Ethiopia. There is hope and the #OromoProtests is the fountain of such hope.
Gudina dreams every night of the student she saw with blood pouring out of their mouth after being struck by a bullet fired by Ethiopian security forces during a protest in December. At a related protest in a different town, 17-year-old Gameda saw security forces enter a school compound and shoot three students point blank, and then carry the bodies away.
Tear gas and bullets from security forces have become a regular part of the state’s crackdown in Ethiopia’s Oromia state, as students keep up a protest movement against the government’s plan for expansion and development of the capital, Addis Ababa. Many say the plan will push the Oromo people off their lands.
According to a report from Human Rights Watch this week, Ethiopia has continued to violently suppress the demonstrations that sparked in November, killing protesters and arresting thousands more without charges. Several people the advocacy organization spoke with said they were subjected to torture and sexual assault while detained.
“Continuing to treat the protests as a military operation that needs to be crushed through force shows the complete disregard the government has for peaceful protest and freedom of expression,” said Felix Horne, Human Rights Watch’s researcher for the Horn of Africa.
“Things have become considerably more violent in the last few days,” he said. “Given the limitations on independent reporting on the ground, it’s hard to know precisely what has been happening.” The organization, which is the source of the eyewitness accounts, has changed the names of people it mentions and even avoids specifying their gender, to protect them for the crackdown by the government Tensions are longstanding between the Oromo and the government, lead with a heavy hand by Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn.
The demonstrations started in mid-November in Oromia, the nation’s largest state and home to 27 million people, including 3.3 million living in Addis Ababa. The Oromo, who are the country’s largest ethnic group, are opposed to the government’s Addis Ababa and Surrounding Oromia Special Zone Development Plan. Activists claim the development agenda will swallow up Oromo land and displace farmers as the capital grows outward.
That expansion reflects Ethiopia’s status as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. The International Monetary Fund ranks it among the top five expanding economies globally, with a gross domestic product that expanded 10.3 percent from 2013 to 2014. The capital development plan is in line with the economic and urban growth, with plans for building highways, roads, parking lots, market areas, and an airport.
On November 12, elementary and high school students formed the first demonstration in the town of Ginci, about 55 miles from Addis Ababa. As a part of the controversial development project, work had just begun on clearing a forest at the edge of town. Activists said the students engaged in peaceful demonstrations, and videos at the time showed them often standing in silence.
Over the next few weeks, protests began to spread to towns throughout the state as part of a larger and years-long Oromo movement. The Oromo account for more than 80 percent of the Oromia state population. Nationally, they represent more than 35 percent.
Many Oromos say they have not benefitted from the country’s development. Literacy rates and government representation are bleak for the Oromo.
This is not the first protest against the so-called Master Plan; there was a similar uprising in April and May of 2014 after the development plan was approved. A crackdown by security forces left dozens dead and hundreds arrested.
As the current movement unfolded, the recent demonstrations quickly surpassed the scale of those from 2014. By January activists estimated upwards of 140 people had been killed and, according to Human Rights Watch, killings and violence have been reported daily. That figure has since risen to more than 200 people.
With Desalegn and the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front controlling the parliament and the judiciary, while having eroded independent civil society and media, Horne said that the protest crackdowns were limiting one of the few outlets for criticism left.
“If Oromia’s citizens have concerns how are they to peacefully express it?” he said. “As we’ve seen the last three months, if you take to the streets you run the risk of being shot by security forces who view protest movements as something to be crushed through brutal force.”
Ethiopia’s Oromo protests: A problem that repression can’t solve
By Simon Allison, Daily Maverick, 23 Februray, 2016
The Ethiopian government likes to be in control – of the economy, of opposition movements, of independent media. Like it or not, the tough approach has worked, at least in terms of the country reaching its development goals. But repression is a blunt instrument and the ongoing Oromo protests should force a rethink. By SIMON ALLISON.
The demonstrations began in November 2015. In towns and villages all over Ethiopia’s vast Oromia province, people gathered to voice their frustration at the government.
Their grievances? Specifically, they were unhappy about the unveiling of the Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan, a document that detailed step-by-step how the capital city would suck more land from the province for minimal compensation. Generally, they were protesting a long history of oppression and marginalisation of the Oromo community. The Oromo, despite being Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group are largely excluded from positions of power and have historically been last to access rights and benefits from the state.
The scale of these protests – the wide geographical spread, and the sheer numbers of people who turned out – scared the government who responded with force.
Supposed ringleaders were detained; curfews imposed in several towns and security forces were called in to deal with the angry crowds. Things soon got ugly even though protestors were largely peaceful (although not always – several government buildings were stormed and looted). The same cannot be said for the police, however, who reacted with tear gas, grenades and bullets. By the end of the year, an estimated 150 people had been killed.
The brutal crackdown was the government’s stick. There was also a carrot. In January, in an apparent concession, the government scrapped the Addis Master Plan, saying it had heard and heeded the voice of the people.
This was all too little, too late. Too little because it’s an open secret that the expansion of Addis will continue – it can’t not – but now with even less direction or regulation; and because the government did not address ongoing discrimination against Oromo people. Too late because the brutality of the state crackdown had merely proved the protestors’ point, and reinforced their grievances.
So the protests continued. As did the brutal response. “Almost daily accounts of killings and arbitrary arrests have been reported to Human Rights Watch since 2016 began. Security forces, including military personnel, have fatally shot scores of demonstrators. Thousands of people have been arrested and remain in detention without charge,” reported Human Rights Watch this week.
The rights group added: “The plan’s cancellation did not halt the protest. The crackdown continued throughout Oromia. In late January 2016, Human Rights Watch interviewed approximately 60 protesters and other witnesses from various parts of the Oromia region in December and January who described human rights violations during the protests, some since mid-January. They said that security forces have shot randomly into crowds, summarily killed people during arrests, carried out mass roundups and tortured detainees.”
Sure enough, the Ethiopian government was quick to deny the Human Rights Watch Report. “[An] absolute lie,” said Communications Minister Getachew Reda, speaking to the BBC. Reda blamed the trouble on armed gangs “who are trying to stir up emotions in the public”. At the same time, Reda lashed out at Human Rights Watch, saying that it was “a stroke of magic” for the organisation to get its information from “halfway around the world”. This is disingenuous: as Reda well knows, and as theDaily Maverick reported last month, the reason that organisations like Human Rights Watch cannot maintain an uncompromised presence in Ethiopia is because government restrictions make this impossible.
Although the government may be reluctant to acknowledge them, there’s no doubt that the Oromo protests are real. It is also clear that the government’s usual tactics for dealing with opposition movements – a hefty dose of police brutality combined with targeted detentions and a slick PR machine – is not making them go away this time round.
Maybe it’s time to try something different. In this instance, a little less repression might go a long way. Real engagement and compromise could alleviate the protestors’ immediate concerns, while reassuring them that the government does cater to its large Oromo constituency.
It’s an experiment worth conducting. The Oromo are far from the only disaffected community in Ethiopia and there’s a real danger that the unrest could spread, particularly to the large Muslim minority, who have a recent history of large-scale anti-government demonstrations themselves. This would not only threaten the government’s authority, but also undermine or even reverse its impressive development statistics. Having made such impressive socio-economic progress, the Ethiopian government’s automatically autocratic response to any kind of opposition risks reversing their gains. There’s got to be a better way. DM
Oromo: Unity Found Between Oppressed Groups in Ethiopia
By UNPO, 22nd February 2016
The oppressive Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has found itself facing increasing anti-government protests over the last few years and months. More significantly, these protests have shown another trend, which has been the increased action taken jointly by oppressed groups, such as the peoples of Amhara and Oromia. This comes as a result of the continual violent suppression of opposition by state forces, oftentimes resulting in arbitrary arrests, injuries and even death. The recent increase in unified response, however, gives some hope for the future of democracy in the country.
Division and fear are the age-old tools of tyrants; unity and peaceful coordinated action the most powerful weapons against them.
Frightened and downtrodden for so long, there are positive signs that the Ethiopian people are beginning to come together, – peacefully uniting in their anger at the ruling party – the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) — a paranoid brutal regime that suppresses the people, is guilty of wide-ranging human rights violations, and has systematically encouraged ethnic divisions and rivalries.
Anti-government protests have been growing over the last few years, and in recent months large-scale demonstrations have taken place throughout Oromia and also in Gondar, where university students have been demonstrating, demanding, academic rights, freedom, democracy and justice.
Tribal groups, particularly the peoples of Amhara and Oromia (the largest ethnic group – accounting for 35% of the population), have come together. Thousands have been marching, running, sitting, shouting and screaming.
Government slays Peaceful Protestors
The EPRDF’s response to the demonstrators’ democratic gall has been crudely predictable: brand protestors ‘anti-peace forces’ and terrorists, then shoot, arrest and imprison them.
Whilst Human Rights Watch (HRW) say security forces have killed at least 140 people, independent broadcaster ESAT news estimates the number to be over 200. The government, which human rights groups state authorised the police and military to use “excessive force, including…live ammunition against protesters, among them children as young as 12”, has so far admitted 22 fatalities.
ESAT reports at least1,500 have been injured and to date over 5,000 arrested (in Oromia alone), including Bekele Gerba, deputy chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), Oromia’s largest legally registered political party, and his son. Senior members of the OFC, as well as members of other opposition parties and their families, have also been imprisoned. Scores more people are harassed, their homes searched. Acting on behalf of an unaccountable government, security forces are “on a mission of wanton destruction of human lives and properties”.
State plan cancelled by protest
The under-reported protests in Gondar (in the Amhara region) were triggered by two separate, but related issues: government cession of an expanse of fertile land -– up to 1,600 square km, to Sudan under new demarcation proposals — and the widespread belief that state forces are responsible for a mass killing that took place in November 2015 against the people of Qimant. Leaders of The Gondar Union Association told ESAT news they believed the murders were “committed by TPLF [government] cadres, who then blamed it on the Amhara people to incite violence among the two groups.”
In Oromia, where protests began in April 2014 throughout the region, it was the government’s plan to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, on to agricultural land. Hundreds of smallholders would have been displaced, villages destroyed, livelihoods shattered. Following months of demonstrations the government has announced that the plan is to be scrapped. The official statement virtually dismissed the protestors’ opposition, claiming it was “based on a simple misunderstanding” created by a “lack of transparency”.
Activists reacted with derision to the government’s condescension, and vowed to continue protesting unless their longstanding grievances of political exclusion are addressed. Sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations have continued in various locations across Oromo, evoking more violence from the ruling party’s henchmen.
Oromo Rage
The Oromo people see the government’s violence as part of a systematic attempt to oppress and marginalise them. As Amnesty International (AI) states in its report ‘Because I am Oromo’: “Thousands of Oromo people have been subjected to unlawful killings, torture and enforced disappearance.” People without any political affiliation are arrested on suspicion that they do not support the government – “between 2011 and 2014, at least 5,000 Oromos have been arrested”. Amnesty asserts that recent regime violence was “the latest and bloodiest in a long pattern of suppression”. This description of government intimidation and brutality will sound familiar to most Ethiopians.
Whilst it was the ‘master-plan’ for Addis Ababa that brought thousands onto the streets, anger and discontent has been fermenting throughout the country for years. Feelings fuelled by restrictions on fundamental freedoms, and human rights violations, many of which can only be described as State Terrorism.
Power Hungry
The EPRDF have been in power for 25 long, and for many people, painful years. The ruling party was formed from the four armed groups that seized power in May 1991, including the now dominant Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Despite the theatre of national “elections” being staged every five years since 1995, the EPRDF has never been elected. Last year’s sham saw them take all 547 parliamentary seats. In order to convince a suspicious, if largely indifferent watching world (the EU refused to send a team of observers to legitimise proceedings) one might have expected a token seat or two for an opposition party, but the government decided they could steal every one and get away with it, their arrogance confirming their guilt.
The Tigrean ethnic group makes up a mere 6% of the country’s 95 million population, but the TPLF (or Weyane as they are commonly called) and their cohorts dominate the government, the senior military, the judiciary, and, according to Genocide Watch, intend “to internally colonize the country”, a claim that the ethnic Somalis living in the Ogaden region, as well as . the people of Amhara and Oromia, all of whom are subjected to appalling levels of persecution, would agree with.
Undemocratic, repressive regime
The Government claims to adhere to democracy, but says the introduction of democratic principles will take time. ‘Outsiders’ (critics such as HRW, Amnesty International and the EU) ‘don’t understand’ the country: thus Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn pretends Ethiopia “is a fledgling democracy – a house in the making”.
Well, it is not a house being built on any recognizable democratic foundations: human rights, civil society, justice and freedom, for example. Indeed there is no evidence of democracy actual or potential on the government’s part in Ethiopia. On the contrary, despite a liberally-worded constitution, the ruling party tramples on human rights, uses violence and fear to suppress the people and governs in a highly centralised manner: Opposition parties are ignored, their leaders often imprisoned or forced to live abroad; the government, Amnesty International (AI) states, routinely uses “arbitrary arrest and detention, often without charge, to suppress suggestions of dissent in many parts of the country.”
The judiciary is a puppet, as is the “investigative branch of the police”, Amnesty records, making it impossible “to receive a fair hearing in politically motivated trials”, or any other case for that matter. Federal and regional security services operate with “near total impunity” and are “responsible for violations throughout the country, including…the use of excessive force, torture and extrajudicial executions.”
There is no media freedom; virtually all press, television and radio outlets are state-owned, as is the sole telecommunications company – allowing unfettered surveillance of the Internet. The only independent broadcaster is internationally based ESAT. The Government routinely blocks its satellite signal, and employee family members who live in Ethiopia are persecuted, imprisoned, their homes ransacked.
Journalists who challenge the government are intimidated, arrested or forced abroad. Ethiopia is the fourth most censored country in the world (after Eritrea, North Korea and Saudi Arabia) according to The Committee to Protect Journalists, and “the third worst jailer of journalists on the African continent”. The widely criticized, conveniently vague “2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation” – used to silence journalists – and “The Charities and Societies Proclamation”, make up the government’s principle legislative weapons of suppression, which are wielded without restraint.
The 99%
The vast majority of Ethiopian people – domestic and expatriate – are desperate for change, freedom, justice and adherence to human rights; liberties that the EPRDF have total contempt for. Their primary concern is manifestly holding on to power, generating wealth for themselves, and their cohorts, and ensuring no space for political debate, dissent or democratic development.
Without a functioning electoral system or independent media, and given government hostility to open dialogue with opposition parties and community activists, there are only two options available for the discontented majority. An armed uprising against the EPRDF – and there are many loud voices advocating this – or the more positive alternative: peaceful, consistent, well-organized activism, building on the huge demonstrations in Oromia and Gondar, uniting the people and driving an unstoppable momentum for change.
Ethiopia is a richly diverse country, composed of dozens of tribal groups speaking a variety of languages and dialects. Traditions and cultures may vary, but the needs and aspirations of the people are the same, as are their grievances and fears. Tolerance and understanding of differences, cooperation and shared objectives could build a powerful coalition, establishing a platform for true democracy to take root in a country that has never known it.
People can only be trapped under a cloak of suppression for so long. Eventually they must and will rise up. Throughout the world there is a movement for change: for freedom, justice and participatory democracy, in which the 99% have a voice. The recent demonstrations in Ethiopia show that the people are at last beginning to unite and are part of this collective cry.
Killings, Detention of Protesters Enter Fourth Month
By Human Rights Watch, 21 February 2016
(Nairobi) – Ethiopian security forces are violently suppressing the largely peaceful protests in the Oromia region that began in November 2015. Almost daily accounts of killings and arbitrary arrests have been reported to Human Rights Watch since 2016 began.
Security forces, including military personnel, have fatally shot scores of demonstrators. Thousands of people have been arrested and remain in detention without charge. While the frequency of protests appears to have decreased in the last few weeks, the crackdown continues.
Protesters in Oromia region, Ethiopia, December 2015.
“Flooding Oromia with federal security forces shows the authorities’ broad disregard for peaceful protest by students, farmers and other dissenters,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government needs to rein in the security forces, free anyone being held wrongfully, and hold accountable soldiers and police who used excessive force.”
The Ethiopian government has said that the situation in Oromia is largely under control following the government’s retraction on January 12 of the proposed “Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan.” The controversial proposal to expand the municipal boundaries of the capital, Addis Ababa, into farmland in Oromia sparked the initial demonstrations.
The plan’s cancellation did not halt the protests however, and the crackdown continued throughout Oromia. In late January 2016, Human Rights Watch interviewed approximately 60 protesters and other witnesses from various parts of the Oromia region in December and January who described human rights violations during the protests, some since mid-January. They said that security forces have shot randomly into crowds, summarily killed people during arrests, carried out mass roundups, and tortured detainees.
Women mourn during the funeral ceremony of a primary school teacher who family members said was shot dead by military forces during protests in Oromia, Ethiopia in December 2015. December 17, 2015.
While there have been some reports of violence during the protests, including the destruction of some foreign-owned farms and looting of some government buildings, most of the protests since November have been peaceful. On February 12, federal security forces fired on a bus after a wedding, killing four people, provoking further protests. A February 15 clash between federal security forces and armed men believed to be local police or militias, resulted in the deaths of seven security officers, according to the government.
On January 10, security forces threw a grenade at students at Jimma University in western Oromia, injuring dozens, eyewitnesses reported. Multiple witnesses told Human Rights Watch that security forces stormed dormitories at Jimma University on January 10 and 11, with mass arrests and beatings of Oromo students.
Security forces have arrested students, teachers, government officials, businesspeople, opposition politicians, healthcare workers, and people who provide assistance or shelter to fleeing students. Because primary and secondary school students in Oromia were among the first to protest, many of those arrested have been children, under age 18.
“They walked into the compound and shot three students at point-blank range,” one 17-year-old student said describing security force reaction to students chanting against the master plan. “They were hit in the face and were dead.”
Human Rights Watch spoke to 20 people who had been detained since the protests began on November 12, none of whom had been taken before a judge. Fourteen people said they were beaten in detention, sometimes severely. Several students said they were hung up by their wrists while they were whipped. An 18-year-old student said he was given electric shocks to his feet. All the students interviewed said that the authorities accused them of mobilizing other students to join the protests. Several women who were detained alleged that security officers sexually assaulted and otherwise mistreated them in detention.
The descriptions fit wider patterns of torture and ill-treatment of detainees that Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have documented in Oromia’s many official and secret detention facilities. Numerous witnesses and former detainees said that security forces are using businesses and government buildings in West Shewa and Borana zones as makeshift detention centers.
At time of writing, some schools and universities remain closed throughout Oromia because the authorities have arrested teachers and closed facilities to prevent further protests, or students do not attend as a form of protest or because they fear arrest. Many students said they were released from detention on the condition that they would not appear in public with more than one other individual, and several said they had to sign a document making this commitment as a condition for their release.
Human Rights Watch has not been able to verify the total numbers of people killed and arrested given restrictions on access and independent reporting in Ethiopia. Activists allege that more than 200 people have been killed since November 12, based largely on material collated from social media videos, photos, and web posts. Available information suggests that several thousand people have been arrested, many of whose whereabouts are unknown, which would be a forcible disappearance.
Human Rights Watch has documented 12 additional killings previously unreported. Most of these occurred in Arsi and Borana Zones in southern Oromia, where protests have also been taking place but have received less attention than elsewhere. This suggests that the scale of the protests and abuses across Oromia may be greater than what has been reported, Human Rights Watch said.
The Ethiopian government’s pervasive restrictions on independent civil society groups and media have meant that very little information is coming from affected areas. However, social media contains photos and videos of the protests, particularly from November and December.
The Oromia Media Network (OMN) has played a key role in disseminating information throughout Oromia during the protests. OMN is a diaspora-based television station that relays content, primarily in the Afan Oromo language, via satellite, and recently started broadcasting on shortwave radio. The Ethiopian government has reportedly jammed OMN 15 times since it began operations in 2014, in contravention of international regulations. Two business owners told Human Rights Watch they were arrested for showing OMN in their places of business. Federal police destroyed satellites dishes that were receiving OMN in many locations. Students said they were accused of providing videos for social media and of communicating information to the OMN. Arrests and fear of arrest has resulted in less information on abuses coming out of Oromia over the last month.
The Ethiopian government should end the excessive use of force by the security forces, free everyone detained arbitrarily, and conduct an independent investigation into killings and other security force abuses, Human Rights Watch said. Those responsible for serious rights violations should be appropriately prosecuted and victims of abuses should receive adequate compensation.
On January 21, the European Parliament passed a strong resolution condemning the crackdown. There has been no official statement from the United Kingdom, and the United States has not condemned the violence, instead focusing on the need for public consultation and dialogue in twostatements. Otherwise, few governments have publicly raised concerns about the government’s actions. As two of Ethiopia’s most influential partners, the United Kingdom and the United States should be doing more to halt the violent crackdown and to call for an independent investigation into the abuses, Human Rights Watch said.
“Ethiopia’s donor countries have responded tepidly, if at all, to the killing of scores of protesters in Oromia,” Lefkow said. “They should stop ignoring or downplaying this shocking brutality and call on the government to support an independent investigation into the killings and other abuses.”
For additional information and accounts from eyewitnesses and victims, please see below.
Student protests in Oromia began on November 12, 2015, in Ginchi, a small town 80 kilometers southwest of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, when authorities sought to clear a forest for an investment project. The protests soon spread throughout the Oromia region and broadened to include concerns over the proposed expansion of the Addis Ababa municipal boundary, known as the “Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan.” Farmers and others joined the protest movement as the protests continued into December.
Many protesters allege that the government’s violent response and the rising death toll changed the focus of the protests to the killing and arrest of protesters and decades of historic Oromo grievances came to the forefront. Oromia is home to most of Ethiopia’s estimated 35 million Oromo, the country’s largest ethnic group. Many Oromo feel marginalized and discriminated against by successive Ethiopian governments. Ethnic Oromo who express dissent are often arrested and tortured or otherwise ill-treated in detention, accused of belonging to the Oromo Liberation Front, which has waged a limited armed struggle against the government and which parliament has designated a terrorist organization.
On December 16, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said that the government “will take merciless legitimate action against any force bent on destabilizing the area.” The same day, the government communication affairs office minister, Getachew Reda, said that “an organized and armed terrorist force aiming to create havoc and chaos has begun murdering model farmers, public leaders and other ethnic groups residing in the region.” Since that time, federal security forces, including the army and the federal police, have led the law enforcement response in Oromia.
On January 12, the ruling coalition’s Oromia affiliate, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), announced on state television that the “Addis Ababa Master Plan” would be cancelled. While the decision was an unprecedented change of policy, people Human Rights Watch interviewed suggest that there has been confusion over the actual status of the plan and whether government will follow through with the cancellation.
After the Addis Ababa master plan had originally been announced in 2014, protests occurred throughout Oromia, which security forces dispersed using live ammunition, killing at least several dozen people. Hundreds were arrested. Many of the arrested remain in custody without charge. Most of the approximately 25 students that Human Rights Watch interviewed from the 2014 protests who had been detained alleged torture and other ill-treatment. Many formerly detained students have not been permitted to return to their universities. On December 2, 2015, five Oromo students were convicted under the counterterrorism law for their role in the 2014 protests. There has been no government investigation into the use of excessive and lethal force during the 2014 protests.
Summary Killings, Unnecessary Lethal Force
In the early weeks of the 2015 protests, security forces who responded to the demonstrations were largely Oromia regional police, who used teargas against protesters, although with some incidents involving live ammunition. Many of the killings initially reported occurred after dark when security forces went house-to-house searching for protesters. They killed some students who tried to flee and others in scuffles during arrests, while the exact circumstances of many deaths are unknown.
Under international human rights standards, law enforcement officials may only use lethal force in self-defense or to prevent an imminent threat to another’s life.
After a December 16 announcement by the prime minister that the government would “take merciless legitimate action against any force bent on destabilizing the area,” witnesses said federal police and military forces were deployed in more parts of Oromia alongside the regional police. Many protesters alleged that the federal police and soldiers fired into crowds.
Wako – a 17-year-old protester from West Shewa whose name, along with others, has been changed for his protection, described the change:
During the first protest [in mid-November], the Oromia police tried to convince us to go home. We refused so they broke it up with teargas and arrested many. Several days later we had another protest. This time the [federal police] had arrived. They fired many bullets into the air. When people did not disperse they fired teargas, and then in the confusion we heard the sounds of more bullets and students started falling next to me. My friend [name withheld] was killed by a bullet. He wasn’t targeted, they were just shooting randomly into the crowd.
Gudina, a 16-year-old Grade 10 student from Arsi Negelle, described the authorities’ response to a protest in early December:
All the schools got together and took to the streets. As we protested, teargas was thrown, we kept marching and then from behind us we heard bullets, many students were hit and fell screaming. One very young student from my school I saw had been shot in throat and blood was pouring. I have dreams every night of that student.
Protesters from Arsi, West Shewa, Borana, and East Wollega zones all described similar events in which security forces, predominantly federal police, shot into crowds with live ammunition, especially since mid-December. They gave little or no warning about using teargas and live ammunition.
Three high school students from Arsi who were interviewed separately described an incident at their school. Kuma, a 17-year-old student, said:
We heard a Grade 6 student was killed in [neighboring village]. To show our solidarity we decided to protest. When the different classes came together and started marching toward the government office, security forces moved toward us. They threw teargas, and then we heard the sound of gunfire. My friend [name withheld] was shot in the chest, I saw him go down and bleeding. We ran away and I never looked back. His mother told me later he had been killed. He was 17 years old.
Security forces entered a school compound near Shashemene apparently to discourage their participation in a planned protest. Gameda, a 17-year-old Grade 9 student, said:
We had planned to protest. At 8 a.m., Oromia police came into the school compound. They arrested four students [from Grades 9-11], the rest of us were angry and started chanting against the police. Somebody threw a stone at the police and they quickly left and came back an hour later with the federal police. They walked into the compound and shot three students at point-blank range. They were hit in the face and were dead. They took the bodies away. They held us in our classrooms for the rest of the morning, and then at noon they came in and took about 20 of us including me.
Arbitrary Arrests, Detention
Several dozen people told Human Rights Watch about friends and colleagues who had been arrested without a valid basis, including many whose whereabouts remain unknown. Fifteen protesters from various parts of Oromia described their own arrests. Usually in the evening following a daytime protest, security forces would go door-to-door arresting students, including many who had not participated, including an 8-year-old in the Borana zone on January 9. They primarily targeted men and boys, but many women and girls were also arrested. Those arrested were taken to police stations, military barracks, and makeshift detention centers.
Kuma, a Grade 7 student from Borana zone, was arrested in early December, held for five days in an unknown location, and beaten with a wooden stick:
They said to me “Why were you in the demonstration? This means you do not like the government. Why? We do good for you.” Then they kept saying we had relations with the OLF [Oromo Liberation Front, which the government considers to be a terrorist group]. What does demonstrating have to do with the OLF? I was released after signing a paper that I would not go in public with more than one person. Many people in our town were released after signing this paper. Several days later there was another protest, I didn’t go, but knew I would be arrested again. I sat at home hearing gunshots all day long hoping I didn’t know any of those that would be killed.
Gameda, a Grade 7 student, said he was arrested at his school compound on the day of a planned protest:
For 10 days I was held at the police station. For the first three days, they would beat me each night on the back and legs with a wooden stick and ask me about who was behind the protests and whether I was a member of the OLF. I was released and several weeks later the protests started again in our town. They arrested me again. Same beatings, same questions. My family bribed the police and I was released.
The authorities have imposed collective punishment on people deemed to have been helping protesters. Lelisa, a woman who assisted students fleeing the security forces in Arsi in early December, said:
I wasn’t at the protests but I heard gunfire all day long and into the night. Students were running away and hiding themselves. Ten students came to me and asked for help so I hid them from the police. The police were going door-to-door at night arresting students. They came to my house, arrested all the boys and I convinced them that the three girls were my daughters. Then an hour later they came back and arrested my husband. They beat him in front of me, when I begged them not to kill him they kicked me and hit me with the butt of their gun. They took him away. I have heard nothing from him since.
Negasu, an owner of a private school, said he was arrested because students at his school were involved in the protest:
I owned a private school in [location withheld]. The students protested but the police did not break it up violently, they just filmed it and then arrested many people at night. Four of the protesters were from my school. So the police came at night and arrested me and took me to a military camp [name withheld]. For five days I was held in a dark hole by myself. It was freezing and they did not feed me for two days. I was beaten each night and accused of giving money to opposition groups, to the Oromo Federalist Congress and to OLF. They also accused me of posting videos to social media and sending to OMN. They just make things up. They closed my school and froze my bank account. They took my house also. Now I have nothing and the students are either going through what I did in detention or are not able to go to school because it’s been closed.
Students who were perceived to be vocal or had family histories of opposing government were particularly at risk. Lencho, 25, said:
I was known to be vocal and was a leader among the students. My father was known to oppose the government. I did not even participate in the protests because of fear but I was identified as one of the mobilizers. I was arrested, and when I got to the police station I saw local government officials, a local Oromo artist [singer], my teacher, and all of the outspoken students of our high school. They were arresting those that they thought were influential. I don’t even think any of them were in the protests because of fear.
Prominent Oromo intellectuals, including senior members of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), a registered political party, have also been arrested. On December 23, Deputy Chairman Bekele Gerba was arrested at his home and taken to Addis Ababa’s Maekelawi prison, where torture and other ill-treatment have been documented. On January 22, he appeared in court, and prosecutors were granted an additional 28 days for investigation, suggesting he is being investigated under the abusive Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. Bekele has been a moderate voice in Oromia politics and a staunch advocate for non-violence.
In addition to those perceived to be actively involved in the protests, security forces have arrested influential people, including prominent Oromo businessman, teachers, professors, and numerous singers and artists. One teacher said:
The students protested. At night they came and arrested many of them, my students were calling me all night to tell me the police were at their door. Then I heard that most of the teachers had been arrested, too. I was away from town at the time. Then the woreda[district] administrator called and told me I was to be held responsible for my student’s behavior since I did not talk them out of it. I had already been in trouble because I did not attend a workshop at the school on the master plan and how we were to convince students it was good for them.
A well-known Oromo singer, now living in exile, said:
I released a song on Youtube [in December] that spoke about the protests and the need for students to stop the silence and speak out about the abuses our people face. I had been arrested three times previously for my songs. My songs have always focused on Oromo history and culture but I was always careful for the songs not to be seen as political in any way. But they arrest you anyway. After my third detention, I stopped censoring myself and spoke openly through my music. Hours after my song was released, I got word from the local administrator that I was to be arrested so I ran away from my home and haven’t been back.
An Ethiopian intelligence official acknowledged to Human Rights Watch in January 2016 that targeting public figures was a deliberate government policy. “It is important to target respected Oromos,” he said. “Anyone that has the ability to mobilize Oromos will be targeted, from the highest level like Bekele, to teachers, respected students, and Oromo artists.”
Human Rights Watch also interviewed a number of students who had been detained during the 2014 protests, eventually released, and then were arrested again as soon as the protests began in November 2015. Some described horrendous treatment in detention. Waysira, a then-second year university student, said:
[In 2014] I was arrested for two weeks. I was stripped to my underwear and beaten with sticks. They applied electric wires to my back. They wanted me to admit being OLF and to say where my brother was – who they suspect was OLF. Eventually they released me. I wasn’t allowed to go back to school, so I have been sitting around doing nothing ever since. I went back to my family’s village. When the protests started again in Oromia, they came to my house and arrested me again. There hadn’t been protests in that area, but there were on the campus I had been suspended from. They accused me of mobilizing students, and beat me for two days. Then I was released. They wanted to target anyone they thought might be thinking of protesting.
Torture, Ill-Treatment in Detention
All of the students interviewed who had been detained said the authorities interrogated them about who was behind the protests and about their family history. They said interrogators accused them of having connections to opposition groups – typically the legally registered Oromo Federalist Congress and the banned Oromo Liberation Front. Interrogators accused some students of providing information to diaspora or international media and a number of students said their phones, Facebook accounts, and email accounts were searched during detention. These descriptions of interrogation match patterns Human Rights Watch has documented in Oromia over several years.
Tolessa, a first-year university student from Adama University, said:
It was the evening after the protest. We were recovering from the teargas and trying to find out who had been shot during the protest. Then the security forces stormed the dormitories. They blindfolded 17 of us from my floor and drove us two hours into the countryside. We were put into an unfinished building for nine days. Each night they would take us out one by one, beat us with sticks and whips, and ask us about who was behind the protests and whether we were members of the OLF. I told them I don’t even know who the OLF are but treating students this way will drive people toward the OLF. They beat me very badly for that. We would hear screams all night long. When I went to the bathroom, I saw students being hung by their wrists from the ceiling and being whipped. There was over a hundred students I saw. The interrogators were not from our area. We had to speak Amharic [the national language]. If we spoke Oromo they would get angry and beat us more.
Meti, in her 20s, was arrested in late December for selling traditional Oromo clothes the day after a protest in East Wollega:
I was arrested and spent one week at the police station. Each night they pulled me out and beat me with a dry stick and rubber whip. Then I was taken to [location withheld]. I was kept in solitary confinement. On three separate occasions I was forced to take off my clothes and parade in front of the officers while I was questioned about my link with the OLF. They threatened to kill me unless I confessed to being involved with organizing the protests. I was asked why I was selling Oromo clothes and jewelry. They told me my business symbolizes pride in being Oromo and that is why people are coming out [to protest]. At first I was by myself in a dark cell, but then I was with all the other girls that had been arrested during the protest.
A 22-year-old woman told Human Rights Watch she was arrested the night of a protest in late December and taken to what she described as a military camp in the Borana zone. She was held in solitary confinement in total darkness. She said she was raped on three occasions in her cell by unidentified men during her two-week detention. On each occasion, she believed there were two men involved. She was frequently pulled out of her cell and interrogated about her involvement in the protests and the whereabouts of her two brothers, who the interrogators suggested were mobilizing students. She was released on the condition that she would bring her two brothers to security officials for questioning.
Right to Health, Education
The authorities have targeted health workers for arrest during the protests, and as a result some wounded protesters have been unable to get treatment. Demiksa, a student from Eastern Wollega, said that he was refused medical treatment in late December for his injured arm and face after he was pushed to the ground in a panic when Oromia regional police fired teargas at protesters: “[The health workers] said they couldn’t treat me. The day before security forces had arrested two of their colleagues because they were treating protesters. They were accused of providing health care to the opposition.”
Health workers said security forces harassed them and arrested some of their colleagues because they posted photos on social media showing their arms crossed in what has become a symbol of the protest movement. A health worker in East Wollega said he had been forced at gunpoint to treat a police officer’s minor injuries while student protesters with bullet wounds were left unattended. The health worker said at least one of those students died from his injuries that evening.
Many students said the local government closed schools to prevent students from mobilizing, or because teachers had been arrested. Some students said they were afraid to go to class or were refusing to go to school as a form of protest against the government. Four students who had been detained said that security officials told them that they would not be allowed to return to their university. A Grade 6 student who said she had the highest marks in her class the previous year said that the principal told her she would not be allowed to go back to school because she attended the protests. As a result, she decided to flee Ethiopia.
Human Rights Watch previously documented cases of students who were suspended after they participated in the 2014 protests, a pattern that is also emerging in the aftermath of the current protests.
Oromo protests will continue unless government ceases ‘killings and torture’
By Ludovica Iaccino, International Business Time, IBTimes UK, 22 February 2016
Protesters in Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest state, are continuing as the government keeps killing, torturing and jailing peaceful demonstrators, an activist alleged during an interview with IBTimes UK. The source, who spoke on conditions of anonymity for security reasons, alleged that the death toll at the hands of security forces stands at 270.
Oromo people, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, have been protesting since November 2015 against a government’s draft plan that aimed to expand the boundaries of the capital Addis Ababa. Demonstrators argued the so-called “Addis Ababa master plan” would lead to forced evictions of Oromo farmers who will lose their lands and become impoverished as a result.
Protesters also claimed that forced evictions as well as a perceived marginalisation by the government are already occurring and they threaten the survival of the Oromo’s culture and language.
Although the government decided to scrap the plan following increasing demonstrations, Oromo people continued to demonstrate arguing they did not trust the authorities.
“The protests continued because the government kept on killing, jailing and torturing people for taking part in the Oromo protests,while giving contradictory press releases saying it scrapped the plan, but continuing to prosecute those who took part in the protests,” the activist told IBTimes UK.
The source added that at least 30,000 people have been arrested. “Our basic demand are: Stop the killings, release all political prisoners, bring to justice all the perpetrators of the killing, tortures and disappearances, establish independent investigators into the matter, compensate victims’ families,” the activist continued.
“We also call on the government to withdraw its army from the Oromia region, where it was deployed to crackdown on the protests as the region’s police force couldn’t control demonstrations”.
The activis’ comments came one day after Human Rights Watch released a report warning that killings of Oromo protesters at the hands of security forces, including the military, continue.
“Security forces, including military personnel, have fatally shot scores of demonstrators,” the rights group said. “Thousands of people have been arrested and remain in detention without charge. While the frequency of protests appears to have decreased in the last few weeks, the crackdown continues.”
IBTimes UK has contacted the Ethiopian embassy in London for a statement, but has not received a response at the time of publishing. Speaking to the BBC, communications minister Getachew Reda denied the government was cracking down on demonstrators.
He also denied that protests were ongoing and claimed attacks on public buildings were carried out by armed gangs “who are trying to stir up emotions in the public”.
In a previous interview with IBTimes UK, Abiy Berhane, minister counsellor at the embassy, confirmed that an investigation had been launched to establish the exact death toll of people who “fell victim to the violent confrontation with security forces as well as the extent of property damage”.
Regarding the allegations of violence against demonstrators and civilians, he said: “These are just one of the many fabrications that are being circulated by certain opposition groups as part of their propaganda campaign. The unrest cannot be described as a national crisis.
“The disturbances orchestrated by opposition groups have now subsided as the general public understood that the integrated master plan is still at a draft stage and will only be implemented after extensive public consultation in the matter takes place and gains the support of the people.”
Oromo children’s books keep once-banned Ethiopian language alive Melbourne woman Toltu Tufa launches publishing company to print teaching resources for Oromo, a language forbidden under Haile Selassie
Toltu Tufa, right, created posters and worksheets for her father’s students before launching Afaan Publications, the first publishing company to print teaching resources entirely in Oromo. Photograph: Toltu Tufa
Toltu Tufa, right, created posters and worksheets for her father’s students before launching Afaan Publications, the first publishing company to print teaching resources entirely in Oromo. Photograph: Toltu Tufa
Toltu Tufa grew up in Australia, so she couldn’t understand why her father insisted on teaching her Oromo, a macrolanguage spoken in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Egypt.
But what she went on to discover about the language prompted her to launch the first publishing company to print children’s books entirely in Oromo, which she exports from her home in Footscray, 5km west of Melbourne, to schools and families throughout the world.
Tufa’s father is from Ethiopia where Amharic, not Oromo, is the national language. Her mother was born in Turkey but moved to Australia when she was four, and it was here her parents met.
‘Stop the killing!’: farmland development scheme sparks fatal clashes in Ethiopia
Read more
Tufa grew up learning English, Arabic and Turkish but, for reasons Tufa couldn’t fathom at the time, her father also made sure she could speak Oromo, the fourth most spoken language in Africa.
“Dad never spoke about his life back in Ethiopia and yet he insisted on teaching us this language,” Tufa said.
“There were so many resources at my fingertips for the other languages I was learning and so many people that speak them. But when Dad was teaching us Oromo, there were no textbooks or learning materials at all. And that struck me as really strange.”
Her father wouldn’t answer her questions about it either.
“He wouldn’t talk about it and he wouldn’t tell us about his past,” Tufa said. “He would just say, ‘Just learn to speak the language. We are Oromo and this is the language we speak.’ ”
But as Tufa, who is now 30, got older and began doing her own research, she discovered why speaking about Oromo was so painful for her father.
The Oromo are the largest ethnic group of Ethiopia. But since their land was conquered and rolled into the Ethiopian empire in the 1880s, the people have suffered repression and persecution at the hands of numerous African regimes, including mass executions, mutilations and slavery.
Under the dictatorship of Haile Selassie in 1941, the Oromo language was banned, including from political life and schools, and the Amharic language and culture was forced upon the Oromo people. It was a ban that would remain until 1991, when the military Derg regime was overthrown by rebel forces.
During this time the Oromo were jailed, abused and executed. Oromo texts were destroyed. Tufa’s father, an Oromo, fled to Egypt and, in the late 1970s, he was granted asylum in Australia.
By the time the Oromo ban was lifted, Tufa’s father had established a small, private Oromo school in Melbourne to teach the language to the children of asylum seekers who had fled the Horn of Africa. As she helped to teach the students, Tufa realised the teaching resources were woeful.
“Dad imported some Oromo books from Ethiopia after the ban had lifted but they were written in tiny print and had these crude black-and-white drawings,” she said.
“Many of the previous education materials were destroyed during the ban and the republishing of books was all managed by the government, who didn’t consult with Oromo speakers and qualified people to print them, and sometimes the spelling was wrong. There was nothing for children. There wasn’t even a single Oromo alphabet poster in Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia scraps Addis Ababa ‘master plan’ after protests kill 140
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Tufa decided to create posters and worksheets for her father’s students, using her own money to get them printed. One of the first things she produced was a series of alphabet posters.
“The first thing I made that I showed to my dad was a poster I made for the Oromo letter ‘A’,” she said.
“He just cried and cried. He was sobbing. He wasn’t really anticipating me doing this. And he said to me, ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’”
Three other small Oromo schools that had opened in Victoria by then heard about the materials and all of them wanted copies. Tufa realised that if there was a demand for Oromo child education materials in Australia, there must be other communities around the world where resources were also needed. She booked a plane ticket and travelled to nine different countries to find them.
“I was born and raised in Australia, so I’m very privileged compared to a lot of brown people and I didn’t go through what a lot of Oromo people went through,” Tufa said. “So I thought, rather than trying to claim these Oromo materials as my own, I needed to talk to people and show them my blueprints and get their feedback. I interviewed children, adults and new Oromo migrants in places like Kenya, Norway, Germany and the US, and I videoed a lot of the feedback as well.”
The response was overwhelming, she said. Word of her project spread and, when she returned to Australia, she launched a crowdfunding campaign so she could print Oromo learning materials and send them back to the communities she had visited. By the end of 2014, in just six weeks, she had raised almost $125,000.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Tufa said. “People began writing to me from around the world, these emotional and long letters about how they were punished and jailed for speaking their own language. One man gave me $10,000 from his retirement savings, saying ‘They tried to kill me, but they didn’t. I want to leave something in my legacy for other refugees like me.’”
Last year, Tufa flew to the communities that had supported her projects most to thank them and provide them with children’s books and posters. Even Oromo speakers who had no money helped her, she said, by editing her books and offering feedback.
While her market is all over the world, the largest Oromo community outside Africa is in the US state of Minnesota, she said. Her resources have also found their way to Ethiopia, with people sending copies to family members who still live there. This year, she plans to launch an online store for her publishing company, Afaan Publications.
Demand is also solid in Australia. According to the latest available census data, the top ancestry responses that Ethiopia-born people reported were Ethiopian (5,297 people), followed by Oromo (821 people).
Meanwhile, the troubles for Oromo people in Ethiopia are far from over. The current government has announced an urban planning strategy that aims to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, by occupying surrounding Oromo towns and land in Oromiya, the largest and most populous state in Ethiopia. The move would require closing Oromo schools and occupying homes to make way for infrastructure.
In November, people, predominantly students, from 100 towns of the Oromiya region began protesting the move, with the government reacting by killing, maiming and imprisoning them. A series of violent clashes between protesters and the government left the country reeling.
Last month, after 140 lives were estimated to have been lost in the protests, the Ethiopian government announced it would scrap the land expansion project. But protesters and activists feel it is too little too late and there is continuing unrest.
“I had planned to take my children’s books to Oromiya this year but I just don’t think it’s safe to do so at the moment,” Tufa said. “The Oromo in Ethiopia are still trying to find their way.”
* Tufa’s father, who frequently travels to Ethiopia, could not be named in this story for his own protection.
Children’s books breathe new life into Oromo language
The first publishing company to print children’s books in the Oromo language, which is spoken in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, has been launched.
The Oromo language fell out of favour in Ethiopia under the rule of Haile Selassie, with the Amharic language and culture being favoured.
It is the fourth most widely spoken language of Africa (after Arabic, Hausa, and Swahili).
Toltu Tufa learnt Oromo from her father as she grew up in Australia. She explained to Newsday why it was important to her to create the children’s books.
Oromo artist icon and comedic genius, Admaasuu Biraanuu Magarsaa (Abbaa Lataa), 1956 – 2016.
Biyyoon Isatti Haa Salphatu.
May His Soul Rest In Peace.
Oduu Gaddaa: Hayyuun Sabaa fi Jaallatamaa Kennaa Addaa Kan Qabu Artist Admaasuu Biraanuu Magarsaa (Abbaa Lataa) Boqochuun himame.
Artistii Beekamaa fi jallatamaa Admaasuu Biraanuu Magarsaa Guraandhala 14 bara 2016 galagala summ’ii diinann du’e reeffii Isaa mana isa keessaa argamuun ibsame. Matii Isaa fi Uummata Oromoo maraaf Hayyuu Dhabneef Waaqayyo Jajjabina Isaa Nuu Haa Kennu.
The Measure of a man: Not – “how did he die” But – “how did he live” Not – “what did he gain” But – “what did he give” These are the units to measure the worth of a man, as a man, Regardless of birth.
Artist Admaasuu Biraanuu Magarsaa: Pioneer and an icon of Oromo art, film, comedy and drama has passed away. He had played a leading role in almost all major works of Oromo films and drama and had been entertaining people for many years. Admaasuu was an amazing artist and comedian. His timeless wonderful works will continue to entertain the generation to come.
ETHIOPIA: FURTHER INFORMATION: DETAINED OROMO PROTESTERS MUST BE RELEASED
By Amnesty International, 17 February 2016, Index number: AFR 25/3437/2016
The Ethiopian authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained a number of peaceful protesters including journalists and opposition party leaders in recent brutal crackdown on protesters in the Oromia Region. Those detained remain at risk of torture and other illtreatment and should immediately and unconditionally be released. Bekele Gerba (Deputy Chair, Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC)), Dejene Tafa (party secretary, OFC), Getachew Shiferaw (Editor-in-Chief of Ethiopian online newspaper Negere), Yonathan Teressa (an online activist), and Fikadu Mirkana (Oromia Radio and TV) are among several Oromo peaceful protesters arrested and detained following the Oromia protests in Ethiopia. The arrests came as a result of a brutal government crackdown on the Oromia protests that started in November 2015 against the government’s master plan to integrate parts of Oromia into the capital Addis Ababa. On 15 December, the Ethiopian government labelled the protesters as “terrorists” and escalated its response to the protests resulting in deaths, injuries, and mass arrests.
Dejene Tafa was arrested on 24 December 2015. On the same day, the police conducted an unlawful search on his house. His wife says that the police, who did not have a warrant, planted an Oromo Liberation Front flag and papers in his house during the search which were then seized from the house. Dejene Tafa is currently being held at the Federal Police Central Investigation Centre (Maekelawi) in Addis Ababa without access to lawyers and restricted family visits. His wife has been allowed three visits since his arrest but only in the presence of police officers. During her last visit on 12 February, Dejene Tafa told her that he had been to the Police Hospital due to pain in his eyes, but police officers present prevented them from discussing the health matter further. His wife has said that he did not suffer from any medical condition before his arrest.
Diribie Erga, age 60, was arrested on 18 December 2015 by a group of plain clothed individuals and officers from the Federal Police for participating in the protests and was released on 10 February. Diribie reports being subjected to torture and other ill-treatment during her detention at Maekelawi detention centre. Amnesty International considers the peaceful protesters arrested to be prisoners of conscience detained solely for peacefully exercising their right to peaceful assembly. They continue to be at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
Oromo Protests and State/Government Terrorism in Ethiopia
Western governments praise Ethiopia for achieving the fastest growing economy in Africa and for being a key ally in the fight against terrorism. This hides the brutal reality of land grabbing, state/government terrorism, and the incredible cost in human lives and livelihoods. Ethiopia is a multinational country of 100 million people, and all of these nations have suffered state brutality in varying degrees. The country is tightly gripped by the totalitarian repression of a single-party dominated by the elite of a minority ethnic group from Tigray.
This minority regime has created absolute control over the country’s politics, economy, military and media, thus stifling every form of creative dissent. To hang onto power, it has marked every legitimate dissent as terrorism and waged wars against its own people. A handful of Tigrayan elites have used economic growth as a smokescreen behind which they carry out bloody atrocities of land grabbing. They have gobbled up the wealth of the nation to satisfy their insatiable greed and lust for power, thus leaving close to 20 million of their fellow citizens to face starvation.
This regime targets Oromos particularly because they are the most populous nation inhabiting a vast arable and mineral-rich land. The current Oromo protest is an expression of deep grievances under 25 years of such state terrorism, land grabbing and violent repression. It demands the world’s immediate attention. Below is a summary of Oromo protests and the various responses.
Oromo Protests
– The protest was ignited by elementary and secondary school students in the small town of Giincii on November 12, 2015
– In no time, this spread like wild fire to all parts of Oromia, and Oromos from all walks of life joined the peaceful protests.
– Beautiful images of peaceful protests filled social media. People marching with raised crossed arms or sitting with bowed heads became powerful symbols of peaceful protests.
– The protests attracted wide-spread solidarity from the Oromo diaspora around the world, from other peoples of Ethiopia with similar grievances, and from the Ethiopian diaspora.
The Issues
– The Ethiopian government has been robbing Oromos of their ancestral lands in the name of development. It has been forcefully evicting millions without adequate compensation or anywhere to go. Hard-working people are reduced to landless, homeless beggars.
– Global land rush has intensified local land grabbing where the government has been violently robing land from the various peoples and leasing out to foreign investors.
– Land is sacred for indigenous Oromos. As they say, dubbiin lafaa dubbii lafee ti [the issue of land is the issue of bones]. Land contains the bones of ancestors symbolizing the depth of the Oromo worldview, knowledge system, history, culture, and identity – a deep spiritual connection. Evicting Oromos from their land is erasing their very existence.
– The trigger for the current peaceful protests is a small soccer field which was taken away from the local youth in the small town of Giincii. Young students in the local primary and secondary schools protested. Enraged by earlier land grab where the nearby Cillimoo Forest was taken away for clearing, parents and other citizens joined the student protests. The environment is as sacred as the land for Oromos; they protect it with their lives.
– By the time the peaceful protests spread and engulfed the whole of the Oromia Regional State, the issue had crystallized around the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan, which is the expansion of the capital city into the Oromo lands without any consultation with the people. The government denies that the plan is being implemented, but it is de facto forcefully evicting Oromo farmers from their land and violating their constitutional rights.
– The Master Plan represents an aspect of the ongoing systematic destruction of Oromo identity, history and culture. The protest against the Master Plan is an expression of bottled up grievances, and longstanding issues of injustice and fundamental human rights.
– In 2014, the government mercilessly massacred 78 Oromos, mostly university students peacefully protesting the Master Plan. When bullets are the answer, legitimate grievances remain unaddressed. The current protests raise the same unanswered questions.
– The Master Plan is a smokescreen behind which the government carries out systematic destruction of Oromo identity, history and culture. The Master Plan is only the visible tip of the iceberg; it only calls attention to the deeper grievances around the violation of constitutional rights fundamental human rights and justice.
Government Response: Genocide
– The government responded to peaceful protests with its usual bloody violent repression. Its inciting agents killed people, and burned property to tarnish the beauty of the peaceful protests and create an excuse to unleash the military force against unarmed protesters.
– In a dramatic move on 16 December 2015, the Prime Minister vowed to mercilessly crush the protests and deployed the draconian counter-terrorism law to crush the peaceful protesters he marked as terrorists. In effect, this is a declaration of a state of emergency where the administration of the Oromia Regional State is suspended, and Oromia is ravaged by a military force centrally commanded by the Prime Minister. The Ethiopian state turned its military on its own citizens, drowning the people in bloodbath.
– State tyranny has unleashed an all-out genocidal war against Oromos. Merciless killing, beating and mass arrests are now a daily reality in Oromia. Soldiers regularly break into homes and university dormitories, brutally beating people and savagely raping women. In this terroristic punishment of the entire Oromo population, children as young as 8 are killed alongside older people of 85. Girls as young as 12 are gang raped alongside older women. Mothers are killed along with their children. Artists, musicians and journalists are imprisoned and tortured. In universities, Oromo university students are particularly targeted, beaten and killed, imprisoned and tortured. Oromo peace activists and members of opposition political parties are beaten and imprisoned.
– In the current carnage of state terrorism alone (between November 12, 2015 and January 12, 2016), various sources report that over 200 Oromos have been killed while more bodies are still being discovered in the forests, rivers and ditches. Over 2000 people are mercilessly beaten and seriously injured while some are being denied medical treatment. Over 10,000 are imprisoned, and many of these are being tortured at this time.
– While states are responsible for protecting universities from attack according to the UN Human Rights Council, the Ethiopian State has turned universities into war zones and military camps where no critical dialogue can take place. Oromo students are hunted down and beaten, raped, killed or imprisoned. Others run away from university campuses because it is impossible to learn under such conditions of state terrorism. The Ethiopian state is systematically carrying out epistemic genocide against Oromos to destroy their intellectual capacity and stifle critical questioning.
International Response: Silence
– Human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and some Western media have been reporting the atrocities. However, the response from Western governments has been largely silence or mild statements that don’t mean much in terms of addressing the carnage.
– Nations promoting democracy have blindly endorsed the government’s shameless claim of 100% election victory, thus completely stifling dissent. While anyone with a rudimentary sense of democratic process would know how ridiculous this is, Western governments have chosen to endorse the violent totalitarian repression of fundamental freedoms and rights.
– They have emboldened the Ethiopian government to continue its atrocity with impunity. De facto condoning the brutal repression, major donor countries like the U.S.A., the UK and European Union continue to provide aid money with little or no attention to the respect of basic human rights or constitutional rights of the people.
– They continue to praise Ethiopia for development even when humanitarian organizations report that a staggering 20 million need help this year, even as they know this increasing need for food aid by a country that registers double digit economic growth is a sign of failed policy and failed governance.
Our Demand
Any nation genuinely interested in promoting peace and democracy should be outraged by the blatant massacre of peaceful protesters legitimately demanding the respect of their constitutional rights. We demand that Western governments, particularly the donor nations, denounce the atrocities of the Ethiopian government and ask it to immediately and unconditionally:
1) lift the merciless military rule imposed on the Oromo people
2) stop the killing, beating, raping, imprisoning and torturing of innocent people
3) release all peaceful protesters and political prisoners
4) bring to justice those responsible for the genocidal atrocities
5) restore the constitutional rights of the people to hold peaceful rallies
6) avail itself to the calls for peace and national reconciliation
7) allow people to participate in the affairs affecting their lives and livelihoods
8) start participatory development that includes people’s development
By Colleen Walsh, Harvard Staff Writer: An educator and award-winning author, Beekan Erena is on a mission to highlight the plight of the Oromo people, the largest ethnic majority in Ethiopia, who have struggled for years for political and economic equality.
The journey Beekan Erena took to Harvard’s Scholars at Risk program began with the suffering he witnessed as a boy in the Oromo region of Ethiopia.
“Poor people were segregated, rejected,” he said. “I wept.” Erena was only 7 years old, living on the edge of poverty in a small grass hut with no running water. But he was determined to find a way to help “these people become equal, because they are born equal on this planet. My vision is to resolve injustice.”
That vision animates his work today. An educator and award-winning author, Erena is on a mission to highlight the plight of the Oromo people, the largest ethnic majority in Ethiopia, who have struggled for years for political and economic equality. As a 2015-2016 Scholar at Risk supported by the Hutchins Center, the 32-year-old Erena has been focused on the Oromo struggle for self-determination and recent clashes between students and government security forces.
The Scholars at Risk Program, now in its 14th year, offers 10-month to yearlong fellowships. This year’s six participants come from Ethiopia, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, and Guatemala. Their fields include literature, law, religious studies, and medicine.
Born into a farming family, Erena worked in the fields through childhood, putting the money he earned toward his schooling. He was just as determined to help others learn. In the ninth grade, Erena borrowed chalk and a board from a town building, turned a small tent into a schoolhouse, and in the early mornings taught close to 80 farmers who had never been inside a classroom. Forty of them went on to university studies.
“I believe in ideas,” said Erena. “That’s why I need to be a teacher.”
With a master’s degree from Addis Ababa University in the capital, Erena taught for three years at Ambo University, also in Ethiopia, developing as a writer all along. He is the author of 33 book-length works, writing in Afaan Oromo, English, and Amharic. (He’d like to write 300, eventually.) His work ranges from what Erena calls “resistance novels” to romance stories to poetry to studies of Oromo folklore, language, and culture.
Fighting for the rights of others has been a constant in Erena’s life. In 2014 he spoke out against the government’s plans to take over land in the Oromiya region in the central southern part of the state. “This is your land,” Erena told local farmers. “You have to fight.” His comments landed him in jail, where he was beaten. On his release, government officials promised him a car and a home if he kept quiet. He refused.
In and out of jail six more times, he was repeatedly beaten, and threatened with a gun to his head. His tormentors told him, “We will kill you. You won’t know the time, you won’t know the day.”
Soon after, Erena came to Harvard with his wife, Yube, a nurse. He knows he was lucky to escape with his life. Many friends died in prison.
A report last year from Human Rights Watch documented the Ethiopian government’s crackdown on people critical of its policies. Authorities routinely arrested and detained opposition party leaders, students, bloggers, and journalists, the report stated.
The crackdown has continued in recent months, rights groups say, with more than 200 protesters killed and thousands arrested by security forces during demonstrations ignited by the government’s plan to expand the boundary of the capital into Oromiya. The plan, now halted, had been criticized as an unjust land grab that would displace countless farmers in favor of developers.
From Cambridge, Erena has stayed connected to his country, pressing his case for change through radio and television stations that broadcast in Ethiopia.
“I have to speak for the voiceless people. For people who aren’t able to speak for themselves. Every social injustice is not only cruel, but causes economic waste and generational loss. Equality, free expression, justice, peace, and freedom are key for the generation’s continuation and for changing the world.”
Appeal of Oromo Student’s Union (OSU) to International Community
February 10, 2016, Finfinne (Addis Ababa), Ethiopia
To:
Multinational organizations (UN, EU, AU, and others)
Countries supporting the Ethiopian regime in the name of development, peace and security, education, science and technology (USA, European countries, Canada, Australia, and others)
Human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa, and others)
Oromo political organizations
Oromo studies Association (OSA)
Oromo community organizations all over the world and all other concerned bodies
We members of Oromo Student’s Union (OSU) appeal to the international community that we are currently living under difficult conditions. It is evident that the Ethiopian regime is committing genocidal crime on the Oromo people in general and the Oromo students in particular by deploying its military and police force and terrorizing us for peacefully protesting demanding our rights asking the legitimate and rightful questions of our people. Our questions are the questions of our people. Our demands are the demands of our people. Our demands can be divided into two major categories:
Basic human rights must be respected. While the Oromo constitute the majority of the Ethiopian population, Oromia constitute the largest territory, and the region is the economic backbone of Ethiopia, the Oromo people have been marginalized in every arena. Over the past 24 years the Oromo people do not have proportional power and economic share in the country and have been ruled under the EPRDF which in essence is maneuvered and completely controlled by the TPLF party. Since the mass base of the TPLF/EPRDF is the minority Tigrean population, it has been in constant conflict with the Oromo people in Oromia. The Oromo people are ruled under the barrel of the gun being constantly killed, arrested, tortured, students dismissed from schools, civilians kidnapped and disappeared, are forced to leave their country and become refugees in several countries around the globe. Therefore we demand that the basic human and democratic rights of the Oromo people be respected and a system based on equality, justice, democracy, and a government based on the needs of our people be established.
Master Plan must be stopped. Starting from 2014 we protested against the so called Master Plan of the TPLF/EPRDF regime, a plan which incorporates several Oromian towns into the capital Finfinne (Addis Ababa), evicts Oromo farmers from their ancestral land, eradicates Oromo culture, language and identity, planned to sell Oromo land and plunder Oromia’s natural resources, divide the map of Oromia into two, and causes pollution and environmental degradation. We presented our appeal in writing several times requesting that the Master plan be stopped. Instead of answering our request to stop the Master plan, the regime announced another plan to incorporate major Oromian towns which is another plan to incorporate the entire of Oromia under the jurisdiction of the federal government which on the other hand is controlled by the TPLF. When our requests fell into deaf ears we protested peacefully. The answer to our peaceful protest has been brutal killings, beatings, mass arrests, kidnappings and disappearances, inhuman torture by the regime’s so called Agazi troops. In addition to some 80+ people who were killed in 2014, more than 200 peaceful citizens, mostly students have been killed since November 2015. Thousands others have been wounded. Countless others have been jailed and are under severe torture. oromo-student-union-appeal-to-international-community-feb-2016-1
OBBO BAQQALA MOKONNON: A PIONEERING AND LIFE-LONG OROMO NATIONALIST
By Asafa Jalata, PhD
It was with deep sadness that our people both in Oromia and in the Diaspora heard on January 24, 2016, of the passing away of Obbo Baqqala Mokonnon, one of the distinguished pioneering founders and leaders of the renowned Macha–Tulama Self-Help Association (MTA). He was a great leader and a highly respected nationalist who devoted all of his adult life to fighting for the rights of the Oromo people.
Obbo Baqqala died at the age of eighty-six. He spent about a decade in an Ethiopian prison as a prisoner of conscience and about a quarter of a century in exile. His death is a tremendous loss to his family members, to our nation, and to all Oromo nationalists who have sacrificed their lives by struggling for the liberation of the Oromo people and their beloved country, Oromia. Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism), which Oromo nationalists such as Obbo Baqqala and his father Mokonnon Wasanu helped to blossom, has developed into the leading ideology of the Oromo national movement and has mobilized the entire Oromo nation into action to liberate itself from Ethiopian colonialism and global imperialism. The current Oromia-wide protest movement is the living example of this process.
This pioneering Oromo nationalist started to fight for the national rights of the Oromo when he was very young. While an Oromo collaborator class has emerged that seeks personal gain and interests at the cost of the Oromo nation, Obbo Baqqala continuously struggled and sacrificed for his people until his death. While living as an exile in London, England, Obbo Baqqala was a dynamic and vibrant nationalist; he actively participated in the affairs of the Oromo nation in the Diaspora by building and supporting the
Oromo Community Association in London and by energetically participating in the activities of the Oromo Liberation Front. All those who knew Obbo Baqqala can testify to this reality.
In the 1960s, Obbo Baqqala was known for two important contributions to the MTA. With other members of the association including Maamo Mazamer, Haile Maaram Diima, Taaffasa Gammachuu, and Fiixuma, he provided security service for the members and leaders of the MTA during meetings.
Particularly, as a trusted and brave man, he worked closely with General Taddassa Biru, who would later emerge as the leading figure of the association. His second contribution was in the area of membership recruitment. He helped build the membership base of the association by identifying prominent Oromo individuals and professionals in Finfinnee, explaining to them the objectives of the association and recruiting them. For instance, with the advise of General Taddassa Biru, Obbo Baqqala recruited Addee Axadaa Habte Maaram Bakare, a prominent Oromo woman, to be a member of the association. She helped in recruiting many Oromo individuals from Wallaga to be members of the association. Later Addee Axadaa and Obbo Baqqalaa married each other and promoted the Oromo struggle together.
When the military regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown and when the OLF participated in forming the transitional government of Ethiopia, Obbo Baqqala joined the OLF and participated in the Oromo national struggle. In 1992, when the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government forced the OLF out of the transition government, he sought political asylum in London and lived there until his death.
The Members and the Board of Directors of the MTA-USA are proud that the Oromo nation has given birth to the likes of committed nationalists such as Obbo Baqqala Mokonnon who contributed their knowledge, skills, financial resources, and lives for the liberation of the Oromo people and country.
Those who serve their people will always forevermore live on in history and will have a special place in the hearts and minds of the Oromo people. We will always remember the long and dedicated service of Obbo Baqqalaa to the cause of our people. May our Waaqa bless our people with millions of other committed nationalists just like Obbo Baqqala Mokonnon! The members of the Board of Directors of the Macha-Tulama Cooperative and Development Association, USA, Inc. express their deepest condolences to his family members and to all those who were touched by his life-long service to the Oromo and, his infectious love for the dignity of his people.
Sincerely,
Asafa Jalata
Asafa Jalata, PhD
President, Board of Directors of Macha-Tulama Cooperative and Development Association, USA
ETHIOPIA SHOULD STOP KILLING, MAIMING AND INCARCERATING ITS PEOPLE’S QUESTION
EDITORIAL, ADDISSTANDARD, 9 FEBRUARY 2016
It is happening again, sadly. The government in Ethiopia is back to its signature of killing, maiming and jailing its own people because they are exercising their chance of rejecting state excesses using the only means available: taking to the streets to protest.
Ethiopia is a country that has effectively obliterated several channels that normally help foster a healthy communication between citizens and the state .The sorry state of independent media and civil society organization is distressing; and every day lived experienced of Ethiopians and their contacts with authorities at any level is alarmingly toxic.
Authorities in Ethiopia should have therefore been the last ones to get started by the idea of citizens taking to the streets to make their grievances heard. Alas, that is not to be.
Hundreds and thousands of students and residents in more than 100 cities and towns in Oromiya Regional State (Oromiya for short), the largest and most populous state in Ethiopia, are in and out of the streets since early Nov. last year. Like every experience when Ethiopians were out on the streets protesting state excesses, every day is bringing heart breaking stories of Ethiopians suffering in the hands of security personnel. Since Nov.12th 2015, when the first protest broke out in Ginchi, a small town 80km west of Addis Abeba, countless households have buried their loved ones; young university students have disappeared without a trace; hundreds have lost limbs and countless others are jailed
Ethiopians are once again killing, miming and jailing Ethiopians.
The immediate trigger factor is the possible implementation of the infamous Addis Abeba and Surrounding Oromiya Special Zone Integrated Development Plan, popularly known as ‘the Addis Abeba Master Plan.’
The federal government claims it is a plan aimed at only creating a better infrastructure link between the capital Addis Abeba and eight towns located within the Oromiya Regional State Special Zone. But the reason why it is having a hard time selling this otherwise fairytale like development plan is the same reason why it is responding heavy handedly to any dissent against it: it is what it wants to do.
The current protest is led by the Oromos, who are the largest ethnic majority in Ethiopia. In all the four corners of the Addis Abeba surrounding localities, Oromos also make up the single largest majority whose way of lives have already been affected by mammoth changes Addis Abeba has been having over the last Century.
They are rejecting the central government’s top down plan because they are informed by a merciless history of eviction and dispossession. Several researches show that over the last 25 years alone about half a million Oromo farmers have unjustly lost their farmlands to give way to an expansion of a city that is xenophobic to their way to being. Not the first time
Sadly, this is not the first time Ethiopians are pleading with their government to be heard in regards to the so-called ‘Master Plan.’ The first protest erupted in April-May 2014 when mostly Oromo student protesters from universities in Ambo and Jimma in the west, Adama in the east and Medaawalabu in south east Ethiopia, among others, expressed their disapproval of the plan. Like today, they have resorted to communicate with authorities the only way they possibly can: take to the streets to protest. And like today authorities have responded the only way they have so far responded to Ethiopian voices calling for justice: killing tens, maiming hundreds and incarcerating thousands.
As of 1991, when the current regime first came to power, students, mostly Oromo students, have staged several protest rallies calling for justice. Each time the end result has been nothing short of a disaster.
Although the 2014 Oromo students protest marked the first of the largest protest against the central government, a not so distant memory of Oromo students’ protests and subsequent crackdowns reveal a disturbing history of state brutality gone with impunity. To mention just two, in late ‘90s Oromo Students at the Addis Abeba University (AAU) protested against a systematic expulsion of hundreds of Oromo students, who, authorities claimed, had links with the then rebel group, Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). But many of those who protested against the dismissal of their dorm mates soon joined the growing list of expulsion; hundreds of were also jailed. Today mothers speak of their kids who have disappeared without a trace since then. And in early 2000 Oromo students have taken to the streets to protest against the federal government’s decision to relocate the capital of the Oromiya regional state from Addis Abeba to Adama. Many of them were killed when police opened fires in several of those protests, including the one here in Addis Abeba.
Although in 2005 the federal government decided to relocate the capital of Oromiya back to Addis Abeba, fifteen years later Ethiopian prisons are hosting hundreds of students who were jailed following their protest against the decision in the first place; hundreds of them have left the country via Kenya and have become homeless in foreign lands. Less mentioned are also the lives that have been altered forever; the hopes that were dashed; the students’ quest to study and change their lives that were cut short; a country that is deprived of its young and brightest; and family fabrics that were shattered. State impunity and all that
Following the 2014 Oromo students’ protest and the killing spree by the federal and the regional state police, Abadula Gemeda, speaker of the house of people’s representatives and former president of the Oromiya regional state, promised to bring to justice those who were responsible for the killing.
But two outstanding experiences explain why Abadula’s words were mere rhetoric. And the government in Ethiopia should address both if it wants to remain a legitimate representative of the people it claims to govern.
First, so far no one who represents the government has been held accountable for the killings, maiming, disappearances and unjust incarceration for countless Ethiopians following protest crackdowns. No matter how excessive the use of force by its security agents against unarmed protesters is, the government knows (and acts as such) it can simply get away with it, as it did several times in the past. This is wrong. A state that has no mechanism to hold its rogue agents accountable for their excesses is equally guilty.
In addition to that, in what came as a disturbing twist, the government has adopted a new strategy aimed at portraying itself as a victim of public vandalism. It is rushing to clean itself of the crimes committed by its security agents. Using its disproportionate access to state owned and affiliated media currently the government is presiding over the stories of victimhood more than those whose lives have been destroyed by it. In an act of shame and disgrace to the profession, these state owned and affiliated media are providing their helping hands to complete the act of state impunity.
Second, the central government’s first answer to the repeated cries of justice by Ethiopians is to communicate with them through its army. Like in the past, in the ongoing protests by the Oromo, which have largely focused on cities and towns within the Oromiya regional state, protesters are not only facing the regional state’s security apparatus but also the merciless hands of the federal army reserve. This is an act that not only trespasses the country’s constitutionally guaranteed federal arrangement but also makes the horrific crimes committed by necrophiliac security agents against protesters to get lost in unnecessary details, hence go unpunished.
Public protests in the past and the manner by which the current government dealt with them should teach the later a lesson or two. But the first and most urgent one is that it should stop killing, maiming and jailing its people’s questions.
In addition to the unknown numbers of those who have been killed by the police and the army in the wake of the ongoing protest, cities have seen their hospitals crowded with wounded Ethiopians of all ages; hundreds of individuals, including senior members of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), are already thrown into jails without due legal process. In clear violation of the constitution by none other than the state most of them are held incommunicado in places unknown to their loved ones.
In the wake of his release after serving four years in prison, Bekele Gerba, the prominent opposition figure, told this magazine in April last year that prison was “not a place one appreciates to be, but I think it is also the other way of life as an Ethiopian.” Sadly, Bekele is once again thrown in to jail because that is Ethiopia does to its people’s questions. But an end to this is long overdue.
South Africa: Bloody Repression in Ethiopia and Why #FeesMustFall Should Take Notice
ANALYSIS
By Addis Alem, All Africa, 4 February 2016
Over the past few months, students, in solidarity with farmers resisting land grabs in the Oromia region of Ethiopia, faced off with security forces in some of the biggest protests the country has ever seen. The protests against the “Addis Ababa Master Plan” were repelled by Ethiopian troops, resulting in mass arrests and deaths of protestors.ADDIS ALEM describes the current situation in the Oromia region, and how it can be compared to the #FeesMustFall protests in South African universities.
The Oromo community, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, began protesting in November against the “Addis Ababa Master Plan”, which, the government said, aimed to develop areas surrounding the capital. Protesters said the plan would only evict farmers and leave them dispossessed and impoverished.
While the protests were about the plan, it also was an opportunity for the Oromo people who feel marginalised economically and culturally by the government, to be heard. And the struggle over the plan is part of a bigger accusation leveled against the state: the forcible removal of removing tens of thousands of people from their homes to make way for large-scale, commercial ventures (mostly foreign).
Of course it is a problem: eighty percent of Ethiopians still live in rural areas and land remains a contentious issue in this East African country.
The protests
Students – from high schools and primary schools – led the protests against land grabs. Doctors, nurses, teachers and bank workers stood in solidarity with them, and boycotts, sit-ins and silent marches were held throughout the country.
The response from the Ethiopian government has been brutal. The police and army in Ethiopia responded with live ammunition, teargas and mass arrests, resulting in scores dying – including children.
Independent reporting on what is happening in the country is almost nonexistent due to government censorship. There is also no way to independently verify the death toll, but activists have put the number at at least 150.
Hundreds more are said to have been arrested, joining tens of thousands of political prisoners in Ethiopian jails.
Journalists, bloggers, Muslim advocates for religious freedom, non-governmental organisations, opposition groups and other dissenting voices have long been repressed with Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation 652/2009. According to Amnesty International, the law permits the government to use unrestrained force against suspected terrorists, including pre-trial detention of up to four months.
Those involved in the current wave of protests have been labelled as “terrorists”, with the military being sent in to clamp down on them. Journalists, bloggers and other dissenting voices have already been prosecuted on the basis of Anti-Terrorism Laws.
Take the story of Hora Banti Irena, a 4th year Food Science student at Walaga University. On January 4th, he was arrested on campus. Two days later, his body was found in the Hadiyya river. In another incident, Reuters reported that two students were killed and six others were injured when a hand grenade was thrown at them in Dilla University.
Meanwhile, others have simply disappeared. In one case, Kenna Shiferaw, a 10th-grade student at Ambo Secondary school was kidnapped by soldiers. Her pictures, along with many others, have flooded social media.
#OromoProtests Kenna Shiferaw a 10th grade student at Ambo secondary school was kidnapped by soldiers this morning. pic.twitter.com/hYkzzr6zSS
— Addisgazetta (@addisgazetta) December 29, 2015
The army was deployed onto some university campuses and schools, and some students – including high school and primary school students – boycotted class, demanding the release of their classmates and arrest of those who killed protestors.
As a result of the protests, the government’s plan was shelved. But the protests have continued. Though calls have been made for independent investigations into the killings and arrests, nothing has been done. The protests over the land have triggered protests against the dispossession of thousands of smallholder farmers, destruction of livelihoods and erosion of cultural rights.
#Ethiopea.Powerful cover from @addisstandard on #OromoProtests. pic.twitter.com/zAKywcSlkb
— Revi Mfizi (@revimfizi) January 11, 2016
“The government should desist from using draconian anti-terrorism measures to quell protests and instead protect its citizen’s right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, was quoted as having said.
Last year, in Ambo, about 125km west of the Addis Ababa, about 47 were reported to have been killed by security forces [Editor’s note: the Ethiopian government said nine people were killed] after university students led a protest against the land grabbing.
In many ways, the wave of protests over land is a resumption of student-led protests 2014, and they have re-emerged at a time of immense desperation: the country faces one of the worst droughts since the 1980s. Despite the much lauded double-digit growth, some ten million people are already in desperate need of food aid as a result of the drought.
The link to South Africa
The student-led struggle in solidarity with smallholder farmers in Ethiopia is similar to the campaign for better working conditions for cleaning staff in South African universities. The campaign in South Africa has forged a unity between students and mainly black women workers, who endure insecure working conditions and earn a poverty wage.
To this end, it is impossible to talk of #FeesMustFall without bringing in the struggles of students and the Oromo people in Ethiopia. They are in many ways the same struggle: for dignity, justice and better access for the black body. Moreover, #FeesMustFall is perhaps the first stop en route the land question in South Africa.
Besides, the story has certainly reached South Africa.
Ethiopians protest at #UN offices in #Pretoria demanding UN interves in rights abuses in #Ethiopia #OromoProtests pic.twitter.com/HBDhVOmlCU
— Hassan Isilow (@hisilow) February 1, 2016
This places an urgent responsibility into the hands of students and other progressives organising in universities and other political formations in South Africa and beyond against this brutal repression of students fighting a similar cause.
The use of live ammunition by the security forces must cease, and thorough and transparent investigations into the extra-judicial killings and other violence against protestors in Ethiopia must begin immediately. Likewise, there must also be investigations into violence of police and private security in protests in South Africa. All political prisoners in Ethiopia must be released. The Anti-Terrorism laws must also be scrapped.
We anticipate that there will be more protests at South African universities against financial exclusion and against outsourcing in 2016. In fact, mobilisations have long begun. The promise to contain protests by any means has also been made repeatedly as universities doggedly insist they will continue to block students burdened with debt and insist on upfront payment.
A firm stand against any form of repression and urgent solidarity is needed to protect the right to protest in South Africa. In the same light, solidarity with the Oromo student-led protests against land grabbing is also an important step which speaks to the struggle of African people to decide on their own material wellbeing in their collective interests and not that of a narrow political and economic elite.
Addis Alem (not his real name) is a member of the October 6 movement, a collective of progressive students, workers and academics in the University of Johannesburg and Witwatersrand.
The two U.S Senators from the state of Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken sent to States Secretary John Kerry their strong legislative support to the ongoing #OromoProtests by issuing the letters below.
They condemning the authoritarian regime of Ethiopia. ” The United States has a compelling interest in ensuring U.S. resources provided to Ethiopia are not being used to violate human rights.”
February 2, 2016
The Honorable John F. Kerry
Secretary of State United States
Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Secretary Kerry,
We write to request that the State Department provide recommendations for actions the United States can take to address the escalating violence against civilians in the Oromia region of Ethiopia. In November 2015, farmers and students in the Oromia region began protests in response to the Ethiopian government’s Master Plan to expand Addis Ababa into surrounding farmland. We are deeply concerned by reports from Human Rights Watch and the media that indicate at least 140 protesters have been killed by Ethiopian security forces.
Minnesota is home to the largest Oromo population in the United States, and our constituents are concerned about the reports of violence and intimidation protesters have faced from government security forces. We want to thank you for condemning the recent killings and violence against peaceful Oromo protesters. However, we believe stronger action is required. Reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Committee to Protect Journalists have alleged that government security forces are using arbitrary arrests and prosecution to silence journalists and Ethiopian citizens who are exercising freedom of expression.
Ethiopia’s restrictions on freedom of the press and independent civil society groups mean those monitoring human rights in Ethiopia increasingly rely on social media reports from protesters and contacts on the ground. There is widespread fear that violence will escalate and that the government is taking steps to isolate the Oromia region. Reports indicate that authorities have recently cut mobile phone coverage in areas where there is a heavy military presence, further escalating fears about the potential for increased violence.
The United States Congress sent a strong message to Ethiopia regarding the government’s Master Plan and harsh crackdown on peaceful protestors by passing a provision in the 2015 Omnibus Appropriations Bill to ensure U.S. aid to Ethiopia cannot be used to support the forced evictions of farmers. The United States has a compelling interest in ensuring U.S. resources provided to Ethiopia are not being used to violate human rights. We would like more information regarding the alleged actions by the Ethiopian government and how the United States can ensure that basic human rights are not being violated.
We respectfully ask you to conduct a full, thorough review of this ongoing situation and report to Congress on immediate actions that can be taken to protect innocent civilians in Ethiopia.
Thank you for your attention to this important human rights manner.
Sincerely,
Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator
Al Franken
United States Senator
US Department of State responds to Congressman Keith Ellison’s letter written on behalf the Oromo people, #OromoProtests
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) would like to express its deep concerns regarding the safety of Oromo prisoners in the Kalitti Jail in Addis Ababa/Finfinne in Ethiopia. According to information leaked out from the Jail and obtained by the HRLHA, Oromo prisoners are discriminatory subjected to torture in a very harsh jail condition in underground dark rooms.
In an inhuman and extrajudicial action taken against some Oromo prisons on the 29th of January, 2016, a lot of Oromo inmates were subjected to tortures that last for over ten hours and left those victims in life-threatening situations. The attack on Oromo prisoners by the prison guards and administrators was executed in two rounds on the same nights in two different compounds of the Jail. According to the leaked documents, it first started in the compound known as “Number Two”.In an after-hour operation, a handful of Oromo inmates was taken out of their prison cells on this Number Two compounds. They were beaten up and tortured for hours and eventually taken to the compound called “Tanker”. They were all naked, their bodies covered with blood, cuts and woulds, and broken limbs.
Tanker is a compound where most of the dark prison cells are located, according to the document obtained by HRLHA. Shocked by the conditions of those tortured Oromos, the Oromo inmates who were previously in the dark cells of the Tanker compound asked as to why they were not allowed at least to have clothes on themselves. This very question triggered another round of assault and torture on some of those who raised the question. These include Kadir Zinabu, Abdisa Ifa, Fakada Abdisa, Abdii Birru, Banti Daggafa, Dajjazmach Bayyana, and Hasien Abdurahman. They were all severely beaten up; and finally transferred to another dark room within the Tanker compound.Husien Abdurahman in particular was separated from all others and taken away to a yet unknown destination; because he was bitterly crying and screaming due to the severe injuries and woulds he received from the assaults and torture. Mr. Husien Abdurahman was not seen or heard from since then (the morning of January 30, 2016). There has been a very deep fear among his fellow prisoners that he might not be alive any more.
This inhuman and extrajudicial operation of torture was headed by a prison official called Gabriel-Igzi’abiher, and took place from around 9:00 PM to about 11:00 AM Ethiopian time. According to the information obtained from the Jail, Mr. Gabre-Igzi’abiher was further threatening the whole Oromo political prisoners verbally, mentioning that he and the government led by his TPLF party could, if need be, drag Oromo prisoners out of their prison cells one by one and shoot them dead.
Such inhuman and cruel treatments added to the already harsh prison situation like that of Kalitti, the safety of political prisoners, who are categorized as enemies by the Ethiopian Government, is undoubtedly at risk. Therefore, HRLHA calls upon all regional and international human rights and diplomatic agencies so that they do all that is at their disposal to ensure the well being of the political prisoners in Kalitti Jail and elsewhere in Ethiopia.
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– Demonstrators say government scheme to expand capital Addis Ababa endangers farmers
– Demonstrators say government scheme to expand capital Addis Ababa endangers farmers
By Hassan Isilow
(PRETORIA, South Africa) – Ethiopians protesting against human rights abuses in their homeland gathered outside UN offices in Pretoria on Monday to call for the international community to take action.
“We are protesting here to create awareness about the killings of Oromo protesters in Ethiopia,” organizer Muna Saidi told Anadolu Agency. “We want the UN to help us pressure the Ethiopian government to stop these killings.”
Demonstrations sprung up in Ethiopia late November after the government proposed expanding the boundaries of capital Addis Ababa into Oromia regional state, leading to concerns among Oromo farmers about a loss of land.
The Oromo are the country’s largest ethnic group.
Saidi said many organizations had been silent over human rights violations in Ethiopia, where, according to Human Rights Watch, at least 140 protesters have been killed by security forces.
Several journalists, bloggers and opposition members have reportedly been jailed for criticizing the government.
“There is no freedom in Ethiopia,” Abdurrahman Jibro, chairman of the Oromo People’s Association of South Africa, told Anadolu Agency. “Protesters are shot and killed. Hundreds of Oromo youth have now fled to neighboring countries because they fear they will be arrested.”
Monday’s protest of around 300 saw demonstrators carrying placards calling for the release of political prisoners and an end to evictions in Oromia.
Will Expressing Concern Prevent State-Led Mass Murder in Oromia, Ethiopia?
By Habtamu Dugo*, Finfinne Tribune, 1st February 2016
The number of Oromo civilians killed, maimed, tortured, disappeared and raped by Ethiopian government forces has been increasing after Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Dr. Tedros Adhanom met with the European Union and US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Powers. Ignoring concerns by the EU and Ambassador Powers over Ethiopia’s government’s violent responses to peaceful Oromo protesters, Tedros’ government has continued with the killings and many other forms of atrocities against the Oromo people, including killing children.
The number of state-led killings has now increased to 185, according Abiyi Atomsa, an Oromo activist who provided the “minimum death tolls”. Another source, Ethiopia Crisis, a group that monitors the crisis and provides updates on the violence, reported on January 29, 2015 that the number of people killed for peacefully protesting against the government over land grabbing “exceeds 200.” A month ago, Human Rights Watch reported that 140 members of the ethnic Oromo were killed for protesting a government plan to expand the boundary of Addis Ababa city into Oromia regional state by evicting Oromo farmers. HRW stated “arrest of respected politician” Bekele Gerba, Deputy Chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, marked the escalation of the crisis.
The European Union Parliament, which correctly assessed the crisis and debated on it and passed a 15-point “resolution on the situation in Ethiopia”, is the only international actor with concrete plans to curb massive rights abuses by the Ethiopian government in Oromia if and when this monumental resolution is translated into actions. Not only did the EU parliament condemn the excessive use of violence by government forces against peaceful protesters, it also called for impartial investigations into killings and other human rights violations and for the prosecution of responsible government actors. More importantly, the EU made it clear that aid to Ethiopia will be contingent upon the protection of human rights going forward. The resolution “stresses that financial support to Ethiopia from the EU should be measured attending to the country’s human rights record and the degree to which the Ethiopian government promotes reforms towards democratization, as the only way to ensure stability and sustainable development.”
Contemptuous of the EU and concerns of Western nations providing aid, $3 billion amounting to half of Ethiopia’s national budget, the Ethiopian regime has not taken any steps to de-escalate the situation. In fact, it’s escalating the use of lethal force against unarmed protesters in Oromia and Gambella regions.
The United States government has failed to follow the good example set by the EU parliament; the US does not yet have a concrete plan to curb the unfolding crimes against humanity against the Oromo population by the Ethiopian state. Despite a stark omission of violence against the Oromo protesters by Ethiopian government from a recent White House National Security Council statement, the State Department and some US diplomats have publically expressed increasing levels of concerns about the killings in Oromia, and urged the Ethiopian government to “allow peaceful protests” and called for “a meaningful dialogue about Oromo community [people’s] concerns.”
While increasing expressions of concern are welcome by the Oromo people, all these statements from the US government lack any concrete plans on how to stop the atrocities by the Ethiopian government. Having observed the reluctance by the United States, the Ethiopian government continued with massive atrocity crimes in the state of Oromia. These statements cleverly avoid the need for involving political actors in the said dialogue. It is very well known that the situation calls for more than a dialogue at this stage—a possible change of system or a comprehensive negotiation of a transitional order involving all political actors with opposing ethno-nationalist agenda. Activists on social media tweeted to the White House, the State Department and Ambassador Samantha Powers and demanded a more concrete action that would lead to holding the regime accountable.
Britain has also expressed concern through its member of parliament. James Duddridge, member of the UK Parliament, posted a message on Twitter saying that he, “raised concerns with Tedros Adhanom [Ethiopia’s MFA] about Oromo protests—important for authorities to exercise restraint and address the root causes.” This expression of concern on social media is welcome, but it raises a question as to whether the United Kingdom has any concrete plans to hold the government it helps finance accountable over killings and other forms of crimes against humanity in Oromia and all parts of Ethiopia. Social media activists pointed out to the UK MP that expressing concern will not alter the violent behavior of the Ethiopian government toward Oromo civilians. Activists cited that the killings continued after James Duddridge expressed concern. So, the concern did not have any impact on the behavior of the regime.
However, except for issuing foreign travel advice in Ethiopia to protect its citizens, the British Home Office has not issued a statement condemning the excessive use of force against Oromo civilians. Like the U.S., the U.K. has no publicly-available plan with which to hold its aid darling Ethiopia accountable over massive human rights abuses. The British Department for International Development has kept pumping aid into Ethiopia without accountability mechanism in place regarding how this aid would be used.
Although asking favors is not a bad thing, the Oromo people are not asking the West to do them a favor when they protest in Western cities such as Washington DC, Seattle, Minneapolis, Ottawa, London, Berlin, Melbourne and so on. They are asking for the withdrawal of foreign aid or the conditioning of aid on the protection of human rights because they believe currently the Ethiopian government is using foreign aid to finance its military campaigns in civilian quarters in Oromia and Ethiopia. Oromo demonstrators in the United States, Canada, and at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, demanded them to stop supporting “tyrannical Ethiopian government that is killing children in schools, colleges and universities across Oromia.”
The United States is not committed to democracy and human rights in Ethiopia despite decades of paying lip service. Nothing speaks louder about America’s lack of commitment to human rights and democracy in Ethiopia than US President Barack Obama infamously calling the current one-party totalitarian Ethiopian government “democratically elected,” during a visit to Ethiopia. The US government does not have a detailed plan with which to hold the autocrats in Ethiopia accountable. It is certain that expressing concern will not stop the ethno-partisan government of Ethiopia from carrying out its habitual and planned atrocities against the Oromo people.
In Oromia, none of the perennial questions raised by millions of Oromo marchers in hundreds of cities and villages have been answered so far. The Ethiopian government has not bowed to international laws, its own constitution, and toothless expressions of concern and condolences from Western diplomats and politicians over killings.
Since December 15, Oromia civilian administration has been illegally suspended in Oromia and Oromia has been brought under military rule. The Oromo people were declared “terrorists, witches and devils” by Prime Minister Hailemariam Deslagn and Information Minster Getechew Reda and centrally-coordinated merciless military actions were threatened and acted upon. Henok Gebissa, a visiting international law fellow at Washington Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia, writes about the military occupation of Oromia as follows: “The current military control in Oromiya exactly resembles the famous Nazi Law known as The Third Reich of 1933 that Nazified all German law in order to grant arbitrary power to Hitler to detain and convict Jews.” In this case, the military is giving arbitrary power to elites of Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front ruling Ethiopia. Gebissa also described growing humanitarian crises where, in addition to all schools in Oromia, the government has deployed the military to hospitals in order to prevent injured individuals from getting medical treatment. People are left to die in the streets from bleeding caused by gunshots.
The first step in finding solutions to questions of land ownership and self-rule raised by the Oromo protesters is to stop the killings. Stop firing live ammunition into crowds of innocent school children with backpacks. But so far international actors have not demonstrated the will to stop the killings, let alone find a solution to politico-survival questions raised by the Oromo people.
The Oromo people have not taken the government announcement that it’s going to cancel the master plan as credible because they know that there is no written document to prove that it has canceled the plan. They also don’t trust the ruling party which was ordered to make the statement to dampen the protests and to curtail international media interest in the ever-deepening crisis. The Oromo upgraded their question to the question of national self-government, democracy, justice and release of all political prisoners.
Making over 45 million people in Ethiopia, the Oromo in the homeland and in the diaspora are asking Western partners of the Ethiopian government to at least choke the flow of aid until they (international actors) come up with plans to end pervasive violence and to ensure the creation of a new democratic order that respects the will of the people. Cutting aid to Ethiopia is no simple action since aid accounts for a good half of Ethiopia’s budget and obviously a significant part of that budget is funding the military being used by one group to persecute non-coethnics with the current rulers of Ethiopia who do not represent the Oromo or the rest of the country.
The international community must also urge that journalists, media, human rights organizations, humanitarian organizations and independent observers have access to Ethiopia in general and to hotspots of unfolding crises such as Oromia, Ogaden, Gambella and other regions needing urgent humanitarian help in particular.
The Ethiopian government thrives on massive surveillance and information control whenever it engages in massive atrocities internally. Human Rights Watch’s Ethiopia researcher, Felix Horne writes profoundly that it is such monopolistic control over information by government that has rendered the “massive crisis” invisible to the world. Horne’s recommendation to Ethiopia’s partners: “But they should also be clear that Ethiopia needs to ensure access to information and stop disrupting telecommunications and targeting social media users. The world needs to know what is happening in Oromia—and Ethiopians have a right to know what is happening in their country.”
Simon Allison writes that “Ethiopia exploits AU role to suppress international criticism,” including surveillance on AU activities by the National Intelligence and Security Service of Ethiopia. As result, AU has been effectively prevented from saying anything on Oromo protests.
If the Ethiopian regime continues to deny access to affected regions, the world is correct to assume that Ethiopia is hiding crimes against humanity against the Oromo people and others. The denial of access to information has made it difficult to assess the real magnitude of the crisis although it’s clear the crisis is massive. Number of people being killed by the government is increasing, but the world does not know about it. Death tolls cited in this piece are minimum estimates and they are just the tip of the iceberg as far as the atrocities by government forces are concerned because the regime intentionally prevents any “negative news from coming out of Ethiopia.”
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* Habtamu Dugo is Adjunct Professor of Journalism and Communications at Howard University, Washington DC. He is also member of the OSA Board of Directors. He can be reached at hab.dugo@gmail.com
Gayle E. Smith, Chief Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said the US continued to be vigilant over the recent protest and subsequent violent crackdown in Oromiya regional state, the largest of Ethiopia’s nine states.
Speaking at a press briefing in the sidelines of the 26th AU heads of state summit this afternoon, Gayle Smith said that she has discussed the issue with the government in Ethiopia.“We have forwarded our clear concern of the dangers leaving such a problem unattended,” she said.
State Department Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, on her part emphasized the importance of communication. “We have engaged the government [on this regard] and there is a clear recognition on their side [that] the questions raised were legitimate” and the use of excessive force was “a mistake.”
Answering to a question from Addis Standard on whether there was a discussion with the Ethiopian government on the way forward, Ass. Sec. Thomas-Greenfield added that “requests have been made” for an investigation which is “transparent and shared” and for the protesters in police custody to be given “access to justice.”
Tom Malinwoski, Assistance Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, on his part said that “we have had constructive discussions with government officials including the Prime Minister.” The level of recognition of the situation “is a crucial first step,” he said.
While access to justice is important for the protesters, including members of the opposition, who were taken into police custody and if there is anyone who is jailed for peaceful expression of opposition, “we believe should be released,” added Malinwoski.
The Oromo Protests, which began on No 12th last year in Ginchi, a small town some 80 Kms South West of the Capital Addis Abeba, is by far the largest protest against the ruling EPRDF since it came to power in 1991.
The US has previously expressed its concerns against the violent crackdown on the protesters, and urged the government in Ethiopia to permit peaceful protest and commit to a constructive dialogue to address legitimate grievances.
But according to a Human Rights Watch report in early January, has resulted in 140 deaths. But several accounts from activists and campaigners put the number as high as above 200.
USAID Administrator Gayle Smith led the US delegation to the AU summit. Joining the delegation are Department of States Assistant Secretary Thomas-Greenfield and Assistant Secretary Tom Malinwoski.
Ethiopia: Land – the Perpetual Flashpoint of Ethiopia’s Political Crisis
OPINION By Endalk Chala, Addis Standard and All Africa, 28 January 2016
#OromoProtests Special coverage
It is important to situate the recent Oromo students’ protest within the historical context of students’ dissent in Ethiopia. The wave of protest that swept through Oromiya, Ethiopia’s biggest and populous regional state, bears a striking resemblance to the 1960s Ethiopian students’ protest, which culminated into the 1974 revolution that brought down Africa’s last standing Emperor, Haile Sellasie I. It was a revolution that changed Ethiopia’s land tenure system for good.
Like the 1960s, the issue of land ownership has fueled the current students’ protest across the entire Oromiya region; as in 1960s, political repression, drought and cover up of the ongoing severe food shortage that is affecting more than 20 million Ethiopians have created fissures in the political system and anger among the general public.
The current Ethiopian Constitution is by and large one of the legacies of the 1960s students’ movement. Adopted in 1995, the constitution pledges that ‘Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange.’However, the regime in Ethiopia owns every inch of land and has been relentlessly taking away huge swathes of it from farmers under the guise of public purpose, only to sell it to investors.
Series of legislations have also made tenure security of farmers vulnerable to the state’s needs over their land. Moreover, the adequacy and fairness of the amount of compensation paid for displaced farmers when the state expropriates their land remains questionable.
Several reports and researches indicate that since 2005 alone hundreds of thousands of mostly Oromo farmers are displaced from their lands to make way for sprawling Addis Abeba. They have subsequently become either daily laborers or beggars in the streets of Addis Abeba. The Oromo protest in this context is not just an opposition to urbanization or infrastructure construction as the regime’s propaganda machine, led by state owned and affiliated media, kept on reciting it; but it is based on a lived experience of anger, desperation and anxiety with the growing trend of repression and displacement.
Breeding the politics of protection
The two previous regimes in Ethiopia were excessively repressive and dictatorial in their nature. During their sixty years of combined rule the politics was selectively distributive in which only a few elites had access to state resources. When the current government came to power in 1991 it reconfigured a century old unitary political system into a new federal political system, taking ethnicity as a primary informer of the federal system. But slowly the politics of a federated Ethiopia once again transformed itself into the politics of protecting a select, centralized few elites.
Far from being federal, as the name says it is, the system started gravitating around a few political elites who have access to make or influence polices; they resorted to establishing a profoundly clientelistic centralism, bent almost entirely upon elites of one ethnic group. Consequently, all the major and key parts of state institutions – army, air force, police, and intelligence, among others, have come under private hands of members of the Tigrayan People Liberation Front (TPLF), one of the four coalition parties that make up the ruling EPRDF. As a result political and bureaucratic institutions have become formal instruments for accumulation of wealth and power that benefits a select few elites who are either members of this party or have access to its network.
However for much of the last 25 years, the central government’s led rhetoric has been about perceived notion of doing away with ethnic suppression and ‘peripherality’ among the Oromos and previously marginalized groups of the wider south. While the start of such rhetoric might have served to empower some of the previously marginalized groups, regional states such as Oromiya and Gambella have never been able to achieve their full independence as stipulated in the constitution; they are neither free to use their resources such as lands as they wish, nor take autonomous positions that represent their interests, especially if the power play at the central government considers those interests threatening to its excess.
Not so much about repression
The growing indignation of many Ethiopians is not so much about the repression under this regime as it is about government’s relentless investment in political propaganda to appear democratic. Unlike the previous two regimes the current government preserves some of the formal aspects of democracy – elections, the concept of multi-party system, a national assembly, or a constitution – just to undo all by deploying systematic technicalities of statecraft. To make matters worse it also boasts extraordinary economic growth and managed to portray itself as the champion of the fastest growing economy.
The truth is, however, like in the 1960s millions of Ethiopians are unable to feed themselves once a day and are hungry again; like in the 1960s millions of Ethiopians are unable to tolerate the economic marginalization in favor of a select few who have managed to build tight political and economic patronage network; and like in the 1960 millions of Ethiopians (this time led by Oromo students) are on the streets saying no to the cumulative results of the ongoing state led political mortification.
And like in the 1960s no amount of state propaganda will cover it up.
Eds’ Note: Endalk Chala is a doctoral student in Media Studies at University of Oregon
‘We ran away from murder, torture and rape’: Oromo Ethiopians ask Manchester to ‘stand with them’ in protest
By Dominic Thomas, Mancunian Matters, 27 January 2016
Around a hundred protesters turned out to call on the UK Government to act on and stop supporting the killing of Oromo people in Ethiopia, in Albert Square yesterday.
The protest comes after Human Rights Watch reported at least 140 people had been killed and tens of thousands arrested by government forces in anti-government protests since November.
This took place in the Oromia region, where the Government had planned to expand the control of the country’s capital in what was known as the Master Plan of Addis Ababa.
The land-grabbing led to anger from the Oromo people, who claim the plans – which have since been scrapped – are part of systematic repression of their ethnic group, and is being supported by the UK Government, which provides Ethiopia with around £300million a year in aid.
Mohammed Tusa, Chairman of the Oromian Community which organised the protest in Manchester, told MM: “We ask the UK Government to stand with Oromo people, to stand against the Ethiopian Government and to speak out.
“So far many protests have taken place in the UK – in London and in Manchester several times –but nobody is listening to us. The BBC is not listening to us, and the Government is keeping quiet.
“We respect and we love British society, but the UK Government is not acting the way we expect them to.”
He described how he and his fellow protestors had been forced to flee to the UK because of the suppression and violence people of his ethnic group faced in Ethiopia.
“Everybody here who came to Britain was forced to flee their own country,” he said.
“We love our country and would love to live there but were forced to run away from there by violations of murder, torture and rape by the Government.”
One protester claimed that he believes around 40,000 Oromo people are currently in jail, and that most opposition leaders and intellectuals have been killed by military action.
“The opposition leaders are being arrested, so freedom of expression is not there,” said one.
“The British Government has been financing the Ethiopian Government to support the poor people, but they have misused that money.
“The British Government should stand up, should listen to our voice, listen to the people and they should act. They are a superpower of the world, so they have to tell them to stop killing innocent students, mothers and farmers.”
Ethiopia has been run by the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Revolutionary Democratic Front since 1995, with the party winning all 547 seats at the last election.
A statement from the European parliament earlier this week read: “The EU, as the single largest donor, should ensure that EU development assistance is not contributing to human rights violations in Ethiopia.
“It also calls on the Ethiopian authorities to stop suppressing the free flow of information, to guarantee the rights of local civil society and media and to facilitate access throughout Ethiopia for independent journalists and human rights monitors.”
We are raising this matter repeatedly in order to remind each other now and then, so that we may not be caught off guard by daily sprouting distorters. The way Oromiyaa resistance of November 2015 took shape surprised not the incumbent colonial government and opposition organizations that aspire to replace it alone, but also confused Oromo organizations as well. Because it was unprecedented phenomenon the TPLF leaders seem to be at a loss on how to handle it. What they can do was only secretly declaring Marshal Law that led to genocide and unnecessary incarceration. Ethiopian opposition organizations that crave to replace TPLF jumped to support the movement unconditionally but cooled down when they found their unevenly developed constituencies of Nafxanyaa remnant extremists were not supportive. This exposed that they are not representing a people’s dreams but that of groups that aspire to control the colonies next. These guys are reactionaries blinded by greedy for power and cannot move with the new world order. The naïve are in cahoots with them for nothing. That there are those that started conspiracy crossing the line to overthrow Wayyaanee and mount the peoples is becoming an open secret.
The peace loving Habashaa people have no problem with their neighbors. They are not yet subjected to eviction Oromiyaa type or land grab, their language is still the king’s language and their green, yellow and red flag is flying far beyond their borders etc. so no reason to rebel now. Even Habasha students in Oromo universities are mostly said not involved in the uprising but stayed in campuses. That implies that they do not feel belongingness to the rebelling region. “Ethiopianism” politicians want to propagate is only their own wish.
Oromo politicians lived confused by multifaceted pressure for a long time. Unable to move forward they turned to defending their leadership turf from assumed internal descent. As a result sincerity and transparency to members and supporters is lost. They have weakened their own base denying themselves the advantage due to a great people. Members became first in the list of adversaries. While they are in this mood, the movement came and gave the politicians and individual activists their lives’ shock. That they were only façade is exposed. Since then their behavior has become incoherent and frenzy, trying to cling on any string they come by and at times whisper of being in control of the movement. And some also are fuming with ambitions for fame and fortune they expect as a result. In connection with this, lies released have no bounds. But they should not forget the saying, “To fool the wise is to seek hatred”. For the mute observer there are lots to be said.
The opposition later switched to asking Oromo resistance movement to be named “Ethiopian”. The Oromo struggle had been around in its organized manner for half a century. They still do not comprehend it differently from how they initially responded to it. Since then much was gained by Oromo revolution as a result of damage done to fabrics of colonialism. Oromo nationalism has since spread throughout the land and people are now politically more conscious of their interest and identity than their elites. So the same approach of 70s and 80s do not serve. Instead of responding to national demand, when it was only a drop, with contempt full of tirades and insults, had they given it necessary attention then, it could not have now turned into the uncontrollable great flood? Though different in presentation and tactics this movement is only extension of the first phase of movement started by Oromo youth of the 60s. However that the objective goal or Kaayyoo is the same can be seen from placards and slogans they are using.
Even now, the offer given them by stray Oromiyaan politicians, to stand with them as equals and fight the Wayyaanee did not sink well with them. They want to humiliate them further by asking them to accept all about Ethiopia unconditionally and work against Article 39 of Ethiopian Constitution. They also want them to condemn OLF for them. They do not lack the method of attracting tamed Oromo but how to cleanse “the poison” spread by OLF. Those that join them are those who can do that, not those demanding to seat on equal level. In their mind there is only one old Imperial Ethiopia that they head, no modification is acceptable to them.
Therefore those that are going crazy with her love have to take that anyways. For independence camp the national objective set by OLF can never be stopped from reaching its goal even if they go insane. OLF is like a mushroom; its spores are scattered everywhere ready to sprout when one mutates into Ethiopianist. It must be known that the nation is not proud of enemy “Askaries” who were defectors and captives however capable they may be, they died enemy soldiers. Our concern is with those that died fighting for independence of their nation our praise should go for them and them alone. No one can rehabilitate the Askaries except independent Oromiyaa.
For Oromo struggle there will be no negotiation with any one that does not accept Oromiyaa’s sovereignty. Habasha have to think how to live with their neighbors after the decline of the empire. Trying to scare us with civil war of the Somalia type, if Oromiyaa gets freedom is not realistic and productive. Unless wanting to be quoted after death for saying it, they are no more the types to venture into colonial war again. Oromiyaa is not Somalia; there will be no mess let alone civil war for the breakdown of the empire. It has the capacity and the culture for self-control. It is clear that the life of Ethiopian Opposition will be short without Oromiyaa or civil war. Even unity of what is now called Amaaraa Country could become doubtful. But it would be prudent if genuine representatives of all people that have stake in the empire sit around a peace and reconciliation table and liquidate the empire and give everyone the chance to decide on its destiny. By participating in that, they can overcome their fears but not by trying the impossible sabotaging of others freedom. Image of “Mother” presented by Afework Teklee serves no more; times have changed. Spit your “Hirmii”.
Oromo youth is finding its way to build Oromiyaa devoid of oppression and servitude imposed on it by aliens. Oromiyaa is for Oromiyaans. There is no force to defend non Oromo Oromiyaans or aliens living in it than Oromiyaa itself. Those that do not want can smoothly exit without much ado. Alien forces that want to take DNA of long abandoned relatives as excuse to disturb its peace have to think twice. Oromo nationals that are trying to jeopardize hard won victories of Oromo youth and farmers must know they are misfired cartridges; they cannot be effective now as they have not been in yester years. Therefore, for good or worse better repent for past mistakes and stick to their people’s struggle. One who does not hold fast on what one initiates and holds that, leaving this one is of no use to oneself or for anybody. Without showing perseverance there is nothing one can be trusted for. It is high time that we all Africans understand values our peoples attach to freedom and independence and act accordingly. Oromiyaa has now burst into existence thanks to the sacrifices of its heroes of the past, and its revolutionary youth of the present. No force can hide it anymore! Long live Oromiyaa, long live our patriots!
Honor and glory for the fallen heroines and heroes; liberty, equality and freedom for the living and nagaa and araaraa for the Ayyaanaa of our forefathers!
Gurraandhala 23,2016 Ummati waanjoo gabrummaa baachuuf dhiitichaa abbaa irree damdamachuun nufisiisee lubbuusaa aarsaa gochuun diinasaa kan ta’e Shorokeessitoota Waayyaaneet bol’a qotuufsochii rog hundaan godhaa jiru jabeessuun har’a baha Wallaggaa bakkeewwaan hedduutti diinasaa hudhee kan dhaabe ta’uu bakkeewwan Leeqaa Dullachaa,Bonayyaa Boshee,Habashaa Sanbataa,Naqamte (Kibba Waachaa,Bordii,Dargee fi Mana barumsaa Qassoo) kan magaalaa Naqamteetti argaman keessatti mormiin dhiittaa namoomaa of irraa fonqolchuu ittu fifeera
Guyyaa Har’aa Amajjii 29,2016 Godina Wallaggaa aanaa Gidaamii fi Jimmaa Horroo akkasumas ganda Burii jedhamu keessatti FXH haala jabaa ta’een gaggeeffamaa oole,Warraanni Wayyaanee haala kanatti rifates jiraattotaa fi barattoota qabee hidhuu fi gidirsuu itti haa fufu malee uummanni naannichaa jabinaan loltoota Wayyaanee of irraa dhorkaa oolanii jiru jedha Qeerroon.
Barattotni magaalaa Naqaamteef jiraattonni magaalatti gabrummaa of irraa fonqolchuuf wayiita carraqanitti dhamsuuf humna waraanaa
Biraanee Fiqruu Mul’isaa jedhamti dhimma mormii MP fi FDG Oromiyaa keessattin deemamaa jiruun walqabatee godina kibba lixa Shaggar aanaa Daawootti mana hidhaa aanichatti dararamaa jirti.Kan hidhamte gaafa guyyaa 27,12,2015ti ture ergasi beellama si’aa 2irratti gaafatan yoo ta’u yeroo lachuu guyyaa 9 sagaal irratti gaafatani turan. Ammas hanga 28/1/2016tti tursisan kan akkas rawwachisa jiru immo bulchinsaa aanaa kan ta’e obboo Fayyisaa Dhaabaa jedhamu, wajjirri poolisii aanaa fi mannii murtii anichaas hojii seeraa dhisaani hojii siyaasa dalagaa jiran.
John Kirby
Dhumaa jaarraa 19ffaatti, yeroo gabrummaa Impaayera Ixoophiyaa jalatti kufe irraa eegalee,biyya abbaa isaa Oromiyaa irratti: bilisummaa,nagaa fi gammachuun jiraatuuf mirga seeraanis ta’e uumaan qabu sarbamee ummatni Oromoo inimmaan osoo irraa hin qoorre hanga har’aa jiraataa jira. Bara Minilik Oromiyaa weeraree ummata Oromoo miliyoona shan fixe; hedduu ammo harkaa fi harma muree fafeesse, Oromoon miliyoonni shan gadi hafee kanneen dhumaniif inimaan buusee kan dhiise qofa osoo hin taane, inimmaan isaa guyyaa tokko gabroomfataa dhiqee Oromiyaa keessaa akka baasu osuma inimmaan buusuu illee raagaa tureera. “Guyyaa itti diinni biyya keenya irraa buqqa’ee ilmaan keenya nagayaa fi gammachuun keessa jiraatan ni dhufa” jechuun kan Roobaa Bultum raage, Minilik ummata Oromoo miliyoona shanii, kan harki 70 dardaraa fi shamarrani eerga fixee booda. Kan yeroo san Roobaa Bultum raage, ummata Oromoo shanyi duguuginsa irraa hafaniif ;akeeka ittiin qajeelfaman, hawwii fi abdii bilisummaa ta’ee hanga har’aatti itti fufee jira.
Amajjii 13/2016 Warraasii FXG Gootota Qeerroo Barattoota Oromoo Yuunibarsiitii Jimmaa Haalaan Jabachuun Mooraa Main Campus keessatti haalaan itti fufe, Waraannii Wayyaanee Dhukaasaa guddaa barattoota Oromoo Yuunibarsiitii Jimmaa irratti Banuun Mooraa Yuunibarsiitii Jimmaa dirree Waraanaa fakkeesse jira,
Oromiyaa guututti FXG Amajii 1, 2016 irraa kaasee baadiyaa fi magaalaa, dhaabbata barnootaa fi amantaallee dabalachuun itti fufeera.
Dargaggoon Fiqaaduu Shuumataa Waaqtolaa baatii Sadaasa 2015 keessa FDG Wallagga magaalaa Madiitti gaggeeffame keessatti hirmaachuun dhadatnoo mirga namoomaa fi mirgoota saba Oromoo kaasu dhageessisuun barattootatti onnee horee nama turedha, dhadatnoo isaan booda suuraaleen inni gaafas ka’e marsaalee hedduu keessatti faca’uun Oromoota biyya alaa fi keessa jiran qalbii hortee akka ture beekama.
Oromian Economist 
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