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Appeal Letter To US State Department by Five Civic Associations In Washington DC and North America.
December 10, 2015
Secretary of State John Kerry
US Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
RE: Continued Massacre in Oromia Regional State by the Tyrannical TPLF Government in Ethiopia
Dear Mr. Secretary,
It has been over a year since the Tyrannical TPLF minority regime unveiled a scheme to expand the city of Addis Ababa into the Oromia Regional State under the guise of development. Their underlying objective is to evict Oromos and settle their Tigrian people. If the scheme is implemented, the current size of the capital increases by 20 folds, from 54, 000 to 1.1 million hectares. It is designed to incorporate 36 Oromian towns into Addis Ababa, such as Dukem, Bishoftu, Adama, Gelan, Legetafo, Sendafa, Sululta, Burayu, Holeta, Sebeta, and Addis Alem among others. More than two million Oromo farmers will be forcefully evicted from their ancestral land by the plan. It is also designed to bring the expanded city under the federal government administration by abolishing the Oromia Regional State jurisdictional right and thereby destroy Oromo identity, Oromia integrity and constitutional right of self-administration
As a matter of fact, Addis Ababa itself is the heartland of Oromia and integral part; and should serve the federal government as headquarters while remaining under the full administration and ownership of Oromia State. Carving out Addis Ababa from Oromia and putting it under the jurisdiction of the federal government is weird and has no contemporary parallelism in the world. Washington, DC or Moscow is not under the jurisdiction of the federal government. The motive of the TPLF government is sinister to deny Oromo ownership and expropriate the city for the benefit of their Tigrian cronies. This scheme leads to permanent conflict and destabilization.
Completely surrounded by Oromia regional state, Addis Ababa city is entirely dependent on Oromia for all services. Today almost all electric power, water supply and other infrastructural raw materials come from Oromia region. In recognition of these, the Ethiopian constitution Article 49 (5) stipulates “the special interest of the state of Oromia will be respected regarding provision of services, the utilization of resources and joint administrative matters.”
Despite these historical, natural, constitutional and economic rights, Oromia regional government is devoid of any decision making process over Addis Ababa administration. Generally, the current so called Integrated Development Master plan violates the Oromia constitutional rights. The ultimate decision is in the hands of the TPLF (Tigre People Liberation Front) leaders whose interest is to exploit the land and resources, loot Oromia and destroy Oromo identity.
The scheme has been rejected by the Oromo nation as a whole. It is an existential question for Oromia and the Oromo people. The unveiling of the scheme ignited public protests in 2014 all over Oromia spearheaded by University, high school, and elementary students. The response by the tyrannical regime is to shoot and kill. More than 70 students were massacred, thousands gravely wounded and tens of thousands were hauled into concentration camps and torture prisons in April and May 2014. Because of the uprising the scheme was paused until it has been reactivated recently again leading to bloody protests in all Oromia Regional State
As different mass media outlets are streaming, the Oromo people in general and students at all levels are currently protesting against the implementation of the plan to expand the city of Addis Ababa into the neighboring Oromo farmers land, which not only displaces millions of Oromo farmers from their ancestral land, but also causes loss of Oromo culture, history and identity. The response by the dictatorial bloodthirsty minority government of the TPLF is shooting to kill, beating, imprisoning and torturing of the peaceful protestors as usual. 8 students were shot dead, thousands wounded, beaten, jailed, disappeared. The tyrannical regime is trying to silence the demand of the people by killing, harassment, imprisonment and torture.
The continued massacre of students and civilians is part of the grand scheme to annihilate the Oromo people and expropriate their land and resources. The late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said a couple of years ago, while he was alive,” the majority will be diminished into a minority.” That remark reflects deep rooted objective of annihilating Oromo, which the current TPLF leaders are bent to implement. Currently, about 90% of political prisoners in Ethiopia are Oromos. The former Defense minister stated that all prisoners speak Afaan Oromo (Oromo language) after released from prison indicating the huge number of Oromo prisoners. It is puzzling to fathom the strategy of reducing 40% of the Ethiopian population to minority unless one thinks of genocide. Generally, a war of attrition is being waged by the TPLF government against the Oromo people. The trend is dangerous. The Oromo demand deserves timely and appropriate response. Oppression leads to violent response.
Dear Mr. Secretary,
What is being perpetrated against peaceful demand and protest is the concern of the 40 million Oromos not students only. Accordingly, the Oromo Community Organization (OCO) of the Washington Metropolitan Area, the Oromo Youth Self-help Association (OYSA), the International Oromo Women’s Organization (IOWO), the Macha Tulama Association (MTA), the International Qeerroo Support Group(IQSG), and the Oromo Community Association in North America (OCO_NA)are writing this joint appeal letter to you to express our deep concern and outrage about the current massacre of Oromo students all over Oromia by the federal police and army of the TPLF/EPRDF Ethiopian government. While more numbers of fatalities are still coming in and the exact number is hard to be known due to the denial of access by the government for local and international journalists. We have known through our contacts that more and more reports of death are coming every day. Moreover, hundreds are severely wounded by live bullet and other thousands are rounded up and thrown into jail. Given the history of brutality of the current regime in Ethiopia, also those in jail are feared to be tortured or even secretly murdered in their prison cells.
It is so sad that such heinous crimes are repeatedly happening to the Oromo students and civilians. The massacre of more than 70 students on April 30 and May 1, 2014, took place when you were making official visit to Ethiopia. While you were in Addis Ababa, dozens of students were being massacred in Ambo, just 80 miles from your site and yet the Ethiopian government media behaved as if nothing had happened. It was only the BBC that exposed the genocidal killings, and other West media kept silent. This is the government that the U.S. Government is giving financial and economic aid and maintains intelligence and military “cooperation” with. The U.S. military support is used to kill Oromos and others who demand respect for their democratic and human rights.
Last year, we protested against the brutality of the government and submitted letter of appeal to address the problem and we also briefed the State Department staffers by appointment. We showed to the staffers videos of graphic atrocities. But nothing has been done. No member of the criminal regime has been brought to court of justice. We are observing criminal governments brought to ICC from former Yugoslavia, Kenya, Congo Democratic Republic, Rwanda, Liberia and others. We don’t understand why the criminal TPLF government is allowed to move with impunity. Because of unrestrained criminal activity, the government has continued to massacre the Oromo people, grab their lands, plunder resources, harass and imprison. The consequence of the unabated killing of citizens with impunity by tyrannical governments will be regrettable as we can see in many countries facing similar situations today. Stitch in time avoids big crack. Oromo life matters!!
The TPLF minority regime is hoodwinking the West by wearing the veil of progress and development. But the reality is the dirt under the veil. While the TPLF regime is boasting of 12% annual economic growth, 10 million Ethiopians are exposed to hunger and famine according to their appeal to the 2015 World Climate Conference in Paris for food aid. This shows the growth propaganda is commercial. But they blame climate change. Climate change is not earthquake that happens abruptly and cause hunger and famine. The main cause of the famine is land policy and mal administration. Land is expropriated by the TPLF government which they distribute to the Chinese, Indians, Saudis, Turks, and others freely for hidden quad pro quo. TPLF is sole land lord in the country. We recall the infamous hanger of 1973 which dethroned Emperor Haile Selassie and abolished feudalism. The 2015 hunger also should have consequences.
The regime speaks of democratic process while rigging election and declaring 100% victory. In the absence of freedom of expression, press, gathering, protesting they speak of democratic prevalence. They accuse dissenters of corruption and rent seeking, while they stash billions of dollars in foreign banks by snatching from the hunger stricken Ethiopians. They snatch people’s houses and farmers land in the name of development by paying minimum or no compensation and stash away the market value. There is no guarantee of property ownership. Generally, government accountability is nil. Anger against this government is simmering. The tyrannical activity of the government is leading to volatile vent. They should be denied support unless they respect human rights, democratic principles and show transparency.
The current student protest against the master plan is partly the extension of government involvement in extensive land grab which we, the Diaspora Oromo, have been protesting in front
of the US State Department and the White House. The plan is a land grab disguised in development. It is designed to kill the Oromo generation. There is no legal or social justification to include this small cities and provinces under Addis Ababa city administration for development.
To worsen the situation, the government has declared establishment of Urban Development Corporation, which controls all cities and municipalities denying the administrative rights of the Regional States. It is an initiative to abolish the federal system and centralize the country under the Tigrian minority regime. It will be adding fuel to the already burning fire in many parts of the country
The principle of integrated regional development does not infringe on the geopolitical entity of the regions. As we can see here in the United States, integrated development among the District of Colombia-Maryland-Virginia does not in any way, encroach on the entities of the states. We do not see any reason why the model cannot be applied in Ethiopia, unless it is for sinister motive. It is illegal to curve out urban centers and bring under the federal government. It is a big scheme to destroy the remaining faint light of federalism and put the county in chaos. There is no track record where the federal government controls the urban centers exclusively. This dictatorial regime is leading the country to disaster. It should be stopped before long.
We earnestly request the US government to use its influence to urge the Ethiopian government to respect the right of the Oromo people, rule of law and stop killing and arresting Oromo students, otherwise we request the US government to stop its support. We specifically request that the US government:
• Demand an immediate stop to the unlawful so called “Integrated development master plan” implementation and the unlawful eviction of Oromo farmers and the illegal selling of Oromo land under the disguise of such “development”.
• Demand the cancellation of the establishment of centralized Urban Development Commission to be implemented by the federal government.
• Demand that an independent commission be appointed to investigate the mass killing in Oromia regional state and look at the prison demography.
• Demand the unconditional and immediate release of Oromo students who are jailed for exercising their constitutional right and all political prisoners languishing in jail for several years.
• Demand that the regime to commit itself to the respect of human rights and allow freedom of expression and assembly and making a peaceful protest.
• Demand Ethiopian perpetrators of mass killing be brought to ICC similar to criminals in other countries.
• Demand the Oromo plight be given equal weight to that of other nations under the yoke of dictatorial regimes
Sincerely,
Desta Yebassa, Ph.D.
Board President, Oromo Community Organization of Washington D.C. area (OCO)
6212 3rd ST NW Washington, DC 20011 and Protest Organizing Committee Chair ydesta9@aol.com, info@oneoromo.org www.oneoromo.org
Abebe Etana
Chairman, Oromo Youth Self-help Association (OYSA)
6212 3rd ST NW Washington, DC 20011
abebe_etana@yahoo.com
Dinknesh D. Kitila
Board Director, International Oromo Women’s Organization (IOWO)
6212 3rd St NW, Washington, DC 20011
iowo@iowo.org. http://www.iowo.org
Teshome Dime
Board Chairman, International Qeerroo Support Group (IQSG)
Box 55244 Washington DC 20040
tashomatakala@yahoo.com
Dr. Guluma Gemeda, PhD
Chair, Board of Directors of Oromo Communities’ Association in North America (OCA-NA)
465 Mackubin St N, St. Paul, MN, 55103, USA
ggemeda@umflint.edu
Asafa Jalata, PhD
Board Chairman, Macha-Tulama Cooperative and Development Association, USA, Inc.
Oromo Center 811 Upshur St. NW Washington, DC 20011
ajalata@utk.edu, contact@machatulama.org http://www.machatulama.org
CC President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500 http://www.whitehouse.gov
Tel: (202) 395-2020
Mr. Ban Ki-moon
UN Secretary-General
First Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017
USA
The current uprising is a culmination of systematic injustice perpetrated against the Oromo.
As is often the case, oppressors are blind to what they perpetrate on their victims and surprised when the oppressed rise up defiantly.
Even the African Union, with its headquarter in Addis Ababa, while rightly concerned about a potential genocide inBurundi, is conspicuously silent on the massacre taking place against the Oromo right on its doorstep.
World Post: What Is Behind the Oromo Rebellion in Ethiopia?
By Yohannes Woldemariam, Associate Professor of International Relations and Environmental Studies at Fort Lewis College
The Ethiopian government is now faced with unprecedented rebellion from the Oromo ethnic group, consisting 35% of the Ethiopia’s population, which it disingenuously claims is inspired by terrorism. The immediate pretext is the Addis Ababa Master Plan encroaching and displacing Oromo farmers, but this masks a deeper grievance which has been brewing for at least two decades under this regime, and for over a century under successive highland Ethiopian rulers. In the following, I will try to provide some context and offer some analysis of the danger Ethiopia and the region are facing.
Background
The late Ethiopian Prime Minster, Meles Zenawi, achieved power in 1991 as “the first among equals” in a ruling coalition. After the 1998-2000 “border war” with Eritrea, he moved to consolidate his power by rewarding loyalists and weakening or imprisoning his rivals. Meles institutionalized one-party rule of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and his Tigrayan inner circle, with the participation of other co-opted ethnic elites who were brought into the ruling alliance under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
The EPRDF consists of four groups: the Oromo Peoples’ Democratic Organization (OPDO), the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), the South Ethiopian Peoples’ Democratic Front (SEPDF) and the Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF). The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) decided to withdraw from the EPRDF coalition in 1992 and was pushed out after unsuccessfully trying to assert its independence from the TPLF within the coalition. The role of OPDO, ANDM and SEPDF is simply to rubber stamp TPLF’s agenda. In North American parlance, one can describe the members of OPDO, ANDM and SEPDF as the uncle Toms of Ethiopian society.
Zenawi’s violent crackdown on the 2005 demonstrations protesting the widely believed rigged election was a clear indication of his determination to hang on to power. In the 2010 elections, the EPRDF won 499 out of 547 parliamentary seats — with all but two others going to EPRDF-allied parties — and all but one of 1,904 council seats in regional elections. Despite the semblance of parliamentary rule, those elected were irrelevant to the governance of the country, since the TPLF and PM Zenawi maintained near absolute control over the country’s politics.
If there was any doubt in 2005, in the 2010 and 2015 elections, it became clear that this was a one-party rule with a vengeance, ensuring the triumph of repression, the squashing of dissenting voices and the shutting down of independent media. Elections in Ethiopia are shenanigans to show complete EPRDF control rather than engagement in democracy. There is a clampdown on internet access, and the arrest and sentencing of political opponents and journalists. Even two Swedish journalistsreporting in the Ogaden were imprisoned on terrorism charges.
Succession Not Transition
There was a speculation that Meles’s passing in august 2012 could touch off an internal power struggle expected to take place within the ranks of his loyalists. But the succession of a new prime minister turned out to be an uneventful affair and at least outwardly peaceful. The number of Tigrayans in the cabinet decreased, but key posts remain in the hands of aging Tigrayan loyalists. The talk of “generational change” over the past few years was simply a charade.
Among the exceptions is the current PM Hailemariam Desalegn, the relatively unknown ex-Deputy Prime Minister. Desalegn’s ethnicity gives a superficial semblance of balance and cover for the Tigrayan oligarchy. Desalegn is a Wolayta, a somewhat marginalized ethnicity in the periphery of Ethiopian society, and a born-again Christian in a country where the dominant church is Ethiopian Orthodox. He never participated in the armed struggle that brought the various factions of the EPRDF to power. His status as an outsider was perceived by many to be an asset that gave him broader legitimacy, insulated him from criticism, and allowed him to present himself as an underdog protected from the historical baggage of the Amhara and Tigrayans.
Yet, in his three years in power, Desalegn has announced few new policies. Some suggest that he is a mere figurehead and that real power is still within a core TPLF group shadowing him. In any case, party leaders seem lost without Zenawi. They govern on autopilot, following the vision and templates he left behind. In effect, Zenawi is ruling from the grave. Yet developments like the Oromo uprising expose the limits of ruling from the grave. Regime officials seem confused. Different officials say different things and contradict each other. They look like deer caught in the headlights. As is often the case, oppressors are blind to what they perpetrate on their victims and surprised when the oppressed rise up defiantly.
Resistance to EPRDF Rule
While opposition and discontent have been growing in Ethiopia, the security apparatus is ever vigilant against them . Rioting Muslims were effectively contained. The TPLF marginalized both the legal and the extra-legal opposition, leaving little option but to protest as in the current Oromo uprising. The few co-opted Oromo elites within the EPRDF have little credibility, and protesters scoff at statements coming from Oromo leaders serving the regime.
Other ethnic groups deeply dissatisfied are the Ogadenis, Gambella and Benishangul-Gumuz. The Ogaden national liberation Front (ONLF) in Ogaden is waging an insurgency exacerbated by forcible relocations to allow oil and gas exploration. Similar insurgency rages in Oromia led by the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). Oromia was incorporated into the Ethiopian empire in the 1880s by emperor Menelik IIduring the time the European scramble for Africa was underway.
Resentment to TPLF rule extends even among parts of Tigray, where a part of the population feel left out by the TPLF elites interested only in making money and investing it in the capital or abroad. The EPRDF has unsuccessfully lobbied the U.S. government to label the ONLF and the OLF as terrorist organizations. Nevertheless, the controversial use and abuse of the Anti-Terrorism Law is applied with impunity. The government attributes the ongoing Muslim and Oromo protest to infiltration from Saudi Arabia, Eritrea and the opposition Ginbot 7 movement.
Despite a dishonest attempt to externalize the issue, Ethiopian Muslims, who number anywhere from 40% to 50% of the population, and the Oromo have historically been marginalized, and the protest is very much homegrown and rooted in a long list of grievances.
Ethiopia, the U.S. and its Western Allies
Ethiopia is a key strategic ally for the War on Terror, which insulates it from any UScondemnation. Ethiopia receives the largest aid in Africa — an average $3.3 billionper year. The government abuses aid money to the extent that even government-provided seeds and fertilizer is denied to farmers who are not party members. Regarding the current uprising, the United States has issued a statement of concern. However, the regime itself is noticably unconcerned because it knows these statements by the U.S. are accompanied by little or no action. Even the African Union, with its headquarter in Addis Ababa, while rightly concerned about a potential genocide inBurundi, is conspicuously silent on the massacre taking place against the Oromo right on its doorstep.
The late Zenawi had the wit to position himself as an indispensable ally of the West in the fight against “terrorism.” Ethiopia is seen as a bulwark against extremism and the chaos of Somalia. From the U.S. point of view, Ethiopia is a military bridgehead to contain Al Qaida infiltration in Somalia and even across the Red Sea in Yemen.
International aid subsidizes about 50 % of Ethiopia’s national budget. United Kingdom funding of $4.9billion for a brutal resettlement scheme was only withdrawn this year. Germany continues to aid Ethiopia for “strategic” reasons despite voicing concern about human rights violations. The regime has deepened its economic relationship with China (which is tight-lipped on human rights issues) by utilizing its comparative advantage: capitalizing on the availability of plentiful cheap labor and Chinese subsidies for projects encroaching in Oromia.
The Economy
Zenawi engineered Ethiopia’s success in securing aid from the European Union and the U.S.; he was adept at maneuvering and securing money from Western financial institutions that even his detractors acknowledge. He counted among his admirers big names such as Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard as well as Professor Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. The country’s rulers have perfected the culture of begging and dependency and are now appealing for a $1.4 billion to feed the 10.2 million drought victims even though they engage in the business of leasing fertile land to foreign investors who export everything they grow. Drought does not have to lead to hunger and famine, if a government plans for it. Poor governments can store grain when there is good harvest in preparation for such emergencies.
Consistent with the notion of state-directed developmentalism espoused by the EPRDF, it aspired to oversee the development of roads, rail, electricity and telecommunications, boasting double-digit growth although the IMF disputes those figures and puts the growth rate at 7.5 per cent . It did succeed in Addis Ababa getting sub-Saharan Africa’s first light-rail network. However, the government’s claim that its socio-economic policies have helped the poor is disputed by critics, who point out that the primary beneficiaries are the political elite and that the gap between the elites and the poor is ever wider. The Oromo uprising is partially resentment over displacement and over environmental damage in the name of development.Corruption is rampant in the country. Theft from state enterprises and participation in the black market, including widespread graft is all too common.
Federalism
Ethiopia under the EPRDF was officially declared a federal state. In states with true federalism, regions enjoy political primacy, as it is they who consciously decide to form the state, unlike centralized states where the constituting units come into being in line with EPRDF administrative requirements from the center. The strong center in Ethiopia never allowed for the true spirit of federalism to emerge. The country could never rid itself of the lingering grievance of the regions, of not getting their share, commensurate with their resources. There is a whole list of such claims, such as, misuse of river waters and cheaply leasing of indigenous land to foreign capitalists, urbanization (as in Addis Ababa’s Master Plan), and increasing Deforestation.
The TPLF military and the future
The Ethiopian military as an institution has acquired unprecedented power. Under any conceivable scenario, the military will continue to be a key and decisive player. Yet, it is not a truly national army; at the officer corps level, it is heavily dominated by Tigreans. Historically, the rank and file soldiers come mostly from the Oromo nation and have been the cannon fodder in the country’s numerous wars under Haile Sellassie, Mengistu Hailemariam, and now under the TPLF dictatorship. There is deep grievance within the army resulting in high profile desertions from the Air Force and other branches.
Control of key economic sectors by the military under the EPRDF have made it difficult to limit its role to a strictly military one. The military’s role has other consequences of spiraling ethnic conflicts which have reached a boiling point in the current uprising. EPRDF rule has engendered profound hatred and resentments among different groups with Ethiopian society and among the former ruling classes of the Amhara ethnic group.
The Ogadenis have a longstanding group grievance that is part and parcel of their indomitable desire for self-determination, which has never been addressed. The current uprising is a culmination of systematic injustice perpetrated against the Oromo. Resistance in Ethiopia in the absence of political space for cross-ethnic alliances is being channeled along ethnic and religious lines, potentially setting the stage for the balkanization of the country. In the 20th century, highland monarchist absolutism, Stalinist dictatorships and today’s make-believe “democratic federalism” may contribute more to fragmentation and dismemberment than nation-building. The legacy of dictatorship, from Menelik II, Haile Selassie, Mengistu Hailemariam to Meles Zenawi has endangered the country.
HUMAN RIGHTS :Scores dead in Ethiopian protest crackdown, says rights group
A human rights watchdog has reported that 75 people have been killed protesting a government project in the Oromia region.
Fatal clashes in Ethiopia
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Saturday that at least 75 people had been killed in recent weeks while protesting an urban renewal plan in the Oromo region surrounding the capital, Addis Ababa.
Outcry as Oromo protests in Ethiopia turn violent
Opposition groups say security forces have killed several people during weeks of protests over a government re-zoning plan. Members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group view the plan as an infringement on their rights.
“Police and military forces have fired on demonstrations, killing at least 75 protesters and wounding many others, according to activists,” the human rights watchdog said in a statement.
In November, students peacefully demonstrated against government plans to take over territory in several towns across the region.
However, the unrest was met with a severe response, including government forces using firearms against protesters.
‘Dangerous escalation’
“The Ethiopian government’s response to the Oromo protests has resulted in scores dead and a rapidly rising risk of greater bloodshed,” said HRW’s Deputy Africa Director Leslie Lefkow.
“The government’s labeling of largely peaceful protesters as ‘terrorists’ and deploying military forces is a very dangerous escalation of this volatile situation,” Lefkow added.
Government spokesman Getachew Reda said the “peaceful demonstrations” that began in November escalated into violence, blaming the protesters for “terrorizing the civilians.”
He said only five people had died, dismissing the higher toll reported by activists.
Oromo opposition leader Bekele has announced his support for peaceful protests, according to DPA news agency.
“Grievances have accumulated over the years. Over the evictions, but also over the lack of democracy in this country, the human rights abuses and the level of poverty,” Gerba said in a statement.
Activists in Berlin have protested the Ethiopian government’s response to the Oromo protests
International outcry
The US State Department on Saturday expressed concern over the crackdown, urging the government to allow “peaceful protests.”
“The United States is deeply concerned by the recent clashes in the Oromia region of Ethiopia that reportedly have resulted in the deaths of numerous protesters,” the State Department said in a statement.
A plan to expand the capital’s administrative control into the Oromia region has sparked deadly protests.
The government has accused Oromo protestors of links with terrorist groups and trying to topple the state.
Amnesty says the claims aim to justify repression of those protesting against feared land seizures.
The Oromo make up Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group, at about 27 million people.
Oromia is the country’s largest region, surrounding the capital Addis Ababa.
Authorities say five people have died in protests so far, but opposition parties and human rights groups say the number is closer to 40.
Protesters also say they fear cultural persecution if what has been dubbed a “master plan” to integrate parts of Oromia into Addis Ababa go ahead.
‘Chilling’
Some have also raised the prospect that they will be forcibly evicted and their land taken amid the rapid expansion of the capital.
“The suggestion that these Oromo – protesting against a real threat to their livelihoods – are aligned to terrorists will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression for rights activists,” said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.
Protesters have been labelled ‘terrorists’ by Ethiopian authorities in an attempt to violently suppress protests against potential land seizures, which have already resulted in 40 deaths, said Amnesty International.
A statement issued by state intelligence services today claims that the Oromia protesters were planning to “destabilize the country” and that some of them have a “direct link with a group that has been collaborating with other proven terrorist parties”.
“The suggestion that these Oromo – protesting against a real threat to their livelihoods – are aligned to terrorists will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression for rights activists,” said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.
“Instead of condemning the unlawful killings by the security forces, which have seen the deaths of more than 40 people in the last three weeks, this statement in effect authorizes excessive use of force against peaceful protesters.”
The latest round of protests, now in their third week, are against the government’s master plan to integrate parts of Oromia into the capital Addis Ababa.
Similar protests against the master plan in April 2014 resulted in deaths, injuries and mass arrest of the Oromo protesters.
Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation 652/2009, permits the government to use unrestrained force against suspected terrorists, including pre-trial detention of up to four months.
People that have been subject to pre-trial detention under the anti-terrorism law have reported widespread use of torture and ill treatment. All claims of torture and ill treatment should be promptly and independently investigated by the authorities.
“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,” said Muthoni Wanyeki.
Warreen humna waraanaa, polisaa fi tika Wayyaanee keessa jirtan Oromoo ajjeessuu irraa of qusadhaa. Mootummaan Wayyaanee yeroon isaa dhumatera. Harka walqabannee mootummaa kana kuffisuudhaan bilisummaa, dimokraasii, nagaa fi tasgabbii ummatootni barbaadan argamsiisuuf haa warraaqnu. Manni olla keettii osoo gubatu kiyya nagaa baha jettee hin eegin. Ibiddi mana olla keetitti qabate kees gubuu hin ooluutii.
December 15, 2015 Human Rights
HRLHA Urgent Action
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
15 December, 2015
The brutal crackdown against Oromoprotesters by the Agazi Special Squad and Liyu Police (literally special police) continues unabated in different parts of the regional state of Oromia. Reports coming from all around Oromia Regional State indicate that Oromia Regional State is already under Command post.
brutalityAccording to information obtained by HRLHA (today) from its correspondents, the Agazi Special Squad has been deployed in Jaldu district, west Shewa with heavily armed vehicles and security forcesengaged in indiscriminately killing and kidnapping the local people from the streets and throwing them into detention centres in the area.
militaryAlthough the protests against thegovernment’s plan to annex some central small towns of Oromia into the Capital Addis Ababa/Finfinne have involved Oromos from all walks of life, age and gender, the prime targets have been children and youth, farmers, university, college, and high school students in particular.
Amongthe many massacred, the HRLHA has received the following names:
Partial List of killed Oromos since protested on 14, November 2015 to present.
(Note: The names of killed Oromos listed in HRLHA’s UA issued on Dec, 8. 2015 also included in this list)
Since the protest started in different parts of the regional state of Oromia two weeks ago, more than 10,000 Oromos have been arrested and detained from the following areas:West Shewa:Ambo, Gudar, Bako,Ginci, Gindabarat, Jaldu,Skukutee, Xiqur Incini, Gindo, Kachise, Gedo, Babichi,
North Shewa: Kuyyuu, Gabra Gurrachaa, Muka Xurii, Salalee
Ethiopia opposition tells government to stop killing protesters
From left: Ethiopian opposition Medrek party Vice-Chairman Merera Gudina, Chairman Beyene Petros and Public Relations head Tilahun Endashaw at press conference in Addis Ababa December 15, 2015
By ANDUALEM SISAY | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The Opposition has accused Ethiopian security forces of killing at least 32 people in Oromia in the outskirt of Addis Ababa in the past few weeks.
The dead, claimed the opposition, include the Oromo students who took part in two demonstrations.
Presenting the names, the relatives and the homes of the victims, the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum (Medrek), urged the government to stop the killings as they were a violation of the constitution.
Medrek urged the government to respond to the demands of the protesters in a peaceful and civilised manner. Their brothers
“How could the military shoot and kill children demonstrating against the killings of their brothers and relatives? We keep on recording such crimes of this regime, and will one day bring the people who committed the crimes before an international court to account,” said the Medrek Chairman, Prof Beyene Petros,
Medrek came third in the May General Election in which the ruling party and its allies won with a landslide.
Expansion plan
A 10-year-old boy was among the protesters killed by security forces in Burayu Monday, according Dr Merera Gudina, the Vice-chairman of Medrek.
The Oromo students have been protesting against the Addis Ababa city’s expansion plan, which they claim will encroach on the land owned by smallholder farmers in Oromia.
Dr Merera claimed the government was buying one square meter of land for 4 to 5 birr (a quarter of US dollar) and selling it to the so called investors for 20,000 birr ($1,000) per square metres.
“Where is this money [profit] going? Is it really going to change the lives of the farmers who used to live on that land? Are we doing something that sustains the lives of the farmers, such as helping them to own bank shares that protect them from becoming beggars after finishing the money?” Dr Merera asked.
The death
He claimed that some 150, 000 farmers were evicted from around Addis Ababa following the disputed May 2005 General Election in which 193 demonstrators were killed.
The government maintains that the new Addis Ababa masterplan aimed at benefitting the Oromo people living around the city through better infrastructures, among others.
A week after the protests erupted and the death of some students was reported, the government also indicated in public media that the masterplan was at a draft stage and would not be implemented without consultations with the people.
Oromo Protesters’ funeral processions turn into protest as government carries violence to burial grounds
(Finfinne Tribune/ Gadaa.com, Muddee/December 15, 2015 ): The Oromo protests have expand in scope and size to stop, what protesters have put as decades-old marginalization, evictions, and politically-motivated killings and imprisonments of Oromos in Oromia, in addition to stopping the Addis Ababa Master Plan. As the Oromo protests grow in depth and size, Oromo students are joined, according to media reports, by Oromo farmers, teachers, factory workers, medical practitioners, athletes and other sectors of the society to wage the Oromo protests. In response to these Oromo civilian protests, the Ethiopian Federal government has mobilized its Special Paramilitary Police forces from other States, such as the Somali State and the Amhara State, in addition to dispatching mechanized army units to protest areas in Oromia. The government’s heavy-handed response to the escalating Oromo protests have led to the deaths of more than 50 Oromo civilians, as per the latest estimates.
While undertaking this paramilitary-police invasion of the State of Oromia, the Ethiopian government’s officials have taken to airwaves on state-owned media outlets to promise that the Master Plan ‘would be brought forward for public deliberations’ – the government has been promising this for the last year and half, but to no avail; rather, some parts of the Master Plan are said to be already underway. According to observers, this has exacerbated the situation since the Ethiopian government’s officials have blatantly continued to dismiss the ongoing peaceful Oromo protests as legitimate voices of the people saying “NO” to the Master Plan; having been given no other channel for protests, Oromo students in particular, and the Oromo public in general, are paying with their lives to say “NO” to the Master Plan. The government’s heavy-handed response emanates from its basic lack of understanding that the Oromo protests are legitimate broad-based people’s demands for rights; when protest movements reach such a point, no amount of military repression can stop them; rather, each death leads to more affected people to join and continue the protests.
According to new reports, the Ethiopian government has carried the violence into burial grounds: disrupting and harassing, and in some cases, shooting to maim and kill, mourners as they weep for and bury their loved ones. For this reason, funeral processions are no longer sober moments only, but moments to stage protests against the Master Plan and against the killings — and against the overall unjust system the Oromo have been subjected to for far too long — funeral processions have become moments to vow to continue the protests of the martyred. When the government refuses to bring forward those responsible for the killings of the unarmed peacefully-protesting Oromos and when the government refuses to take the ongoing Oromo protests as a “NO” say of the people against the Master Plan, justice becomes carrying the torches of the martyred and moving on the Oromo National protests to their final victory.
A Call for a Broader Solidarity with the Oromo Students Protesting against the Plan that will displace the Oromo Farmers
December 13, 2015
By Sidama Human Rights ActivistsIn the past three weeks, high school and university students across the Oromia region have staged peaceful protests against the Addis Ababa (Finfine) “Master Plan” that will integrate the city and the surrounding areas in the Oromia region inhabited by the Oromo farmers. The students and the Oromo communities living in the areas adjacent to the city stress that the so-called Master Plan will displace thousands of farmers from their ancestral farm lands thereby undermining their livelihood security and social cohesion. They condemn the ‘Master Plan’ as a pretext for a land grab. They argue that economic development and transformation should benefit people living on the land first, not displace them. Like many other urban centers in Oromia and the south, Finfine is a garrison city built on the ancestral lands of the Oromo people. In such urban centers, the interests of the indigenous inhabitants should be carefully balanced with the need for expansion of the urban space.Peaceful protests by students to voice these legitimate concerns of millions of the Oromo people, have been met with extraordinary violence and brutality by the Ethiopian federal police and paramilitary forces. According to the latest reports, the federal police and paramilitary forces have killed about 20 students in various parts of the Oromia region in the past three weeks. Similar peaceful protests in May 2014 against the same ‘Master Plan’ led to death of about 11 Oromo students (Oromo activists put the death toll at 47).The Oromo people are the single largest nation in Ethiopia accounting for 37% of Ethiopia’s population of about 96 million in 2014. The Oromia region remains the backbone of the Ethiopian economy. Nonetheless, the Oromo people never enjoyed the fruits of their natural resource endowments nor had equitable political representation commensurate to their stature in the country since their land was annexed into the Ethiopian Empire in the late 19th century. Instead, like many other oppressed nations, they remained systematically marginalized and continued to be treated as minorities by the successive Ethiopian regimes. Successive regimes continue to grossly violate human rights of the Oromo and other oppressed peoples. An October 2014 Report by Amnesty International revealed that “at least 5,000 ethnic Oromos have been arrested between 2011 and 2014 based on their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government.” The report highlights widespread violations of human rights in the Oromia region and “exposes how Oromos have been regularly subjected to arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention without charge, enforced disappearance, repeated torture and unlawful state killings as part of the government’s incessant attempts to crush dissent.”
Widespread violations of human rights were also observed in Sidama following the Loqqe Massacre of 70 peaceful protestors on 24 May 2002. The Loqqe protest was against the proposal to relocate the Sidama administrative capital from Hawassa city to a district town. In exactly the same manner in which the Addis Ababa ‘Master Plan’ envisages to grab the surrounding lands inhabited by the Oromo farmers, the Hawassa city administration continues to displace thousands of the Sidama farmers living adjacent to the Hawassa city today without commensurate compensation, destroying their livelihood security and plunging them in to destitution.
The demands of the Oromo students therefore echo the suffering not only of the Oromo framers but also of the Sidama farmers, the Somali farmers, the Afar farmers, the Benishangul-Gumuz farmers, the Gambella framers, and the farmers in all oppressed regions of Ethiopia. In light of this, the silence of the high schools and the university students in Sidama, Somali, Afar, Benishangul Gumuz, Gambella, as well as Wolayita, Gamogofa, Kaffa, and everywhere else is unwarranted. We call up on all high school and university students in oppressed lands in Ethiopia to join hands in peaceful solidarity with the Oromo students as a matter of urgency. It is naïve to think that the Oromo problems are not our problems. Injustice against one oppressed people, is injustice against all oppressed peoples! You will never be free unless your neighbor is free.
We have witnessed the Oromo solidarity demonstrations in various cities in North America and Europe. This is emboldening. We call up on all the oppressed peoples in Diaspora to join hands in solidarity with the Oromo protesters in North America and Europe and elsewhere.
We also call up on the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Union, China, and the African Union to exert pressure on the Ethiopian government to immediately halt the use violence against peaceful students echoing legitimate grievances about the livelihood securities of their people.
Finally, on behalf of the Sidama people, we express our deepest condolences for the tragic losses of the lives of young and aspiring Oromo high school and university students in the past three weeks.
Letter from Heart Broken Oromo-American Sister to President Obama: From $840 US aide to Oromo students’ slaughter
By Seena Oromia, December 12, 2015
Dear President Obama,
Have you heard the news in Ethiopia? President Obama, have you seen our sorrow? Can you feel our pain? Can you hear our anger? I hope you can! It was not too long ago… that I among thousands of fellow Oromos campaigned for you. I knocked door-to-door, walked miles and made calls throughout the night. Like millions of Americans. I longed for you to win the election. Like all others who lost hope in their governments and discriminated by the system, I prayed and crossed my fingers for you to become the president. In you, I saw my dream and hope. I believed you were the person, the chosen leader that will stand with the people that is left behind for far too long. On a cold Tuesday evening, I waited among thousands others to watch you give the defining speech that moved us so much. You said, “to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared…out of many, we are one….”
Since then many things had happed. I watched you transform from candidate to president. As the world leader I watched you take blame for some things that is outside of your controlled. I watched some republican congress trash you simply because they hate to be governed by black person. I saw some conservatives disrespect you in the most painful way I can possible think. Thought you don’t see me, I got burn for you in the inside. Though I am far and irrelevant, I defended you and some of your policies. With all this madness that was and still is going on, I thought you deserved benefit of the doubt like any other human being. You inherited the most dangerous time when America, as we know, was in verge of collapsing internally and externally as well.
However, sometimes I wonder and question some of your judgments. I understand that though you might have enormous pressure to make things right, to prove to the world that your administration and your government has the intelligence to lead our world, president Obama, why do you praise dictators like the Ethiopian that has the thousands of Oromo blood on its hand? Why visit and meet with the Ethiopian prime minister and the party that supposedly won the election by 100% votes? I know you are not naïve to believe the election was legitimate nor do you for a second believe that country was democratic. But, somehow your choice of standing by the dictator and praising his action has only lead to more extreme violence that lead us, not only to question your morality, but also your intentions. And today, so many of our brothers and sisters are paying the price with their lives.
Yesterday, in May of 2014, while your secretary Kerry was giving a speech praising this regime, over 50 university students were murdered in cold blood just less than 70 miles away. Yet, you failed not only to condemn this crime that had happened over and over but failed to denounce the perpetrators. A year later you went there as a first sitting US president praising this very regime. President Obama, you tell me, what happened to change you can believe in? What has happened to those promises on campaign trail? What happened to those promise of yours that said, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish?” President Obama, we are hopeless, our sisters and brothers are voiceless that even local reporters turn around and shut their cameras rather than capturing the horrifying images. Perhaps the government restricted them so now international media thinks our lives are less important and not news worthy. Where is the place for people like us, refugees, and political immigrants? Who stands with us, if not you, the president of free world, which is built on the back of African slaves and all immigrants?
President Obama, as one of your biggest fan and supporter who not only campaigned for you but supported you financially, please condemn this violence publicly that is taking place right in front of our eyes. Please stop $840 million aid to the Ethiopian regime that is the perpetrators creating this violence. President Obama, I am hopeless and my heart is in agony. I am also asking you as your fellow American to demand justice for Oromo students that are gunned down each and every day.
For more developing news or story, please check out this links that includes reports from BBCNews,
According to a media report, just last month alone, 600 Oromo farming families were evicted from Sululta, one of the towns in Oromia affected by the Addis Ababa Master Plan of the Ethiopian Federal government. The Master Plan evictions in Sululta came in November 2015, just before the latest escalations of Oromo protests as Oromo students in particular, and the Oromo public in general, engage the Federal government to stop the Addis Ababa Master Plan as well as the overall land-grabbing campaigns being undertaken by the Federal government in the name of “development” across Oromia. The report about the Master Plan evictions of 600 Oromo households in Sululta contradicts the Ethiopian Federal government’s stated position that the Addis Ababa Master Plan is still in its drafting phase awaiting public deliberations. Last year, during the April-May 2014’s #OromoProtests, the government promised to open the Master Plan for public deliberations only to forego that phase of the policy-making altogether. Protesters say the government’s promise of public deliberations are only tricks to buy time to fully implement the Master Plan and other land-grabbing campaigns across Oromia.
Here’s an excerpt from the DW report:
One Oromo farmer from Sululta, a town part of the ‘integrated master plan’ located 26 kilometers (16 miles) to the north of Addis Ababa, spoke to DW on condition of anonymity. He claimed that in late November alone, the government evicted 600 farming families on the grounds that their land was needed for the construction of a factory. When asked if they had received fair compensation and a new home, the farmer told DW that the money given to them was ‘very meager,’ and that the families had so far not been given a place to relocate to.
Mergitu Argo, who helped organize a march on Thursday in support of Oromo student protestors in Ethiopia. (Photo by Goorish Wibneh)
Oromos from the Seattle area gathered downtown yesterday to condemned the Ethiopian government’s lethal response to student protests sparked around the south of the country this week.
The protests of high school and university students were in response to the government’s “master plan” that will integrate the capital and surrounding areas now belonging to the Oromo Region, which protestors say will displace farmers.
“I believe people should have the right to protest without feeling like they are gonna be beaten, or killed or jailed.” said Sartu Adem, 18, who was among about 200 solidarity protesters who gathered in front of the Federal Building on 2nd Avenue. “But I feel like the people should have a say whether they want [the development plan] or not — not just the government saying ‘oh we are developing the country!’”
The action was coordinated by Oromo Community Services of Seattle, and began in the rainy noon hour with march from Yesler Community Center.
Despite being the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, the Oromo people have historically been politically and economically marginalized. In 1991 a federal constitution was instituted to address the issue, but some Oromo elites remain unconvinced that the region or the people are as autonomous as they should be.
Oromia, which physically includes Addis Ababa (knowns as “Finfine” in the Oromo language), is the largest region in Ethiopia.
Muktar Kedir, the administrator of Oromia Regional State, explained in a press conference earlier today that the development plan will not be implemented before public discussions and agreement.
But Abubeker Ali, one of the organizers of the Seattle protest, said displacement is already happening.
“The extent that we know so far is, in Finfine/Addis Ababa area, thousands of people have been displaced already. Homes have been demolished, people have been arrested,” Ali said.
Ali said he opposed the master plan, which he referred to as “master killer.” He called it a “land grab” designed to displace millions of farmers without any compensation.
Demonstrators gathered outside the Federal Building asking the U.S. government to apply diplomatic pressure on Ethiopia to end the crackdown on protests. (Photo by Goorish Wibneh)
There are conflicting accounts of the number of students that were killed.Bloomberg reported 10 Oromo students have been killed by security forces, quoting Bekele Nega a leader of the Oromo Federalist Congress, an opposition party. On Wednesday, Horn Affairs reported it was able to confirm five deaths but officials only acknowledged four fatalities.
The protesters in Seattle also delivered a letter to Senators Murray and Cantwellrequesting that the U.S. urge the Ethiopian government to stop violent responseagainst peaceful student protesters and conduct independent investigation into the deaths.
The U.S. has a longstanding military relationship with Ethiopia to fight terrorism. At the rally protestors could be heard chanting for the U.S. to stop “supporting the Ethiopian government” and “funding a terrorist government.”
The protesters included some ethnic Somalis from the Ogaden region in eastern Ethiopia who were there in solidarity.
While the “master plan” has not been officially implemented yet, Addis Ababa has been fast expanding already for several years.
Naboni Amenu who was at the rally with her husband said the farmers that had already been displaced are now stranded on the streets without resources.
FBC, a media outlet affiliated with the government, reported that Muktar Kedir, the administrator of Oromia, said “the violence had occurred due to limitation to clarify the master plan and this has created uncertainty among the community as well as led the public to raise question[sic].”
According to Ethiopia-based blogger Daniel Berhane, protests around the Oromia region are ongoing, with many businesses and public institutions closed. The situation is still fragile.
“I feel like in Ethiopia people only care about which region they’re from,” Adem said yesterday, decrying the regionalism that she sees hurting the country. “Everyone should care about each other. Everyone should think about ‘Has this person eaten?’ ‘How’s this person living?‘”
The Honorable Julie Bishop
Australian Foreign Ministry
PO Box 2010
Subiaco, WA, 6904
Melbourne, Australia
Dear Mrs. Bishop,
Ref: – This weeklong killing, beating and detention of protesting Oromo Students by the Ethiopian security forces across Ethiopia’s Oromia Reginal State,
We are coping you an appeal letter we sent to the Ethiopian regime to draw your attention to the plight of Oromo students, and Oromo people in Oromia, Ethiopia and to convey our great concern about the ongoing violent action against unarmed students protest. We are extremely saddened by reports that Ethiopian security forces again this week opened fire and killed unarmed student protestors at Haro Mayya and Madda Walaabuu Universities, imprisoning unarmed young university and high school students over Oromia Region from East to West and North to south. The current episode is the repeat of the inhumane treatment of two years ago and innocent students and parents are under indiscriminate attack.
The Board of the United Oromo Evangelical Churches, on behalf of its member churches around the World, is sending its urgent appeal to you and all fair minded people of good will, churches and other religious establishments, regimes, and other Human Rights organizations to urgently intervine on behalf of the young Oromo students and the households of students, and the small farmers being displaced and ask the Ethiopian government to:
AUS_-UOEC-petition_letter_cover_-Human-right-Organziations, 4 December 2015
Depuis 10 jours, de violents affrontements ont lieu entre les forces de l’ordre et des manifestants dans la région d’Oromia en Éthiopie. Les militants, pour beaucoup des étudiants, dénoncent un projet “d’accaparement des terres” mené par le gouvernement.
Fin novembre, le gouvernement éthiopien a annoncé un plan d’extension de la capitale Addis Abeba, située dans la région d’Oromia. Appelé “Master Plan”, ce projet a pour objectif, selon les autorités éthiopiennes, de contrôler l’expansion rapide des grandes villes pour atténuer l’exode rural. Mais ce projet fait craindre aux habitants un accaparement des terres agricoles. Il avait déjà été annoncé en 2014 et avait alors suscité une vague de manifestations à travers la région, coûtant la vie à 70 étudiants, selon un communiqué de l’association des étudiants de l’Oromia.
“Ni les habitants ni le gouvernement de l’Oromia n’ont été concertés”
John B
John B (pseudonyme) est étudiant à Ambo University dans la région d’Oromia. Il était sur le campus durant les premiers jours de la manifestation. Il nous explique ce conflit compliqué entre les Oromos et le gouvernement central.
L’Éthiopie est une République fédérale divisée en neuf régions. Selon la constitution, chaque région à le droit à son propre gouvernement. Mais nous avons un problème dans l’Oromia : la capitale du pays, Addis Abeba, est située dans la région et elle est gouvernée par le gouvernement fédéral.
Il y a toujours eu des différents entre la population d’Oromia et le gouvernement central, mais en Éthiopie, il y est difficile de se rebeller. Le mois dernier, le gouvernement a de nouveau mis sur la table son “Master Plan” . Avec ce projet, le gouvernement veut étendre son contrôle administratif dans l’Oromia. C’est une sorte d’extension d’Addis Abeba.
Mais le “Master Plan” remet totalement en cause notre frontière et nous avons peur que cela passe par un accaparement des terres. Des fermiers oromos pourraient-être expulsés. Ni les habitants ni le gouvernement de l’Oromia n’ont été concertés. C’est pour cette raison que la population manifeste : personne ne veut céder ses terres ! Surtout que nous savons que ce plan de “développement” de la ville ne va bénéficier qu’à une minorité de dirigeants, pas aux habitants oromos.
Selon Bekele Nega, le secrétaire général du Congrès Fédéral d’Oromia [parti d’opposition en Éthiopie], 13 étudiants auraient été tués et une centaine jetés en prison suite aux manifestations. Sur Facebook et Twitter, de nombreuses photos d’étudiants blessés et de policiers armés ont été relayées.
Ce sont les étudiants qui se sont mobilisés en premier. Dans mon université, les manifestations ont commencé la semaine dernière. C’était très pacifique et d’ailleurs, selon la Constitution éthiopienne, nous avons le droit de manifester. Trois jours après le début des manifestations, la police est entrée dans le campus. Les forces de l’ordre se sont montrées très violentes, des étudiants se sont fait frapper, beaucoup avaient du sang sur le visage et les mains. Tout le monde s’est mis à courir. Ceux qui n’ont pas eu le temps de s’échapper ont été arrêtés et emmenés au poste de police.
Les fermiers et les habitants de l’Oromia ont rejoint les manifestations étudiantes. Photo prise à Inango – Oromia.
Je sais que dans d’autres universités, les policiers ont utilisé des armes à feu mais pas dans la mienne. En ce moment il n’y a presque plus personne sur le campus : les étudiants ont peur. Dans d’autres villes, les manifestations continuent et les étudiants ont été rejoints par les habitants et les fermiers. Je n’ai jamais vu un mouvement de contestation si important dans la région.
Les médecins de l’hôpital Jimma dans la ville d’Agaro dans l’Oromia expriment leur soutien aux manifestants.
Le mouvement de contestation ne s’arrête pas aux frontières éthiopiennes. Selon le compte Twitter “Oromo Press”, la communauté oromo aux États-Unis s’est mobilisée ce vendredi pour dénoncer le “Master Plan” et demander l’intervention du président américain.
Le commissaire de police de la région s’est justifié lors d’une conférence de presse la semaine dernière. Selon lui, les manifestants auraient été particulièrement violents. Les forces de l’ordre ne seraient alors intervenues que pour maintenir le calme dans les universités et écoles.
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English Translation (Google)
For 10 days, violent clashes took place between police and protesters in the Oromia region in Ethiopia. The activists, many of them students, denounce a project “land grab” led by the government.In late November, the Ethiopian government has announced a plan to extend the capital Addis Ababa, located in Oromia. Called “Master Plan”, the project aims, according to the Ethiopian authorities to control the rapid expansion of large cities to mitigate the rural exodus. But this project fears the inhabitants a farmland grab. It had already been announced in 2014 and was then sparked a wave of protests across the region, claiming the lives of 70 students, according to a statement of the association of students of theOromia.
With nearly 25 million inhabitants, Oromia is the most populated region of Ethiopia. The Oromos, the largest ethnic group in the region, denounce their marginalization for many years.
“Neither the people nor the government of the Oromia have been concerted”
John B
John B (pseudonym) is a student in Ambo University in the Oromia region. He was on campus during the first days of the event. He explains this complicated conflict between the Oromo and the central government.
Ethiopia is a federal republic divided into nine regions.According to the constitution, each region has the right to his own government. But we have a problem in Oromia: the capital, Addis Ababa, is located in the region and it is governed by the federal government.
There have always been different from the population of Oromia and the central government, but in Ethiopia, it is hard to rebel. Last month, the government again put on the table his “Master Plan”. With this project, the government wants to extend its administrative control in the Oromia. This is a kind of extension of Addis Ababa.
But the “Master Plan” runs counter to our border and we fear that it goes through a land grab. Of Oromo farmers could be expelled. Neither the people nor the government of the Oromia have been concerted. This is why the population manifesto: nobody wants to surrender its land!Especially since we know that this plan “development” of the city will benefit only a minority of leaders, not the Oromo people.
According to Bekele Nega, the general secretary of the Federal Congress Oromia [opposition party in Ethiopia], 13 students were killed and hundreds jailed following protests. On Facebook and Twitter, many photos of students injured and armed police were relayed.
These are students who mobilized first. At my university, the demonstrations began last week. It was very peaceful and elsewhere, according to the Ethiopian Constitution, we have the right to demonstrate. Three days after the protests began, the police entered the campus. The security forces have been very violent, students have been hit, many had blood on his face and hands. Everyone started running. Those who have not had time to escape were arrested and taken to the police station.
Farmers and people of Oromia joined student protests.Photo taken at Inango – Oromia.
I know that in other universities, police used firearms but not in mine. Right now there is almost no one on campus: students are afraid. In other cities, the protests continue and the students were joined by local residents and farmers. I have never seen such a large protest movement in the region.
Doctors at the hospital in Jimma town in the Oromia Agaro express their support for protesters.
The protest movement does not stop the Ethiopian border. According to the Twitter account “Oromo Press”, the Oromo community in the US rallied on Friday to denounce the “Master Plan” and request the intervention of US President .
The region’s police commissioner was justified at a press conference last week. He said the demonstrators were particularly violent. The security forces would do that then intervened to maintain calm in universities and schools.
In the last two weeks, protests have spread to more than 50 towns as part of a larger and years-long movement against the Ethiopian government’s controversial development plan. It’s 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.
By all accounts, according to Jawar Mohammed, the founder of Oromo Media Network, the recent movement is much bigger than its predecessor. The Minnesota-based Ethiopian said reports indicate farmers and other citizens have even begun to join in on the demonstrations over the last few days.
“This is the biggest protest by far that I have seen in the last 25 years,” Mohammed said.
In addition to being more widespread than previous demonstrations, this year’s protests have reportedly been better organized, according to American-based Ethiopian journalist Mohammed Ademo. While improved access to social media has played a role, Ademo said the size can also be attributed to a growing dissatisfaction among the public with what he called the “government’s top-down, non-participatory approach to development.”
“Gone are the days when the central government can displace Oromo farmers and forcibly implement any policy,” he said. “Continued crackdown on the protesters only ensures Oromos’ growing estrangement from the state.”
The estrangement has a strong economic component. The expansion of Addis Ababa, the headquarters of both the African Union and the international airline carrier Ethiopia Airways, is a symptom of both the wider urbanization in sub-Saharan African cities and the booming success of national economy.
Addis Ababa has seen growing foreign and economic investment in recent years, while at the same time becoming a regional business hub, Bill Moseley, a geography professor at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota, said.
“Ethiopia’s seen as this kind of up-and-coming country with a lot of investment that’s posturing to make Addis more of a global city, so I’m sure that’s feeding into this sort of push to expansion,” Moseley explained. “It’s these small farmers that lose out, but it’s rationalized in sort of these broader development goals.”
Generally, said Moseley, when governments pave the way for urban growth they often use this development as a way to justify land grabs. According to Moseley, this situation is not exclusive to Addis Ababa and Ethiopia, but one seen in other cities across sub-Saharan Africa and around the world.
For the Oromo, specifically, activists claim they have not benefited from the country’s growth and prosperity. The regional ethnic group, which counts Oromia as its homeland, makes up more than 80 percent of the state’s 27 million people. Nationally it represents upward of 35 percent.
Literacy rates are bleak and the group is underrepresented in government. According to Mohammed, nearly a dozen Oromo clans have been swallowed up in the city’s horizontal expansion as they are forced off their lands. In Ethiopia, the government owns all of the land, but the constitution does provide some protections for the public. Oromo activists say these rights have been ignored in the rush to expand.
“The capital city is in the middle of Oromia, but you don’t see any Oromo identity in it,” he said. “Every time [Addis Ababa] expands it just destroys them. They’re saying the development has to incorporate us…. You can’t just leave us stranded.”
The planned development has also hit home for the Oromo, who have a very close connection with their land, according to Human Rights Watch Horn of Africa researcher Felix Horne.
“They’re concerned if a large portion of land outside of Addis Ababa comes under control of the city administration that farmers will be displaced from the land,” he explained. “[That] they won’t receive compensation from their livelihoods. And they won’t have the ability to feed their families.”
The government has a history of cracking down on the Oromo people, who represent a majority of the population and a perceived threat to power to the minority-led coalition. Horne said that anytime Oromos expresses dissent or simply asks a question about land development policies, they can be subject to arbitrary detention and mistreatment.
Beyond discrimination and crackdown on the Oromo, freedom of press and other expression is heavily curtailed in the country as a whole. Horne said coverage of the recent protests has been almost non-existent.
“Ethiopia is often applauded internationally for its economic growth and development initiatives, but that’s only one part of the story,” he said. “Anyone who expresses any form of dissent in Ethiopia is in trouble.”
Opposition groups say security forces have killed 20 people in three weeks of protests over a government re-zoning plan. Members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group view the plan as a further infringement on their rights.
Opposition groups say security forces have killed 20 people in three weeks of protests over a government re-zoning plan. Members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group view the plan as a further infringement on their rights.
“Dubbiin lafaa dubbii lafeeti!” (“The matter of land is a matter of the bone.”) When describing the sensitivity of the so-called “Addis Ababa master plan,” Bekele Naga, the Secretary-General of the Oromo Federalist Congress party (OFC), does not mince his words. “The constitution of the country proclaims that the land belongs to the people,” Naga told DW. But he believes this is being violated: “The Ethiopian government has been engaged in land grabbing, leading to cultural genocide [of the Oromo people].”
Oromia is one of nine regional states organized by Ethiopia’s system of “ethnic-based federalism,” which is part of the country’s constitution. The national government is pushing forward with a plan to expand the area of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia state. Protests over the plan have been going on for weeks, but for the Oromo people, tensions have existed for much longer.
Neglect at the root of the crisis
Oromos make up the largest chunk of Ethiopia’s 95 million people, and their language is the fourth most widely spoken African language across the continent. Yet Oromo is not recognized as a federal working language.
Most Oromos feel they have been cheated of political and economic representation by a succession of non-Oromo governments. To them, the plan by the government and city administration to expand the area of the capital – which Oromos prefer to call Finfine instead of the Amharic “Addis Ababa” – is yet another example of the high-handedness of the ruling elite which comprises mostly non-Oromos.
Protests against the plan to connect the capital with a number of Oromia towns first turned violent in April 2014. At least 11 people were killed when security officers used live ammunition against demonstrators. Oromo representatives put the number of dead as high as 47.
According to an Amnesty International report from 2014, “between 2011 and 2014 at least 5,000 Oromos have been arrested […], detained without charge or trial, or killed by security services during protests, arrests and in detention.”
Many of the protestors are students, who are now demonstrating against the violence.
Farming families evicted
In Africa’s second most populous nation, land is hotly contested between farmers and investors, both local and foreign, as the government pushes forward with an ambitious development agenda. Critics of the “Addis Ababa master plan” argue that it is not designed to export development into the surrounding communities as the government claims, but rather to evict Oromo farmers and residents from their land.
One Oromo farmer from Sululta, a town part of the “integrated master plan” located 26 kilometers (16 miles) to the north of Addis Ababa, spoke to DW on condition of anonymity. He claimed that in late November alone, the government evicted 600 farming families on the grounds that their land was needed for the construction of a factory. When asked if they had received fair compensation and a new home, the farmer told DW that the money given to them was “very meager,” and that the families had so far not been given a place to relocate to.
The farmer also claimed that officials at the Sululta municipality and the Oromia regional administration threatened the farmers they were evicting with arrest should they fail to accept the “deal.”
Get the word out
“Where do we go…no one is going to accept us,” another farmer, aged 89, told DW, on condition of anonymity.” Since we have no other solution, we are pleading to you [the media],” he said.
Not surprisingly, there has been little to no information in the country’s mainstream media, which is tightly controlled by a government often criticized by media watch groups for its harassment of independent and critical journalists.
That’s why Oromo protesters have taken to the Internet and to social media. #OromoProtests is trending on Facebook and gruesome images and videos of gunned-down students are circulating widely on the web.
Oromos in the diaspora, known for their vocal contribution to the “Oromo cause,” have also taken to the streets in major cities in the US and Europe. “It is often months before victims and witnesses come forward to reveal what happened in their communities,” says Felix Horne, an Ethiopia researcher with Human Rights Watch. “They eventually do, and the truth will emerge.”
Three weeks of protest have left 20 dead, more than 150 injured and more than 500 arrested – that is according to figures provided to DW by the OFC, the main Oromo political party. The protests are likely to continue, and some embassies in Ethiopia’s capital are bracing for more violence. Norway, for example, has issued travel warnings for parts of Oromia.
In response to the ongoing protests in Ethiopia’s Oromia regional state and authorities’s violent response, killing and injuring several peaceful protesters, Freedom House issued the following statement:
The authorities trying to forcibly stop protests in Oromia should remember that peaceful assembly is guaranteed by Ethiopia’s constitution,” said Jenai Cox, senior Africa program manager. Firing live bullets to disburse peaceful protesters violates this right. The government of Ethiopia should conduct an inquiry into these police killings and bring those responsible to justice.”
Background:
Oromia is the largest regional state in Ethiopia. Students and other residents across the region have staged peaceful rallies to object to a government-proposed master plan that apparently calls for the expansion of Addis Ababa into the Oromia regional state, potentially evicting farmers. Activists report that 14 protesters have been killed by police and several others were injured.
Freedom House is an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.
Violent clashes in Ethiopia over ‘master plan’ to expand Addis
Extending capital into surrounding farmland is part of ongoing discrimination against Oromo people, say protesters. Global Voices reports
Men parade in the Oromia region outside Addis Ababa. Photograph: STR New/Reuters
Endalk Chala for Global Voices, part of the Guardian Africa network
Friday 11 December 2015
At least 10 students are said to have been killed and hundreds injured during protests against the Ethiopian government’s plans to expand the capital city into surrounding farmland.
According to Human Rights Watch, the students were killed this week when security forces used excessive force and live ammunition to disperse the crowds.
The students were protesting against a controversial proposal, known as “the master plan”, to expand Addis Ababa into surrounding Oromia state, which they say will threaten local farmers with mass evictions.
According to the Ethiopian constitution, Oromia is one of the ninepolitically autonomous regional states in the country, and the region’s Oromo people make up the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia.
It’s not the first time the security forces have reacted violently to protests in support of the group. At least nine students were killed in May 2014 while defending the rights of famers in the region when the “master plan” was first announced.
In response to the violence, Amnesty International issued a report on government repression last year, noting that “between 2011 and 2014, at least 5,000 Oromos [were] arrested based on their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government.”
The human rights organisation found that in numerous cases “actual or suspected [Oromo] dissenters were detained without charge or trial, killed by security services during protests, arrests and in detention.”
The ruling elite and members of government are mostly from the Tigray region, which is located in the northern part of the country.
Social media
The Ethiopian media has paid little attention to the protests. Demonstrators have been taking to Facebook and Twitter to report the clashes, with additional coverage coming from diaspora media.
“The Oromo youth are a powerful political entity capable of shaking mountains,” one Facebook user, Aga Teshome, wrote in support of the protesters. “This powerful political entity is hell bent on exposing the [ruling party] EPRDF government’s atrocious human rights record and all round discriminatory practices.”
Another user said more should be done to shine light on the movement: “The silence has truly been deafening. We need to see and hear the inspiring actions undertaken by huge numbers of #Oromo in #Ethiopia.”
Desu Tefera echoed the calls for better media coverage: “We call upon the media to investigate the conditions that these students died trying to expose and resist,” he wrote.
“Oromia needs a new kind of reporting by the international media, which gives voice to the voiceless Oromo people, who for a very long time have been killed, mistreated, abused, neglected and repressed in Ethiopia.”
Dubious development
For many Ethiopians, this week’s clashes show that the issue of Oromo rights refuses to go away.
Protests against the master plan for expansion first began in April last year, when students from outside the capital argued that if the proposal was implemented, it would result in Addis further encroaching into the surrounding territory, allowing the capital to subsume surrounding towns and leaving informal settlements vulnerable to government redevelopment.
The government rejected the accusation, claiming that the plan was intended only to facilitate the development of infrastructure such as transportation, utilities and recreation centres.
The unrest halted the development until now, but in November resentment boiled over again when it became clear the government had resumed its plan.
Since the highly contested 2005 national election forceful evictions and urban land grabbing have become frequent in Addis and its environs, opposition groups say. The city’s rapid growth has resulted in increasing pressure to convert rural land for industrial, housing or other urban use.
The population of the capital is estimated to have grown at a rate of 3.8% per year since 2007, but the repurposing of land in order to accommodate the expansion has been a particularly contentious issue.
Ermias Legesse, a high profile government defector, has argued that since 2000 the Addis Ababa city municipality, with the support of the federal government, has enacted five different pieces of legislation to “legalise” informal settlements, allowing them to be sold on to private property developers.
“Sometimes the informal settlers are given only a few days’ notices before bulldozers arrive on the scene to tear down their shabby houses and lay foundations for new investors,” Legesse said in an interview last week.
IOYA expresses concern about brutality against Oromo protesters
The following is a statement from the International Oromo Youth Association (IOYA).
09 December 2015
We are greatly concerned about the recent brutal crackdown against innocent unarmed peaceful protesters in Oromia by Ethiopian police.
Words seem inadequate to express the sadness we feel for the peaceful protesters who have been killed, beaten and unlawfully detained. We share their grief in this time of agony and pain. We are appalled that a similar tragedy occurred last year in April, 2014 and not much has changed in Ethiopia. Recent images surfing the internet are heartbreaking and disturbing. As an organization subscribing to broader democratic engagement of the Oromo youth, we oppose the brutal violence that the Ethiopian government is meting out on innocent, unarmed young students who are peacefully protesting. As International Oromo Youth, we support and stand in solidarity with Oromo student protesters.
The students are protesting the Addis Ababa “Integrated Developmental Master Plan” which aims at incorporating smaller towns surrounding Addis Ababa, displacing millions of farmers. The implementation of the “Master Plan” will essentially result in the displacement of the indigenous peoples and their families. Farmers will be dispossessed of their land and their survival both in economic and cultural terms will be threatened. The student protesters strongly believe that this plan will expose their natural environment to risk, threaten their economic means of livelihood (subsistence farming), and violate their constitutional rights.
We call on the international community to join us in denouncing these inhumane and cruel activities carried out by the Ethiopian government. It has been reported that shootings, unlawful arrests, and harassment by security personals are becoming rampant. We believe it is imperative that the international community raise its voice and take action to stop the ongoing atrocities that are wreaking havoc to families and communities in the Oromia region.
We pray for safety and security of all peoples in Ethiopia.
The following is a statement from the Oromo Studies Association (OSA).
—–
Oromo Studies Association (OSA)
P. O. Box 5641
Minneapolis, MN 55406-0541 www.oromostudies.org
Email: admin@oromostudies.org
For Immediate Release
December 9, 2015
Statement on the Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan and Oromo Student Protests against Its Implementation
The Oromo Studies Association (OSA) decries and denounces extreme measures taken by Ethiopian security forces, ongoing from late November 2015, killing and maiming peaceful student protesters.
Oromo students at every level of the educational system in Ethiopia, from elementary school to university, began peaceful demonstrations in late November 2015, to protest the implementation of a federally designed Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan (AAIMP), which usurps the authority of the Oromia regional government. The students have been met by heavily armed and equipped special Ethiopian police force units who fire into the crowds with deadly impact. There are ten (10) confirmed deaths at this writing, with the confrontation escalating.
The “Master Plan” refers to the federal government’s controversial design for expanding the territorial boundaries of the capital city, Addis Ababa, increasing the city to twenty times its present size by taking over prime agricultural land from Oromo farmers. This plan, developed in secrecy, was first exposed in April 2014, a disclosure that prompted widespread protests at that time. In April and May 2014 the Oromo students’ peaceful protest against the imposition of the Master Plan in all of Oromia region was met with deadly force and live ammunition, which resulted in the confirmed deaths of more than 70 students, maiming of hundreds and imprisonment of thousands of university students.
Since late November, the demonstrators have started to resist specific steps taken to implement this Plan. It calls for the Federal jurisdiction of the Capital City to seize fertile, well-watered and centrally located parts of the Oromia Regional State. The blueprints for this undertaking were developed without the participation of the Oromia regional government. Since the revelation, there has been no opportunity for public discussion of the plan. Now as Federal forces have begun to move these arable lands out of the domain of indigenous Oromo and into the control of the central government, Oromo students have responded with renewed protests. The scale of the Master Plan is such that it engulfs enough ancestral farmland to affect the lives and livelihoods of nearly six million Oromo people and dismembers the Oromia Regional State by dividing it into two separate zones. There is universal opposition among Oromo both in Oromia and in the diaspora to this Federal action, taken without due process.
OSA members belong to Oromo public and political organizations representing a wide spectrum of ideological and institutional positions. They share a clear focus and mission to produce verifiable data that reveal the real conditions of life of the Oromo people. They also find it within their mission to inform the public of the value and relevance of those findings. In this regard, OSA members have studied and produced research data on multiple dimensions of this very complex and problematic crisis of land use and proprietary rights in the east, west, north, south, as well as centre of Oromia. Findings reveal a longstanding but largely ignored pattern of land confiscation from the Oromo – of which this Master Plan is the latest expression.
OSA believes that the Master Plan is unconstitutional. It violates the principle of federalism, illegally alters the boundaries and jurisdiction of the Oromia regional government, violates citizens’ human right to property and security, and ignores the constitutional principle of transparency for good governance.
OSA believes that the Master Plan is harmful to human development. Contrary to the principles of participatory policy-making for sustainable development, the Master Plan was developed by the federal government to apportion land, in the name of investment, to the economic elite who are already at the top of the social hierarchy. The plan disregards the livelihood of Oromo farmers who will be displaced to face extreme poverty and an increasing unemployment rate. OSA views the plan as having uneven and detrimental impacts by contributing to policy-driven poverty among the Oromo and exacerbating intra-nation/ethnic economic inequality.
OSA believes that the Master Plan is injurious to the environment. Developed in secrecy, the Master Plan violates established principles and practices pertaining to environmental protection clauses. Under the Master Plan, the expanded city will continue dumping toxic substances and industrial wastes on the surrounding cities, towns and lands of Oromo people. Oromo communities in the outlying zones and the ecosystem will remain on the receiving end of the environmental harm.
OSA members fully support the rights of the students who initiated the protests and the rights of those who have now joined them in massive numbers. OSA officers and members will assist their effort to the fullest extent in its capacity as an academic, non-partisan association of Oromo and non-Oromo scholars. We are deeply concerned that the government is using excessive, often deadly, force against unarmed students, including even elementary school students. These incidents are followed by attacks against parents and townsfolk who come out to protect their children against the very security personnel who are constitutionally mandated to provide protection and maintain law and order. It should be a matter of grave concern when an internationally recognized government uses excessive force against its own citizens. It is extremely grievous that the Ethiopian government has called up its well-armed special forces to move against unarmed students. This violates every international human rights principle and rights enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution that officially guarantees extensive, regional and individual rights.
Let us be clear. The issue is not an abstract debate about whether a government has the duty to develop and implement policies to improve the conditions of lives for its citizens or to conduct urban planning necessary to accommodate natural migration of people from rural areas to urban centers. The issue is the unjust process in this instance developed and designed to implement a massive land transfer from Oromia Regional state control to Federal jurisdiction. Even more troublesome is the government’s utter disregard of the people’s inalienable right in a purported democracy to protest policies and to exercise rights guaranteed by the Ethiopian constitution.
The Master Plan is designed to be put into effect over a span of 25 years with a final phase occurring in 2038. When it is fully complete, it will:
o Incorporate 36 towns and 17 rural districts of the Oromia region into the Greater Addis Ababa territory. This includes, Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) Sululta, Dukem, Chancho, Adama, Ambo, Sabata, Mojo and other towns;
o Encompass a total area estimated to be 1.1 million hectares, of which the share of rural and urban areas amount to 85% and 15% with a corresponding population size of 2 million and 11.5 million respectively;
o Accumulate land “to increase rental housing by building 86,000 units every year under what the government calls “Rental Building Cooperative Sector” (10%), “Public Rental Housing Sector” (30%) and “Developmental Owners/Real Estate Sector(15%). As the result, it will uproot millions of Oromo farmers, disrupting not only their lives and livelihoods but dismantling their central position in the territorial and cultural landscape. The takeover disconnects Oromia’s current reach from the eastern to western boundaries of Ethiopia;
o Achieve 30% and 50% level of urbanization in 2023 and 2038 respectively. Given the limited urbanization among the Oromo because of the state-wide discriminatory language and economic policy against the Oromo, the plan will effectively erase Oromo identity, culture and language from the aggrandized Greater Addis Ababa. Even Oromo physical and economic presence would be totally cleared out of this crucially situated zone.
Generally, the plan has the direct effect of forcible transfer, displacement, dislocation and dispossession of the Oromo population from the area in which they are historically indigenous.
The Master Plan reveals that the incumbent policies continue longstanding patterns of historical injustice by denying the Oromo freedom of association, press and expression; by ostracizing residents and the Oromia Regional officials from political decision-making; by stifling and intimidating dissent through invoking arbitrary laws which depict even peaceful protest as terrorism; and by taking repressive measures such as capture, torture, extra-judicial murder, and massive arbitrary detention – all of which were used against Oromo protesters in 2014 and are being actively imposed again as the world witnesses on social media the massacre in broad daylight of the Oromia region’s young and brightest lives.
Cognizant of all of these issues, the Oromo Studies Association calls upon the following:
To the Ethiopian government: o Release immediately all protesters currently being held in open and secret detention; o Stop immediately the use of excessive force by security forces against peaceful protesters; o Honour and protect the rights of citizens to freedom of association, freedom of the press and to freedom of expression; o Protect the constitutionally-guaranteed right of citizens to protest any policy, a right also protected by all international human rights agreements that this government is a contracting party to; o Allow independent investigation into the actions of security forces that have resulted in the death and imprisonment of protesters; and o Bring to justice members of the security force and government officials responsible for the killing and injury of peaceful protesters. o Halt the implementation of the Integrated Development Master Plan for Addis Ababa and submit it to a constitutionally mandated review, giving the citizens a voice in their own governance.
To Foreign Governments, Donors and Consultants engaged in giving expert advice and financial support to the Ethiopian government in the implementation of the Master Plan: o OSA offers our considerable research, data – historical, economic, ecological, cultural and social –to all agencies and government who seek to know the full scope of the impact of their engagement with the Ethiopian government. o OSA acknowledges that all foreign parties in Ethiopia will better pursue their own best interests when operating with full knowledge of the circumstances in the country. We suggest to all parties that reliable information as well as consultation and analysis pertaining to the majority Oromo population of 40 million people is available through Oromo Studies Association. o Examine the evidence that demonstrates that Oromos are a force for peace and stability in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Peace and justice (nagaa fi haaqa Oromoo) are the principles that undergird governance among Oromos.
To Oromo Students all over Oromia and Ethiopia as a whole: o OSA is aware and supportive of your efforts and rights to peaceful protest. We understand that you are risking your lives and well-being simply for exercising your democratic right to peacefully protest a policy that directly impacts you, your family, community and nation. o OSA applauds your commitment to clearly observable forms of peaceful protest. o OSA affirms its commitment to continue to provide the institutional support and intellectual materials to those who will support you in any venue and to document the ongoing crisis.
To the Public in Oromia and in all of Ethiopia: o We offer all possible intellectual and scholarly assistance to those who will create avenues to support Oromo protests against the implementation of the Master Plan, realizing that Oromo cultural identity and livelihood is threatened by this design for unvetted, unexamined land confiscation. o Comparative research by OSA scholars demonstrates that the Ethiopian government’s unconstitutional actions in dealing with one aggrieved the Oromo, indicate an absence of democratic process which inevitably affects all groups. o OSA reaffirms our commitment to providing research and documentation useful to those who wish to create or strengthen avenues for democracy, citizens’ empowerment and peace within and among peoples who are in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.
To Non-Governmental, Inter-Governmental and International Community in general: o OSA calls upon you to investigate thoroughly the conditions that the Oromo student protesters are suffering and in many cases, dying, to bring to the world attention. OSA members are committed to work with you to examine the conditions that have given rise to this renewed voice. We call on you to alert your respective governments about the widespread violations of fundamental rights in the Oromo region of Ethiopia. o OSA commends the excellent courageous work of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and International Crisis Group in investigating crises affecting the Oromo over the years. We urge you to continue to document the tragic events underway to bear witness to the sacrifice of the intelligentsia among Oromo youth to draw attention to this issue which is critical to their people’s existence. OSA will provide you with any possible assistance.
To International and Foreign Media Outlets: o There has been a virtual blackout of information and awareness of the Oromo plight in Ethiopia in general and of this immediate crisis in particular. o OSA calls upon all forms of print, broadcast and online media to document and publicize the events underway in the implementation of the Master Plan, the widespread Oromo student protests and the harsh response to them. OSA pledges to supply information as needed. o OSA urges Voice of America to employ at least one, if not several, Oromo correspondents on the ground in Oromia region. o OSA commends BBC for establishing an Oromo language service and anticipates in depth coverage of these issues in near future.
Re-iterating that Oromo livelihood, language, cultural identity and economic survival is threatened by this design to confiscate land in Oromia, OSA affirms its commitment to support the legitimate rights of all citizens to peacefully protest the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan. We are committed to offer all possible intellectual and scholarly assistance to strengthen the efforts of those who create avenues to resist its unexamined and unconstitutional implementation.
The Right Honorable Philip Hammond MP
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AHOpen letterSystematic repression: Torture, Killing, and Harassment of unarmed school Children in the Oromia regional state of EthiopiaDear Minister,It is with sadness and anger that we report the renewed crackdown on peaceful Oromo protesters by government security forces in Ethiopia. More than 70 students were killed, many made to disappear, others jailed simply for taking part in a peaceful demonstration in April 2014. Amnesty international compiled a detailed report giving a clear account of this crackdown in its report of “because I am Oromo- a sweeping repression in Oromia.” Over the past week the same tragedy was taking place in Oromia high schools and universities as they were protesting against the continued eviction of the Oromo people from their livelihood without compensation and by driving them down to extreme poverty.While more than 15 million peasants are reported to have been starving (BBC report, 9 Nov, 2015) the oppressive regime in Ethiopia continues to push its policy of evicting the Oromo people from their livelihood on
a wider scale. This policy, coupled with the burning of a vast area of natural forests and continued eviction of indigenous people has been opposed in peaceful protest yet met at all times with brutal suppression in the forms of mass arrest, torture and killings.
The government security forces have killed already Twenty four students since the protest began in different parts of Oromia. Among those first casualties,
Clashes between police and protesters in Ethiopia’s Oromia region have left several people dead, according to officials and regional opposition leaders.
Oromia has seen three weeks of protests over a government plan to integrate parts of the region with the capital, Addis Ababa. Critics say the plan will undermine local rule and cause local farmers to lose their land.
Witnesses say police have used force to contain or shut down protests, including one that took place Thursday in the town of Bako.
“Today in Bako city when the students came out to protest, people joined them and they started firing live rounds and hit some students,” a witness told VOA’s Horn of Africa Service. There was no word on whether anyone was killed.
Bloomberg news quotes a prominent opposition leader, Bekele Nega, as saying police have killed 10 students taking part in the ongoing protests.
Ethiopia’s communications minister, Getachew Reda, put the number of dead at four, and said security forces have been exercising restraint in the face of violence.
Widening protests
Oromia is one of Ethiopia’s nine ethnically-based states and holds the largest population at more than 27 million.
The protests started on November 20 in the Western Oromo region cities of Ambo, Ginchi and Western Welega, and they have since spread.
The tactics used to clamp down on these protests are reminiscent of the 2014 protests in the Oromia towns of Ambo, Nekemte and Jimma, according to Human Rights Watch, where security forces fired live rounds and beat people who were protesting peacefully.
Speaking to journalists in Ethiopia a few days ago, the police commissioner of the Oromia region, Ibrahim Hajj, blamed misinformation and propaganda for fueling hostilities among some in the Oromo community.
“Today the people are ensuring the rights and are beneficiaries in all sectors including, social, economic sectors. But there are some who are trying to make it seem as if the rights of the people have been violated and they take advantage of this situation behind the scenes,” he said.
Felix Horne, an Ethiopia and Eritrea researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the spread of the protests started slowly and gained momentum within schools and other educational institutions.
“Initially it was students in primary schools, secondary schools, some university students and now we are seeing farmers, workers beginning to take part in these protests in different ways — staging protests peaceful means, sit-ins to mourn the death of those who’ve lost their lives. So the protests definitely seem to be gaining momentum,” he said.
Horne said that while the government’s development for Addis sparked the protests, they are about much larger issues.
“Ostensibly these protests are about the Addis Ababa Master Plan but clearly the Oromos have been marginalized by successive governments and so it’s kind of an accumulation of different frustrations,” he said. “Throughout Oromia, arbitrary detention is common, mistreatment in detention is common and then Oromos just don’t have a voice in issues that impact them day-to-day.”
Students mourning at Haromaya University. Photo shared widely on social media.
Over the past two weeks, students in Ethiopia’s largest regional state, Oromia, have been protesting against a government plan to expand the area of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia. Reports suggest security forces used violence including live ammunition to disperse crowds of peaceful demonstrators in the compounds of universities in Oromia.
According to Human Rights Watch, at least three students were killed and hundreds were injured across the region as security forces used excessive force to disperse student protesters. Other reports put the number of students killed up to ten. Although protesters are primarily university students, in some instances, high school and primary school children were also reportedly involved in intense confrontations with government forces.
At least nine students were killed by government forces in May 2014 while protesting over the same issue.
The persecution of Oromo people
The students argue that the controversial plan, known as “the Master Plan”, to expand Addis Ababa into Oromia state would result in mass evictions of farmers mostly belonging to the Oromo ethnic group.
It wouldn’t be the first time the government has uprooted members of an ethnic group. Thousands of ethnic Amharas in western Ethiopia were expelled from the country’s Benishangul Gumuz region in 2013 in what critics called “ethnic cleansing”.
The students have other demands such as making Oromo a federal language. Oromo, the language of the Oromo people, is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia and the fourth largest African language. However, it is not the working language of the federal government.
According to Ethiopian Constitution, Oromia is one of the nine ethnically based and politically autonomous regional states in Ethiopia. Oromo people make up the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia. However, the group has been systematically marginalized and persecuted for the last 24 years. By some estimates, there were as many as 20,000 Oromo political prisoners in Ethiopia as of March 2014.
A 2014 Amnesty International report on repression in the Oromia region noted:
Between 2011 and 2014, at least 5000 Oromos have been arrested based on their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government. These include thousands of peaceful protestors and hundreds of opposition political party members. The government anticipates a high level of opposition in Oromia, and signs of dissent are sought out and regularly, sometimes pre-emptively, suppressed. In numerous cases, actual or suspected dissenters have been detained without charge or trial, killed by security services during protests, arrests and in detention.
The ruling elite of Ethiopia are mostly from the Tigray region, which is located in the northern part of the country.
Social media fills in the gaps
Even as the Ethiopian drought and impending food crisis makes a rare appearance in local—and some international—headlines, little attention is being paid to the student protests in Ethiopian media. But despite Ethiopia’s highly controlled online environment and the government’s firm grip on communications infrastructure, social media users are reporting on the issue, particularly on Facebook, with additional coverage coming from diaspora-based media.
Photo widely circulated on social media, taken from the Facebook page of Jawar Mohammed.
One Facebook user, for example, hopedfor the world to hear stories of the student protesters’ inspiring actions:
The silence has truly been deafening. We need to see and hear the inspiring actions undertaken by huge numbers of #Oromo in #Ethiopia. Tell their story, enable the world to be swept up in their story.Considering the complete absence of freedom to criticize the government or report opposition stories from within the country, people around the world reading about it can help greatly by doing everything possible to amplify this story.
Another Facebook user, Aga Teshome,took note of the political power of Oromo youth:
…#OromoProtests a call for all oppressed people in #Ethiopia to support the ongoing protest against #landgrabing
….the Oromo youth are a powerful political entity capable of shaking mountains. This powerful political entity is hell bent on exposing the [ruling party] EPRDF government’s atrocious human rights record and all round discriminatory practices.
We call upon the media to investigate the conditions that these students died trying to expose and resist, to draw attention to these concerns. Oromia needs a new kind of reporting by the international media, which gives voice to the voiceless Oromo people, who for a very long time have been killed, mistreated, abused, neglected and repressed in Ethiopia. Going forward with the current plan, which ends up displacing tens of thousands of poor farmers, destroying their livelihood and depriving their identity, is a tragedy. It deserves attention. These students put their lives on the line to draw attention to the farmers’ plight.#OromoProtests
Although social media reports are pivotal in letting the world know about the protests, they miss a huge chunk of nuance that would help observers understand how this dispute is unfolding. Notably, the fact that the student protests combine delicate ethnic politics, urban land grabbing and Ethiopia’s diaspora community’s involvement in home country politics.
Given Ethiopia’s highly controlIed environment, one might wonder how the students managed to get organized to express their grievance in the mid of highly controlled environment. Despite the firm grip on communication infrastructure there are constant update on Facebook and Twitter about the protest.
Dubious development practices
The story is unpleasantly familiar, as students are protesting for the second time in less than two years.
In April and May 2014, the protests began in response to the government’s plan to implement the “Integrated Masterplan for Addis Ababa”. As Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, is an enclave within Oromia regional state, students primarily from Oromia state accused the Ethiopian government of attempting to take over land owned by local farmers in the name of integrating adjacent Oromia towns into the sprawling city of Addis. The students further alleged that if implemented, the Masterplan would result in Addis Ababa further encroaching into the territory of Oromia.
The government rejected the accusation, claiming that the Masterplan was intended only to facilitate the development of infrastructure such as transportation, utilities, and recreation centers.
When the protests began the students’ main demand was the complete halting of the Masterplan. In May 2014, the government did momentarily halt the plan in order to abate the protests after at least nine were killed and hundreds of ethnic Oromo students were imprisoned. But when the government decided to resume plans to implement the Masterplan in November this year resentment boiled over again, resulting in the currently two-week-old student protest leaving at least ten people dead and many injured.
Since the highly contested 2005 national election, forceful evictions and urban land grabbing have become frequent in Addis Ababa. The capital city’s rapid growth has resulted in increasing pressure to convert rural land for industrial, housing, infrastructure, or other urban use.
Diaspora-based advocates say the unrest in Oromia is just a part of the general unhappiness that prevails in the country. They accuse the government of working for the benefit of a few people at the expense of others. They even suggest that the Ethiopian government covertly encouraged informal settlement on the outskirts of Addis Ababa so that they could later find a way to intervene under the guise of rebuilding the slums and lease the land to real estate developers.
Ermias Legesse, a high profile government defector, traces the cause of the Oromo student protest to events that took place 15 years ago. In his book, “Addis Ababa: The Abandoned City”, Ermias notes that since 2000 the Addis Ababa city municipality, with the support of the federal government, enacted five different pieces of legislation to “legalize” the informal settlements, and then sold the “legalized” lands to private property developers.
Most informal settlers on the outskirts of Addis Ababa manage to establish themselves for a period of time until they are displaced by government. “Sometimes the informal settlers are given only a few days’ notices before bulldozers arrive on the scene to tear down their shabby houses and lay foundations for new investors,” Ermias said in an interview with a diaspora-based television channel.
Oromia/Ethiopia: Human rights defender says attacks on Oromos are ethnic cleansing war crimes.
Oromia/Ethiopia: Region-Wide, Heavy-Handed Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters
HRLHA Urgent Action
For Immediate Release
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) expresses its grave concern at the continuation of gross human rights violations in Oromia Regional State – violations that have regularly occurred since 1991 when the TPLF/EPRDF came into power.
The most recent heinous crime was committed – and is still being committed – against defenseless schoolchildren protesting against the approval of “the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan” by the Oromia Regional State Parliament a month ago. The peaceful protest involved many elementary school, high school and university students, and civilians. Among them were students in Western Oromia zones: Najo, Nekemt, Mandi high schools, and in other towns, in Central Oromia in Ginchi, Ambo, Addis Ababa high schools and the surrounding towns, Eastern and Southern Oromia zones, in Haromaya, and Bule Hora Universities, and many more schools and universities. In violation of the rights of the citizen to peaceful demonstration enshrined in the Ethiopian Constitution(1) [Chapter Two, Article 30 (1) states: “Everyone has the right to assemble and to demonstrate together with others peaceably and unarmed, and to petition. Appropriate regulations may be made in the interest of public convenience relating to the location of open-air meetings and the route of movement of demonstrators or, for the protection of democratic rights, public morality and peace during such a meeting or demonstration.”], students, in all of these places, were severely beaten, imprisoned or even killed.
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa emphasizes that the ongoing violence and crimes committed in Oromia Regional State for over two and a half decades by the TPLF perpetrators against the Oromo Nation amount to war crimes, and crimes against humanity – a clear failure of the Oromo People Democratic Organization (OPDO) authorities, an organization claiming to represent the Oromo Nation. The members of this bogus political organization have proved to be not the Oromo peoples’ true representatives, but rather stand-ins for their real masters who have compromised the interests of the Oromo Nation. The Oromia Regional State authorities/OPDO did not resist the TPLF regime when Oromo children, farmers, intellectuals, members of political organizations were killed, abducted, imprisoned, tortured and evicted from their livelihoods by TPLF security agents in the past two and half decades. Instead, they helped the TPLF regime to control the political and economic resources of the Oromia Regional State. TPLF high officials and ordinary level cadres in Oromia Regional State engaged in enriching themselves and their family members by selling Oromo land, looting and embezzling public wealth and properties in the occupied areas of the Oromo Nation, and committing many other forms of corruption.
Committing atrocities and crimes against humanity are failures to comply with obligations under international law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including the principles of proportionality and discrimination. With many civilians suffering from the crimes and serious violations of human rights, and by not taking any measures to ensure the accountability of those responsible for these crimes and violations, it has become clear that after all these years the so called Oromia Parliament (Caffee Oromiyaa) has betrayed the Oromo people by not protecting them. The OPDO members and the Oromia Parliament (Caffee Oromiyaa) members should not continue in silence while Oromo children are brutalized by Aga’azy squads deployed by the TPLF for ethnic cleansing. The Oromia Parliament(Caffee Oromiyaa) and OPDO have a moral obligation to dissolve their institutions and stand beside their people to resist the TPLF regime’s aggression.
The HRLHA believes that the gross human rights violations committed by the TPLF government, in cooperation with OPDO in the past two and half decades against Oromo Nation, have been pre-planned every time they have happened. TPLF regime security agents imprisoned, killed, tortured, kidnapped, disappeared, and evicted from their ancestral lands thousands of Oromo nationals, simply because of their ethnic backgrounds and to acquire their resources. The TPLF inhuman actions against Oromo civilians are clearly genocidal, a crime against humanity and an ethnic cleansing, which breach domestic and international laws, and all international treaties the government of Ethiopia signed and ratified.
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) expresses its deep concern over the safety and well-being of these Oromo nationals who have been arrested without any court warrant and are being held in different police stations, military camps, “Maekelawi” compound, the main federal police investigation center, in Central Addis Ababa and in different unknown places.
Therefore, HRLHA calls upon governments of the West, all local, regional and international human rights agencies to join hands and demand an immediate halt to these extra-judicial actions, terrorizing civilians and the immediate unconditional release of the detainees.
The HRLHA also calls on all human- rights defender non-governmental, civic organizations, its members, supporters and sympathizers to stand beside the HRLHA and provide moral, professional and financial help to bring the dictatorial TPLF government and officials to international justice.
The HRLHA is a non-political organization that attempts to challenge abuses of human rights of the people of various nations and nationalities in the Horn of Africa. It works to defend fundamental human rights, including freedoms of thought, expression, movement and association. It also works to raise the awareness of individuals about their own basic human rights and those of others. It encourages respect for laws and due process. It promotes the growth and development of free and vigorous civil societies.
—– Copied to:
– UNESCO Headquarters
– UNESCO – Africa Department
– UNESCO – Africa Regional Office
– Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
– Office of the UNHCR
– African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR)
– Council of Europe
– U.S. Department of State – Ethiopia Desk
“Ethiopian police have moved in to suppress this united demonstration of protest. Government sharpshooters are firing into crowds and killing students again.”
Protesters say the central government is trying to evict Oromo farmers from their land under the auspices of urban development, with little or no compensation, essentially turning them into street beggars and daily laborers.
Tensions rise as students in Oromia accuse government of land grab
Activists claim security forces have killed at least seven students in more than two weeks across Ethiopia’s Oromia state, where students have been protesting a government plan to expand the area of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia.
Oromia police have confirmed three fatalities in what it termed provocations by “anti-peace elements.”
Images of severely injured students have been posted on social media, and hundreds of other protesters have reportedly been rounded up in a crackdown on those demonstrating against several state-led development projects.
Oromo students, the opposition and diaspora activists liken the proposed Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Plan, or the Master Plan, to a land grab. They fear that it will displace Oromo farmers and undermine Oromia’s interests by expanding Addis Ababa’s boundaries.
Addis Ababa is in the state of Oromia and serves as the regional and federal capital. In theory, the Ethiopian constitution protects Oromia’s “special interest” in Addis Ababa in the provision of social services and use of natural resources and on joint administrative matters.
While the city, home to 4 million people, has experienced massive growth over the last decade, Oromo activists have long decried the lack of social facilities for its Afaan Oromo speakers, including schools, hospitals and cultural institutions.
The protests broke out in November Ginci, a town about 50 miles west of Addis Ababa. Students from universities, high schools and even some primary schools continue to stage sit-ins and demonstrations around the country.
Oromia, the largest of Ethiopia’s nine ethnically based states, is home to close to half the country’s population of 100 million. The Oromo people have long had a contentious relationship with the national government.
“Many Oromos have felt marginalized and discriminated against by successive Ethiopian governments and have often felt unable to voice their concerns over government policies,” Felix Horne, the Horn of Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch, wrote in a Dec. 5 blog post.
He called for an immediate halt to the excessive use of force by security personnel, an independent and impartial investigation into the killings and the prosecution of security forces involved in the violent crackdown.
‘Long-simmering grievance’
Protesters say the central government is trying to evict Oromo farmers from their land under the auspices of urban development, with little or no compensation, essentially turning them into street beggars and daily laborers.
The government says its plan is mutually beneficial, will enhance cooperation and will make the area globally competitive by remedying its disorganized spatial growth.
Addis Ababa serves as landlocked Ethiopia’s primary gateway to the outside world. Last year the New York–based consultancy A.T. Kearney named Addis Ababa “the third-most-likely city to advance its global positioning,” adding, “the Ethiopian capital is also among the cities closing in fastest on the world leaders.”
Modest economic growth and the lack of opportunities in rural areas have fueled massive rural-to-urban migration. The Master Plan is part of an effort to mitigate the city’s resulting rapid expansion. But critics contend that the proposal focuses mostly on attracting investors and will ensure the continued erasure of Oromos’ historical and cultural values from the city.
The Oromo students’ protests are not new. They been demonstrating against the central state for most of the last two decades.
In April and May 2014, Ethiopian security forces fired live ammunition at unarmed protesters, killing dozens of students and wounding many others. Hundreds of students were arrested and charged under Ethiopia’ssweeping anti-terrorism law, and many remain incarcerated.
A federal court last week convicted five students for participating in those protests. In the early 2000s, Ethiopia saw similar protests and violence over a government plan to move Oromia’s capital from Addis Ababa. The decision was reversed in 2005 amid a public outcry.
There has been limited media coverage of the ongoing protests. There are strong restrictions on the free press in Ethiopia, one of the most censored countries in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Government critics and the independent press face increased scrutiny.
Analysts warn that continued violent responses to peaceful protesters could bode ill for Ethiopia’s future.
“The Oromo have long been humiliated with their still marginal status in Ethiopia’s power arrangement,” said Hassen Hussein, an Ethiopian-born university professor in Minnesota. “These almost annual student protests give voice to these long-simmering grievance and perhaps a harbinger of what is to come. The authorities cannot forever count on an aggrieved nation remaining docile.”
Oromo activists and community leaders in North America, Western Europe and Australia are planning solidarity rallies for next week, when more violence is anticipated.
Bonnie Holcomb, an author and anthropologist based in Washington, D.C., said the current situation mirrors the violence of 2014. “The international media were silent when Ethiopian police opened fire into crowds, killing 68, permanently disabling hundreds and arresting thousands. Now the next stage of the Master Plan is being implemented,” she said.
“Ethiopian police have moved in to suppress this united demonstration of protest. Government sharpshooters are firing into crowds and killing students again,” she said.
(Oromia press): The following is a statement from the Peoples’ Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (PAFD), a coalition of five national liberation movements, namely, OLF, SNLF, ONLF, GPLM and BPLM, operating in Ethiopia.
—
Peoples’ Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (PAFD)
The Ethiopian Government Brutal Army and Paramilitary Police Use Lethal Force against Oromo Students Demonstrating Peacefully
Press Statement by Peoples’ Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (PAFD)
The Ethiopian government’s brutal army and paramilitary police are shooting at unarmed Oromo students demonstrating against the implementation of Addis Ababa land grabbing master plan.
Just over a year ago, TPLF’s regime planned to exponentially expand Oromia’s capital, the city of Finfinne (Addis Ababa), under the scheme known as ‘Addis-Master-Plan.’ This plan aims to incorporate the rural agricultural areas in Oromia state surrounding Addis Ababa. This Plan will totally displace the entire Oromo rural population in the area without their consent. The said plan has seriously angered the Oromo people, who went on a peaceful demonstration of opposing the plan. The regime’s security and armed forces’ unprecedented and violent response to the peaceful demonstration has left over 60 Oromo University and high School students and the others Oromo civilians dead, and over 200 wounded.
After remaining silent for around a year, the Prime Minister and others government officials have recently announced their decisions to re-implement ‘Addis-Master-Plan.’ Again, the Oromo students started demonstrating, beginning in West Oromia towns, such as Mattuu, Ambo and others places; it has widened its horizons to almost entire Oromia Zones and districts.
On December 1 and 2, 2015 there have been series of demonstrations in various Oromia regional Zones and districts, including in Madawalaabuu university, Agarfaa, Ayira (Guuliso), Bantuu, Burrayyuu, Chancho, Dalloo, Dinshoo, Finfinnee, Gaasaraa, Gimbi, Gudar, Haromayaa, Horro Guduruu, Jaarraa, Maattu, Sabroo, Jaarsoo, Laaloo, Asabi, Jiddaa, Ayyaanaa, Mandi, Najjoo, Qilxuu Karraa, Sabataa, Walisso, Sabroo, Xuqur Incinni and others various high schools, universities, towns and villages. In all these places, the responses of TPLF security and police personnel has been as brutal as always. Several deaths have been reported since last week. The number of wounded Oromo students, including children, has reached to several hundreds.
PAFD categorically condemns the brutal treatments of the civilians, and calls all liberation fronts and opposition parties to unite in ending the current undemocratic rule and create a new system that respects the rights of all peoples in Ethiopia. We call all nations and peoples in Ethiopia to rise up and stop this illegal displacement of Oromo people from their ancestral lands as is happening in all other parts. We call upon the international community to denounce the unlawful action of the Ethiopian brutal regime and urge it to abide with international laws in respecting citizens’ rights, dignity and safety. We also call upon all nationals working for TPLF’s repressive apparatuses, such us military, police and security that are inflicting pain on their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers, to unconditionally stop their alliance with the regime brutalizing all peoples, and join a genuine struggles for democratic change to bring about equality for all.
Finally, with deepest sadness, PAFD sends its condolences to the families of Oromo students who have been murdered by the authoritarian Ethiopian regime.
Peoples’ Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (PAFD)
OROMO FIRST. Continued marginalization, discrimination and brutal crackdown against peaceful civilian Oromo protest is fast driving the resurgence of ethnic Oromo nationalism in Ethiopia.
Student protests are spreading throughout Ethiopia’s Oromia region, as people demonstrate against the possibility that Oromo farmers and residents living near the capital, Addis Ababa, could be evicted from their lands without appropriate – or possibly any – compensation. Social media is filled with images of bloodied protesters; there are credible reports of injuries and arrests in a number of towns; and local police have publicly acknowledged that three students have died so far.
The current protests echo the bloody events of April and May 2014, when federal forces fired into groups of largely peaceful Oromo protesters, killing dozens. At least hundreds more students were arrested, and many remain behind bars. Both then and today, the demonstrators are ostensibly protesting the expansion of Addis Ababa’s municipal boundary into the surrounding Oromia region, which protesters fear will displace Oromo farmers from their land. But these protests are about much more: Many Oromos have felt marginalized and discriminated against by successive Ethiopian governments and have often felt unable to voice their concerns over government policies.
Of the student protesters detained in 2014, some have been released. Those I spoke with told me about the torture they endured as part of interrogations. But countless others remain in detention. Some have been charged under Ethiopia’s draconian counterterrorism law for their role in the protests; others languish without charge in unknown detention centers and military camps throughout Oromia. This week, five students were convicted of terrorism-related offenses for their role in the protests.
There has been no government investigation into the use of live ammunition and excessive force by security personnel last year.
Ethiopia’s tight restrictions on civil society and mediamake it difficult to corroborate the current, mounting allegations and the exact details of the ongoing protests emerging from towns like Haramaya, Jarso, Walliso, and Robe. The government may think this strategy of silencing bad news is succeeding. But while the fear of threats and harassment means it is often months before victims and witnesses come forward to reveal what happened in their communities, they eventually do, and the truth will emerge.
The government should ensure that the use of excessive force by its security personnel stops immediately. It should then support an independent and impartial inquiry into the conduct of security forces in the current protests – and last year’s as well. Those responsible for serious abuses should be fairly prosecuted. This would be the best way for the Ethiopian government to show its concern about the deaths and injuries inflicted on the students, that it does not condone the use of live ammunition against peaceful protesters, and that those who break the law are appropriately punished.
Citizens from all over Oromia have been protesting for months against the Addis Ababa Master Plan, which would see Oromo farmers around the capital evicted from their land with the city’s expansion. Marches have intensified since the events at Haromaya University last week, where Oromo students, protesting peacefully against the government plans, were shot at by the Ethiopian Federal Police, killing at least three and injuring many more. The attack was recorded on a video, which can be viewed from the link below.
The following video shows as the Ethiopian Federal Police, known as Agazi and part of the elite force of the ruling Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), shooting at Haromaya University’s Oromo students – who were out protesting against the Addis Ababa Master Plan in late November 2015. According to media reports, at least three were killed and many more were wounded. The students were protesting against the Addis Ababa Master Plan, whose goal, they say, is to expand the City of Addis Ababa by many folds by evicting Oromo farmers from their land around the City of Addis Ababa in Oromiyaa. The Oromo people, especially students, have been expressing their protests against the Addis Ababa Master Plan, ever since it was unveiled by TPLF officials in April 2014. As a result of the Oromiyaa-wide protests against the Addis Ababa Master Plan, over the last year and half, more than a hundred Oromos were killed by the Agazi force, including the four who had been reported dead at the recent Haromaya protest.
The students, pronounced dead, and those others protesting, come from all sections and all zones of Oromiyaa for their higher education at Haromaya University.
In this brief commentary, I will address some general conceptual issues related to resistance against development intervention and then I will proceed to the specific case about the ongoing contested master plan of Finfinne city called “integrated urban development”. This assessment is aimed to achieve multiple purposes; namely to contribute academic inputs to policy making, to clarify to the readers on the nexus between development interventions and resistance, and to indicate that the ongoing resistance from the Oromo is within the context of rights enshrined in the constitution of the country.
Like elsewhere in the modern world, successive Ethiopian governments have been engaged in translating various versions of development discourses into practice – albeit posited within different ideological orientations. The imperial and military regimes had put in place hegemonic systems in channeling down policies and programs that they also tried to sell to the populace under the buzz concepts such as ‘development’ and ‘modernization’. In this regard, historical accounts remind us the social, economic, cultural and political consequences of such modernist development discourses and practices of different groups in the country among which the Oromo were significantly affected. To mention one, the collectivization (villagization) program of the military regime disrupted social ties, economic practices and cultural connectedness of the people to their land. This hints at the repercussions of development projects that are conceived, implemented and managed within hegemonic systems of governance because absence of democratic systems opens the path to external interventions without proper consultation of citizens. Nevertheless, the post-1991 political order in Ethiopia has put in place for the first time in the history of the country a system whereby nations and nationalities are given rights of self-determination to decide on matters that affect their communities including the right to administer resources and development projects, and to promote the language, culture and history of their people to mention a few – no matter how the practical implementation is still the subject of contestation.
2. Development Interventions and Popular Resistance: An Overview
High modernist development practices all over the world entailed the exercise of top-down and expert-based scientific knowledge that considered participation of ordinary citizens and local knowledge at odds with the development visions of the state and/or non-state actors. High modernist development discourses give limited room for participatory approaches of development and government-public partnership. This approach was practiced by colonial powers and continued in the post-colonial periods as well. The general assumption behind high modernist development discourses was that few elites would plan development programs and mobilize the mass for its implementation under strict control of ‘experts’. However, as a famous scholar on peasant resistance, James Scott, has noted, the power of domination often produces the power of resistance from the group that is seemingly powerless as seen in literal conceptions of power. Since the mid-1980s, scholars began not to underestimate the agency of the “weak” who under conditions of domination can use different strategies of resistance against development interventions that they define from their own values, identity, worldviews and history.
However, it is misleading to construe local communities’ resistance against development intervention as if the people are against development – despite controversies revolving around the concept itself. Although the term can be given different meanings and manifestations according to the interest, ideology and worldviews of various actors, what local communities often resist is not the conventional understanding of the concept per se – referring to improvement in the overall wellbeing of human society and their environment. Rather, the approach, strategy and consequence of development programs, projects and practices constitute contestable meanings.
3. The “Integrated Urban Development Plan and the Question of the Oromo
3.1. Background
According to the 1995 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia (Article 49) Finfinne (Addis Ababa) became the capital city of the Federal government while at the same time it has been the seat of Oromia regional state. Finfinne is adjoined by Oromia region in all directions. Article 49.5 of the constitution gives special right for Oromia to get special benefit from Finfinne as it is the heartland of Oromia besides being its administrative capital. According to the constitution (Article 49.5), “The special interest of the State of Oromia in AddisAbaba, regarding the provision of social services or the utilization of natural resources and other similar matters,as well as joint administrative matters arising from the location of Addis Ababa within the State of Oromia, shall be respected. Particulars shall be determined by law”. Nevertheless, there are critiques that Oromia has not yet benefited from Finfinne. On this topic, because of lack of empirical evidence whether the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) tried to utilize the constitutional rights given to Oromia in getting benefit from Finfinne or not, I would not push this assertion forward.
The plan, according to the government, is intended to create integrated urban development between Addis Ababa city administration and Oromia towns surrounding the capital city such as Burayu, Sabata, Sululta, Bishoftu, Laga-Xafo Laga-dadhi, Galan and other semi-urban centers adjoining these towns. From this perspective, the government tries to disseminate its development programs by presenting to the public the advantages of the plan in terms of infrastructural and social provisions. On the other hand, the Oromo from different walks of life, including some members of the OPDO officials are skeptical whether the Master Plan has been planned for mutual benefit of Finfinne and Oromia regional state or is just a systematic strategy of incorporating Oromia towns into Finfinne. Thus, it is crucially important to analyze some underlying reasons behind Oromo’s resistance and discontent to the Master Plan. In the following section, I will try to discuss it situating within historical experiences, political scenarios and procedural drawbacks in the planning process. However, one should boldly know that no one is against development project that changes the lives of its people if carefully planned and implemented.
3.2. Why do the Oromo Resist the Master Plan?
Memories and experiences of past evictions and dispossessions
Like other nations and nationalities in the country particularly those who faced the brutal conquest under emperor Menelik II during the late 19th century, the Oromo people have lived memories and experiences of ‘development’ induced displacement, dispossession and oppressions under the successive regimes. Moreover, the assimilationist and hegemonic systems in the past have left enduring repercussions on Oromo culture, language and identity with the case in Finfinne more appalling still today. Historical accounts of the establishment of Finfinne city in 1886 illuminate that the territory was inhabited by different Oromo clans until they were eventually displaced by the imperial regimes. The city was built on the ancestral land of the Oromo through policies of land alienation, dispossession and displacement of indigenous peoples in similar approaches to many other urban centers in the conquered regions of the South. It is, thus fair to argue that Finfinne city was established as a garrison town predominantly occupied by war generals and soldiers. There is no need to turn history books or archives to understand the displacement of indigenous Oromo communities from Finfinne and to comprehend the impacts of the assimilationist projects under the imperial and military regimes. It is rather enough to see the current ethnic composition of the Addis Ababa city where one can clearly see that people who identify themselves as Oromo are immensely few in contrast to Finfinne’s being the heartland of Oromia. Therefore, resistance against the Master Plan should be understood within the historical antecedents the Oromo experienced with regards to dispossession of their land, displacement from their ancestral land and the socio-economic, cultural and political repercussions of development interventions.
In response to the constitutional rights
The Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE Constitution 1995: Article 43.2) clearly stipulates the right of each nation, nationality and people of Ethiopia to be fully consulted and involved in development projects that affect their community. In addition, Article 39 of the same constitution gives unconditional rights of self-determination to the nations, nationalities and peoples of Ethiopia that include the right and autonomy to determine which development program to envisage and the right of self-government on territories they historically inhabited. These are a few of the fundamental principles of ethnic federalism that are enshrined in the constitution. In this specific context, Oromia regional state and the Oromo people have constitutional rights to decide on the urban development programs through democratic, transparent, bottom-up and inclusive approaches of participation. They have the right to decide whether they opt to go for the integrated urban development or not. The resistance from Oromo intellectuals, politicians, students, peasants and business people should be understood as a response to interventions that to a large extent violated their constitutional right, particularly Article 43.2 of the FDRE’s constitution – the right to be consulted and involved in development projects.
Mistrust generated from lack of genuine participation
Resistance to state development projects to a large extent reflects the nature of state-society relations, questions of legitimacy and trust. Governments have the leverage of building legitimacy and trust or become victims of legitimacy crisis based on their policies, programs and overall political systems vis-à-vis citizenship rights of the society. It has been evident from discussions during public sensitization programs on the Master Plan that the planning process was top-down and did not involve citizens who will be affected by the project. A higher official from EPRDF presumably acknowledged the importance of involving grassroots communities through bottom-up approaches though he maintained the view that there was no problem with the top-down approach in development intervention. Here comes the fundamental disparity between constitutional promises and practices.
Under such circumstances where citizens are not consulted and involved in the planning process, one should not be surprised if they resist the project because any conscious society does not accept something without knowing its benefits, impacts and implications. Therefore, resistance is a function of procedural incongruity with the constitutional promises.
Anticipated Repercussions on the identity, culture and livelihood of the Oromo
Development projects such as urban expansion, dam projects, large scale agricultural projects, and protected areas conservation have significant repercussions on the livelihood, culture and identity of indigenous peoples all over the world unless critically handled. Because of historical experiences the Oromo faced under successive regimes in Ethiopia – experiences of displacement, suppression, exploitation and dispossession – the current project is also seen by the majority of the Oromo as a continuation of the past trends. Rhetoric and discourses can’t simply convince people who have lived-in scars and experiences in their minds, around their homesteads and in their neighbors that are reflected in their culture, identity, language, economy and politics. The government can rather convince the people on the benefits they would enjoy from the project not by injecting them with high modernist discourses of development but through practical and genuine involvement of the people in the projects.
Still another challenge that awaits the government is whether it has really delivered in other areas of development, whether other development projects didn’t have socio-economic and cultural impacts on local inhabitants elsewhere in the country and whether there is independent judiciary system that citizens can use as a guardian of their human rights in cases any development program threatens their right. I leave this question open to the readers. In practice, according to those who think it would incorporate Oromia towns surrounding Finfinne city, the current Master Plan will adversely affect the Oromo by reducing peasants into landlessness and in exacerbating land expropriation under the guise of investment. Like situations in the capital city, Oromo language, culture and other related rights would be suppressed if these towns are incorporated into the city without clear negotiation on who administers these “integrated” cities.
A way forward?
The development project should not be imposed, rather it should involve stakeholders particularly local communities who will be affected by the project from inception to implementation.
The integrated urban development can serve the interest of all stakeholders if and only if it is participatory and if it doesn’t violate constitutional rights of Oromia regional state and its geographical boundaries.
Finfinne City has the potential to develop by its own given that the city administration makes inward looking to develop a system of modernizing the city not necessarily through horizontal expansion. The unanswered question is: why Finfinne city administration started this integrated plan while there are immense critiques that it is unable to solve its own municipal problems. Therefore, before launching ambitious and ambiguous projects like this, the city administration should have utilized all available opportunities within its administrative boundaries to develop and modernize the city.
The regional government of Oromia has to claim its constitutional right to get special benefit from Finfinne (if not yet).
What guarantee does the regional government of Oromia have as to whether Finfinne administration eventually incorporates the surrounding Oromia towns to its administration or not? This is critical question the federal government, Finfinne city administration and particularly the regional government of Oromia should address. More importantly, the failure to put this agenda on the front line in negotiating with the other actors will be a critical test to the legitimacy of OPDO in representing the Oromo people.
In conclusion, two fundamental issues should be made clear regarding resistance against the “Integrated Urban Development Master Plan” of Addis Ababa City:
1) It has been evident that people are not against development per se. However, where development projects are perceived to be threatening fundamental rights and needs of the citizens, it becomes a policy to be resisted rather than a program to be embraced. On the other hand, under contexts where the people are recognized as rightful citizens whose voices, views and knowledge contribute to the overall development vision through genuine participatory approaches, it would be expected, to a large extent, that development mobilizes the society towards similar goals of the state.
2) Regardless of the power of domination the intervening actor might have, development intervention faces the utmost resistance from the people whose livelihood, culture, language, identity and history will be affected. Therefore, the government should not overlook the potency of local resistance in impacting on its legitimacy and trust.
* Barattooni magaala ginci namooni 80 ol yakka tokko male oromoo ta’u isaanif qofa hidhaman atattaman akka gadi nuf lakkifaman.
Dhaadannoo kan armaa olii fi kan kana fakkatan dhageessisaan. sirboota qabsoo Oromoo jajjabeesus wallisuun. karaa konkolaata baha gara dhiha Asoosatti darbu cufanii gooma konkolaata karaa irratti gubanii hojii boonsa hojjachaa oolani.
Torbaan darbe kana keessa mormii godina Shawaa lixaa aanaa Daandii magaalaa Gincitti jalqabamee tureen, namoonni 80 ol hidhamuu isaanii kan jiraattonni nutti himan gabasuun keenya ni yaadatama.
Oromia (Finfinnee): KFO fi Fincila Diddaa Saamicha Lafaa (FDSL). The public meeting convened by Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) in Finfinne on Sunday, October 18, discussed the so called the ‘Master Plan’ and conclude that it is a land grab policy disguised as a development plan and called on Ethiopian authorities to halt it, and on the public to continue rejecting it.
On 30 May 2015 residents in Buraayyuu (Central Oromia) protesting the demolishing of their residential houses by TPLF/ Agazi for being the supporters and voting for the popular opposition OFC/Medrek) in the 24 May 2015 General Elections.
Gaafiin mooraa Yuuniversitii kanatti ka’ee jiru dhimma amantaan kan wal qabate tahullee barattootni Oromoo heddumminaan keessatti gaaffii miidhaan saba Oromoo kaasuun, gubachuu bosonaa fi warshaalee Oromoo keessa jiranis kaasuudhaan gaaffii barattootaa gara gaaffii mirgaatti naannessanii guyyoota lamaan kana jechuun Bitootessa 17 fi 18 barumsi dhaabbatee akka jiru odeessaan Qeerroo gamasii addeessaa jira. Barumsas akka hin baranne Oromiyaan boca uumamashee mootummaa Wayyaanen utuu gadhisaa jirtuu, ilmaan Oromoo mana hidhaatti osoo gidirfamuu jireenya dhuunfaa keenyaaf barumsa kennee lafa dhiituun haa dhaabbatu jechuun diddaan mooraa kanattis qabatee akka jiru odeessi nugahee jira.
Naannoo Wallootti:-
Aanaa Gudayaa ganda Konkaa Ijaa jedhamau Bitootessa gaafa 15 fi 19 /2015 mootummaa irraa ergamee hojii basaastummaa aanaa kana keessatti kan hojjetu dhalootaan Amaara kan tahe tokko nama dhalootaan oromoo tokko sabboonummaa qabu harka mootummaatti dabarseekennuu irraan tarkaanfiin ajjechaa basaasaa mootummaa wayyaanee kana irratti raawwatamee jira. sababa kanaan manneen jireenyaa saba amaaraa 4 ol tahus ibiddaan gubateera,diina mootummaan ergamee uummata hammeenyaaf kennaa jiru kana irratti boombiinis darbatamee namoonni hedduun mada’anii jiru, odeessa Qeerroo hubatamu irraa uummanni tarkaanfii mootummaa wayyaanee irratti fudhachuu eegalee jira,deggertootni mootummaas sodaa kana keessa seenuudhaan hojii isaanii irraa akka deebi’aa jiran dhalootaan saba biraa kan tahan, ilmaan habashaa hojii diinummaa irratti bobbahanii jiranis naannoo sana irraa uummataan ariyamaa akka jiran odeessi Qeerroo addeessa. http://qeerroo.org/2015/03/19/diddaan-sirna-wayyaanee-fi-gaaffiin-mirga-abbaa-biyyummaa-guyyaa-haraa-yuuniversitii-afur4-keessatti-jabaatee-itti-fufe/
Qeerroo’s Status Updates: Feb. 22, 2015 – March 13, 2015
Oromo students protests continue to erupt in several towns in the Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia – taking various forms in recent weeks. The new round of protests began on February 22, 2015, when Oromo students and youth of Jimma town turned an Oromian Sports Championship event, which had been taking place in the city, into a protest against the so-called “Addis Ababa Master Plan” and against the recent inflammatory speech of Abay Tsehaye, one of the TPLF strongmen. The students chanted slogans, such as “Finfinne is ours! Adama is ours! Jimma is ours!” and more, a reminiscent of the bloody April/May 2014 widespread protests, in which more or less the same slogans had been chanted throughout Oromia. The Oromo youth were also singing revolutionary songs in the whole stadium. The protests continued beyond control in Jimma Stadium and on the streets of the city on a daily basis until the Sports Championship was to come to a close on Sunday, March 1, 2015.
Speech of Oromian “President” Muktar Kedir Interrupted
On March 1, 2015, the Oromo students protest escalated to a higher level when two high-level delegates of the Ethiopian government, the so-called President of Oromia – Muktar Kedir and President of Amhara Region Demeke Mekonnen appeared in the stadium for the closing ceremony, and also in an attempt to address and pacify the protesting youth. As the whole stadium erupted with shouting voices, slogans and revolutionary songs of the students, Muktar Kedir was unable speak at all, and he and all the “guests,” including the Honorable GuestDemeke Mekonnen, were forced to leave the stadium in humiliation and eventually reported to have left the city the same day.
Audio: March 1, 2015 – Jimma, Oromia
Govt Messenger’s Indoctrination Meeting Foiled in Nekemte
On the evening of March 1, 2015, the same day students of Jimma university protested, a meeting organized in Wollega University by the government delegate and messenger Dr. Getachew Begashaw through the university administration intended to inculcate the students with the evil policies of the government and to pacify the Oromo students from protesting was foiled by the Oromo students, and the meeting was dismissed. It was as soon as the meeting began that Oromo students started shouting, singing revolutionary songs and chanting slogans, such as “the [Addis Ababa] Master Plan will never be realized! OLF is the hope of Oromo people! International community should be made aware of the genocide committed against us!” and more. Dr. Begashaw and other “guests” were forced to stop their lecture, and leave the university while the students continued chanting slogans and singing in the whole university campus throughout that night. Although the students were protesting peacefully, hours later, a large number of police force entered the university campus and started beating the students and arrested many of them, including a 3rd-year electrical engineering student Kuma Gammachu. The whereabouts of the arrested students is still unknown.
At least 10 Oromo Students Abducted in Jimma
On March 2, 2015, the Ethiopian government unleashed its police force in Jimma University, and abducted at least 10 students for no crime other than exercising their rights by peacefully protesting, together with thousands of other Oromo students. Among the abducted Oromo students of Jimma University are:
These and other abducted Oromo students are said to be held in a prison in Jimma city in an area known as Alazar.
Looting of Oromian Top Soil Thwarted in Sibu Sire
On March 7, 2015, Oromo farmers – who were evicted from their land and from whom their farm land was given to investors in East Wollega zone, Sibu Sire district, in a village called Tuqa Wayyu – organized the youth and the local Oromo population, and stopped lorries which were looting top soil (fertile soil) of their land and taking to an unknown place.
Three OPDO Officials Fired
On March 10, 2015, the government fired three OPDO officials in Western Shaggar (Shoa) zone, Abuna district, accusing them of siding with the protesting Oromo people for their right and being sympathetic to Oromo students. These are:
1. Shiferaw Mekonnen, Head of Finance of the district
2. Bacha Lamessa, Head of Human Resource
3. Girma Bacha, Jobs Coordinator
Protest in Wama Hagalo: An Oromo Pastor Arrested
On March 10, 2015, protest of the Oromo population for their right and against the policies of the EPRDF government was flared up in Eastern Wollega zone, Wama Hagalo district, Qasso town. A fierce clash has occurred between the Oromo population – who were protesting, and government police forces during which the police arrested several people, among whom are:
1. Qajeelaa Raggaasaa
2. Boodanaa Baqqalaa
3. Misgaanuu Raggaasaa
4. Danjaa Dhangi’aa
5. Dhugaasaa Abdiisaa
6. Booboo Addunyaa
7. Misgaanuu Addunyaa and many more.
Moreover, an Oromo pastor of the Evangelical Church of the district, Waqgari Ayana, was abducted and disappeared, accused of praying to God for the downfall of the current government. The whereabouts of this pastor is still unknown. It is to be recalled that a respected Oromo pastor Gudina Tumsa was abducted and killed by the Derg regime in 1970’s.
2nd Round of Protest in Wollega University
Oromo students of Wollega University, Nekemte town, protested for the second time on March 11, 2015 in their university campus. It was right after their breakfast that the students gathered in front of the cafeteria and started chanting the slogans which they had prepared. One of the students who was interviewed by Simbirtu Radio and another student interviewed by OVL/SBO (Oromo Voice of Liberation) – both explained the details of the protest. It was before the protest expanded to the entire campus that a large number of police force came and dispersed the students. It is reported that still a tense situation exists in the university campus, and no two students are allowed to stand together.
Audio: March 11, 2015 – Wollega, Oromia
Protest in Busa: Young Oromo Severely Beaten & Abducted
On March 11, 2015, protest of Oromo population erupted in South West zone of Oromia, Dawo district, Busa town, during which the people chanted slogans, such as “Oromia belongs to the Oromo! We will not give Finfinne (Addis Ababa)! We need peace! We are fed-up of Woyane’s lies!” and more. During this time the government dispatched a large number of police force which were seen beating the protesters. Especially the police has severely beaten an Oromo youth Geleta Waqo – dragged him on the floor and have taken to an unknown location.
Kana malee Anaa Deedoo irraa ilmaan Oromoo torba kanneen ammaf maqaan isiinii nu hin qaqqabiin humna poolisii federaalaan qabamanii mana hidhatti darbamuu maddeen keenya gaabasan.
Haaluma kanaan Yeroo amma kana Mootummaan Wayyaaneen humni Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo ABO’n Godina Jimmaa keessa buufate jira maqaa jedhuu fi maqaa sakkatta’aa dhabamsiisuu jedhuun humna poolisii naannoo Oromiyaa irraa shakkii guddaa qabatuun ajaja mootummaa federaalaatiin poolisoota Federaalaa fi waraanaa aanota Godinichaa keessa bobbaasuun ilmaan Oromoo maqaa qorannoo fi sakkatta’insaan dararuu fi ukkamsuun hidhatti darbaa jiraachuun saaxilamera. Adeemsi gochaa diinummaa mootummaan Wayyaanee fudhachaa jiru kun uummata bakka jiruu dammaqsuun akka uummatni fincilee sochii FDGtti makamuun mirga isaa kabachiifatuuf dirqamsiisa jiraachuu irraa uummatni utuu hidhatti hin ukkanfamiin harka walqabatnee mootummaa abba irree irratti finciluun yeroon gamtaan kaanee falmannuu amma jechuun dhaamsa waliif dabarsaa jiraachuun ibsame jira.
Ethiopia Official Threatens to Continue Mass Murder in Oromia to Grab Land; Use the Hashtag “#StopAbayTsehaye” to Protest Abay Tsehaye and the Addis Ababa Master Plan
February 21, 2015 · Finfinne Tribune & Gadaa.com
(OromoPress) – Abay Teshaye, a member of the Executive Committee of Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and adviser to the current nominal Prime Minster of Ethiopia, made a genocide threat against the Oromo people who oppose the implementation of a land grabbing policy. Abay Tsehaye made the threat with a vitriolic tone of hatred and arrogance toward the Oromo:
“The master plan will be implemented now. If anyone from the Oromia regional administration or anti-peace forces oppose this, we’ll cut them to size,” OMN reported citing a leaked Amharic audio of Abay Tsehaye from a meeting that took place in Hawasa town in the south. Made against the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) and the wider Oromo people; the threat comes on a the heels of massacre across Oromia region from May to July 2014. Oromo media have repeatedly reported that Abay Tsehaye was one of TPLF/EPRDF masterminds of the episode of genocide that claimed the lives of over 200 Oromo students and led to the incarceration of 3,765 students and farmers across Oromia in mid-2014. The students were protesting the implementation of a land grab policy in Oromia towns and rural districts in and around Fifninnee/Addis Ababa, which led to an unexplained disappearance of over 200,000 Oromo farmers.
Abay Tsehaye made the statement at an official meeting on behalf of his party and the Tigrean-led Ethiopian government. His speech was not an empty threat since he and other TPLF officials have followed through with threats and engaged in acts of genocide in Oromia State against innocent civilians, especially the Oromo youth, over the last 24 years (since Tigreans grabbed state power). Oromo activists created a Twitter hashtag #StopAbayTsehaye to protest the angry and arrogant genocide threat by Abay Tsehaye and to spread awareness about the issue to the global audience.
We Are Ready to Pay Any Sacrifice to Stop Abay Tsehaye and His Cohorts
Qeerroo Bilisummaa Calls for Revolt In Response to Abay Tsehaye’s Insult of the Oromo People
One of the leaders of the TPLF/EPRDF regime and an architect of the so called “Addis Ababa Master Plan”, Abay Tsehaye, has openly insulted the Oromo people and particularly the OPDO by saying that the “Master Plan” will be put into practice by all means. Filled with contempt and arrogance, Abay Tsehaye said those who oppose the Master Plan “will be put down” or “face the consequences”. He proved the long time belief that the so called OPDO is nothing but a puppet of the TPLF which can be intimidated by a single TPLF individual. The dictatorial Woyane Ethiopian regime’s leader Abay Tsehaye, who is working as an “advisor” of the Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, is one of the TPLF heavy-handed personnel who interfere in all internal affairs of the nominal so called “Oromia regional government”. He is said to be constantly harassing and intimidating high ranking OPDO officials and the leaders of the so called Oromia Regional Administration by calling them into his office. It should be clear that his current insult of Oromo nationalists and members of the Oromia regional administration is an insult to the entire Oromo nation. The so called “Master Plan”, which Abay Tsehay and his TPLF hooligans are trying to shove down into the Oromo people’s throat, is a plan intended to evict Oromo farmers from their ancestral land and destroy the Oromo identity. It intended to take away Oromo land without the will of the owners of the land and destroy Oromo language by incorporating Oromian towns and villages into one big Addis Ababa, the capital city which should belong to Oromo in the first place. In doing so, Abay Tsehaye and the Tigrayan elites have a plan to divide Oromia into two: East and West.
In April and May, 2014, Qeerroo Bilisummaa has organized Oromian youth for nationwide protest against this so called “Master Plan”, in which the regime brutally killed hundreds of school children and arrested and ruthlessly tortured tens of thousands others. Our people have already paid the ultimate sacrifice with their blood and the lives of their children. The current chauvinistic outburst of Abay Tsehaye only reaffirms to us that our struggle should continue and that we should pay all necessary sacrifice. We will NEVER let this minority regime dictate its will upon us. We shall ignite the torch of Revolt Against Subjugation (Fincila Diddaa Gabrummaa) again and defend our father’s land and dignity. A minority regime will not “put us down”. More:- Stop Abay Tsehaye and His Cohorts
Addis Ababa has expanded rapidly over the last 20 years by swallowing villages and farming communities, all of whom are Oromos, along its path. This has resulted in the eviction of at least an estimated 100,000 Oromo farmers to make way for “industry” and other high priority “development” endeavours, and for the construction of luxury apartments and mansions for TPLF officials and their accomplices. These farmers, because they have never had any experience with urban ways of life and doing business, soon become homeless, jobless begging on the street when they run out of the unfair compensations they were given by the government. This is very sad, and a crime of genocidal proportion.
Many OPDO officials, contrary to their TPLF masters, know these horrifying stories of farmers left on the street of Addis begging, and others working as daily labourers. And it seems they have said enough when they resisted the top-down approach of imposing the so-called Addis Ababa surrounding Oromia integrated Master Plan, which is kind of a way to legitimize the annexation of towns around the city. Many were killed when they peacefully took to the streets to protest the Master Plan in April/May 2014. No enquiry has ever been conducted regarding the massacres in Ambo and other locations.
And TPLF continues to bully OPDO officials to submit themselves in continuing to committing genocide on the Oromo farmers. Some bow for their masters. Others not so much.
Many believe the Master Plan is not according to the interest of the Oromo people, and it has to be prepared by the Oromia regional state after Addis Ababa is handed over to the Oromia regional state as a special administration territory, also stipulated in article 49(5). Well, TPLF is not even willing to amend the plan, let alone giving the city to Oromia regional state. This is shown in the ignorance of officials, such as Abay Tsehaye, who declares war on people as unison on public meeting. Abay Tsehaye, probably the second in command of TPLF, has vowed to crush any resistance to the Master Plan. But the Oromo youth or Qeerroo and other political parties, both peaceful and through armed movement, have echoed their concern and promised to address the issue seriously.
The following video is a compiled satellite night time images making time lapse of Addis Ababa since 1992. It clearly shows the city has rapidly grown particularly huge jump between 2003 and 2006.
Ask yourself, is this growth or genocide? What is the meaning of development if it just displaces resources, makes one rich for every 1000 poor? Ask yourself, why farmers who have always lived with their land in pride, sustain themselves for generation, are removed from their livelihoods into new ways of life that are quite radical and hard to comprehend? http://finfinnetribune.com/Gadaa/2015/02/reinvent-ethiopia-areal-satellite-images-of-the-addis-ababa-expansion-1992-2013-at-the-expense-of-oromo-farmers/
Few months ago, in an interview with journalist Befekadu Moroda of Oromia Media Network (OMN), I asserted that TPLF and the Tigrean ruling class have transformed into Neftegna. Abay Tsehaye’s recent words and behavior testament to that. Remember the Neftegna system that gave monopoly over the means of violence and the sources of wealth produced chauvinistic agents who exploited and disrespected oppressed groups in Ethiopia. The system also engineered social behaviors that justified the actions of those agents and popularized myths of the dominant groups socio-cultural superiority. Overtime, the ruling class and its base began rationalizing and institutionalizing prejudice and extreme form of violent responses towards those who dissented.
During the early years of their rule, as violent and oppressive they were, TPLF differentiated themselves from their predecessors by being sensitive and showing reasonable respect for groups they subjected. However, they began abandoning such sensitivity as they consolidated power and began amassing wealth, and they have started adopting the ugly behaviors of their predecessors. Nowadays, emboldened by the absolute monopoly of the means of violence, intoxicated with abundance of wealth at their disposal and facing no so significant threat to their rule, the TPLF Tigrean rulers’ rudeness, arrogance and disrespect for other cultures have become their norm. Just like their predecessors, they have the false sense of inherent superiority which had made them feel invincible. This behavior is even worse among their rising generation – which was born into wealth and power and grew up being drugged with post-victory (post-1991) bravado of TPLF.
This is good and bad news. It’s ‘bad’ because such collective behaviors increase and justify violence and repression against the subjected populations. However, on the ‘good’ side, it makes the system intolerable – expanding the base of resistance, and, consequently, speeding up the downfall of the system.
Abay Tsehaye’s threat, its tone and spirit, is very revealing of TPLF’s contempt and disrespect for Oromos, even those who are serving them as puppets. What is the story behind such outburst? After completion of the the Master Plan without any involvement from the Oromia side, Abay Tsehaye gathered senior OPDO leaders and ordered them to implement the plan. They expressed concern that they were not involved in the process of drafting the plan and that it will be hard to convince the rank and file. They were told they will not take NO for answer. The OPDO leaders could not even agree on the matter and when they took the issue to the mid-level leadership, they were met with fierce resistance and hostility. While the Oromia state leaders were planning to bring the issue to the Caffee ( parliament) for deliberation, Abay/TPLF could not wait so they bypassed them, gathered administrators of cities surrounding Finfinne and told them to begin implementation. At this meeting, the city administrators raised several procedural and policy objections and said they cannot take this plan without further study and deliberation at Caffee ( Oromia parliament level.) The administrators said they cannot convince the public about a plan even they themselves neither understand nor accept. In their typical manner Abay Tsehaye and TPLF leaders rejected the request for further discussion at the leadership level and gave them strict orders to begin the implementation phase. This conflict reached the public leading to the mass protest and massacre of April/May 2014.
During and in the aftermath of the protest, OPDO leaders agreed on the need to postpone the Master Plan as a way of containing the situation. This idea was initially accepted by the official EPRDF including the Prime Minister. However, Abay Tsehaye summoned the OPDO leaders and accused them of sabotage and threatened to eliminate them from the top down, and anyone who stands in the way of the Master Plan. Terrified, the puppet leaders went home and began hibernating avoiding the subject altogether.
Therefore, what is heard in this leaked audio of Abay Tsehaye threatening over a thousand urban planners and administrators is nothing new. His contempt towards Oromo and insidious plan to rob them of their land must be confronted. They have already began implementing the Master Plan and Abay Tsehaye had made it abundantly clear that they will go ahead by any means necessary. Well this needs to be met with the same spirit–the plan must be stopped by any means necessary.
Lets remember that the Finfinne issue is not isolated. TPLF’s real master Plan is to establish Tigrean economic monopoly by depriving Oromos of any real source of economy across the country including fertile land, mineral sites, manufacturing and trade. Therefore the target of Oromo resistance needs to focus on fighting back against this real Master Plan. The resistance needs to identify businesses of TPLF and its affiliates across Oromia and take them on to ensure they don’t succeed.
Arrogant TPLF leaders should realize that their power is more vulnerable than their fortified headquarters lead them to believe. The roots and branches of their domination extends deep into the remotest part of our homeland.
Biyya tuffatan harreen garmaaman ========================
The Gulele Post • February 15, 2015
“Waan feetaanis fiddan Masteer Pilaanin Finfinnee hojirra ni oola. Warra nu dura dhaabbate abbaa feetes taatu ‘likkii’ galchina. Qondaalonni Oromoo godiina naannawa Finfinnee yakkamtoota. Qonddaalonni Oromiyaa laamshoodha.” Kun hundi arrabsoofi dhaadannoo qondaaltichi Wayyanee guddichi Abbaay Tsahaayyee Oromoota walitti qabee itti huruurse kaassaayi. Sagalee gabaabduu waraabamtee OMN geette irraa jechoota fokkisaa akkasii yoo dhageenyu kan nuti hin dhagayin hafan maal faa akka ta’e yaadun nam hin dhibu. Akkan dhagayetti, tibba mormiin godhamaa ture san qondaaltoota OPDO gurguddoo walitti qabuun arrabsoo dhuunfaa bira dharbee hamma doorsisuufi harkaan itti aggaamutti gahame ture.
Tuffiifi jibba Abbaay Tsahaayyeefi waahillan isaa Oromoof qaban afaan ajaayan as bahe kun dhimma nam- tokkee akka hin taane namuu hubachuu qaba. Ejjennoo jaarmayni Wayyaanneen qabattee deemtuun, kan qabeenya Oromoo saamuun sirna cunqursaa isaanii tursiisuuf hammeenya hammamii raaw’achuuf akka muratan ragaadha. Karoorri maqaa Master Pilaaniitin Finfinnee bal’isanii, Oromiyaarraa muranii fudhachuu kunis kophatti laalamuu hin qabu. Master Pilaaniin kun karoora guddicha fi isa ol aanaa Tigroonni ol’aantummaa dinagdee yoomifu turu ijaaruuf qaban irraa kan maddeedha. Akkuma namuu argu yeroo amma kanatti lafti gabbataan jaraaf hirmaa jira. Iddoon albuudaa, warshaalee gurguddaani fi magaalaan sochii dinagdee qabdu too’annaa jaraa jala galfamaa jira. Daldaltoonni Tigraay hamma baadiyyaa Oromiyaatti caasaa diriirfachuun daldaltoota Oromoo taphaan ala godhanii jiran. Qonnaan bulaa Oromoo kaan lafa irraa fudhatanii warshaafi mana jireenya waardiyyaa isaani godhatan. Warra hafe ammoo xaa’oo gatiin samii tuqee itti fe’anii kasaarsanii hiyyoomsan.
Sochii Warraaqsa Bilisummaa ta’aa jiru daran jabeessuun dhadannoolee uumata onnachiisanii fi waamicha diddaa sirna Wayyaanee kan qabu barruuleen kun bakkoota mootummaan Wayyaanee beeksisa maxxanfatu irrattii fi lafa magaalota bakka bebbeekamoo irratti maxxanfamuu fi uumataafis raabsamuu gabaasi Qeerroo naannicha irraa nu gahe addeessa.
Keessattuu Qeerroon aanaa Daawoo magaala Buusaa mana murtii fuula duraa fi secondary fuuldura ti waraqaa waamichaa dhoobuu fi magaala iddoo hedduu ti faca’uurraan kan ka’ee uummanni gammachuu guddaan kan itti dhagaheef qeerroon daraan kan onnatan ta’uu odeessi gama sana irraa nu dhaqabeera.
Gabaasa guutuu dhimma kana agama fuula duraa dhiheesina.
Hiriira barattoota Oromoo guyyaa har’aa Muddee 03,2015 amma itti jiramu irratti Wallagga Aanaa Gullisoo Ganda Calliyaa Keessatti Gooti Barataan Oromoo Karrasaa Caalaa Rasaasa Mootummaa Abbaa Irree Wayyaaneen erga rukutamee booda bayyaannachuu dadhabuu irraan Wareegame.
![Jimma[1]](https://qeerroo.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/jimma1.jpg)
Oromian Economist 
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