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Ethiopia is an authoritarian state ruled by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which has been in power since 1991 and currently holds every seat in Parliament. Multiple flawed elections, including most recently in 2015, showcased the government’s willingness to brutally repress the opposition and its supporters, journalists, and activists. Muslims and members of the Oromo ethnic group have been specifically singled out. Perceived political opponents are regularly harassed, detained, and prosecuted—often under the guise of Ethiopia’s deeply flawed Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. The 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation drastically impeded the activities of civil society groups.
Key Developments:
Hundreds of people were killed in a crackdown on antigovernment protests that took place primarily in the Oromia and Amhara regions throughout much of the year. The Ethiopian government admitted to at least 500 deaths since the protests began in November 2015, while some human rights organizations report up to 800.
Thousands of people have been detained in connection with the protests, and reports of mistreatment, including torture, while in custody are rife.
In early October, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced a six-month state of emergency that gives the government sweeping powers to deploy the military, further restrict speech and the media, impose curfews and movement restrictions, and monitor communications.
Throughout the year, the authorities disrupted internet and mobile phone networks, and temporarily blocked social-media platforms and certain news websites, in an effort to prevent people from organizing and communicating about the protests.
Executive Summary:
Ethiopia was wracked by protests throughout much of 2016, a result of widespread and growing discontent with ethnic and political marginalization and repressive rule by EPRDF. The largely peaceful protests were frequently put down violently by the security forces. The protests had begun over ethnic and land rights in November 2015 in the Oromia region, and intensified in 2016, with significant additional protests in Addis Ababa and the Amhara region.
In January, the government withdrew the contentious Addis Ababa Master Plan, which had been the rallying point for Oromo protesters who alleged that thousands of farmers would be displaced from their ancestral lands to make way for the capital’s expansion. However, the announcement did little to staunch larger discontent with the EPRDF, and demonstrations took on broader antigovernment dimensions and appealed to Ethiopians across ethnic lines. The protests were regularly met with excessive force by the police and the military, including the use of live ammunition and tear gas against crowds. Tens of thousands of people were detained in police sweeps, and reports of mistreatment, including beatings and torture while in custody, were widespread. Among those arrested or charged were leaders of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress, including party chairman Merera Gudina and deputy chairman Bekele Gerba. In October, the government admitted that more than 500 people had been killed in connection with the protests since November 2015, though some rights organizations reported that the true figure is at least 800.
In early October, the government announced a nationwide six-month state of emergency, enacting sweeping powers to deploy the military, restrict speech and the media, impose curfews and movement restrictions, and monitor communications. According to some estimates, nearly 24,000 Ethiopians were detained under the state of emergency, although about 10,000 were released in December. The demonstrations subsided in the wake of the emergency decree, but the government has taken little action to address the grievances of the protesters.
In September, the government pardoned some 700 prisoners in its annual gesture, including 135 Muslims who had been convicted on terrorism charges. However, key religious, ethnic, and political leaders, as well as at least 16 journalists, remained behind bars, and a number of new arrests occurred in 2016; countless other political dissidents are still facing terrorism charges in lengthy and ongoing trials.
Tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea reached a boiling point in June, when the two militaries skirmished at the northern border town of Tsorona before returning to an uneasy peace.
Ten countries whose stability can’t be taken for granted (The Maldives, Mauritania, Algeria, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, China)
Ten countries whose stability can’t be taken for granted
Political science is heavy on the political and light on science.
As George W. Bush and Al Gore debated prior to the 2000 elections, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan merited serious mention. Eight years later, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain foresaw chaos in Syria and Libya. Political science is heavy on the political and light on science. Area studies specialists failed to predict the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the fall of the Soviet Union, or the Arab Spring. Policymakers are much more comfortable second-guessing what they saw in the rearview mirror than gazing over the horizon. Simply put, the world is unpredictable and the chief concerns for the next administration might be barely a blip on the radar today.
ProtestsEthiopia, October 2, 2016. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri.
Putting aside existing conflicts in Libya, Syria, Yemen, the South China Sea, and Ukraine, what crises could blindside the White House in the next four years? Here are ten countries and potential crises that should certainly be on the next administration’s radar screen: The Maldives might be isolated and far from US shores but isn’t that what analysts once said of Afghanistan?
The Maldives. Let’s start small. Few Americans know the Maldives, but those who do likely think of the low-lying Indian Ocean archipelago as the archetypaltropical island paradise. Outside of the gated resorts, however, Islamist radicalism has been taking root. The Maldivian government has sought US assistance, but the 3 a.m. phone call has now been ringing unanswered for several years. Might the Islamic State seize Western tourists on the island? What would a radical government willing to accept arms and foreign jihadis mean for trans-Indian Ocean shipping? The Maldives might be isolated and far from US shores but isn’t that what analysts once said of Afghanistan?
Mauritania. Africa has largely been a success story over the past 20 years, but several countries put that progress at risk. Take Mauritania, for example. European terror analysts regularly list Mauritania as perhaps their top, under-the-radar concern. The impoverished country on the Atlantic coast of Africa has the population of Phoenix, Arizona, spread over an area twice the size of California. An Islamic Republic, it is one of the last countries to embrace slavery in practice if not in law. Its largely ungoverned interior has become the domain of smugglers and a safe-haven for terrorists. Loose weaponry from Libya has only poured fuel on the fire. In many ways, Mauritania has become pre-9/11 Afghanistan, just without the diplomatic attention.
Algeria. Africa’s largest country, Algeria should also be one of its wealthiest. But decades of military rule, statist economic policies, and a devastating civil war in the 1990s have taken their toll. Now, southern Algeria is a haven for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria’s long-time strongman, will likely not last out the next four years. There is no clear succession and, even if a president does consolidate political control, he will have to face down Islamic radicals who might seek to avenge their long suppression. One Libya has been destabilizing enough. Another so close to Europe could herald disaster.
Ethiopia. Two and a half times the size of California, Ethiopia is one of the world’s oldest countries but, despite an increasingly autocratic and repressive leadership projecting an aura of stability, it looks like it could be among the world’s most fragile states. While the economy has grown rapidly, poverty remains the rule as the population also booms. The agricultural basis of the economy makes Ethiopia susceptible to drought. State-dominated industries mean it competes poorly with the outside world. The country is incredibly diverse. In 1991, Eritrea successfully seceded after a decades-long civil war. While Eritrea had its own colonial heritage, many other ethnic groups are as resentful of Addis Ababa’s control and, specifically, ethnic Tigrean domination. Of greater concern, however, is Ethiopia’s sectarian division. Muslims already represent a third of the population and are growing at a faster rate than the Ethiopian Christian population. Should ethnic and sectarian divisions erupt into open conflict, the resulting insecurity could make Somalia look like Club Med.
Nigeria. Concerns about stability in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, hit international headlines in 2014 when Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of school girls in order to convert them forcibly to Islam and marry them off to militants. But that’s only one of many problems Nigeria faces. Boko Haram has thrived against the backdrop of endemic corruption. By some estimates, Nigeria has lost $400 billion to embezzlement and corruption since 1960, more than total international aid to Africa during the same period. While the international community has largely eradicated piracy off the coast of Somalia, the problem hasskyrocketed in the Gulf of Guinea, and even that is underreported since states don’t always report seizures in their territorial waters. Like Ethiopia, Nigeria faces not only ethnic but sectarian divisions. Tensions between Muslims and Christians plunged the Ivory Coast into civil war in the last decade; Nigeria is far more volatile. If its fragile democracy fails, West Africa may see a conflict worse than any it has seen in decades.
Turkey. What would it mean if a NATO ally collapsed? Over the past decade, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has seized dictatorial power. He called the aborted July 15 coup “a gift from God” and used it as an excuse to declare a state of emergency and purge more than 100,000 military officers and civil servants. But there are indications that there could be more violence on the horizon. Doğu Perinçek, a former Maoist turned ultra-nationalist power-broker, leads a shadowy group Turks simply refer to as “the Perinçek group.” Some suggest that Perinçek is Turkey’s real defense minister, behind-the-scenes. In August, Erdoğan hired Adnan Tanriverdi, a former Special Forces trainer close to Perinçek, to be counsel for the president. The question is whether those Tanriverdi trains will be more loyal to Perinçek or Erdoğan when the next blow comes. Regardless, Erdoğan may be a marked man and even if he is killed or forcibly removed, he has so eviscerated the Turkish state that political chaos will likely follow his death.
Russia. Like Turkey, Russia is ruled by a strongman who has substituted the illusion of stability for its substance. When President Vladimir Putin dies, the Russian people will have to pay the price for his decades of corruption and mismanagement. Putin’s lasting legacy will be the vacuum of power underneath him. Beyond poor governance, however, Russia will soon face reverberation from its demographic crisis. Its Muslim population is growing as its ethnic Russian population shrinks. At the same time, it faces Islamist radicalism not only in Chechnya and Daghestan, but also increasingly among ethnic Tartars. Here’s the question: As Muslims make up a growing proportion of the conscript-age population, can Russia count on its own army in any sectarian conflict? (On all these issues, the writings of Leon Aron and Anna Borshchevskaya are must-reads).
Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s facing a perfect storm: US policy has empowered and re-resourced Iran. The price of oil has declined precipitously pushing the Saudi economy to the brink. Saudi Arabia is bogged down in a war in Yemen which seemingly has no end. All of this would be bad in the best of circumstances, but add into the mix a king that very well may have Alzheimer’s and the Kingdom may face a crisis unlike any it has faced in decades. Every US administration since Franklin Roosevelt’s has counted on a strong partnership with Saudi Arabia kingdom to bring stability to the Middle East and order to the world economy. If Riyadh is unable or unwilling to continue that partnership, can Washington find a substitute or fill the gap?
Jordan. Even more than Saudi Arabia, the United States has relied on Jordan for generations. The Hashemite Kingdom is perhaps America’s closest Arab ally. But Jordan is in crisis today, even if the Jordanian government will not admit it. With the influx of Syrians, Jordan has now absorbed its third major wave of refugees, putting tremendous strain on the economy. King Abdullah II is far more popular in Washington and London than he is in some corners of his own kingdom. And while Western journalists depict Queen Rania as a romantic and popularfigure, she is widely disliked inside Jordan for her profligate spending. All of this has created fertile ground for the Islamic State to infiltrate Jordan even if it keeps its presence low-key. Should he United States and its Iraqi and Kurdish allies push the Islamic State out of Iraq and Syria and lead more of its fighters to enter Jordan, then the assault on Mosul and Raqqa might truly be Pyrrhic.
China. Last but not least China, the world’s most populous country. Some pundits have watched China’s economic boom and sung its praises, even suggesting that the communist republic’s dictatorial ways might be superior to those of the United States. Economic development is uneven: coastal, urban incomes are exponentially higher than interior, rural incomes. The legacy of decades of China’s murderous one-child policy are still to come as China faces a demographic precipice. My colleagues Dan Blumenthal and Derek Scissors highlight the implications of stagnation in China. Simply put, future US administrations should worry less about the rise of China and more about its decline. Will a faltering China, for example, lash out militarily as a stagnating Russia has?
The world is a dangerous place. These scenarios may be too obscure for the 2016 presidential debates, but ensuring the ability of the United States to react to them should not be.
In its total lawlessness, the regime had left no right unviolated be it bluntly or systematically. It is because of this that in terms of what rights it limits or what new power it confers on the executive, this declaration is inconsequential. There is nothing it changes on the ground. The resistance was happening while a full military rule organized by a Command Post chaired by the Commander-in-Chief himself was already in place. In the name of taking a “merciless and definitive” measure on protestors, the army and its Agazi Regiment, the Regional Special Forces, the Federal Police, the States’ Police Forces, Prison officials, and the Local Militia have all taken ultimate measures on civilians, children, mothers, and the elderly. They have applied the most barbaric methods of execution, massacre, torture, and abuse.
This morning, Ethiopians woke up to the news that the Council of Ministers of the Federal Government has passed an emergency decree that may last for the coming six months. The official text of the Decree is not yet published in the official legal communicator, the Negarit Gazetta. (As it has now become customary, it may never be published at all; the regime does what it wants to do nonetheless.) That it is so declared today is announced to journalists by the Prime Minister in Cabinet on the state television. The Prime Minister spoke in order to announce the decision to journalists as the primus inter pares, the first among equals, in the Cabinet. The reason given by the Prime Minister for issuing the declaration is that there is a breakdown of law and order that threatens the safety of citizens and the integrity of the constitutional order.
To the peoples of Ethiopia, especially to those who have been under military rule for the last one year and more (without any fact that necessitates it or any law that warrants it), the decree makes no practical difference in their ‘lives’. As such, the decree has little significance, if any.
The people have seen the worst face of repression. Killing, maiming, mass arrest, arbitrary detention, public torture, dispossession, eviction, dislocation (because of loss of houses and job and domicile), and much worse. They have seen burning of prisoners alive (in Qilinxo, Ambo, Gonder, Angereb, Debretabor, Zuway, etc). They have seen towns set on fire and razed down (in Konso). They have seen detainees poisoned (in Sabbataa). They have seen massacres on a sacred ground (Irrechaa) that was turned virtually into a killing field (Horaa Arsadii). They have seen children shot dead right in front of their moms (in Wallaggaa, in Arsi, in Harargee, and everywhere else).
Every day, those that are alive have lived under ‘the shadow of death.’ They have seen the regime mobilize one group of people against the other and lose loved ones and their means of livelihood as a result. They have seen snipers shoot young people in market places, in school compounds, and in the privacy of their homes. In short they have seen it all. So, what new thing they haven’t already seen is this emergency decree going to bring about? The answer given by almost everyone is a resounding “NOTHING!”
But while we are at it, it is important for us to ask what it means to declare a state of emergency in Ethiopia. What exactly is a state of emergency? When is it proper? Who declares emergency? What is the procedure? What is the implication for rights and for the exercise of power by the regime? Why is it declared now? What new thing is the regime planning to do under the guise of the emergency decree?
In what follows, I explore these questions in the light of the Ethiopian constitution (although no law, constitution or otherwise, has ever meant anything in Ethiopia). The key provision that regulates the mode, procedure, consequences, and implications of emergency declaration is article 93 of the Constitution.
What is emergency declaration? And when is it necessary?
Emergency decree is a decree of extraordinary situation. It is a law of abnormal times. It is a way of creating ‘legal illegality’ in a constitutional-political order invoking necessity on the ground of actual or impending war, crisis in law order, natural disasters, or break out of epidemics. It is a regime of exception-making through which the state is authorized to do what it cannot lawfully do under normal circumstances. Through emergency laws, a state is empowered to exercise special powers justified on the ground that the exigencies of political life has become so terrible that it demands a special set of measures.
According to the Ethiopian constitution (art 93(1)(a)), emergency is declared when there is:
a) external invasion;
b) a breakdown of law and order that cannot be managed through ordinary law-enforcement mechanisms;
c) natural disaster; or
d) epidemic.
One can see from the above that special measures that have to be effected through emergency decree are said to be necessary in times of war, crisis of public order, natural catastrophe, or the spread of contagious disease or plague that threatens the population.
According to the announcement of the Prime Minister, the cause of the emergency declaration today is the complete breakdown of law and order which has threatened the constitutional order. This is of course a concession on his part to the fact one can easily observe on the ground since the re-emergence of the #Oromoprotests on 12 November 2015.
Throughout the year Oromia—where military rule is imposed–has been completely ungovernable. Konso has also been ungovernable for the last eleven months. After July 2016, when the Amhara resistance broke out in Gonder, the Amhara region also became ungovernable by the regime thereby necessitating a military rule to be imposed there, too.
Who issues the Declaration of Emergency?
The necessity of such a decree is assessed and acted upon by the Council of Ministers (COM). But the COM is not the only institution that has a sole authority on the management of emergency situation. The power to declare emergency is shared between the Executive and the Legislature. According to art 93(2), owing to the urgency associated with emergency, the declaration may be issued unilaterally by the COM but it should be presented to the parliament within 48 hours if the parliament is in session. If the parliament refuses to approve it, the decree will be dead on arrival. If the parliament approves it by a 2/3rd majority vote, it becomes effective for up to six months from the date of declaration.
If the emergency happens in the season when the parliament is not in session—like it is the case now—the decree must be submitted to the parliament within fifteen days. This may necessitate calling a special or extraordinary meeting of the parliament. Without the approval of the parliament, no emergency decree can be effective. In other words, emergency power is shared between the two institutions, the executive (COM) and the legislature (HPR). The former has the power to generate the emergency bill and the latter has the power to approve or reject the decree submitted to it by the former.
The How of Emergency Declaration: Procedure
The process is activated when the COM decides to have such a decree after duly assessing the situation. If exceptional measures are found to be:
a) necessary; and
b) not preventable through any other measures.
Thus, the COM must demonstrate that there is a serious crisis in public order that it could not otherwise control through the activation of ordinary law-enforcement mechanisms. Once this is demonstrated, the decree is submitted to the Parliament for approval. On approval by parliament, it becomes the law of exceptional times. When it is duly approved by the parliament, the parliament establishes an Emergency Inquiry Board that supervises the humane treatment of all persons arrested in the course of enforcing the emergency (art 93(5)). The Board ensures the accountability of the executive for its measures taken during the emergency season.
What does Emergency entail? What are its consequences?
The declaration of emergency confers special powers on the executive. It empowers them to take measures necessary and proportional to avert the danger. Often, the executive is given latitude to suspend some constitutional rights as may be necessary to protect public peace and order. The usual candidates are rights such as freedom of assembly, demonstrations, movement, etc, which can be suspended for a limited period of time.
However, these powers are not open-ended. There is a limit to what the Executive can do. In particular, its actions are circumscribed by constitutional provisions that are non-derogable. The provisions relating to the right to life, freedom from torture and all forms of cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment or punishment, equality and non-discrimination, etc are often seen as universally inviolable under any circumstance. This emanates from the principle of sanctity of human life, human dignity, and fundamental equality in worth of all human beings.
In art 93 (4)(3)), these non-derogable provisions are five: art. 1 (the provision that has to do the nomenclature of the country and the system it denotes); art. 18 (the provision on the right to freedom from cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishment or treatment such as torture); art 25 (the provision on the right to equality and non-discrimination); art 39(1) (the provision on the right to self-determination including secession); and art 39(2) (the provision on the right to language, culture, and history). Curiously, the right to life (under arts 14 and 15) is not in the list of rights that cannot be suspended or limited during situations of emergency. Given the weight given to other structures such as the federal democratic republican structure and the name that denotes it; or to right of nations to self-determination; the absence of the right to life, the most fundamental of all human rights, in this list must be an oversight.
Why now? What Motivated the regime to Issue this declaration?
What is the point of this declaration? What new measures are to be taken other than those “merciless” measures that were being taken throughout the year? What rights are to be newly suspended and/or limited because they have been left unviolated thus far?
As we all know, the regime has virtually banned all forms of demonstrations, political meetings, associations, etc for a long time. We know that there is no press freedom in the country. Ethiopia is one of the top four jailers of journalists in the entire world. Arbitrary killing, mass arrests, detentions, tortures, discrimination, have been a matter of routine practice throughout the 25 years tenure of the regime, only exacerbated now in the context of the open mass revolt in the last couple of years.
The regime has always been confrontational with religious groups because it routinely and unscrupulously interferes with their freedom of religion.
Demanding the right to self-determination as per the constitution automatically renders one a terrorist because apparently, in EPRDF’s book, the right to self-determination is already exercised by all. As a result, identity is securitized, i.e., it is handled as a matter of threat to national security.
The right to one’s distinct language—e.g. the right to a choice of script—is routinely violated, a striking example being the regime’s denial of the right of the Erob people of Tigray Region to adopt a Latin script for their language.
In its total lawlessness, the regime had left no right unviolated be it bluntly or systematically. It is because of this that in terms of what rights it limits or what new power it confers on the executive, this declaration is inconsequential. There is nothing it changes on the ground. The resistance was happening while a full military rule organized by a Command Post chaired by the Commander-in-Chief himself was already in place. In the name of taking a “merciless and definitive” measure on protestors, the army and its Agazi Regiment, the Regional Special Forces, the Federal Police, the States’ Police Forces, Prison officials, and the Local Militia have all taken ultimate measures on civilians, children, mothers, and the elderly. They have applied the most barbaric methods of execution, massacre, torture, and abuse. Surely novelty will elude them in this regard. They have practised abuses that the world’s ghastliest torture centres and killing fields have witnessed in history.
The only question that remains now is why the regime issues this declaration now? What do they want to achieve? There are two possibilities: 1) to give a retrospective legal cover to atrocities they have been perpetrating so far and to exculpate the more extensive barbaric measures they are preparing to take in a last vindictive act just before they vacate power; and 2) to terrorize the public into temporary silence during which time they will dismantle major infrastructural facilities and move to the home base of the TPLF core of the regime. These possibilities are mere speculations, of course, but these are speculations that are hardly without reasons rooted in the conduct, words, and attitudes of the key figures in the regime.
Ummatni Oromoo gochaa diinaa kana jabinaan dura dhaabbatuun Har –Sadeen bakka uumaa itti galateeffatan malee waltajjii siyaasaa mootummaa itti faarsan ykn eebbisan akka hin tahiin hubachiisuun, mootummaan gochaa kana irraa akka dhaabbatu hubachiisaa fi yaadachiisaa ture. Haa tahu malee mootummaan humnatti amanu kun akkuma bare humnaan to’achuun waltajjii ofii godhatuuf yaalii godheen mormii dhalateen ummata meesha maleeyyii ayyaana kabajataa jiru irratti boombii harkaa darbatuun lubbuu gaaga’ee, waraana lafoo fi helikooptara waraanaan marsee dhukaasa baneen lammiilee fayyaaleyyii Oromoo dhibbaa ol ajjeesuu dhaan diinummaa isaa caalaatti ifa godhee jira. Guyyaan kun Oromoof Sanbata Gurraacha seenaa keessatti hin dagatamne tahee jira.
Kanneen aadaa fi safuu ummataaf kabajaa hin qabne ajjechaa jumlaa fi tarkaanfii sanyii duguggii kana kan rawwatan bakka Irreeffannaatti tahuun ammoo mootummaan kun Ayyaana ummata Oromoof kan kabajaa hin qabne tahuu kan durii caalaa mirkaneesse. Waan taheef tarkaanfii diinummaa kana ABOn gadi jabeessee balaaleffata.
Hawaasni addunyaa, nagaa jaallattootni, dhabbattootni mirga namoomaa gochaa gara jabinaa fi faashistummaa mootummaa Wayyaanee kana akka balaaleffatan ABOn jabeessee gaafata. Addatti ammoo mootummootni mootummaa kanaaf waahela tahan ajjechaan jumlaa haa gahu jechuun callisa isaanii irra aanuun tarkaanfii barbaachisuu fi quubsaa yeroon itti fudhatan amma tahuu irra deebi’ee yaadachiisa.
Ummatni Oromoo mootummaa Wayyaanee ummatoota hunda irratti roorrisaa jiru kun akka gatiittii ummatoota irraa bu’uuf qabsoo gaggeessuun durummaan kaafama. Qabsoo ummatni Oromoo itti jiru fakkeenya godhatuun kan qabsoo mirgaa fi eenyummaa kaasuun falmaa seenanis hedduu dha. Ummatootni qabsoo eenyummaa fi mirgaatti jiran martis gochaa kana akka balaaleffatanii fi qabsoo mirgaa fi dimokraasii ummatni Oromoo itti jiru cinaa hiriiruu fi wal tumsuun falmaa isaanii akka finiinsan ABOn gaafata.
Tarkaanfiin fashistummaa guyyaa har’aa Onkoloolessa 2, 2016 ummata Oromoo irratti fudhatame hariiroon mootummaa Wayyaanee fi ummata Oromoo gidduu kan diinummaa tahuu waan daran caalaatti mirkaneesseef, ummatni Oromoo mootummaa kana irraa ajjeechaa fi hidhaa, xiqqeenyaa fi salphina malee kan argatu homaatuu akka hin jirre hubatee, qabsoo bilisummaa itti jiru bifa hundaan akka finiinsu ABOn dhaamsa dabarsa.
Dhaabotni bilisummaa fi mirga waliigalaaf qabsaawan hundi fi ummatootni marti akka qabsoo hadhaawaa kana finiinsanii umrii mootummaa fashistii kana gabaabsuu irratti akka fuulleeffatan waamicha keenya dabarsina.
Sanbatni kun Oromoof Sanbata Gurraacha Seenaan hin dagatamne dha.
(Africa Times) — Oromo rights activists said Friday that Bontu Bekele Gerba, daughter of the imprisoned Oromo political opposition leader in Ethiopia, had been released after security forces detained her in the town of Mojo.
Independent Oromo journalist Mohammed Ademo, a former al Jazeera America columnist based in the United States, said the family’s lawyer confirmed the late-afternoon disappearance.
Ademo and other Oromo advocates immediately took to social media, some demanding that U.S. officials and international NGOs confirm her whereabouts and intervene as necessary.
Journalist Jawar Mohammed, executive director for the Oromio Media Network in the U.S., reported that she was released after being detained for questioning at a Mojo police station.
Bontu Bekele Gerba is a political activist in her own right, speaking often to media organizations and Ethiopian activists on behalf of her father, a leader of the Oromo Federalist Congress, and the movement.
The elder Bekele Gerba was most recently detained at Ethiopia’s Kilinto Prison in Addis Ababa, a maximum-security facility where high-profile political prisoners and anti-government protesters are incarcerated. He was rearrested in December following a short release and since remained at the facility, where a fire claimed 23 lives in early September, according to official Ethiopian government totals.
Bontu Bekele Gerba led a search for her father when prison authorities failed to provide information to anxious families who knew nothing of their loved ones’ fate, and spoke publicly again on their behalf.
Her father’s initial 2011 arrest followed a meeting with Amnesty International researchers that led to terrorism charges, which are often used by Ethiopia to silence political dissidents including the Oromo.
Global concern for the 30 million Oromo living under President Mulatu Teshome has increased, following a year in which at least 500 hundred Ethiopians died in violent clashes with security forces.
That visibility was raised following the protest of Ethiopian Feyisa Lelisa at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and his subsequent application for U.S. asylum. Activists in the U.S. have held large protest marches, most recently on Thursday in Washington D.C., on behalf of the Oromo.
Dr. Tedros sits in EPRDF’s central committee responsible for the killings of peaceful protesters (of not only the more than 200 killed during the aftermath of the May 2005 elections) but also for the more than 600 peaceful protesters killed in the ongoing nationwide protests, as per the Human Rights Watch’s latest report.
(Addis Standard) — As a matter of historical coincidence, both Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) were established in 1948. Dr. Tedros Adhanom became the former’s first unqualified but politically appointed minister in history and he now wants to take over the later, in a similar and unjustifiable trajectory.
First, it has to be established as to how such a man with all sorts of personal shortcomings, including but not limited to, professionalism, integrity, leadership quality and even humanity made atop Ethiopia’s political hierarchy. Dr. Tedros is the executive member of the TPLF, a party constituting the core of the lofty ruling coalition, EPRDF, which ruled Ethiopia for over quarter a century with an iron fist. TPLF elites hail from the minority Tigrean ethnicity in the north who played a significant role in ousting Ethiopia’s communist dictator, Derg, in 1991 only to appear yet as another version of it under the leadership of the late Meles Zenawi. By effectively annihilating the country’s capable political elites, the late Meles created an amorphous political buffer around himself where opportunist elites such as Dr. Tedros were to be welcomed. The promotion of Dr Tedros from a mere malaria desk expert at the regional health department of Tigray to the ministerial portfolio of Ethiopia in 2005 was part of this trajectory. Accordingly, the biologist-turned malaria entomologist became the first health minister with non-health background in the history of the Ethiopian state.
Following the death of his late mentor Meles Zenawi, the malaria expert even astonished the whole world by becoming, all of a sudden, the minister of foreign affairs in a country home to some of the most experienced career diplomats. In a nutshell, both his shortcomings in professional competence and the typically opportunist twists of the political pathway for his ascendancy to power proves the modes operandi of his party TPLF and how such people like him benefited from that.
It’s true that under his tenure as a minister of health, there were some progresses registered in the country’s health sector. But, the narrative that Ethiopia registered miracles, as even wrongly propagated by few western media, should be filtered so carefully. Ethiopia’s health sector is still categorized by the WHO itself among those “in critical crisis”. Nevertheless, because of the politically motivated decisions made by the regime to crackdown on international NGOs working on human rights (especially after the 2005 elections fallout) thereby channeling some huge international funds only into the health sector, there were progresses made during his tenure as a health minister. This is particularly true in the areas of health facilities expansion and the globally politicized care involving maternity and child health. But below, I outline examples of Dr. Tedros’ grim failures even in these allegedly modest gains.
Corruption: As huge international funds pumped by NGOs & philanthropists to strengthen Ethiopia’s health sector, mismanagement of funds and corruption were the hallmark of Dr. Tedros’ tenure as a minister of health between 2005-2012. This was brought to public attention as some media went on meticulously reporting it. Even the US government was obliged to cut funds for HIV/AIDS by 79% because of such financial mismanagement and corruption.
Inequality in health: Ethiopia has been praised for its achievements in the areas of maternity and child health. While there could exist some elements of truth in this intentionally hyped story, taking it as such would amount to a gross distortion of the country’s reality. In fact, the progresses made were achieved only for the wealthier class in the health quintiles. According to the latest report by the “Count Down” project, a US-funded project established in 2005 with the aim of assisting countries to generate and utilize empirical evidences in order to track progress towards health-related MDGs – particularly in areas of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH) – the disparity across wealth quintiles – between the poorest 20% and the richest 20% of the population – is extremely high in several indicators. For instance, the under-5 mortality rate, though declined overall, has actually increased among the poorest 20% of the population, from 130 in 2005 to 137 per 1,000 in 2011. Disparities in coverage also remain large across Ethiopia’s administrative regions, and between residents of urban and rural areas. According to this report, not only in remote regions like Afar and Somali, but also in the largest & central region of Oromia, from where 60% of Ethiopia’s GDP comes, a significant majority receive two or less out of eight essential RMNCH interventions; while in Addis Abeba & Dr. Tedros’ homeland of Tigray in the remote north, a vast majority of children receive at least six out of the eight.
Politicization of health: Dr. Tedros left the Ethiopian health sector very much politicized and crippled, which has to be yet depoliticized if it has to function properly. The more than 35,000 female health extension workers trained for six months and deployed across Ethiopia during his tenure, which many praise him for, are more of political cadres who are deployed in rural household families to serve the TPLF than helping health workers. This has been verified by their own internal memos and reports on various occasions.
In addition to these, under Dr. Tedros’ tenure, Ethiopia experienced outbreaks of many rudimentary diseases, like the cholera outbreak in 2006, 2008 and 2011 among others. Even though the Ethiopian law stipulates cholera to be a “mandatory notifiable disease”, Dr. Tedros left the legacy of keeping disease outbreaks “secrete”. Today that legacy remains as cholera ravages the whole country including the capital Addis Abeba.
Even worse, Dr. Tedros sits in EPRDF’s central committee responsible for the killings of peaceful protesters (of not only the more than 200 killed during the aftermath of the May 2005 elections) but also for the more than 600 peaceful protesters killed in the ongoing nationwide protests, as per the Human Rights Watch’s latest report.
In my view, Dr. Tedros doesn’t deserve to represent the face of such a prestigious global organization as the WHO, which is much regarded as an utmost humane. Ethiopia has many talents and capable leaders both in the health sector and beyond to offer to the WHO if professional competence, integrity and leadership quality are to be considered. Dr. Tedros Adhanom is not one of them.
The United States is very concerned over the situation in Ethiopia, particularly the instability in the Oromia and Amhara regions.
The United States is very concerned over the situation in Ethiopia, particularly the instability in the Oromia and Amhara regions, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in an interview. Speaking in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting, Assistant Secretary Thomas-Greenfield called the response by the government to protests an “intense and somewhat harsh crackdown:”
“We have had discussions with the Ethiopian government encouraging that they have dialogue, and that they open the possibly for press freedom, civil society’s ability to function, and that many of the people who have been put in jail be released.”
In Oromia anti-government protests began in November 2015, and they have also occurred in the northern Amhara region.
Assistant Secretary Thomas-Greenfield said the United States believes that the situation in the country could deteriorate and that the Ethiopian government is aware of that possibility as well.
“We’ve met with Prime Minister Hailemariam [Desalegn] in New York, and we have encouraged him to look at how the government is addressing this situation.”
“We think,” she said, “it could get worse if it’s not addressed – sooner rather than later.”
The truth is that Ethiopians are revolting in the clearest of terms. One need not look beyond what has evolved in Oromia and Amhara regional states over the last ten months where simple, constitutional and even by the ruling party’s lexicon ‘legitimate’ requests by the people of Ethiopia was turned by the government into unimaginable horror.
For a government that deprived the people of Ethiopia any other means to either humble it or talk back to it, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is harvesting what it sowed and the least it can do is admit that its way of being a government is not working. If this means dissolving itself, so be it!
When news of a 100% victory by the ruling EPRDF came out shortly after the May 2015 general elections, everyone scorned the result; it was too stupid to be true. After all, democratic elections in a multinational state home to a near 100 million odd, which Ethiopia is one, were not supposed to be like this. So, the world was right to scorn the results because nowhere in it would similar experiences go down history books unchallenged.
Alas, the ruling party in Ethiopia was not only intoxicated by the victory to see what was in the offing, but it was so sure to get away with it, as it did get away with many lapses of political orders in the last quarter a century.
The reason why the world – not the government in Ethiopia – looked at the results of that fateful election with a sheer horror is because the latter is the author, director and main character of the tragic political drama which eventually dragged Ethiopia to the verge of crisis, yet again. And that election was the straw that broke the Camel’s back. From north to south and left and right Ethiopians are on the streets screaming their ultimate rejection of a government which claimed to have won a 100% of their votes.
Damage from within and outside
There is damage to be sustained when a rebel-turned-government spoils its political capital to become a bullying dictatorship. In all measures, that is what happened in Ethiopia since the advent of May 1991. A federated state tutored by party manifesto; alternative political parties decimated from inside out with their leading members often jailed, harassed and in some cases killed or simply made to disappear from the face of earth; independent media and civil society organizations persecuted in equal terms as terrorists; and academic institutions and religious establishments coerced to dance to the music of the ruling party. Regrettably, that is Ethiopia as we know it since it was declared the ‘democratic republic of Ethiopia,’ although some would discount the first 10 years as a semi-successful democratic experiment.
The result is that military violence has now become the new language in which the government is using to talk back to the people of Ethiopia. Judging by the look of events it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that Ethiopians are betrayed by their own government which has no misgivings to turn into the military to answer their questions and control their dissenting voices.
But there is also damage to be sustained from outside when western allies of a dictatorship sugarcoat their terms of reference to declare a dictatorship “democratic” and continue to engage with it business as usual. (See story here).
Such blunders by the west are driven by several factors. Leaving aside the cliché, this magazine posits two of the often neglected factors.
The first is the burning ambition by Ethiopia’s western allies to showcase how the aid business turned a once poster child of famine into a successful budding state with a seemingly soaring economy. Calls by rights organizations, and most importantly, the people of Ethiopia for the west to use constructive diplomatic leverages to tame the government often fell on deaf ears. Ethiopia’s western allies repeatedly opted to hold their nose about the smelly human rights record and the government’s unbridled control of both the political and civic spaces in Ethiopia. But at the same time they continued pumping taxpayers’ money in the name of aid and lavish a repressive state with undeserved international legitimacy.
The second is the concept of not wanting to face the task of opening the Pandora’s Box during what’s often a constitutionally limited term in office practiced by most western governments. President Barak Obama is leaving office and he was under no illusion that speaking truth to the world that Ethiopia was going down the nasty way was going to do him more harm than good.
The result is that there remains no discourse and platform where Ethiopia’s western allies can use to discipline a government they themselves enabled to grow out of control.
True, Ethiopia is a sovereign state whose independence should not be tampered with but there are international laws, for example, that Ethiopia itself is a signatory to. Sadly no western ally is daring to speak out loud when Ethiopian officials use and abuse these laws the same way they use and abuse local laws. The recent flagrant dismissal by the government in Ethiopia of the kind reminder by the UN Human Rights Commission of the need to allow access to UN monitors to investigate recent killings and rights abuses in Ethiopia is one classic example.
This means it should now be up to the ruling party to stop playing illusory for the sake of PR consumption by the west and propaganda for Ethiopians and start facing the inevitable. That means the ruling EPRDF should admit that the country is really on the verge of crisis and that it and only it is responsible for it.
The truth is that Ethiopians are revolting in the clearest of terms. One need not look beyond what has evolved in Oromia and Amhara regional states over the last ten months where simple, constitutional and even by the ruling party’s lexicon ‘legitimate’ requests by the people of Ethiopia was turned by the government into unimaginable horror.
For a government that deprived the people of Ethiopia any other means to either humble it or talk back to it, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is harvesting what it sowed and the least it can do is admit that its way of being a government is not working. If this means dissolving itself, so be it!
The crux of the matter is this – both Ethiopia and Eritrea are ruled by equally brutal dictatorial regimes. The only difference is the Ethiopian regime is the darling of the West and the havoc it is creating within the borders of Ethiopia and beyond are conveniently overlooked by Western powers for geopolitical reasons, its mission in Somalia on behalf of Western powers, mainly USA. Specifically, EU is very much aware that the Ethiopian regime is no less a dictator than that in Eritrea.The reader may wonder what has this got to do with the refugee numbers. Here is the logic. Those who decide to travel long distances across deserts and oceans are smart people. Besides they are well informed by the smugglers as well as network of refugees who are already settled in Europe. They know what officials in the other side of the sea want to hear. So, a good proportion of those who register themselves as originating from Eritrea are actually Ethiopian refugees, who know very well that if they declare themselves as Ethiopians then their case would get immediately rejected.In fact, there is strong reason to believe that actually the majority of those who registered as Eritreans are likely to be Ethiopians. There is a corroborating evidence for this – International Migration Organization statistics for immigrants arriving in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Incidentally, the impact of repressive regime in Addis Ababa is so much that the refugee outflow to Yemen is still unabated, even when Yemen is burning due to civil war.Refugees arriving in this part of the world do declare their true identity, and the majority, about 80%, are Ethiopians. This sharply contrasts with the statistics on arrivals in Europe where refugees anticipate bias due to geopolitics. Otherwise, after all, Eritrea has only about 5 million population. If all of those who are crossing the desert and register as Eritreans were truly Eritreans, then the country’s population would have diminished to a great extent by now.This discrepancy reveals an interesting fact, which EU officials do not want to admit. It is not that EU officials are not aware of these facts, it is just that they do not want to reveal to their general public the havoc their foreign policy is creating by generously, even officiously in the Ethiopian case, supporting some dictators but exaggerating troubles created by others, all depending on geopolitical interests. We do not live in a world where geopolitical interest can be put aside, but we should not live in a world where every foreign policy should be governed by just geopolitical interests. If EU or USA chooses to employ security concerns to override all other values of humanity, then there will be no escape from engaging in a web of lies and deceptions even in explaining troubles arriving at their door, like the current refugee crisis, which is essentially a boomerang.It is disappointing to witness the persistence of Western powers in refusing to admit policy mistakes even in the middle of such crisis. This could have given them the opportunity to openly declare their stance regarding the cruel dictatorial regime in Ethiopia, which wins “elections” with 100% and yet remain a persistent offender of human rights: impoverish, imprison, torture, and kill citizens at massive scale. Ethiopia is the only country on earth where double digit economic growth rate has been declared year after year for over a decade but famine and starvation at massive scale is still shamelessly being announced to continue begging for food aid. It is a disgrace to witness the so called international community look the other way.
Kenyan Government is Held Accountable for Supporting Ethiopia TPLF Dictatorship and Hunting Freedom Fighters
OLF Press ReleaseForeign assistance from foreign countries near and far has helped the Tigirean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) government of Ethiopia to stay in power unjustly for the last 25 years. Unintentional or intentional, foreign assistance provided to Ethiopia, has made it difficult for the peoples of Ethiopia to free themselves from the imposed orders of the anti-democracy and anti-human rights TPLF regime of Ethiopia.Because of the current popular uprisings in many parts of the country, the TPLF Ethiopian regime is hysterically paranoid, desperate and callous. In the same way the regime has been protecting its power by force and by begging for foreign support. Now the regime is attempting to enlist the help of neighboring and distant states to save itself from collapsing or to prolong its life. The TPLF regime is using its experience of begging for food handouts also plan to stay in power by soliciting foreign assistance in order to weaken domestic protests, armed and unarmed oppositions. By responding to the sinister invitation from the Ethiopian regime, the Kenyan government has agreed to provide military support and has ordered a joint military operation against the Oromo Liberation Army of Southern Zone.Holding Kenya and the sovereignty of Kenya in contempt, the TPLF regime of Ethiopia has crossed borders into Kenya several times and has been inflicting massive damage on Kenyan citizens under the pretext of searching for OLF/OLA. The crimes Ethiopia’s TPLF army is committing in Kenya include, massacre of the Turkana people, abduction and refoulement of Oromo refugees by interfering and infiltrating Kenyan policy and security operatives. Some Kenyan police fulfilled the wishes of Ethiopian government by letting it avoid responsibility for engaging in wanton criminal activities. The fact that the Kenyan government is entering into alliance once again with the Ethiopian regime by ignoring Ethiopia recurrent attacks against Kenyan civilians will make Kenyan people lose their respect and trust for their own government, which is continuously being treated as a puppet for Ethiopia dictatorship. Fulfilling the interests of the Ethiopian government at the expense of Kenyan interest amounts to complicity in the crimes against humanity being committed by TPLF regime inside Ethiopia and in Kenya’s own territory.
By enlisting the assistance of the Kenyan government, the TPLF regime and the Kenyan government have finalized plans to launch a campaign of attacks against the OLA operating in the south. It has been known that Kenya is planning to participate in this anti-OLA campaign by mobilizing its Special Forces unit GSU (General Service Unit), and its infantry (Kenyan Defense Force) and specially KA1 to take action in Moyale area across the border. There is no doubt that Kenyans citizens opposing the action of Ethiopia totalitarian regime and Oromo refugees are going to be the groups that are going to be the most hurt by Kenya’s blind support for TPLF. This military action by the two forces is not new.
Despite the search and joint operation conducted by Kenyan army and Ethiopia regime military repeatedly before, it has been impossible to stop OLF activities in the south. And it is meaningless if it is thought to reverse the ongoing Oromia wide struggle to uproot the TPLF brutal regime once for all.
Like many failed joint past campaigns, there is no doubt that this campaign is also going to fail again. We believe that it’s clear to everyone at this juncture that as long as the Oromo questions ofbilisummaa (freedom) are not answered, the Oromo liberation struggle will not be contained.
The OLF strongly condemns military, security and other forms of assistance the Kenyan government provides to Ethiopia’s tyrannical regime. Because these acts target freedom fighters struggling for the just cause of their people and because it will contribute to depriving the Oromo of freedom and to perpetuating dictatorship and slavery for the majority, the OLF again strongly asks the Kenyan government to stop providing assistance to the Ethiopian regime. Kenya should not be fighting a proxy war in which it has no stakes just to prolong the life of a dictatorial regime of Ethiopia.
Kenya’s government’s participation in wars planned by Ethiopia has no use except expanding the conflict into a regional conflict. It is possible to learn from the long history of the Oromo people that the Oromo have practiced peaceful relations, respect, love and mutual co-existence with neighboring peoples. Violating this long history/code of brotherhood/ good neighborliness, the role of the Kenyan government should not be one of being a proxy war monger on behalf of the TPLF regime that is staggering to collapse because of concerted and unstoppable popular movements at home. The OLF would like to remind Kenya that it will be responsible for perpetuating dictatorship and injustice and slavery against the Oromo people in Oromia and Ethiopia if it proceeds with this an unwelcome alliance and proxy effort with the fragile military regime of Ethiopia. Kenya will be responsible for all the damages this unholy alliance will inflict on the Oromo people and the Oromo national liberation struggle. Kenya should not interfere in the domestic political affairs of Ethiopia by picking Ethiopia’s regime’s side against the will of the Kenyan people who would want a respected and sovereign Kenya.
We call on the Kenyan people to confront and protest repeated unjust and illegal actions by their government, which will negatively impact the relationships between the peoples of Kenya and the Oromo people and others fighting for freedom from military dictatorship in Ethiopia. Kenyan people have the obligation to hold the Kenyan government accountable; they have the responsibility to object to continued Kenyan interference in the domestic affairs of its neighboring country. This actions will harm Kenyan people, Kenyan history and the relationship of Kenyans with their neighbors.
Beyond silently watching the Ethiopian government shed the bloods of the peoples of the Horn of Africa who struggle for their freedom every day, if the Horn of African countries silently watch the military support Kenya gives to Ethiopia regime, history will judge these governments. We appeal to regional governments to stop the Kenyan government for acting as a proxy warrior for Ethiopia in a conflict that does not concern Kenya and its peoples altogether.
Victory to the Oromo People!
Oromo Liberation Front
September 20, 2016
Last weekend on the eve of two large celebrations in Ethiopia—the Ethiopian New Year and the beginning of Eid al-Adha festivities—the Ethiopian authorities pardoned approximately 1,000 people, 135 of whom had been charged under the country’s draconian Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. Amongst those released were leaders of theEthiopian Muslim community, who have been in jail since July 2012 when they were detained for protesting against governmental interference in religious affairs.1
While the release of these political prisoners is welcome, we must not be fooled by this supposedly “generous” act. The Ethiopian government frequently issues pardons at times of international scrutiny. Before President Obama’s trip to Ethiopia in July 2015, for instance, numerous high profile political prisoners were released, including Bekele Gerba,2Reeyot Alemu, and several of the Zone 9 Bloggers. Pardons like these are strategic. They are meant to make the Ethiopian government look reasonable, with the hope that the international community will be pacified and look the other way.
And let us not forget the thousands that remain behind bars, having not been included in what appears to have been an arbitrary set of pardons.
Mounting Pressure
The Ethiopian government has good reason to worry about the growing dissent in the country. The past months have seen increased unity in the courageous fight for democracy and human rights. Community members engaged in the struggle told Oakland Institute staff “there will be no jubilation until all political prisoners, regardless of religious or ethnicity, are released.”
International pressure, too, has mounted. On September 12th, Rep. Chris Smith introduced House Resolution 861, entitled “Supporting human rights and encouraging inclusive governance in Ethiopia.” The bill recounts the many abuses taking place in Ethiopia – from the impact of the villagization program on the Anuak in Gambella, to the numerous unlawful arrests made under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation; the crackdown on civil society organizations under the Charities and Societies Proclamation to the numerous extrajudicial killings that have taken place during this past year’s protests – and calls for strong action, both by the US and Ethiopian governments. One day later, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed deep concern in his opening remarks before the Human Rights Council regarding the “lethal use of force against protesters, enforced disappearances, and mass detentions” by Ethiopian forces. He reaffirmed his previous calls for an “independent, impartial, and international” investigation.
Solidarity actions are also taking root in the US. On Friday September 16th, the Oromo Renaissance Organization will hold a peaceful rally in Oakland to “denounce the deadly crackdown … on peaceful protesters in Oromia and other regions of the country.”3 Earlier this week, Olympic silver medalist Feyisa Lilesa held a high-profile press conference in Washington DC, bringing significant international media attention to the plight of not just the Oromo people, but those in Amhara and Gambella as well. Lilesa will hold another press conference on September 18th in Minneapolis, hosted by the Oromo Community of Minnesota.4
A Critical Moment for Ethiopia
This is a critical moment for Ethiopia. The US Government, United Nations leaders, and the international media are all paying attention to the abuses taking place, and finally giving these atrocities the attention they deserve. Now, more than ever, the international community needs to follow through on its responsibility. We must not accept the introduction of a bill or the pardoning of 1,000 as enough. Instead, we must continue to call for universal human rights, democracy, and justice across Ethiopia.
The time for change in Ethiopia is now!
Footnotes
[1] Their sentencing was condemned by the Chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, who called the Muslim leaders “peaceful advocates for religious freedom.”
[2] Bekele Gerba was rearrested in December 2015, and continues to languish in jail.
[3]The peaceful rally, coordinated by the Oromo Renaissance Organization, will be held on Friday September 16 from 11am – 2pm at 1301 Clay Street in Oakland, CA.
[4] The press conference with Feyisa Lilesa, hosted by the Oromo Community of Minnesota, will be held at 12:00pm on Sunday September 18th at the Minneapolis Convention Center, 1301 2nd Ave S., in Minneapolis, MN.
There is every sign that Ethiopia is plunging into a crisis whose scale, intensity, and multiple and interdependent drivers are unprecedented since the founding of the regime in 1991.
The Ethiopian leadership remains in denial. The long meetings of its ruling bodies have culminated in a report on 15 years of national “rebirth”, in which it awards itself good marks, while acknowledging the existence of a few problems here and there.
Nonetheless, the odd warning signal may be heard – though very seldom – in counterpoint to the general complacency. Hailemariam Desalegn, prime minister and chairman of what is essentially the single party, has gone so far as to warn that the issues facing the regime are a matter of “life or death”,[1]and that Ethiopia is “sliding towards ethnic conflict similar to that in neighbouring countries”.[2]
Well, these neighbouring countries include Somalia, epitome of the ‘failed state’, and Sudan, which has split in two and where civil war is raging in the new Southern State. In this, unusually, he is in agreement with Merera Gudina, head of one of the main opposition parties still permitted to operate, whospeaks of the probability of “civil war […] if the government continues to repress”.[3] There is every sign that Ethiopia is plunging into a crisis whose scale, intensity, and multiple and interdependent drivers are unprecedented since the founding of the regime in 1991, although the impossibility of field research precludes any in-depth and conclusive assessment.
The first, very discreet signs of this crisis appeared in the spring of 2014 in a part of the country where they were probably least expected: in Tigray, where the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), pillar of the quadri-ethnic party ruling coalition – the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – seemed both unopposed and unopposable.
Yet the Tigreans loudly and clearly accused “their” Front of neglecting them by only looking after its own interests or, as Hailemariam Desalegn expressed it, of using “public authority for personal gain at all levels”.[4]
The crisis erupted into the open a few weeks later in Oromya, with additional grievances. In the most populous of the nine states and two municipalities that make up federal Ethiopia, a state that is also the country’s economic powerhouse, students took to the streets to protest against the Addis Ababa Master Plan. Their suspicion was that this would inevitably lead to a transfer of sovereignty from the Oromo region to central government and be accompanied by “land grabbing”, the expulsion and dispossession of the local peasant farmers. Protests resumed in November 2015 and continue today at a larger scale that now includes the general population and almost the whole of Oromo State.
Turning up the heat
The heat was turned up a further notch in mid-July with the advent of protests in the historic heart of Amhara State. Together, Amhara and Oromo account for almost two-thirds of the country’s total population. The diversity of the ways of life that characterizes Oromo – farmers and pastoralists, of its religions – Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Protestant, animist, together with its very loose traditional structures, prompts Merera Gudina to emphasise “the chronic division between Oromo political forces”.[5] By contrast, the homogeneity of the Amhara population – in its vast majority small farmers and Christian Orthodox – fosters unity, while its mobilisation is favoured by its sense of hierarchy and discipline. Finally, the parallel protests by Oromo and Amhara, with largely shared reasons and objectives, breaks with their historical antagonism: the dispossession and subsequent exploitation of the Oromo by an Amhara – and Tigrean – elite from the late nineteenth century onwards, embedded their relations in a system that the Oromo have described as colonial.
The toughest demonstrations that the regime had faced followed the contested elections of 2005. They were essentially confined to Addis Ababa, with the young unemployed playing a major role. In all, they lasted only a few days, in two surges. They came in response to a call from established political forces for a very clear outcome – respect for the verdict of the ballot box. The regime reacted in unison with violent repression – killing almost 200 and arresting tens of thousands – immediately followed by a large-scale strategy of political reconquest through the expansion of the quasi-single party and a rallying of the elites. The protests very quickly died down, and the opposition forces collapsed.
This time, the protests affect the country’s two main states. Despite the repression – hundreds killed, thousands arrested – it has been going on for nine months, with varying degrees of intensity. The attempts at dissuasion through fear have not been enough[6] – at least for the moment – to demobilize the protesters, as evidenced by new forms of protest such as the recent “dead city” operations in the Amhara region[7] and the just launched boycott campaign in Oromya.
This time, a whole generation of young people is in the forefront of the protests – the 15-29 age group represents more than a quarter of the population – starting with, but not confined to, all those who have benefited from mass education, who have carried their elders with them. This time, their anger derives from widespread discontent, focusing on three areas.
First, they are fed up not just with the regime’s authoritarianism, but more so with the way it is exercised: supervision and control that are stifling, intrusive and infantilising, imposed everywhere, all the time, on everyone, by a Party that has swallowed up the State. The second focus is the implementation of a federalism that is in theory equitable, but in reality profoundly unbalanced. Tigray, representing 6% of the population, was the epicentre of the rebellion, which threw out Mengistu Haile Mariam’s military-socialist junta in 1991, the Derg. It was headed by the Tigrean student elite that founded the TPLF. This historical role justified its initial primacy.
Twenty-five years on, however, this elite remains vastly overrepresented at the apex of political power, the army, the security services. In addition, through public and para-public companies, it controls two thirds of the modern economy, excluding traditional agriculture.In the specific Ethiopian case… a tentacular and increasingly voracious and arrogant oligarchy… has ultimately filtered down to village level.
The third focus of discontent is the backlashes of the “developmental state”. This system centralises revenues at the summit of power, which supremely decides on its optimal use for development across the country. This strategy has been decisive in the exceptional economic growth of the last decade – probably around 6% to 7% per year – and in the expansion of education and health services alike. However, the centralisation it entails is evidently incompatible with authentic federalism. Moreover, in the specific Ethiopian case, the fact that the functions of political leadership, economic decision-making and the management of public and para-public enterprises are concentrated in the hands of the same people at the summit of the party-state, free of any control and political counterweight, has led to the creation of a tentacular and increasingly voracious and arrogant oligarchy, which has ultimately filtered down to village level.
These flaws have had a cumulative and mutually reinforcing impact. In Oromya in particular, the implementation of development projects dictated from above and often controlled by nonindigenous oligarchs, has frequently been marked by authoritarianism, spoliation and ethnic favouritism. In the case of “land grabbing”, there are multiple instances of land being brutally appropriated and embezzlement of the compensation owed to evicted farmers. The triggering factor for the protests in Amhara region was the authorities’ refusal to tackle the dispute arising from the incorporation into Tigray of the Wolkait region – a thin strip of land in the north that was part of the imperial province of Amhara – imposed after 1991 without public consultation of any kind, together with the transfer of western areas to Sudan, a process conducted in total secrecy.
“Thief!”
The demonstrators’ slogans and targets speak for themselves. They have attacked prisons to free the inmates. They have ransacked public properties, not just offices, vehicles, etc., but also health centres, unemployment offices and cooperatives, places they see as existing more to control the population than to perform their purported functions.They have ransacked public properties… they see as existing more to control the population than to perform their purported functions.
They have gone after local party bosses and their possessions – the lowest layer of the oligarchy – targeting government representatives as much as the despoilers. They have burned businesses owned by national and foreign investors (farms, factories, hotels, etc.) because they symbolise an external stranglehold over Oromya and the Amhara region. “Oromya is not for sale” was one favourite slogan. In short, the demonstrators are targeting both the persons and property of those they see as having obtained position and/or wealth at their expense, through the patronage of the ruling power. “Thief!” is one of the most oft repeated slogans.
In Oromya, the conviction of having remained second-class citizens in a system dominated by a “northist” minority, and in the Amhara region of having become second-class and of feeling permanently “humiliated and marginalized”[8] because a part of the Amhara elite was dominant in the imperial era, is less and less tolerated. The assertion of ethnic identity and the demand for the full rights associated with it are at the heart of the demonstrations. “We want genuine self rule”, cry the Oromo, “We are Amhara”, declare the crowds in the historical capital Gondar, or in Bahir Dar, the new capital. However, these claims are also taking a very worrying turn. In Oromo, demonstrators have gone after Amhara and Tigreans, as well as their properties. Tigreans have been targeted in the Amhara region. However, distortions of every kind in the propaganda war make the reality difficult to grasp. In particular, were the rioters targeting arrivistes more than Tigreans, or vice versa? Anyway, Tigreans are even beginning to leave certain areas, notably in a “mass exodus” from Gondar.[9] Some go so far as to speak of “ethnic cleansing”.
There are pressing calls for these practices to cease, both on social media and from the legal opposition. But as Beyene Petros, one of its leaders, explains:“we’re just watching… people are coming out spontaneously… political parties are bypassed”.[10] By contrast with 2005, this popular protest is largely independent of the legal opposition, and even the illegal opposition groups, such as the Oromo Liberation Front, the oldest and most radical of the Oromo “nationalist movements”, and Ginbot 7, heir to one of the big opposition parties of 2005 and considered a pan-Ethiopian movement.There is no secret central command orchestrating events.
There is no secret central command orchestrating events, although there is no doubt that informal clandestine networks, with links to the diaspora, are contributing to basic coordination and the exchange of information. “These protests are at the level of an intifada”, claims Merera Gudina,[11] or rather at the level of what could be called an “Ethiopian Spring” reminiscent of the “Arab Springs”.
‘Arab plot’
In addressing this situation, the ruling power clings stubbornly to a binary, reductive and simplistic analysis. True, it quickly shelved the Master Plan, an entirely unprecedented turnaround. It also reaffirmed the self-critique that emerged from the congresses of summer 2015: beyond the immense benefits that it has brought – peace and development – its action has been marred by failures and deficiencies, notably with regard to corruption, bad governance, unaccountability and youth unemployment. The narrative is that these are the only failings that the “public” condemns, which makes them “legitimate”. It has undertaken to correct them and “to discuss with the people” in order to tackle them more effectively.
So the legitimacy of these “public” claims is accepted. But those who demand more are supposedly driven by a “destructive agenda” manipulated by “destructive”, “anti-peace”, “anti-development elements”, “bandits”, or even “evil forces” and “terrorist groups”, “extremist Diaspora members who have negotiated their country’s chaos for money”, which are puppets of “foreign actors” or “invaders”, starting with Eritrea. It is they who are “hijacking” peaceful demonstrations and turning them into illegal and violent protests. Websites close to the TPLF, among the few accessible in Ethiopia, are more explicit: according to them, the wave of protest is simply the outcome of an Arab plot, led by Egypt, in which Asmara, the OLF and Ginbot 7 are mere “foot soldiers”. Their real purpose? “To destabilise” Ethiopia, repeats the government, “the total disintegration of Ethiopia as a country”, according to these websites.[12]
To attribute the crisis to external, foreign conspiracy is unjustifiable. Eritrea, still in an on/off state of war with Ethiopia, and Egypt, deeply alarmed by the construction of a colossal dam on the Nile, would undoubtedly welcome a weakening of Ethiopia. It may even be that they are trying to fan the flames. But they do not have the means to light the fire and keep it burning. And the ruling power’s claim that they have been able to do so is itself an admission of weakness: for them to succeed, the regime must already have been resting on weak foundations.
This externalisation also exempts the government from having to consider the grievances at the heart of the protests, going far beyond a few personal failings and deficiencies in implementation. Externalisation is also used to justify repression as the only possible response: there can be no compromise with the enemies of the motherland. It would therefore be pointless to move beyond the use of force and engage in the political sphere, as it did in 2005. Above all, however, the government rejects this option because a political response to the protesters’ demands would require it to question its whole political structure and policy.
‘Intellocracy’
The TPLF is a child of the student movement of the end of Haile Selassie’s reign, radically Marxist and above all Leninist. From its creation, it adopted the movement’s analysis of Ethiopian society. The peasantry – still 80% of the population today – backward and illiterate, the working class tiny and in any case ‘trade-unionist’, the ‘national’ bourgeoisie equally small and anyway indecisive, assigned an irreplaceable role to “revolutionary intellectuals”, as Lenin defined them. They are the only ones able to develop the path that would bring Ethiopia progress and well-being, and therefore the only ones with the legitimacy to impose it on Ethiopians, willingly or by force if necessary.[13]
This conviction remains. Just a few years ago, Hailemariam Desalegn explained: “due to poor education and illiteracy, the Ethiopian public is too underdeveloped to make a well reasoned, informed decision”; so the “enlightened leaders” have “to lead the people”.[14] At the other extreme, every local official is convinced that his position places him within the circle of “enlightened leaders” and that he has the right and duty to assume all the authority associated with that role.
This messianic vision creates an unbridgeable divide between a handful of ‘knowers’, an ‘intellocracy’, which alone has the legitimacy and the capacity to exercise power, and all the others, the ‘ignorant’, in other words the people, reified and bound to obey in its own interests, whatever it may think. It justifies a totalising ascendancy in every sphere, exercised through an age-old hierarchy on which the Leninist formula “democratic centralism” confers a modern and revolutionary dimension. Or, in this particular case, “revolutionary elitism” or “elitist centralism”.[15] Of course, the outcome has been exactly the same: centralising excess and denial of democracy, culminating with the installation of a “strong man” at the apex of a pyramid of power. Meles Zenawi, the prime minister until his death in 2012, would become the acknowledged fulfiller of this role, drawing on immense rhetorical skills backed by an exceptional intelligence.
In this binary vision, the political spectrum is inevitably polarised at two extremes. The ruling power is the sole promoter of peace and development. Those who oppose or merely question it are assigned to the “anti-peace”, “anti-development”, “anti-federalist” camp, as “chauvinists” or “narrow nationalists”, threatening the Ethiopian state and the integrity of the country. Although masked in the early days of the TPLF by the collective operation of the leadership, this conception of ruling, monopolistic and exclusive to the point of extreme sectarianism, is in essence undemocratic. It legitimises the use of force whenever those in power deem it appropriate.
A new middle class
However, a growing section of the population is no longer prepared to be stifled, undervalued and marginalised. A new middle class has emerged, essentially in the public sector, in services and – largely unrecognised – in the countryside, where a rump of recently enriched farmers has emerged. 700,000 young people are in university, 500,000 have obtained degrees in the last five years.[16] In a country of close to 100 million inhabitants, the number of mobile phone customers has reached 46 million, internet users 13.6 million,[17] compared respectively with fewer than a million and 30,000 ten years ago. Satellite dishes have sprouted on the roofs wherever electricity is present, breaking the public television monopoly. It is estimated that 4 million Ethiopians live abroad, but still maintain close relations with their native country. Millions of Ethiopians are suddenly connected to the world. More globally, the demands society now places on the regime are commensurate with the upheavals brought about by the development it has driven. In this sense, the regime’s very successes have come back to bite it.
Ethnic faultlines are also imprinted in the regime’s DNA. From the mid-1980s onwards, the TPLF carried its combat against the Derg from the regional to the national level. At least within the country’s two major “nations”, Oromo and Amhara, it thus had to find ethnic political movements to join it. But rather than forming partnerships, which would have entailed power-sharing, it imposed its grip on them. That is the original sin of federalism ‘Ethiopian style’.
Rather than reaching agreement with the spearhead of anti-Derg struggle in Oromya, the OLF, it created the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO), drawn from among its Oromo or simply Oromifa-speaking prisoners. This structure would be confined to the rank of ‘junior partner’, even more than the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), the Amhara component of the EPRDF, although its initial nucleus had been an autonomous group. The new Oromo and Amhara elites that joined this structure did so more out of opportunism than by conviction, and in general at least without recognising their leaderships as legitimate representatives.
Federalism, which was supposed to achieve a harmonious balance in inter-ethnic relations, has in fact as practised led ultimately to their deterioration. It faced an insurmountable contradiction. On the one hand, it promoted new ethnic elites to political, administrative and economic functions; on the other, it continued to keep them subordinate, while sharpening ethnic identities. Large parts of these elites, and moreover large swathes of their nations, are no longer prepared to tolerate this.
Deepening faultlines
Ultimately, the exclusiveness and top-down approach are having a negative impact on the economy. In the first phase, the party’s control over the State and the modern sector encouraged the mobilisation and effective use of resources. At this time, the ‘developmental state’ proved its worth by delivering remarkable economic growth. It has to continue if the regime wishes to tout it as a pillar of its legitimacy.
However, this model is on the wane. The developmental state has gone off the rails, diverted by the oligarchical dynamic. The onus is on private investors, in particular foreign investors, to take over from public investment to drive structural transformation towards a globalised market economy. However, the governing power’s obsession with maintaining control is stifling those investors.
Finally, the party political discipline imposed on the technocracy smothers its professional capacities and its confidence. This is one of the primary sources of frustration. It also hampers the effective use of the resources essential for growth in an increasingly complex economy. Yet even at its current rate, that growth is unable to absorb the two to two and a half million young people entering the labour market each year, including new graduates, contributing to the anger that is now exploding in the streets.
In light of these contradictions, the fault lines are deepening. The discontent of the Tigreans has triggered the emergence of a ‘reforming’, pragmatic and politicised current inside the TPLF, which wants to rally them by making the Front work for them again. It advocates breaking with the “rule of force”, an immemorial feature of Ethiopian history.
It underlines that the only way to achieve long-term stability, beginning with peaceful changes of government, is through the step-by-step introduction of the “rule of law” by full and integral application of the constitution, notably the separation of powers, the exercise of fundamental liberties and an authentic federalism.[18] It would have to be “consociationalist”. The chief nations would be equally represented, with decisions taken by consensus, so each would possess an effective right of veto. The second “traditionalist” or “conservative” current rejects significant change and argues for continuity. Essentially, it takes the view that Ethiopia is not yet mature enough for democratic move, and still needs to kept under iron control. A website close to the TPLF argues:“the people are not ready yet in every aspect and meaning of the word (democracy). Any attempt to accelerate that process other than its natural course… can only lead to darker places”.[19]
Reflecting the intensity of this division, these websites are full of heated debate between those who show real understanding of the protests and those who utterly condemn them, between those arguing for immediate political openness and those calling first and foremost for the crushing of the unrest. However, they agree on one point: an unprecedentedly virulent condemnation of the leadership of the Front, which is deemed inept and incapable of handling the situation.
This political division has also reached the ranks of the ANDM and OPDO, but here the focus is on federalism. The “ethno-nationalists” reject the asymmetries of the current federal system and are keen to assert their party’s autonomy from the TPLF. Their adversaries are considered too weak to fend for themselves and vitally in need of the TPLF’s support. So, the OPDO base has literally disintegrated. At its summit, there is overt opposition between Abadula Gemeda, who expresses understanding for the claims of protesters and is the only leader who enjoys real popularity, and Muktar Kedir, who is perceived as an insubstantial apparatchik imposed by the TPLF. The same applies to the problematic destiny of Gedu Andergatchew, President of the Amhara region, number two in the ANDM and the Movement’s real heavyweight in terms of popularity, and the official number one, Demeke Mekonnen, a much criticised figure who is nevertheless supported by the TPLF.
This ethnicisation of the political landscape is also apparent in the deterioration of relations between TPLF, ANDM and OPDO. Discussions with their rank and file members and a reading of their websites give an insight into their mutual mistrust.
In the TPLF, there is an iron belief that the “rotten chauvinists” and “revanchist”Amhara, controlled remotely by Ginbot 7, have “hijacked” the ANDM, are intent of restoring their former hegemony by “overtaking the position of TPLF in the Ethiopian politics” and are even once again forcing Tigreans “to defend our existence from extinction”.[20]
In the ANDM, there is a conviction that the TPLF wants to continue to make Amhara pay for the former dominance of some of their elite, to marginalize them and to dispossess them of ancestral lands.[21] For the ordinary OPDO party official, nothing has changed since the nineteenth century conquests: exploitation, oppression, marginalisation, or even quite baldly “genocide”. Hackneyed as it clearly is, the word is widely used, symptomatic of a paranoia that casts doubt on what remains of the unity at least at the base of the EPRDF.
These fractures were born since the initial formation of the ruling power. Meles Zenawi widened them, but succeeded in masking them by maintaining an iron grip over the tensions that they engendered. The present wave of protests has exacerbated them. They are splitting, not to say cracking, the party, from its summit to its 7 million member base, which is torn between loyalty and discipline, the material advantages of membership, and the ever-growing swell of popular aspirations within it.
In Oromya, part of the OPDO pushed behind the scenes for overt opposition to the Master Plan. The regional police were unable to cope or adopt a prudent ‘wait and see’ strategy. Today, they are virtually out of the game, and the federal police and army have had to intervene. The OPDO has essentially been relieved of the government of Oromya, which is under military administration via a “Command Post” based in Addis Ababa and headed by Hailemariam Dessalegn.[22] In the Amhara region, at least the big initial demonstrations were held with the support or tacit approval of part of the ANDM, although officially forbidden. Out of their depth, the Amhara State authorities had to request army intervention. The region has been placed under military command.[23]
The growing number of leaks of documents and recordings of discussions at the highest level of government and the State-Party are testament to the fact that frontline leaders now have one foot in the government camp and one in the protesters’ camp. Villages and entire local areas are taking advantage of the dilution or even disappearance of public authority to set up embryonic forms of self-government. In places, the State-Party’s local structures have placed their organisations at the service of the protesters. Armed men, who can only be village militiamen in principle strictly under local government control, have fired in the air alongside demonstrators. They are necessarily involved in fatal ambushes on soldiers and attacks on military depots. Desertions and overt acts of insubordination are taking place.
Losing authority
By contrast with 2005, when neither the federal nor regional governments lost control, today – at least at certain times and in certain places – they have lost authority over their own agents and even their monopoly on the use of force. Hailemariam Desalegn had to concede: “chaos” has broken out “inparts of Oromia and Amhara states”..[24] There has been a shift from demonstrations to riots, and then from riots to pockets of insurrection. Militiamen and farmers hold hundreds of thousands of weapons. The transition from unrest towards a scattered armed peasant revolt (a “jacquerie”), is a possibility.
The crisis is not only about a change of government, or even regime change. It is systemic, because it is rooted in the form in which contemporary power has been exercised since its bases were laid down in the middle of the nineteenth century. This has been theocratic, authoritarian, centralised, hierarchical, ethnically biased, monopolising the country’s resources.
“Intellocracy” has replaced theocratic feudalism, but other main traits have been more or less transposed in an updated form. The ruling power faces more or less the same demands as those it addressed to Haile Selassie’s regime forty years ago: rule of law; fair use of assets, beginning with land (“land to the tiller”, went the slogan; denunciation of “land grabbing’” now); the “national question”, in other words a balanced relationship between Ethiopia’s 80 “nations, nationalities and peoples”; and, at the crossroads of the land issue and the “national question”, the border conflicts between the states.“They want to rule in the old way, and people are refusing to be ruled in the old way”
“They want to rule in the old way, and people are refusing to be ruled in the old way”, is Merera Gudina’s concise summing up.[25] What the protesters – and indeed the “reformists” – are demanding is huge: the shift from an imposed, exclusive and closed system, to an accepted, inclusive and open system. This would require a total reconstruction, an outcome that the successors of Haile Selassie, then of Mengistu, failed to bring about.
For the moment at least, this goal is well beyond the EPRDF’s capacities. Firstly, it is paralysed by its divisions. These range from personal conflicts to business rivalries, from old ethnic tensions to new political disagreements. Secondly, the Front would risk disintegration if the “reformists” tried to force through their views. Whatever side they are on, its leaders know that a split would be fatal to everyone. They are obliged to maintain unity, with the result that they seem for now condemned to immobility.
Opening up
The majority of the Front perceives opening up as a leap in the dark and a fatal threat to its positions and its interests.
Opening up to the opponents of the Front would have to go hand-in-hand with an internal opening up. It would inevitably threaten numerous unfairly acquired positions.
Until now, the rule of winner-takes-all has reigned. In the general perception, or at least ‘Abyssinian’ perception, authority is either absolute or moribund: if it accepts concessions, it implicitly acknowledges that its end is imminent. To open up would therefore trigger a sharing of power, which could culminate in total loss of power.
Opening up would also mean a historic shift. For centuries, power has been “northern”, Abyssinian. A fair representation of the different ethnic components is inconceivable without the Oromo, the largest ethnicity, playing a central role, a role moreover that they are demanding.
That would be an even more hazardous leap for the TPLF, abandoning its domination and betting that a genuinely democratic federalism would emerge. In other words, that nations or a coalition of nations much more populous than the Tigreans would not impose majority rule, threatening the preservation of what for the Front is non- negotiable: Tigreans remaining in charge of Tigray.Finally, power and enrichment go together.
Finally, power and enrichment go together. From the summit of the state-party to its most modest ranks, official positions and oligarchical rents are mutually reinforcing. This material dimension is an overwhelming reason to preserve the status quo. In particular, the vast majority of the Front’s members think that it is right that their commitment and obedience should be rewarded with direct or indirect favours.
To open up, but to whom, in what domain, and to what point? Everyone agrees that the protest movement has neither a recognised leadership nor a clear programme, which is its major weakness. Would it consider itself authentically represented by the legal opposition, enfeebled through repression and its own divisions, or by the more radical illegal opposition, whose real representativeness is impossible to assess? Would these very diverse forces agree on a sort of shared programme of demands?
Up to now they have always stumbled over two crucial points: whether to maintain public ownership of land – far and away the primary asset – or to privatise it; and whether to accentuate or to temper federalism. For the moment, the voices making themselves heard cover a very wide spectrum of demands, from the launch of a national dialogue through to the total and immediate overthrow of the EPRDF. And history tells us that in such circumstances the extremists quickly prevail over the moderates.But the word compromise has no direct translation in Amharic…
Yet short of plunging the country into chaos, there exists no credible alternative to the existing authority, except in the long term. Supposing the EPRDF were to decide “to rule in a new way”, it would only do so on condition that it remained in control of a very gradual and therefore very long process of change. Which of its adversaries would accept this? On one side or the other, all-or-nothing politics have so far been the rule. But an inclusive and open system cannot be created unless all the stakeholders, without exception, are ready for compromise, in other words ready to make reciprocal concessions in order to reach an agreement. But the word compromise has no direct translation in Amharic…
Worst case scenario
So every scenario remains possible, including the worst-case. The regime may decide to continue on the same trajectory, relying on repression and the acceleration of its recovery plan for the state-party. It could be that the machinery of repression will stifle the protest movement. This machinery is extensive and experienced. It is even possible that the army could decide to take matters into its own hands, if it thought that the political leadership was failing. Its effective head, Samora Yunus, has always said that “the army is always vigilant to safeguard the constitutional order”.[26]
But will it be able to, especially if protest intensifies, and in particular if it takes root in the rural areas? From a leaked record of a meeting of army chiefs, it seems that some are uncertain about the physical capacity of the troops to hold firm on multiple fronts, and above all about the risks of insubordination, or even mutiny, resulting from the ethnic divisions in their ranks.[27]“Killing is not an answer to our grievances”
Even supposing that simple repression works, the probability is high that it would only offer the regime a period of respite before, sooner or later, a new – even more devastating – surge of unrest. To prevent this, it has just decided to put on the table the question of Wolkait and the relations between Addis Ababa and the Oromo lands around it, and above all to “sack and reshuffle party and government officials including Ministers” in the coming month, all through wide-ranging discussions “with the people”.[28]
But even the legal opposition judges these reforms to be “cosmetic”.[29] Up to now, these discussions have always consisted in a massive process of self-justification, with no genuine consultation of the people, which is unable – or does not dare – to make itself heard. Moreover, this promise is an old chestnut. The struggle against the dark triad of corruption, bad governance and unaccountability, on the agenda since the early 2000s, has had no impact. The campaign to “purify” the state-party of its black sheep, launched with much fanfare in the autumn of 2015, has been a damp squib. It touched only minor officials, while none of the senior figures – some are notorious for their corrupt practices – was affected, leading the population to conclude that the campaign was nothing but a smokescreen.
This triad of failings extends from top to bottom of the EPRDF. It is hard to see how the Party could put an end to them in response to what it sees as the main demand emanating from the people, without putting itself at high risk.
“Killing is not an answer to our grievances”, cry the demonstrators. For the moment, however, no other genuine answers are to be heard or seen, unless basic common sense, not to mention democratic aspirations, were to prevail in the ruling power.
As Ethiopians ready to celebrate their New Year and the Muslim feast of Sacrifice, shops in the town of Burayu are shuttered and streets strangely empty amid fresh anti-government protests.
With New Year festivities set for Sunday and Eid parties scheduled the following day, in any other year Burayu’s sheep and cattle market would have been at its busiest this weekend.
But after months of on-off trouble in the central Oromo region — home to Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group — this small town close to the capital, Addis Ababa, is in virtual lockdown after a call for a general strike against the government’s stance on Oromo demands.
Closed shops in Burayu town, about ten kilometres from Addis Ababa in Oromia regional state
“I’ve never seen the city like this,” said a grocer manning one of the few market stalls still open.
“The police came and said we have no right to close our shops and if we close, they’ll close us for good.”
But despite incessant police patrols up and down the streets, most of the shops have remained shuttered.
“The whole Oromo region is ruled by the military,” said 26-year-old Abdisa, who vows while chatting with a couple of friends that his family’s small cafe will stay shut until the New Year, as agreed by the shopkeepers.
“This boycott is a way of showing our disagreement with the government,” adds Abdisa, who gave no family name.
The lockdown, he says, is a sign of respect for those killed in the Oromo region since November, which rights groups say number in the hundreds.
With security forces readily using live bullets against demonstrators, there have been fewer protests in recent days.
– ‘People choice is my choice’
“We don’t want to celebrate the New Year with joy … They’re killing people with guns. We need the killings to stop,” said Falmata, a young university graduate unable to find a job.
And when talk focuses on Ethiopia’s last elections in May 2015, when the ruling EPRDF coalition — in power for a quarter of a century — won every parliamentary seat, Falmata’s anger boils over. “This result is totally false,” he says.
It was a government decision a few months later to appropriate Oromo lands for an urban development scheme — a decision now rescinded — that raised fears by Oromo farmers of expropriation, triggering months of deadly trouble.
“The plan brought a lot of blood, and that blood started everything”” said Falmata.
“We don’t want this regime to continue, it’s ruled by a few people dominated by the TPLF,” he added, referring to the Tigray Liberation Front that overthrew Mengistu Haile Mariam’s dictatorial regime in 1991 but is now also accused of monopolising political power.
The unrest, the first such protests in a decade, has spread to the northern Amhara region. In August, simultaneous protests took place for the first time in the two regions that together account for 60 percent of the country’s people.
The protests were violently suppressed by security forces who opened fire on crowds in several places leaving at least 100 dead, according to rights group Amnesty International.
In Burayu, the main bus station is deserted, with activists stopping all traffic to western Oromo, where the protests have been specially violent.
Civil disobedience appears to be growing in the region, with artists now openly joining the protest movement.
“I am on the side of the people,” popular singer Abush Zeleke said on Facebook. “People choice is my choice. I am not going to perform any concert.”
Local media says around 20 artists have decided to boycott New Year celebrations on Sunday.
closed shops in Burayu town, about ten kilometres from Addis Ababa in Oromia regional state.Most traders have closed their shops and called for a general strike against the repression of anti-government movement that affects the Oromo region.
Most traders have closed their shops and called for a general strike against the repression of anti-government movement that affects the Oromo region.
Ethiopians cite disputes over land, ethnicity and indiscriminate killings of protestors as the real causes of the Ethiopian “intifada”. But if one believes the Ethiopian spokesman, Mr.Getachew Reda, the protests in Gondar and Oromia are somehow remotely orchestrated and stage managed from Eritrea. Mr. Reda, with his outrageous claims, is increasingly sounding as clownish as the late Saddam’s information minister, comical Ali. He rarely addresses the real causes of the protests: the forceful incorporation of Wolkayt region into Tigray or the daylight land robbery in Oromia― all in the name of “development”. The government spokesman attributes the Oromo, Muslim, and the Wolkayt protests to infiltration from Eritrea, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. This false claim is another example of utter contempt and disrespect for the people by an arrogant government official who is out of touch with the heartbeat of the people.
It is true that there is no love lost between the ruling regimes in Eritrea and Ethiopia but it is absurd to believe that Eritrea, even it so desires can stir up the kind of uprising occurring in Ethiopia. It simply has no such power to do so. The border between the two countries is one of the most militarized borders in the world and one under heavy surveillance. An uprising of this scale cannot be initiated by an outside force. Such a claim is an insult to the pride and intelligence of the Ethiopian people.
The overwhelming narrative in the Western media portrays Ethiopia as a source of stability in a troubled region, as an economic powerhouse with a potential to surpass Kenya and join the club of countries like South Africa as well as a pacifying regional force and a bulwark against terrorism. There is little critical reporting on the country which means international readers have a skewed and partial picture at best. Unless one has the time and the motivation to dig deeper, one would not know that the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), the dominant group within the ruling coalition, has in fact destabilized the region, rules over a deeply divided and aggrieved populace, which in actual fact is responsible for worsening terrorism in Somalia. The core of the TPLF is an ideological group which behaves like a chameleon depending on the audience and responsible for the atmosphere of tension and the expensive militarization of the region.
The TPLF has carried out egregious human rights violations; the regime has become even more repressive with each year by systematically limiting political space, taking 100% parliamentary seats in the lower house, detaining members, discrimination and harassment of Amharas, Muslims and the Oromo; it has all but blocked legal political participation for these groups.
Ethiopians of all stripes and not just the Oromo, are sick and tired of the regime in Ethiopia and the suffering they must endure challenging it while Ethiopia enjoys impunity and protection from the powers that be. The ongoing protests in different parts of the country are not connected or coordinated and appear to be spontaneous protests. Participants in the protests embody resistance to their increasing marginalization, which are ongoing and spreading. More recently, the protesters in Gondar proclaimed solidarity with the Oromo uprising in the South. For a regime that thrives on divide and rule, this solidarity is a worrisome sign and perhaps signals the beginning of its dissolution.
It also seems the tired scapegoating of Eritrea for its own domestic woes is increasingly ineffective. Imaginary scapegoats and bogeymen had served the regime well but there are now indications that ordinary Ethiopians are beginning to see that Eritreans are not natural enemies of Ethiopians, as the regime has depicted. This is a good sign that the populations are beginning to recognize the essential brotherhood of all the peoples of the region: this could be the leap of faith which was missing due to the influence of intensive propaganda by dictatorial rulers for the last six plus decades. Recent headlines also give hope that the era of impunity may end sooner than later. Headlines like these from major newspapers:
are new. The massacre that occurred over the first weekend of August may have jarred the radar of the international media but their overall failure to register the pattern of it has been the norm for almost as long as the TPLF has been in power. The genocidal policies towards the Anuak in the Gambella region received little international publicity. Rioting Muslims were effectively and brutally silenced. The TPLF marginalized both the legal and the extra-legal opposition arresting prominent leaders like Professor Bekele Gerba, a prominent Oromo intellectual and human rights activist. Professor Bekele Gerba and other prominent leaders are protesting their treatment in detention by staging a hunger strike.
Resentment to TPLF rule extends to the movement’s home base of Tigray, where most of the population feel left out by the TPLF elites interested only in making money and investing it in the capital or abroad.
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. When it comes to the thugs running Ethiopia today, whatever happened to the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect? Rewarding the TPLF with a non-permanent membership in both the Security Council and the UN Human Rights Council, despite its dismal human rights record, is cruel and cynical.
This tribalist regime must go and the criminals at the helm must answer for their crimes. A first step is investigation by aindependent observers as recommended by the UN Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein. Predictably and true to character, the TPLF regime is refusing to allow in neutral outside UN observers. The regime has a pattern of ignoring international norms and laws, when it doesn’t suit it.
The Ethiopian people desperately need relief and healing. The region needs to be spared from this dangerous and fanatical warmongers. Ethiopia deserves imaginative leaders who can prevent fragmentation and are cognizant of the complexity of the society, who can see beyond tribe, and discern and appreciate the mosaic of ethnicities that make the country beautiful and rich. The West should stop enabling this murderous thugs. China should stop bailing out this regime and other African dictators and begin to care about the human rights of Africans!
“They killed my son, and they forced me to sit on his dead body while they were beating me.”
If there is any doubt in one’s mind that the regime in Addis Ababa would come to its senses and respect the dignity and sanctity of human life, what happened this week in a western town of Dembi Dolo should put that doubt to rest. An act so cruel, so abhorrent, not just humans, it makes the rocks weep. A mother finds her sixteen-year-old son’s lifeless body covered with blood in the middle of the street, shot by forces loyal to the regime. Arriving at the scene, a mother, as all mothers do, began wailing while holding her son’s body. What followed next was hard to describe and painful to comprehend to any one with a minimum degree of decency. The same forces loyal to the regime ordered the mother to sit on her sixteen-year old son’s dead body as they mercilessly hit her.
It is an act so savage, so devoid of any norms and values cultural or otherwise, it reflects the psychopathic behavior of forces that do the killings in Ethiopia. Ephrem Hailu, the sixteen- year old boy, was simply in his daily routine like any other sixteen-year-old, playing and doing what sixteen-year-olds do. His life was cut short for no apparent reason except the psychopathic killing machines called Agazi have to kill someone to satisfy their addiction of killing.
The regime in Addis Ababa is at war with the Ethiopian people, young and old, men and women are being terrorized and murdered in broad daylight for simply demanding freedom of expression, assembly and respect to the rule of law.
“I was in my house knowing that my son was out playing with his friends,” said Ephrem’s mother. “Upon hearing gunshots downtown the boys, including my son, began running and that is when they shot and killed my son.” She said sobbing “He wasn’t just my son; he was looking after me like a father; he did manual labour work to support me. He was my only hope, my only lifeline. I didn’t have money for his funeral; my neighbors raised money for the funeral. I sat holding his body with my little girl by my side worried they might shoot my little girl, too.”
This is the dark and horrifying reality in the four corners of Ethiopia. Mothers are terrified to send their children to school because they have no guarantee they would return home safe. If they escape from the bullets they might not avoid the concentration camps where they are tortured and exposed to malaria infection without any proper medical service. The suffering of the Ethiopian people, particularly the young has reached an intolerable climax. While all peace and freedom loving people in Ethiopia and around the world mourn with Ephrem Hailu’s mother, it is also a reminder that the only way to have safety and security is by ridding the country from a brutal authoritarian rule once and for all.
Recently, I posted a piece titled “Refusing to be adversaries.” In this piece I was given a short poem which was written by a young man who lost his best friend to forces loyal to regime. I was moved by the poem because it describes the sorrow and pain of a mother whose child was gunned down. I have re-posted the same poem (below). It was originally written in Amharic. I translated it to English.
Tears of the moon
Gripped with an overwhelming sorrow
A mother says “I have no tears left
I have cried until I no longer see
I have wailed until I have no voice left
What is sight for, if I cannot see my child?
What is a voice for, if he cannot come to me when I call his name?
Here we have run out of tears.
Instead, our rocks, trees and fields are crying for us,
Here the birds no longer sing,
As they are mourning with us in silence.
The sun, too, weeps as we languish in the burning shadows of oppression,
And the moon sheds tears with us at night, as we hide in our blood stained forest.
When will this end?”
She asks,
“When will we relearn to laugh again?
When will peace reign?
When will the true spirit of humanity return to this land of our ancestors again?
We are collectively tired of oppressionWe are people of an exhausted nation.”
The undersigned civil society organisations write to draw your attention to grave violations of human rights in Ethiopia, including the recent crackdown on largely peaceful protests in the Oromia and Amhara regions.
As the UN Human Rights Council prepares to convene for its 33rd session between 13 – 30 September 2016, we urge your delegation to prioritise and address through joint and individual statements the escalating human rights crisis in Ethiopia.
An escalating human rights crisis in Oromia and Amhara Regions
The situation in Ethiopia has become increasingly unstable since security forces repeatedly fired upon protests in the Amhara and Oromia regions in August 2016. On 6 and 7 August alone, Amnesty International reported at least 100 killings and scores of arrests during protests that took place across multiple towns in both regions. Protesters had taken to the streets throughout the Amhara and Oromia regions to express discontent over the ruling party’s dominance in government affairs, the lack of rule of law, and grave human rights violations for which there has been no accountability.
Protests in the Amhara region began peacefully in Gondar a month ago and spread to other towns in the region. A protest in Bahir Dar, the region’s capital, on 7 August turned violent when security forces shot and killed at least 30 people. Recently, on 30 August, stay-at-home strikers took to the streets of Bahir Dar again and were violently dispersed by security forces. According to the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE), in the week of 29 August alone, security forces killed more than 70 protesters and injured many more in cities and towns across Northern Amhara region.
Since November 2015, Ethiopian security forces have routinely used excessive and unnecessary lethal force to disperse and suppress the largely peaceful protests in the Oromia region. The protesters, who originally advocated against the dispossession of land without adequate compensation under the government’s Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan, have been subjected to widespread rights violations. According to international and national human rights groups, at least 500 demonstrators have been killed and hundreds have suffered bullet wounds and beatings by police and military during the protests.
Authorities have also arbitrarily arrested thousands of people throughout Oromia and Amhara during and after protests, including journalists and human rights defenders. Many of those detained are being held without charge and without access to family members or legal representation. Many of those who have been released report torture in detention. The continued use of unlawful force to repress the movement has broadened the grievances of the protesters to human rights and rule of law issues.
The need for international, independent, thorough, impartial and transparent investigations
Following the attacks by security forces on protesters in Oromia earlier this year, five UN Special Procedures issued a joint statement noting that “the sheer number of people killed and arrested suggests that the Government of Ethiopia views the citizens as a hindrance, rather than a partner”, and underlining that “Impunity … only perpetuates distrust, violence and more oppression”.
In response to the recent crackdown, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, has called for “access for independent observers to the country to assess the human rights situation”. Ethiopia’s government, however, has rejected the call, instead indicating it would launch its own investigation. On 2 September, in a public media statement, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights reiterated the UN High Commissioner’s call to allow a prompt and impartial investigation led by regional or international human rights bodies into the crackdown.
There are no effective avenues to pursue accountability for abuses given the lack of independence of the judiciary and legislative constraints. During the May 2015 general elections, the ruling EPRDF party won all 547 seats in the Ethiopian Parliament.
Ethiopia’s National Human Rights Commission, which has a mandate to investigate rights violations, has failed to make public its June report on the Oromia protests, whileconcluding in its oral report to Parliament that the lethal force used by security forces in Oromia was proportionate to the risk they faced from the protesters. The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions has rated the Ethiopian National Human Rights Commission as B, meaning the latter has failed to meet fully the Paris Principles.
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, who met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn at the margins of the European Development Days in June 2016, has called on all parties to refrain from the use of force and for a constructive dialogue and engagement to take place without delay. On 28 August, after the EPRDF party’s general assembly, Prime Minister Hailemariam reportedly ordered the country’s military to take any appropriate measures to quell the protests, which he described as illegal and aimed at destabilising the nation. Following a similar call regarding the Oromia protests, security forces intensified the use of excessive force against protesters.
A highly restrictive environment for dialogue
Numerous human rights activists, journalists, opposition political party leaders and supporters have been arbitrarily arrested and detained. Since August 2016, four members of one of Ethiopia’s most prominent human rights organisations, the Human Rights Council (HRCO), were arrested and detained in the Amhara and Oromia regions. HRCO believes these arrests are related to the members’ monitoring and documentation of the crackdown of on-going protests in these regions.
Among those arrested since the protests began and still in detention are Colonel Demeke Zewdu (Member, Wolkait Identity Committee (WIC)), Getachew Ademe (Chairperson, WIC), Atalay Zafe (Member, WIC), Mebratu Getahun (Member, WIC), Alene Shama (Member, WIC), Addisu Serebe (Member, WIC), Bekele Gerba (Deputy Chair, Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC)), Dejene Tufa (Deputy General Secretary, OFC), Getachew Shiferaw (Editor-in-Chief of the online newspaper Negere Ethiopia), Yonathan Teressa (human rights defender) and Fikadu Mirkana (reporter with the state-owned Oromia Radio and TV).
Prominent human rights experts and groups, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have repeatedly condemned the highly restrictive legal framework in Ethiopia. The deliberate misuse of the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation’s overbroad and vague provisions to target journalists and activists has increased as protests have intensified. The law permits up to four months of pre-trial detention and prescribes long prison sentences for a range of activities protected under international human rights law. Dozens of human rights defenders as well as journalists, bloggers, peaceful demonstrators and opposition party members have been subjected to harassment and politically motivated prosecution under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, making Ethiopia one of the leading jailers of journalists in the world.
In addition, domestic civil society organisations are severely hindered by one of the most restrictive NGO laws in the world. Specifically, under the 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation, the vast majority of Ethiopian organisations have been forced to stop working on human rights and governance issues, a matter of great concern that has been repeatedly raised in international forums including at Ethiopia’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
This restrictive and worsening environment underscores the limited avenues available for dialogue and accountability in the country. It is essential that the UN Human Rights Council take a strong position urging the Ethiopian government to immediately allow an international, thorough, independent, transparent and impartial investigation into alleged human rights abuses committed in the context of the government’s response to the largely peaceful protests.
As a member – and Vice-President – of the Human Rights Council, Ethiopia has an obligation to “uphold the highest standards” of human rights, and “fully cooperate” with the Council and its mechanisms (GA Resolution 60/251, OP 9). Yet for the past ten years, it has consistently failed to accept country visit requests by numerous Special Procedures.
During the upcoming 33rd session of the Human Rights Council, we urge your delegation to make joint and individual statements reinforcing and building upon the expressions of concern by the High Commissioner, UN Special Procedures, and others.
Specifically, the undersigned organisations request your delegation to urge Ethiopia to:
immediately cease the use of excessive and unnecessary lethal force by security forces against protesters in Oromia and Amhara regions and elsewhere in Ethiopia;
immediately and unconditionally release journalists, human rights defenders, political opposition leaders and members as well as protesters arbitrarily detained during and in the aftermath of the protests;
respond favourably to country visit requests by UN Special Procedures;
urgently allow access to an international, thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigation into all of the deaths resulting from alleged excessive use of force by the security forces, and other violations of human rights in the context of the protests;
ensure that those responsible for human rights violations are prosecuted in proceedings which comply with international law and standards on fair trials and without resort to the death penalty; and
fully comply with its international legal obligations and commitments including under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and its own Constitution.
Amnesty International
Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
Civil Rights Defenders
DefendDefenders (East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project)
Ethiopian Human Rights Project
FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights)
Foundation for Human Rights Initiative
Freedom House
Front Line Defenders
Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect
Human Rights Watch
International Service for Human Rights
Reporters Without Borders
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
Exclusive: Rights groups raise concerns over fate of political prisoners held in facility at the time
By Adam Withnall, The Independent, Africa Correspondent, 6 September 2016
Members of the Oromo, Ogaden and Amhara community in South Africa demonstrate against the ongoing crackdown in the restive Oromo and Amhara region of Ethiopia on August 18, 2016 AFP/Getty
Rights groups have raised serious concerns over the fate of political prisoners held at a facility on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa after 23 inmates died in a huge fire at the high-security complex.
While the cause of the blaze remains unknown, the Ethiopian government has admitted at least two of the prisoners were gunned down by the authorities as they fled the burning building.
The Kilinto prison has become notorious as a holding facility for jailed members of the opposition, including members of the Oromo ethnic group.
And the Oromo Federalist Congress, a key opposition party, said there were fears for the lives of its “entire leadership”, which it said was being detained at Kilinto at the time.
Amnesty International and New York-based Human Rights Watch, which has been monitoring the deaths of the Oromo people during a government crackdown on political protests, told The Independent it was vital the authorities released the names of those killed in the incident.
ESAT, a TV broadcaster based outside Ethiopia, showed grainy footage of the fire visible from a great distance (ESAT)
Local media groups reported gunfire could be heard from the scene, while a TV station based outside Ethiopia broadcast footage of the fire live.
Initially, the Ethiopian government said one person was killed in the fire. But in a statement released this week via the state affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate, it said 21 died from “stampede, fire burns and suffocation”.
Video of the fire also emerged on social media, though official reports were slow to come through (ESAT)
“The remaining two were killed while trying to escape from prison,” Fana reported, adding that two buildings were damaged in the blaze.
The government statement provided no details of how the fire began, only stating that the police were investigating, nor did it give the names of any of those killed.
And on Tuesday, OFC’s Assistant Deputy Chairman Mulatu Gemechu told the Reuters news agency: “Our entire leadership is being held in that place and we have no idea what has happened to them.
READ MORE
Ethiopian state TV censors marathon runner’s finishing line protest
“The government has a responsibility to explain to the public, no less their families. We have no idea why it is taking that long.”
Some local media have questioned the official version of events. They cited unnamed witnesses saying the prisoners were shot by wardens.
Ethiopian journalist Tesfalem Waldyes, who was detained in Kilinto prison for more than a year before his release in July 2015, told The Independent it was hard to believe reports that the fire began as an attempted jailbreak.
“It is difficult for inmates to access fire,” he said. “Prisoners are not allowed to cook or smoke. And the remand facility is a highly guarded place and security cameras are everywhere.”
Though it has become known for political imprisonments, Kilinto is a facility where suspects of all sorts of crimes are held, sometimes for many years, before trial.
As such, none of its inmates have actually been convicted of their alleged crimes. Yet Tesfalem said the prison still operates under a ruthless regime, with those who complain about abusive treatment subjected to the “Kitat Bet” (punishment house) or the “dark house”, a form of isolation.
“The political prisoners mostly face harassment, intimidation, confiscation of their written materials, denial of their visitation rights and sometimes physical abuse,” he said.
It was impossible to know, until the government releases more information, how many of those killed were political prisoners. Tesfalem said all those who are arrested on political grounds are sent to the facility to await trial, and they make up a significant proportion of the 3,000 or so inmates, though not the majority.
Human Rights Watch says more than 500 people have been killed in clashes between the security forces and protesters demanding greater political freedoms in the province of Oromia.
Last week, the African Union – which is based in Addis Abiba – expressed concerns about the unrest for the first time, while on Sunday the US ambassador to the UN said her country had raised “grave concerns” about what it called the excessive use of force against protesters in Ethiopia, a long-time ally.
Felix Horne, Human Rights Watch’s senior researcher in the Horn of Africa, told The Independent: “Numerous witnesses describe hearing heavy gunfire during the fire at Kilinto, raising serious questions about the safety and wellbeing of the prisoners held there.
“Family members of those held at Kilinto also still do not know the whereabouts of their loved ones. The authorities should immediately account for the whereabouts of all prisoners to their families, and provide details about those who died during the incident.”
Amnesty International’s Fisseha Tekle said the charity was concerned about all prisoners held at the facility, including those detained on political charges.
“We call on the authorities to inform the families of prisoners of the situation of their loved ones,” Ms Tekle said. “They have the right to know whether their relatives are dead or alive.”
The current Ethiopian government is widely recognized as a criminally organized group with high rates of human rights abuses.
THE LOCAL independent Ethiopian citizens’ news agencies are reporting outside the country that there is a huge popular mobilization against the government.
In January, 2016, Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom was nominated as Africa’s candidate for director general of the UN World Health Organization.
Just this past week, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was named global ambassador for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) by the WHO, a position in which he will serve under whoever is ultimately appointed as the WHO’s director general. While Bloomberg, with his impeccable record of public health advocacy and international philanthropy, is clearly over-qualified for this role, what frightens me is the potential appointment of Adhanom as his superior. A rudimentary comparison of these two men’s records highlights the latter’s extreme unfitness for the office he seeks to assume and the absurdity of his even being considered.
During his unprecedented three-term tenure, mayor Bloomberg took direct control of the troubled New York City school system and oversaw a marked increase in children’s test scores; he banned smoking in restaurants, bars, parks and other indoor and outdoor public arenas; he partnered with and empowered citizens of the city by calling upon them to notify authorities of suspicious happenings they observed; he established a comprehensive information hotline that provides vital factual data to city dwellers and visitors in more than 170 languages; he banned trans-fats and mandated the posting of calorie counts in New York restaurants, measures that have since been adopted in major cities throughout the nation toward combating rising obesity rates in both adults and children; he used his own private funds to pay for a Super Bowl ad promoting stricter gun control.
And this is a mere sampling of his contributions to the quality of life of the people he governed. Now that his terms as mayor have ended, he has expanded his health, well-being and justice initiatives to the broader global community and continues to work tirelessly, and to donate generously, to promote causes at the core of human flourishing.
No model of leadership could be more divergent from Bloomberg’s than the one Ethiopian Foreign Minister Adhanom, along with his political associates, represents. The current Ethiopian government is widely recognized as a criminally organized group with high rates of human rights abuses. According to The New York Times and Human Rights Watch, tens of thousands of peaceful protesters against the government have been incarcerated, and over 700 have been killed, in recent months. The Ethiopian athlete Feyisa Lilesa made a powerful public gesture in solidarity with his oppressed countrymen at the Summer Olympics in Rio last month and was warned not to return home afterward.
The International Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Ethiopia is among Africa’s leading jailers of journalists and has destroyed its own independent civil society. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights has requested an independent evaluation of the deaths of hundreds of peaceful civilian protesters in recent months at the hands of the Ethiopian army. However, Foreign Minister Adhanom and his government have refused external evaluation of human rights abuses complained of by large numbers of citizens.
THE LOCAL independent Ethiopian citizens’ news agencies are reporting outside the country that there is a huge popular mobilization against the government.
The local citizens are demonstrating peacefully, with the following complaints: that the government is killing them indiscriminately and robbing the country of power and economic resources, which are being funneled to one small, elite tribal group (known as the Tgria Peoples Liberation Front), and that their land is being sold to the Tgrian tribe, or that this tribe is selling their land to foreign investors.
On the day that the athlete Lilesa showed his support at the Olympics in Rio, there was a demonstration planned in the capital city of Addis Ababa, but the government deployed military force to put down the peaceful citizens who organized it. Only Lilesa could make his statement, safely insulated, for the moment, from the army’s threatened violence, by a couple thousand miles.
His fellow citizens at home were not so fortunate. Just this past week, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced on national television that all military personnel would be ordered to open fire on peaceful demonstrators, which, on the first day following, resulted in dozens of civilian deaths.
Britain Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond recently warned, in a meeting with Adhanom, that Ethiopia’s “repeated failure to deliver on our basic requests” regarding an Ethiopian-born English citizen being held on death row simply because he is the opposition party leader had led him be begin “looking carefully at the bilateral relationship” between the two nations. This is yet another example of the current Ethiopian government’s pervasive corruption and lawlessness.
As a chief agent of this depraved, bloody government body, how can Adhanom be considered as a prospective director general of the WHO? How does his candidacy reflect on the WHO itself, or, more broadly, the UN’s role as the world’s moral anchor and arbiter? Clearly, there is no just way forward but for the UN to investigate the current Ethiopian government’s reported abuses and to renounce the candidacy of its foreign minister for the position he seeks at the WHO.
It is perhaps in the values that underlie the actions of Bloomberg and Adhanom, respectively, that the starkest contrast between these two men might be drawn. Bloomberg has often been quoted as saying, “The thing about great wealth is that you can’t take it with you,” by way of explaining why he is choosing to give so much of his private fortune away – a total of $4.3 billion thus far, including $510 million distributed by his philanthropies in 2015 alone. Adhanom, on the other hand, is a prominent member of the Ethiopian government whose former leader, Meles Zenawi (the man who appointed Adhanom to his position), had a reported net worth of over $3b., having amassed this amount entirely during his years in office.
He took power in 1991 with an officially listed salary of $220 per month, and had no private financial resources to his name at that point. Today, all the top leaders of the TPLF are billionaires, though their nation remains an impoverished member of the Third World. Sadly, the source of these leaders’ newfound wealth is not too hard to surmise.
I have lived, for years, under the governance of both mayor Bloomberg and Finance Minister Adhanom and can thus attest, on a personal level, to the disparate impact of their leadership on the people they’ve ruled. I know, first hand, what it has been like to live under the policies of Bloomberg’s and Adhanom’s administrations, and how each has affected the daily life of his constituency.
More than all the facts and figures I have cited above, these real-life, on-the-ground experiences have shaped my conviction that Adhanom and his cronies must go if my native land is ever to prosper as my adopted city has in the past few decades. The WHO’s recent appointments, within the broader context of rising unrest in Ethiopia, where my family resides, and my own relatively secure life in New York, have brought this realization home to me as never before. I can only hope that the world will begin to see things in kind.
Although no single event seems to have triggered the 10 months of demonstrations in Ethiopia, the Oromo people complained of a plan to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, into their lands, and that they are disenfranchised by a government largely led by the Tigray grouping, from northern Ethiopia.
The EU follows the human rights situation in Ethiopia very closely.
No monies from the EU’s flagship Emergency Trust Fund (ETF) for Africa goes to the Ethiopian government or its agencies, the Commission stressed yesterday (6 September), as human rights groups say more than 400 people have been killed in clashes with the government.
The ETF was set up last year, at the Valleta migration summit, in an attempt to mitigate the ‘pull’ factors behind uncontrolled migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, in the wake of the migration crisis.
Ethiopia, with a stable and West-friendly government in the Horn of Africa, is one of the major recipients of the trust fund, which aims to improve life chances and livelihoods in some of the world’s poorest countries.
However, the authoritarian government in Addis Ababa has long been the butt of accusations over its treatment of the Oromia people and their region – which surrounds the capital.
Since November 2015 – when Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker signed the ETF – some 400 people have been killed by Ethiopian government security forces during protests, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Thousands more have been detained.
Credit: Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International says over 100 people were killed at a demonstration in early August.
This week, the situation deteriorated further, with the deaths of at least 23 inmates in a fire at a prison believed to be holding detained protestors.
Pictures showed smoke billowing from the jail, but the BBC cited local media reporting the sound of gunfire from the Qilinto prison.
Pressed by EurActiv.com on whether the Commission had a view on the unrest in one of its key partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and whether the ETF contained a mechanism for either reviewing or even suspending payments through the Emergency Trust Fund, a spokesman was quick to point out that no monies were channelled directly through the government in Addis Ababa, or any government agencies.
In an emailed statement later, it added, “As far as the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa is concerned, it is important to know that no funding are decentralised to, or channelled through, the beneficiary countries’ government structures.
Ethiopia is being hit hard by one the most severe El Niño phenomenon on record. Numbers speak for themselves – in the past year, the number of food insecure people has increased from 2.9 million to over 10 million at present, write Neven Mimica and Christos Stylianides.
Ethiopia, which is a close ally of Washington, is surrounded by failed states in the Horn of Africa, such as South Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea. This year it has had to deal with one of its worst droughts in 50 years, worse even than that of the famine of 1984-85, exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon.
However, it has a difficult relationship with major aid agencies and NGOs, some of whom complain privately that operating in the country is dependent on not criticising the government in Addis Ababa.
The government in Addis Ababa, led by Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, has angrily dismissed the numbers cited by HRW, although admitting people have died in the protests, and blamed “illegal demonstrations and criminal attacks on property” for the unrest.
Desssalegn gave a press briefing on 30th August in which he made it clear that the government had a “responsibility to deal carry out its mandate to maintain law and order.”
“The government would never abrogate its responsibility to maintain peace, law and order. It would not allow the illegal demonstrations, violent clashes or criminal attacks on property that have been disturbing the country to continue,” he added.
Dessalegn stressed that peaceful demonstrations were allowed under the Ethiopian constitution – but must be agreed in time and in advance over location, be peaceful and “avoid disrupting day-to-day public activities or civic engagement.”
Although no single event seems to have triggered the 10 months of demonstrations in Ethiopia, the Oromo people complained of a plan to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, into their lands, and that they are disenfranchised by a government largely led by the Tigray grouping, from northern Ethiopia.
In a wide-ranging interview, Commissioner Neven Mimica tells EurActiv.com’s Matthew Tempest about the executive’s master plan for legal migration, as well as the limits of development aid to African states in the rough.
The cause of the Oromo people hit the headlines worldwide this summer, as Ethiopian runner Feyisa Lilesa crossed the finishing line at the Rio Olympics with his arms crossed in protest, before seeking political asylum abroad.
A spokesman for the Commission said, “The EU follows the human rights situation in Ethiopia very closely.
“Through high-level political contacts, the EU consistently raises concerns with the Ethiopian government.
“The EU also provides specific assistance to support human rights in the country, notably through the EU Civil Society Fund. We firmly believe that the combination of constructive dialogue and targeted development assistance will lead to positive changes in the human rights situation in Ethiopia and in the region.
“Key areas of concern are human rights, peace and stability in the country, as well as irregular migration and displacement.
Recently, the Ethiopian government began a big drive to increase its attraction as a high-end international tourism destination.
With the worst drought in 50 years, some 18 million people dependent on emergency food supplies, and aid agencies warning the money and the aid will run out in two months, it seems a strange time for Ethiopia to be marketing itself as an upmarket tourist destination.
Protests reportedly began in the Oromia region in November 2015, opposing the Federal Government’s plan to expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa. Reports indicate that despite the termination of the expansion plan, the protests continued due to the detention of activists, the use of excessive force, and killing of protestors by law enforcement officers.
More recently, protests reportedly erupted in the Amhara region of Gondar in July 2016 when armed police arrested members of the Welkait Committee who called for the recognition of the Welkait community, currently within the Tigray region, as part of the neighbouring Amhara region.
Reports further indicate that from 6 – 7 August 2016, thousands of people around the country took to the streets calling for political reform, equality, justice and the rule of law. The Commission is seriously disturbed by reports which aver that law enforcement agents responded with excessive force, including firing live bullets at protestors in Bahir Dar killing at least 30 people, and beating protestors with batons in Addis Ababa. Reports indicate that nearly 100 protestors were killed from 6 – 7 August 2016.
The Commission has also received information that the Government completely blocked internet throughout the country for 48 hours in an attempt to stop the use of social media to organise further protests. It is alleged that most social media applications are still blocked, hampering communication.
Reports allege that following the first protests in November 2015, hundreds of protestors have been killed, and many more have been beaten, arbitrarily arrested and detained.
The Commission is equally concerned about reports that members and human rights monitors of the Human Rights Council of Ethiopia (HRCO) have been arrested and detained in the Amhara and Oromo regions, while allegedly monitoring and documenting the crack-down on protestors in these regions.
Without reaching conclusions on the above allegations, the Commission is concerned that if these allegations are correct they would amount to violations of Articles 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 19 of theAfrican Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African Charter), as well as other regional and international human rights instruments to which the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia is a party.
In view of the above, the Commission calls on the Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to:
Fully investigate or allow the African Commission and other international/regional human rights mechanisms unimpeded access to the concerned areas in order to carry out prompt and impartial investigations into the allegations, so that these reports can be verified;
Ensure due process of law for those arrested and detained;
Respect peoples’ right to freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and access to information;
Ensure that perpetrators of the alleged violations are held accountable;
Ensure that the victims and their families obtain full redress, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition; and
Uphold its obligations under the regional and international human rights instruments to which it is a party, in particular the African Charter.
When Ethiopian security forces killed dozens of peaceful protesters in a hail of gunfire last month, the Canadian government responded with a brief tweet to say it was “disturbed” by the deaths.
But Canada’s Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan did not cancel his scheduled visit to Ethiopia.
Three days after the killings, he arrived in its capital and held a friendly meeting with Ethiopia’s defence minister and prime minister, making no public comment about the government’s actions.
Canada’s muted response to the lethal crackdown on the biggest protests in Ethiopia’s recent history is a sign of its continuing close relationship with the East African country.
Ethiopia is often among the first stops for Canadian cabinet ministers when they visit Africa, and it remains one of the biggest beneficiaries of Canadian foreign aid, receiving $108-million from Ottawa last year.
The Liberal government, which has promised a “re-engagement” with Africa, must decide how to engage with Africa’s human-rights abusers, of which Ethiopia is among the worst.
The government in Addis Ababa has a long record of jailing and killing its critics, manipulating elections and using Western food aid to reward its supporters and punish its opponents.
The question many are asking now is whether the Liberals will turn a blind eye to these abuses as it tries to revive Canada’s often-neglected relations with Africa.
The growing wave of protests against the Ethiopian government over the past 10 months, especially in the Oromiya and Amhara regions, has been the most significant in this authoritarian nation for more than a decade.
And they have spread to the Ethiopian diaspora around the world, symbolized by Ethiopian marathon runners who made protest gestures as they crossed the finish line at the Rio Olympics and elsewhere.
The protests reached Canada last Sunday, at the Quebec City Marathon, when the winning runner, Ebisa Ejigu, a Canadian resident of Ethiopian origin, clenched his fists and crossed his arms in an “X” sign above his head as he crossed the finish line.
The gesture is a sign of solidarity with the Oromo people, the largest ethnicity in Ethiopia, who have been demonstrating against government plans to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, into traditional Oromo farmland.
A week earlier, Ethiopian runner Feyisa Lilesa made the same protest gesture as he crossed the finish line at the Olympics.
He won the silver medal – and then refused to return home to Ethiopia, telling journalists that he is afraid of being imprisoned or killed for his protest actions.
“The Ethiopian government is killing my people,” he told journalists.
“My relatives are in prison, and if they talk about democratic rights they are killed.”
Ethiopian security forces killed more than 400 protesters in the Oromiya region – and arrested tens of thousands more – from last November until June, according to a Human Rights Watch report.
This was followed by the killing of a further 100 protesters last month, reports say.
Canada and other Western countries have long regarded Ethiopia as a useful ally in the fight against Islamist extremism in Somalia and elsewhere in East Africa.
Canada has been one of the biggest donors to Ethiopia in recent years, providing several hundred million dollars in development and humanitarian assistance.
The Liberal government could use this leverage to put pressure on Ethiopia to halt its killing of protesters, according to human-rights groups and Ethiopian-Canadian activists.
“We’ve been very concerned that the Ethiopian government has had a bit of a free ride from Canada and the international community,” said Alex Neve, secretary general of the Canadian branch of Amnesty International.
He said it is “utterly unacceptable” that Canadian officials and cabinet ministers don’t apply strong pressure on the Ethiopian government to halt the killing of protesters.
“It is absolutely time for Canada to make clear that this has to stop.”
Aside from the short tweet of disapproval from the Global Affairs department, there is no record of public statements by the Liberal government about the killings last month.
But a Global Affairs spokeswoman said Canada is “deeply concerned” about the reported deaths of the protesters.
“Canada has raised these concerns directly with the government of Ethiopia, and will continue to do so,” spokeswoman Jocelyn Sweet said in response to questions from The Globe and Mail.
“We continue to monitor the situation closely.”
Renée Filiatrault, deputy chief of staff to Mr. Sajjan, said the issue of the killing of protesters was “raised in private bilateral conversations” during the defence minister’s visit to Ethiopia.
“While I can’t go any further, I can say that the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms is key to our foreign policy and was a topic of discussion in every meeting that we had,” she said.
Some activists are urging the Liberal government to halt the flow of Canadian aid to Ethiopia and find ways to penalize the regime for its crackdown on protesters.
“Canada’s aid to Ethiopia has been a failed experiment in turning brutal dictators into democrats,” said Yohannes Berhe, an Ethiopian-Canadian human-rights activist.
“Spending taxpayers’ money without any measure of accountability and without demanding true political reform is, at the very least, a wasteful endeavour, and at worst, tantamount to encouraging one of the most repressive regimes in Africa.”
Several people are reported to have been killed in various parts of the Amhara regional state in Northern Ethiopia, where an ongoing protest by the people is intensifying. The VOA Amharic service quoted a resident in Debarq yesterday that four people were killed when security officers fired live bullets at protesting civilians.
Over the last few days several reports on social media indicated a rising death toll following security crackdown against a stay-at-home protests in Bahir Dar and Gonder, the region’s capital and a historic city visited by thousands of tourists respectively. Pictures coming from many cities and towns in the region also show protesting citizens, burning tyres and roadblocks. Reports also indicate that up to 50 civilians were killed in the past one week only.
Tensions are on the rise following a statement given to state owned media by Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in which he announced that he has ordered the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) to intervene to control the situation in the region, home to the second largest ethnic group in the country. In his speech PM Hailemariam blamed Ethiopia’s “outside enemies” for being the instigators to disrupt the country by providing “radicals with sacks full of money.” He further stated that the government will use “its full forces to bring the rule of law” into the region.
A day prior to PM Hailemariam’s statement, Sheger FM, a private radio based in Addis Abeba, reported that the regional state has requested a military intervention by the Federal government. Talking to the station, Nigusu Tilahun, the regional government’s Chief spokesperson, conceded that lives were lost in the recent protests but declined to give numbers. As a result of intensifying protests, the regional government requested the intervention of the federal army, Sheger FM quoted the spokesperson.
Pictures circulating around social media show heavy artillery moving towards the state capital Bahir Dar, 550 North of Addis Abeba, and the nearby town of Gondar where the recent wave of #Amharaprotests originated late last month. Addis Standard could not independently verify the authenticity of those pictures. Internet is shut off in the whole region while locals fear government sanctioned phone call monitoring.
In the last few days tens of thousands of citizens in several cities and towns in Gojam and Gonder areas of the region have come out to the streets to protest the government. In what many see as the ultimate test of the ruling EPRDF protesters are also showing solidarity with the #Oromoprotests which began in Nov. 2015.
In the weekend of 6-7 August region wide protests both in Amhara and Oromia regions were met by violent crackdown by security forces. It’s reported that more than 100 civilians were killed in that weekend only, according to Amnesty International. In Bahir Dar only, more than 30 people were killed when a security guard opened fire at protesters. The government disputes that number. The stay-at-home protests in Bahir and Gonder followed the deadliest weekend, however in the last few days that too turned violent when security forces began breaking into houses in an attempt to force citizens and businesses to stop the stay-at-home protests.
Roadblock in Bahir Dar. Photo: Social Media
Some reports claim that attacks against government institutions and party owned and affiliated businesses were witnessed in some cities and towns. There are also reports that young men and women are being arrested en mass by security forces.
A group of civil society organizations are calling for an independent and impartial international investigation into human rights violations in Ethiopia, including the unlawful killing of peaceful protesters and a recent spate of arrests of civil society members documenting this crackdown.
DefendDefenders (East and Horn of African Human Rights Defenders Project), the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE), Amnesty International, the Ethiopia Human Rights Project (EHRP), Front Line Defenders, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), are concerned about the levels of persecution and detention of civil society members in the country. Since last month, four members of one of Ethiopia’s most prominent human rights organizations, the Human Rights Council (HRCO), were arrested and detained in the Amhara and Oromia regions. HRCO believes these arrests are related to the members’ monitoring and documentation of the crackdown of on-going protests in these regions.
On 14 August, authorities arrested Tesfa Burayu, Chairperson of HRCO’s West Ethiopian Regional Executive Committee at his home in Nekemte, Oromia. Tesfa, who had been monitoring the protests for the organization, was denied access to his family and his lawyer, and released on 16 August without charge. Two days earlier on 12 August, Abebe Wakene, also a member of HRCO, was arrested and taken to the Diga district police station in Oromia. Abebe Wakene remains in detention with no formal charges against him. In addition, on 13 August, Tesfaye Takele, a human rights monitor in the Amhara region, was arrested in the North Wollo zone and is still detained without charge.
The lack of independent and transparent investigation of human rights violations in Ethiopia strongly implies that the Ethiopian government’s investigation of the ongoing human rights crisis will not be independent, impartial and transparent.
HRCO’s human rights monitors were arrested for attempting to document the large-scale pro-democracy protests and the following violent crackdown by the authorities in the Oromia and Amhara regions, as well as in the capital Addis Ababa on 6 and 7 August. Amnesty International reported that close to 100 protesters were killed and scores more arrested during the largely peaceful protests.
Three journalists were also arrested and detained by Ethiopian security officials for 24 hours on 8 August 2016 in the Shashemene area of the Oromo region. According to the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Ethiopia, Hadra Ahmed, a correspondent with Africa News Agency, was arrested along with Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) reporters Fred de Sam Lazaro and Thomas Adair, despite having proper accreditation. They were reporting on the government’s response to the drought in the Oromia region, where protests have been ongoing since November 2015. Their passports and equipment were confiscated and they were forced to return to Addis Ababa.
“Despite the systematic repression of peaceful protestors, political dissents, journalists and human rights defenders, the absence of efficient and effective grievance redress mechanisms risks plunging the country into further turmoil,” said Yared Hailemariam, Executive Director of AHRE.”
Ethiopia’s National Human Rights Commission, which has the mandate to investigate rights violations in Ethiopia, has failed to make public its own June report on the Oromo protests, whileconcluding in its oral report to Parliament that the lethal force used by security forces in Oromia was proportionate to the risk they faced from the protesters. Since November 2015, at least 500 demonstrators have been killed and thousands of others arrested in largely peaceful protests in the Oromia and Amhara regions and other locations across the country.
“The lack of independent and transparent investigation of human rights violations in Ethiopia strongly implies that the Ethiopian government’s investigation of the ongoing human rights crisis will not be independent, impartial and transparent” said Sarah Jackson, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. “It is time to step up efforts for an international and independent investigation in Ethiopia.”
DefendDefenders, AHRE, Amnesty International, EHRP, Front Line Defenders, and FIDH urge the Ethiopian authorities to (i) immediately and unconditionally release civil society members targeted for their work and (ii) facilitate access for international human rights monitoring bodies including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to conduct thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into the ongoing human rights violations in the Oromia, Amhara and Addis Ababa areas.
30 August 2016 – The Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, is deeply alarmed by the deteriorating human rights situation in Ethiopia, and especially, the arbitrary killing, arrest and detention of protesters.
According to reports, the Ethiopian government forces have killed more than 500 protestors since November 2015, and have arrested and detained thousands.
We recall that on the eve of calls for protests, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Haile-Mariam has warned that measures will be taken against protesters. Eventually, when protests took place in the Amhara and Oromia regions in August 2016, nearly a hundred protesters were killed. The public statements of warning by the senior government officials stirred the suspicion that the ongoing human rights abuses by government forces are happening by the approval of the Ethiopian government.
The Ethiopian government has rejected the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (UNOHCHR) request that the government allow international observers to assess the human rights violation in Ethiopia. The government has stated that it would establish a domestic body to investigate the matter.
However, the findings of the commissions of inquiry established in the past by the Ethiopian Parliament (House of Peoples’ Representatives) have generated mistrust by stakeholders, human rights organisations and other bodies. In the past, instead of the main perpetrators of the violence that actually committed the arbitrary killings and detentions, individuals who took part in the protests have been held accountable on charges like incitement and terrorism. The commissions of inquiry have not implicated members of government forces and senior government officials, and as a result, they have not been held accountable. These commissions of inquiry have also lacked adequate participation of stakeholders and transparency.
Moreover, the fact that senior government officials have been, and continue to make statements threatening protesters from making peaceful protests amounts to approving the human rights violations. Such statements send a signal to the Ethiopian security and military forces to assume that the ongoing arbitrary killings, arrests and detentions are legitimate.
With a view to addressing these problems, making a credible, independent, impartial, effective and transparent inquiry is imperative. To this end, the Centre is convinced that international or regional inquiry mechanisms are better suited than domestic commission of inquiry in Ethiopia.
Therefore, the Centre for Human Rights makes the following requests:
The United Nations Human Rights Council should put the serious human rights violations in Ethiopia in its agenda on the 33rd regular session in September 2016. It should be noted that Ethiopia is currently a member of the Human Rights Council. The Council should consider whether to suspend Ethiopia’s membership of the Council for having committed “gross and systematic violations of human rights” (as provided for under A/RES/60/251 paragraph 8).
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings should make an urgent appeal to the Ethiopian government, and undertake a visit to Ethiopia with a view to gather first-hand information of the arbitrary killings according to its mandate, and to release it reports.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions should investigate the arrests and detentions of protesters in Ethiopia.
While we take note of the letter expressing grave concern about the violations by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, we urge the Commission to undertake a visit into the country and in order to assess the human rights violations.
The Chairperson of the African Union, with its seat located in Addis Ababa, should denounce the human rights violation in Ethiopia
The Ethiopian government should consent to fully cooperate with international and regional inquiry mechanisms to undertake their investigation; it should release political detainees; it should respect the right to peaceful demonstration, which is protected in art 30(1) of the Ethiopian Constitution and various human rights treaties to which Ethiopia is a party; it should note that the limitations of this right are to be construed narrowly; and it should desist from further using excessive force and violence to disperse peaceful protests.
For more information, please contact:
Prof Frans Viljoen
Director, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
Tel: +27 (0) 12 420 3228 / 3810
Mobile: +27 (0) 73 393 4181
Email: frans.viljoen@up.ac.za
#OromoProtests: Must Wach Press TV Africa News: Scores of people were killed across Oromia state, Ethiopia as security forces brutally suppressed a new wave of anti-government protests
#OromoProtests, Must watch Al Jazeera new video News of August 20, 2016, Hundreds have been killed by agazi police forces during a peaceful demonstration across the country (Oromia, Ethiopia).
The cruel Fascist Ethiopia’s regime (TPLF) is killing Oromo children on daily basis. Since 6 August 2016, over 25,000 Oromo nationals of all walks of life have been in military concentrations/torture camps. The figure is rising daily. This figure does not include the over 50,000 detained before 6 August 2016.
Targeted killing continues across Oromia.This is Galataa Admaasuu, a young man of age 19. He was returning home after watching a soccer game at a cafe in the evening of August 19, 2016 when the regime’s force with sniper bullets hit him 3 times and killing him on spot in front of Dambi Dollo Hospital, in Qelam Wallaggaa. In the past few days we have been receiving several such targeted killing using snipers or by staging night time raid to homes.
Kun Galataa Admaasuu dargaggeessa umri 19 kan galgala kaleessaa osoo kubbaa laalee galaa jiruu loltuun Wayyaanee rasaasan dhahee fuuldura Hospitaal Dambi Doollootti ajjeeseedha.
16 years old from Fantaallee kidnapped by Ethiopia’s regime fascist forces on 17 August 2016 his whereabouts is unkown
Kun barataa kutaa sagal Marraa Hawaas kan hiriira Hagayya 6 bara 2016 Aanaa Fantaallee magaalaa Mataa-Haaraatti geggeeffame irratti nama 29 waliin qabamee mana hidhaa Mataa-Haaraatti dararamaa ture. Barataan kun kaleessa mana murtitti dhiyaannan umrii 16 waan ta’eef akka bayu manni murtii murteesse. Garuu, warri seeruma ofii baafattettuu hin bulle, ukkaamsitee bakka hin beekamne geessitee turte. Odeessi nu gahe akka ibsutti, yeroo ammaa mana hidhaa Martitti dararaan irra gayaa jira.
Dr Alamuu Taaddasaa, medical doctor at incinnii hospital in Oromia kidnapped by Ethiopia’s regime fascist forces on 16 August 2016 and his whereabout is unknown
kun Dr Alamuu Taaddasaa jedhama. Hojjetaa hospitaala Incinnitii, Hagayya 16 bara 2016 waree booda lukkulee wayyanetiin qabamee essa akka isa buusaan dhabnee jirra jedhan.
Obsineet Baqalee, young Oromo woman, worker of Ethio telecom. Kidnapped on the Grand #OromoProtest, 06 August 2016 demonstration inFinfinnee, her whereabouts and health is unknown.
Jamaal Abdalla Aadam, Oromo boy, star student, from Calanqoo kidnapped by Ethiopia’s regime fascist forces on 6 August 2016
Barataa Jamaal Abdalla Aadam jedhama. Jiraataa Harargee Bahaa Aanaa Meettaa magaala Calaanqooti. Barataan kun qoruumsa kutaa 12ffaa qaphxii 467 kan fide yoo ta’uu, qaphxii isaa ille arkuu hin dandenye. Eega gaafa hiriira guddicha hagayya 6 irraa qabamee qeerroo baayyee waliin gara magaalaa qullubbii geeffame, achitti rakkisa jiran.
KADIR MOHAMMAD ABDULLAA , Oromo national from East Haraghe, Gursum, Funyaan Hujubaa town in Oromia state kidnapped by Ethiopia’s regime fascist forces on 15 August 2016. His whereabuts is unknown.
Mallicha Guyo, former lecturer at Dire Dawa University and currently a graduate student of Constitutional & Public Law at AAU is among the many peaceful demonstrators unlawfully detained during the Grand #OromoProtests, 6th of Augus 2016 in Finfinnee and still kept in regime’s secrete detention centres.
Akkuma beekamufu hiiriiraa guddicha sanbata xiqqaa sani irratii namoota kumatamat lakkawaamu achii buute dhaban hamami hin jedhamu…namni maqaan isaa Malicha Guyyoo jedhamu kan barsiisa university Dire dawa tii damee seeraa barsiisuu amma MA university finfinnet constitutional and public law baracha Jiru achii buute isaa dhaban…..mee nama qoonqoo isaa qabu faa yoo argate inbox na godhii.
Godina Wallaggaa Lixaa Anaa Baaboo Gambeel keessatti gaafa 06 /07/2016 hirirraa guutu Oromiyaattii ta’e irraattii anaan Baaboos hirmachuun mormii jabaa dhageessisanii tura sanan wal qabatee namoonnii hedduun hiidhamuufi manii hiidhalee hankakee mana barumsaatii uummattaa hiidha akka turan gabaasun keenya ni yaada tamaa ammaas namoonnii hedduun hiidhaatii dararamaa yoo jirata dargagoo lamaa
1 Jafar Caaliif
2 Jafar Qawwee kan
jedhaman immoo mana hiidhaatii basanii essa akka isaan geessan hin beekamu! Uummanniis dararraa guddaa keessa jira!
An Oromo national Taagal Daaqaa Waaqgaarii is among thousands of peaceful protesters who have been unlawfully detained by the TPLF security agents during the Grand #OromoProtests rally in the capital Finfinnee, on the 6th of Aug, 2016. It’s believed that Mr. Tagal & thousands of others unlawfully detained during these peaceful protests are currently being tortured at a Military Camp called Awash Arba, in the remote Afar regional state. The regime is torturing thousands to death in such a remote military barricades across the country.
Oromo youth, Yaasiin Xaahaa, original from Jimma, kidnaped by fascist Ethiopia’s regime forces on August 6, 2016, Grand #OromoProtests Rally in Finfinnee. His whereabouts unknown.
Young Oromo national Akaaluu Mulugeetaa Olaanii, kidnaped by fascist Ethiopia’s regime forces on 6 August 2016 (Grand #OromoProtest) his whereabouts is unknown.
This is Kebede Gemeda, a 70 year elder. He was arrested at the Grand Rally in Finfinne. He was beaten so badly that he lost one of his eye sight completely. They thought he was dying so they took him out of the military camp and threw up near his house.
Oromo national Jibriil Mohaammad, from Jimmaa Arjo shot four times at gun point by Agazi on 6 August 2016 at Grand #OromoProtests.
#Oromoprotests alert: The regime now using collage campus as concentration camp in addition to several military camps. For instance some 25000 protesters arrested in Hararge have been taken to Kombolcha Agricultural College. Their head has been shaved and they are crammed into classrooms in hundreds.
NOTE: These colleges are mostly built and run by money donated from American and European tax payers. So tell your representatives. Jawar Mohammed, OMN reports, 20 August 2016.
VOA Afaan Oromoo reports how fascist TPLF Ethiopia’s regime soldiers killed a man named Hora Wajiso in his own home and then imprisoned his wife with her infant child.
Maqaan isaa Dr.Gabayyoo Jaallataa jedhama. Kaninni itti dhalatee guddate godina Wallaggaa lixaa aanaa Gullusoo jedhamtu keessatti.
Ga’een hojii isaa Dookteerummaadhaan kilinika Abdii kan jedhamu magaalaa naqamtee keessaa naannoo Hoospitaala naqamteetti kan argamu keessatti ramadamee hojjechaa nama tureedha. Dr.Gabayyoo jaalataa xinnummaa isaa irraa ka’uun nama diinaaf harka hin laanne nama oromummaa isaatti boonee jiraatuu fi nama ilmaan oromoo akka lubbuu isaatti jaallatu keessaa nama tokko ture.
Haata’u malee yeroo darbe hiriira guddicha magaalaa naqamtee keessatti akka abidda saafaa belbelaa ooleen wal qabatee sababii inni oromummaa isaa jaallatuuf jecha akkasumallee ati dhoksaadhaan qeerroo mana hojii itti ramadamtee hojjettu keessatti ol seensistee walla’aansa gochaafii jirta maqaa jedhuun humni agaazii guyyuma hiriira guddichaa sana bakkuma hojiisaatii deemanii rasaasa itti roobsanii deemanii jiru.
Haa ta’u malee dr Gabayyoon yeroo sanaaf rukutamee hatattamaan gara hoospitaala naqamteetti ergamee yaaliin deddeebiin torban tokkoo oliif osooma godhamaafii jiruu hoomaayyuu fayyuu hin dadhabuurraan kan ka’e guyyaa har’aa jechuun Hagayya 15/08/2016 du’aan addunyaa kanarraa boqotee jira. Reeffi isaas gara bakka dhaloota isaa kan taate godina wallagga lixaa magaalaa gullusootti ergamee jira.
Qabsa’aan du’us qabsoon itti fufa.
on 15 August 2016 night, fascist Ethiopia’s regime Agazi soldiers broke into home of Hora Fajiso, and killed him on spot in Batu town, East Shawa.
Bulchiinsa magaalaa Baatuu guyyaa 09/12/2008 halkaan sa’aati 10:00 ti Dargaggoo Hora Fajjisoo sababii meeshaa woraan qabda jedhuun marsaanii warranaa mana jirenyaa isaati itti banuun kan ajeesaan yoo ta’u akka ajeefamu kan haala mijessee obbo Kadir Gammada I/g W/ra Bulchiinsa fi Nagenyaa Magaalaa Baatuu ta’u bekkame jira ,dhukaasa godhameen Poolisii tokkoo yoo Ajefamuu tokko rukkutame jira.
This is martyred Ahmadoo who was killed by TPLF Ethiopia’s regime fascist Agazi forces in Haramaayaa town, East Hararge on 6 August 2016, Grand #OromoProtests. May his soul rest in Peace!
Kun wareegamaa keenya barataa Ahmadoo, kan hiriira guddaa Oromoo godina Harargee Bahaa, magaalaa Haramaayaa, keessatti Hagayya 6 bara 2016 waraana Wayyaaneen wareegame.
Gootota Oromoo kumaatamaa wajjin nagaan nuuf boqodhu!
Qabsoon hanga bilisummaatti itti fufa!!
Rabbi lubbuu isaa haa qananiisu.
Abduselam Ahmed, a succesful Oromo businessman in haramaya was assassinated by tplf fascit Ethiopias regime on 7 August 2016.
The other victim on the protest held in Robe, Bale on the Grand #OromoProtests on 6 August 2016 was Zubeyr Kadir as you can see on the picture bellow! May he join Oromo martyrs in heaven!!!
Zubeyr Kadir gunned down by Ethiopia’s regime fascist forces on 6 August 2016 in Robe Bale, Oromia.
#OromoProtests, Must watch Al Jazeera new video News of August 20, 2016, Hundreds have been killed by agazi police forces during a peaceful demonstration across the country (Oromia, Ethiopia).
Darajee Birbirsaa, Oromo national, civil engineering graduate kidnapped by fascist forces on 19 August 2016 and his where about is unknown.
kuni darajee birbirsaa jedhama. bara 2015 wallaga university irra civil engineering dhan eebifame kan turee yoo tauu dalagaa male hanga ammaatti magaala Itayya godina arsi keessa turee haa tauu malee akka lakkobsa Habashaatti Hagayya 12 bara 2008 poolisi feedaralattin ergaa fudhatame booda eessa akka dhaqee hin beekamuana sirreessa aanaa fi goodinaa keesattis hin argamnee.isaa walii is namooni abdalla dasee jedhamuu fi muktar abdoo jedhamuu dhabanni jiraan.
Jundii Abboomsaa Badhaasoo, Oromo business man from Arsi, Martii district kidnapped on 17 August 2016 and his whereabout is unknown
GodinaArsii Bahaa Aanaa Martii ganda Golagotaa keessaa nama Jundii Abboomsaa Badhaasoo jedhamu guyyaa dheengaddaa mana murtii irraa waraqaa fidanii mana isaatti seeraan sir barbaanna jedhaniinii ani Wayyaaneetti hin bulu reeffa kiyya malee jiraa kiyya asii na hin fuutan jedheenii gootummaan dura dhaabbate. Achii jaarsoliin fuudhanii magaalaa geessanii halkan kalee namoota 16 waliin halkan saa’aa 9 makiinaa lamaan fe’anii achi buuteen hin beekamne. obbo Jundii Abboomsaa Badhaasoo abbaa qabeenyaa lafa bishaan hektaara hedduu yoo ta’u, akkasumas eessuma wallisaa Ibroo Ibsaa; kan akka abbaatti guddisee asiin gahee hanga har’aatti gargaaree sirboota hedduu hojjisiise.
Aman Aliyii Xaha, Oromo national was shot at gun point by fascsist Ethiopia’s regime forces on 6 August Grand #OromoProtests in Haramayaa and died on 20 August 2016.
Godina Haragee Bahaa Haramayaa keessatti Hirira guddicha Hagayya 6, 2016 irrati dhahamee harra lubbuun isaa dabarte.”
OSG’s letter to United Nations Human Right Council : Ignoring a wave of unlawful killings and enforced disappearances in Oromia is fueling further catastrophic in the region. osg-call-for-urgnet-action
HRLHA Urgent Action
Ethiopia: State – Sponsored Terrorism and Military Brutality in Oromia HRLHA Urgent Action
August 17, 2016
Ethiopia, a UN Human Rights Council member since 2011, and an elected member of the UN Security Council as of 2017 is committing state- sponsored terror against the Oromo nation in violation of the UN Human Rights Council responsibility for the promotion and protection of all human rights and the UN Security Council responsiblities for maintaining international peace and security as well as the human rights treaties it has signed and ratified. The government- trained and highly funded Agazi force shot Gebeyehu Jalata, a medical doctor, several times at his personal clinic in East Wallaga Nekemt town on August 6, 2016 while he was allegedly treating wounded protestors at his clinic. Dr. Gebehu Jalata was taken to the Nekemt hospital for treatment and died on August 15, 2016 . The Agazi killing squad also invaded Mr. Hora Fajisso’s home- he is a farmer in East Showa Zone Adami Tulu district, Batu town- and murdered him in his bed in front of his three children and his wife at 5:00 am on August 16, 2016. During the grand nationwide Oromo nation protests on August 6,2016, the Agazi force killed at least 70 people and arrested tens of thousands of others in Oromia Regional State. 1-ethiopia-government-sponsered-terrorism
Among Oromo nationals killed on August 06, 2016 the Human Rights League (HRLHA) reporters managed to get the names of the following 65 people:-
Ethiopians wait to fill water cans in February during the recent drought. With the return of the rains, however, have come flooding and disease — something the government is reluctant to discuss. (Aida Muluneh for The Washington Post)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — After going through its worst drought in 50 years, Ethiopia is again seeing rain. In fact, in some places, it’s falling too hard and has set off floods.
So while the number of people requiring food aid has dropped slightly from 10.2 million in January to 9.7 million, according to the latest figures, there is a new threat of disease in a population weakened by drought.
Measles, meningitis, malaria and scabies are on the rise. And most seriously, there has been an outbreak of something mysteriously called “AWD,” according to the Humanitarian Requirements Document, issued by the government and humanitarian agencies on Aug. 13.
“There is a high risk that AWD can spread to all regions with high speed as there is a frequent population movement between Addis Ababa and other regions,” it warned.
The letters stand for acute watery diarrhea. It is a potentially fatal condition caused by water infected with the vibrio cholera bacterium. Everywhere else in the world it is simply called cholera.
But not in Ethiopia, where international humanitarian organizations privately admit that they are only allowed to call it AWD and are not permitted to publish the number of people affected.
The government is apparently concerned about the international impact if news of a significant cholera outbreak were to get out, even though the disease is not unusual in East Africa.
This means that, hypothetically, when refugees from South Sudan with cholera flee across the border into Ethiopia, they suddenly have AWD instead.
In a similar manner, exactly one year ago, when aid organizations started sounding the alarm bells over the failed rains, government officials were divided over whether they would call it a drought and appeal for international aid.
Police break up anti-government protest in Ethiopian capital
Play Video0:57
Hundreds of protesters on Saturday clashed with police in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa after campaigners called for nationwide protests due to what they say is an unfair distribution of wealth in the country. (Reuters)
The narrative for Ethiopia in 2015 was a successful nation with double-digit growth, and the government did not want to bring back memories of the 1980s drought that killed hundreds of thousands and left the country forever associated with famine.
“We don’t use the f-word,” explained an aid worker to me back in September, referring to famine.
Like many of its neighbors in the region, Ethiopia has some issues with freedom of expression and is very keen about how it is perceived abroad. While the country has many developmental successes to celebrate, its current sensitivity suggests it will be some time before this close U.S. ally resembles the democracy it has long claimed to be.
Ultimately, the government recognized there was a drought and made an international appeal for aid. The systems put into place over the years prevented the drought from turning into a humanitarian catastrophe — for which the country has earned praise from its international partners.
In the same manner, even though it doesn’t call it cholera, the government is still waging a vigorous campaign to educate people on how to avoid AWD, by boiling water and washing their hands.
Yet this sensitivity to bad news extends to the economic realm as well. Critics have often criticized Ethiopia’s decade of reported strong growth as being the product of cooked numbers. The government does seem to produce rosier figures than international institutions.
After the drought, the International Monetary Fund predicted in Aprilthat growth would drop from 10.2 percent in 2015 to just 4.5 percent in 2016.
Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, maintained, however, that growth would be a robust 8.5 percent, despite the falling agriculture productivity and decreased export earnings.
In the political realm, news of unrest and protests is suppressed. During a weekend of demonstrations on Aug. 6 and 7, the Internet was cut, making it difficult to find out what happened.
Human rights organizations, opposition parties and media tried to piece together the toll from the deadly demonstrations, which according to Amnesty International may have been up to 100.
The United Nations has called for international observers to carry out an investigation in the affected regions, which the government has strongly rejected even as it has dismissed estimates of casualties without providing any of its own.
“That is one of the factors we are struggling against with this government, the blockade of information,” complained Beyene Petros, the chairman of a coalition of opposition parties. “Journalists cannot go and verify. We cannot do that.”
Local journalists are heavily constrained, and as Felix Horne of Human Rights Watch points out, Ethiopia is one of the biggest jailers of journalists on the continent.
“Limitations on independent media, jamming of television and radio signals, and recent blocking of social media all point to a government afraid to allow its citizens access to independent information,” he said.
Foreign journalists do not fare much better, especially if they attempt to venture out of the capital to do their reporting.
In March, the New York Times and Bloomberg correspondents were detained by police while trying to report on the disturbances in the Oromo Region.
They were sent back to Addis Ababa and held overnight in a local prison before being interrogated and released.
In a similar fashion, a television crew with American Public Broadcasting Service was detained on Aug. 8 south of the capital trying to do a story on the drought conditions.
They and their Ethiopian fixer — an accredited journalist in her own right — were released after 24 hours, and they were told not to do any reporting outside of Addis.
In both cases the journalists were all accredited by the Government Communication Affairs Office, with credentials that are supposed to extend the breadth of the country but in practice are widely ignored by local officials.
The government spokesman, Getachew Reda, has dismissed the allegations about the information crackdown in the country and in recent appearances on the Al Jazeera network he maintained that there are no obstacles to information in Ethiopia.
“This country is open for business, it’s open for the international community, people have every right to collect whatever information they want,” he said.
Calls for an international investigation in Ethiopia have surfaced after more than 100 people were killed in demonstrations.It is a conflict that has led to 400 deaths since November, 100 of them in the last week alone, according to human rights groups.The Ethiopian government is cracking down on ethnic Oromos and Amharas, who are calling for political reforms.Human rights groups have called the reponse ruthless. And the United Nations wants to send international observers to investigate.Ethiopia has denied that request, saying it alone is responsible for the security of its citizens. But what can be done to ensure the Ethiopian government respects human rights?Presenter: Folly Bah ThibaultGuests:Getachew Reda – Ethiopian communications affairs minister.Felix Horne – Ethiopia reseracher for Human Rights Watch.Ezekiel Gebissa – Profesor of History and African studies at Kettering University.- Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe– Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish– Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera– Check our website: http://www.aljazeera.com/
#OromoProtests Alert! Mass torture and killings are going on against Oromo people in Ethiopia. Oromo children are subjected to torture and mass killings by fascsist Ethiopia’s regime (TPLF/Agazi force.
The New York Times was able to picture in video camera while fascist cruel Ethiopia’s regime (TPLF/Agazi) was attacking peaceful Oromo Protesters in Finfinnee (Addis Ababa), Oromia on 6 August 2016, Grand #OromoProtests.
Genocide is going on against Oromo people. On 6 August 2016 Protests held over 200 towns and cities in Oromia state wide. All over, Oromo demonstrators demanding political change in Ethiopia have been met with violent resistance by the fascist TPLF Ethiopia’s regime.It has been reported that over 283 innocent Oromo have been gunned down by cruel fascist TPLF Ethiopia’s regime ( https://oromianeconomist.com/2016/08/13/oromia-dhiigi-mucaa-kootii-dhangalaee-hin-hafu-oromiyaan-ni-bilisoomti-akeeka-ummatni-oromoo-bakkaan-gahuuf-murteeffate/ ). These are in addition to over 600 people the regime has murdered since November 2015. Since 6 August 2016, over 4000 people are being tortured in Awash Arba concentration camp alone. This figure does not include thousands and thousands in thousands TPLF torture camps.
Fascist Ethiopia’s regime’s detaining and torturing Oromo children. This photo was taken at Iyasu IV prison in Gara Mulata, East Hararge, Oromia. 13 August 2016
This is picture is a photo of martyred birght Oromo teenager school girl Mamiituu Hirphaa who was killed by cruel fascist Ethiopia’s regime Agazi forces in Ambo town, West Shawa, Oromia on 6 August 2016.
Fascist Ethiopia’s regime forces attacking 80 years Oromo elder in Arsi, Oromia state, captured by citizen journalist camera and social media.
A full scale military massacre has-been conducted by ethiopias fascsit regime in Naqamte East Wallaggaa, Oromia. The is picture is a young Oromo gunned down by the regime forces. 6 August 2016. Grand #OromoProtests.
These are tips of the iceberg of genocidal crimes of Fascist (TPLF) Ethiopia’s regime.
Dictators are in a constant battle of gaining meaning to their existence by denying meaningful life to others. Through its atrocious actions and inactions, the TPLF/EPRDF has taken the animosity between itself and the people of Ethiopia to another threshold. It has completely lost the shred of legitimacy it had in few quarters when assuming power in 1991.
It is incumbent on us – the people – to struggle for the restoration of our humanity and dignity. Although the primary responsibility to liberate ourselves rests upon us, we should not underestimate the role of the international community in this life-and-death situation. Since November 2015, over 600 people have been killed, thousands wounded, and tens of thousands imprisoned in Oromia, by government forces, while protesting peacefully. Over 100 people have been killed in Oromia and Amhara regions only during the last weekend.
Most of the financial aid is given in the name of development and social services. While the dictators in Ethiopia are busy killing and detaining innocent people across Oromia and Amhara regions – not doing development or running social services – the World Bank is busy processing 1.2 billion USD in new aid for the regime.
It should be noted that, following the bloody 2005 elections during which about 200 people were killed by government forces, the Bank introduced a slightly tightened control system, which it has progressively loosened. Through the Program-for-Results Financing (PforR), it is currently implementing a scheme that is consequentially similar to the direct budget support it used to run before the 2005 elections. The “Results” in the “PforR” is to be confirmed by a mere report by the government, and the World Bank has no verification system of its own. The effect is that the regime will be able to divert the fund away from the intended purposes, including using it for enforcing tyranny.
To aid the government of Ethiopia in this time, when it is perpetrating a brutal crackdown against peaceful protesters, is an antithesis of development/public service and painful for the people suffering under the current regime. Remember, actions become eventful not only in themselves but also in relation to the context in which they take place. On both sides of the actions, there are human beings – those who stand with the authoritarian regime to enforce repression and those who suffer the consequences.
It is unfortunate and outrageous that the international donor community has refused to seriously consider the plight of the oppressed and continued to offer diplomatic, financial, and military aid to the oppressor. By doing so, the donor community supported dictatorship and serious human rights violations and deferred the dawn of freedom against the oppressed. They chose to support an authoritarian, minority regime in contradiction with the values they ostensibly advocate for – hypocrisy can only start to explain this blatant contradiction. It is unfortunate that the people of Ethiopia will have to put up with this agonizing reality.
It has been repeatedly said that dictators do not learn from history and, I add, hypocrites do not learn from history either. Allies of the TPLF/EPRDF regime are in a moral bankruptcy, with alarming consequences. We hold them morally responsible for sustained repression of the people of Ethiopia. Those who continue to directly and indirectly support a regime that kills, maims, and tortures innocent people will be held responsible in the court of public opinion and leave a bloody history for generations to come.
The delay of freedom and justice is very costly to all the oppressed people of Ethiopia, the cohorts of the regime, and the world at large. However, the quest for these virtuous goals will continue and, no matter how long it takes, will ultimately hit its desired destination. Then comes a time when redressing current moral bankruptcy of the international community becomes impossible. Nonetheless, today has offered non-ignorable options for all to consider seriously.
Out of faith in the inner sincerity of human beings and humanity’s united yearning for liberty and justice, I appeal to the citizens and tax payers of Western donor countries to hold their governments accountable and demand an end to financial, diplomatic, and military support to the authoritarian regime of Ethiopia, which is turning the country into war zone. Behold donors and Western allies of the minority regime, the struggle in Ethiopia may soon enter a massively new phase.
Dictators are in a constant battle of gaining meaning to their existence by denying meaningful life to others. Through its atrocious actions and inactions, the TPLF/EPRDF has taken the animosity between itself and the people of Ethiopia to another threshold. It has completely lost the shred of legitimacy it had in few quarters when assuming power in 1991.
It is incumbent on us – the people – to struggle for the restoration of our humanity and dignity. Although the primary responsibility to liberate ourselves rests upon us, we should not underestimate the role of the international community in this life-and-death situation. Since November 2015, over 600 people have been killed, thousands wounded, and tens of thousands imprisoned in Oromia, by government forces, while protesting peacefully. Over 100 people have been killed in Oromia and Amhara regions only during the last weekend.
A year after Obama’s visit, Ethiopia is in turmoil
Protesters’ shoes lie scattered on a sidewalk in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Aug. 6 after demonstrators were arrested and taken away by police. (Paul Schemm/The Washington Post)
By Paul Schemm August 9, 2016
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The shoes lay scattered on the sidewalk as the detained protesters walked barefoot through the rain, escorted by grim-faced police officers who casually beat them with batons to keep them moving.
In nearby Meskel Square here in the heart of the Ethiopian capital, police kicked around the remnants of protest signs. Just 10 minutes earlier, 500 people had gathered at the site, shouting slogans against the government — before being beaten, rounded up and carted off by police.
In Ethiopia’s countryside, however, it was a bloodier story. Rights groups and opposition figures estimate that dozens were killed in a weekend of protests that shook this key U.S. ally in the Horn of Africa.
The government had switched off the Internet over the weekend, apparently to prevent demonstrators from organizing, so it was only by Monday that word spread of the extent of the violence across the Oromia and Amhara regions.
[Ethiopia confronts its worst violence in years]
Police break up anti-government protest in Ethiopian capital Play Video0:57
Hundreds of protesters on Saturday clashed with police in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa after campaigners called for nationwide protests due to what they say is an unfair distribution of wealth in the country. (Reuters)
Just a year ago, Ethiopia was basking in the world’s spotlight after a visit from President Obama and global accolades for its decade of double-digit growth and enviable stability in a dangerous region.
Since then, however, this country of nearly 100 million has been hit by a widespread drought that has halved growth, and anti-government protests have spread across two of its most populous regions.
The local weekly Addis Standard estimated that at least 50 people were killed over the weekend — based on phone calls to protest hot spots. Amnesty International put the toll at about 100, citing sources across the country.
On Monday, the government announced that the situation was under control and that “the attempted demonstrations were orchestrated by foreign enemies from near and far in partnership with local forces.”
Merera Gudina, chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress, told The Washington Post that an estimated 50 people died in the Oromia region Saturday and 27 were killed Sunday in Bahir Dar, the capital of the Amhara region and a major tourist destination.
“The government is responding in the same way it has responded to such incidents for the last quarter of the century,” he said by phone from Washington during a visit with the Ethiopian community there. “They want to rule in the old way, and people are refusing to be ruled in the old way.”
[History repeats itself in Ethiopia]
Protests began in November in the Oromia region, a sprawling state the size of Nevada that is home to the Oromos, the largest ethnic group in the country. It is also home to the capital.
As a booming Addis Ababa expanded and Ethiopia brought in foreign investors, more and more land from the surrounding Oromia region was confiscated. People also complained of corrupt administrators and, with little recourse to justice, began to stage demonstrations.
The government response was harsh. Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 400 people were killed in protests over the next several months. The official Ethiopian human rights council put the figure at 173.
In the face of the repression, the protests slowly quieted in Oromia, only to erupt last month in the neighboring region of Amhara, the historical ethnic center of the Ethiopian state and home to spectacular rock-cut churches and medieval castles that attract tourists.
A botched government attempt to arrest activists in the northern city of Gondar in mid-July led to two days of rioting that left 11 members of the security forces and five civilians dead. Two weeks later, tens of thousands held a peaceful demonstration over land issues and government repression.
Protesters in Amhara declared solidarity with the Oromo people and their opposition to the government, which many say is dominated by the minority Tigrayan ethnic group.
Activists abroad then called for demonstrations across the two regions this past weekend — a call to which thousands responded despite the Internet shutdown.
“It is clear Ethiopia has a potentially serious and destabilizing unrest on its hands,” said Rashid Abdi, the Horn of Africa project director at the International Crisis Group. “What started off as isolated and localized protests in the Oromia and Amhara regions has now morphed into a much broader movement covering a large swath of the country.”
He said the government has to move swiftly to defuse the crisis by engaging in talks with the communities and addressing the root causes of the dissatisfaction. Despite Ethiopia’s impressive economic gains, the growth has not been enough to “keep pace with rising social inequality” and unemployment, he said.
Opening these lines of communication, however, may be difficult because of a lack of leadership. Opposition parties have been repressed — the ruling coalition won 100 percent of the parliamentary seats in elections last year — and local officials are often mistrusted or viewed as corrupt.
Seyoum Teshome, a university lecturer in Woliso, a town in Oromia where protests also occurred, said people have taken to the streets because they do not feel they have any other choice.
“They have no other option other than protests to explain their grievances,” he said. “They have nothing.”
Gudina, the opposition leader, said his party has been so curtailed by authorities that it has little control over what has been happening in Oromia. Most of the party’s leadership was imprisoned when the protests began last year.
He said that unless the government eased its repression, the violence would worsen.
“These protests are at the level of an intifada — people in their own ways are resisting the government pressure and demanding their rights,” he said, using an Arabic term that means uprising. “I don’t think it’s going to die down.”
Fascist Ethiopia ‘s regime has been conducting mass killings in Awaday, Oromia. Fascist Ethiopia’s regime forces killed several Oromo children in Awaday, Oromia, 1 July 2016.
18 years old young Oromo woman Sabrina Abdalla was shot by fascist Agazi of the TPLF Ethiopia’s regime on 20 June 2016 in Chalanqo, East Hararge, Oromia. She has died at upon arrival at Harar hospital. She was shot in a small hut she uses to sell tea and coffee.
Body of Sabrina Abdalla (18 years), the 10th grade Oromo female student who was gunned down in the night of 20 June 2016 byfascist Ethiopia’s regime soldiers in Chalanqo, East Hararge, Oromia.
June 28 /29 2016: #Oromo protests in Oromia (finfinnee, Hanna Furi) as the regime engaged in destroying residential houses for land grabs.
This is not just a political slight of hand. This is downright tragic. This is simply brutal. This is an act of state terror. This is bureaucracy deployed to disrupt life and terrorize poor citizens. This is a heartless exposure of people to a miserable death on the streets in these dark rainy days. You can’t call out women and children to a meeting and yet demolish their houses in their absence. We say NO to this in the strongest possible terms! NO! to a continued infliction of unnecessary suffering to poor people! Tsegaye Ararssa.
(Nairobi) – Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 protesters and others, and arrested tens of thousands more during widespread protests in the Oromia region since November 2015. The Ethiopian government should urgently support a credible, independent investigation into the killings, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses.
The 61-page report. “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown’: Killings and Arrests in Response to Ethiopia’s Oromo Protests,” details the Ethiopian government’s use of excessive and unnecessary lethal force and mass arrests, mistreatment in detention, and restrictions on access to information to quash the protest movement. Human Rights Watch interviews in Ethiopia and abroad with more than 125 protesters, bystanders, and victims of abuse documented serious violations of the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly by security forces against protesters and others from the beginning of the protests in November 2015 through May 2016.
Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 protesters and others, and arrested tens of thousands more during widespread protests in the Oromia region since November 2015.
“Ethiopian security forces have fired on and killed hundreds of students, farmers, and other peaceful protesters with blatant disregard for human life,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately free those wrongfully detained, support a credible, independent investigation, and hold security force members accountable for abuses.”
Human Rights Watch found that security forces used live ammunition for crowd control repeatedly, killing one or more protesters at many of the hundreds of protests over several months. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have identified more than 300 of those killed by name and, in some cases, with photos.
Partial list of Oromos mainly students that have been killed by Ethiopian regime police, security agents, Special and armed force during peaceful demonstration of last three months (updated stand. March. 2016)
Partial list of Oromos mainly students that have been killed by Ethiopian regime police, security agents, Special and armed force during peaceful demonstration of last three months (updated stand. March. 2016)
ABC News: Right Group:Oromia: #OromoProtests: Ethiopia’s security forces carrying out serious rights abuses, killings and rapes in clashes with protesters in Oromia
Sabboonan Oromoo Barataa Tarreessaa Safaraamooraa Yunivarsiitii Mattuu keessatti Ajjeefame. Oromo national Tarreessaa Safaraa, Engineering student at Mattu University murdered by TPLF/ Ethiopian Security agents on 23rd October 2015
Ethiopian Government Paramilitary Commits Torture and Rape in Oromia
The following is a statement from the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA).
HRLHA Urgent Action October 12, 2015
Harassments and intimidations through arbitrary arrests, beatings, torture and rapes were committed in Ada’a Berga district Western Showa Zone of Oromia Regional State against young Oromo nationals on September 24 and 25, 2015. More than 30 young Oromos were picked up from their homes at night by an Oromia paramilitary force. According to HRLHA informants in Ada’a Berga, the major targets of this most recent District Administration officials-sponsored violence were mostly young Oromos working in the Dangote Cement Factory and university students who were there to visit their families in the summer break. HRLHA informants from the area confirmed that this particular operation against young Oromo nationals in Ada’a Barga was led by the local government official obbo Tolera Anbasse. In this incident more than 30 young Oromos (16-25 ages) were arrested; more than 20 were severely beaten by the Oromia Paramilitary and confined in the Ada’a Barga district Police station for three days in violation of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Article 19 (3) “Persons arrested have the right to be brought before a court within 48 hours of their arrest. Such time shall not include the time reasonably required for the journey from the place of arrest to the court. On appearing before a court, they have the right to be given prompt and specific explanation of the reasons for their arrest due to the alleged crime committed”. Although it has been difficult to identify everyone by their names, HRLHA informants have confirmed that the following were among the arrestees:
All arrestees were accused of what the police referred to as “instigating the public against the government.”
When the arrestees were brought to court, one man explained to the court that he had been beaten severely in front of his family members and his wife and his sister age 16 were raped by one of the paramilitary members.
The arrestees showed their scarred backs to the court to indicate the torture inflicted on them by the Paramilitary. Even though the court released all the arrestees on bail the police refused the court order and took them to jail.
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) expresses its deep concern over the safety and well-being of these arrested Oromo nationals and urge the Oromia Regional State Government to make sure that the bail conditions granted by the court are respected and release the arrestees unconditionally. HRLHA also urges the Oromia Regional State and the Ethiopian government to bring the torturers and rapists Ethiopian government paramilitary members to justice.
Naannawa Shagar aanaa Sululta Magaalaa Caancoo keessatti saamicha lafaa fi qotee bulaa humnaan qe’ee irraa buqqiduun daran hammaachuu irraan kan ka’e diddaan uummataa jabaate. Yeroo ammaa kana Wayyaanee fi dabballoonni ishee qotee bulaa lafa irraa buqqisuun saamicha gaggeessaa kan jirtu yoo ta’u uummanni magaala Caancoo diddaa jabaa dhageessisaa jira.
Diddaa uummataa kana dura dhaabbachuuf yeroo hedduu maqaa wal gahii jedhuun uummataa fi hojjattootta mootummaa yaamuun sossobuuf yaalaa kan turte yoo tahu walgahii isheen yaamte irratti hojjattoonni dhalootaan Oromoo tahanii fi uummanni magaalaa Caancoo diddaa jabaa waan dhageessisaniif diddaa kana dura dhaabbachuu hin dndeenye. Kana waan taheef ammas diddaa uummataa kana dhaamsuuf dabballootuma waliin saamicha gaggeessaa turan yeroodhaaf jettee mana hidhaa aanaa Sulultaa magaala Caancootti guuraa jirti.
Haaluma kanaan fakkeessidhaaf lafa saamtanii jirtu sababa jedhuu dabballootuma idhee itti gaafatamaainvestment kan tahe nama Salamoon Debebe jedhamuu fi mahandisoota magaala Caancoo nama sadi yeroodhaaf sagalee fi didaa uummataa dhaamsuuf jettee mana hidhaatti kan darbatte.
Darajjee Goobanaa, Oromo national and 3rd year student at Bule Hora University is murdered by fascist TPLF Ethiopia (Agazi) forces: Barataa Waggaa 3ffaa Yuuniversitii Bulee Horaa Kan Ta’e Sabboontichi Darajjee Goobanaa Rasaasa Poolisoota Wayyaaneen Wareegame.
Barataa Darajjee Goobanaan godina Wallaggaa Horroo Guduruu aanaa Jaardagaa Jaartee jedhamutti kan dhalatee guddate ta’uu fi amal qabeessaa fi qaroo ilma Oromoo akka ta’e barattooti Yuuniverstii Bulee Horaa dubbatu.
Peoples Most under Threat: The Oromo, Anuak, Afars & Somali (Ogaden) and other Indigenous People are Facing Genocide in Ethiopia, the Latest Annual Report Released on 18th May 2015 by Rights Group Reveals May 21, 2015
Yakka waraana mootummaan EPRDF/TPLFn uummata Oromoo fi barattoota Oromoo irratti fudhateen jiraattotii fi hojjettooti hostala Naqamtee haalaan kan gaddan yeroo ta’u Oromoonni adduunyaa irratti bakka hunda faca’anii jiran gochaa hammeenya wayyaanee kaan akka balaaleffatanii fi hirkoo baratootaaf akka ta’an Qeerroo dhaammata.
Gama biraan Haaluma kanaan walqabatee Yuunibarsiitiin Wallaggaa fi Magaalaan Neqemtee rafama guddaa keessa jirti, Mootummaan Wayyaanee lubbuu ilmaan Oromoo fi nageenya uummata Oromoof bakka tokko illee hin qabnee fi tarkaanfii gara jabinaa Oromoo irratti fudhachuun beekamu guyyaa har’aa caamsa 20/2015 immoo Magaalaa Neqemtee keessatti dabballota, fi
kaadiroota isaa waliin hiriira duula filannoo gaggeessa jira. Uummatni Oromoo magaalaa Neqemtee fi yuunibarsiitii wallaggaa humna waraanaa guddaan eegamaa jiruu, Barattootni Yuunivarsiitii Wallaggaa guyyaa hardhaa barnoota dhaabani jiru.
Armed TPLF (Agazi) forces that have camped in and occupied University of Wallagga in Naqamtee City have been engaged in terrorizing and torturing students and civilians in the city. It has been learnt that on 19th May 2015 the Agazi forces shot at and wounded 2 university students.
6 Oromo Students of Three Universities Abducted by TPLF Led Government Forces
Qeerroo Report, May 17, 2015: As the fake 2015 so called Ethiopian election approaches, the TPLF led Ethiopian government has intensified arresting, harassing, and abduction of Oromo nationals, especially Oromo students of universities and higher educational institutions. Accordingly, the following Oromo students of Adama University, Eastern Shoa zone of Oromia regional state have been abducted by the terrorist “intelligence” forces of the Ethiopian regime and their whereabouts are unknown. Read Full; Qeerroo Report, May 17 2015http://qeerroo.org/2015/05/17/6-oromo-students-of-three-universities-abducted-by-tplf-led-government-forces/
5 Oromo students from Adama University have been kidnapped by TPLF (Agazi) security forces. Kidnapping, torturing and violence against Oromo students and civilians is continued all over universities and entire Oromia. See the following table for few latest lists in Afaan Oromo.
Barataan Oromoo maqaan isaa Rabbirraa Biloo jedhamu Kiibxata Caamsaa 04, 2015 Univarsity Wallo, Kampasii Dassee keessaatti fannifamee ajjeefame. Barataan Oromoo kun barataa Health Science waggaa 1ffaa yoo tahu, barataa dadeettii fi namuusa qabeessa akka turee fi gaafa Wiixataa barumsaa isaa barachaa oolee gara naannoo sa’aa 1:00w.b. irraa eegalee akka baheen eessa buuteen isaa waan dhabameef hiriyooti isaa qaama Poolisii mooraa Univarsitichaatti gabasanis yerodhan tarkaanfiin akka hin fudhatamnee fi reeffi barataa Oromoo kanaa dirree kubbaa miillaa Universitichaa keessaatti gaafa Kiibxataa Caamasaa 04, 2015 fannifamee akka argame ibsaniiru. Yeroo reeffi barataa Oromoo kanaa argameetti qaami isaa walqixxaatee akka turee fi mallattoon biraa fuula isaa tahe afaan isaa irratti akka hin argamne hiriyooti isaa ifa godhanii jiru.Duuti barataa Rabbirraa Biloo rakkoo fi miidhaa barattoota Oromoo irraan bulchiinsi Univarsity Walloo fi mootummaan abbaa irree Wayyaanee geessisaa jiraniin kan wal-qabatee tahuu fi akkaataa du’a barataa Oromoo kanaa barattooti Oromoo Univarsity akka seeraan qoratamu bulchiinsa univaristichaa gaafatanis qaami bulichiinsa Univarsitichaa sun qormaati akkasii kan geggeeffamu Hospitaala Maqaleetti yookan immoo Hospitaal Miniliktti jechuudhaan ajjeechaan lammii Oromoo kanaa osoo seeraan hin qulqullaahin gara matii isaatti akka ergame ifa taheera. Barataan Oromoo kun bakki dhaloota isaa godina Shaggar Dhiyaa, aanaa Gindabaratti ta’uun beekameera.Mooraan Kampasii Dassee dallaa tokkollee kan hin qabne ta’uu isaa fi kana barattooti yeroo adda addaa qaama bulchiinsa Univarsitichaatti iyyatanis hawaasi nannichaayyu dalla isiniif taha jechuudhaan mooraa Univarsituchaatti dallaa ijjaaruu akka didan maddeen oduu kana ibsanii jiru.Barattooti Oromoo Univarsity Walloo yaaddoo barumsa isaanii nagaan barachuu fi wabii jireenyaa dhabuu qaban yeroo ibsan, barataan Oromoo mooraa san keessatti akka lammii lammaffaa fi yakkamaatti kan ilaalamuu fi gaaffii mirgaas tahe kan bulchiinsa Univarsity wajjin wal qabatee kamiyyuu yoo gaafatan tarkaanfiin isaan irratti fudhatamu isa dhumaa fi keessa deebii ykn ilaalcha tokko kan hin kennamneef tahuu ibsanii; gaaffii guumii aadaa fi afaan Oromoo hundeessuuf bulchiinsa Univarsitychaaf yeroo dheeraaf dhiyeessanillee hanga har’aatti deebii osoo hin argatiin jiraachuu isaa fi warreen gaaffii mirgaa akkasii dhiyeessan illee tarkaanfiin barumsa irraa hari’uu akka irratti fudhatamu akka akeekkachiifaman beekameera.
Humni Tika fi Loltuun Feederaala Wayyaanee Barattoota Oromoo Yuuniversitii Wallaggaa Hedduu Reebuu Saamaa Jira, Barattoota Afur Reebichaan Gara Malee Miidhe.
Oromo students in University Wallaggaa have been tortured and robbed their belongings by TPLF (Agazi) forces operating in the campus. Among students who have been severely attacked by Agazi are:
Abarraa Ayyalaa fi kanneen biroo maqaan hin qaqqabin dararama jiraachuun maddeen keenya gabaasan. http://qeerroo.org/2015/05/15/humni-tika-fi-loltuun-feederaala-wayyaanee-barattoota-oromoo-yuuniversitii-wallaggaa-hedduu-reebuu-saamaa-jira-barattoota-afur-reebichaan-gara-malee-miidhe/
More than 50 Oromo students arrested by Ethiopia’s tyrannic TPLF regime in Ambo, Oromia; 20 being tortured
The statement from the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA):-Ethiopia: The Endless Violence against Oromo Nationals ContinuesFear of Torture | HRLHA Urgent Action For Immediate Release May 7, 2015 Harassment and intimidation through arbitrary arrests, kidnappings and disappearances have continued unabated in Ambo and the surrounding areas against Oromo youth and intellectuals since the crackdown of last year (April 2014), when more than 79 Oromos, mostly youth, were killed by members of the federal security force. According to HRLHA correspondents in Ambo, the major targets of this most recent government-sponsored violence were Ambo University and high schools Oromo students in Ambo town. In this incident, which started on April 20, 2015, more than 50 university and high school students were arrested; more than 20 were severely beaten by the security force and taken to the Ambo General Hospital for treatment. Although it has been difficult to identify everyone by their names, HRLHA correspondents have confirmed that the following were among the arrestees: Those who were badly beaten and are being hospitalized in the Ambo General Hospital: According to HRLHA reporters, the arrests were made to clear out supporters and members of the other political organizations running for the 5th General Election to be held May 24, 2015. The EPRDF, led by the late Meles Zenawi, claimed victory in the General Elections of 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010. The TPLF/EPRDF government of Ethiopia has started a campaign of intimidation against its opponents. Extrajudicial arrests and imprisonments, particularly in the regional state of Oromia, the most populous region in the country, began late October 2014. 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 at police stations and unknown detention centers. The Ethiopian government has a well documented record of gross and flagrant violations of human rights, including the torturing of its own citizens, who were suspected of supporting, sympathizing with and/or being members of the opposition political organizations. There have been credible reports of physical and psychological abuses committed against individuals in Ethiopia’s official prisons and other secret detention centers. HRLHA calls upon governments of the West, all local, regional and international human rights agencies to join hands and demand the immediate halt to such extrajudicial actions against one’s own citizens, and the unconditional release of the detainees. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to the Ethiopian Government and its officials as swiftly as possible, written in English, Ahmaric, or your own language. The following are suggested: – Indicate your concern about citizens being tortured in different detention centers, including the infamous Ma’ikelawi Central Investigation Office; and calling for their immediate and unconditional release; – Urge the Ethiopian authorities to ensure that detainees will be treated in accordance with the regional and international standards on the treatment of prisoners, and that their whereabouts be disclosed, and – Make sure the coming May 24, 2015 election is fair and free. Read full statement from the following links: The Endless Violence against Oromo Nationals Continues, HRLHA Report, 7th May 2015
Ethiopia: Kidnapped And Disappearance of Oromo Civilians
Oromia Support Group Australia Appeal for Urgent Action: To: Committee on Enforced Disappearances and Committee against Torture Human Rights Treaties Division (HRTD) Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Palais Wilson – 52, rue des Pâquis CH-1201 Geneva (Switzerland) Ethiopia: Kidnapped and disappearance of Oromo civilians Magarsa Mashsha And Urgessa Damana: Oromia Support Group Australia Inc. (OSGA) expresses its deep concern regarding the kidnapping a nd disappear an ce of two Oromo civilians by the Ethiopian security forces. Mr Magarsa Mashasha Ayansa was kidnapped and diapere d on April 23rd, 7pm local tim e while Urgessa Damana was on May 4th, 2015. Mr Magarsa, community health worker, a student of Ambo University is the local area resident. He was kidnapped by Ethiopian security forces from the country’s central city Fifinna (Addis Ababa) – Bole area – while he was on a trip for his personal business. In a similar situation, Mr Urgessa Damana a former Rift Valley University Student and resident of Ambo town also captured on 4th of May 2015 by Ethiopian security forces. Since then the whereabouts of theses Oromo civilians remained unknown. OSGA believes that th e Ethiopian government conduct violated the fundamental rights. The right to freedom from torture and the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Per sons under Any Form of Detention and Imprisonment including the UN Standard Minimum Treatment of Prisoners is entirely denied. We are concerned that this pattern will continue to worsen. We respectfully believe that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) – Human Rights Treaties Division (HRTD) has a duty to use its diplomatic relationships with the reciprocal expectation of protecting human rights and legitimate democratic governance. These accusations reveal serious violations of human rights and legal process, and without external accountability, many vulnerable people will suffer in the country. We, therefore, urge you to: 1. Request the Ethiopian Government to reveal the whereabouts of these two Oromo civilians and immediate and unconditional release of them including all political prisoners under their captivity. 2. Request to investigate, amongst other things, actions taken by the Ethiopian Government security forces in the state of Oromia and the suffering of Oromo civilians in hundreds of official and hidden torture chambers. 3. Raise this case with the international community and other relevant United Nation bodies. Stress the righ t to remedy, restitution, compensation, non-repetition, and punishment of the perpetrators, in line with the UN Guidelines on the right to treat. We denounce the attacks on peoples who are exercising their fundamental and democratic rights. Thanks for considering of OSGA appeal Oromia Support Group Australia Read More:- osga-appeal-for-urgent-action-on-the-disapperances-of-mr-magarsa-and-urgessa-may-8th-2015-photo-include
Oromo national Urgeessaa Dammanaa, student from Rift Valley University, kidnapped by fascist TPLF Ethiopian security forces on 4th May 2015 and his whereabouts is not known.
Oromoo Hidhuu fi Ajjeessuu Araada Kan Godhate Mootummaan Abbaa Irree Wayyaanee, Sabboonticha Oromoo Barataa Urgeessaa Daammanaa Caamsaa 4 Bara 2015 Edda Ukkaamsee Har’aa Ukkaamsee Eessa Buuteen Isaa Hin Beekamne.
Gabaasa Qeerroo Finfinnee,Caamsaa 4,2015Caamsaa 04,2015 Mootummaan Abbaa Irree EPRDF/TPLF yakka tokko malee ilmaan Oromoo sabboontota ta’an ukkamsaa jira haala kanaan guyyaa har’aa sabboonaan Qeerroo Oromoo kan ta’ee barataa Urgeessaa Dammanaa Kumsaa humnoota tikaa mootummaa EPRDF/TPLF magaalaa Finfinnee keessatti ukkanfame. Barataa Yuunivarsiitii Rift Valley kan ture, Sabboonaan Qeerroon Oromoo Urgeessaa Daammanaa yakka tokko illee utuu hin qabaatiin daa’imummaa isaa irraa eegaluun Oromummaan yakkamee manneen hidhaa biyyattii garaagaraa keessatti hidhamuun dararamaa kan ture,fi bara 2011 Mana hidhaa Maa’ikalaawwii, fi Qaalliittii Waggaa tokkoo oliif badii tokko malee hidhamee dararamaa kan turee fi yeroo garaagaratti mana hidhaa lixaa Shaggar magaalaa Amboottis hidhama kan ture yoo ta’uu, Guyyaa har’aa kanas badii tokkoo malee FDG Qeerroo Bilisummaa Oromoo gaggeessa jiru qinddeessiteetta jechuun yeroo dheeraa erga hordofamaa ture, ammas humnoota tikaa mootummaa Wayyaanee EPRDF/TPLF’n guyyaa hardhaa ukkanfamee eessa buuteen isaa hin beekamne. Sabboonaan Qeerroon barataan Oromoo kun FDG Qeerroon Bilisummaa Oromoo biyyattii keessatti qindeessee gaggeessa jiru keessa harka qabda sabaabaa jedhuun nannoo dhaloota isaa Godina Lixaa Shaggar Magaalaa Amboo kolleejjii Rifti Valley Amboo utuu barachaa jiruu yeroo sochii Warraaqsaa FDG bara darbee Ebla 2014 Qeerroon barattootni fi uummatni Oromoo sirna bittaa Wayyaanee balaaleffachuun mormii guddaa gaggeessa turanitti FDG kana qindeessuu keessa harka qabda jechuun naannoo dhaloota isaa magaalaa Amboo irraa baqachiifame ,barnoota isaas akkatti baratuu dhabuun haala baay’ee rakkisaa ta’ee keessatti gara magaalaa Dirree Dawaatti barnoota isaa itti fufuuf akkuma Koolleejjii Rift Valley Damee Dirree Dawaatti galmaa’ee barnoota eegaletti hordoffiin humnoota tikaa fi dabballoota Wayyaanee itti jabaachuun akka barnoota isaa itti fufee barachuu hin dandeenye dhorkatame akkatti baratuu dhabuun gara magaalaa Finfinneetti deebi’uun hojiilee wardiyummaa fi hojiiwwaan humnaa garaagaraa hojjechuun utuu of jiraachisuu guyyaa hardhaa humnoota tikaa mootummaa EPRDF/TPLF’n ukkanfamee eessa buuteen isaa dhabamee jira. Ilmaan Oromoo biyya abbaa isaanii keessa jiraachuu dadhabuun Mootummaan Wayyaanee diina itti ta’uun mirga namummaa fi dimookiraasii mulqamnee guyyaa irraa gara guyyaatti ilmaan Oromoo ukkaanfamaa jiraaniif dhaabbileen mirga namummaa addunyaa fi mootummootni gamtooman uummata Oromoof dirmachuu qabu, ilmaan Oromoo biyyoota garaagaraa keessa jirtan dhaabilee Idil-Addunyaa mirgoota namummaa kabachiisan hundatti akka uummata keenyaaf iyyaannu Qeerroon bilisuumma Oromoo dhaamsa dabarsa.
11 years old Oromo child from Galamsoo town, Eastern Oromia was tortured and murdered by fascist TPLF security forces. Mootumma abba irree wayyaannen muca daa’ima waggan isa 11 ta’e wajjira poolisii magaala galamsoo keessatti ati ABO dhaf basaasta haati kee eessa jirti, mal hojjetti jedhanii utuu reebanii lubbuun isa darbite.Source: Social networks, 4 May 2015.
Ogeessa Fayyaa fi Barataa Yuuniverstii Amboo Kan Ta’e Sabboonaa Magarsaa Mashashaa Ayyaanaa Humnoota Tika Wayyaaneen Ukkaamfame.
The Ethiopian Government is Responsible for the Inhuman Treatments against Ethiopian Refugees and Asylum Seekers around the World
HRLHA Press Release
25th April 2015
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa has been greatly saddened by the cold-blooded killing of 30 Christian Ethiopian refugees and asylum seekers in the past week in Libya by a group called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria/ ISIS. The HRLHA also highly concerned about thousands of Ethiopian refugees and asylum seekers living in different parts of Yemen were victimized due to the political crises in Yemen and hundreds have suffered in South Africa because of the unprecedented actions taken by a gang opposing refugees and asylum seekers in the country. The suppressive policy of the EPRDF/TPLF government has forced millions of Ethiopians to flee their country in the past twenty-four years. The mass influx of Ethiopian citizens into neighboring countries every year has been due to the EPRDF/TPLF policy of denying its citizens their socioeconomic and political rights. They have also fled out of fear of political persecution and detention. It has been repeatedly reported by human rights organizations, humanitarian and other non – governmental organizations that Ethiopia is producing a large number of refugees, estimated at over two hundred fifty thousand every year.
The HRLHA calls upon the Ethiopian government to unconditionally release the detained citizens and allow those who have been injured during the clash with police to get medical treatment.In connection with the incident that took place in Libya, on April 22, 2015 tens of thousands of Ethiopians marched on government- organized rallies against the killing of Ethiopian Christians in Libya. However, with the demonstrators’ angry expressions were directed at the authorities, the police used tear gas against them and hundreds of people were beaten on the street and arrested. On the 23rd and 24th of April 2015 others were picked up from their homes and taken to unknown destinations according to the HRLHA reporter in Addis Ababa.
Recommendations:
The Ethiopian government must stop political suppression in the country and respect the human rights treaties it signed and ratified
The Ethiopian Government must provide the necessary lifesaving help to those Ethiopians stuck in crises in the asylum countries of Yemen, South Africa and others.
The EPRDF/TPLF government must release journalists, opposition political party members, and others held in Ethiopian prisons and respect their right to exercise their basic and fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution of Ethiopia and international standard of human rights instruments.
Ethiopia: Police must stop the use of excessive force against demonstrators
April 27, 2015
PUBLIC STATEMENT April 22, 2015 AI Index: AFR 25/1515/2015Amnesty International calls on the Ethiopian authorities to ensure that police refrain from excessive use of force in policing demonstrations, after police violently dispersed mass protests in Addis Ababa yesterday. The Ethiopian authorities must respect the rights of demonstrators to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly.Video footage and photographs posted online show police beating protestors who appear to be offering no resistance, and tear gas being used against the crowd. A journalist in Addis Ababa told Amnesty International that 48 people had been seriously injured and admitted to different hospitals, and that many others sustained minor injuries. Two photos show wounded people being treated at hospital. Hundreds of others are reported to have been arrested.The protests started on Tuesday following circulation of a video showing the killing of around 30 people believed to be Ethiopians by the armed group ISIS in Libya. Two of the named victims have been identified as coming from Cherkos, Addis Ababa. Hundreds of relatives and friends were gathered outside their family homes before spilling on to the streets towards Meskel Square. Many protestors in the photographs and video footages posted online are shown holding pictures of the two men.Protests resumed on Wednesday morning, with thousands gathering in Meskel Square where a mass rally had been organized as part of the official three days of mourning announced by the government. Around 100,000 people took part in the demonstrations, which were initially targeted against the killings by ISIS, but later turned into anger towards the government, including its inability to protect Ethiopian citizens and more general calls for political reform. According to reports the police began to disperse the gathered crowd by force after some demonstrators shouted slogans during the rally, and as the situation escalated there were clashes between protesters and police.In a statement on Wednesday evening, Communications Minister Redwan Hussein accused the opposition Semayawi (Blue) Party of trying to manipulate the demonstrations for their own political interests and of inciting the public to violence, which the party has denied. The minister said that seven police officers had been injured and hospitalized, but made no mention of injuries or arrests among the protestors. Eight members of the Semayawi Party were arrested, including three candidates in the upcoming general elections on 24 May 2015. They are Woyneshet Molla, Tena Tayewu, Ermias Siyum, Daniel Tesfaye, Tewodros Assefa, Eskinder Tilahun, Mastewal Fekadu and Yidnekachewu Addis. At least one other party member was hospitalized after beaten on the head by police.The Ethiopian authorities have an obligation to facilitate people’s exercise of their right to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly. If there is a legitimate reason for which it is necessary to disperse an assembly, police must avoid the use of force where at all possible or, where that is not practicable, must restrict any such force to the minimum necessary. Law enforcement officials may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty.The authorities in Ethiopia must ensure that there is an effective and impartial investigation into the use of force by police against protestors during the demonstrations and ensure that any police found to have used unnecessary or excessive force are subject to disciplinary and criminal sanctions as appropriate. Arbitrary or abusive use of force should be prosecuted as a criminal offence.Amnesty International urges the Ethiopian authorities to ensure that in policing demonstrations in the future, the police comply with international law and standards on the use of force by law enforcement officials. With general elections a month away on 24 May, the Ethiopian authorities should commit to facilitating the right of protestors to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
This is part and parcel of the TPLF Ethiopian government’s ongoing genocidal crimes against Oromo people. Kurnasoo Abdulmaalik Yuunis (in picture) is Oromo national residing in Eastern Oromia, Dire Dawa city. He was attacked and severely beaten on 28 March 2015 by TPLF (Woyane) killing forces in the area while he visited the police station to search for the whereabouts of his kidnapped brother and close friends.
Oromo: HRLHA Plea for Release of Detained Peaceful Protestors
February 8, 2015 By Stefania Butoi Varga, Human Rights Brief, Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law*
From March to April 2014, members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, engaged in peaceful protests in opposition to the Ethiopian government’s implementation of the “Integrated Regional Development Plan” (Master Plan). The Oromo believe that the Master Plan violates Articles 39 and 47 in the Ethiopian Constitution, by altering administrative boundaries around the city of Addis Ababa, the Oromia State’s and the federal government’s capital. The Oromo fear they will be excluded from the development plans and that this will lead to the expropriation of their farmlands. In response to these protests, the Ethiopian government has detained or imprisoned thousands of Oromo nationals. In a January 2005 appeal, the Human Rights League of the Hornof Africa (HRLHA) claimed that the Ethiopian government is breaching the State’s Constitution and several international treaties by depriving the Oromo prisoners of their liberty. Amnesty International reports that some protestors have also been victims of “enforced disappearance, repeated torture, and unlawful state killings as part of the government’s incessant attempts to crush dissent.” Under the Ethiopian Constitution, citizens possess the rights to liberty and due process, including the right not to be illegally detained. Article 17 forbids deprivation of liberty, arrest, or detention, except in accordance with the law. Further, Article 19 provides that a person has the right to be arraigned within forty-eight hours of his or her arrest. However, according to the HRLHA, a group of at least twenty-six Oromo prisoners were illegally detained for over ninety-nine days following the protests. The HRHLA claims that these detentions were illegal because the prisoners were arrested without warrants, and because they did not appear before a judge within forty-eight hours of their arrest. The Ethiopian authorities’ actions also disregard the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires that no one be subject to arbitrary arrest, and that those arrested be promptly brought before a judge. Ethiopia signed and ratified the ICCPR in 1993, and is thus bound to uphold the treaty. Additionally, the Ethiopian Constitution deems torture and unusual punishment illegal and inhumane. According to Article 18, every citizen has the right not to be exposed to cruel, inhuman, or degrading behavior. Amnesty International reports that certain non-violent Oromo protestors suffered exactly this treatment, including a teacher who was stabbed in the eye with a bayonet for refusing to teach government propaganda to his students, and a young girl who had hot coals poured onto her stomach because her torturers believed her father was a political dissident. Amnesty International further recounts other instances of prisoners being tortured through electric shock, burnings, and rape. If these reports are an accurate account of the government’s actions, the Ethiopian authorities are not only acting contrary to their constitution, but also contrary to the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT). According to Article 2 of the CAT, a State Member must actively prevent torture in its territory, without exception. In addition, an order from a high public authority cannot be used as justification if torture is indeed used. Ethiopia ratified the CAT in 1994, and is thus obligated to uphold and protect its principles. The HRLHA pleads that the Ethiopian government release imprisoned Oromo protesters. This would ensure that the intrinsic human rights of the Oromo people, guaranteed by the Ethiopian Constitution and several international treaties ratified by Ethiopia would finally be upheld. Furthermore, it would restore peace to and diminish the fear among other Oromo people who have abandoned their normal routines in the wake of government pressure, and have fled Ethiopia or have gone into hiding. *The Human Rights Brief is a student-run publication at American University Washington College of Law (WCL). Founded in 1994 as a publication of the school’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, the publication has approximately 4,000 subscribers in over 130 countries.
Ethiopia:- TPLF’s Leaders Arrogance and Contempt – Inviting Further Bloodshed and Loss of Lives – HRLHA Statement
The following is a statement from the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA). ———————- February 23, 2015 Since the downfall of the military government of Ethiopia in 1991, the political and socioeconomic lives of the country have totally been controlled by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front/TPLF leaders and business institutions. As soon as the TPLF controlled Addis Ababa, the capital city, in 1991, the first step it took was to create People’s Democratic Organizations (PDOs) in the name of different nations and nationalities in the country. With the help of these PDOs, the TPLF managed to control the whole country in a short period of time from corner to corner. The next step that the TPLF took was to weaken and/or eliminate all independent opposition political organizations existing in the country, including those with whom it formed the Ethiopian Transitional Government in 1991. Just to pretend that it was democratizing the country, the TPLF signed seven international human rights documents from 1991 to 2014. These include the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”. Despite this, it is known that the TPLF has tortured many of its own citizens ever since it assumed power, and has continued to the present day. The TPLF Government adopted a new constitution in 1995; and, based on this Constitution, it formed new federal states. The new Ethiopian Constitution is full of spurious democratic sentiments and human rights terms meant to inspire the people of Ethiopia and the world community. The TPLF’s pretentious promise to march towards democracy enabled it to receive praises from people inside and outside, including donor countries and organizations. The TPLF government managed somehow to maintain a façade of credibility with western governments, including those of U.S.A. and the UK. In reality, the TPLF security forces were engaged in intensive killings, abductions, disappearances of a large number of Oromo, Ogaden, Sidama peoples and others whom the TPLF suspected of being members, supporters or sympathizers of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), Ogadenian National Liberation Front (ONLF), and Sidama People’s Liberation Front (SPLF). TPLF – from high officials down to ordinary level cadres in the various regional states – engaged in enriching themselves and their family members by looting and embezzling public wealth and properties; raping young women in the occupied areas of the nations and nationalities in Ethiopia; and committing many other forms of corruptions. After securing enough wealth for themselves, the TPLF government officials, cadres and members declared, in 2004, an investment policy that resulted in the eviction of indigenous peoples from their lands and all types of livelihoods. Since 2006, thousands of Oromo, Gambela, and Benishangul nationals and others have been forcefully evicted from their lands without consultation or compensation. Those who attempted to oppose or resist were murdered and/or jailed by the TPLF1. The TPLF government then cheaply leased their lands, for terms as long as 50 years, to international investors and wealthy Middle East and Asian countries, including Saudi Arabia2. The TPLF government has done all this against its own Constitution, particularly article 40 (3)3, which states that “The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all natural resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia. Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange”. These acts were also against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17 (1 & 2)4, which says, “1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.” In order to facilitate further corruption and embezzlement, the money paid for the leases as long as 50 years were received in cash. For example, the Indian agro investor Karaturi explained to a Guardian newspaper’s reporter that the TPLF government officials asked him to pay in cash in order to get the land, which he called “green gold”5. These gross human rights violations by the TPLF leaders against the Oromos, Gambelas, and Benishanguls have been condemned by many civic organizations, including Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch, the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa, the Oakland Institute and others. The giving away of Oromo land in the name of investment also includes Addis Ababa, the capital city situated at the center of Oromia Regional State. 30,000 Oromos were evicted by the TPLF/EPRDF Government from their lands and livelihoods in the areas around the Capital City and suburbs, and their lands were given to the TPLF officials, members and loyal cadres over the past 24 years. In order to grab more lands around Addis Abba, the TPLF government prepared a plan called “the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan,” a plan that aimed at annexing about 36 towns and surrounding villages into Addis Ababa. This Master Plan was first challenged by the Oromo People’s Democracy Organization/OPDO in March 2014. The challenge was first supported by Oromo students in different universities, colleges and high schools in Oromia, and then spread to Oromo farmers, Oromo intellectuals in all corners of Oromia Regional State and to Oromo nationals living in different parts of the world. The Oromo nationals staged peaceful protests all over Oromia Regional State. In connection with this Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan, which had the risk of evicting more than two million farmers from around the capital city, about seventy Oromo students from among the peaceful protestors were brutalized by the special TPLF Agizi snipers and more than five thousand Oromos from all walks of life were taken to prisons in different parts of Oromia Regional State. The inhuman military actions and crackdowns by the TPLF government against peaceful protestors were condemned by different international media, such as the BBC6, human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and the HRLHA7. The government admitted that it killed nine of them8. The unrest that started in central Oromia suddenly escalated to such a high level that the TPLF leaders suspended the expansion plan for a while. However, recently, without the slightest regret and sense of remorse over the massacres committed against peaceful protestors of Oromo Nationals by his government in May and April 2014, the TPLF’s co-founder, top official and the current Prime Minister’s (Hailemariam Dessalegn’s) special advisor, Mr. Abay Tsehaye, vowed in public that anyone who attempts to oppose the implementation of the so-called Addis Ababa Master Plan would be dealt with harshly. In his speech, he confirmed that the TPLF government is determined to continue with the master plan, no matter what happened in the past or what may come in the future. In a manner that Abay Tsehaye was reiterating that the annexations of towns and cities in central Oromia into the capital Addis Ababa will go ahead as planned regardless of the absence of consultations and consent of the local people and/or the officials of the targeted towns and cities. Besides displaying his extreme arrogance and contempt for the Oromo Nation, Mr. Abay Tsehaye’s speech was in direct breach of constitutional provisions of both federal and regional states. The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) would like to express its deep concern that this TPLFs leader’s speech not only encourages violence against the country’s own citizens, but also invites further bloodshed and losses of lives; it leaves no room at all for dialogue, consultation and consent – norms which are at the core of a genuine democracy. This is still happening despite the killing of more than seventy Oromo youth and the arrest and incarceration of thousands of others as a result of violent and deadly responses by armed forces of the TPLF and the government to peaceful demonstrators in May and April 2014. Conclusion: The HRLHA believes that the gross human rights violations committed by the TPLF government in the past 24 years against Oromo, Ogaden, Gambela, Sidama and others were pre-planned and intentional all the times that they have happened. The TPLF killed, tortured, and kidnapped and disappeared thousands of Oromo nationals, Ogaden and other nationals simply because of their resources and ethnic backgrounds. The recent research conducted by Amnesty International under the title “Because I am Oromo”: SWEEPING REPRESSION IN THE OROMIA REGION OF ETHIOPIA’9 confirms that peoples in Ethiopia who belong to other ethnic groups have been the victims of the TPLF. The TPLF inhuman actions against the citizens are clearly a genocide, a crime against humanity10 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 wants to hold the TPLF government accountable, as a group and as individuals, for the crimes they have committed and are committing against Oromos and others. The HRLHA calls on all human rights families, non-governmental civic organizations, HRLHA 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 which 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 on raising 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. ——————- We Fight for Human Rights! HRLHA Head Office February 23, 2015 ——————- 1. Genocide Watch, http://www.genocidewatch.org/ethiopia.html; The Oakland Institute, Engineering Ethnic Conflict,http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/Report_EngineeringEthnicConflict.pdf 2. Saudi Company Leases Ethiopian Land for Rice Export, http://www.pri.org/stories/2011-12-27/saudi-company-leases-ethiopian-land-rice-export 3. Proclamation No. 1/1995 Proclamation of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopiahttp://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/research/Proclamation%20no.1-1995.pdf 4. UDHR, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ 6. Ethiopia protest: Ambo students killed in Oromia state; BBC; http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27251331 7. Ambo Under Siege; HRLHA; http://www.humanrightsleague.org/?p=14287; and Region-Wide, Heavy-Handed Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters; HRLHA; Http://Www.Humanrightsleague.Org/?P=14668 8. BBC TV Reported 9. Ethiopia: ‘Because I Am Oromo’: Sweeping Repression In The Oromia Region Of Ethiopia,https://www.amnesty.org/En/documents/Afr25/006/2014/En/ 10. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Articles 6&7, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/InternationalCriminalCourt.aspx
http://gadaa.com/oduu/26561/2015/02/24/ethiopia-tplfs-leaders-arrogance-and-contempt-inviting-further-bloodshed-and-loss-of-lives-hrlha-statement/ Oromo Political Prisoners The young man whose photo you see below is Nimona Chali. He was the Chairman of Gumii Aaadaaf Afaan Oromo (GAAO) and a second year engineering student at Haromaya University. He was arrested from the university campus right after #OromoProtests started last year and he is being kept incommunicado in a dark room at the notorious Ma’ikelawi prison. He has not been charged with any crime nine months after his arrest. Nimona Chali had spent three years as a political prisoner prior to going to Haromaya University. He was born and raised in Ambo, a city known for its proud tradition of resistance against tyranny of Ethiopia.
Two Oromo Farmers in Salale Brutally Murdered; Their Bodies Dragged and Put on Pubic Display for Resisting Oppression Against Tigrean Habesha Rulers [Viewer Discretion Advised: Graphic Photo]
January 6, 2015 Since the March-April 2014 crackdowns against the peaceful Oromo protesters who have protested against the Ethiopian Federal Government’s plan of annexation of 36 small Oromia towns to the capital city of Addis Ababa under the pretext of the “Addis Ababa Integrated Plan”, thousands of Oromo nationals from all walks of life from all corners of Oromia regional state including Wollo Oromo’s in Amhara regional state have been detained or imprisoned. Some have disappeared and many have been murdered by a special commando group called “the Agiazi force”. The “The Agiazi” force is still chasing down and arresting Oromo nationals who participated in the March-April, 2014 peaceful protests. Fearing the persecution of the Ethiopian government, hundreds of students did not return to the universities, colleges and high schools; most of them have left for the neighboring states of Somaliland and Puntiland of Somalia where they remain at high risk for their safety. Wollo Oromos who are living in Ahmara regional state of Oromia special Zone are also among the victims of the EPRDF government. Hundreds of Wollo Oromos have been detained because of their connection with the peaceful protests of March-April 2014. The EPRDF government has detained many Oromo nationals in Wollo Oromia special Zone under the pretext of being members or supporters of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), as prisoners’ voices from Dessie/Wollo prison have revealed. From among the many Oromos who were picked from different districts and places from Wollo Oromia special Zone in Amhara regional state in April 2014, the HRLHA reporter in the area has received a document which shows that 26 Oromo prisoners pleaded to the South Wollo High Court that they were illegally detained first in Kamise town military camp for 36 days, Kombolcha town Police Station for 27 Days, and Dessie city higher 5 Police Station for 10 days- places where they were severely tortured and then transferred to Dessie Prison in July 2014. According to the document, they were picked up from three different districts and different places by federal police and severely beaten and tortured at different military camps and police stations and their belongings including cash and mobile telephones were taken by their torturers. In their appeal letter to the South Wollo high court they demanded Full document in1-Ethiopia-HRLHA-2015
Godina Dhiha Oromiyaa Magaalaa Gimbii Keessaitti Dhaddachi Maana Murtii Godina Wallagga Dhihaa Galmee Hidhamtoota Oromoo 32 Cufe.
Gabaasa Qeerroo Gimbii Muddee (December) 30,2014 Muddee 26 fi Muddee 27/2014 Godina Dhiha Oromiyaa magaalaa Gimbiitti Dhaddachi Mana Murtii Godina Wallagga Dhihaa galmee hidhamtoota Oromoo Oromummaan yakkamanii hidhamanii himatamaa jiran ilaaluun ilmaan Oromoo 32 bilisaan gadi lakkisee galmee hidhamtootaa cufee jira.Mootummaan abbaa irree Wayyaanee sobaan Ilmaan Oromoo yakkee balleessa malee hanga barbaade erga hidhatti ukkamsee booda, galmee sobaan qindeessee ittin ilmaan Oromoo hidhee dararaa ture turtii je’oota hedduu fi waggootan lakka’amuu booda bilisan gadi lakkisuun haamilee fi sammuu ilmaan Oromoo erga torture godhee booda gatii kan hin qabne ta’uun beekamadha. Ilmaan Oromoo jumlaan ukkanfamanii manneen hidhaa Wayyaanee garaagaraa keessatti argaman hundi Oromoo ta’anii dhalachuu fi ani Oromoodha, mirgi keenyaa sarbamuu hin qabu waan jedhanii dubbatan qofaaf yakkamaa ta’an malee balleessa kan hin qabne ta’uun beekamadha. Kanaafuu manneen murtii Oromiyaa dhugaa jiru hubachuun tarkaanfii sirrii fi seeraa warreen fudhachaa jirtan galatni keessan bilisummaa haa ta’uu jechaa ilmaan Oromoo manneen murtii Wayyaanee garaagaraa keessa jirtan waan dhugaa hojjettaniif midhaan fedhe iyyuu yoo isin irra ga’ee uummatni Oromoo cufti dugda keessan duuba jiraachuu hubachuun dhugaa Uummata keessanii fi haqa uummata Oromoo afaan qawween dabsamaa jiru akka dura dhaabbattan amma illee waamicha keenya dabarsina. Maqaa fi galmee himata ilmaan Oromoo irra bilisaan gadi lakkifaman kan isin qaqqabsifnu ta’uu ni hubachifna!!
ETHIOPIA: Outbreak of Deadly Disease in Jail, Denial of Graduation of University Students
HRLHA – URGENT ACTION December 10, 2014 The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) would like to express its deep concern over the outbreak of a deadly disease at Gimbi Jail in Western Wollega, as a result of which one inmate has already died and sixty (60) others infected. HRLHA strongly believes that the very poor sanitation in the jail, absence of basic necessities, and denial of treatment after catching the illness have contributed to Mr. Yaikob Nigaru’s death. HRLHA fears that those who have already caught the disease might be facing the same fate. It is well documented that particularly inmates deemed “political prisoners” are deliberately subjected to unfriendly and unhealthy environments and, after getting sick as a result, are not allowed access to treatment until they approach or reach the stage of coma, which is when recoveries are very unlikely. HRLHA considers it one way of the systematic eliminations of alleged and/or perceived political dissidents. Mr. Ya’kob Nigatu was one of the 224 Oromo Nationals (139 from Gimbi in Western Wollaga, 80 from Ambo, and 5 from Ma’ikellawi in Addis Ababa/Finfinne) who were charged by the Federal Government on the 10th of November, 2014 for allegedly committing acts of terrorism in relation to the April/May, 2014 peaceful protests by Oromo students in different parts of the regional state of Oromia. HRLHA has learnt that five of the 224 Oromo defendants, who were held at the infamous Ma’ikelawi Criminal Investigation for about six months, were subjected to harassments and intimidations through isolations and confinements, with no visitations by relatives and friends, no access to a lawyer, and no open court appearance until when they were eventually taken to court to be given the charges. Those five Oromo nationals, who were transferred to Kilinto Jail right after receiving the alleged terrorism charges, were:
Ababe Urgessa Fakkansa (a student from Haromaya University),
Magarsa Warqu Fayyisa (a student from Haromaya University),
Addunya Kesso (a student from Adama University),
Bilisumma Dammana (a student from Adama University),
Tashale Baqala Garba (a student from Jimma University), and
Lejjisa Alamayyo Soressa (a student from Jimma University).
Besides the outbreak of a deadly disease witnessed at Gimbi Jail, and the likelihood of the same situations to occur particularly at highly populated and crowded jails, Kilinto is known to be one of the very notorious substandard prisons in the country. Such facts taken into consideration, HRLHA would like to express its deep concern over the safety of those young Oromo prisoners. HRLHA has also received reports that 29 Oromo nationals, who have been attending the Addis Ababa/Finfinne University, have been denied proofs of graduations (degrees and/or diplomas) and, as a result, prevented from graduating after completing their studies for allegedly taking part in the April/May peaceful protests of Oromo students and other nationals against the newly drafted and introduced Finfinne Master Plan. The 29 Oromo students were first detained along with 23 other Oromo students of the same university, following the protests, and released on bails ranging between $1000.00 and $4000.00 Birr. Upon re-admission back to the University, they were all (52 of them) forced to appear before the disciplinary committee of the University, where they were asked to confess that their involvement in the peaceful demonstrations was wrong and that they should apologize to the Government and the public. According to reports from HRLHA’s correspondents, it was the students’ refusal to confess and apologize that has resulted in their prevention from graduating, despite their fulfillment of all the academic requirements. HRLHA describes the University’s becoming a political weapon as shameful, and the restrictions imposed on Oromo students as a pure act of racism aimed at partisan political gains. Of the 29 Oromo students who have become victims of the University’s non-academic action, HRLHA has obtained names of the following nine students:
Jirra Birhanu
Jilo Kemee
Mangistu Daadhii
Taddasaa Gonfaa
Lammeessa Mararaa
Ganna Jamal
Nuguse Gammadaa
Dajanee Daggafaa
Gaddisaa Dabaree
BACKGROUNDS: The human rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) has reported (May 1st and 13th, 2014, urgent actions, www.humanrightleague.org) on the heavy-handed crackdown of the Ethiopian Federal Government’s Agazi Special Squad and the resultant extra-judicial killings of 34 (thirty-four) Oromo nationals; and the arrests and detentions of hundreds of others. Besides, Amnesty International in its most recent report on Ethiopia – “Because I am Oromo – Sweeping repression in the Oromia region of Ethiopia” – has exposed how Oromo nationals 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. Also, the provisions in Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law have been criticized by local, regional, and international human rights agencies such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as violating most of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Ethiopian Constitution, other legal documents and international human rights standards that the Country has ratified. Given Ethiopia’s proven track record of mistreating and/or torturing suspected members and supporters of opposition political organizations, HRLHA calls upon the world communities, human rights, humanitarian, and diplomatic agencies so that they monitor using all means available how those young prisoners are treated in Ethiopian jails. Please direct your concerns to:His Excellency, Mr. Haila Mariam Dessalegn, Prime Minister of Ethiopia P.O.Box – 1031 Addis Ababa Telephone – +251 155 20 44; +251 111 32 41 Fax – +251 155 20 30 , +251 15520 Office of the President of Oromia Regional State Telephone – 0115510455 Office of the Ministry of Justice of Ethiopia PO Box 1370, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Fax: +251 11 5517775; +251 11 5520874 Email: ministry-justice@telecom.net.etUNESCO Headquarters, Paris. 7 place de Fontenoy 75352 Paris 07 SP France 1 rue Miollis 75732 Paris Cedex 15 France General phone: +33 (0)1 45 68 10 00 www.unesco.orgUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)- Africa Department 7 place Fontenoy,75352 Paris 07 SP France General phone: +33 (0)1 45 68 10 00 Website: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/africa-department/UNESCO AFRICA RIGIONAL OFFICE MR. JOSEPH NGU Director, UNESCO Office in Abuja Mail: j.ngu@unesco.org Tel: +251 11 5445284 Fax: +251 11 5514936 Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights United Nations Office at Geneva – 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland Fax: + 41 22 917 9022 (particularly for urgent matters) E-mail: tb-petitions@ohchr.org (this e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) Office of the UNHCR Telephone: 41 22 739 8111 Fax: 41 22 739 7377 Po Box: 2500 Geneva, Switzerland. African Commission on Human and Peoples‘ Rights (ACHPR) 48 Kairaba Avenue, P.O.Box 673, Banjul, The Gambia. Tel: (220) 4392 962 , 4372070, 4377721 – 23 Fax: (220) 4390 764 E-mail: achpr@achpr.org Council of Europe, Commissioner for Human Rights, F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex, FRANCE + 33 (0)3 88 41 34 21, + 33 (0)3 90 21 50 53 Email (C/O): pressunit@coe.intU.S. Department of State Laura Hruby, Ethiopia Desk Officer U.S. State Department Email: HrubyLP@state.gov Tel: (202) 647-6473 Amnesty International – London Claire Beston, Claire Beston” Claire.Beston@amnesty.org Human Rights Watch Felix Horne, “Felix Horne” hornef@hrw.org.
Waaqeffannaa (Amantii Oromoo), the traditional faith system of the Oromo people, is one version of the monotheistic African Traditional Religion (ATR), where the followers of this faith system do believe in only one Supreme Being. African traditional religion is a term referring to a variety of religious practices of the only ONE African religion, which Oromo believers call Waaqeffannaa (believe in Waaqa, the supreme Being), an indigenous faith system to the continent of Africa. Even though there are different ways of practicing this religion with varieties of rituals, in truth, the different versions of the African religion have got the following commonalities: – Believe in and celebrate a Supreme Being, or a Creator, which is referred to by a myriad of names in various languages as Waaqeffataa Oromo do often say: Waaqa maqaa dhibbaa = God with hundreds of names and Waaqa Afaan dhibbaa = God with hundreds of languages; thus in Afaan Oromoo (in Oromo language) the name of God is Waaqa/Rabbii or Waaqa tokkicha (one god) or Waaqa guraachaa (black God, where black is the symbol for holiness and for the unknown) = the holy God = the black universe (the unknown), whom we should celebrate and love with all our concentration and energy. http://gadaa.com/oduu/11044/2011/09/19/waaqeffannaa-the-african-traditional-faith-system/
Oromo student Rabbirraa Kusha Bayeechaa from Ambo University, Waliso Branch, Accounting 1st year student was abducted by Fascist TPLF Agazi forces on 20th November and being tortured at jail in Waliisoo/Ejersa.
Sadaasa 21,2014 Gabaasa Qeerroo
Barattooti Oromoo Sababaa Gaaffii Mirgaa Kaastan Jedhuun Hidhamuu fi Dararamuun Irraa Hin Dhaabbanne,yeroo ammaa kanas mootummaan EPRDf Wayyaaneen dargaggoota Oromoo irratti duula banteen barataa Rabbirraa Kushaa Bayeechaa sababaa sochii warraaqsaa deemu duubaan jirta jedhuun Ambo college Waliso branch keessaa accounting wagga 1ffaa kan baratu yakka tokkoon malee Sadaasa 20,2014 mana hidhaa magaalaa Waliisoo/Ejerrsa jedhamutti darbamuun ilmaan Oromoo naannichatti Oromummaan yakkamanii hidhaman waliin dararaan guuddaa irraan gahaa jira. Barataa Rabbirraa Kushaa bakki dhaloota isaa godina Kibba Lixa Shaggar aanaa Iluu ganda Bilii jedhamutti kan dhalate yeroo ta’u.Yeroo dheeraaf sababaa Oromummaan yakkamaa akka turee fi yaada itti amanu dubbatee baafachuu dorkamaa turuun gabaasi nu gahe addeessa.
Ethiopia: The Violence Against Oromo Nationals Must Be Stopped, HRLHA
The following is a statement of the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA). ————-
Ethiopia: The Endless Violence against Oromo Nationals Must be Halted
Fear of Torture, HRLHA Press Release November 16, 2014 Harassment and intimidation through arbitrary arrests, indefinite detentions without trial, kidnappings and disappearances have continued unabated in Ambo and the surrounding areas against peaceful protestors since the crackdowns of April 2014, in which more than 36 Oromos were killed by members of the federal security force. According to HRLHA correspondents in Ambo, the major target areas of this most recent government-sponsored violence includes Ambo town and the villages of Mida Qagni district in eastern Shewa zone, approximately 25km south of Ambo town. More than 20 Oromos, students, teachers and farmers from different villages were arrested beginning November 11, 2014, until the time of the compilation of this press release. According to HRLHA reporters, the arrests were made following the protest by the people of the area against the sales of their farmland by the federal Government of Ethiopia to the investors. Although it has been difficult to identify everyone by their names, HRLHA correspondents have confirmed that the following were among the arrested: 1- Kitata Regassa – age 70 – Wenni Village, Farmer 2- Tolessa Teshome – age 15 – Balami High School, 10th grade student 3- Dirre Masho – age 15 – Balami High School, 9th grade student 4- Tarku Bulsho – age 15 – Balami High School, 10th grade student 5- Yalew Banti – Balami High School, Teacher 6- Biyansa Ibbaa – age 15 – Balami High School, 10th grade student 7- Tesfay Biyensa – age 15 – Balami High School, 10th grade student 8- Mangistu Mosisaa – Balami, Businessman On the other hand, in order to “clear and smoothen” the road to the victory of the election, which is to be held in the coming May 2015, the TPLF/EPRDF government of Ethiopia has started the campaigns of intimidation against whom it suspects are members of the other political organizations running for the election. Extrajudicial arrests and imprisonments, particularly in the regional state of Oromia, the most populous region in the country, has begun starting from the end of October 2014. In this most recent wave of arrests and imprisonments that has been going on since the 30th of October 2014, and has touched almost all corners of Oromia, hundreds of Oromos from all walks of life have been apprehended and sent to prison. According to information obtained from the HRLHA reporters, many Oromos from Wollega, Jimmaa and Illu-Ababora Zones, Western Oromia Regional State, Bale and Borana Southern Oromia Regional State were arrested for being members of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), the organization operating peacefully in Oromia Regional State. These members of the opposition political organization were accused with terrorism acts, and disseminating false and hateful information against the present government of Ethiopia. Among the detainees, three members Oromo Federalist Congress – Mr. Ahjeb Shek Mohamed, Mr. Mohamed Amin Kalfa and Mr. Naziv Jemal from Jima Zone were sentenced with two years and six months in prison and the fates of the rest detainees are yet unknown. 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 at Mida Qagni police station and other at unknown detention centers. The Ethiopian government has a well-documented record of gross and flagrant violations of human rights, including the torturing of its own citizens who were suspected of supporting, sympathizing with and/or being members of the opposition political organizations. There have been credible reports of physical and psychological abuses committed against individuals in Ethiopian official prisons and other secret detention centers. HRLHA calls upon governments of the West, all local, regional and international human rights agencies to join hands and demand the immediate halt of such kinds of extra-judicial actions against one’s own citizens, and release the detainees without any preconditions.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to the Ethiopian Government and its concerned officials as swiftly as possible, in English, Ahmaric, or your own language
Your concern regarding the apprehension and fear of torture of the citizens who are being held in different detention centers including the infamous Ma’ikelawi Central Investigation Office; and calling for their immediate and unconditional release;
Urging the Ethiopian authorities to ensure that these detainees would be treated in accordance with the regional and international standards on the treatment of prisoners, and to disclose the whereabouts of the detainees; and
To stop grabbing Oromo land without negotiation with the owners and compensation
Make sure the coming 2015 election is fair and free
Send Your Concerns to:
His Excellency: Mr. Haila Mariam Dessalegn – Prime Minister of Ethiopia
Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission: Hearing on the Human Rights Dilemmas in Ethiopia Testimony of Felix Horne, Human Rights Watch Researcher, Africa Division
NOVEMBER 17, 2014
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for providing me the opportunity to speak today about the human rights situation in Ethiopia.The other panelists have articulated some of the critical issues that are facing Ethiopia ahead of the May 2015 elections. I would like to elaborate on human rights concerns associated with Ethiopia’s many development challenges.Ethiopia is the one of the largest recipients of development assistance in the world, including more than $800 million in 2014 from the US government. Many of Ethiopia’s 94 million people live in extreme poverty, and poverty reduction is rightly one of both the US and Ethiopian government’s core goals. Improving economic and human development is fundamental to ensuring that Ethiopians are able to enjoy their rights to health care, education, shelter, food and water, and Ethiopia’s government, civil society, international donors and private investors all have important roles contributing to the realization of these rights.But sustainable development also requires a commitment to the full range of human rights, not just higher incomes, access to education and health care, but the ability for people to express their views freely, participate in public policy decision-making, join associations of their choice, have recourse to a fair and accessible justice system, and live free of abuse and discrimination. Moreover, development that is not rooted in respect for human rights can be counter-productive, associated with abusive practices and further impoverishment of people already living in situations of extreme poverty. In Ethiopia, over the past few years Human Rights Watch has documented disturbing cases where international donors providing development assistance are turning a blind eye to government practices that fail to respect the rights of all beneficiaries. Instead of improving life in local communities, these projects are proving harmful to them. And given the repression of independent voices, media and associations, there are no realistic mechanisms for many local communities to express their views to their government. Instead, those who object or critique the government’s approach to development projects face the prospect of intimidation, harassment and even serious abuse. In 2011 in Ethiopia’s western region, Gambella, Human Rights Watch documented such abuses during the implementation of the first year of the government’s “villagization” program. Gambella is a region populated by indigenous groups who have suffered from political marginalization and lack of development for decades. In theory the villagization program aimed to address some of these concerns. This program required all indigenous households in the region to move from their widely separated homes into larger villages – ostensibly to provide improved basic services including much-needed schools, health clinics and roads. I was in Gambella for several weeks in 2011 and travelled to 16 different villages in five different districts. I met with people who had not yet moved from their homes and others who had been resettled. I interviewed dozens of people who said they did not wish to move but were forced by the government, by police, and by Ethiopia’s army if necessary. People described widespread human rights violations, including forced displacement, arbitrary arrest and detention, beatings, and rape and other sexual violence. Thousands of villagers fled into neighboring countries where they became refugees. At the same time, in the new villages, many of the promised services were not available and the food security situation was dire. The villagization program has also been implemented in other marginalized regions in Ethiopia. These regions are the same areas where government is leasing large pieces of land to foreign investors, often from India, China and the Gulf states, without meaningful consultation with local communities, without any compensation being paid to local communities, and with no benefits for local communities other than low-paying labor jobs on the plantations. In the Omo valley in southern Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch found that the combination of sugar and cotton plantations and hydroelectric development is causing the displacement of up to 200,000 indigenous people from their lands. Massive amounts of water are being used for these projects which will have devastating impacts for Lake Turkana across the border in Kenya and the 300,000 indigenous people who live in the vicinity of the lake and depend upon it. The displacement of communities in the Omo valley is well underway. As in Gambella, communities in the Omo valley told Human Rights Watch about coercion, beatings, arrests and threats from military and police to force people to move to new settlements. Human Rights Watch also found politically motivated abuse in development programs. In 2010, we documented discrimination and “political capture” in the distribution of the benefits of development programs especially prior to the 2010 elections. Opposition party supporters and others who did not support the ruling party were denied access to some of resources provided by donor-funded programs, including food aid, micro credit, seeds, fertilizers, and other critical agricultural inputs needed for food security, and even employment opportunities. Schools, funded as part of education programs by the US and other development partners, were used to indoctrinate school children in ruling party ideology and teachers were required to report youth perceived to support the opposition to the local authorities. These government practices, many of which continue today, show the intense pressure put on Ethiopian citizens to support the ruling party, and the way in which development aid is manipulated to discriminate against certain communities. All of these cases have several common features. First, the Ethiopian government routinely denies the allegations without investigation, claiming they are politically motivated, while simultaneously restricting access for independent media and investigators. Second, these programs are directly and indirectly funded by Western donors, who seem unwilling to acknowledge, much less address human rights concerns in Ethiopia. Monitoring and evaluation of these programs for human rights abuses is inadequate. Even when donors carry out assessments to look into the allegations, as has happened in Gambella, they are not conducted rigorously and do not ensure victims of abuses can speak freely and safely. In the current environment in Ethiopia, it is essential for anyone seeking to investigate human rights violations to go to locations where victims can speak openly, to understand the dynamics of the local communities, and recognize the depths of the fear they are experiencing. All of these problems are exacerbated by the ongoing government crackdown on the media and civil society. The independent press has been ravaged since the 2010 election, with the vast majority of journalists terrified to report anything that is remotely critical of the government. In October I was in a country neighboring Ethiopia where over 30 journalists have fled in the past few months alone. I spoke to many of them: their papers were closed, their families were threatened, and many had been charged under repressive laws merely because they criticized and questioned the Ethiopian government’s policies on development and other issues. I spoke with someone who was forced to seek asylum abroad because he had questioned in writing whether the development of Africa’s largest dam on the Nile River was the best use of money in a country where poverty is pervasive. As for Ethiopian civil society, it has been decimated by another law, the Charities and Societies Proclamation. It has made obtaining foreign funding nearly impossible for groups working on human rights, good governance, and advocacy. Leading members of the human rights movement have been forced to flee abroad. Some people take to the streets to peacefully protest. Throughout 2014 there were various protests throughout Ethiopia. In many of these protests, including during the student protests in the Oromia region in April and May of this year, the security forces used excessive force, including the use of live ammunition against the students. We don’t even know how many Oromo students are still detained because the government publicizes no information, there is no comprehensive human rights monitoring and reporting, and family members are terrified of reporting the cases. Members of the Muslim community who organized protests in 2012 against what they saw as government interference in religious affairs have also paid an enormous price for those demonstrations, with many beaten or arrested and most of the protest organizers now imprisoned on terrorism charges. Finally, bringing about change through the ballot box is not really an option. Given that 99.6 percent of the parliamentary seats in the 2010 election went to the ruling party and that the political space has shrunk dramatically since then, there is little in the way of a viable opposition that can raise questions about government policy, including development plans, or other sensitive topics. This situation leaves Ethiopians no real means to express concerns over the policies and development strategies imposed by the government. They either accept it, they face threats and imprisonment for speaking out, or they flee their country as thousands have done. The refugee communities in countries neighboring Ethiopia are full of individuals who have tried to raise concerns in all of these ways, and are now in exile. To conclude, we all recognize that Ethiopia needs and requires development. The problem is how development is being undertaken. Development projects need to respect the rights of the local communities and improve their quality of life, regardless of ethnicity or political perspective. The United States and Ethiopia’s other major partners can and should play a leading role in supporting sustainable, rights-respecting development. The US should not accept arguments that protecting human rights is in contradiction to development goals and implementation. In 2014, the appropriations bill required the US to scrutinize and suspend funding for development programs in Ethiopia that might contribute to forced evictions in Ethiopia, including in Gambella and Omo. This was an important signal that the abuses taking place were unacceptable, and this should be maintained in the upcoming FY15 appropriations bill, whether it is a stand-alone bill or a continuing resolution. As one of Ethiopia’s key partners and supporters of Ethiopia’s development, the US needs to do more to ensure it is rigorously monitoring and consistently responding to human rights abuses in Ethiopia, both bilaterally and multilaterally. The US should be pressing the Ethiopian government to ensure that there is genuine consultation on development initiatives with affected communities, that more robust monitoring is put in place to monitor for potential abuses within programs, and that independent civil society, both domestic and foreign, are able to monitor and report on rights abuses. Respect for human rights is first and foremost a concern of all Ethiopians, but it is also central to all US interests in Ethiopia, from security to good governance to sustainable development.
#Dargagoo Oromo Yoonas Jedhama Guyya Lama Dura Magalaa Jimma Nannoo Xaana Jedhamuti Miseensi Homa Waranaa Weyanee Fodda Cabse Seenudhan Akko Isa Xiyitii Tokkon Isammo Xiyitii 32 Itti Roobse Ajjesee. Dargagoon Kuni Eega Ji’oota Shan Dura Harmeen Isa Boqatte Booda Obbolessa Isa Kan Hangafa Fi Akko Isa Wajjiin Jiraata Ture. Miseensi Hooma Warana Wayyanee Bombi fi Mesha Waranaa Qabate Lubbu Dargagoo Oromo Kana Haala Sukkanessa Ta’een Dabrse Jira..Akkoon Mucaas Battalummati Boqatani. #BecauseIAmOromo. Sadaasa 15 bara 2014.
The genocidal TPLF (Ethiopian) Agazi troops by invading an Oromo family home in Jimma murdered Oromo youth Yoonas and his grand mum. The killers shot unarmed innocent boy 32 times and his grand mum 2 times. #BecauseIAmOromo. 15th November 2016
Intensifying Mass Arrest, Torture, and Killing will Only Inflame Struggle of for Freedom
Statement of Qeerroo Bilisummaa on Continued Arrest and Conviction of Oromo Students from Various Zones of Oromia
November 16, 2014
It is to be recalled that tens of thousands of Oromo nationals in general and Oromo students in particular have been arrested and severely tortured by the TPLF-led Ethiopian regime over the last few months in connection to a series of Oromo student protests which broke out in large scale and spread out throughout Oromia beginning the month of April, 2014. These protests, organized and led by the National Youth Movement for Freedom and Democracy (aka Qeerroo Bilisummaa), are just one incident in a series of continued struggle of the Oromo nation for freedom, democracy, and justice over the last 23 or so years. Hundreds have been gunned down by live bullets by the so called Agazi troops of the regime in the months of April and May, 2014. In addition to those who have been shot and killed during the protests, many have lost their lives in prison cells unable to stand the brutal torture. Many others have simply disappeared. Qeerroo Bilisummaa believes that those who disappeared have been killed and their bodies hidden – a practice repeatedly perpetrated on the Oromo prisoners by this regime. On July 7, 2014 Qeerroo Bilisummaa has compiled a list of 61 Oromos killed and 903 others rounded up and thrown into jail during the April/May Oromo student protests of universities, colleges, high schools, middle schools and other educational institutions. Our evidence indicates that all those who have been arrested have undergone through intense interrogation which involved severe and brutal torture. Many have lost their lives due to the severe torture. For example, a 2nd year Computer Science Oromo student of Haromaya University, Aslan (Nuradin) Hasan, was killed as a result of extended torture in prison on June 04, 2014. On the same day a 10th grade student, Dawit Wakjira, was arrested and beaten to death in Anfillo district, Qellem Wollega zone. Again on the same day a young high school teacher, Magarsa Abdissa, was beaten and killed in Gulliso Prison, West Wollega zone. The fact that these three young Oromos are known and reported to have been beaten to death on the same day, from different parts of Oromia, is a testimony that prisons in the empire are not safe places under this regime. It has to be noted that many other killings that occurred in the prison cells remained hidden as it is extremely difficult and risky to compile reports of such brutal killings under tight security machinery of the regime. The arrests and tortures have continued non-stop. More and more are being arrested before those who are in jail are released or brought to court. Many of those who survived the torture will remain incarcerated, without any charge, until they confess the accusations brought against them. On many other prisoners, concocted charges and false witnesses have been prepared and they are brought to the kangaroo court of the regime to pass a long time sentence on them so as to legitimize their prison term. Everybody who pays close attention to how the judicial system of the regime operates knows for sure that the so called “court” of the regime is just a place where a fictitious drama is performed. Qeerroo Bilisummaa believes no justice is expected from the so called “court” of the current Ethiopian regime at any level. In this brief statement the data collection team of Qeerroo Bilisummaa has compiled a list of 183 Oromos, from 6 different zones of Oromia, mainly students, on which the regime has finalized its trumped up charges in order to pass a “guilty” verdict on these young innocent Oromo students and others and sentence them to several years of prison. The main content of the charges brought against them is “having connection with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)” and “participating on the public protest against the government”. These Oromo students and other Oromo individuals are in addition to several hundreds of prisoners Qeerroo has reported in the last few months and our reports indicate that they are going under severe torture and they are denied food, health care, closing and basic needs to sustain their lives. Qeerroo Bilisummaa strongly demands that the Ethiopian regime drop all charges against these Oromo nationals and tens of thousands others and release them immediately and unconditionally. We would like to reiterate that we the Oromo youth Qeerroo will not sit and be silent when part of our body is bleeding. The Ethiopian regime should realize that intensifying arrest, torture and killing will only inflame the struggle of the Oromo people for their right. More oppression doesn’t lead to submission. It rather breeds more dissenting voices. We are certain that eventually the Oromo and other oppressed nations and nationalities will bring down this criminal regime and justice and freedom will prevail. Read Full Statement:- Continued Arrest and Conviction of Oromo Students from Various Zones of Oromia
OMN: Interview with Amnesty International Researcher Claire Beston – Part 2
OMN reported land grabs, mass arrests, killings and evictions by TPLF Agazi and Liyu Police at Mida Qenyi (Central Oromia, Ambo) and at Saweyna & Beelto in Bale, Southern Oromia.
Ethiopia’s federal court in Dire Dawa has handed down 1-5 years prison sentence against 16 Oromo students arrested during #OromoProtests. Below is these list of students:
According to a report obtained by HRLHA from its local reporters in eastern Oromia, the border clash that has been going on since November 1, 2014 around the Qumbi, Midhaga Lolaa, and Mayuu Muluqee districts between Oromo and Ogadenia nationals, has already resulted in the deaths of seven Oromos, and the displacement of about 15,000 others. Large numbers of cattle and other valuable possessions are also reported to have been looted from Oromos by the invaders. . The HRLHA reporter in the eastern Hararge Zone confirmed that this violence came from federal armed forces (the Federal Liyou/Special Police) from the Ogadenia side; the Oromos were simply defending themselves against this aggression- though without much success because the people were fully disarmed by the federal government force prior to the clash starting. Read the detail @ http://www.humanrightsleague.org/?p=15215
Mass killings is being conducted by Liyu Police against Oromo people in Eastern (Harargee) and Southern (Bale) Oromia. OMN News Sources, 7th November 2014.
Mass evictions of Oromo families from their ancestral homes in Buraayyuu (Central Oromia, near Finfinnee), OMN reports, 30 October 2014. Listen to the following OMN, Afaan Oromo News.
Seenaa Abdissa:- Twenty Years Later After the Adoption of the Constitution, Jailed, Abducted and Killed #BecauseIAmOromo
The following short note, but thought provoking and moving paragraph – adopted for the Oromo case from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, is from Seenaa Abdissa’s Facebook. The time to end the injustice on the Oromo people is now; this generation must not run away from this injustice and pass on the duty of fighting against this injustice to the next generation. This generation must face the enemy and defeat it by all nonviolent means necessary. Qeerroo, stand up! ——————– by Seenaa Abdissa “Twenty years ago, when Ethiopians adopted a federal constitution after deposing the cruel dictator Mengistu Hailemariam, this momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Oromo who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But twenty years later, the Oromo still is not free. Twenty years later, the life of the Oromo is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. Twenty years later, the Oromo lives on a lonel
Hundreds were killed, and thousands were detained in #Ethiopia’s crackdown on antigovernment protests #FreedomReport http://freedomhou.se/fiw17eth
This morning, Ethiopians woke up to the news that the Council of Ministers of the Federal Government has passed an emergency decree that may last for the coming six months. The official text of the Decree is not yet published in the official legal communicator, the Negarit Gazetta. (As it has now become customary, it may never be published at all; the regime does what it wants to do nonetheless.) That it is so declared today is announced to journalists by the Prime Minister in Cabinet on the state television. The Prime Minister spoke in order to announce the decision to journalists as the primus inter pares, the first among equals, in the Cabinet. The reason given by the Prime Minister for issuing the declaration is that there is a breakdown of law and order that threatens the safety of citizens and the integrity of the constitutional order.
Ethiopia: State – Sponsored Terrorism and Military Brutality in Oromia HRLHA Urgent Action
Read more at:- 
Oromia Support Group
According to HRLHA reporters, the arrests were made to clear out supporters and members of the other political organizations running for the 5th General Election to be held May 24, 2015. The EPRDF, led by the late Meles Zenawi, claimed victory in the General Elections of 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010. The TPLF/EPRDF government of Ethiopia has started a campaign of intimidation against its opponents. Extrajudicial arrests and imprisonments, particularly in the regional state of Oromia, the most populous region in the country, began late October 2014. 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 at police stations and unknown detention centers. The Ethiopian government has a well documented record of gross and flagrant violations of human rights, including the torturing of its own citizens, who were suspected of supporting, sympathizing with and/or being members of the opposition political organizations. There have been credible reports of physical and psychological abuses committed against individuals in Ethiopia’s official prisons and other secret detention centers. HRLHA calls upon governments of the West, all local, regional and international human rights agencies to join hands and demand the immediate halt to such extrajudicial actions against one’s own citizens, and the unconditional release of the detainees. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to the Ethiopian Government and its officials as swiftly as possible, written in English, Ahmaric, or your own language. The following are suggested: – Indicate your concern about citizens being tortured in different detention centers, including the infamous Ma’ikelawi Central Investigation Office; and calling for their immediate and unconditional release; – Urge the Ethiopian authorities to ensure that detainees will be treated in accordance with the regional and international standards on the treatment of prisoners, and that their whereabouts be disclosed, and – Make sure the coming May 24, 2015 election is fair and free. Read full statement from the following links: 
Magaalaa Qassoo Keessatti Gaaffii Mirgaa Kaasuun Poolisoota Wayyaanee Waliin Wal Qabaa Jiru. Wallaggaa, aanaa Waamaa Hagaloo magalaa Qassoo keessatti Bitootessa 10 bara 2015 Humna uumata Oromoo FDG gaggeessaa jiruu fi ergamtoota Wayyaanee jidduutti walitti bu’iinsi guddaan uumameen magaalli Qassoo dirree falmaa ta’uu Qeerroon naannicha irraa gabaasa. Gaaffii uumannii fi qonnaan bultooti naannichaa gaafataniin wal qabatee guyyaa har’aa hiriirri magaalaa kanatti ta’ee fi dhadatnooleen uumataa kan isaan rifaasise poolisoonni Wayyaanee uumata nagaa qabanii hidhuu fi hiraarsuu itti fufanii jiru. Haaluma kanaan sabboontota armaa gadii kana magaalaa Qasoo keessaa waraanni Wayyaanee guyyaa har’aa qabee akka hidhee jiru qeerroon gabaasa. 1. Qajeelaa Raggaasaa 2. Boodanaa Baqqalaa 3. Misgaanuu Raggaasaa 4. Danjaa Dhangi’aa 5. Dhugaasaa Abdiisaa 6. Booboo Addunyaa 7. Misgaanuu Addunyaa fi kanneen biroon mana hidhaatti argamu Oduu dhuma wal fakkaatuun lubi waldaa makaana yesuus darabaaWaggaarii Ayyaanaa jedhamu mootummaan akka kufuuf Waaqayyoon kadhatte jedhamee achi buuteen isaa kan dhabamedha. 
February 23, 2015 Since the downfall of the military government of Ethiopia in 1991, the political and socioeconomic lives of the country have totally been controlled by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front/TPLF leaders and business institutions. As soon as the TPLF controlled Addis Ababa, the capital city, in 1991, the first step it took was to create People’s Democratic Organizations (PDOs) in the name of different nations and nationalities in the country. With the help of these PDOs, the TPLF managed to control the whole country in a short period of time from corner to corner. The next step that the TPLF took was to weaken and/or eliminate all independent opposition political organizations existing in the country, including those with whom it formed the Ethiopian Transitional Government in 1991. Just to pretend that it was democratizing the country, the TPLF signed seven international human rights documents from 1991 to 2014. These include the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”. Despite this, it is known that the TPLF has tortured many of its own citizens ever since it assumed power, and has continued to the present day. The TPLF Government adopted a new constitution in 1995; and, based on this Constitution, it formed new federal states. The new Ethiopian Constitution is full of spurious democratic sentiments and human rights terms meant to inspire the people of Ethiopia and the world community. The TPLF’s pretentious promise to march towards democracy enabled it to receive praises from people inside and outside, including donor countries and organizations. The TPLF government managed somehow to maintain a façade of credibility with western governments, including those of U.S.A. and the UK. In reality, the TPLF security forces were engaged in intensive killings, abductions, disappearances of a large number of Oromo, Ogaden, Sidama peoples and others whom the TPLF suspected of being members, supporters or sympathizers of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), Ogadenian National Liberation Front (ONLF), and Sidama People’s Liberation Front (SPLF). TPLF – from high officials down to ordinary level cadres in the various regional states – engaged in enriching themselves and their family members by looting and embezzling public wealth and properties; raping young women in the occupied areas of the nations and nationalities in Ethiopia; and committing many other forms of corruptions. After securing enough wealth for themselves, the TPLF government officials, cadres and members declared, in 2004, an investment policy that resulted in the eviction of indigenous peoples from their lands and all types of livelihoods. Since 2006, thousands of Oromo, Gambela, and Benishangul nationals and others have been forcefully evicted from their lands without consultation or compensation. Those who attempted to oppose or resist were murdered and/or jailed by the TPLF1. The TPLF government then cheaply leased their lands, for terms as long as 50 years, to international investors and wealthy Middle East and Asian countries, including Saudi Arabia2. The TPLF government has done all this against its own Constitution, particularly article 40 (3)3, which states that “The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all natural resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia. Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange”. These acts were also against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17 (1 & 2)4, which says, “1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.” In order to facilitate further corruption and embezzlement, the money paid for the leases as long as 50 years were received in cash. For example, the Indian agro investor Karaturi explained to a Guardian newspaper’s reporter that the TPLF government officials asked him to pay in cash in order to get the land, which he called “green gold”5. These gross human rights violations by the TPLF leaders against the Oromos, Gambelas, and Benishanguls have been condemned by many civic organizations, including Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch, the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa, the Oakland Institute and others. The giving away of Oromo land in the name of investment also includes Addis Ababa, the capital city situated at the center of Oromia Regional State. 30,000 Oromos were evicted by the TPLF/EPRDF Government from their lands and livelihoods in the areas around the Capital City and suburbs, and their lands were given to the TPLF officials, members and loyal cadres over the past 24 years. In order to grab more lands around Addis Abba, the TPLF government prepared a plan called “the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan,” a plan that aimed at annexing about 36 towns and surrounding villages into Addis Ababa. This Master Plan was first challenged by the Oromo People’s Democracy Organization/OPDO in March 2014. The challenge was first supported by Oromo students in different universities, colleges and high schools in Oromia, and then spread to Oromo farmers, Oromo intellectuals in all corners of Oromia Regional State and to Oromo nationals living in different parts of the world. The Oromo nationals staged peaceful protests all over Oromia Regional State. In connection with this Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan, which had the risk of evicting more than two million farmers from around the capital city, about seventy Oromo students from among the peaceful protestors were brutalized by the special TPLF Agizi snipers and more than five thousand Oromos from all walks of life were taken to prisons in different parts of Oromia Regional State. The inhuman military actions and crackdowns by the TPLF government against peaceful protestors were condemned by different international media, such as the BBC6, human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and the HRLHA7. The government admitted that it killed nine of them8. The unrest that started in central Oromia suddenly escalated to such a high level that the TPLF leaders suspended the expansion plan for a while. 
However, recently, without the slightest regret and sense of remorse over the massacres committed against peaceful protestors of Oromo Nationals by his government in May and April 2014, the TPLF’s co-founder, top official and the current Prime Minister’s (Hailemariam Dessalegn’s) special advisor, Mr. Abay Tsehaye, vowed in public that anyone who attempts to oppose the implementation of the so-called Addis Ababa Master Plan would be dealt with harshly. In his speech, he confirmed that the TPLF government is determined to continue with the master plan, no matter what happened in the past or what may come in the future. In a manner that Abay Tsehaye was reiterating that the annexations of towns and cities in central Oromia into the capital Addis Ababa will go ahead as planned regardless of the absence of consultations and consent of the local people and/or the officials of the targeted towns and cities. Besides displaying his extreme arrogance and contempt for the Oromo Nation, Mr. Abay Tsehaye’s speech was in direct breach of constitutional provisions of both federal and regional states. 
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) would like to express its deep concern that this TPLFs leader’s speech not only encourages violence against the country’s own citizens, but also invites further bloodshed and losses of lives; it leaves no room at all for dialogue, consultation and consent – norms which are at the core of a genuine democracy. This is still happening despite the killing of more than seventy Oromo youth and the arrest and incarceration of thousands of others as a result of violent and deadly responses by armed forces of the TPLF and the government to peaceful demonstrators in May and April 2014. Conclusion: The HRLHA believes that the gross human rights violations committed by the TPLF government in the past 24 years against Oromo, Ogaden, Gambela, Sidama and others were pre-planned and intentional all the times that they have happened. The TPLF killed, tortured, and kidnapped and disappeared thousands of Oromo nationals, Ogaden and other nationals simply because of their resources and ethnic backgrounds. The recent research conducted by Amnesty International under the title “Because I am Oromo”: SWEEPING REPRESSION IN THE OROMIA REGION OF ETHIOPIA’9 confirms that peoples in Ethiopia who belong to other ethnic groups have been the victims of the TPLF. The TPLF inhuman actions against the citizens are clearly a genocide, a crime against humanity10 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 wants to hold the TPLF government accountable, as a group and as individuals, for the crimes they have committed and are committing against Oromos and others. The HRLHA calls on all human rights families, non-governmental civic organizations, HRLHA 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 which 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 on raising 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. ——————- We Fight for Human Rights! HRLHA Head Office February 23, 2015 ——————- 1. Genocide Watch, 
![Two Oromo Farmers in Salale Brutally Murdered; Their Bodies Dragged and Put on Pubic Display for Resisting Oppression Against Tigrean Habesha Rulers [Viewer Discretion Advised: Graphic Photo]](https://i1.wp.com/finfinnetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Oromo-in-Salale-Murdered-Dragged-and-Displayed-2015.jpg?resize=950%2C713)
![Two Oromo Farmers in Salale Brutally Murdered; Their Bodies Dragged and Put on Pubic Display for Resisting Oppression Against Tigrean Habesha Rulers [Viewer Discretion Advised: Graphic Photo]](https://i1.wp.com/finfinnetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Oromo-in-Salale-Murdered-Dragged-and-Displayed-2015-3.jpg)
Dargaggoonni aanaa kanaa naamusa filannoo jeequuf warra qophaya jiran waan taheef jedhamee barattootas tahee dargaggoota hundaafuu kaardiin filannoo dhorkamuu Qeerroon gabaasaa jira. Akkasuma aanama kana keessa ganda Baabboo jedhamu keesstti dargaggootaan qarshii 3, 3 fidaa waraqaa eenyummaa baafadhaa isaan booda filannoof kaardii isiniif laanna jedhame tole jechuun dargaggoonni qarshii jedhame kana kennan, horiin isaan irraa fuudhames gara darbe dargaggoonni kaardiis fudhachuu hin dandeenye qarshii keenya deebisa Wayyaanee silaafuu hattuudha jechuudhaan daraggoonni Oromoo guyyaa kaleessaa FDG kaasanii jiru. Haala kanaan namootni 6 dargaggoota kan qindeessu filannoon aka hin gaggeeffamneef dargaggoota ijaaraa kan jiraniidha jedhamuun ganda Baabboo irraa konkolaataa poolisiin galgala sa’a 12 booda waajjira poolisii aanichaatti gaaffeman, namootni kun maqaan isaanii: 1. Mikaa’el Hirkisa-ogeessa fayyaa Looniiti 2. Nuuraddiin Muusaa-Daldalaa 3. Amad Horaa-Qonnaan Bulaa 4. Shaful Boshoraa-Barataa 5. Iddoosaa Raagaa-Qonnaan Bulaa 6. Shuumaa Lammeessaa-Qonnaan Bulaa Namootni kun amma waajjira poolisii aanaa Jimmaa Horroo keessa jiru, maqaan ittiin yakkaman tokko namusa filannoo kan jeeqan, kana gochuufis uummata fi dargaggoota ijaarsa irratti kan argaman jedhamuun. Suuraaleen kun barattoota qabamanii fi loltoota sirncha muldhisa. 
Since the March-April 2014 crackdowns against the peaceful Oromo protesters who have protested against the Ethiopian Federal Government’s plan of annexation of 36 small Oromia towns to the capital city of Addis Ababa under the pretext of the “Addis Ababa Integrated Plan”, thousands of Oromo nationals from all walks of life from all corners of Oromia regional state including Wollo Oromo’s in Amhara regional state have been detained or imprisoned. Some have disappeared and many have been murdered by a special commando group called “the Agiazi force”. The “The Agiazi” force is still chasing down and arresting Oromo nationals who participated in the March-April, 2014 peaceful protests. Fearing the persecution of the Ethiopian government, hundreds of students did not return to the universities, colleges and high schools; most of them have left for the neighboring states of Somaliland and Puntiland of Somalia where they remain at high risk for their safety. Wollo Oromos who are living in Ahmara regional state of Oromia special Zone are also among the victims of the EPRDF government. Hundreds of Wollo Oromos have been detained because of their connection with the peaceful protests of March-April 2014. The EPRDF government has detained many Oromo nationals in Wollo Oromia special Zone under the pretext of being members or supporters of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), as prisoners’ voices from Dessie/Wollo prison have revealed. From among the many Oromos who were picked from different districts and places from Wollo Oromia special Zone in Amhara regional state in April 2014, the HRLHA reporter in the area has received a document which shows that 26 Oromo prisoners pleaded to the South Wollo High Court that they were illegally detained first in Kamise town military camp for 36 days, Kombolcha town Police Station for 27 Days, and Dessie city higher 5 Police Station for 10 days- places where they were severely tortured and then transferred to Dessie Prison in July 2014. According to the document, they were picked up from three different districts and different places by federal police and severely beaten and tortured at different military camps and police stations and their belongings including cash and mobile telephones were taken by their torturers. In their appeal letter to the South Wollo high court they demanded Full document in
