By Yoseph M. Baba, Ph.D.

Excerpt

In this metaphilosophical engagement, whilst some of the scholars confined themselves to cross-examining the nature of philosophy others went further to stipulate how they thought African philosophy should proceed. Yoseph Mulugeta’s Metaphilosophy or Methodological Imperialism? The Rationale for Contemporary African Philosophy with Reference to Oromo Philosophy situates very well in the category of those who besides subjecting the nature of philosophy to scrutiny also spelt out how they thought philosophy in Africa should progress. He not only engages in the fruitful metaphilosophical exercise but also proceeds to the practical concrete level with particular reference to the Oromo people of North Eastern Africa. There are not many texts in African philosophy that engage in both the metaphilosophical theoretical question as well as its application aspect. Herein lies a significance of Yoseph’s text. (Another text that belongs to the same category, mutatis mutandis, is that by D. A. Masolo, Self and Community in a Changing World—Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010).

In writing this text, Yoseph had set before him some cardinal objectives. The four basic ones, in my estimation, being: (i) to interrogate the underlying principles of the discipline of philosophy, to engage in philosophizing about philosophy—metaphilosophy; (ii) and in parenthesis, to demonstrate how African philosophy can be authenticated via the mechanism of what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o refers to as a decolonizing the African mind; (iii) to identify fundamental issues that have beleaguered (post) colonial Africa; (iv) to recommend an approach to African philosophy that would be most appropriate in resolving the problem of what he calls the “unfulfilled and paradoxical ‘independence’ of (post) colonial Africa.” There is no doubt in my mind that Yoseph has attained these objectives.

There is a Swahili adage that asserts, usipoziba ufa utajenga ukuta, which means, “If you don’t fix a crack in your wall, you will end up building the whole wall.” The discourse on African philosophy has been going on for a long while now yet the crack on African society has continued to widen causing hopelessness, despondency, lack of self-respect and self-dignity amongst African peoples. What will save Africans from building the whole wall? Metaphilosophy or Methodological Imperialism? The Rationale for Contemporary African Philosophy with Reference to Oromo Philosophy—offers a viable answer to the question.

(Excerpt from prologue by Prof. F.Ochieng’-Odhiambo)

The Case of the Oromo reflection shared by pastoral intern Wasihun Gutema. (Good Shepherd Lutheran Church)

The modern Ethiopian Sate was an inception in the late 19^th C and built as a modern State through the conquest of Emperor Menlik (1889-1913) who brought the Southern nation and nationalities of Ethiopia in to a centralized country. A complete modern state of Ethiopia was formed with the incorporation of Jimma Abba Jifar, an Oromo province, in 1932 under the newly crowned Emperor Hailie Silassie of Ethiopia culminating the further expansion of the Ethiopian Empire. Following this, the Ethiopian state consolidated its power and became important in the horn of Africa. The country is a country of diverse nations with diverse languages and cultures. The Oromo are one among the many nations and nationalities of Ethiopia.

The Oromo nation predominately inhabits Ethiopia, North Kenya and Somalia which makes the Oromo the single largest group in the entire Horn of Africa¹. Historical accounts differ over the population census but current Ethiopian Sate Demographic profile puts at 35 million².  The people speak Afaan Oromo, a language which is the 4^th most widely spoken language in Africa following Hausa, Swahili and Arabic.

The Oromo Nation was entirely incorporated into the modern Ethiopian State in the late 19^th C and pre-history of the Oromo states that the Oromo had a democratic egalitarian system called the Gadaa through which power was transferred every 8 year.

The Oromo were neither Islam nor Christian prior to the 16^th century. They were followers of traditional religion. Today, the Oromo practice Christianity, Islam and traditional religion.

Following the incorporation into the Ethiopian Empire State, the Oromo were totally marginalized and forced to be in serfdom. Having been serfs for years, the Oromo fall into the lowest social class during the Menlik era and his successors. Yet, the voice of the people was unheard.

Despite taking the bulk of the population demographic of the country, the Oromo nation did not get the chance to have their language the language of the government or literature in Ethiopia. Successive regimes have repressed the Oromo language and the Oromo people. With the end of the Menlik era and the takeover of Hailesillasie, the Oromo people continued to be repressed politically and economically.

Politically, the Oromo did not get any representation in the Ethiopian political leadership. The population was totally alienated and discriminated on the basis of language and ethnic identity. Economically, the Oromo nation feeds the bulk of the Ethiopian population and the largest of the country’s GDP is from the Oromo land but the Economy has always been and is controlled by those on power. Economic repression in the Ethiopian State over the Oromo nation is unprecedented.

A great below to the Oromo as a nation began when the current government took over the state power in 1991. Since 1991 thousands of Oromo were killed, detained indefinitely, or tortured. A former senior Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) military commander, Siye Abraha, expressed his view of the Ethiopian prison and said the “prison speaks Afaan Oromo.”³ According to recent comment by Bekele Nega who is under house arrest in Ethiopia, 85% of prisoners in Ethiopia are Oromo⁴.  Amnesty International and HRW have repeatedly reported and the 2014 Amnesty International report entailed “Because I am Oromo…” could have been an eye opening to the International community of what is going on in Ethiopia.

The current government kidnaps, detains and kills Oromo from all over Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa including Kenya, the Sudan, the Southern Sudan but no one is interested in deeply investigating and reporting the  mass killings and detentions of the Oromo people over the years. Even the churches in Ethiopia with all the knowledge they have with regard to the Oromo mass arrest, killings and dentations have taken a silent status for fear of their safety. The church is called to be a prophetic to the voiceless community. The church is called to proclaim freedom to the oppressed. The church is called to be the mouth piece of the neglected, boldly speak against injustices and discriminations of any kind.

The church in Ethiopia has so far taken a fine line with the church leaders taking a place of complete silence other than sacrificing themselves for the call entrusted to them. Had there been a Bonheoffer, Rev. Gudina Tumsa (Ethiopia) and Oscar Romero of Latin America, the political trajectory, systemic cultural and language repression and economic empire built benefiting certain groups of the population would have been dismantled. So are we coming to the point of losing hope? By no means for even if God also seems silent has acted in the pains and suffering of his people. God was at work in the pain and suffering of Christ and through the sufferings of the Oromo people of Ethiopia and despite the voice is unheard and the world is silent there will come justice for the Oromo people and the suffering nations of Ethiopia.

Yet, even in the absence of the voice of the church from Ethiopia, churches abroad can make pressure on the violence perpetrated by the Ethiopian regime against its own citizens, for all churches despite geography and doctrinal bacground are one body in Christ and the pain of the one is the pain of all of us. It is a call to every church in the world to side with the Ethiopian people in general and the Oromo in particular regardless of where we are and to what doctrinal background we belong.

Wasihun Gutema

1.    https://en.wikpedia.org/oromo_people#Demagraphics accessed January 12, 2015.

2.   www.indexmundi.com/Ethiopiademographics/profile.html accessed January 12,  2015.

3.   http://mereja.com/forum/view topic.php? f=35&t=67155 accessed January 17, 2016.

4.   Bekele Nega is a senior opposition party leader in Ethiopia.

By Katie Pavid

The new snake species, Bitis harenna, has only been seen in the wild by biologists once. This is one of the few photos taken of it. © Evan Buechley, University of Utah

UK (Natural History Museum) — A team of scientists led by Museum researchers have identified and named a new species of viper, Bitis harenna, that lives in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park.

The new viper species was seen in the Harenna Forest, which lies on steep slopes in the Bale Mountains

The study, published today in the journal Zootaxa, involved researchers from the UK, Germany and USA. They have previously worked closely with Ethiopian colleagues, logging hundreds of hours of fieldwork studying the reptiles and amphibians of the Bale Mountains.

Despite the many hours the team have spent searching the area, both at night and during the day, the new species is known only from a single museum specimen, which was collected in the late 1960s.

Until the latest research, this specimen was thought to be an unusually patterned example of Bitis parviocula, a similar Ethiopian viper.

The sighting of the snake in the wild, in 2013, prompted the team of scientists to re-examine the historical museum specimen.

Scientists used a micro-CT scanner to examine and make a 3D reconstruction of the skull of the only known Bitis harenna specimen

Micro-CT scanning carried out in the Museum’s Imaging and Analysis Centre revealed details of the skull that enabled the team to confirm the viper as a separate species.

It is distinguished by its unique colour patterns, the structure of its skull, and differences in its head proportions and number of scales.

Drawings of the head of Bitis harenna

A threatened habitat

The new species is named Bitis harenna after the Harenna Forest, the part of the Bale Mountains National Park where it was observed.

This globally important National Park is a biodiversity hotspot, home to many species that are found nowhere else on the planet. It is also known as the last remaining stronghold of the Ethiopian wolf.

Sadly, the habitats of the Harenna Forest and other parts of the Bale Mountains National Park are under threat from cattle grazing and deforestation, with serious repercussions for the wildlife living there.

Parts of the Harenna Forest have been cleared for cattle and housing

In another recent study, also led by Museum researchers, four frog groups unique to the region were discovered to have plummeted in number.

Dr Gower says, ‘The discovery of the new viper further highlights the importance of protecting the natural environment in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains.’

Unlike the elusive new species, Bitis parviocula is traded as a pet in Europe and North America. But it is also still poorly understood, with only three museum specimens known worldwide.

Dr Gower concludes, ‘Much more research is needed to locate populations of Bitis harenna and to learn about the biology of these two viper species.’

Brutal repression was the secret to the country’s rapid rise. It could also bring it crashing down again.

By Jacey Fortin

December 17, 2015 – People mourn the death of Dinka Chala who was shot dead by the Ethiopian forces the day earlier, in the Yubdo Village, about 100 km from Addis Ababa in the Oromia region. Dinka Chala was accused of protesting, but his family says he was not involved. Tensions have been riding high between the population of Oromia and the Federal Government of Ethiopia. The population of Oromia are unhappy with the current Master Plan which is overtaking Oromo lands surrounding Addis Ababa. The protests have been ongoing for the past three weeks, with government responding in force with live ammunition. The Government also claims death tolls of around 5, the unofficial figure made by protesters has reached up to 40+. / AFP / ZACHARIAS ABUBEKER (Photo credit should read ZACHARIAS ABUBEKER/AFP/Getty Images)

ADAMA, Ethiopia (Foreign Policy) — For those who would speak frankly about politics in this landlocked East African country, the first challenge is to find a safe space.

But on a recent evening in Adama, a city in the heart of a region reeling from the largest protest movement Ethiopia has faced in decades, most people seemed at ease. University students poured out of the city’s main campus, spilling into claustrophobic bars and pool halls. Others crowded around a cluster of aging taxis, jostling for a quick ride home.

Though it is one of the largest cities in Oromia — where members of Ethiopia’s Oromo ethnic group have taken to the streets in recent months in unprecedented numbers to protest their political and economic marginalization — Adama has remained mostly quiet.

Citizens feel they have to watch what they say, and where they say it. At the hangouts where crowds have gathered, a political statement might be overheard. Out on the sidewalks, government spies could be on patrol. Inside the university campus, security officials are on the lookout for suspicious behavior.

In a way, the recent unrest is rooted in Ethiopia’s rapid economic rise. The federal government claims to have notched double-digit GDP growth rates over the past decade, but its rigid, top-down approach to developing industry, and attracting foreign investment, has resulted in mass displacement and disrupted millions of lives. This, in turn, has heightened ethnic tensions that today threaten Ethiopia’s reputation for stability.

All across Oromia, government security forces have been struggling to control the spate of violent protests that erupted in November, partly in response to the government’s so-called master plan to coordinate development in Addis Ababa with nearby towns in Oromia, a sprawling central region that surrounds the capital on all sides. Like much of the country, the vast majority of Oromia is rural, home to small-scale farmers who feel left behind by the dazzling growth of Addis.

When this latest round of protests began last year, demonstrators seized on the master plan as symbolic of broader encroachments on Oromo autonomy. They also accused the government of taking land from Oromo farmers for little or no compensation, suppressing the Oromo language in schools, and unfairly redistributing the region’s natural resources.

In Adama, a 23-year-old engineering student, whose full name has been withheld for his safety, was initially reluctant to speak with this reporter for fear of reprisal. He relaxed only after he and some close friends sat down in a deserted cafe near campus, where a quiet woman brewing coffee over hot coals was the only person listening in.

“There are so many problems facing the Oromo people,” he said. “But those who speak about it are getting arrested. Educated people, farmers, teachers, doctors — the government accuses them all of being part of the protests.”

His caution was warranted. Less than two weeks later, a confrontation erupted at the university, reportedly in response to a small demonstration by students — though the details, as always, are hazy. One witness who asked not be named said he heard gunshots as security forces descended on the campus. Amid the confusion, at least two fires were sparked — one in the school’s backup generator.

“On campus, students already feared the armed forces,” said the witness, who is a student at the university. “Now, no one feels like they have any right to speak at all.”

Government security forces have been accused of exacerbating the crisis in Oromia by violently suppressing the protests. In a recent report, Human Rights Watch said it had “documented security forces firing into crowds of protesters with little or no warning, the arrests of students as young as 8, and the torture of protesters in detention.” The rights group said military and police forces have killed “several hundred peaceful protesters” since November.

Members of the Ethiopian diaspora have been equally vocal, taking to social media to call attention to alleged atrocities. Jawar Mohammed, who is based in Minnesota, is perhaps the most prominent online activist, manning a number of social media feeds featuring bloody photos of dead demonstrators and grainy videos of police brutality that have become hubs for Oromo diaspora members around the world. His Facebook page has amassed nearly a half million followers.

“We have freelancers embedded in pretty much every district across the country,” said Mohammed, who was born in Ethiopia but works abroad as the executive director of the Oromia Media Network, a news broadcaster whose satellite feed here has been repeatedly jammed by the Ethiopian government. “They infiltrate the system from top to bottom,” he said in a Skype interview.

How much of an impact social media activism has had on the actual protest movement is a matter of debate. In a country with limited Internet penetration, and where the sole government-owned telecommunications provider has the power to shut down signals and block opposition websites, online activists like Mohammed are necessarily limited in what they can do. According to the engineering student in Adama, people on the ground are driving the protests, and social media matters “only a little bit.”

There are also questions about the direction social media activists have steered the debate surrounding the protests. Comments by Mohammed’s passionate social media followers sometimes advocate violence against members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a political party from the northern region of Tigray that dominates the government’s security and intelligence agencies. And because he and other online activists are far from the front lines, some argue that their social media posts are ultimately a distraction. The student who witnessed the altercation at the university in Adama, for instance, said he agrees with Mohammed’s political analysis, but is concerned that the Facebook page has become a magnet for a dizzying array of viewpoints — about religion, regional politics, and ethnic strife — that make the movement more controversial than it needs to be.

Still, Mohammed has a clear strategy in mind. When it comes to human life, he advocates nonviolence. But he encourages demonstrators to block trade routes, destroy the property of companies that are seen as operating against Oromo interests, and avoid bringing crops to market in order to raise food prices.

Might such tactics be unethical during the worst drought Ethiopia has witnessed in decades, which has left 10.2 million people in need of emergency food aid? “Morally, yes,” Mohammed said. “Strategically, no.”

Officials have no time for these “activists on the other side of the Atlantic,” said government spokesman Getachew Reda. He claimed that agitators, some of whom have backing from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s archrival, have infiltrated the ranks of the protesters and are responsible for the current violence. The government security forces, by contrast, have generally handled the situation professionally, he said.

“We may have some bad apples,” Reda said. “Otherwise, the security apparatus that we have in this country is very much oriented towards serving the interests of the public.”

Amid this war of words, normal citizens are caught in the middle. In the quiet café in Adama, the engineering student spelled out a set of remarkably prosaic demands: He would like to see more Oromo professors at the university, for instance, and a fairer allocation of resources for the region. But, he said, he stays quiet for fear of Ethiopia’s pervasive security and intelligence apparatus.

“People don’t feel free,” he said. “We are all psychologically impacted.”

After two months of violent demonstrations, the government announced that it was scrapping the master plan. It wasn’t enough. Some protesters said they didn’t believe it had really been canceled. Others were motivated by grievances that run much deeper than any development scheme, citing marginalization stretching all the way back to the late 1800s, when the Ethiopian emperor Menelik II swept in from the north to expand Ethiopia’s borders and establish the capital city in Oromo lands.

On paper, today’s federal system is meant to ensure some measure of autonomy for all of the country’s ethnic groups, including the Oromos. The ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), is made up of four regional parties, including the TPLF and the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO). But the government lost some credibility in May, when the EPRDF and allied parties won every parliamentary seat in a national election. Though the OPDO holds more parliamentary seats than any other party, protesters say the party either cannot or will not challenge the dominance of the TPLF — and Oromos remain marginalized as a result.

Officials say they are trying to promote meaningful dialogue. “It is the government’s responsibility to make sure that people’s legitimate grievances are addressed properly,” Reda said. To that end, OPDO officials have convened meetings with concerned citizens across Oromia, and hundreds of low-level officials have been dismissed for corruption.

But the government has continued to lean on its powerful security apparatus, which has both enabled Ethiopia’s impressive, state-led economic development and imperiled it by bringing ethnic tensions to the fore. The ongoing protests in Oromia point to cracks in the facade, where citizens feel left out as the government pursues its uncompromising vision of modernization.

By continuing to crack down on demonstrators instead of listening to their demands, Ethiopia risks compromising the reputation for political stability that fueled its unprecedented decade of growth and foreign investment. In that way, the government may soon erode the very foundation of its own economic ambitions.

Qeerroo Led Revolution: Bloody, but Unbowed

by Albasa Dagaga ,  March 30, 2016

Qeerroo and TPLF are at loggerheads. On the one hand, the TPLF is doing everything imaginable to suppress Oromo national uprising including the use brute force. On the other hand, Qeerroo is challenging the status quo conquering fear and willing to pay any price to free Oromia once and for all. Throughout history, the price of freedom for all has been paid by a few who loved freedom enough to pay the cost for everyone, and in the case of Oromia, Qeerroo is paying the price of freedom for all at a heavy cost, facing ruthless and inhuman enemy armed to the teeth. The Oromo peaceful struggle to be free from TPLF tyranny has intensified the past 4 months. The level of violence –arrests, torture, and shooting and killing, murdering and dumping–by TPLF special-forces and the army against peaceful Oromo demonstrators and public disobedience is reaching a very dangerous point. Unless TPLF makes radical change, which is unlikely, we may be witnessing a replay of the Khmer Rouge period rule of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan and the Communist Party of Kampuchea over Cambodia repeating itself in Oromia. The main difference this time, TPLF is not supported by Moscow or Beijing, but by cynical western “democracies” in the name of protecting their “national security interest”; an irresponsible and short-sighted policy that is grounded in egocentric short-term interest and surely destined to inflict heavy damage to their long-term interest and to the democratic values they ritualistically preach. After all, it has been said that, the degree to which souls cooperate with evil is directly proportional to the degree of suffering that will befall humanity, and not just humanity, but all of nature as well.

TPLF took control of Ethiopia and Oromia with the defeat of the Derg in 1990. One of the most important decisions TPLF faced was what to do with OLF. TPLF determined that to control Oromia, it had to systematically liquidate OLF. By 1990, OLF was one political organization Oromo embraced as genuine Oromo representative. TPLF was well organized; had the full support of Shabia (EPLF); and keen prop from the international community. The US with the blessing of Kremlin facilitated the downfall of the Derg junta and the control of Ethiopia and Eritrea by TPLF and EPLF, respectively. The TPLF and Shabia hoodwinked OLF political leaders into encamping OLF fighters, subsequently surrounding the encamped fighters and easily massacring unsuspecting fighters; turning those camps into a killing field.  The remaining were either thrown into concentration camps, while a few political leaders and fighters exiled to foreign land. Within a few months-time, Oromia lost her brave sons and daughters fighting force that she produced over the two decades of military rule. The TPLF decision to liquidate OLF was taken as a bold move by TPLF admirers, while rational political thinkers judged the move as one of the most reckless and ludicrous decisions sure to haunt TPLF in the future. For an average Oromo, that evil act of TPLF/EPLF duo left wound that is still fresh and shall live for eternity in the annals of Oromo history. This political and military venture and drama was accomplished, thanks in part to Shabia and Washington scheme. The Shabia leadership self-serving decision to foolhardy conspire with TPLF was not only irrational and dangerous but proved to be plain stupid; Shabia paid a very heavy price in lives lost and treasure wasted a few years later.

Both TPLF and Shabia should have known that the defeat of OLF might delay, but would never stop the Oromo struggle for their right to self-determination. Too many wrongly concluded that the TPLF victory ended the Oromo aspiration for freedom. Yet, time has proven, that was one victory, one battle, in an ongoing war. The struggle never stopped and the war continues today, only the skills gained and the battle tactics have changed. The defeat of the OLF did not stop Oromos from continuing voicing their grievances, mostly peacefully, at times through low-scale protracted armed struggle. Each time, TPLF used the same method to silence Oromo struggle–brut security and military force. For sure, the damage on life and livelihood has been heavy, the degree of suffering enormous, the level of cruelty and savagery inhuman, yet Oromos continued to put Extraordinary Acts of Courage, Sacrifice and Heroism. For quarter of a century now, Afaan Oromo has been the lingua franca of Ethiopian prisons. Thousands of Oromos were brutally maimed and killed. Those who were able to cross boarders exiled from their homeland and reside as refugees every corner of the world. Thousands lost their lives while trying to escape inside or outside the country.

Scientists tell us that if you cap the volcano, eventually the pressure beneath rises to the point that the cap gets blown off in spectacular fashion. In the same vein, political and social scientis understand that the suppression of social mobility and the monopolization of power by the few at the expense of the many are universal dynamics in social orders. It’s not a stretch to surmise from this that the greater the TPLF concentrate power, the lower the social mobility for Oromo and others, the greater the odds that the system TPLF built will eventually collapse when faced with crisis as is happening now in TPLF controlled Ethiopia. The cap the TPLF put on Ethiopia through brut military force got blown off in a spectacular fashion in Oromia. Various evidences suggest that the buildup to blast-time in other regions is in full swing.

The most recent political unraveling in Oromia is sparked by TPLF’s ill-fated plan to grab more Oromo farm land surrounding Finfinnee. The TPLF Oromia land grab plan was secretly prepared under the Addis Ababa Integrated Regional Development Plan (AAIRDP). The plan extends the city’s authority to the surrounding Oromia region, including 17 Woredas, 38 cities, totaling 1.1 million hectares. The secret plan aims at achieving two major goals. The first action displaces Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands and settles Tigre Nouveau Riche and it accomplishes in the newly acquired lands, and the second, the outcome of the first, practically divides Oromia from contiguous territory into two, east and west, disconnected and detached territory. The official rational marketing strategy for public and international consumption behind the expansion of Finfinne was presented by TPLF as logical outcome to handle growth of the population and to bring about development that benefits the region. For the Oromo, particularly for the young generation of Oromo who grew under the regime and know this group as nothing but anti-Oromo determined to wipe out as many Oromos it can, it was an easy matter to untangle the evil intent, the deception, the make believe shenanigan. The major lesson was acquired from data that show how all Oromo land inside Finfinne was scavenged by TPLF rank and fine with little or no compensation for Oromo farmers. For the young generation, the Addis Ababa Master Plan was the catalyst that sparked political uprising. For the exiled Oromo, most veterans of Oromo struggle, this was a make-or-break moment, an opportunity to educate the international community who do not really understand the TPLF and challenge the wisdom of those who knew the TPLF but decided to defend the evil group anyway. Even within the OPDO, an organization created by TPLF from captured Derg soldiers for the sole purpose of implementing TPLF political objectives in Oromia, this program was too much to stomach, and some openly objected and were instrumental at exposing the content of the secret plan. So strong and so ruthlessly imposed were protocols constraining discussion of TPLF political, economic, and military objectives that when OPDO expressed with undisguised resentment, the fears and objections felt in much of Oromia, a political volcano erupted.

The Finfinne master plan did not get support even from some non-Oromo groups, including from those who do not necessarily have the best interest at heart for Oromo quest for self-determination. For some, the plan was undertaken without proper consultation with the Oromo who are directly affected. They thought that the plan is legally indefensible even under the letter and spirit of the TPLF constitution. For other nations that experienced land grabbing without even showing mock plan as the Finfinne master plan, the Oromia land issue was Déjà vu and were not amused by TPLF facade. TPLF uprooted many people in the Gambella and Southern regions, such as in the Omo, and the Afar Region handing their land to TPLF Capos or leasing their lands to foreign international investors with little or no compensation for the owners of these lands. The people of Welkait-Tegede were forcefully separated from Gondere kins and put under Tigray.

A few Amhara chauvinist extremists misinterpreted the current Oromo resistance movement as power struggle between TPLF and OLF. Admasu Belay writes “As much as we feel sorrow for the youth in Oromia who are being brutally attacked by the TPLF; deep inside we all know that the last few weeks of unrest is nothing more than a TPLF-OLF civil war. …. The current chaos in “Oromia” is really a battle for supremacy between two ethnocentric elitist groups. These two groups are the Tigray elites and the Oromo elites.” Such jingoistic old way of thinking coming out of children of Naftegna who hallucinate to revive the life their parents relished does not come as a surprise for any Oromo. This group should be reminded that the system that empowered you to rule using gun as a weapon of domination ended with the land reform of 1975, and Oromos and others won’t allow the reinstitution of Amhara neo-neftegna rule again. Contrariwise to the old-school-thinking, Oromos should acknowledge the new generation of Amhara who are sympathetic to our cause while also facing similar circumstances from TPLF. For example, ESAT played a major role in exposing TPLF fascistic action against Oromo these past 5 months, and spent time and large resources to collect crucial information that helped educate Ethiopians and the international community. This crucial media also invited several prominent Oromo to explain what was happening in Oromia. Others joined Oromo demonstrations around the world condemning TPLF killing of unarmed Oromo civilians and land grab.

The TPLF Oromia land grab plan venture were made possible by revising and modifying TPLF 1976 manifesto, as the result of and manifestation of the group’s confidence that it has dominated the political, economic, and military power over the entire country for 25 years, and was able to crash opposition so far. The TPLF initial plan was the formation of Republic of Greater Tigray. In their February 1976 manifesto, the TPLF defined who a Tigryan is; the land that the TPLF considers as Tigray; and the final destination of the TPLF. In general, a Tigryan is defined loosely as anybody that speaks the language of Tigrigna including those who live outside Tigray– extending the geographic boundaries of Tigray to the borders of the Sudan including the lands of Humera and Welkait from the region of Begemidir, to land extending down to the regions of Wollo, to Eritrean Kunama, to Afar lands including Assab. The final goal was to secede from Ethiopia as an independent “Republic of Greater Tigray”.

The change of heart from seceding from Ethiopia to ruling over Ethiopia gave the TPLF advantages, benefits, and profits the group never ever dreamed was even possible to dream. TPLF’s initial plans have been accomplished, even with the change from seceding from Ethiopia to ruling over Ethiopia. Ruling over Ethiopia also opened floodgate for TPLF to looting of the rest of the country. We also knew that the vision for TPLF to control Ethiopia was staged to the group, and the visionaries were Shabia leaders hopping for creating future possibilities in their minds for themselves. The Shabia vision was a strategic decision meant to create a possibility for Eritrea to share the loot of Ethiopia with TPLF for the foreseeable future. Conning TPLF settled to rule over Ethiopia, but, took Shabia’s other plans as a temporary tactical move. A few years later, TPLF reneged on sharing the loot of Ethiopia with EPLF, cut relations from Eritrea, isolated Eritrea internationally, thereby turning, the country once boasting as destined to become an economic Tiger of Africa, into an economic basket case.

Such TPLF short-term success stories has inflated egos of a tiny poverty stricken Tigray new leaders to continue to think of grandiose Tigray. Overwhelmed with flush of victories, the group’s abuse of power has reached its zenith. In one recent chat room a Tigrean responded to an Amhara saying “Don’t forget, we are Axumites, we ruled 29-45 kingdoms under our Axumite Empire. Gonder was built by Tigrayans. … We can repeat what our ancestors did, we have the capacity to rule the entire continent of Africa”.  A mere 6 percent of Ethiopians are Tigrayans. The group’s coming to power is largely result of historical accident: The opportunity the sudden end of the Cold War created; the bizarre and twisted Mengistu leadership resulting in the refusal of Ethiopian army to fight; the American endorsement etc… The Tigray region barely feeds her current population in a good harvest year and the habitats of Tigray suffer from persistent drought and starvation putting her habitually at the mercy of international food donor organizations. For the past 25 years, Tigray was able to feed her population mostly through robbing from more fertile regions of the country TPLF control at gun point. These guns are manufactured by international powers for lackeys and Tigray can’t manufacture a needle without. The people who are been robbed were patient for far too long, but are saying no more now. That makes TPLF bravado foolish, perplexing, and dangerous for their own people. The group is not really qualified to run modern nation state. In terms of educational attainment and skills, most of TPLF leaders barely graduated from college (their Chief of Staff is elementary school 4^th grade dropout. Several purchased Master’s degree papers from con-artists); almost never held regular jobs since most of them spent their youth fighting the Derg until they moved to Finfinnee. The group can’t find one qualified Tigre to replace their dead leader because every TPLF leader voted self, and finally decided to pick a Wolayta PDO, who is having a lot of trouble identifying who his real boss from within the TPLF. There is no leadership, and so the country runs by Military Fiat.

In terms of economic growth, the fact that a few mafia oligarchs from Tigray become billionaires and millionaires from stealing international donor money; land grabbing; and from multitudes of other forms of corruption is not a real measure of social mobility or economic progress for the masses. TPLF mafia controls the Ethiopian economy using two instruments. The first is REST (Relief Society of Tigray). This financial umbrella of TPLF is registered as NGO, and humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia is controlled by this group. The second is EFFORT (The Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray). EFFORT is TPLF economic empire and has monopolized the private sector of the Ethiopian economic sector to the extent never seen anywhere in the continent. TPLF can fool the donor countries, but not the citizens of that land; for the citizens know the true condition of their lot in life. The other major beneficiary of TPLF rule is Mohammed International Development Research and Organization Companies (MIDROC). MIDROC Companies are owned by the Saudi billionaire, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-Amoudi.  MIDROC Ethiopia owns 70 group and affiliate companies that are engaged in multifaceted business sectors across the country. The Saudi billionaire exploits Oromia resources, but loathed Oromo and shared none. Oromia suffered all the negative attributes associated with his myriads of mining and other businesses but none of its benefits. No employment, no infrastructure development, no schools and no hospitals for communities. Not a single Oromo is employed as head of his 30 or so corporation as a CEO. The communities experience deforestation, lethally polluted lakes, toxic, acidic water, too many very sick people and animals with symptoms related to toxicity and pollution. All the benefits went to his sponsors TPLF, and to his kin and kinfolks. The Saudi billionaire showers TPLF fascist clique with millions of dollars and with highest positions his corporations.

The national and international media trumpeted impressive double digit economic performance has not trickled down and benefitted the majority. Although Oromia is the richest region in natural resources, making a living has become unsustainable for Oromo and living in poverty has become a norm for the many. Of the 20 million people affected by drought, food insecurity and gripped by famine today, the vast majority are Oromo.

Twenty-five years of TPLF abuse of Oromo and exploitation of Oromia was reaching boiling point in Oromia even prior to the sinister master plan was leaked to the public. The master plan and the expected consequences for the very existence of Oromia and the safety of Oromo were in a grave situation. Prior to this and other plans, TPLF had disarmed Oromos from owning guns and even sharp home objects used for farming purposes that TPLF thought could be used as a weapon someday, using its Trojan horse, the OPDO. Notwithstanding, Oromo youth had enough and erupted like a volcano from every corner of Oromia telling the TPLF, Oromia belongs to Oromo, and the group should get out. The mass movement spread Oromia wide through peaceful protests, civil disobedience by students a la Gandhi’s doctrine of Satyagraha. The TPLF reaction was not surprising. True to its usual barbaric manner, ordered its killer Agazi force, illiterate Tigray farmers trained to kill without questioning, irrespective of age, gender or occupation, to go and kill students. The entire Oromia was erupting, and Agazi force was also everywhere, shooting and murdering students at point-blank. Families who joined the demonstration or went to pick their kids were not spared. Kids from as young as 5 years to elderly of 80 years to pregnant women were summary executed. The TPLF orders the national army to join the Agazi and Oromia turned into a killing field. During the first three months of demonstration, over 400 Oromos are summarily executed; tens of thousands are wounded; and no one has good estimate on how many were captured and put into prisons and concentration camps. TPLF leaders whose 1970s manifesto was to liberate Tigray, are now the freshly minted sole political and military rulers of Oromia killing Oromos at will in their own homeland for speaking out and for peacefully demonstrating.

The TPLF wrongly believe that she can silence Oromo through such savagery and terror. The Oromo youth had different ideas, very similar in sentiment to Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death” speech in 1775 for the necessity of the American revolutionary war and the primacy of individual liberty. Patrick Henry concludes his long speech with the following: “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! … Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

TPLF barbaric acts in Oromia was a reminder of Apartheid era in South Africa during anti-apartheid era demonstrations.  Nevertheless, it could not stop the Oromo from continuing to peacefully demonstrating and refusing to surrender. The bravery  and total repudiation of unarmed Oromo in the midst of this carnage facing TPLF fascist military force bare hand was never seen in that land. The courage mothers who lost their young, telling the enemy to get out of Oromia was exemplary for other families and praiseworthy by those who are facing similar circumstances. Jim Morrison once wrote that “There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.” That “something bigger than oneself” for Oromo youth is love of Oromia; dignity and honor of Oromoness; breaking the back of marauding Tigray thugs raiding and looting and killing innocent Oromo; the determination and commitment to free Oromo; and the actualization of free and liberated Oromia.

Oromia is the most welcoming of non-Oromo and hosts millions of residents of all national groups in that empire. Unfortunately, those non-Oromo residents inside Oromia did not join Oromo uprising in appreciable numbers. Still, Oromos protected all residents, while shedding their own blood, thinking of tomorrow and manifesting Oromo wisdom of welcoming and defending others even under environment of uncertainty–wisdom not to allow the enemy from dividing peoples. This wisdom of welcoming and defending others while defending also oneself, is ingrained in the Oromo being; an outcome of Oromo cultural practices lasting thousands of years. But, such benevolence practices have always been a double edge sword for the Oromo. Among non-Oromos flocking into Oromia to make a living; some respectfully share in what Oromia has to offer and are grateful, while others also happy at making a good living, behave ungrateful, use, abuse, and exploit Oromia, while detesting and despising the very people that welcomed them. For the past 130 years, Oromia has been victimized as a result of its open culture of welcoming these latter groups, some forced others willingly. Defending non-Oromos inside Oromia during the past mass upraising still is wise and commendable, considering the TPLF effectively used to hang onto power through divide-and-conquer, even as some of these residents continue to be apathetic or even hostile at Oromo upraising.

By early March, TPLF knew that it can’t control Oromia through its surrogate OPDO, and all the mass killings, beating, pounding and clobbering and the torturing of those arrested can’t silence the Qeerroo generation. In yet another desperate move, TPLF officially put Oromia under its military rule. TPLF divides Oromia into 8 sections, and each section is to be commandeered by a military General. The governance of Oromia is under Defense Council containing 11 Generals. The council is led by the current chief of staff, Samorah Yunis. All except 2 are from Tigray; the other two include 1 Amhara and 1 Agaw. Not a single Oromo General was trust-worthy of TPLF to be included in the Defense Council that governs Oromia. According to one source, Samorah Yunis instructed his generals, with the following words: This war is about our survival; if we lose this war, it is the end of us (TPLF). Samorah is right, his group has done so much damage to the country, so much theft, too many lies, and exerted unrestrained abuse of power becoming one of the most hated in that country.

Opting for TPLF Generals to run Oromia did not come as a big surprise for Oromo nationalists, for they have always known that Oromia has always been under TPLF military and security occupation and OPDO is/was nothing but a façade used for hoodwinking the public and for international consumption. Prior to direct military rule, TPLF had established a sophisticated spy network where by one person is assigned to shadow and report on five persons deemed to be suspects of opposing its rule and for labelling such persons terrorist. The spy network spread to every facet of life including schools, religious institutions, peasant associations, urban associations, and to overseas. Also, prior to the direct military rule, any grievance by any Oromo is considered as OLF conspiracy, and OLF is labelled as a “terrorist” organization. Therefore, Oromo grievances and legitimate demands were branded as terrorist conspiracies under TPLF rule and are charged under the Anti-Terrorist Proclamation law. In essence, today’s Oromia wide movement for their right to self- determination makes all Oromo terrorists. That also explains why Oromo Generals in TPLF army were not included in the Defense Council, because they are terrorist suspects.

With the institution of Defense Council to govern Oromia, in a nutshell, a group of Tigray college-age-youth of the 1970s, whose aim was to liberate poverty stricken Tigray, not only liberated Tigray, but are crowning themselves as the 21^st century colonial power of Ethiopia.  The question then become, for how long can this tiny group of semi-literate gun tooting gang continue to behave this way?  Many a times in history, twisted leaders form political parties aimed at domination of others. Adolf Hitler of the Nazi party, one-time Austrian vagabond who rose to be the dictator of Germany, came up with a bizarre plan to rule the world. Hitler was able to subdue many nations, defied successfully and humiliated some of the greatest powers of Europe. At the end though, he brought calamity to his nation. He was destroyed and Germany was destroyed, for he unleashed forces of hatred throughout the world. In Italy, another fascist rose. Mussolini rose in Italy and violence and territorial expansion on grounds of national or racial superiority were part of the fascist creed. Following few ventures and successes, Mussolini also met his grisly end in 1945. In the Horn of Africa, Mohamed Siad Barre of Somalia also dreamt big, and built a formidable military good enough to defeat Ethiopia’s weak army in the early 1970’s.  He advocated for Greater Somalia (Soomaaliweyn). Greater Somalia encompasses Somali-inhabited regions of the Horn of Africa including Somalia, Djibouti, Ogaden in Ethiopia, and the North Eastern Province in Kenya. Siad Barre became even more daring and decided to conquer large part of east and southern Oromia, up to the Awash River. He won temporary battles with Ethiopia, but at the end, lost the war and with that destroyed the nation state of Somalia, which only exists in name on world map, as a failed basket case territory for over 30 years. Thus, history is not on the side of leaders and groups of swashbucklers who tried to dominate others whether the motive is political domination or territorial expansion, as history of Hitler-Mussolini- Ziad Barre attest. With Western countries continuing pouring money into the coffers of TPLF, while the gang is declaring war in Oromia and others killing, torturing and herding people into concentration camps, the fate of Ethiopia under TPLF will not be that different from the counties led by previous trio–Hitler-Mussolini-Ziad Barre.

Based on the past 4 months of TPLF behavior, it is clear that TPLF does not follow or care about the norm of just war against civilians. TPLF lacks just cause for war in Oromia, and it is fighting unjustly. When TPLF soldiers attack peaceful demonstrators, pursue them beyond what is reasonable, or violate other rules of fair conduct, they commit not acts of war, but acts of murder. Civilians, who have not forfeited their rights by becoming soldiers are never permissible targets of war. International law also suggests that every individual, regardless of rank or governmental status, is personally responsible for any war crime that he might commit. War crimes tribunals are meant to address such crimes. There is no justification for TPLF to send Agazi and its military into Oromia against peaceful student demonstrators. This is clear violation of international norm and is war crime against humanity. The decision by TPLF to govern Oromia using 8 Tigre Generals is telling the world that despite what Oromos say and do, TPLF has declared war on Oromia and is ready to kill anyone who is challenging hegemony over Oromia.

The question for every Oromo then become, how to bring this very dangerous situation under control, and how to defeat this dangerous enemy called TPLF with as minimum sacrifice in life as can be achieved without compromising our rights and the right to free Oromia.

Some suggestions:

• Make Oromia ungovernable for TPLF. Oromo professionals, business persons, skilled workers, farmers, laborers, and military should join Qeerroo led revolution; Oromia roads should be cut off from any form of land transportation; Food items and consumer goods should not be sold or exchanged with TPLF and its affiliates under any condition; Oromia towns surrounding Finfinnee should block any form of transportation, particularly food items from reaching the epicenter of TPLF power. Complete blockage can choke TPLF and force residents now hesitant to rise up against TPLF. If TPLF intensifies the jailing, and murdering of our people, strategic and large infrastructure supply lines that the country can’t function without should be put out of service.

• Economic boycott. At this stage, a well-coordinated and well-planned economic boycott is the most important and most effective tool to weaken the TPLF rule over Oromia. Oromia can starve TPLF bureaucracy and army with well-coordinated economic boycott and can seriously incapacitate TPLF and its affiliates. Boycott TPLF and affiliate such as MIDROC owned companies and all its products.

• Be aware of TPLF/OPDO propaganda. TPLF will use every deceptive tactics and misinformation to silence, divide and conquer, and hoodwink the international community to hang on to power. History shows that TPLF have mastered the art of deception schooled since their guerrilla in Tigray mountains and have left the world with history of deception, some so gruesome to grasp for a civilized mind. The most important caution for our media, including print media and others is to be extra careful from putting any positive interpretation from any information that come out of TPLF media or from their Trojan horse OPDO, particularly, if it seems too good to be true; it probably is.

• Oromo political leadership role. Oromo political leaders must not repeat their past misdeeds and narrow their differences and support unconditionally the Qeerroo led revolution. Work very closely with Qeerroo leadership on several levels to find permanent solution to the quest for Oromo freedom and for the right of Oromo to its inalienable right to self-determination.

• The Oromo diaspora must intensify its diplomatic and advocacy work in an organized form more efficiently by agreeing on consistent non-contradictory talking points. With objective, reliable and effective advocacy, TPLF can be internationally isolated and her source of financial support that has sustained the group so far will dry up.

• Form alliances where possible. Serious and honest discussions should start with all regions in Ethiopia, including those who support us, are neutral, and those who disagree with our stated political objectives. Continue to assure every non-Oromo citizen residing inside Oromia that Oromo struggle for freedom is freedom for all; it is against TPLF rule and by no means targeting non-Oromo residents. The great tradition of protecting our non-Oromo sisters and brothers residing and making their living inside Oromia should continue and TPLF tactics of divide and conquer should be watched and exposed at the spot. Based on past practices, creating division and animosity among the different nations and nationalities has been the tool TPLF has effectively used to rule so far.

• Never negotiate from position of weakness. There should not be any negotiation with TPLF while she is pointing a gun at our head, at our families in our homes, neighborhoods, and fatherland. The precondition for any negotiation is for TPLF occupation forces to vacate Oromia and by encamping the army and sending Agazi back to Tigray willingly or be forced. Any form of negotiation under the current condition by any group should be rejected.

• Oromo army and security. Oromia police, security, and those in TPLF controlled army should join the fight against TPLF counterparts. Not doing so amounts to fighting their own people in defense of and to sustain children of Tigray to continue to enslave Oromo and control Oromia resources.

• OPDO-the Trojan Horse. Oromo can defeat TPLF inside Oromia in a flush if the OPDO was not guiding Agazi inside our neighborhood. The OPDO leadership includes Oromo traitors, Quisling, sellouts, some mercenaries. In that sense, Oromia is suffering as much from self-inflicted wound as from TPLF. There are also Oromo nationalists who are in OPDO to make a living and to feed their families. The role of Qeerroo is to use the good against the bad and take decisive action against the bad.

• Self-defense. The TPLF move to occupy Oromia militarily has technically ended peaceful resistance alone requiring other more complex combination of civilian and military engagement by OLF. OLF should intensify engaging TPLF army that is occupying Oromia. Hundreds of thousands of Oromo youth are ready and waiting for training and to engage the TPLF army and the Agazi killer force that is terrorizing the entire unarmed civilian population of Oromia.

Oromia is at crossroads. TPLF will use and say anything and everything literally to survive now it is clear that Oromo from every corner of Oromia has risen, is unafraid, and determined to free Oromia. TPLF is also cognizant that it is hated, despised and detested by an average Oromo for their despicable act of terror in Oromia-up to an estimated 500 peaceful demonstrators shot and killed at point blank in just 2 years; 400 in just 3 months. Dividing Oromia into 8 sections and trying to control using 8 Tigre Generals is a desperate act. We also know that trying to militarily occupy people who hate you and despise you did not work well even for Super-Powers. It is hard to imagine this working for TPLF; a group who do not have basic knowledge and understanding of the very most basic and universal human values; and distinguished for being the most primeval blood thirsty gun tooting clowns who think this is 18th century.

So far, our youth have achieved what was once unimaginable, and continue to rock the foundation of TPLF political power and economic infrastructure. In the process, many have lost their lives, thousands are severely wounded and locked-up in TPLF concentration camps. We understand that this is a very high price to pay. We also learn from others experience that freedom is everything it’s cracked up to be. Freedom is not free and does not come cheap. It requires dedication, fortitude, and great sacrifice. Notwithstanding, it really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. If we don’t take all the risk necessary to free Oromia, we risk losing even more. Our cause is a just cause, and no matter how hard TPLF plot evil, it can never quite match up to the power of our good cause. Try as she might, when everything said and done, TPLF will never keep the control of Oromia, and will be defeated decisively, for the young generation shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, and overcome any obstacle until Oromia is free and whole.

About the Author: Albasa Dagaga is a researcher and resides in Washington DC Metro area. You can reach him on albasa1@verizon.net

By Teferi Fufa

I was listening to a news report coming out of Ethiopia today. The live reports sounded like horror stories written cleverly for their effects on the psyche of the reader. The images accompanying the reports were so gruesome they make one sick to his/her stomach.

It is well documented that freedoms of expression, assembly, and dissent are unknown in Ethiopia. Consequently foreign Human rights groups are banned from operating in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has its own human rights group that is operating under severe restrictions: reporting only on what it was asked to report, interviewing only those it is allowed to interview, covering only the period of time it is allowed to cover.

Amidst mounting criticism of its heavy-handed dealings with peaceful protesters and increasing pressures from the international community to be fair and transparent in its dealings with opposition, the Ethiopian government promised that its human rights group (Human Rights Council of Ethiopia) will conduct a thorough investigation. Accordingly it gave the human rights group directives to investigate the recent protests and the damages caused.

The investigation was completed and the report is out. The group carefully avoided harsh words and judgement focusing on row data. The names, pictures, addresses of murdered protesters along with dates of their death, where and by whom they were killed. Due to the limited area of investigation and refusal of some interviewees to give information for fear of reprisal, the number of dead is significantly lower than available in other reports (Only one tenths of the protest area was covered in the investigation). Yet, the sheer number of death and the gruesome manner in which the victims died in the hands of government security forces make this report more damning than any accusation leveled at the government by outside parties. So far there is no response to this report by government officials; except that rampant killings continue at a rapid pace.

Meanwhile, the pressing issue, be it in the international community or organized groups of Ethiopians, is not the loss of Oromo lives but how Ethiopia can be saved. “What does Oromo protest mean for Ethiopian Unity?”, queried on report.  Consistent with this line of thinking was a very well-written and moving poem I noted as it was read on face book today. The author recalls the heroics of old Abyssinia and appeals to the old bravado to concur the present and reinstall the glorious past. Considering all this I began to ask myself, “Is Ethiopia worth saving?”

I fully understand the need to resort back to ones history to find reason and courage to face current reality. I also have my own understanding of this Abyssinian persona and what it means in the context of Ethiopia and the diverse peoples held within the confines of the Ethiopian empire.  It is at this juncture that I started thinking about the progression of evil happenings in the empire from the very beginning to the current carnage.

It is from the journals of Krapf and Isenberg, protestant missionaries, in the first half of the 19th century that the burning and looting of Oromia which took the shape of outright robbery was first published. Because Sululta is part of the ongoing conflict with regards to Addis Ababa expansion, let us look at what Krapf observed in 1942.

The Gallas on the neighboring mountains are called Sululta Gallas. Their neighbors in the south east are called Finfini Gallas, from the high mountains of the same denomination.

The plain of Sululta is exceedingly rich in grass and waters; but there is no wood. I observed here as in other places, that the Gallas leave their plains to their horses, sheep, cows, &c., which they love like their children; while they themselves seek their maintenance by cultivating the mountains. In doing so they are able to bring up a better cavalry than perhaps any other nation.

As the Gallas of Sululta did not pay their tributes in horses and cows, the king gave orders for all their villages to be destroyed by fire. I did not care much to know the names of the Galla villages, as they are destroyed almost on every expedition. The soldiers take all they can get in the houses, and then burn them. As the harvest was over, the king could not, as he generally does, burn the fruits; but much wheat was destroyed with the houses. The Gallas are foolish, I have no doubt, because they could prevent the king from burning their houses, as the tribute which he requires from them is very little.

Sahle Selassie conducted three such raids yearly, according to reports from the same missionaries.

It is worth noting here that the comment, “The Gallas are foolish.” Has proven to be predictive of European response to Oromo suffering as the result of Abyssinian onslaught including the current Oromo protest.

Following Shale Selassie, came Menelik’s full-fledged and barbaric attack that included not only looting and burning, but also mass killing, mutilations of men and women, capturing large numbers of people and selling them off to slavery, taking over lands and subjecting owners into serfdom.

Inheriting and expanding on Sahele Sellassie’s strategy, Menelik carried on more menacing and more extensive expeditions into Oromo regions. The purpose of the expedition is no more to pillage communities and return but to occupy, stay, and suck dry the resource of the Oromo like a deadly parasite.

Here is how Alexander Bulatovich, the Russian army adviser to one Of Menelik’s generals wrote in his journals during 1897/1898.

Regions that did not want to submit voluntarily Menelik turned over to his most talented commanders, whom he let have the opportunity to conquer them and “feed off” them. However, once these regions had been completely destroyed by war, they could not supply provisions for all the troops that had conquered them, which gave rise to the conquest of neighboring lands which were still free. Thus little by little, the domain of Menelik grew, and the borders of Abyssina expanded.

Bulatovich further observed,

The dreadful annihilation of more than half of the population during the conquest took away from the Galla all possibility of thinking about any sort of uprising. And the freedom-loving Galla who didn’t recognize any authority other than the speed of his horse, the strength of his hand, and the accuracy of his spear, now goes through the hard school of obedience.

There are horrific stories one is told as a child about death and destruction of Oromo communities that took place as invading hordes of Abyssinians rampaged through Oromia. My own life began after the empire was fully established and the purpose of its formation, good or bad, was being manifest. Hence, let me just mention a few incidences of cruel deeds and evil happenings I observed as one imperial Ethiopian undertaker after another did its best to uphold Ethiopia and preserve its glory, as my perspective and valuation of Ethiopia cannot avoid the influences of these events.

I was a freshman at the then Haile Selassie I University. New to campus, new to the city, new to the large number of students, I was excited and scared at the same time. One night after dinner there was a big meeting. I was not sure who was in charge, but there were forceful speeches and denunciations of the emperor. The main theme was “land to the tillers.” To be sure there were supporters of the emperor who warned of God’s wrath upon those who would speak ill of the emperor. I remember a mob attack upon one of those supporters of the emperor. The next morning things seemed tense, at least to me, and immediately after breakfast we gathered in the middle of the campus. The leaders with their megaphones announced the direction. We were to live the Amist Kilo campus and walk up to the Sidist Kilo campus to join with the protesters there. We had just started chanting when sounds of gun-fire interrupted us. A sudden commotion ensued. I do not remember how I got out of the campus, but there were many who fell down and got run over by the crowed as the result of the stampede. One of the leaders was shot dead.

As I was running across the street I could see strange looking armed people in rusty uniforms and hard hats running after students. Later I learned that they were the meder tor (the ground army of the emperor). Some of them were at the gate clubbing students while others were waiting outside the walls of the fence ready to intercept those who were jumping over the fence. I heard that one student who was climbing over the fence in a hurry fell onto the waiting bayonet of one of those beastly troops. I ran all the way to my friend’s apartment where I stayed in hiding for weeks.

For a number of days following that, security officers of the emperor were busy rounding up students, loading them onto trucks, and shipping them out of the city. No one knew where they were going or what was to happen to them. Students who were from the city or those who had close relatives in the city knew where to hide. But those from the country side who did not have friends residing in the city were easy prey for the merciless security forces. (Yes, even back then the source of our insecurity was Ethiopian security forces.) For a number of weeks there was no public transportation leaving Addis Ababa, making it difficult for the unfortunate souls to escape and ensuring a maximum harvest for the terror inflicting “security forces” of the emperor.

After hiding for about six weeks I was informed that buses were starting to leave Addis Ababa. So I left one early morning and went to the bus station. I boarded the bus for home and waited for the news of the University opening. After what felt like ages, in reality about two months, I was back in Addis Ababa. I ran into a high school friend of mine. He looked very skinny. This was a young man who was always upbeat and seemed to be bothered by nothing. This time he looked angry, withdrawn, and unexcitable. I invited him to join me for coffee and he, reluctantly, accepted my invitation.

I learned from this friend what happened to some of those students who were captured and loaded on trucks. My friend began to explain.

We were packed on the open back of the lorry. We travelled all that day and all of that night. We were brought to the base of a steep mountain. We were hungry, thirsty, and dirty. Then the security forces lined us up and ordered us to remove our shoes. They tied our feet together at the ankle and tied our hands in the back. Then they ordered us to climb the mountain. Since we could not take steps up, we had to hop. It was hard to balance as our hands were tied in the back. You can imagine how hard it was to stay on your feet. It was even harder to get up after you fell down. As the sharp rocks cut into our bare skins and the prickly bur clovers and other thorny plants poked holes in our skins we were bloodied. To add insult to injury, the barbaric torturer mocked you if you showed a sign of weakness and cried upon falling down and being unable to get up. He would kick you and say, “What is the matter woman! I thought you were the tough guy who was ready to take over the government.”

After getting kicked, beaten, spat on, and insulted several times you make it to the top. Then he would hurry you back down. This time, when you fall, you cannot stop from rolling down. It was a trip to hell and the devil was right there behind you, torturing you.

Listening to my friend, I was even more frightened than before. But still I had to go on being a student, dangerous and endangered at the same time. Yes, being a student is still a dangerous proposition in Ethiopia.

Fast forward 15 years. This time I am in the United States. Oromo refugees are all over the Horn of Africa. I find myself advocating for Oromo refugees: helping in resettlement, helping with relief aid, and advocating for them in every way I could. This effort brought me to the Sudan.

After spending a couple of days in Khartoum, I took the bus to go to where there were a large number of Oromo refugees. I got off the bus in a small village, Sinja, where the Oromo Relief association had a presence. There were not many refugees there. But I was able to find a man who looked much older than he actually was. I spent a couple of hours talking to him and learning about him.

This man had a very normal beginning in a rural Oromia village. He was the oldest of many brothers and sisters. He married early and had a baby girl he Called Shukkaare. He was forcibly recruited into the militia by the Dergue government. In his unit, there were mostly people like him, people who did not volunteer to be there, people who did not speak Amharic, people who had never been to school. It was not a training but a preparation for death. To drive the message home that you are there to die, there was a game of initiation they played. In this game, one unlucky recruit would be chosen. The chosen recruit would be asked to dig his own grave. Once the hole is dug deep enough, the recruit would be made to stand in the grave. Another recruit would be asked to stand at a given distance and aim. On signal he would shoot. Sometimes it would take two or more bullets to kill the unfortunate wretch. On occasions the shooter had blanks and the action was made to just scare the victim and give the onlookers to have something to laugh about. It was a hell on earth. This is where you learn to hate yourself and hate everyone else.

Shukkare’s father was lucky enough to survive and return home for a short time. A stay home however, was for him, not safer than being in the militia. Shortly after arriving home he was accused of having ties with the Oromo Liberation Front and put in prison. It was while he was talking about his prison experience that he literally broke down. His pain was so visible that I could not hold back my tears. After listing to all the different torture methods that are now familiar like, beating with electric wire on the bare skin of the back, beating the soles of the feet with electric wire, tying ones hand in the back and the feet together with a rope and suspending the person in an awkward way for hours, dipping head underwater, mock execution, and etc., he came to one where he could not say. He just froze. His face turned dark. He stooped down and started scratching the dirt with a twig. Then he mumbled, “Man, man, what is left of a man?”

I did not pursue that topic further. I did not want to pain him more by asking him to explain what he meant. I surmised that it must have been what I had heard of elsewhere, namely, the torture involving sexual organs. He might have been impotent as the direct result of the torture he suffered in prison. One must never suffer such degradation.

Fast forward another quarter of a century. The TPLF assumes power in Ethiopia. Land grab is the newest method of Oromo expropriation and subjugation.  Oromo protest is in full swing. Thanks to the social media, we see the methods of torture and the rising level of barbarity by the government forces daily. The government denies all reports of foreign human rights organizations. The resource starved and legally restricted internal human rights organization referred to above just released its report. Not only did it confirm what had been alleged by the international human rights organizations but it listed names, ages, locations, pictures of the victims as well as who has done the killing. The government continues its terror on the Oromo people.

Abyssinians built their tolerance for this inhuman treatment while they were inflicting it on others, mainly Oromos. Here and there they do inflict it on each other. Now the TPLF is doing it to the Amharas as well. The Amharas are outraged that this is happening to them. They boast that it is not natural that this happen to them and they refer back to history to muster up courage and face the enemy. The Oromo on the other hand have been denouncing this history. We can never be proud of this Ethiopian history. We cannot leave with humiliation forever either. So the answer to the question, “Is Ethiopia worth saving?” is, I guess, “yes,” and no. “Yes,” for those who want to continue the history, the resulting conflict, the rapid descent into darkest depth of barbarity that we see in Ethiopia today. And “no,” for those who want a new arrangement of freedom and autonomy? The new arrangement will and must recognize past wrongs, build new relationships, and start anew.

There are those who confuse the opposition to Abyssinian hegemony over Oromia with opposition to Abyssinians. Throughout the history of Abyssinian expansion into Oromia it is the Abyssinisan elites and the military who inflicted the suffering on the Oromo. It is only the Abyssinian system of aggression that was the problem. However, Abyssinians, either as individual or as organized communities never recognized the problem of the Oromos or empathized with their condition. While only a small number of elite Abyssinisans benefit from the system of aggression, the large majority of them are left with the psychological benefit of knowing that they may be poor and destitute but, thank god, they are not Oromos. How much this psychological benefit is worth is an open question. Even right now, there are many peasants in Tigray who are starving while a handful of Tigray elites are enriching themselves by robbing Oromos. Oromo opposition to Abyssinisan aggression is an act of self-defense that is aimed at ridding Oromia of the enemy. Abyssinisans who are not in Oromia as parts and parcel of the system of continued aggression do not have anything to worry about. In the absence of aggression, the possibility of neighborly relations based on mutual respect and benefit can and must be established. For now, the pressing need for Oromos is freedom and self-determination.

One might ask if there is a possibility of an alliance between the colonized Oromo and the neglected Abyssinians. Such an alliance, however, requires the awareness of the neglected Abyssinians of their true condition, that they are not represented by their elites and that their conditions would be better in an environment of peace. The question then is who would lead the campaign for awareness? Oromos have more pressing needs. Abyssinian groups who are organized and are looking for allies, at present, seem to be those who wish to take their turn and continue the Abyssinian tradition of aggression. These elements are the ones calling for Ethiopian unity, often at the cost of freedom of the colonized peoples of the South the majority which are the Oromo. For the Oromo, the primary objective is not to maintain Ethiopia any form but to regain the humanity of the occupied and dehumanized peoples. To this effect Oromos must assert their own rights and become masters of their own destiny first and then worry about how to relate to others.

Teferi Fufa

3/15/16

By Berhanu Kelbessa

My point here is to state few ideas I have concerned about it and understood its most solution for our most chronic socio-economic and political problems and people’s lives trapped under many recurring, permanent and also more serious and dangerous conditions as I think. Concerned, because of the member of the society and understanding the problems could follow the omission or undermining the core points toward the continuation of conflicts besides other major factors left unstated here.

While desiring the attention of, particularly, youth from different ethnicities, in Ethiopia, there is one question which mostly comes to my mind; the way we all failed to focus to basic reasons or the core points or problems of something often drowned us in to whatever ideas of only our immediate group and the status quo, regardless of its benefits in multi-directions. In other words, instead of focusing to the right conditions, alternatives, better ideas; mostly when we limit our-selves to factors which can affect us a group or as general due to limited choices and interaction or ways of bounded ideas. So, taking the better sides, reasonably, which is wrong or right, in the scope of our experience and reason based on facts, time and results and also neutrality to groups but dedication to useful solutions or for better conditions and averting risks deserve leading priority; which seeks keeping self at one’s or others’ places during judgments, and more focusing to the reasons which cannot be denied in terms of deep and reasonable demands, peace and development; though sometimes to please our friends or groups or to keep the status quo, we get restrained from supporting best alternatives or solutions than negatives and damaging conditions effected to risky situations.

Among the very common natural and social factors where the world population experiencing both common and differences, when we come to down to ours as its part as a continent, calling Africa could give more sense to all Africans; which is not racism or narrowness, and it because beyond the name, all Africans share and know what the life looks there and how they have lived and experienced than the others; similarly, following concerns for its shared values it could create significant bounding conditions one cannot escape at all. Then, region, neighbors/bordering/ countries, the country, and then internal regions or states to villages or families have both common binding conditions and specific others where some factors could contribute to the expectation of most or opposite; in different ways.

When we limit our ideas only to group’s and in worse conditions, oppose the way other groups practiced and experienced and demanded, clearly its opposing reality and isolating self from others and the base of the problem could be ours than those whom we oppose unreasonably; in terms of creating real solutions. under the condition where it’s not only indicates continuous risks, ignorance, or intolerance and no solution; and moreover, sticking to impossibility in non-legitimate ways is only to wage extra cost for the reason force cannot bring lasting solutions; but dialogue, understanding and  effective or unbiased  decision.

In our experience, contrary to reason, when following only pre-conceived, one side thought to interpret   the whole without proper attention to others among many factors, when common and shared-values left unvalued and the miss of that significant factors sometimes lead us to wrong process or duties or opposing other groups than fulfilling our limitations while judging the whole, based only on our own immediate group stances. For example, when beyond pressuring each other, discriminating and forcing to follow ill order of power than mutual understanding, usually it results to not only wrongs but also losses; as to the lives of many children at the current incidents. Besides the loss of our brothers and children’s lives, there is much dangerous conditions which many cannot visualize; dangers which creating unlimited gap, differences, hate and ideal isolation; and beyond all fallacy to tangible proximities and an invitation to more strange conditions and  problems. In reality, the big problem is not the conflicts/fighting / we have faced at different times but the way we think, analyze, understand and decide to avert problems or work for solutions. For example, at old time, the now Oromia region grand and great grandparents, including mine, had traveled long to fight at the region now called Tigray, or North, as known, as said, “…there were because unknown enemies, few of them crossed the river/sea/ and too many not yet, once crossed, the fate of kids and women who can neither fight nor escape had known; so, they must be there first; first to reach for the purpose of that,  to save; ” in terms of priority besides the main goal;  where at today’s view, we exaggerated the gap than our real knowledge and experiences while treating each other as if there is no least concerns or conditions; to give full attention and understanding, or in dedicating to search for realities beyond our scope of thoughts. As wrongly but often limited to “Only I’m right and you are wrong;” without even understanding the causes and realities of the other. Then, thinking back, the then times children or  kids from northern part of the country could be the fathers of current Ethiopian officials or even few officials among the group responsible to the current situation failed to devise means to avert the cause to the loss of children’s lives at this age and time.

All these are the way we create wider gap than realities, and/or consider in weakness/limitations/ as heroism, modernism, wisdom or strength. Though base/root/ less conflicts could happen both in a group and between groups but doesn’t take time or go further as the one has had fundamental cause.

The left importance of this idea is for one basic reason; not to be silent and guided with wrong status quo, especially for future generations in saving time for better actions, to limit causalities, not to give extra time and chance for our fundamental enemies-hanger, disease, illiteracy /ignorance/, backwardness; and also chronic opposing ideas, lack of freedom, cowardice character, and blindness to root of solutions as well as in identifying both our shared values and differences to fix the problems whether we like it or not.

Further, current problems, as I understood, the two conditions in our country, though the rest are non-debatable, invites continuous blood shade and legitimate demand from the enquirer(nationally  & internationally)  while improperly undermined and exist the core of the problem depend on more power(gun) and less on the status-quo without any better reason for the solution.

The idea of National language, AFAAN OROMO where English-common for all, to assume, to take and to legalize soon, could be seen as difficult to many at this time; while one of the best advantage for all in different ways if properly seen without limited and narrow ideas. In fact it’s expected that many  can understand its positive effect but fear to express self, just to follow friend’s or  group’s ideas which has existed and followed for longer; during and when emotion controls reason. So, that kinds of views and restriction or self-imposed limit to reality impacts to unnecessary results and solutions. If one always thinks or worries about breaking down the nation in to parts, at least need to think sometimes if it can be wider or no change at all too; as far as both are imaginations which exist before the start of imperative actions to better conditions for all.

Similarly, REFERENDUM,  the concept that taken as curse to not few persons but curing factors in asserting current and future presence or absence of conflicts or root of conflicts, must be welcomed by all and together, work to better understandings and in eliminating most factors which expected, if exists, would create what have created hesitation. Obliviously, most ideas have been the reflection of myth, media, some politicians, and many older and educated persons we wrongly understood as persons with higher level of political knowledge (theory and practice); in whatever field and wherever country they have lived; while, undeniably, the key factor is the way of people’s life, history, the feeling which has already created-there; where one behave as the protector and the other is as claimer.

In simple words, reasonable demand needs matching response or solutions in the way it avoids the cause of the problems in preferable ways, matured, concerned and more for the best result to deny any means to create related problems. Unless and otherwise, providing clear message to others that if it is undermined, left only one possibility; using force; where as seen from experience, for only the reason of rigidity and undermining the voice of the mass, which is primary self-defeat to the group, and ready to surrender only if gun rules the case; the second and would be second defeat including expected maximum loss of lives and materials.  In fact, the other fear seems acceptable in this case could be single decision or conclusion; for individuals who believe in domination and subjugation, unable to analyze concerns of others and its benefits for all who considers history and the satisfaction of the majority in self-expressing, feeling and decision making. This single factor, which is by far the most expected solution even to win over all groups fighting for the cause on one hand and asserting the mass to decide about its right as the most important deed, and also for that matter, setting the date, could happen as expected and  it will  automatically generate the feelings of  immediate freedom, doubtless or liberated mind to better understandings or being free from the belief of imposition of others pressure, ideas, and fake more concerns than others;  but independently as a person and as the group for equality, dignity, liberty and cooperation under free spirit contributes unexpected achievements for stronger nation; up on the will and interest of the people.

Berhanu Kelbessa

Seattle, WA

By: Assefa Mitike Janko[1]

Land Grabbing

How much land has been acquired by the Indian enterprises in Ethiopia? What crops do they plan to grow? Source: Oakland Institute, February 2013

Although the global land grabbing literature focuses on large-scale land transfer to foreign and domestic ‘investors’ in developing countries, the situation in Oromia is quite different. Land grabbing in Oromia was started in the late 19^th century when the Abyssinian empire conquered the Oromo nation through relentless military conquest that some scholars refer to internal colonization. Following the conquest, Oromo lost their land, natural resources, autonomy, and sovereignty, and were eventually subjected to imperial oppression under successive regimes in the country.

Despite changes in political system in Ethiopia in the last one hundred years, successive regimes in the country followed similar policiesin expropriating Oromo land and resources. Land remained to be source of political power, economic wealth and social prestige for Ethiopian political elites–the Tigrayan and Amhara elites. One of the root causes of the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution, for example, was the issue of the archaic feudal land tenure system that made the majority of Ethiopian peasants landless in their own country. Despite the land reform policy of the military regime, Oromo peasants remained prey to the exploitative state apparatus because of the nationalization of land. Land is now the sole property of the TPLF and its cronies. In the last decade, almost above 90% of land for investment in central Oromia was sold to TPLF incubated millionaires and foreigners. The indigenous people lost not only their land but also the right to live and exist as human beings. TPLF’s crony capitalism will never benefit the poor. TPLF has realized that land is the most important means of exploitation and disempowering people across the country. That is why it is snatching land in every corner of the country. The Addis Ababa Master Plan that has ignited nationwide protest is another grand scheme to dislocate poor peasants from their ancestral land without compensation. So many families have already been victims of the grand scheme and lost their livelihood. These people were offered nothing but slavery on their own land. Moreover, the floriculture industries are other instruments state exploitation and displacement of Oromo farmers.

Land for floriculture industry was grabbed from Oromo farmers in the fertile central Oormia like Bishoftu, Holeta, Sendafa, Batu, Woliso, Modjo, Alem Gena, Sebeta and Ginchi.  Farmers who were displaced from their land for the floriculture have now become daily labourersin the floriculture industries with very low wage, and exposed to sever health impacts as a result of the chemicals.

The sector was blamed for most of its social and environmental shortcoming in Ethiopia (Gudeta and Degytnu, 2012). Many Ethiopian environmental activists still argue that environmental policies or standards and labor regulations are not implemented within the industry. One of the issues which floriculture industries in Oromia blamed is unsafe working conditions of floriculture farm laborers associated to massive chemical usage of the industry. In this piece of work, I will elaborate on the impacts of the Floriculture Industries on ecological and environmental sustainability, health conditions and livelihood aspects of Oromo farmers taking the case of this destructive project around Ziway area, Oromia.

Ecological and Environmental Destruction

Lake Ziway is the major source of irrigation for all floriculture industries in this area. Water is intensively extracted from this Lake by the commercial farms. These industries never pay a penny for using that much volume of water, either for regional or federal governments. Besides, they discharge their wastewater back to the Lake untreated. Local people use Lake Ziway as a source of livelihood; fishing is a common practice. In other words, the aquatic lives, in general in this ecosystem are being endangered, and some fish species are now at the verge of extinction.

When I was in Ziway Fishery Resources Research Center it was our day-to-day experience to observe the death of volume fish around the lakeshore. We tried to bring the case to the attention of higher officials including Oromia bureau of agriculture and the federal Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of water and energy. Although they came to observe the scene, they were not willing to stop the discharge of the chemical, which is released to the lake without any treatment. I remember, one higher official from Oromia Bureau of Agriculture once told us that he can’t intervene in the Floriculture industries because these projects are connected to higher politicians in the TPLF party. As our mandate we proposed to conduct research on the lake to stop fish mass killing. Unfortunately, the higher officials refused by saying “it’s a political issue”. That means, they are hiding the information from the community because if the communities know the situation happening in the lake pollution, fish death due to chemical and using banned chemical for pesticide, which have impact serious on human health, all people would protest. In this regard, OPDO (Oromo People’s Democratic Organization) that is the surrogate to the TPLF has never been working for the interest of the Oromo; rather it appeases its boss – the TPLF.

Health Impact

Flower growers are among the heaviest users of agricultural chemicals, including pesticides that are suspected of being among the most toxic. The chemical has three categories. The first category is the most dangerous/banned worldwide for health, which is forbidden to use it. But, all of the flower farms are using chemicals without considering workers health and bees’ colony, which is popular around the flower farm area. Due to the toxic of chemical spray workers have serious illness, die and for the bee colonies same too. When supervisors come from higher officials to check the situation, they are not willing to hear the workers even for insurance compensation. Workers union in the farm is almost forbidden.

Socio economic impact

TPLF are evicting and dispossessing Oromo farmers in the name of flower farm. Just imagine how many Oromo farmers and their families have to be evicted, displaced and killed for generations to come through land grabbing. Child labor is one of the most sensitive issues in other world. But in Ethiopia it is not an issue. Especially, in floriculture industry high child abuse with very low payment. It is because of the government officially announcing that labor cheap. Due to this even the payment is not enough for basic need.

Conclusion

This case is one from many cases of Oromo people’s harassments. Land grabbing in Oromia is the ongoing process from the previous system. But, in this dictatorial TPLF government, it is a matter of grabbing plus killing or torturing the people on their own land. The solution to ensure Oromo’s right to land ownership, economic empowerment and political autonomy is to struggle against this oppressive regime in unity. The current Oromo Protest is a wonderful platform that has brought Oromo political organisations and activists in unity.

[1] The writer of this case is Masters Student at Van Hall Larestein University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands. 

Tom Lantos Commission Briefing, April 19, 2016
2255 Rayburn House Office Building

Statement by Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute

Source: Oakland Institute

Congressman Ellison, members of the Tom Lantos Commission, thank you for this opportunity to provide an update on land-related human rights issues to you.

Ethiopia—one of the poorest countries—is the world’s fifth largest recipient of development aid, and the largest in Africa. United States is the largest bilateral donor to Ethiopia. In 2014 Ethiopia received $665 million in US aid.

Ethiopia has been hailed as a nation in “renaissance,” praised for its economic growth and partnership on key US strategic interests. But missing from this narrative is that its so called “development” is based on widespread human rights violations, forced evictions and the displacement of millions of people from their traditional lands, the criminalization of dissent, and the misuse of the 2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. The land grab in Oromo, which triggered recent protests, is a country-wide phenomenon.

The enormous financial support Ethiopia gets from its international donors has been essential in funding the government’s development strategy, as outlined in its 2010 Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). A cornerstone of USAID activity in Ethiopia was support for the GTP, a key element of which was the relocation of 1.5 million people from areas targeted for industrial plantations under the government’s “villagization” scheme. These displacements have continued without the free, prior, and informed consent of the impacted populations, and when communities resist, they are forcibly removed by means of violence, rape, imprisonment, intimidation, political coercion, and the denial of humanitarian assistance, including food aid.

These forced resettlements have operated in tandem with Ethiopia’s land-investment policies. In early 2008, the Ethiopian government embarked on the process to award millions of hectares (ha) of land to foreign and national agricultural investors at rock-bottom prices. Page 30 of the 2015 Investment Guide to Ethiopia, a document from the Ethiopia Investment Commission, states that there are nearly 11.55 million ha of potential land available for farming.

While the human rights consequences of the EPRDF’s political hegemony are indisputable and acknowledged by USAID and the State Department, recognition of the human rights violations resulting from the government’s forced removals has largely been missing. On-the-ground research since 2008 by the Oakland Institute, has exposed the systemic and coerced resettlement of indigenous communities and has documented specific accounts of beatings, unlawful arrests, and rape at the hands of the Ethiopian Defense Force, all used to enforce the government’s villagization program.

In a 2013 report, the Oakland Institute documented how officials from USAID heard first-hand accounts of forced resettlements and human rights abuses from villagers and still came to the conclusion that the allegations of forced removals were “unsubstantiated.” In spite of hearing from people directly impacted by them, USAID officials said that no evidence exists to make the links between their programs and the practices of the Ethiopian government.

The USAID officials ignored their initiative, “Ethiopia: Land Tenure and Administration Program” (ELAP), targeting high-potential investment areas and facilitating land transactions with the stated purpose of facilitating investment. Today Land Administration to Nurture Development (LAND) has replaced ELAP, and is assisting the federal and regional state governments in implementing policies and plans that will facilitate and encourage investment for so called appropriate use of land for improved productivity.

US development assistance also operates through Feed the Future (FTF), which aims to make pastoralist land more productive. While FTF mentions concerns about Ethiopia’s “policy of settlement regarding pastoral peoples,” it places primary importance on increasing private sector capacity in pastoral communities as a means to development.

In September 2015, in violation of Appropriations Bills of 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016, the US Treasury voted in favor of World Bank’s new Enhancing Shared Prosperity through Equitable Services (ESPES) program in Ethiopia. ESPES replaces the Bank’s Promoting Basic Services (PBS) program, which for years has been associated with human rights abuses and the forced relocation of indigenous communities and large-scale land grabs. These issues were highlighted in a report by the World Bank’s own independent Inspection Panel in 2015. Rather than addressing the grave concerns raised about the program, the Bank, instead, launched an almost identical initiative under a new name.

Congressional laws exist to ensure that US tax payers’ dollars don’t contribute to social harm. The Commission should ask the Treasury to explain how it could ignore the Congressional mandate and disregard the protection of indigenous groups and forced displacement by voting in favor of the ESPES program.

And in the course of our work, we have seen Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation used as the tool to carry out the government’s development strategy. A recent report authored by lawyers from leading international law firms, provides an in-depth analysis of the Proclamation and shows how it is a tool of repression, designed and used by the Ethiopian Government to silence its critics.

While legitimate anti-terrorism laws exist, Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation criminalizes basic human rights, especially freedoms of speech and assembly. The law defines terrorism in an extremely broad and vague way so as to give the government enormous leeway to punish words and actions that would be perfectly legal in a democracy. It also gives the police and security services unprecedented new powers, and shifts the burden of proof to the accused. Worse still, many of those charged report having been tortured, and the so-called confessions that have been obtained as a result have been used against them at trial. Those who have been charged as terrorists under the law include newspaper editors, indigenous leaders, land rights activists, bloggers, political opposition members, and students. The Anti Terrorism laws are being used by the Ethiopian government not against the terrorists, but to curb human rights of its own citizens.

Ethiopia is one of the largest recipients of US development aid. It is imperative to ensure that efforts to reduce hunger, poverty and conflict in the East Africa are not being undermined by undemocratic and increasingly repressive development practices in Ethiopia. Congress put forward important protection in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 Appropriations Bills around our aid being used for forced displacements. It is time to follow-through with those promises, to ensure proper monitoring of the situation on the ground, and where necessary, the redirection of funds.

We recognize the need for development aid, especially during major humanitarian crises like the current drought in Ethiopia. Yet it is counterproductive if donor aid is supporting the destruction of natural resources upon which the poor directly depend, and if it enables projects that lead to human rights abuses. Current US support to the Ethiopian government—financial, political and moral—is in danger of producing exactly the opposite result from what we intend. It is enabling an authoritarian government to ignore the rights and interests of its own citizens, which can only end in violence and instability. The US Congress should undertake a serious examination of our development aid to Ethiopia, to ensure that it is not supporting political repression, and is not being funneled into land grabs that are undermining the poverty-alleviation intent of US taxpayer aid.

The European Union earlier this year passed a strong worded resolution on the human rights situation in Ethiopia. It is time for the United States to speak up for democracy and for human rights in Ethiopia.

Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director

Anuradha Mittal, founder and executive director of the Oakland Institute, is an internationally renowned expert on trade, development, human rights and agriculture issues. Recipient of several awards, Anuradha Mittal was named as the Most Valuable Thinker in 2008 by the Nation magazine.

Mittal has authored and edited numerous books and reports including (Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab; The Great Land Grab: Rush for World’s Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor; Voices from Africa: African Farmers and Environmentalists Speak out Against a New Green Revolution; 2008 Food Price Crisis: Rethinking Food Security Policies; Going Gray in the Golden State: The Reality of Poverty Among Seniors in Oakland, California; Turning the Tide: Challenging the Right on Campus; Sahel: A Prisoner of Starvation; America Needs Human Rights; and The Future in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance. Her articles and opinion pieces have been published in widely circulated newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bangkok Post, Houston Chronicle, and the Nation. Anuradha has addressed the Congress, the United Nations, given several hundred keynote addresses including invitational events from governments and universities, and has been interviewed on CNN, BBC World, CBC, ABC, Al-Jazeera, National Public Radio and Voice of America.

Anuradha is on the board and advisory committees of several non profit organizations including the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize), International Forum on Globalization, and is a member of the independent board of Ben & Jerry’s which focuses on providing leadership for Ben & Jerry’s social mission and brand integrity.

 By Tsegaye R Ararssa

1. Introduction

Oromo Honor  Dr. Trevor Trueman in Melbourne, Australia

(Addis Standard) — A lot is happening in our part of the world. The last five months have been immensely eventful. We witnessed a series of tragic events unfolding successively one after the other, each more saddening than the one preceding it. These are truly hard times. Such times signal the urgency of prudent action. Reflexive action is the imperative of the time.

Over the weekend, when I was asked to comment on the ongoing Oromo protest in Ethiopia, I chose to reflect on the Oromo pursuit of social justice and political freedom, the pursuit of what Etienne Balibar calls ‘Equaliberty.’[1] In particular, I chose to reflect on the four critical phases of the Oromo struggle for national emancipation in order to express, if I can, solidarity with the national awakening we see in Oromia today. Specifically, I focused on the phases of survivance,[2]resistance, recovery, and reconstruction.

The primary aim for me personally is to pay attention and to remember and remember. It is to pay tribute to the people, young and old, who have given and are giving their all in this most recent iteration of the Oromo national struggle for emancipation. The broader aim is to encourage all of us to look ahead into the future, where the Oromo will build walls of connection serving as a force for good in the region. It is aimed at encouraging us into the redemptive work of transformation of the entire Horn of Africa Region through a just peace, a peace that honors the ideals of Equality and Liberty (social justice and freedom). It is directed towards invoking what Ruti Teitel calls ‘Humanity’s Law,’[3] the law that emerged in consideration of the global inter-connectedness in the 21^st century – and the law that enhances accountability for one’s actions in all corners of the world. I will argue that the success of this ongoing resistance, which some rightly call ‘Oromo National Awakening,’[4] depends on its capacity to engage with the world responsibly and re-constructively within the framework of Humanity’s Law.

2. Phases of the struggle for National Emancipation

Since the time of their incorporation into Ethiopia in the 19^th century, the Oromo have undergone four phases in their expression of indignation and resentment to the hegemony of the Ethiopian state nationalism. These phases can be summarized as follows:

a) Survivance;
b) Resistance;
c) Recovery;
d) Reconstruction.

I hasten to add that there is hardly a clear demarcation between these phases as they not only flow into one another but also overlap. At times, they occur simultaneously. When they do so, or whenever any two of these happen together, as in the current Oromo awakening, the more successful they become, the more explosive in their intensity, the more powerful in their impact. When they come coevally, they tend to birth a rupture, even a revolution.

Let us have a quick look at what each stage involves.

• Survivance: Insisting on Presence

At this stage of reckoning with loss and lamenting humiliation, the Oromo was engaged in a quiet performance of Oromumma in the privacy of their homes and/or in the non-penetrated spaces of the rural environment. Among other things, this stage is marked by a quiet resistance to cultural and physical extermination. It was a season of adaptation and adjustment, a season of quiet retreat into one’s own way of life. It is a season of practising Oromumma in the non-public space (in the privacy of the home and in the isolated corners of unpenetrated Oromo hinterland).  In urban areas, the Oromo tried to resist assimilation even as they performed a politics of passing and invisibility, making a gesture towards assimilation. In the rural areas, where the State was unable to penetrate the society, the resistance took the form of distancing oneself from the state. A typical practice in this regard is avoiding state schools for fear of being subjected to a repressive pedagogy of assimilation and erasure of their Oromo identity. The time from incorporation into the Ethiopian imperial state in the late 19^thcentury to the 1960s can be characterized as a time of survival and of practising survivance.[5]

• Resistance

This is the stage of refusal to be governed. This is the stage of saying NO, overtly and covertly. In its covert form, it sought to disperse the benefits of modern education and basic infrastructure among the Oromo without calling it an Oromo movement. This is what one sees in the early activities of the self-help association known as the Matcha-Tulama Association (MTA).  Of course, this kind of covert resistance is undergirded by a keen sense of awareness of oneself as an Oromo and of appreciating the uneven distribution of basic social services in the empire.

The most overt form of resistance started in the acts of rebellion and organized armed resistance in the 1960s. The age of resistance that started with the MTA movement in urban areas of the centre was corroborated by the Bale Oromo resistance also charting out the route (also in part contributing) to the subsequent Ethiopia-wide social upheaval and revolution of 1974. The more mature phase of resistance, of course, took shape only after the formation of the Oromo Liberation Front in 1974 to launch an armed struggle.

Fast forward, when the military regime was eventually toppled by forces of the periphery in 1991, this phase of overt resistance came to a close only to start after a season of recovery. The Oromo self-assertion as a self-determining agent to have a role in the reconstitution of the Ethiopian state as a democratic, human rights-sensitive, caring and compassionate polity committed to multi-foundationalism, plurinationalism, and just peace[6] was met by a military reprisal under an insecure Ethiopian regime that was reluctant to lose power for the sake of transforming the polity on democratic and humanitarian bases. The transition to democracy faltered and ultimately got derailed altogether. The politics remained militarized. The state crisis continued to deepen. When the OLF left the transition, the transitional pact signed among various liberation fronts collapsed. The hope of transformation was deferred.

The Oromo self-assertion came to be viewed as a threat to the national security of Ethiopia. Oromummabecame a securitized identity. The Ethiopian prisons and detention centres started to be congested byOromos charged with the non-existent crime of being ‘anti-peace elements’ (the incipient form of what later became the discourse of terrorism). The politics of co-optation and patronage had led to the creation of the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) to rule Oromia on behalf of the Ethiopian regime, which was now under the tight grip of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). In order to secure a semblance of legitimacy in Oromia, however, the regime adopted the OLF’s program of recovering the Oromo language (Afaan Oromo), Oromo identity, Oromo culture, Oromo history, and all there is in between.

The seeds of recovery were already in the phase of resistance. However, the actual work of recovery started to bear fruit as it was intensified even in the midst of a violent repression unprecedented in a long time. While the Ethiopian regime utilized its good relations with the international community to malign the Oromos as terrorists and to exclude them from the public space, the Oromo took solace in the possibility of using their language, practicing their culture, and manifesting their identity in public—albeit only to a limited extent. Later on, this act of taking comfort and pride in using language, expressing culture, and manifesting identity came to express itself in the cultural turn the Oromo resistance took in the face of the increasing closure of the public (political) space.[7]

• Recovery

This phase was a stage of ‘drawing breath.’[8] Although at first it appeared a moment of loss and defeat, it actually became a moment of recovery. It is a moment of finding our way back to our Oromo selves. It proved to be a moment of experiencing resilience in its full bloom. Almost like a national recess, it served as a season of rehabilitating the Oromo self, recovering and projecting Oromo subjectivity. It was a moment of reclamation of voice for the Oromo.

In particular, it was a season of recovering the language, the identity, the history (the narrative, the memories, and the stories), the culture, and the cultural institutions of the Oromo. It was a season of refurbishing our way of being in the world, a moment ofre-presenting ourselves, counteracting the forced absence of the Oromo from the Ethiopian public scene. It was a moment of imagining home from exile. In short, it was a season of restoring dignity to the Oromo (even in the darkness of the unprecedented state terror from 1992-todate).

• Reconstruction

The fourth phase is probably the most critical of all. This stage marks the season for the Oromo to take their legitimate place in the world. It is a stage of reconstituting the Oromo self in the context of a globalized world infinitely interconnected with other peoples. It is a season of reconfiguring the Ethiopian state. The work at this stage can be nothing but transformative. It is a work of engaging with Ethiopia, the horn region, the African Union, the middle-east, and the wider world. It is a moment of projecting an Oromo self that intervenes in the world as a force for good, as a responsible regional actor, as a responsible ‘international citizen.’

At this stage, as a people, the Oromo shall hopefully overcome the brokenness of our past, the deep fractures in our relations with the other peoples of Ethiopia and the Horn. In particular, the Oromo must pay attention to the Ethiopian State with a view to engagement for its genuine transformation. The Oromo pursuit of justice must be complemented by a responsible pursuit of democracy, if only to harness the political power needed to transform the state. Oromo pursuit of equality in citizenship can be a rallying point for all of the ‘other’ peoples (who inhabit the Southern and the peripheral half of Ethiopia). This demand for equality is at its root a question of justice, but we have now learnt the bitter lesson that justice is the function of (mainly legislative and judicial) power. The task of reconstruction cannot be done without pursuing some form of transformative power. The Oromo quest for equaliberty becomes a synthesis of individual rights on the one hand and the right of collectivities (as well as classes and other categories) to universal social equality. In a sense, this self-conscious and reflexive pursuit of power is a pursuit of a ‘strong democracy.’[9]Pursuing a strong democracy in a country such as Ethiopia, pursuing transformative power in this context, requires a huge sense of responsibility to reckon with the other (all the Ethiopian others) with an eye on reconfiguring the terms of citizenship, to reconstruct the state, and to transfigure the state-society relationship. This process of pursuing and achieving transformative power is an engagement in the task of redemption (a process of turning the essentially illegitimate into legitimate). [10]

Granted, it is a painful task. It requires looking at historical evil squarely in the eye, reckoning with its impacts, accounting for it, remembering it, but choosing to forgive. [11]It requires an agonistic engagement with our plurinationality and the complexity thereof. It comes with cost and sacrifice. For the Oromo, the price of equaliberty is a sense of national responsibility. This is because the work of reconstruction in Ethiopia demands nothing less than redemption. From theological discourses, we know that redemption requires sacrifice that invests in the belief that the future will be different from the past. It is a process that unleashes anguish as we try to undo injustices of the past and hope for a fairer and more just future.

Transformative engagement with Ethiopia requires consideration of several concrete political realities such as international debts, borders, and military engagements in the neighbouring countries and in the UN Peace-keeping mission fields. More importantly, it requires a serious look into the trade, investment, and development partnerships that Ethiopia has gone into and the obligations that flow therefrom. The Oromo also needs to engage creatively and imaginatively with the institutions of the Ethiopian empire. One has to have a clear idea of what to do with its repressive security, intelligence, military, police, and prison institutions. One also needs to have a clear idea of what to do with abused constitutional institutions and arrangements (parliaments, elections, federalism, self-determination rules, constitutions, ‘rule of law,’ etc). The most urgent and pressing challenge that the Oromo needs to counter directly is the arrest and eradication of the intermittent famine that is caused and mismanaged by successive Ethiopian regimes.

In the endeavour to transform the state-society relation, the Oromo needs to change the hierarchic, centralized, and authoritarian political culture of the country. When it comes to the issue of handling plurinationality and the demand for ethno-cultural justice, the Oromo needs to appreciate that there will be no post-EPRDF moment in some ways and find more practical and just ways of satisfying legitimate national aspirations at all levels. For this, the Oromo needs to empower citizens, preparing them for the democracy to come both within Oromia and in the wider Ethiopia. One needs to prepare people for making an informed sovereign choice in the deliberations on sensitive issues of self-determination and constitutional secession. Throughout, one needs to beware of what we inherit: huge amounts of international debts; an interlocked and inter-dependent but conflicting and volatile neighbourhood; chronic poverty; malfunctioning institutions; budding corruption in a bubble economy;a generally neo-liberal-capitalist global society; a US-driven civilizational cleavage in the ‘war against terrorism’; a deeply divided society; a society that is traumatized by decades of state terrorism; etc.

In the work of reconstruction, the Oromo ought to enact wholeness, connectedness, into the future. The Oromo now ought to become the people of promise, the people of hope. The Oromo ought to draw on their traditional values and institutions to actively pursue justice. They only need to remember that they are a people of legality (seera and safuu), a people of egalitarian rule (Gadaa), a people of peace (nagaa), a people of substantive justice (sirna dhugaa fi haaqaa), and a people of reconciliation (araara). In all this, they act from the space of brokenness they inhabit as a people who know, from lived experience, what it means to be oppressed. In engaging with the world from the position of brokenness and suffering helps the Oromo create that moment of inter-subjectivity, the space in-between, born out of the historic vulnerability.As Hannah Arendt reminds us, this place in-between is where the world is constituted. “The world is between people,”[12] she once said.

At this stage of the national struggle, the Oromo engage in the act of rebuilding. We build walls of connection, solidarity, humanity, and co-equal/human responsibility. It is at this historical stage that the Oromo takes advantage of the contemporary world’s law. Ruti Teitel calls this body of global law ‘humanity’s law.’[13] It is composed of the trinity of international human rights law, the law of war (humanitarian law), and international criminal justice. The first is chiefly a protective body of law (firmly rooted in the fundamental human dignity and worth). The second is more a remedial type of law that gets activated in times of crisis as  people conflict (going to war or engaging in other forms of political violence) and mistreat each other (in the context of war). The third is focused on ensuring responsibility for atrocities beyond one’s national borders. In this third category of law, the Oromo sees the International community as a truth bearing witness and a potential ally in the pursuit of their equaliberty. The third category, being mainly a post-sovereignty regime of law, also helps us overcome the weaknesses of traditional state-centred institutions of human rights and humanitarian law. It is this nature that makes it suitable to the concerns of sub-national entities that were routinely ignored or abused by the complicity of the national and the international actors whose conducts are anchored in the notion of sovereignty.

The Oromo of the 21^st century, the brave new generation that is living this moment of awakening, has the task of reconstruction by paying attention to and taking advantage of the contemporary humanity’s law.   Humanity’s law helps us achieve human rights, peace, and justice, all three of them together. This in turn consolidates just peace in the entire region.  For the Oromo, apart from allowing us to engage the international (which was often neglected in the struggle although the latter was always attendant to our oppression from colonial times to cold war, and further on to this neo-liberal ‘global-capitalist’ age), helps us pursue equaliberty, i.e., both equality and liberty. The historic Oromo quest for freedom and social justice will then be achieved within this framework.

In the course of reconstruction, the Oromo engage in self-transcendence. They live out the imperative of paying attention as an act of solidarity with all oppressed people around them. They reach out to all their neighbours, especially the humble and the lowly. And these are in abundance in the region, be it in Ethiopia or in the wider Horn region. Without reaching out to these and working together with them, Oromia can hardly achieve freedom, justice, or peace.

3. Pursuing Equaliberty: The Imperative of Resistance, Recovery, and Reconstruction

The Oromo pursuit of equaliberty in the framework of humanity’s law, unlike what its detractors maintain, is not a quest for power. Nor is it just a quest for thin democracy as experienced in electoral practices. It is primarily a quest for social justice in a democratic environment that is grounded in a sense of responsibility for the protection and elevation of human dignity. In this process, the Oromo is going to go beyond resistance and self-recovery to achieve reconstruction with an eye on reconciliation. This is necessitated by the fact that both freedom and justice, both liberty and equality, are intensely relational. No time is more suited than now for us to proclaim, in the spirit of Ubuntu, that “I am because we are.” No place needs this spirit in abundance more than do Oromia and its neighbourhood.

4. After the Oromo Protest: the Imperative of Reconstruction

In the past few years, we have witnessed among the Oromo the simultaneous operation of the logic of recovery and resistance–sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously. The stronger the repression, the more powerful the momentum of the resistance. The generation that benefitted from the cultural rehabilitation has come of age to demand their right in their own terms. In the last five months we have become fortunate to see a generation that is mentally emancipated, a populace that knows how to conduct itself in the face of adversity, a people who act cohesively with a unity of purpose. We have seen the persistence in resistance.

We have seen a people determined to insist on justice. A people who turned (economic and electoral) despair into hope, loss (of land and livelihood) into gain, (electoral and military) defeat into (a genuinely substantive political) victory.
We have witnessed a people who, with their resilience, exposed the moral and political bankruptcy of a conceited regime. We observed a self-mobilized, self-directed, grassroots movement that virtually shamed and humiliated a seemingly invincible regime. We have seen people expose the limits of deceptive politics whose legitimacy is shored up through using election as a war by other means. We have seen a people who tested the limits of political double-speak. We have seen a people who exposed the true nature of the regime. They have rendered a region totally ungovernable. They have forced the regime to impose a military rule.[14]

We have seen a movement that conducted itself responsibly vis-à-vis other peoples even in the face of provocation and manipulation by the regime to foment horizontal conflicts.

This is an indication of the fact that the Oromo public is now ready to engage the wider Ethiopia, the entire region, and the world re-constructively, transformationally, redemptively within the framework of humanity’s law. The success of this National Awakening is to be completed when its leaders demonstrate thecapacity to make the generation to begin again, to start afresh, to remake the neighbourhood, to build new walls of interdependence, even from the ravages of our oppressed Oromo lives. The success is said to be complete when the Qubee Generation demonstrates its capacity to write a new history by emulating the Phoenix that “rises out of the ashes”, to go beyond the ruins imposed on it by a century of injustice to make a difference in the region.

For this, we need to start paying attention to connectedness, inter-dependence, and the need for acting in solidarity with others. After all, as Simone Weil reminds us, paying attention is an act of grace, the ultimate expression of solidarity. Like all the other peoples in Ethiopia, the Oromo ought to start learning to see through others’ lens. We have a fear to dispel. We have a trust to build. We have the responsibility to enchant the generation into hope and a better future.

5. Conclusion

The current Oromo awakening reminds us that the Oromo have survived. The age of being seen as an unwanted presence, as a vestige of a regrettable past in Ethiopia, is substantially on the decline. The work of national self-recovery has borne fruits.The Qubeegeneration is already here to make a difference.The children have arrived. Resistance has matured, especially in the way it conducts itself horizontally. But in the main, it has restored agency to the Oromo public, who in turn have made Oromia totally ungovernable to the regime. Mental emancipation has been achieved.

People now know how to act, and can act, even in desperate conditions. What remains now is to start engaging wisely with the world around us in the task of reconstruction.  Prudence suggests that we can take advantage of humanity’s law. Prudence also suggests that we be mindful of the fact that in our times, lawful engagement is a necessity. Yes, law, too, can be effectively—albeit discerningly—be used as a spectre of resistance and a useful means of reconstruction. We need to remember that more often than not, law is deployed as ‘war by other means.’ It is this interlocked deployment of law in/and war that David Kennedy calls lawfare[15] (war by legal means), and perhaps rightly so. The flip side of this is that law can be deployed to build connections, relations, and peace thereof. I hope the Oromo national awakening will make optimal use of this lawful form of engagement with the world.

ED’s Note: Tsegaye Ararssa is from Melbourne Law School. He can be reached at:tsegayenz@gmail.com.  The article was prepared as a remark for the ‘RIGHT TO FREEDOM’ event organized by Oromo Support Group Australia, 16-17 April 2016, Melbourne Australia

 End Notes:

[1] Etienne Balibar, Equaliberty:Political Essays, Tr. James Ingram. (Duke University Press, 2014).

[2] The term ‘survivance’ is used among scholars working on the issues of First Nations (also known as indigenous peoples). I came across the term for the first time in the work of Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Nebraska, 1999). The term means a lot more than mere survival. According to Vizenor, “Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy and victimry.” In Derridan sense, survivance of course refers to “a spectral existence that would be neither life nor death.” The Oromo struggle in its first iteration soon after the conquest was more like survivance, especially in its quest for active presence in the Ethiopian polity.

[3] Ruti Teitel, Humanity’s Law (Oxford University Press, 2011). Teitel identifies three important components that constitute ‘Humanity’s Law’: International Human Rights Law; Laws of war (traditionally known as humanitarian law, i.e., the law IN war and the law OF war); and International Criminal Justice (following the creation of the International Criminal Court via the Rome Statute). Humanity’s Law, Teitel argues, is the new framework of understanding ‘transitional justice’ in the context of changing global relations. I follow her tack and suggest that this law lays the framework for solidarity and responsibility in an increasingly interdependent world.

[4] I am indebted to Nageessaa Oddo Dube for this phrase. Nageessaa used the phrase in his recent speech televised by Oromo TV on 16 April 2016, also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF4SskY660A.

[5] One notes, however, that the formation of the Western Oromo Confederation in 1936 and its act of approaching the League of Nations for membership, or alternatively seeking a British Protectorate instead of submitting to the Italian invaders, was an early and short-lived expression of overt resistance to the hegemony of the Ethiopian empire and an assertion of Oromo subjectivity in the international system of the time. See Ezikiel Gebissa’s ‘The Italian Invasion, the Ethiopian Empire, and Oromo Nationalism: The Significance of the Western Oromo Confederation of 1936,’ 9 Northeast African Studies 3 (2002), 75.

[6] A commitment also inscribed in the 1991 Transitional Charter of Ethiopia and later in the preamble of the 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia. To an extent, this undelivered promise of the constitution was what made the political elite of Ethiopia’s South (including the Oromo) ambivalent in their reaction to the constitution. It was also this promise that TPLF used to co-opt several Southern nationalists.

[7] This increasing use of songs, cultural events (such as Irrecha), exhibitions, etc to express political disaffection is recently referred to as the ‘cultural turn’ in the trajectory of Oromo national struggle. See Ezekiel Gebissa, “Land, Life, and Leadership” [?] (Dec 2015, OSA Extraordinary conference on the Master Plan).

[8] Alison Phipps, ‘Drawing Breath: Creative Elements and their Exile from Higher Education’ Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9(1) (2010), 43.

[9] Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (20^th anniversary ed) (University of California Press, 2004).

[10]This is inspired by a thought in Richard Dehmel’s poem, Transfigured Night (Verklarte Nacht) (1998) in which the conception of a child by an adulterous wife is transfigured by the light of love, also represented by the moonlit night, to bring infinitely more joy and rejuvenation to the husband. I like to suggest that this kind of redemptive transfiguration helps us overcome ‘constitutional original sins’ in order for us to go beyond the original constitutive wrong.

[11] An imperfect but useful institutional model in this regard is presented to us in the example of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

[12] Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (Harvest Publishers, 1970).

[13] Ruti Teitel, Humanity’s Law (Oxford University Press, 2011). See also her ‘Humanity’s Law: Rule of Law for the New Global Politics,’ (2002) 35 Cornell Journal International of Law(2), 356. Teitel tries to work out a new framework of accountability at the global level by going beyond her earlier work on Transitional Justice (Oxford 2000). This framework, I hope, will be useful for the Oromo both to pursue justice for the atrocities experienced and to engage with their neighbors responsibly. Coming as they do out of a long and deep crisis situation, the Oromo can also use this framework for building a sustainable peace grounded in justice and truth.

[14] Contrary to what many people assume, what exists in Oromia now is not Martial Law. It is a pure military rule devoid of any semblance of legality that one sees even in Martial law (a rule under the command of the highest military official that suspends or deposes political leaders because of a constitutional crisis or utter incompetence on the part of civilian political governance).  In Ethiopia, what we see is an illegal dismissal of the state’s civilian administration by a Command Post chaired by the Federal Prime Minister who ordered, again illegally, eight divisions of the Army to “take a merciless and final measure” on protesters.

[15]David Kennedy, ‘Laware and Warfare’ in Cambridge Handbook of International Law, eds. James Crawford and Martti Koskenniemi (2012), 159, and David Kennedy,Of War and Law (Princeton University Press, 2006).

By Habtamu Dugo

About 2500 Oromo-Americans traveled to the United States Capital Washington DC from 38 states and Canada for three main reasons. They wanted to witness the historic attention given to the Oromo by the United States Congress through the bi-partisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission briefing on the deteriorating human rights conditions in Oromia and Ethiopia. Secondly they showed up to protest US assistance to the Ethiopian government and to demand action from Congress and the White House on ongoing state-led crimes against humanity in Oromia and elsewhere. They intended to renew the spirit of internal solidarity and unity in the face of unfolding tragedies at home and they succeeded.

Since the onset of peaceful demonstrations in Oromia on November 12, 2015, Oromo communities in the United Sates staged three rallies, including the one that took place after the briefing on Capitol Hill on April 19.  This time, however, they did not go home feeling that the United States government does not want to listen to them. They learned through the briefing, which was the first and largest of its kind, that the United States government has started listening to them face to face.

You could look around Rayburn House Office Building, the hallways and outside of it, and you feel much more than a hot Spring temperature coupled with body heat in unusually overcrowded venue—you feel people learned years of outcry for human rights had just started to be recognized and many were validated by this modest first step in what might be a long journey to lobby and secure actions of stopping massive human rights violations in the homeland from the United States Congress.

The next day the Oromo communities received breaking news that the United Sates Senate released a resolution condemning the “killings of peaceful protesters and excessive use of force by Ethiopian security forces…”  The next sections of this news analysis will examine the significance of the newly-earned briefing and the resolution and their implications on the behavior of the TPLF-controlled Ethiopian regime.

The Briefing: ‘The Beginning of a Sustained Pressure’

Consistent with the event’s purpose and the mandate of the TLHRC, the participants of the briefing examined the human rights situation in Ethiopia and made several useful recommendations regarding the roles the United States can play in promoting democracy, human rights, and stability in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison and Executive Committee Member of TLHRC promised the audience that he would raise his concerns about human rights violations in Oromia with the Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States.

However, an audience member expressed his mistrust that the Ethiopian ambassador will not help stop the human rights abuses and asked Ellison to pass the message from the briefing onto the President Obama instead. Ellison reassured the audience: “I will be speaking to the Ethiopian Ambassador about my constituent, people who live in my district. A lot of times when I talk to foreign ambassadors about a human rights problem in their country, they sometimes say why you are interfering in the inner workings of our country. But in this case if that issue comes up, I will say, I am speaking on behalf of my constituents. I did not go out looking for problems in Ethiopia, they came to my office door-step.” Representative Ellison sent out several tweets, including this one: “hundreds of people from Oromo Community here to fight for human rights in Ethiopia.”

Addressing Oromo community from her constituency in Minnesota, Congresswoman McCollum also made strong remarks that she ‘stands up for human rights.’  McCollum underscored, “The Ethiopian Government must be held accountable and it will take pressure from Congress and the Obama Administration to end the repression of the people of Oromia.” The Oromo managed to enlist the support of Congressional Delegation from Minnesota in their campaign for human rights and self-government in Oromia.  It’s fair to say that these representatives can predict that Ethiopian authorities will try to schmooze them saying all is well in Oromia, but they are going to engage the ambassador because of a matter of procedure. The best thing for the Congressman to do is to resort to the use of US and international legal mechanism to ensure civilians are safe from state-led violence.

Mohammed Ademo, a journalist with Al Jazeera America, provided a rich context to the briefing stressing that the root causes of the protests are economic, social and political exclusion and marginalization of the Oromo people. Ademo addressed many important issues, including the fact that Oromia has been under “emergency military rule for the last three months,” which he said has the consequence of “further eroding the federal system which is holding the country together.”  Further showing the culture of impunity by Ethiopia’s security forces, Ademo said, “Parents have been forced to sign papers absolving the government of any responsibility if their children are killed in future protests.” Ademo recommended that “Congress should immediately suspend all counter-terrorism funding to Ethiopia.”

During the briefing, Anuradha Mittal, founder and Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, brought to the fore important “land-related human rights issues,” which are among the key root causes of the protests in Oromia and many regions of Ethiopia’s south. According to Mittal, Ethiopia is the largest benefactor of development aid from the United States receiving $665 million.

Mittal showed that foreign aid is funding human rights violations, including the removal of indigenous populations from their ancestral lands without consent or adequate compensation.  “A cornerstone of USAID activity in Ethiopia was support for the GTP, a key element of which was the relocation of 1.5 million people from areas targeted for industrial plantations under the government’s “villagization” scheme.”

The briefing is a significant first step in securing other actions by the United States government, including possible Congressional Hearing, a resolution and a possible bill or law to stop atrocities in the country and to institute a new representative, inclusive and accountable government that respects the human and democratic rights of peoples. The new social contract is envisioned to transform people from subjecthood to citizenship with rights and obligations. The briefing can also serve as a channel of informing members of Congress and leaders of different branches of US government and agencies to take a stand on the crimes against humanity in Oromia and elsewhere in the country.

Two Oromo individuals who suffered severe torture and trauma in the hands of TPLF/EPRDF government also testified about what happened to them bringing audience to tears and shock.

Urji Dhaba, a female torture survivor, brought participants and audiences of the briefing to tears with the story that she told about cruel sexual torture that was perpetrated on her because of her ethnic origin as an Oromo woman and because of her political views. Ms. Dhaba said, “Our students are being killed in schools and schools are disrupted. They rape wives in front of their husbands at gunpoint. I am Urji Dhaba. I faced torture in prison. Interrogators broke bottles inside my private part. They melted candles in my private part as well. I was peeing irregularly through my abdomen for the two years. I was passing urine into a bag. Because of the torture on my body (private part) I am still ashamed and fearful of walking in public and going about my daily life. Right now in Oromia what happened to me is happening to five to six-year-old children. As women how do you feel if what happened to me happened to you?”

Durata’a, a male torture survivor added a concrete human rights abuse by showing his scars to the speakers on the stage and the audience. “My name is Durata’a. What were are telling  here is not false; we are telling you the truth. Look at my hands and look at my leg (showing mutilated fingers and a wrist from torture). This was done to me by the current regime. They killed my wife and my two children along her. The regime destroyed our private property.”

Some audience members made comments reinforcing the statements of the participants and suggesting the need for the United States to stop supporting the Tigrean-minority-owned government of Ethiopia. Habtamu Dugo said the crimes unfolding against civilians in Oromia is genocide as proven by the intent of Ethiopia’s officials who called Oromo as a whole “devils” and “terrorists” and then put Oromia under martial law. He urged Congress to pay attention to the crimes against humanity in Oromia. He also warned about the possibility of Ethiopia becoming like South Sudan or Somalia if the United States continues transactions as usual with the minority TPLF elites ruling Ethiopia at gunpoint.

US Senate Resolution and What It Means

Bonnie Holcomb, Oromo Studies Association Board Chair and US anthropologist who studied the Oromo for decades, recognized the significance of the introduction of “Senate Resolution supporting respect for human rights and encouraging inclusive governance in Ethiopia,” as “a positive outcome from Oromo protests.” Senators Cardin, Rubio and 10 others US Senators introduced a resolution condemning “Ethiopia’s crackdown on civil society.” This came a day after the briefing and the massive rally that proceeded from Congressional offices to the White House on April 19, 2016.

The resolution condemned “A) the killings of peaceful protesters and excessive use of force by Ethiopia’s security forces; B) arrest and detentions of journalists, students, activists and political leaders…; C) abuse of the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation to stifle political and civil dissent and journalistic freedoms.” The resolution calls for the US Secretary of State “to conduct a review of US security assistance to Ethiopia in light of allegations that Ethiopian security forces have killed civilians.” It also calls on “the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development to improve oversight and accountability of the United States Assistance to Ethiopia…”

The resolution calls on the relevant US Government agencies to review programs dealing with Ethiopia show significant shift of the Senate opinion on Ethiopia, which has been static for decades.

The most problematic and likely unattainable points of the resolution are the calls on the Ethiopian government to: “ a) to halt the use of excessive force by security forces; b) to conduct a full, credible and transparent investigation into the killings and instances of excessive use of force that took place as a result of the protests that took place in the Oromia region and hold security forces accountable for wrongdoing through public proceeding;…”

Ethiopian Government Can’t Be a Credible Investigator of Its Own Crimes

Tasking the Ethiopian government with credible investigation in the killings is most unattainable because the Ethiopian government will either conduct sham/staged investigations or ignore the calls altogether because state leaders are not going to provide pieces of evidence that will be used to help bring crimes against humanity indictment and charges in the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice at the Hague. There is also nothing in the resolution about the next course of action if Ethiopia fails to comply with the calls—not even an overt threat of cutting US assistance.

The resolution echoes blind trust by many Western diplomats for the Ethiopian government to carry out credible investigations into its own crimes. This approach is simply wrong and here are further reasons why the Ethiopian government is the wrong candidate for this task.  Over the last 5 months since the second onset of Oromo peaceful demonstrations in Oromia, the Ethiopian government has shown utter disregard for international calls to halt the violence and continued with its genocidal activities in the state. The regime ignored the EU resolution and continued massive repressions as usual.

Since there is nothing biding in the simple Senate resolution, the regime is likely to continue with the killings and excessive use of force against civilians. Of the four types of US legislations, the purpose of simple resolutions, ‘designated S. Res.’, are “to “express nonbinding positions of the Senate or to deal with the Senate’s internal affairs, such as the creation of a special committee. They do not require action by the House of Representatives.”

It is good to be reasonably optimistic that this resolution will be followed by actions. However, it is also good to remember that a much more binding legislation, “Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007” was killed in the senate after passing the house. As a result, Ethiopia never saw the democracy and respect for human rights the document promised. HR 2003 was considered a first major step in in promoting democracy, human rights and rule of law in Ethiopia. Peoples hope were raised and then denied.

The track record of the current regime shows that although its officials pretend to be positive about changing destructive policies when they meet with European and American diplomats, they will forget what they promised a few minutes later and go back to human rights violations as usual. Whether EU, UN or the US State Department urge the Ethiopian officials to investigate their own atrocity crimes and bring security forces who have perpetrated them to justice, the regime is unable to carry out any independent investigation because the regime and the security forces are one and the same. In fact, the security forces perpetrate crimes against humanity at instructions from Tigrean civilians and military leaders.

Nowhere in the history of crimes against humanity or genocide has a perpetrator been able to investigate its own crimes and delivered justice. The human rights violations, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic-cleansing happening in Ethiopia must be independently investigated by the UN, international human rights organizations, and donors to the regime if the crimes are to be stopped and punished. Then not only should the security forces face the full force of international laws, but their bosses—the political and military leadership—must be indicted and tried in international courts.

After the Resolution, Ethiopia Resumes Human Rights Violations

Just after the congressional briefing and the resolution, the regime in Ethiopia continued violent crackdowns, including killings, torture, rape and atrocities against Oromo civilians. It’s ignoring the call to stop violent crackdown. It is also abusing the anti-terrorism proclamation to charge innocent Oromo protesters, students, farmers, opposition leaders and members and journalists.

For instance, Ethiopia-based Human Rights Project reported on April 2, 2016, that 20 Addis Ababa University Oromo students who were among dozens who peacefully protested in front of the US Embassy in Addis Ababa were charged with the so-called crime of “protesting in front of embassies and foreign institutions and inciting violence. In fact, the students did not incite any violence, but holding placards/slogans and chanting in front of the embassy was considered a crime by the Ethiopian government.

Yet in another saga of continued disregard for calls to stop abusing the anti-terror law against dissidents, the Ethiopian government charged a prominent Oromo Federalist Congress opposition party leader Bekele Gerba and 21 others with terrorism after months of detention without due process and torture in jails. These members and leaders of OFC including Gurmessa Ayano Wayessa, Dejene Tafa Galata, Addisu Bulala, Abdeta Negasa Faye and others were charged with terrorism with Bekele Gerba, according to breaking news by Addis Standard, an Addis/Finfinne-based publication.

The crimes against humanity continued in Oromia. In one instance, Lami Jarso, a Twitter user reported that “four Ethiopian soldiers gang-raped two young women in Waliso town early this week. Victims are in hospital.” This account was corroborated by other social media users.

On April 17, 2016, in a statement titled, “Ethiopia: TPLF Agenda of Reducing the Oromo Population Must Be Stopped,” The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa reported “terrorists and criminal attack targeting Oromo youth and children, and even pregnant women have continued unabated…” Since the regime’s declaration of an unofficial marital law on February 26, 2016, the Oromia Regional State has been divided into 8 military zones each led by Tigrean military generals. HRLHA observes that the killings, maiming, imprisonment, torture, and rape, among other crimes, became more arbitrary and widespread after Oromia was brought under the military control of Tigrean generals. 90% of the generals leading the crimes against humanity are of ethnic Tigrean origin by design. The regime trusts only loyal co-ethnics.

HRLHA, which calls the atrocities taking place in Oromia, “genocide and ethnic-cleansing,” provides details:

HRLHA states many of the victims of the atrocities have been children. Security forces also killed many pregnant women in their homes. “On February 27, 2016 a seven- months pregnant mother of  six, living in the West Arsi zone in Oromia state in Ethiopia, was shot down in her home by security forces who had come to her home looking for her husband. Another six- months pregnant woman Shashitu Mekonen was also killed and thrown into the bush in Horro Guduru Wallega, Oromia.” Unlike the US and EU resolutions and comments by some diplomats, the HRLH calls for independent investigation of the atrocities by the UN.

Senators Cardin and Rubio expressed that they were shocked by such brutal actions of the Ethiopian government and condemned them. Senator Rubio said, “Peaceful protestors and activists have been arrested, tortured and killed in Ethiopia for simply exercising their basic rights. I condemn these abuses and the Ethiopian government’s stunning disregard for the fundamental rights of the Ethiopian people. I urge the Obama Administration to prioritize respect for human rights and political reforms in the U.S. relationship with Ethiopia.”

The Oromo must continue to mount sustained pressure on US elected officials to act on the resolution and the briefing and to terminate direct assistance to the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front, aka the government of Ethiopia.

Bonnie Holcomb rightly observes that both the briefing and the resolution are the outcomes of Oromo protests, “There is nothing as powerful as the idea whose time has come. The Oromo time has come. Spectacular success on Capitol Hill honors Oromo Protests.”

As Amnesty’s Akwei reminded audiences at the venue, what happened was just the beginning of “a marathon,” to engage the Congress and the White House to make changes in archaic foreign policy doctrines that have always sided with brutal dictatorships in Ethiopia from Haile Selassie down to the current regime.

The degree to which elected US officials can take actions on the genocide policies of the Ethiopian government in Oromia depends on the strength of the struggle on the ground in Oromia. And people let their guard down until the day of freedom.

Realizing that a successful one-day event is not sufficient, Oromo communities have created strategies of direct engagement with Congress and the White House. According to a document handed to me in the Hallway of the Rayburn building, the Oromo have plans to pressure the US Senate and the House of Representatives to achieve the following. Advocacy activities with Senate include contacting Senators and urging them to cosponsor, and pass a resolution, which has already been accomplished. There remain major advocacy activities with the House of Representatives, including remaining line-up of advocacy activities, “ask for hearing to be scheduled and an independent investigation launched by the Lantos Commission or Subcommittee for Africa; ask Congress to enforce the US Foreign Assistance Act; and ask Congress to enforce Arms Exports Control Acts.”

While the current advocacy strategies are well-thought-out, there is a need for Oromo community leaders in the United States to coordinate their efforts and mobilize people for what I call, “the advocacy of scale,” in order to achieve the engagement goals laid out in the document  mentioned. Every effort must be built on the principle of complementarity and cooperation rather than competition and rivalry.

Habtamu Dugo is a US-based professor, independent journalist and conflict analyst. He is the author of “US Interventions and Conflict in Multinational Ethiopia.” He can be contacted at hab.dugo@gmail.com

Abbaa Urjii tiin

“Duumeeysaa rooba fida – roobaa galaana fida,” ja’u. Kuni gaafa jiruu fii jireenyi lammii dhunfata isaanii jala ture, gaafa uumamni (nature) sadoo fii gammachuun hawaasa badhaasu. Ee! Gaafasumaa, ali-ali/yaroo-garii duumeeysi qe’eerraa ni dhabama. Duumeeysi dhabamnaan roobni ni hanqata. Roobni hanqannaan boolla midhaanii banatu. Bonni walitti dhaabbatee midhaan boolla ifii keessa jiru yo fixan kan gandaa, san dhumnaan kan gosaatti abaar bahu. Kana dabarran, “Maganeey magan!” tu dhufa. Meeyra jiidhaa qabatanii, “Maganeey magan!” jechaa hujuba dhaqanii qoma qulqulluun Maganoo kadhannaan, alasuma Leeymoon jirkaa roobaa waaqarraa gadi harcasee, namaa-sa’aa fii mukaa-citaa dheebuu baasa.” Ja’an, dur…, dur…, odoo warri uumaa fii uumamaaf kabajaa hin qabne lammiirratti hin abboomin; odoo Hujubni Qullubbii Galma Gabreelitti hin geeddaramin.

Eega waan Gabreelii kaafnee fuu, sheekkoo hiriyaan koo gurratti na hasaaseen isiniif dabarsaa… gabaa! Gaaf tokko, namicha magaalaa keessa dhama’aa oolee, galgala, daabboo lama bitatee gala deemaa jiruurraa, Mataskaana Gabreelii biratti, dukkana keessatti, daabboon harkaa buute. Yaroo tana, namichi gama Mataskaanaa garagalee, “Yaa Gabreelii! yo daabboo too naaf arkamsiifte takka siifiin kenna,” je’ee itti waywaate. Isumaa san je’e, hangaasuun lafa ibsitee, ijji, daabboo lameen keessa takkarra buute. Takkitti arkannaan, “Yaa Gabreelii,” je’e, kan reefu mataa gadi qabatee kadhate, amma boquu ol-qabee, “ani daabboo too argadhee, atiis tee barbaaddadhu,” je’ee nii, karaa manaa kaate. Akkaan sheekkoo dhagayeen, kofla booda, “abadan namni kuni Oromoo miti. Munaafiqni safuu hin beeyne kuni Habasha,” ifiin je’e. Maalif akkaan je’e, boodaan itti deebi’a.

Ummanni keenya gaafa Mootummaa Fugugiin (Ripublic) if bulchaa turan, namaa-sa’aa bira kutanii mukaa-citaaf mirga jireenyaa, kan uumaan qaban, kabajaafii turan. Yakka fedheef lubbuu namaa hin galaafatan. Bineensa hin ajjeesan. Qalanii hin nyaatan. Bobeeysaaf kan dhimma itti bahan, meeyra lataa lubbuu qabu odoo hin taane, muka goggogee qoraanawe qofa. Duuba, eega gabrummaa jalatti kufanirraa kaasee, haalli kun heera sirna bulchiinsa Habashaa tiin dhaalame. Sirna bulchiinsa Habashaa keessatti mukaa-citaa fii beeyladaa hanqatee dhalli-namaa mirga hin qabu. Mirgi kan Mootii qofa. Mootiin, nama shiftummaan lubbuu namaa-sa’aa fii mukaa-citaa galaafatee, humnaan hawaasarratti abboomee jiraatu. Habasha biratti ummata ykn heera ummataa wanni ja’u hin jiru. Wanni jiru, Mootii fii gabbaarii ykn Abbaa Irree fii kan mataa gadi cabsatee jalatti bulu. Hawaasa Habashaa keessatti, takkaa mootummaan tan fugug/ummataa taatee hin beeytu. Isiin yaruma hunda tan Abbaa Irree ti. Heeraa fii aadaa isaaniitti, hawaasni kan gaggeeffamuu qabu warra ifiif if keessaa filateen odoo hin taane, irree ni. Kan haala bulchiinsa isaanii hin jaalanne, naannoo sanirraa baqachuu ykn daggala seenee, shiftaa tahee, humnaan aangoorraa buusee ifiif koruu qaba. Haalli kuni, hawaasa isaanii lolaan adda bahuu hanqise. Hawaasa shororkaawaa keessatti, ummata malees, uumamni nagaya dhaba. Nagaya dhabiinsi kuni namaa-sa’aa abaariif qaadhima. Kanaaf, ummanni Habashaa takkaa abaariin adda bahanii hin-beekan. Mirkanii kanaa tiif, abaar bara 1535 kan Futuh al-Habashaa keessatti galmeeffame-rraa kaasee, kan baroota 1540, 1611, 1623, 1634, 1650, 1653, 1678, 1700, 1702, 1742, 1752, 1783, 1789, 1796, 1800, 1829, 1835 fii 1880 mudatan ragaa dha. Abaar kuni kan galmaawe, odoo ummanni naannoo sanii, gariin lafa gammoojjummaa qabdu keessa qubatan, nagayaan jiraatanii ti. Yo sirritti xiinxalame, abaar kuni, naannoo mudatetti, jijjiirama mootii ykn dhufiinsaa fii kufiinsa mootota Habashaa tiin wal-qarqabee arkama.

Gaafa Minilik Oromiyaa fii naannota biraa tiis dhunfatee Xoophiyaa uummate, biiyti tuni, Faranjootaan, biyya zambiila daabboo tan Afrikaa mara beela baaftu (The breadbasket of Africa) ja’amte. Garuu, kaayoo Qaallichaa tan biyya zarafuu fii ummata gabroomfachuu, akkuma ummataatti, uumamni biyyaa tiis ganamumaan dura dhaabbate. Akkuma lola Canalqoo kan 1887-rraa Minilik hara baafateen, abaar dhufiinsaa fii kufiinsa mootummootaa Habashaa farrisu, bara 1888 – 1892 jidduu, biyya dhunfate. Abaar Faranjoonni (The Great Famine of Ethiopia) moggaasaniif kuni, baroota afuriif rooba hanqisee, mukaa-citaa goggoysee, namaa-sa’aa lafarraa duguuge. Gaaga’amni gaafas lubbuu namaarra gaye himufillee hin tolu. Akka galmeen seenaa ibsitutti, ummata biyyaa kan gaafasii keessaa harka sadihirraa tokkoo (1/3) tu dhume. Abaarsa  mootummaa Habashaa faana deemu kana dura, hawaasa biyya Oromoo keessatti abaar seenaa galmeeffatee hin beeku.

Dallansuun uumamaa kuni, ayyaanaa fii feestaa guddaa gonfata mootummaa tiif (coronation) Minilik qopheeyfate duraa ukkaamse. Abaarsi uumamaa yoomi san qofatti jalaa hafe, abaar bara 1913 tiin du’a isaa farrisee, Muddee 12, 1913 adunyaarraa galche. Yaroo tanaas, akkuma feestaa gaafa mootomuutti, awwalcha isaa irraa gidiraa/ulfina fuudhe.

Haaluma kan Minilikitti, mootomuu Hayle Sillaasee kan bara 1930-tiis, uumamani abaar cimaa bara 1929-ii, kan mootummaarratti fincila guddaa kaaseen simate. Simannaa haala kanaan jalqabe itti fufuun, bara 1958, anaa reefu dhalatu, abaar biyya Tigree keessatti lubbuu namaa 100,000 ol galaafateen, fincila General Mangistuu Naway kan bara 1960-ii itti kaase. Sanitti aansuun, bara 1966 keessa, abaar Amaara lafarraa duguugeen mootummaa isaa doorsise.

Gaafa kaan, anaa guddate, bara 1974 keessa, akka mana barnootaa tii baneen, barattoonni mana barnoota Medhaane-alem kan Biyyoo Adaree guutuun, dirree kubbaa seennaa magaalaa jiru dheeyne. Anaa fii barattoota gulantaa lamaffaa mara wanni achi geeyse, daawwannaa filima tokkoo ti. Filimni “The Hidden Hunger,” (Abaar Dhokote) kan ja’amu, kan Jonathan Dimbleby, gaazexeessaa biyya Engilizii tiin qophaawe. Filimni abaar ummata Walloo-rratti bu’e agarsiisa. Sababni maqaan akkasii  moggaafameef, rakkoon ummata Walloo mudate kuni, lammii biyyaa tii fii hawaasa adunyaarraa-hiis waan dhooyfamee fi. Filmiin Jonathan, kumaatama ummata Walloo, warra waan nyaatan dhabarraa, foon qaamaa irraa dhumee, lafeen qofti hafte agarsiisa. San malees, odoo ummanni Walloo abaariin dhumaa jiruu, Mootiin Moototaa, Soora Qabeessi Duraa, Hayle Sillaaseen, haala guyyaa dhaloota isaa kan saddeettamaa itti kabajate agarsiisa. Ayyaana Mootichaa tiif, kaartoonnan farshoo kanneen miliyoona hedduun biyya alaarraa bitamanii fii keeka Xaaliyaanii dhufe agarsiisa. San bira taree, sadoo Mootichi afeeramtoota isaa ittiin qananiisu, cooma baadhatamee ummata keessaan deemamuu fii warra nyaata quufanii, qaruuraa shaampaanyii waliin dhawaa gammadaa deeqqifatu agarsiisa. Isa maddii, reeffa ummataa kan awwaalcha dhabee daandii dheertuurra tarrifamee fii kuufame, wal-bira qabaa, onnee daawwataa fudhata. Mootichaa saricha isaa, Luuluu, saanaa dahabaa keessaa foon bareedaa nyaachisu agarsiisuun dhiiga namaa danfisa. Itti fufuun, da’imoota haadha duuterraa harma goggogaa hodhaniin imimmaan namarraa xuruursa.

Jonathan, haala abaarii fii kan Mootichaa wal-faraqaa fidaa, maayyiirratti, abaar kana dhooysuuf ijibbaata Mootummaan Xoophiyaa gootee fii isaas ugguruuf dhiibbaa irraan gayan himuun, Mootichaa fii mootummaa saaxileessa. Sanirratti, eega abaar naannoo sanitti bu’e barri tokko dabruu fii haalli kuni hamma yoonaatti dhooysatti waan qabameef,  gargaarsi tokkolleen ummataaf godhamaa akka hin jirre ibsa. Abaar kuni, hamma yoonaatti, lubbuu namaa 200,000 ol galaafachuu gabaasa. Dhumarratti, yaroo gabaabduu keessatti yo hin dirmatamneef, ummanni dhumuuf jiraatu dacha warra duruu gaaga’amanii tahuuf akka jiraatu hubachiisuun filima xumura.

Filimni warra achi ture hunda anaannataan hudhe. Halkan san namuu akkuma tahu-tahee manatti gale. Borumtaa, baratoonni akka mana barnootaatti wal-geenyeen, suuraa Hayle Sillaasee gubuun hiriira diddaa bulchiinsa isaa jalqabne. Naannoo teenya malees, iddoo filimni itti daawwatame maratti, ummanni Mootichaa fii mootummaa isaa abaarsaan darbachutti seenan. Dallansuun uumamaa kan fincila ummataa tiin dabaalame, Mooticha baroota afurtamii afuriif, kan dura dhaabbatu cabsee-baysee, irreen biyya bulchaa bahe; kan sodaatamuu bira dabree akka Waaqaatti sujiidamaafii turerraa, sodaa fii ulfina mulqee, Birraa 12, bara 1974, siree jalaa fuudhee lafaan-dhawe.

Gaafa gaaga’amni goolabametti, abaar Walloo, lubbuu Oromootaa fii Afaroota 400,000 – 800,000  jidduu galaafachuun galmeeffame. Abbar sanitti aanee kan dhufe, kan bara 1983 – 1985 ti. Abaar kanaaf Faranjoonni maqaa “The worst famine to hit the country in a century” moggaasaniif. Kan kana ja’aniif, miidhaan abaarichaa kan gaafa Miniliki biyya dhunfate waliin waan walitti madaalamee fi. Dallansuun uumamaa kuni, iccitiin isaa Dargii jalaa bahee, gurra hawaasa adunyaa seenee, gaafa dirmachuu arkatetti, abaar qaata hidda hidhate. Lafa Tigree, naannoo abaar itti bu’e, warra dura dhaqan keessaa gaazexeessaan BBC, Michael Buerk, “a biblical famine in the 20th Century” fii “the closest thing to hell on Earth” jechuun adunyaaf gabaase. Gabaasaan isaa hawaasa adunyaa mara garaa raase. Gargaarsa gaaga’ama abaar kanaa tiif, mootummoonni waan dandayaniin tarree galan. Warri amantii galmoota aabudaatti safii gargaarsaa miseensotarraan deeman. Wallisoonni babeekkamoon kophaa fii walotti walleelee baasanii horii guuran. Joolleen mana barnootaatti, liiraa karameellaaf ol kaayyatan gumaachan. Anilleen jaarmaya Islamic Relief Canada (IRF) waliin Zakaa fii sadaqaa funaaneef.

Abaar kuni, lubbuu namoota miliyoonaa fudhate ja’ama. San malees, miliyoona saddeetii ol miidhuu tu gabaafame. Yaroo uumamni bulchiinsa isiirraa dallansuu qabu haala kanaan agarsiisu, Dargiin, ooyrota gurguddoo qotee bultootarraa saamuu fii hayyama seedata midhaanii kan jimlaa ummatarraa fuudhee if harkatti galchuurratti sukukkulaawaa ture. Gocha isaa kanaan, oomishaa fii raabsaa midhaanii xiqqeessuu malees, qonnaan bultoota 500,000 gali-dhablee fii daldaloota 25,000 huji-dhablee godhe. San biratii, dhibdee ifiif uumee fii tan uumamaa mara ija irraa cufatee, lubbuu namaa tii fii qabeenya biyyaa duula injifachuuf hin-jiraannerratti qisaasaa ture. Haala sanii niis, kan abaar galaafaterratti, inni niis, yaruma san keessatti, ummataa fii loltoota jidduu lubbuu 150,000 caalaa halaake. Akkasumaa waliin, dhibdee abaar kan dallansuun uumamaa itti fidderraa odoo hin kabsatin, bara 1991 achi buutee miila Bakhar tahee, mootummaan isaa tan Wayyaanee tiin dhaalamte.

Yaroo reefki Tigree awwaalcha dhabee karaarra tuulamaa ture, Wayyaaneen, tan silaa isaaniif dhaabbatte, ummata gargaaruu dhiiftee, gaaga’amarraa bu’aa buufachutti bobbaate. Horii miliyoonaan lakkaawamu kan gargaarsa ummataa tiif karaa isii xiixa ture, rakkatoon gayuu dhiiftee, dhimma dhaaba isiirra oolfatte. San bira kuttee, miseensota isii daldaloota midhaanii fakkeessitee, midhaan isii, halkan tokkotti, iddoo sadihitti Faranjoota waldaya gargaarsaa bakka bu’anitti gurgurtee, horii isaa khiisha kaayttee, midhaan boollatti deeffachaa turte. Kan hunda caalaa nama naasisu, warra ummata rakkate gargaaruuf midhaan barbaadu, haala saniin gowwoomsuu isiitti dhaadachaa turuu isii ti. Hujii aadaa akkanaa tu namicha daabboon jalaa badde Habasha godhe.

Dargiin kufee shiftoonni Tigree aangoo mootummaa dhunfachuun namaa-sa’aa fii mukaa-citaa naannoo san dhibdee dur daranii tiif saaxile. Tigreen takkaa abaariin adda hin-bahin, kan mormuun ajjeesaa ykn hidhatti guuraa, qabeenya biyyaa akka waraabeessa lafee arkatetti qoqorutti seente. Daggala biyyaa, hamma gaaga’ama mootummoota duraanii jalaa hafe, ibidda itti qabsiiftee lafa isaa sooreeyyii alagaatti gurgurachutti bobbate. Akkuma daggala gaaraatti, lafa baadiyyaa fii magaalaa tiis qubataa fii daldalataa irraa kaasuuf ibidda itti qabsiisuu tooftaa godhatte. Haala kanaan, gaaga’ama baroota diiydamii shanan dabran biyyatti fidde, ummata malees, uumamni arkaa dhageeytii jibbee itti fincile.

Wayyaaneen akkuma kan ummataatti fincila uumamaa tiis dhooysuuf ijibbaata guddaa goote. Abaar guyyuma-guyyaan ummatatti faana fuudhaa jiru, feestaan ukkaamsuuf, ji’uma saddeet dura, akka waan biyya ofiirraa baqachuun faayaatti, baqatootaaf, “Guyyaa Diaspora” jachuun, ayyaana qopheessite. Hoggaa baqattoota, lafaan isiniif kennaan sobdee, noolii xayyaaraa irraa baaftee/irriftee hoteela bilaashii fii bashannana adda-addaan tiin qananiiftu, ummanni biyyaa tii fii uumamni “ajab!” ja’an.

Wayyaaneen biyya zarafaa, yaroo abbootii garaa kanaa waliin fanxaziyaa godhaa jirtu, naannoo gariitti, duruu, lammiin miliyoonaan lakkaawaman bishaan jiirkaana tokko barbaacha amna cinaa guyyaa deemuu jalqaban. Daa’imman miliyoona jahaa ol qaata waan nyaatanii fii dhugan dhabanii booyaa jiru. San keessaa miliyoonni duruu laaw’atanii harka Waaqaa seenan. Beeyladoonni waan dheedanii fii dhugan dhabanii akkuma raaretti bobbaafamaniin, ol deebi’uu dadhabanii, kumaatamaan dirree goggooyduu keessatti dudu’aa jiru. Abaar taraa tana tiif, jaarmayni Gamta Mootummootaa (UN), ammaaf, “worst drought in 50 years” moggaaseefii jira. Yo kheeyrii hawwuuf tahe malee, kuni abaar bara 1966-a tiin adda. Yo tahellee kan bara Dargii tiin wal-gita.

Iccitiin abaar kan Wayyaaneen olola misooma kijibaa tiin ukkaamsuu barbaadde, duraa ala baanaan, akkuma aadaa isiitti, zaliilaa ummataarraa saaqa buufachuuf mala dhawachaa jirti. Haaluma ammaan dura gootetti, miidhaan boolla isii keessaa baaftee, Faranjootarraa horii ittiin guurrachuu irraa if duuba hin deebitu. Midhaan gargaarsaa kan harka isii seenuu, ummata beelaweef hiruu mannaa, waraana biyya keessa bittinneessitee iddayyuu beelawaa jiru ittiin nafaquuf qophooytee jirti. “Harki hanna bare dooluu sossooha,” ja’anii mitii?

Goolabbiif, akka seenaan hidhata abaarii fii mootummoota Habashaa mirkaneessutti, abaar bara kanaa tiis, akkuma kanneen isa duraatti, callaqqisa uumamni diddaa bulchiinsa Habashaa tiif qabu. Kan dhufee fiis, akkuma kanneen ammaan duraatti, namaa-sa’aa galaafachuu qofaaf odoo hin taane, du’a mootummaa Wayyaanee farrisuu fi .

Oromiyaan ni bilisoomti!

“Banned and forced out of Transitional Government”: Struggle for National Rights and Democracy, in the Era of a “New World Order” – the Case of OLF

by Dr. Shigut Geleta,  full speech.

Dear Mr. Chairman,
Esteemed members of the Swedish Parliament,
Dear Honourable guest speakers,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to thank and convey my deepest gratitude to the organizing committee for inviting me to present a paper on this seminar on behalf of the Oromo Liberation Front, OLF. It is a great privilege and honour for me and my organization to be here today representing the Oromo people.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The topic on which I am going to speak is “Banned and forced out of Transitional Government: Struggle for National Rights and Democracy – the Case of OLF”.  My presentation is organized in five main parts:-

1. I will give some background on the Oromo people and Ethiopia.
2. I will elucidate the birth and grand objectives of the OLF and its formidable role in the past, today, and the future politics of Ethiopia.
3. I will try to indicate how the vision of “New world order” challenged by Global War on Terror (GWOT).
4. I will skim over the current situation in Oromia/Ethiopia, and finally,
5. I offer my organization’s view on the way forward.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

1. Background:

The Oromo make up a significant portion of the population of the Horn of Africa. In Ethiopia, the Oromo constitute about 40% of the 101 million population of the country. Oromia, the land of Oromo, is the economic backbone of Ethiopia.  Despite the fact that, Oromo’s maintain distinct and homogenous culture, common language, history, ancestry, and separate territory, they are socially, economically, and politically subjugated and marginalised in Ethiopian.  Ethiopia is an empire-state created as an outcome of the 1884/1885 Berlin Conference during the era of the “scramble for Africa”. The core Abyssinian kingdom was assisted to expand by annexing the other nations and nationalities to their south. The Ethiopian empire that emerged as a result of this expansion is ethnically heterogeneous, comprising more than 80 nations and nationalities with 83 languages and over 200 dialects.  The Oromo and Amhara are two of the largest ethnic groups.  Since the expansionist occupation, the Oromo people have lived under successive brutal and oppressive rules to this day. The fact that the Oromo were occupied by black African nation makes their case quite blurred compared to nations colonized by Europeans.  The pain and brutality of inter-tribal occupation among black Africa was and is as severe and bitter as that of white occupation of black Africa nonetheless.

Following the occupation of the 1880s, Ethiopia was ruled by successive emperors including Menelik II and Haile Selassie I.  The later was ousted by Marxist military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in the early 1970s which was in turn overthrown by the Tigrian Peoples Liberation Front in 1991. All successive Ethiopian regimes have been characterized by harsh exploitation, political suppression and marginalisation of the Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia.  Discrimination, subjugation, repression, exploitation of the people and torture and killings of opposition forces were rampant.  Political pluralism and tolerance has never been part of Ethiopia’s political makeup.  The imperial attitude without a shred of concern for the growth and development of the country has been a source of obstacle towards economic development, giving rise to abject poverty and hunger in perpetual.  The Oromo people’s struggle is to bring about an end to this vicious process, and to build a fair and just political system where the rights and lives of the people are respected, and all live in peace in union or as neighbours.  This is our inalienable right that we ask, and demand, this is the purpose of our struggle for which we are willing to fight regardless of the stakes.

2. The birth and grand objectives of the OLF

All peoples of Ethiopia including Oromo, Sidama, Ogaden, Afar, Gambella, Walaita, Benshangul, Gedyoo, Gurage peoples, etc. have vehemently resisted the process of subjugation both at the time of annexation and thereafter to this day. The nature of the resistance has taken various faces and patterns.  There is no other road that leads to peace and stability in Ethiopia and the region that doesn’t fully address the legitimate struggle and demands of these peoples to obtain their full rights.

The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) was established in the late 1973 to give voice and legitimacy to the Oromo resistance following a number of brutal interventions by the Ethiopian government to suffocate peaceful demand of the people for equal rights.

When all peaceful venues were met by killings and tortures, the OLF amended its program in 1974 and established its military wing, the Oromo Liberation Army, (OLA). Right at its emergence OLF was challenged both by Ethiopian nationalists and Somali nationalists in South east during Ethiopia-Somalian war. The Republic of Somalia used a Somali proverb saying: Wherever the camel goes that is Somalia. This was used rhetorically to encompass its direct claim to huge swatches of territory occupied by Oromos. On the other side the Ethiopian military regime was using a say: anyone who wore “Shirit” (cultural wear of both Oromo and Somali in south east) is “Sergogeb” (infiltrator) from Somali government and then shoot it.  However, OLF managed to survive this Ethio-Somalia war safeguarding its independence and area of operation. The OLF aimed to create an Oromo national movement that would allow the Oromo people to decide their political destiny democratically through referendum.  Since its inception, the OLF has survived massive military assault by the Ethiopian governments, and continues to grow despite Ethiopian government’s propaganda to the contrary.  In fact, resistance of the Ethiopian governments to peacefully and amicably address ethnic injustices in the country, and its often ruthless reaction to even peaceful demonstrations have forced many more fronts to take arms to fight for their inalienable rights as people.  The OLF has engaged the Ethiopian Military regime of Mengistu until the fall of the regime in May 1991, and has defended its posts against the TPLF since 1991.  During all these years, the OLF has never targeted civilians, and conducted its operation with internationally accepted norms of military conflict.  However, the Ethiopian government has repeatedly attempted to paint our struggle for freedom and equality as terror, while freely terrorizing, arresting, and killing civilians with impunity, without a due process.  The evidences for these mass killings are abundant.

3. Let me now address the 1991 transition – the emergence of the TPLF and the fall of the Dergue regime in the era of The New World.

Right at the eve of the downfall of the Dergue, the US government took an initiative to lay down a plan for peace and stability in Ethiopia, and invited the major armed groups: Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF), Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and the falling Dergue for a conference in London on May 1991. To motivate all parties to the peaceful talks, the US government declared “No democracy, No Cooperation”.  Believing in the leadership of the US government, and the promise they gave, the OLF joined TPLF as a partner in drafting the Transitional charter and establishing a Transitional government (1991-1992).  Knowing the political traditions of the land, it was difficult but necessary to be optimistic.  The OLF took the Charter and worked on it for a democratic process building a new road for Ethiopia, the first of its kind in the history of the country.

However, the TPLF, with its marionette parties amalgamated under an umbrella organization named Ethiopian people Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), started violating the charter from the get go, paving the way for a one-party dictatorship.  Elections were rigged, OLF members and candidates were arrested and the EPRDF declared landslide victory even in Oromia region. Observers from Norway, Sweden, USA and other democratic countries have witnessed this at that time. The OLF was forced out of the government and declared illegal.  Human rights abuses, tortures, disappearances, and untold pain met our people who live under unbearable political repression since. Over forty thousand from members and the people suffered in different concentration camps. About thirteen thousand perished out of this by disease and other means.

Geostrategic interest shackles democracy:

The vision of a “new World order” that assumed  a peaceful, stable and just new world order has  been sooner challenged elsewhere,  like in June 1991 Yugoslavia descended into civil conflict that left nearly 20,000 dead and more than one million homeless within a year. Three of successors of the Soviet Union Georgia, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan have experienced power struggles over control of their governments involving varying degree of violence. In Somalia 30,000 died and 2.5 million displaced from January 1991 to July 1992. Bin Laden the Master mind for the emerging terrorism deported in 1992 from Saudi and took Sudan, neighbouring Ethiopia, as its destination from 1991 to 1996. US peacekeeping force is forced to leave Somalia in 1994. In addition to the above enumerated situations, the US intervention in Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait has renewed the Geo-strategic interest of US across the western side of the Arabian Peninsula (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti Somalia and Kenya). This interest has become vital after the terrorist bomb attack on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.   Moreover, the identification of Somalia by the US since 9/11, as an area of state collapse conducive to support for al-Qaeda, the presence of US force in Djibouti since December 12, 2002 and the Islamist agendas of some of the local factions have enabled Ethiopia to link its own security interests in the region to the “Global war on terror”. The Horn dominates a part of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean through which oil tankers constantly move and overlooks the passages where the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean converge became the main strategic interest of US policy makers.  According to some scholars (Baffour Agyeman-Duhah, 1994) three types of USA “Global security network” incorporation were readily discernible: direct or absolute NATO’s type of relationship, surrogate model whereby the state was armed to play a regional role on behalf of the United States like that of Ethiopia  and peripheral in which the state was to provide local facilities for electronic surveillance installations or the pre-positioning of logistics, for instance, troops, arms, and refuelling or refurbishing centres.

Because of this rapidly changing Global security and politics, the US policy makers prioritized to partners of Global security than anchoring democracy. To this day, our people see the slogan and promises of the US government that stated “No democracy, No co-operation” as an empty promise.

The TPLF led Ethiopian regime exploited the US policy on terrorism and the emerging global fear and caution tagging popular liberation movements and political parties as terrorists and banning them.  The TPLF has effectively transformed itself into a ruthless dictatorial party.  The institutional base for EPDRF’s hegemony began with the elections of 1995 with an amended constitution. Regional parliaments were created after the elections. As the election was run under the supremacy of one party, EPRDF/TPLF became the indisputable winner by near perfect margins.  The government declares an opposition illegal whenever it finds the opposition threatens its power. Thus, currently there is no political space for the opposition as was evidenced again in 2015 when the government declared winning by 99.6% electoral results in 2010 national elections, and by 99.9% in May 2015 local elections.  Clearly, despite all the Western financial supports and promises of no democracy no help, today the Ethiopian government has become one of the world’s ruthless and totalitarian regimes.

Sadly, the Ethiopian government has masterfully ridden the “war against terrorism” wagon labelling its oppositions as terrorists.  The OLF is the main target of this Machiavellian machination mainly because the OLF is a real threat to the regime.  The Ethiopian government has made significant efforts to misinform the Western public and governments misrepresenting the OLF and lobbying to put the organization on a terrorist list.  The government has planted bombs and targeted civilians only to blame the OLF, and then use its criminal act as a proof against OLF.  In a document released by WikiLeaks the head of Ethiopian security Getachew Asefa tells the US ambassador in 2009 that “the OLF and ONLF should be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)”[1]   .  However, an earlier report of the same source states that “an embassy source, as well as clandestine reporting, suggests that the bombing may have in fact been the work of the Government of Ethiopia’s security forces.”[2]

4. In outlining the current situation in Oromia/Ethiopia

I start quoting Nelson Mandela who said “It is the oppressor that dictates the nature of the resistance”.

After it was forced out of the Transitional Government in 1991, the OLF continued for what it stood and was created for, standing for and defending the fundamental rights of the Oromo people.  And yet the OLF never ceased on calling TPLF for a negotiated peaceful settlement. However, all our attempts fell in deaf ears.  Instead of resolving the conflict, TPLF has several times declared that it has eliminated the OLF from Ethiopia altogether only to issue public statement weeks later accusing the OLF for destabilizing the country.  Despite dooming government propaganda, the OLF has remained steadfast, as it will always be, determined to guard the national interests of the Oromo people, ready to sit down with all interested parties to discuss a peaceful process that brings justice and harmony for much needed progress.  Today, because of its unwavering determination to peace, but guarded by its unflinching position to stand for human rights to end the human misery in Ethiopia, the OLF has gained immense diplomatic sympathy and political support from across the international community.

Attempts by the TPLF to portray the OLF as a terrorist organisation have backfired, and in addition to a full backing of our people who have suffered greatly defending their rights, we also enjoy a full and growing support and recognition by the international community.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

To sum up, generally OLF has engaged itself into five major areas. Namely: organising Oromo’s both in clandestine and overtly where the situation allowed, try to solve the problem with TPLF/EPRDF through dialogue, laterally co-operating with other political forces (such as Paris Conference on peace, joint co-operation work and forming an alliance), distancing itself from terrorist act and educating Oromo people from any sorts of fundamentalism, and defending itself militarily by being transparent to international community in presenting the Oromo cause is a just cause.

Today we are on a high moral ground, and we are a living testimony of our people’s perseverance, marching towards a more stable, prosperous and democratic system that honours the cultural values and human rights of all peoples in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government is waging unwinnable war on Oromo and Ethiopians. This round of Oromo protest and general civil unrest championed by Oromo Youth, locally known as Qeerroo, have been underway for the last six continuous months.  These protests have now covered the entire Oromia and beyond, surviving hundreds of killings, thousands of wounding, disappearances, and over 40 thousand detentions by the Ethiopian security forces.  We have the identity of several murdered individuals with their names and pictures.  These protests proved to the world that: 1) the Oromo struggle is intrinsically non-violent, 2) Oromos are determined to end the political marginalisation and economic exploitation perpetuated by TPLF, 3) torture and mass killings will not stop Oromos from fighting for their rights, 4) their demand is for deep political transformation, not for cosmetic changes, and 5) the people continue giving their unflinching support to the OLF.

5. The way forward, OLF’s perspectives

Ladies and gentlemen,

As the saying goes “a hammer drives nails because of its mass”.  Because of its geographic position, Oromia have cultural ties and economic interactions with diverse peoples living adjacent to Oromia.  This gave Oromos a unique opportunity to coexist with others in peace.  It developed social harmony, economic interdependence, and democratic pluralism.  Because of its ancient democratic heritage known as Gada, which limits political office of elected officials to 8 year terms, there is deep rooted respect for opposing views, tolerance for clashing ideas, and urge for a negotiated settlement.  Oromos share three major religions, and yet religious extremism is unheard of until Ethiopian government’s political manipulation attempted to create one.  Oromos who constitute 40% of Ethiopia, the 3rd largest nation in Africa, can be a powerful instrument for peace and progress.  Further attempt to marginalize our people will result in more tragic episodes the outcomes of which are continuation of  war, poverty, and hunger.

Unfortunately the US government has provided a lip service to Oromo protest even in the face of hundreds of killings of innocent civilians by the security forces of the Ethiopian government.  The US government has yet again given a tacit support to the government in Ethiopia by failing to fully report these killings in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015, and by making various bilateral agreements on various issues with Ethiopia.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Ethiopia received approximately 3 billion USD for the so called development Aid annually, that is, more than a third of its annual budget. Assistance of Western countries for this regime by negating the very basic democratic values on which Western countries are founded is paradoxical.  This paradox will breed a very dangerous situation with far reaching consequences unless addressed immediately.  Assistance of western countries for this regime negating the very basic democratic values on which western countries are founded is paradoxical. I assume it is the politics of perceived fear at the stake. To mention some: 1) the outcome of Oromo people’s referendum. It is great failure deciding the outcome of a people’s choice that affects the existence of the right to make a choice moreover the quest of self-determination is not a vanity question 2) Ethiopia has estimated Moslem population more than any of the Arab countries except Egypt. However tolerance of religion is an existing fact for the Oromos 3) the western perception of the link between poverty, “failed states” and religious radicalization. The TPLF-led regime used safety nets for its political patronage 4) Ethiopia’s role as an anchor State in a “turbulent” region. But there are a lot of witnesses that the regime instigating the conflict and posture itself as a neutral peacemaker 5) China’s domination in the region. As a result the west perceived fear Ethiopia will go with China.  6) Package for refugee influx from Ethiopia via North Africa to Europe.  These and some other factors dictated Western policies to maintain states quo. However, it is our fresh memory  that some Arab leaders (Tunisia Ben Ali-1987, Hosni Mubaric-1981, Libya Mummer el Kaddafi 1969, Yemen Ali Abdallah Saleh -1978 and Mr. Bashir al Assad Syria 1963)  for too long (more than 25 years), ageing autocracies were supported by Washington, London, Paris, Brussels etc.  The Arab Revolution has transformed this situation to the point that western governments remain uneasy with the existing situation and its potential challenge to their previous hegemony.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The international community should be serious about supporting social equality and preventing further destabilization of the Horn of Africa by stopping continued moral, financial, diplomatic and other support to an authoritarian regime in Ethiopian.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to extend our call to international communities and all peoples in Ethiopia to stand shoulder to shoulder with the OLF to fight for freedom, liberty, justice, and peace for our peoples and for our troubled region.  We are forced to raise arms, ready to pay the ultimate penalty than accept maltreatment by a government that provides respect based on ethnic domination and political affiliation.  If the peoples of Ethiopia rise with us demanding equality, justice, and rule of law as a day in which all people are treated equally is in sight.  We can then start a long and much needed journey of taking the peoples out of perpetual hunger and poverty; we can then start curving a new paradigm and tradition in which all human beings are treated equally by law, where political corruption and abuse of human rights are considered illegal and shameful, and the region is no more considered a hell to run away from by its own citizens.

Peace shall prevail!

Thank you for your attention.

[1] Cable reference id: #04 ADDIS ABABA 001318
[2] Marked “Secret; Subject: Ethiopia: Recent Bombings Blamed on Oromo Possibly the Work of GOE [Government of Ethiopia]” “Classified By: Charge [affairs] Vicki Huddleston”, “(Cable reference id: #06ADDISABABA2708.)

Kalkidan Yibeltal & Tesfalem Waldyes

(Addis Standard) — The current government in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), often claims the multi-national constitutional federalism that it introduced a quarter century ago answered the country’s age-old question – famously known as the ‘national question’ – once and for all.

Ethiopia’s constitution, the government further claims, is multi-foundational by its nature and adequately addresses the politics of recognition and inclusion for Ethiopia’s long marginalized nations; better yet it guarantees the right to self-determination up to secession. States are now autonomous and free from the yolk of a centralized state and the notion of “one country, one people, and one language”, a notion that had violently governed Ethiopia’s oppressed mass for at least a century.

Today’s Ethiopia is a ‘federal democratic republic’ of nine autonomous national regional states: Afar, Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, Harari, Oromiya, Somali, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) and Tigray. All of them home to an incredibly diverse and free people, so the story goes.

For the last two decades, therefore, anyone who questions the accuracy of these narratives is labeled as an outright enemy of this unique polity, a polity born out of its people’s age-old grievances where “unity in diversity” is the order of the day.

Trouble in paradise

But a five month persistent protest by the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, for whom the inaugural of a multi-national constitutional federalism was a long awaited victory, which started in Nov. 2015 has laid bare the otherwise flawless narrative Ethiopians have believed in for more than two decades. What began as an opposition against a The Addis Abeba Master Plan, which was, by any legal standard, prepared in a clear violation of the fundamental principles of federalism, led to historical questions that the Oromo of a federated Ethiopia continued demanding an answer for, including the questions of national identity, of economic injustice and land ownership as well as a genuine political representation.

However, a look back at just the last eighteen months alone reveals that the Oromo are not the only ones that seem to be haunted by the re-opening of the old wounds that Ethiopians thought were treated two decades ago.

Incidents that resulted in the killings of hundreds, mass arrests and disappearances as well as displacements of thousands of Ethiopians in the hands of the state security apparatus show that the questions of national identity, the urge for self-administration and equitable use of resources (mainly land) and lack of adequate political representation have re-emerged afresh in five out of the nine independent regional states in the federated Ethiopia.

The ever restive Gambella

Home to around 200, 000 people, the Nuer, Agnuak, Apana, Mezhenger, and Komo are the main indigenous peoples of Gambella. But it is also home to other ethnic groups from the country such as the Amhara, Oromo and Tigray. According to a 2007 census, of the total ethnic composition in Gambella the Nuer consists 40%, followed by the Agnuak who make up 27%, Amhara 8%, Oromo 6%, Mezhenger 5.8%, Keffa 4.1%, Mocha 2%, and Tigray 1.6%, as well as other ethnic groups mainly from various regions in Southern Ethiopia who constitute 5.5%.

Unlike the triumphant declaration of a constitutional federalism however, Amharic, which is the mother tongue of neither the Nuers, nor the Agnuaks, is the working language of the State.

Historically, Gambella is a region prone to ethnic conflicts. The 2003 unprecedented massacre of more than 400 Agnuaks in the hands of government security forces and ‘highlanders’, according to the HRW, left Gambella stuck in crisis watch list of several international organizations including the United Nations.

What happened at the end of January 2016 can therefore be easily taken for the usual sporadic skirmishes between the two dominant ethnic groups; it involved both and covered vast areas in the region, touching villages from Abobo to Itang, Gog to Jor, and a refugee camp in Pugindo, as well as a prison cell in the capital, Gamebella town. By the government’s account 14 people, including Gatdet Gony, Deputy Head of the Transport and Road Development Office, were killed in the clash. Several other accounts put the number as high as 50.

The federal government quickly dismissed the cause as a simple confrontation between two men from both tribes, but the cumulative fear by the Agnuaks about the Nuer’s political dominance (which is often alleged to be supported by the federal government) and near absolute control over resources by the Nuer plays a significant role in instigating these conflicts.

Gambella’s small nuisances 

While the rest of Ethiopia was welcoming the Ethiopian New Year of 2007 on Sept 11, 2014 with jubilant festivities, Meti, a small town in Godere District in Mezhenger Zone of Gambella was struggling to contain a chaos that besieged the villagers. Around 8 AM that morning a group of men broke into a prison located in Kebele 01 and released several inmates who then went door to door to residences of the ethnic Mezhengers, killing many including women and children, according to charges brought against the perpetrators.

The Mezhenger consider people who came from various parts of the country, mostly from the highland areas of the North and Central Ethiopia and had settled there as ‘highlanders.’ Some of these ‘highlanders’ had lived in the district for decades.

Although the flare ups of many of these conflicts always come in the form of petty individual confrontations between the ethnic Mezhengers and these ‘highlanders’, the fundamental problem is one that Ethiopia’s two decades old constitutional federal dispensation failed to address effectively.

The Mezhenger zone is one of the three zones in Gambella bordering in its southeastern part the Sheka and Bench Maji zones of SNNPR, as well as the Agnuak of Gambella and Illubabor of Oromiya to the north. Endowed with abundant natural resources it is a region where the long arms of the federal government easily tampers with. The area is home to large scale tea plantations owned by foreign companies and fertile lands contracted to both local and foreign companies without much say from the Gambella regional state.

A recent report by Fortune newspaper, a private weekly, revealed that “Nearly 100 commercial farming investors in Gambella are losing thousands of hectares of land because the region leased by mistake lands under federal jurisdiction.” When asked to comment on the issue, Gatluak Tut Kon, president of the Gambella regional state, told the newspaper, “You should talk to the federal government. I wish to give no comment on the case.” For many who believed in the principles of constitutional federalism that Ethiopian officials claim to have instilled, this was no ordinary news headline.

Critics also lament that the demands of the Mezhenger people to want to forcefully evict “highlanders” from their native land comes from the insecurity of resource distribution and a sense of political exclusion. They were always Ethiopia’s marginalized periphery.

 Konso, Qucha, Wolkait, Qimant and all that demand

Following the creation by the SNNPR regional state of the Segen Area Peoples Zone in March 2011, the Konso community in the south was staging peaceful protests for the last 10 months. The Konso people fear the creation of the new zone forces them to lose their “right to self-administration and their right to advance their culture, language and national identity, enshrined in the constitution.”

The response from the regional government was similar to the response the federal government often avails to contain similar demands elsewhere: deploying the region’s Special Forces who asnwered the community’s constitutionally legitimate demands with violence.

Although to a lesser extent, the Qucha people, who also reside in the SNNPR regional state, are demanding a similar question: the right to self-administration. Forty elected representatives of the community have come to Addis Abeba at the end of 2014 and have raised the question of national identity and self-rule with the House of Federation.

In the north of Ethiopia the Qimant people in the Amhara regional state, north of Gondar, also demand what the Konsos and Quchas were demanding for years. A recent conflict that flared up in Nov. 2015 between the Qimant people and the regional administration is believed to have resulted in the death of several community members of the Qimant people.

However, contrary to the people of Konso and Qucha, (and rather uncharacteristic of the regime), the Qimant peoples’ demand for self-administration was addressed in March 2015 when the Amhara Regional state granted them a status of nationality and ruled that they can exercise self-administration. According to the ruling, the Qimant have a right for self-administration in 42 Kebeles in the adjacent Armachiho and Chilga Districts. They can also enjoy the full rights of developing their language as well as their culture.

In north western Ethiopia, the simmering question of national identity by the Wolkayit community has recently reached a new peak. In what’s largely believed to be a forceful decision by the federal government, the Wolkayit people are to stay under the Humera Zone of the Tigray regional state. It is a decision that quashed the community’s two decades old demand to join the Amhara regional state, as they identify themselves as Amharas. A few weeks into the protest the people of Wolkayit were paraded in front of the national TV carrying placards that declared all their questions, including their questions of identity, as have been answered once and for all.

But as the bumpy road continues to stretch from the North to the South to the West (and seem to grow by frequency as well as magnitude) the first – and perhaps most uncomfortable – step would be to probe if Ethiopia, where the concept of “unity in diversity” avails itself for all to indulge on an equal footing, was ever born in the first place.

Worry or not worry?

Ezekiel Gebissa, a Professor of History and African Studies at Kettering University, argues that the constitutional federalism the incumbent introduced doesn’t originally belong to it; it dates back to “the Ethiopian student movement” of the early seventies.

Prof. Ezekiel Gebissa

At the pinnacle of the student movement the question of national identity took center stage, especially among the movement’s leaders such as Walelign Mekonnen.  Walelign’s prescription of self-administration up to cessation for the politically marginalized became the rallying factor for the would-be guerrilla fighters, who later defeated the Marxist Derg regime, Prof. Ezekiel explains.

Although the Derge tried self-administration based on different regions called ‘autonomous provinces’, it was a system that didn’t save the center from an eventual collapse. With the coming to power in 1991 of the ruling EPRDF, therefore, having constitutional federalism was not an option but a necessity, according to Ezekiel.

Tamrat Kebede, Executive Director of InterAfrica Group, a think tank, agrees.  In addition, he sees the country’s journey from an absolute monarchy through military dictatorship to a constitutional federalism as “a quantum jump”. He believes that with the coming into power of the EPRDF questions of national identity and self-determination were put to the test for the first time. Himself a former member of the seventies’ student movement, Tamrat argues that as much as the questions were debated and discussed, the approach was purely theoretical.

Tamrat Kebede

Both Tamrat and Ezekiel find the government’s claims that the current constitutional federalism has answered Ethiopia’s age-old questions as exaggerated.

A careful look at the lingering cases of the Konso, Qucha, Wolkait and Qimant reveal the uncanny similarity each community’s approaches share to put their constitutionally guaranteed demands to the attention of the federal government; they all invoked legal mechanisms enshrined in the structures of the constitutional federalism. “The skeleton of the structure is in place. But putting it into policy is one thing, implementing it is another,” Ezekiel says.

When the Konso people began to protest the demotion of their administrative area from the status of Special District to a mere District, they formed a representative committee to advance their demand for self-administration and managed to collect signatures from more than 5% of the community, well above the constitution’s requirement. The committee then appealed to the Federal House of Federation here in Addis Abeba but the House sent the people (and their questions) back to the regional government.

Similarly the Qucha people, who are currently administered under the Gamo Gofa zone of the SNNPR, say that they are not ethnic Gamos, as the current arrangement dictates; they are their own nationality – Qucha. Qucha District, which is home to the Qucha people, has close to 150, 000 people, according to the 2007 national census.

And a committee gathered to address the question by the Wolkait people has written a letter on December 2015 to the House of Federation demanding proper response to their question of identity. The committee says that the Wolkait’s right to work and learn in their own language as well as their right to promote and advance their culture have been suppressed in the past, including the 20 plus years of the rule by the EPRDF.

But these glitches do not make Tamrat of InterAfrica Group lose faith in the constitutional federalism Ethiopia is following. In his interview with this magazine Tamrat says practicing a complex federal system such as that of Ethiopia’s will “inevitably run into enormous constraints and challenges.” “[such a system] entails decentralization; it is sensitive; it requires capacity, both in human terms and resource terms, which are not all readily available when you launch into such a complex arrangement,” Tamrat said.

Prof Ezekiel shares Tamrat’s view: adjusting the system itself as needed, “requires a careful, thoughtful, deeply concerned implementation” he says. But Ezekiel is critical because that never happened in the last two decades. “The question that brought the very existence of Ethiopia into a country was never fully answered”.

The reason for this, according to Ezekiel, lies in the undemocratic nature of the incumbent. Once in power the EPRDF “thought that they could do whatever they want; they could engineer any outcome; they could muzzle dissent; they could decimate opposition and tell the politically marginalized nationalities on the highland and on the lowland that ‘you have a constitution, your questions have been answered and you have no other question’”.

He believes that the questions raised now in different parts of the country are indeed not “new questions”. “They are the same questions” he told this magazine. However he doesn’t “believe for one minute that questioning the very foundation of the federal arrangement is the answer. It is whether it should be implemented or not.”

Darkness before dawn?

Analysts who follow Ethiopia closely argue that recent incidents happening in all corners of the country: the demands for economic justice, self-administration and national identity are symptoms of a disease far deeper than the current government dares to admit. Tamrat is one of them.

“These signs should force us to question what it is that we are not doing right,” he says, “or why is this structure we have created to precisely avoid these kinds of problems creating these problems? Could it be that we issued rights that are not being exercised? Have we not prepared ourselves for the manner in which they are to be exercised? That could very well be,” he says.

For him the recognitions of the identity and equality of nationalities as well as the rights to exercise self-administration up to the level of cessation manifests “strong rights which demand fair resource sharing, fair political participatory process, needless to say a democratic culture, in the absence of [which] they are bound to erupt.”

Ethiopians’ questions of national identity and the demand for self-rule are re-emerging frequently because they have never been answered in the right way, argues Ezekiel. “Ethiopia is still a one party state” in which not only its marginalized but also a great many are simply excluded from the political process.  And it is not just a theoretical exclusion, he said, “it is a totalitarian control of the assets of the state to give permanency to the exclusionary politics that the regime has put in place.”

The ruling party, Ezekiel further said, “uses the state resources to co-opt the military, the security apparatus and the business class” to “create a total hegemony of structure and discourse” and to “emasculate the very constitution it celebrates.”  The ruling party also puts an executive manned by “ill-educated party cadres that simply parrot the leaders’ pronouncements without any understanding of the complexities of implementing [federalism] policies.” The trajectory of this direction is one that’s “leading to calamity.”

Ezekiel believes that the disastrous handling by the federal government of almost all of these incidents (such as disarming regional police, intervention without due parliamentary process, committing crimes with an absolute sense of impunity and several other signs showing excessive control of the federal government against these national regional states) show that the party that likes to take total credit for creating Ethiopia’s constitutional federalism is becoming the system’s enemy number one.

Tamrat too shares Ezekiel’s concerns. The government’s ways of handling public resentments, which include the application of excessive force, does not manifest proper and competent handlings.

Campaigners and activists say the recent widespread public protest in Oromiya, which saw the federal army being quickly deployed, left more than 400 killed, twice that number injured, and thousands incarcerated. The federal army roamed many of the streets where protests broke out; and the whereabouts of hundreds of people remains unknown.

Members of the Konso community said that several of their people, including their leader, are incarcerated or have unjustly lost their jobs following their demand for self-rule, although many of them were released since the writing of this story.

According to a December 2015 letter addressed to the House of Federation by a committee gathered to discuss the question of the Wolkait people, there were about 116 people whose whereabouts were unknown because they raised “a question of identity.”

Going to the Qucha community in the South, in January 2015 the Gamo Area High Court has sentenced 27 members of the community to up to 16 years imprisonment for allegedly instigating violence and causing damage on people and properties fourteen months earlier. According to the charges presented against them, they were trying to operate illegally to forcefully obtain a status of nationality for the Qucha community. And to advance their cause, the charges add, they attacked residences of Kebele officials.

For Tamrat, some of the challenges the country is struggling with currently require an expanded political space, “to be debated, to be discussed, to [bring forth] appropriate responses. I see a deficit in that regard,” he says.

The government’s dogmatic obsession with the constitution is another “often overlooked” aspect for Tamrat. For the incumbent, the Constitution is non-debatable, fixed entity, probably because it mistakenly equates “the Constitution for law and order. So whenever it says the constitution [is beyond any discussion], it is actually saying that law and order are [beyond any discussion].”

Yet, the Constitution is an embodiment of a document that entails the compromise of different views and it is not static, argues Tamrat; it could be and should be amended when issues demand so. In fact “there is a provision that stipulates its own amendment” because amendment was “an envisaged process.” Article 104 clearly states the legality of “initiation of Amendments.”

“Any proposal for constitutional amendment, if supported by two-thirds majority vote in the House of Peoples’ Representatives, or by a two-thirds majority vote in the House of the Federation or when one-third of the State Councils of the member States of the Federation (by a majority vote in each Council) have supported it, shall be submitted for discussion and decision to the general public and to those whom the amendment of the Constitution concerns,” the Article reads.

A change towards democracy is a must if the country is to avoid regrettable tragedy, Ezekiel says. “People at the top of the government must know that the status quo is not sustainable”, he argues, “because there is too much discontent, too much dissatisfaction, a lot of desperation, a lot of deprivation,” Ezekiel said, adding that the government must stop listening to the reverberation of its own voices and understand that this is not a sustainable path.

“It should begin by decriminalizing dissent, open up the political space, expunge the draconian laws that are muzzling the press, start from the freedom of the press, release political prisoners. These are the measures the government could take in order to win the good will of the public,” Ezekiel said. “This is not an option, this is an imperative. The window will close sooner or later. But, would the government be able to see that? Well, I always say absolute power dements more than it corrupts.”

No turning back

Several Ethiopian critics of the government assert that the fundamental problem of the recent conflicts that besieged several areas is the constitutional federalism itself. According to these critics, it focuses more on differences than unity. Some fear it may even lead to an eventual disintegration of the country. A return to the old unitary system of administration is an idea whose appeal seems to gain increasing popularity among many Ethiopians. But it is an idea both Tamrat and Ezekiel strongly disagree with.

“The [current] federal arrangement was a response to a historic question of nationalities,” Ezekiel says, “to deny that there is a question of nationalities is to deny the sun rises in the East.” The country, according to him, has tried the unitarists as well as the assimilationists track for decades and it actually led to “proliferation of centrifugal forces”. Thus, “the claim that says we need a unitary state is a flight of fancy that collides with reality.”

Tamrat adds “a unitary government has not yielded the desired, harmonious and peaceful relationship. We can’t go back to a unitary system that’s held by force. We have travelled enough distance in this federal system in which national senses of identities have taken a right recognition and it is this right recognition which is manifesting itself as demands of right.”

But back in the power corridors of the government in Ethiopia exhausting propaganda is being relentlessly produced and aired through state affiliated media claiming that the federal arrangement not only answered the ‘national question’ but also put the burning question of land ownership, and the nation’s quest for self-rule, which saw the previous two regimes toppled by the will of the people, to their final resting place.

But to put Ezekiel’s words in this context, this one too seems “a flight of fancy that collides with reality.”

By Ibsaa Guutama  | Gubirmans

(We African Nations) –Beautiful ethnic Oromo bride (wearing white in the middle) surrounded by her pretty maid of honors at Oromo traditional wedding ceremony at Oromia in Ethiopia, East Africa. The Oromo (Oromo: Oromoo, “The Powerful”; Ge’ez: ኦሮሞ, ’Oromo) people are indigenous and one of the largest Cushitic-speaking ethnic group in Africa, occupying the Eastern and North Eastern Africa. Oromo as one of the Cushitic speakers have occupied parts of north-eastern and eastern Africa (Horn of Africa) for as long as recorded history. They are found in:

• Northern Ethiopia (southern Tigray Region)
• Kenya (mainly northern), even as far south as Lamu Island and
• Somalia

The Oromo people is the single largest national group in Ethiopia, accounting for about 35 million (40%) of 75 million population. Tilahun (1992), however, posits that “in Ethiopia, Oromo account for 50%-60% of the population of the Ethiopian Empire State (Tilahun, 1992). They are “a very ancient race, the indigenous stock, perhaps, on which most other peoples in this part of Eastern Africa (the Horn of Africa) had been grafted” (Bates, 1979). The Oromo people primarily reside over a vast region of Ethiopia predominately in Wallaggaa, Iluabbaabooraa, Jimmaa, Shewa, Arsii, Baalee, Harargee, Walloo, Boranaa, and Southwestern part of Gojjam .

MARRIAGE CEREMONIES OF OROMO

The Oromos have a traditional marriage ceremony which descended from earlier times (antiquities). The great social significance is attached to the wedding ceremony. The wedding day is a very important day in the life of both the bride and the groom. It is important for the bride whose wedding celebrated once in her life. As for the man, he can celebrates his wedding if he marries a second or third wives either because of the death of his first wife or when ever he wants to have more than one wife. However, even for the man, it is the first wedding ceremony which is more important than the second or the third one. These ceremonies do not take place equally in all forms of acquiring wife (marriage).The most typical is Naqataa (betrothal) form of marriage where the ceremony starts at the moment when marriage is first thought of and even continues after the marriage is concluded in such case as Ilillee, Mana Aseennaa, Minje Deebii and Torban Taa’umsa.

Bethortal is a form marriage mostly arranged by the parents of the bride and groom with a great deal of negotiation. Traditionally the groom’s parents search for a bride for their son. Before they make any contact with the bride’s parents, the groom’s parents research back seven generations to make sure that the families are not related by blood. Once this has been done, the boy’s parents hen make contact with the girl’s parents through a mediator. The mediator goes to the home of the girl’s parents and asks if their daughter will marry the son of the other parents. The girls’s parents often impose conditions and the mediator will take the message to the boy’s parents, then arrange a date for both parents to meet at a mutually convenient location. When the parents have reached an agreement, the man and woman get engaged (betrothed). The parents then set a wedding date and they meet all the wedding expenses.

After the betrothal is conducted, both parents prepare food and drink for the wedding and invite guests. The families enjoy the wedding ceremonies of their children and say that yeroo cidha dhala keenyaa itti arginudha (it the time to seethe wedding of our children). Both families begin to make wedding feast including Farsoo1, Daadhii2, Araqee3 and food. These preparations begin a couple of weeks before the date of wedding. Fifteen or twenty days before marriage, the young girl friends of the bride-to-be are invited to come to her house after dark to practice singing and dancing. This is called Jaala Bultii (Dancing and singing, which takes, place around the boy’s and girl’s house in the evening two or three weeks prior to the wedding and terminates on the wedding date.) The boys and girls of the community gather and sing by the house of the bride and the bridegroom. The singers on the side of the bridegroom praise him and his relatives while degrading the bride and her relatives by their songs. The same is true of the singers on the bride’s side.

One month before the wedding date, the groom requests his companion (hamaamota) and age mates (Hiriyya) to travel with him to take his bride. It is also his responsibility to choose the miinjee (miinjota, plural)-the best man. Usually these people come with mule. If most of the bride’s friends and best men come with their own mules it is assumed to be an indication of groom’s wealth. The father of the boy also tells one of his age-mates to go with his boy as waa’ela abbaa (father’s stand-in). A week before the wedding date the bride will start washing her clothes, arranging her hair and finish her unfinished works like traditional clothes and other household furniture. Her friends will not depart from her thereafter. Women in the neighborhoods of the bride would help the mother of the bride in grinding, roasting grains which are used for making food and local drinks. They also fetch water, collect firewood and carryout some other similar works. The men on their part help by fetching objects, which are necessary for the feast, by constructing temporary staying rooms called Daassii for the attendants of the feast and decorating the compound.

The bride and her friends often discuss about the departure which is inevitable. During this time they are sorrowful and often sing breath-taking melodies, the bride makes prose in poetical style and weep and her friends follow after her in singing the prose and weeping. In the early morning of the wedding date, the relatives of the bridegroom gather. After a while bride’s companions gather while girls near the house of the bridegroom sing and dance. After wards, companions will be provided with food and drinks. The bridegroom then will be dressed with the clothes especially prepared for that date and will be seated a midst of his relatives. The parents of the bridegroom, elders and relatives will bless the bridegroom. When the bridegroom leaves his houses with his companions, the girl will accompany him by beating drums, singing and resounding (Ilillee). If the bridegroom is from the wealthy family, bullets will be shot as a pride to the family.

The companions will proceed to the bride’s house singing songs. When they arrive at the house of the bride’s family, a certain procedure should meet. That is, the bride with her friend will come to the gate of the place reserved for the companions and beating drums. By doing this, she bars the bridegroom and the companions from entering the house of her family. Such activity is known as Balbal qaba. She will do this until she gets a certain sum of money from the bridegroom as an entrance fee.

Sometimes the bridegroom tries to enter the house of the bride’s family without giving a certain sum of money to the bride. During this time, a dispute may arise between the bride and her age-mates on the one hand and the bridegroom and his companions on the other hand on whether or not the company of the bridegroom should be let enter the house of the girl’s family without paying some amount of money to the bride. Sometimes the disputes may lead to serious debate and even to exchange of blows. In such occurrences, some individuals from bride’s family try to cool the nuisance and make the girls leave the entrance. This is almost carried out by making the entrance fee negotiable by both sides.

That means these individuals advice the girl to reduce the sum and the company of the boys to pay a certain sum. After the sum fixed is paid the bridegroom and his companions will sit on the seat reserved for them in the temporary staying rooms (daassii). After they get in the dassii hosts from the bride’s family provide food, distributes waancaa (A vessel made of horn of animals which is used foe drinking purposes) or drinking glasses to them and fills it with good quality Farsoo. After the food is eaten, the groom puts gatii caabii (Caabii: earthen dish or plate used for dinning. Gatii caabii – money paid by the groom after the food is served. The girl’s mother takes this money and it is usually between twenty to thirty Ethiopian Birr.) The feast goes on in the form of eating and drinking.

The companions together with girl’s parties sing and dance. Following this, the groom and bride receive blessing from the girl’s parents. In that blessing place the father and the mother of the bride as well as close relatives of her willassemble and the bride and the bridegroom will be seated side by side in front of the individuals who bless them. The mother of the bride will provide wancaafull of farsoo or milk. The bride and the groom will take hold of the glass by putting their hands together on the glass at the same time. While the bride and groom holding the glass together, the father and mother of the bride will bless them by saying walitti horaa bulaa, which means have children, wealth and all necessity of life and live together. Graan keessanii fi afaan keessan tokko haata’u, which means be one mind and heart. Then the bride and groom will take a sip of the drink of blessing. At this moment older men take out all items or materials made ready to be given as a gonfa (gifts) to count, tie and pack them. These are prepared by the bride and her parents, and are also contributed by near relatives and the bride’s age-mates. The gifts contributed by the invited people in the form of money or kinds are called gumaata.

After the competition of the blessing process, the elders from the bride’s side demand a miinjee (the first best man) to be named and becomes forward when the proxy for the groom’s father (dura adeemaa) calls his name. Then the best man is asked whether he has a sister or not and his willingness to be a brother of this girl (miinjee). If he names his sister, he will take an oath in her name to take care of the bride as his own sister. He receives an oath to counsel and protect her ways, to help her whenever she is in problem and asks him for help. The best man says, “If I fail to assist her, let my sister’s best man treat her like that”. In the case that the best man has no sister, he swears saying that the same kind of treatment should come to himself. After that the groom and his companion, through the elder representing them then, state now we ate and drunk and finished what is required of us. So, we appeal to your will to let us go because we on our part have guests at our home. The groom rises alone while the best man helps the bride and leads her out. The bride walks with her best man under the newly bought umbrella and mounts her mule by the help of the best man.

The companion take all the material given as dowry and mount their own mules. After this, the bridegroom and his company will leave for their home with his bride. On their way to bride’s house if they come across a river, the bride halts her mule because she wants the groom to promise her half claim over a cow.

The girl does not practice this whenever she comes across a river. Rather, this is done only in the cases of rivers which she might come across near his or her house. In the case of the second river when she practices the same act, she would be promised the second half of cow as the case may be.
On arrival at the groom’s house, the groom’s sister and her friends singing to defame the bride. The companion present the gonfaa (gifts) and count it in frontof relatives and invited guests to show how much her parents are hard working.The groom’s sister blocks the entrance until he pays her some amount of money. The companion who takes the responsibility of the bride then pays some amount of money to the groom’s sisters who do not let the bride enter the house and if they got they leave the door.

The companion and other guests enjoy themselves with the feast till the morning while singing and dancing. That night the boy deflowers the girl. The best men and the groom’s mother go to the girl after she has been deflowered. The bride’s scarf is used to take the blood to proof her virginity. If no proof of virginity is found, the husband whips her with alanga (Whip made from hippopotamus), and sometimes sends her back to demand the return of marriage payment. But such practice is at less degree these days. If she is found virgin, the groom and the best men shoot of the gun to declare her purity and the groom’s mother and the best men take possession of the stained scarf and emerge triumphant to declare the virtue of the girl. The best men spend five days with the couples except for the day they return to her parents’ house for the misiraachoo ( Congratulating the girl’s family on the virginity of their daughter and their proper upbringing.) For these five days the bride remains in the small house behind a curtain with her best men, visited freely only by the groom and his mother throughout a five day isolation. During these five days the best men do not allow any one to visit the bride without offering some cents.

One day following the wedding day the best men and other friends congratulate the girl’s family on the virginity of their daughter and their proper upbringing. On the arrival the best men and his friends shoot off the gun and present the stained cloth to the individual family members by placing it on each of their caps while he sounds ilillee (An utterance of victory or joy.) The friend or relative is obliged to offer a gift for the privilege of viewing the bloodstained scarf. The scarf is not necessarily the one, which has a spot of a blood on it. Every individual is supposed to give more than two coins (0.20 Ethiopian cents). After spending there enjoying the feasts and congratulators start for their house, directly to the house of the newly weds to stay there till fifth day.

On the fifth day, the bride introduces herself to the groom’s family and makes a formal entry into the big house of the groom’s parents. The entry is called mana aseeennaa. Before the girl leaves the little house, the couple and the miinjotaa feed from the marqaa (A bread made from grain flour, usually barley served with butter) and qorii (Barley roasted and serve with special butter) provided by the groom’s mother.

When she leaves her small hose the groom shaves her qarree, which is another sign of her new status, and she also shaves a small portion of her husband’s hair. Following this the couple enter the house of the parents followed by the miinjotaa and at the door her husband’s father promise her cows, and she reciprocates by providing the father with heavy bullukko (A large garment usually worn by men. It is local production made from cotton) and the mother with kutaa (A cotton cloth which is very long worn by the women from the top to the bottom. It is usually worn on the date of festivals) and wedding and sabbata ( It is a long step of cloth, which is worn by Oromos of Gidda area round their waist.)

The miinjee also brings many things for the ceremony such as qorii, food served with chicken dish, and pot full of farsoo. All the family with their relatives enjoy the feast prepared for the ceremony. From that day on wards the miinjotaa go their homes and the bride lives with her husband without feeling of loneliness.

After month or two the bride family invite the couple with miinjotaa to return home. This first homecoming is known as miinje deebii (returning of the best man). For that day the groom prepare a goat that will be killed at the house of the bride’s family. His mother prepares qorii, araqee and kukkutaa (A food soaked in a meat soup), which the bride takes with her when she goes for the miinjee deebii.

After getting prepared, the couple and the companion go with few friends on fixed date. At the house of the bride’s family, young girls gather and sing together. On the arrival they are given seats in the temporary staying rooms. The bride’s family provides them with food and drink. After eating and drinking, the bride stands up to exchange greetings with her family and relatives. Following this the best men dances at the middle of the girls dancing out side, declaring the virginity of the girl while the bride serving the food she has brought. People rarely sleep that night; usually stay all night eating, drinking and singing. Early in the morning, the groom brings into the front the goat he has brought and the first best man kills it.

From the killed goat, steer or ram what ever it may be, the right hind limb will not be consumed there but the newly weds take it to their home. And also the skin belongs to the best men. The couple, the best men and friends who accompanied the couple and relatives of the bride’s family eat meat from the goat prepared by the bride’s mother and women from the surrounding. After this, few friends who accompanied the couple return home while the couple and the best men stay for another one or two days. Before the couple return to their home, the family of the bride fix a date for their daughter to come back for yet another visit which is called toorban taa’umsa (a stay for a couple of weeks).
On this fixed date the bride goes to her family accompanied by her husband who will turn home in the morning. She carries again flour and spiced butter to provide to her family. After her stay for a week with her parents the husband takes her home.

Beautiful ethnic Afar girl from Danakil Desert in Ethiopia showing her beautification sharpened teeth in a hearty smile.

Beautiful ethnic Afar girl from Danakil Desert in Ethiopia showing her beautification sharpened teeth in a hearty smile. The Afar people also known as Adal, Adali, Oda’ali, Teltal and Dankali are Cushitic-nomadic people located in the East African countries of Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. The Afar (Danakil) claim to be descendants of Ham (Noah’s son). They prefer to be known as the Afar, since the Arabic word “danakil” is an offensive term to them. They are a proud people, emphasizing a man’s strength and bravery. Prestige comes, as it always has, from killing one’s enemies. The Afar people are warrior tribe and are very good at using knives and daggers in a warfare. They love their culture and respects their laws. There is a proverb in Afar that says: (koo liih anii macinay kamol ayyo mogolla) which means “I accept you in my home as a brother but I do not accept that you put my authority questioned” and therefore the Afar have still not agreed to be humble, being crushed, therefore they are in conflict with the rest of ethnic groups.

A Struggle with an Independent Oromo State In Sight *

Mekuria Bulcha

Introduction

The Oromo and the other peoples in the southern part of Ethiopia are caught in a vicious circle of tyranny that is deeply rooted in a colonial conquest at the end of the 19^th century. The tyranny had stirred popular uprisings in many places at different times. Hitherto, most of the uprisings have been suppressed, and the revolutions were hijacked and reversed. As we know, the revolution that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 was hijacked by a military junta, which came in promising democracy but delivered terror in abundance. The response to the military dictatorship was the formation of half a dozen national liberation fronts with the aim of waging a struggle and liberate their respective peoples from an empire which a British political scientist Ernst Gellner called a prison-house of nations.[1] After a decade and a half they defeated the military regime in 1991 and formed a Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE). One of the victorious fronts which formed a coalition and built the TGE was the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). The Charter on which the transitional government was based, promised to bring about fundamental changes in the prevailing political and social order in Ethiopia. It made provisions for a federal structure that will create space for democracy and the self-determination of peoples in Ethiopia. However, within a year, the revolution was hijacked and reversed by the TPLF which was militarily and organizationally the strongest party in the coalition and a new dictatorship replaced the military dictatorship. As an autocrat, Emperor Haile Selassie was the law for there was no law above him. He ran the country as his private property, handing out favors in land and punishing lack of loyalty severely. After consolidating his political power and asserting his position as the prime minister of Ethiopia, the TPLF leader Meles Zenawi assumed an autocratic posture similar to that of Haile Selassie and ruled the country with an iron hand. In his book Ye-Meles Tirufatoch (The Legacies of Meles), Ermias Legesse mentions that Zenawi’s subordinates – ministers and other functionaries in his government – referred to him internally as “Dirgitu”, meaning “The Organization”.[2]  Gradually, his wishes and orders came to weigh more than provisions in the Ethiopian Constitution and conditions set by the laws of the country. Thus, with a pernicious form of Abyssinian rulers’ despotism in place, Melese and his acolytes intensified the abuses of their predecessors plundering the properties of the state which they were supposed to guard. They committed human rights violations with impunity that has surpassed the appalling records of the military regime they had replaced. The Oromo have been affected by the policies of the regime more than most of the peoples in Ethiopia. The reason is simple and well known: (a) they occupy a territory that produces more than 60 percent of Ethiopia’s gross national product. The Oromo peasants produce more than 85 percent of the coffee exported from Ethiopia. Gold, platinum and tantalum which play an important role in the Ethiopian economy today are also extracted from mines in Oromia. (b) Democracy, as promised by the Transitional Charter, will not allow the TPLF leaders to structure the political economic institutions in their own favor. (c) Therefore, it was necessary not only to weaken the structure that was designed for a democratic change in Ethiopia, but undermine also legitimate Oromo institutions and political organizations in order to control the state and exploit the economic resources of Oromia, and indeed the rest of the country.

A revolution can be aborted by a counterrevolution, but that does not always mean that no change had occurred or the present is an unaltered continuation of the pre-revolution system. Whenever and wherever revolutions occur somethings will change or seeds of change are planted. One of the changes which was introduced by the 1991 Transitional Charter was the right to language and culture. In the case of the Oromo, what made this change important was the “vernacular revolution” which followed in its aftermath.  The speed and efficiency with which textbooks were prepared and the change from Amharic to Afaan Oromoo was implemented between July 1991 and June 1992 was stunning. What could have taken several years to organize and implement was accomplished in less than a year under the leadership of Ibsaa Guutama, a member of the OLF who was Ethiopia’s Minister of Education in the TGE. The school which, by and large, was seen as an alien institution in many parts of the Oromo countryside in the past became an Oromo institution overnight. With Afaan Oromoo as a medium of instruction, it became a place of learning and engagement, where education was sought eagerly and acquired easily by millions of Oromo children. The Oromo children who started their education with Afaan Oromoo as a medium of instruction in 1991-92 became the first cohort of the qubee generation. The Oromo youth who are currently enrolled in grade-schools (grades 1-8), high schools (grades 9-12), colleges, and universities are over seven million.[3] Without this generation, we wouldn’t have had the ongoing revolution. The strength of the current uprising cannot be appreciated without a proper understanding of the qubee generation’s cultural underpinnings and demographic background.

To be called a revolution, an uprising should mobilize a population for a fundamental change. Uprisings can occur in a country in different places and their causes may be also similar; but they become revolutionary only when they occur simultaneously “nationwide”. In the case of the Oromo, the uprising which occurred in a small town a small town of Ginchi, central Oromia, on November 12, 2015 had triggered such an event.  Together with the prevailing contention between the Oromo people and the Ethiopian state over the so-called “Addis Ababa Integrated Development Master Plan”, widely known as “the Master Plan,” and multitudes of other illegitimate acts conducted by the TPLF regime against the Oromo, the event in Ginchi, as will be discussed in this article, could raise popular grievances to a boiling point throughout Oromia. The result is a revolution in which millions of people have taken part during the last five months. In spite of the brutal violence with which the regime has been trying to suppress the revolution, not a single day has passed without massive demonstrations, often occurring simultaneously in a number of towns, cities and districts in Oromia during the last five months. The situation has been such that it gives, at times, the impression that the entire Oromo nation is out demonstrating in the streets.

Purpose of this article

The current Oromo uprising has been preceded by a trajectory of contentious events such as the forest fires of 2000, the 2002 conflict over fertilizer prices, and the 2003/4 conflict over the transfer of Oromia’s capital from Finfinnee to Adama that had marked the relationship between the Oromo youth and the Ethiopian regime during the last fifteen years. Since I have dealt with these events and the contentious “Master Plan” at large elsewhere, I will not delve into them here.[4] Although the outset of the ongoing Oromo uprising was triggered by “the Master Plan”, the main focus of this article is on factors that made the year 2014 a turning point in Oromo politics and history. The article will discuss a crucial political identity shift among the Oromo that is caused by the atrocities inflicted on peaceful Oromo protesters by the TPLF regime’s police and security forces. It argues also that the consequences of the silence of the  international community over these atrocities was, by and large, an Oromo awakening to the realities of realpolitik and strengthening of their will to defend their national rights. With the November 2015 Oromo revolution in focus, the article discusses some important similarities between the revolts of the Oromo qubee generation, the Intifada kids of the state of Palestine in the 1990s and the black youth of South Africa’s shanty towns in the 1970s and 1980s in revitalizing the revolutionary processes in their respective societies and in influencing positive changes in the positions of world powers on the struggles and rights of their respective peoples. On the home front, it compares the current Oromo Student Movement (OSM) with the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) of the 1960s and 1970s. It suggests that, because of its size, the unity of purpose and ideology of its members and their embeddeness in the Oromo society, the OSM will show more resilience against the repression of the Ethiopian regime and become more successful in achieving its goal than the ESM did.

2014 – A decisive juncture in Oromo politics

Since a lot has been said and written about “the Master Plan”, particularly in Oromo media, I need not go into details. What I want to mention here are some of the factors that made 2014, in my view, and the declaration of the “Master Plan” a turning point in the struggle of the Oromo people.  Obviously, “the Master Plan” was not an Oromo-friendly idea. The Oromo saw it as a physical and psychological attack on them as a nation. Planned to cover over a million hectares of land, it threatened to evict millions of Oromos who live in a dozen towns and rural districts. If implemented, it will tear Oromia into two parts. Between the two, it will carve out of central Oromia a large region from which the Oromo language and culture will disappear gradually.[5] The political consequences are also obvious.  The project will not only violate Oromo sovereignty, but also pose a threat to Oromo nationhood. With its implementation, Oromia will cease to be a compact contiguous territory as we know it now. In fact, as a concept, “the Master Plan” brings to mind the map of the Palestinian territory and the problems which its separation into “West Bank” and “Gaza Strip” has created for the Palestinian people and state.  Should the Oromo accept the creation of similar problems in their territory? Obviously no. Given this and what is said above, it is not difficult to understand why the Oromo oppose resolutely the implementation of “the Master Plan”

One may doubt whether the scenario I have described above is a true intention of the TPLF regime. But it is a reality which is already partially in progress. “The Master Plan” which was announced in 2014 was an enlarged extension of an ongoing project which started in 2005 unannounced by the government. According to Ermias Legesse, the TPLF leaders had grabbed over 50,000 hectares of land that belonged to 30,000 households with over 150,000 family-members were evicted from 29 kebeles. Ermias Legesse refers to this as an act of ethnic cleansing. He says that 95 percent of those whose land is confiscated are Oromo and the vast majority of its recipients are Tigrayans.[6] It is also a widely acknowledge fact that many of the evicted Oromo farmers have died, thousands of families have been disintegrated, and that the majority are now laborers, guards and beggars in Finfinnee and elsewhere in Oromia. The irony is that this is even what members of the ruling party and government are saying.[7] According to Legesse, those to whom the land was distributed had collected about 20 billion birr or US$1.5 billion from land sale.[8] It is public knowledge that the TPLF leaders and their followers became fabulously rich selling the land from which they had evicted Oromo peasants.

A decisive shift in Oromo attitude

The reaction to the news about “the Master Plan” was dramatic. The Oromo were rudely awakened not only by the news about “the Master Plan”, but also by the arrogance of a junior TPLF official who was present at a workshop the regime organized in Adama on April 13, 2014, allegedly to start public discussion on “the Master Plan”. Responding to reactions from some OPDO members who complained that “the Master Plan” imposed from above without consulting the Oromo people he said “there is nothing to prevent us to impose the Master Plan from above.” The implication was “the project will be implemented whether you like it or not”. The TPLF regime’s lack of respect for Oromo rights to homeland and property was reflected by the attitude of the TPLF official.  Although the eviction of the Oromo from Finfinnee and its vicinity has been taking place since 2005, that the decisions were made entirely by the TPLF was not clear to most Oromos. As reflected in the reactions at the Adama workshop, ironically, even the members of the OPDO were not informed about “the Master Plan” until April 2014. That the TPLF leaders can exercise their power over the Oromo people and their resources without consultation and legal constraints became crystal clear at the meeting in Adama. When exposed in a rare report by journalists from the state-run Oromiyaa TV (OTV), the knowledge that the TPLF officials did not bother to consult even the mayors of the 15 townships that are affected by “the Master Plan”, let alone the millions of Oromo farmers of the surrounding villages, was humiliating not only to the junior OPDO members who were attending the workshop, but also the Oromo people at large. [9]

The crisis did not stop there. Be it out of arrogance or ignorance, the leaders of TPLF regime did not give attention to the angry words of some of the young OPDO members at the Adama workshop on “the Master Plan.” They continued to stress the irreversibility of its implementation. Consequently, the protest against the project spread quickly to universities and high schools across Oromia. The students of Ambo University organized a protest on the 25^th of April and translated the popular indignation into action. Students from other universities and high schools took similar steps. One of their most resonant slogans was “Finfinneen handhura Oromiyaati!”, “Finfinnee is the bellybutton of Oromia!” Their message was clear: “we won’t allow you to cut it out; you are interfering with the geography of our national identity.” The crackdown of the regime’s security forces on the students became the bloodiest they had hitherto conducted against Oromo demonstrators. Over 70 students and residents were killed. Most of them were massacred in Ambo. The impunity with which the federal police and military forces of the regime cracked down on unarmed students revealed clearly their blatant lack of respect for the Oromo right to life.

The atrocity committed against the Oromo youth had unexpected effects. It changed the attitude of the Oromo, including those who hitherto had been indifferent about the ongoing Oromo struggle for justice. It created a reaction which reflected not only the revulsion provoked by the atrocities committed against children, pregnant women and the elderly, but also a national solidarity among the Oromo at large. Above all, the events of 2014 made it clear to many Oromos that regaining control over their homeland is a precondition for exercising their fundamental human and peoples’ rights. “The Master Plan” came to be seen as a crime against the Oromo nation and the attitude of the Oromo people about the Ethiopian state started to take a decisive negative turn.

The banner of Oromo struggle was raised and engrained

The cruelty of the Abyssinian rulers against the Oromo is well-known, but the TPLF regime’s atrocity against the Oromo youth in 2014 was an eye-opener to many Oromos. It stirred the Oromo diaspora across the globe to mobilize and protest in mass. In many cities around the world, they went out condemning the atrocities of the TPLF and chanting the slogan “We are Oromo; we are not Ethiopians.” Many had not only joined the demonstrations against the TPLF-led regime for the first time, but were also carrying the OLF flag. In a number of ways this reaction was significantly different from the mixed feeling which many Oromos had about Ethiopia in the past. What is new, and interesting in my view, is the combination of the declaration of identity expressed as “We are Oromos! We are not Ethiopians!” and the act of carrying the OLF flag, the symbol of the Oromo struggle for freedom, by Oromos who have never been members and even supporters of the OLF. Obviously, the events of 2014 had forced them to take a positions on the “Oromo versus Ethiopia question” which is at the core of Oromo politics. To carry a flag in a public demonstration is like carrying a banner in a battle: it is to endorse or protect the objective or interest which the flag signifies. Be that as it may, in the diaspora, many Oromos carry the OLF flag at mass rallies, or decorate their homes with it, to express their support for what it represents: that is to say, the establishment of an independent Oromo state.

At home, the significance of flags in identity politics was clearly marked during the 2015 national parliamentary elections. Those of us who followed the 2015 Ethiopian elections were surprised the fact that, among the thousands of Oromos who had participated in rallies organized by the only Oromo opposition party at home, the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), not a single person was seen carrying the Ethiopian flag. In fact there were no banners of any kind at many of the videoed rallies. It is said that there was an attempt to distribute the Ethiopian flag to the participants during one of the OFC rallies, but that was unsuccessful. No one was willing to carry it. Given the level of the prevailing political consciousness among the Oromo, it is difficult to expect them to march with a flag which symbolizes the subjugation of their forefathers. But, the intriguing question is that, when we talk about rejection of the flag that does not tell us whether it is the subjugation, which the flag symbolized, which was being rejected, or the Ethiopian identity which is also implied. My guess is both. The rejection of Ethiopian flag and identity is also reflected in the actions of the Oromo youth who have been raising the OLF flag in many places across Oromia. As we have been witnessing during the last five months through social media, it is raised to honor those who were killed by the Ethiopian security.

In general, it seems that as a symbol of resistance, the OLF flag is arousing positive emotions among the Oromo in tandem with the increased atrocity committed against them by the TPLF regime.  The demonstrations of 2014, 2015 and the last three four months have indicated clearly the significance the OLF flag in the Oromo struggle. Juxtaposed with the evergreen odaa tree, the symbol of gadaa democracy, and rays of a rising morning sun, the red, green and yellow OLF banner has become a resonant symbol of the expected Oromo resurgence from the dark nights of a more than a century old subjugation, into the bright light of independence. That the image which the OLF flag is ingraining in the minds of the Oromo. Although the Oromo do not have an independent state, and the use of the OLF flag is not endorsed by an Oromo parliament as a national flag, it is “seen” fulfilling many of the functions that national flags fulfill.

A shocking but liberating moment

The indifference of the international community to the crime perpetrated by the Ethiopian regime was another issue that awakened the Oromo to reality. The Oromo who naively believed that the international system is humane and justice-based were suddenly confronted with the culpable silence of realpolitik. Although the atrocities the Ethiopian regime had committed in Oromia constituted a clear case of what the Statute of the International Court (Article 7) defines a crime against humanity, the rest of the world continued doing business with the Ethiopian regime as usual. The two American Peace Corps volunteers, Jen Klein and Josh Cook who had witnessed atrocities committed against Oromo students in the town of Ambo, central Oromia, wrote “Ironically, as we sat at home, listening to gunshots all day long, John Kerry was visiting Ethiopia a mere 2 hours away in Addis Ababa, to encourage democratic development.”[10]

The visiting US Secretary of State was not the only diplomat who was silent about the student massacre.  Although 70 peaceful students were massacred in a couple of days, no government raised its voice against the Ethiopian regime.  The African Union, which has headquarters in Finfinnee/Addis Ababa, remained conspicuously silent about a massacre that took place “on its doorsteps”. This was also the case with the entire diplomatic corps who staff the embassies of nearly all the member states of the UN, who reside in the heart of the Oromo country. In fact, the two Peace Corps volunteers mentioned above were advised to keep quiet when they started to inform others about what they saw in Ambo.  This appalling indifference can be explained by a mixture of factors including the lack of interest in what was happening to the powerless, pursuit of selfish geopolitical and economic interest or selfish individual motives. The Abyssinian ruling elites have a refined tradition of distorting reality. The British journalist Evelyn Waugh wrote “Tricking the European was a national craft; evading issues, promising without the intention of fulfilment….were the ways by which [Abyssinian rulers] had survived and prospered.”[11] The rulers of Ethiopia remained adept at exploiting this time tested method long after Waugh made this critical observation. Writing about the 1973 Ethiopian famine, the American writer Jack Shepherd argued in his Politics and Starvation that, “honorable men and women’ working for honorable institutions refused to jeopardize their jobs or their comfortable relationship with Haile Selassie’s government by calling international attention to the Emperor’s secret.”[12] The Abyssinian national craft of tricking foreign diplomats is inherited and is being diligently used by TPLF leaders in their dealings with the international community.  We also know that they are diplomats and foreign experts themselves who are reluctant to jeopardize their comfortable relationship with the TPLF regime and jobs in Finfinnne (Addis Ababa) today. Avoiding criticism of the Ethiopian government for undemocratic practices, they prefer to talk about a step forward on the right road towards democracy, and pledge assistance for further democratization irrespective of how grave the observed violations of human rights are.[13]

“Oromoo! Walmalee fira hinqabnu!”

Like other oppressed peoples who believed the promises of the UN Charter and that of the other international organizations which that pledge support the oppressed, humiliated and downtrodden peoples, it took the Oromo a long time to understand that their lofty promises are empty words.  The Oromo interpretation of the silence over the massacre of Oromo youth in 2014 was that the death of the powerless is not more important than business with the Ethiopian regime. The conclusion they drew from the silence was summarized in a statement which said: “Oromoo walmalee fira hinqabnu!” (“Oromo! We have only ourselves!”). This was on the lips of everyone for a while after the tragic massacre of Oromo students in 2014. Notwithstanding the tone, the statement did not reflect hopelessness or victimhood; it expressed the sober understanding that waiting for others to liberate them was an illusion. It underlined the necessity of internal solidarity and collective action to overcome their national predicament. The overall reaction to the external silence was an internal unity and psychological bonding among the Oromo. The feeling was that “if we are united we will stop the Master Plan; if not our future as a people is in danger.” In my view, the silence of the international community was a “blessing in disguise”: it killed the naïve belief which many Oromos had about the international community’s readiness to condemn injustice wherever and whenever it occurs. It underlined the importance of self-reliance and aggressive engagement in diplomacy.

“Black man, you are on your own!”[14]

The Oromo are not the first people to find themselves in that situation. The South African Student Organization (SASO) declared in the early 1970s: “Black man, you are on your own!” Steve Biko, the co-founder and first president of SASO (1969), who is known more as a prominent leader of the anti-Apartheid movement called Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), reminded his compatriots:

We are oppressed because we are black. We must use that very concept [black] to unite ourselves and respond as a cohesive group. We must cling to each other with a tenacity that will shock the perpetrators of evil.[15]

The silence of the international community over its massacre of Oromo students in 2014 emboldened the Ethiopian regime to continue its policy of evicting the Oromo from their land.  In spite of the widespread Oromo opposition, both at home and in the diaspora, it did not drop the Master Plan. In February 2015, the former Minister of Federal Affairs and current special advisor of the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Mr. Abay Tsehaye, declared his government’s determination to implement the plan. However, it was not only the position of the Ethiopian regime that was unwavering on the question of Finfinnee. Notwithstanding the threats from the government, the Oromo youth at home were prepared to pay the sacrifice it may ask and continue their struggle and defend the sovereignty of their homeland and the rights of their people. In the diaspora, media outlets such as the OMN (Oromia Media Network) and others that connect the remotest parts of Oromia with Oromo communities across the globe were in place. Informed by these sources and through other networks such as Facebook, Tweeter and Instagram, the Oromo in the diaspora were active in bringing the atrocities being committed by the Ethiopian regime in the name of development to the attention of the international community. By and large, the Oromo opposition to the threat posed by the “Master Plan” was united and their response to the crimes committed by the TPLF regime against the Oromo youth was cohesive

The Oromo appeal to the international community got attention after another round of TPLF massacre in late 2015. Following the strong resolution passed by the European Parliament in January 2016, and statements made by the US Department of State on the situation in Ethiopia in general and Oromia in particular, the deafening silence that had prevailed on the ongoing violence against the Oromo was lifted. The Oromo have also started to win some ground in the diplomatic front. However, that does not mean enough work has been done and effective pressure has been applied against the TPLF regime. In fact the violation of human rights in Oromia has kept on escalating since November 2015.

The November 2015 Oromo Revolution

An event in a small town in Oromia on November 12, 2015 epitomized the crimes of the TPLF. An uprising which was ignited in Ginchi, a small town 80 km west of Finfinnee, involved an assortment of injustices: land grabbing, the plunder of Oromo resources, deforestation, destruction of the environment, the impunity of the security forces, in other words, the major causes of Oromo grievances because of which the Oromo students have been protesting for a long time across Oromia. When the news of what happened in Ginchi was reported over social media, it became an epitome of both the crimes of the TPLF regime and the resistance in Oromia. The people could not tolerate the situation anymore. The news caused uprisings first in Ambo and then to Mendi, a town in western Oromia, and immediately all over Oromia. The situation is such that sometimes it seemed as if the Oromo are marching simultaneously in one and the same demonstration. It is as if people were responding in unison to a national call made in March 2015 by the students of Jimma University who, among other things, said: “We have been subjugated together; we should stand shoulder to shoulder to reclaim our God given rights and freedom together.”[16]  The news and video records that have been coming out of Oromia on daily basis since November 12, 2015 show successions of mass demonstrations across Oromia that reflect similarities with the daring actions of the Palestinian Intifada kids and the mighty post-Soweto youth protests in South Africa’s black townships in the 1980s.[17]

In January 2015 Opride wrote that today’s Oromo youth are “like a new species of Oromo.” They are “keenly aware of their state’s boundaries and the Oromo people’s longstanding misgivings about the Ethiopian state.” It said “the average Oromo protester personifies the indomitable spirit of Oromo nationalism and a steely determination to see to it that the injustice against the Oromo becomes a thing of the past. Such open national consciousness was hitherto unthinkable in Ethiopia, which remained a unitary state in large part by harshly suppressing Oromo self-expressions.”[18] In fact, OPride’s observation about the Oromo qubee generation’s national consciousness and indomitable determination is reflected in the following sample of slogans. Chanted in chorus by tens of thousands of schoolchildren, secondary school and university students, these and other slogans have been reverberating across Oromia during the last five months.[19] In many towns and remote villages schoolchildren were chanting the touching slogans defying cruel beating, tear gas, and even live ammunition directed at them by policemen and the security forces of the Ethiopian regime.

As reflected in these slogans, the Oromo youth want that their people should get rid of terror, eviction, and humiliation under the rule of the TPLF regime and be in charge of their own destiny. They demand respect for their rights – their right to life, and the right to shape their individual and collective lives without external interference. They will not violate others’ rights, but, as reflected in the slogans, they will sacrifice their lives to defend Oromo rights and dignity. To paraphrase a comment made by an observer, the Oromo protesters have shattered fear and intimidation and are confronting the regime’s brutal crackdowns, including salvoes of live ammunition, defiantly with hands crossed. This bravery is not an impulsive act. To the Oromo, the question of Finfinnee is seen as a matter of life and death for Oromo sovereignty and territorial integrity, in a federation or as an independent state. Although almost all of the Oromo youth’s protests have been conducted hitherto peacefully, the responses from the Ethiopian regime has involved deadly brutalities, beatings, rapes, disappearances, imprisonments etc. The men, women and children killed so far are at least 550; those who have been injured are counted in thousands. Nobody knows the number of those who have been kidnaped and disappeared. Those who are detained are counted in tens of thousands.

The Oromo youth, the children of Soweto and the Intifada kids of Palestine

Women mourn during the funeral ceremony of Dinka Chala, a primary school teacher who family members said was shot dead by military forces during a recent demonstration, in Holonkomi town, in Oromiya region of Ethiopia December 17, 2015. Ethiopia’s government said on Monday at least five people had been killed in protests against its plan to incorporate areas of farmland near the capital into a new zone to attract business, while an opposition figure said 30 had died. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri – RTX1Z5UT

It is interesting to note here that features of the revolution that had been ignited by the incident in Ginchi in November 2015 has similarities with the resistance of the South African and Palestinian peoples in the past. To begin with, welded together by an unwavering faith in their legitimate cause the Palestinian Intifada kids constituted a defiant “army” who faced Israeli tanks, jeeps and soldiers with stones. Their bravery had cost them many lives, but, it was not pointless or in vain. It was contagious and took the Palestinians to the streets in their thousands.  The burial of each and every Palestinian killed by Israeli bullets became a massive show of national solidarity in a resolute psychological defiance against the Israeli occupation. The kids who lost their lives were not betrayed and forgotten. As we remember, it was the heroic acts of the Intifada youth which forced the Israeli government under Yitzhak Rabin to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Front (PLO) and its leader Yasser Arafat in 1993. Thus, the daring youth also put the Palestinian question on the agenda of the powerful West and the Palestinian state on the map of the Middle East.

The similarities between the current deeds of the Oromo youth to stop the implementation of “the Addis Ababa Master Plan,” and the courage the Palestinian kids had shown in defense of Palestinian rights are striking. It is even the struggle of the Oromo youth that has made the world to pay attention to the Oromo question for the first time. Among others, the European Parliament passed resolution on the situation in Ethiopia condemning the use of violence against peaceful Oromo protesters. The US government expressed its concern publicly for the first time about the situation in Oromia. However, the statements are yet to be accompanied by tangible action. On its part, the Ethiopian regime has continued with its vicious actions against the Oromo people ignoring the concern of the international community.

Again, it is important to remember that the support of the international community, though needed, is not a panacea for a national predicament in the last analysist. Although, the assistance given to the ANC by external powers was very substantial, but we must remember that Apartheid was brought to its disgraceful demise by the monumental demonstrations and death-defying confrontations which were conducted in the racially segregated shanty towns in which the vast majority of the indigenous African population live. Indeed, it was those actions which had gradually turned Apartheid South Africa into a hell for the white racist regime. The trend we see in Oromia is proceeding in the same direction. As the uprising shocked “the perpetrators of evil” in Apartheid South Africa, the Oromo uprising has given the TPLF regime a shock it has never felt during last 25 years. As we know, it took a decade and half to bring down the Apartheid regime after the Soweto uprising. While the popular base of the ongoing Oromo revolution seems to be at least as united and strong as the Anti-apartheid movement had been, one cannot say the same when it comes to the strength of its leadership.  However, I can say that what the OMS has already achieved has brought the Oromo people nearer to the goal they have been aspiring for a long time: (a) it has united the Oromo people from corner to corner to struggle for a common goal; (b) it has brought the Oromo question to the attention of the international community. (c) One of the arguments against Oromo independence concerns the security of non-Oromos who live in Oromia today. However, the humanity shown to non-Oromos during the last five months must have, by and large, dispelled that fear. In other words, it has indicated that non-Oromos can live in an independent Oromia without fear for their lives and property. These and other victories scored by the Oromo people, particularly during the last five months, indicate that the day of their independence is not far

Number matters

The current Oromo uprising is maelstrom that has refused to cease for the last five months and is involving scores of cities, all the universities in Oromia, nearly all the high schools and most of the elementary schools. In addition, millions of farmers, businessmen and women, and civil servants have been participating in it. However, the Oromo youth remain in the forefront. The term youth includes university and high school students and primary school children. The TPLF leaders seem to have forgotten the role the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) had played in overthrowing the Haile Selassie regime in 1974 when they under-estimated the strength of the Oromo youth. The ESM of late 1960s and early 1970s of which many of the TPLF leaders were members, was based on population of 6,098 university (in 1974-75), 88,541 secondary school and 1,191,158 grade school (1-8) students in the country, including Eritrea, in 1976.[20] Compared to that, there are, according to a recent report from the Ministry of Education of Ethiopia[21], over 600,000 students enrolled in higher institutions of education in the country during the academic year 2013/14. If we estimate that between 35 percent of them are Oromo that means there are over 210,000 Oromo students in the colleges and universities. According to the same source, the number of Oromo students who were attending secondary schools was more than 650,000. Over 6,620,000 Oromo children were attending grade schools. Given this gigantic number of current schoolchildren, it is plausible to assume that the number of Oromo students in secondary schools and universities will double and even triple soon. Therefore, it is unlikely that the TPLF or any other regime that may take power in Finfinnee hereafter can destroy the Oromo youth movement physically or diminish its political importance unless it is prepared to commit a genocide.

It is important to point in this connection that the majority of the Oromo youth with whom the TPLF regime is in conflict were born after it came to power. They are between the ages of 17 and 24. A regime which treats a young generation of such an immense size with unbridled atrocity as the TPLF has been doing for the last fifteen years cannot have a future. The TPLF regime is seating in an irreparably damaged boat that is sinking in a stormy sea. The only means it depends on now to stay in power are the instruments of coercion. But those are not functional any more in Oromia.

Unity of purpose and ideology matter  

Unity of purpose and ideology are the other variables which differentiate the Oromo Student Movement (OSM) from the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM). The ESM’s mission was based on the notion of class struggle. Its vision was building an Ethiopian state dominated by a working class. However, a working class that can conduct a revolution and run a state did not exist in Ethiopia. Therefore, the revolution for which it became a catalyst paved the way for a military dictatorship. After the Dergue destroyed ESM in the mid-1970s, it has not been possible to unite Ethiopian youth under a similar organization. The case of the Oromo youth movement is different. It is not only larger in size, but is also free from the ethnic division which denied members of the ESM unity. It is based on Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism) the essence of which is psychological bonding and the conviction to defend Oromo rights. As Frantz Fanon had stated, “each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.” According to most of the respondents interviewed by media outlets such as Voice of America (VOA) and Oromia Media Network (OMN), abba biyyummaa is the aim for which they will struggle to the end. In its six-point resolution of April 15, 2016 the students of Wallaga University have declared, among others, that “Diina guyyaa saafaa mana keenya seenuun haadhaa fi ilmoo wal irratti ajjeesaa jiru of keessaa baasuuf halkaniif guyyaa hojjenna” (We will work day and night to dislodge the enemy that is killing mothers and their children together entering our homes in broad daylight).[22] Even though it is not declared as a manifesto, the liberation of Oromia is crystalizing as a mission of the qubee generation. The events of the last five months indicate a rapid progress in that direction.

Embeddedness

Another factor that makes the Oromo youth movement different from that of the ESM is its embeddedness in the society. The signs are that it has greater support from the people than the ESM ever had. In fact few had heard about the ESM outside the major urban centers. John Markakis has the following to say about them. They “came neither from the down-trodden peasant mass nor the minuscule working class. They were the offspring of the ruling elite, the makuanent, gultegna, neftegna and balabbat; the overwhelming majority were of Abyssinian origin, and lived in towns. … [These) town-bred radicals were little acquainted with conditions in the countryside.”[23] In other words, the vast majority of the students knew little about the aspirations of, particularly the non-Abyssinian peoples they were talking about. Since the class perspective defined the sociology of Imperial Ethiopia in their view, its main problem was distributive justice. One was rich or poor, landless or landlord. Therefore, they emphasized distributive justice as a solution for conflict in Ethiopia.

The case of the present Oromo youth movement is different. Conceived in the wombs of an ongoing struggle for national liberation, the overriding concern of the majority of its members is the achievement of national sovereignty. In their view, distributive justice and the national question cannot be seen separately – for a conquered, and politically and culturally dominated people like the Oromo, economic liberation in the absence national freedom is barely achievable. More significantly, the overwhelming majority are from the rural areas and the sons and daughters of farming households. What they want is what their people are aspiring for. The subordination of the Oromo as a nation and the economic disadvantages they experience as individuals are often interrelated. They express the grievances of their people. The most common slogan of the Oromo demonstrators during the last five months has been “Gaafiin Bartoota gaaffii ummataatii!” “The student demands are the demands of the people!” As a generation, the  qubee generation see themselves as the offspring of heroes who had sacrificed their lives while fighting for the liberation of Oromia. Almost every Oromo household seems to have at least one young member who entertains these feelings and convictions of the OSM.

A peaceful resistance against a regime that does not understand peace

The pre-emptying efforts to silence the Oromo youth through the practice of arbitrary imprisonment, beating, torture, murder, rape, and disappearing may continue, but there will be no room for the reproduction of the Abyssinian system of domination in Oromia anymore. The TPLF atrocities have not only intensified youth resistance, but also awakened the Oromo people at large to the reality that fighting injustice with every means necessary is a must. The events of 2014, 2015 and now 2016 made the Oromo to come to the conclusion that they cannot allow anyone to hunt and kill their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters or their neighbors as if they are unprotected wild game. The Oromo people have learnt to withstand increasing repression with determination under the present regime. They have “killed” their worst enemy, fear. Many of us have been often stunned with awe during the last five months to see the failure of atrocious violence including live ammunition to force the Oromo youth into flight or silence their protest. They buried their dead and went back to the place where their brothers, sisters or compatriots were killed to continue with the protest. However, their method of resistance may not remain as peaceful as it had been hitherto.  Frantz Fanon, whose views about freedom were informed by the struggles waged by indigenous peoples against European colonial rule in Africa and elsewhere in the 1950 and 1960s, and shaped particularly through his direct participation in the Algerian war of independence, has reminded us that, “For he [the indigenous person] knows that he is not an animal; and it is precisely when he realizes his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure his victory.”[24] Or as stated by another influential thinker Mamood Mamdani, “He of whom they [the colonizers] have never stopped saying that the only language he understands is that of force, decides to give utterance by force” to become the master of his destiny.[25] By and large, Fanon’s and Mamdani’s statements mirror a universal truth: whenever history takes that course, we find yesterday’s victims turning around and casting aside their victimhood and becoming masters of their own lives and destiny. So far the Oromo have conducted peaceful protests facing live bullets from the police, the notorious Agazi squads and military forces of the Ethiopian state. Confident in the righteousness of their demands, they haven’t been using violence to achieve it. But, they are determined to defeat the Ethiopian regime by making themselves uncontrollable and Oromia ungovernable. In an effort to crash the Oromo uprising, the TPLF regime has made recourse to the indiscriminate use of violence against the Oromo people as a whole. This violence may increase in its atrocity. However, like all oppressors the TPLF-regime tends to forget that it does not have a monopoly over violence. It ignores the Oromo also have the right to use violence in self-defense and pursuit of justice.

Peace and justice go together. Therefore, talking about peace doesn’t make sense in the absence of justice. Wherever it fails to restore justice, peaceful resistance cannot remain peaceful indefinitely. As reflected in the events described above, the peaceful protests of the Oromo students during the last fifteen years have been extremely costly to themselves, their families and the Oromo nation as a whole. The regime has made it known repeatedly that it will never tolerate, any opposition to its power whether it is peaceful or not. The option which its leaders have been offering the Oromo and other peoples in Ethiopia is not democracy but submission to their rule. As I tried to show in this article the Oromo youth have shown their rejection of subjugation. A writer summarizes their feeling as follows:

The only future I see is a future free of Abyssinians [who do not] dominate any aspect of Oromo life. It is a future where Oromo police protect Oromo towns, Oromo armies protect Oromo borders, Oromo teachers educate Oromo children and where Oromo leaders are peacefully elected to govern Oromo people. It is a future where the name of our homeland is Oromia.[26]

The independent state of Oromia implied in the quotation is not a new as an idea or a program for action. Hundreds of Oromo have written about it. Thousands of them have sacrificed their lives to realize it. The Indian sociologist T. Oommen has said that “a nation tends to produce its state when it faces abnormal situations.”^[27] Needless to say here that the situation in which the Oromo had been caught for more than 130 years had been abnormal before it became totally abominable under the present regime. The experience of the Oromo youth during the last 15 years has proved that use of peaceful protests will not change the situation. The logical response to the situation is self-defense by all means necessary. Freedom is seldom given freely. It cannot be achieved by begging oppressors for it. Speaking about Apartheid South Africa, Steve Biko said that for the blacks, begging the Apartheid regime for emancipation is “giving them further sanction to continue with their racist and oppressive system.”[28] Begging the TPLF-led regime for political democracy will amount not only to inviting them to continue with the ongoing massacre of the Oromo youth, evicting of Oromo farmers, and imprisoning, torturing and killing Oromos, but also to sanction their blatant contempt for the Oromo people.

Conclusion

The Oromo have shown great patience and tried to create conditions in which they can live on decent and respectful terms in Ethiopia for a long time. It did not work. That is what the 2015 Ethiopian elections showed us. The Oromo do not have much choice but paying the ultimate price to reclaim their freedom.  It is a moral imperative to get rid of the repressive grip of a vicious system that is killing them and is destroying the eco-system on which they depend for their survival. The events of the last two years have given us a clearer view of not only the cruelty of the Ethiopian regime, but also a glimpse of a new phase in the Oromo struggle for independence. If I may predict, the increasing number of Oromos who are responding to the call of their youth heralds that the day of freedom is dawning. As I will discuss elsewhere (forthcoming in Oromia Today) this does not mean that their revolution is secure against both Oromo and Abyssinian hijackers. What I will suggest here is that our youth should stay vigilant regarding about political parties who promise democracy now but will even reverse the achievements the Oromo people have made so far through their struggle once they come to power in Finfinnee.

The leaders of the Ethiopian regime did not imagine the resistance which the Oromo had put up, since November 2015 was possible, when they threatened those who would dare to oppose the Master Plan with reprisal. Then, they were shocked and said they had cancelled the controversial Mater Plan. However, the statement about the termination of the project came not only too late, but was also insincere.  It was false because the regime did not release the tens of thousands of Oromos they have incarcerated for protesting against “the Master Plan;” they have continued to use violence with impunity against those who demand the release of the detained Oromos and imprison more Oromos. Lately they are even saying the Master Plan is not abandoned but will be revised and implemented. Turing deaf ears to the popular slogan “Oromia is not for sale”, they are promising to pay Oromo farmers for the land from which they will be evicted. The conclusion is that the Oromo have no other option left than getting rid of the oppressors by all means necessary and at any cost to regain their freedom and control over their own resources.

• The first version was presented at the Oromo Studies Association (OSA) 2016 Mid-Year Conference, London School of Economics on April 2 – 3, 2016. This version is prepared for the website Oromia Today on request.

[1] Ernst Gellner, Nationalism, 1983, p. 85
[2] Ermias Legesse, Ye-Meles Tirufatoch – Balabet Alba Ketema (The Legacies of Meles – A City Without Owners), 2014, p. 16ff.
[3] For non-Oromos who do not have information about Oromo language, qubee is the Latin script adapted by Oromo scholars to Oromo sounds and is used in Oromo writing.
[4] Mekuria Bulcha, “Land Grabbing and the Environmental Crime: Causes of the Oromo Student Uprising 2000-2015.” Paper present at Oromo Studies Association (OSA) Symposium Washington Ethical Society, January 16, 2016. Forthcoming in the Proceedings of the Symposium.
[5] Gizachew T. Tesso, Amharic interview with ESAT TV on November 5, 2015.
[6] Ermias Legesse, ibid.
[7] See Oromia Media Network (OMN), March 8, 2016. In a meeting which was videoed and leaked to the mass media recently, the current Speaker of the Ethiopian Federal Parliament, Abba Duulaa Gammadaa, was confessing that the said evictions had destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of former self-sufficient families and who are now jobless and beggars, or are daily laborers, guards and cleaners hired by those to whom the government sold their land. In the video, he was persuading Oromo parliamentarians to go and see the situation for themselves. The sincerity of Abba Duulaa Gammadaa is questionable because the ruling party, of which he is a member, is killing Oromos who are protesting against “the Master Plan” while he is speaking. In addition, in the first place, he was the President of the Regional State of Oromia when the eviction of the Oromo farmers he was talking about occurred.
[8] Ermias Legesse, 2014, p. 6.
[9] See News report by Yihun Ingda on Ethiopian Television Oromo Program, April 13, 2014
[10] Jen & Josh “Ambo Protests: A Personal Account”, May 24, 2014.
[11] Evelyn Waugh, Waugh in Abyssinia, 1936.
[12] Cited by Peter Gill in Famine & foreigners: Ethiopia since Live Aid, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 29.
[13] The hypocrisy of whitewashing Ethiopia’s murky “realities” is not limited to the diplomatic community in Finfinnee but includes also agents of international organizations. A UNDP report which quotes a World Bank document talks about impressive progress made by Ethiopia Cited in UNDP National Human Development Report 2014: Ethiopia, p. 86.
[14] Steve Biko, S. I Write What I Like, Oxford: Heinemann, 1976, p. 91
[15] Ibid, p. 91
[16] See Gadaa.com, “Appeal Letter of the Students of Jimma University to the University’s Administration”, March 3, 2015.
[17] See Gizaw Tassisa, “The Soweto (South African) Students Uprising for Freedom and Justice
Implications to the April 2014 Oromo Students Uprising for Freedom and Justice”, Gadaa.com, January, 2015.
[18] OPride, “OPride’s Oromo Person of the Year 2014: Oromo Student Protesters”, January 1, 2015.
[19] See for example Gadaa.com, “Vidoeos Chronicle How Fear Got Defeated by Oromo Protests in Oromia –December 9, 2015 to January 4, 2016, posted on January 6, 2016,
[20] Central Statistical Office (SCO), Ethiopia: Statistical Abstract 1976, Addis Ababa, 1976, p. 231
[21] See Ministry of Education of Ethiopia (ME), Education National Abstract 2013/14, June 2015
[22]  See Ayyaantuu.com, “A Statement from the Qeerroo branch of Wallaga University”, April, 15, 2016.
[23] Markakis, J. Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers, James Currey, 2011, p. 162.
[24] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Translated from French by Constance Farrington, New York: Grove Press, 1961, p. 43.
[25] Mamdani, M. When Victims Become Killers, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 13
[26] Jiituu Finfinnee, “The Abyssinian Personality: Why They Cannot Be Trusted.” Oromo Press, April 22, 2014
[27] T. K. Oommen, Citizenship and National Identity: From Nationalism to Globalism, London: Sage Publications, 1997, p. 31.
[28] Biko, S. ibid. p. 97.

Paper presented at the Conference on New Directions in Critical Criminology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, May 6-7, 2016.

Asafa Jalata

The Oromo movement is engaging in struggle to empower the Oromo people in order to restore their control on their economic resources such as land and cultural resources and to overcome the effects of Ethiopian state terrorism and globalization. The Oromo people were colonized and incorporated into Abyssinia, present Ethiopia, and the capitalist world system during the “Scramble for Africa” by the alliance of Ethiopian colonialism and European imperialism. This colonization involved terrorism and genocide in order to transfer Oromo economic resources, mainly land, through destroying Oromo leadership and the cultural foundation of the Oromo society. The Oromo resistance that started with the colonization of the Oromo was transformed into the anti-colonial movement in the 1960s and still continues in various forms. On their part, successive colonial Ethiopian governments have been using various forms of violence to destroy the Oromo struggle for national self-determination and democracy. Starting in 1992, the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government has been imposing state terrorism, genocide, and political repression, with the assistance of big powers and international institutions on the Oromo, the largest ethno-national group, and other groups in order to destroy the Oromo national movement led by the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and to dominate the political economy of Oromia (the Oromo country) and Ethiopia in order to transfer economic resources, particularly land, to Tigrayan state elites and their domestic and international supporters.

This paper first provides the historical background for these complex issues. Second, it outlines theoretical and methodological approaches of the paper. Third, the piece explains the role of big powers in supporting the Ethiopian state at the cost of democracy and human rights in order to promote “savage development” (Quan 2013) or “violent development”(Rajagopal 2003) in this age of globalization. This section also explores how the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government and its international supporters are using the discourses of democracy, human rights, and economic development while terrorizing the Oromo and other indigenous peoples by dispossessing them of their rights and their ancestral land and natural resources. Fourth, it explains how the ongoing peaceful Oromo mass protest movement has emerged in Oromia, how and why the regime is violently cracking down on protestors, including Oromo school children and university students, farmers, and other sectors of the Oromo society, and why the West is facing a political dilemma regarding supporting a government that is openly massacring peaceful protestors and violently repressing dissent. Finally, the piece explores the larger political and economic consequences of the Oromo protest movement in bringing about a fundamental transformation to the political economy of Oromia and Ethiopia.

Background

The Ethiopian colonial terrorism and genocide that started during the last decades of the nineteenth century with the assistance of England, France, and Italy still continue in the 21^st century with the support of global powers (Jalata 2010). During Ethiopian (Amhara-Tigray) colonial expansion, Oromia, “the charming Oromo land, [would] be ploughed by the iron and the fire; flooded with blood and the orgy of pillage” (de Salviac 2005 [1901]: 349). Martial de Salviac (2005 [1901]: 349) called this event “the theatre of a great massacre.” The Oromo oral story also testifies that the Abyssinian armies destroyed and looted the resources of Oromia and committed genocide on the Oromo people and others through terrorism, slavery, depopulation, cutting hands or breasts, and creating a series of famines and diseases during and after the colonization of Oromia. According to Martial de Salviac 2005 ([1901]: 8), “With equal arms, the Abyssinia [would] never [conquer] an inch of [Oromo] land. With the power of firearms imported from Europe, Menelik [Abyssinian warlord] began a murderous revenge.”

The colonization of Oromia involved human tragedy and destruction: “The Abyssinian, in bloody raids, operated by surprise, mowed down without pity, in the country of the Oromo population, a mournful harvest of slaves for which the Muslims were thirsty and whom they bought at very high price. An Oromo child [boy] would cost up to 800 francs in Cairo; an Oromo girl would well be worth two thousand francs in Constantinople” (de Salviac 2005 [1901]: 28). The Abyssinian/Ethiopian government massacred half of the Oromo population (5 million out of 10 million) and their leadership during its colonial expansion (Bulatovich 2000: 68). The Amhara warlord, Menelik, terrorized and colonized the Oromo and others to obtain commodities such as gold, ivory, coffee, musk, hides and skins, slaves and lands. Menelik controlled slave trade (an estimated 25,000 slaves per year in the 1880s); with his wife he owned 70,000 enslaved Africans; he became one of the richest capitalists. He invested in American Railway Stock; “Today the Abyssinian ruler had extended the range of his financial operations to the United States, and is a heavy investor in American railroads . . . with his American securities and his French and Belgian mining investments, Menelik has a private fortune estimated at no less than twenty-five million dollars.” (New York Times, November 7, 1909).

The destruction of Oromo lives and institutions were aspects of Ethiopian colonial terrorism. The surviving Oromo who used to enjoy an egalitarian democracy known as the gadaa system ((Legesse 1973; 2006) were forced to face state terrorism, genocide, political repression, and an impoverished life. Alexander Bulatovich (2000: 68) explains about the gadaa administration: “The peaceful free way of life, which could have become the ideal for philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century, if they had known it, was completely changed. Their peaceful way of life is broken; freedom is lost; and the independent, freedom loving [Oromo] find themselves under the severe authority of the Abyssinian conquerors.” The Ethiopian colonialists also destroyed Oromia’s natural resources and beauty. Oromia was “an oasis luxuriant with large trees” and known for its “opulent and dark greenery used to shoot up from the soil” (de Salviac 2005 [1901]: 21–22). The colonialists devastated “the forests by pulling from it the laths for their houses and [made] campfires or firewood for their dwellings.” Bulatovich (2000: 21) applied to Oromia the phrase “flowing in milk and honey” to indicate its abundance of wealth in cattle and honey before and during its colonization.

The Ethiopian colonial state gradually established settler colonialism and developed five major types of colonial institutions, namely, slavery, the colonial landholding system, the nafxanya-gabbar system (semi-slavery), the Oromo collaborative class, and garrison and non-garrison cities (Jalata 2005 [1993]). It introduced the process of forced recruitment of labor via slavery and semi-slavery (Holcomb and Ibssa 1990: 135). The Haile Selassie government consolidated these institutions and practices between the 1930s and 1970s. Furthermore, the military regime that emerged in 1974 under the leadership Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam continued state terrorism, dictatorship, and Ethiopian colonial policies. When Oromo activists and citizens started to resist the military regime, it intensified its state terrorism and political repression. The military regime had committed massive human rights violations in the 1970s and 1980s in the name of the so-called Revolution with the assistance of the so-called socialist countries such as the former Soviet Union and its satellite countries. As Norman J. Singer (1978: 672–673) notes, those who were killed during the initial three months of “the campaign of the ‘ Terror’ . . . numbered around 4000–5000 in Addis Ababa alone; the killings continued in March 1978, spreading to the rest of the country . . . Those detained for political instruction numbered from 30,000 upwards . . . Torture methods . . . included severe beating on the head, soles of the feet . . . and shoulders, with the victim hung by the wrists or suspended by wrists and feet from a horizontal bar . . . sexual torture of boys and girls, including pushing bottles or red-hot iron bars into girls’ vaginas and other cruel methods.”

In 1980, one Oromo source said, “The Oromo constitutes the majority of the more than two million prisoners that glut Ethiopia’s jails today” (The Oromo Relief Association 1980: 30). In the 1980s, thousands of Oromo activists or nationalists were murdered or imprisoned; the regime also terrorized Oromo farmers and students. The military government terrorized the Oromo population by holding mass shooting and burying them with bulldozers: “Over years this procedure was repeated several times. When the method did not work and the Oromo population could not be forced into submission, other methods were used. The victims were made to lie down with their heads on stone, and their skulls were smashed with another stone . . . . When the Oromo movement could not be quenched by shooting or by the smashing of skulls, [the government] came up with a new idea. Men’s testicles were smashed between a hammer and an anvil, ” Gunnar Hasselblatt (1992: 17–19) writes. As explained below, Ethiopia has maintained its terrorism and oppressive and repressive structures on the Oromo and other colonized peoples by the assistance of successive global powers, namely, Great Britain, the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China. Before continuing the analysis, the introduction of the theoretical and methodological approaches is needed.

Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

This work draws from an analytical framework that emerges from theories of the world system, globalization, nationalism, and social movements. It combines a structural approach to global social change such as globalization, neoliberalism and capital accumulation with a social constructionist model of human agency of the Oromo social movement. In this era of neoliberal globalization, in the name of democracy, development, and human rights the Ethiopian state and its global supporters are engaging in dispossessing land and other resources of the Oromo and that of others while repressing and terrorizing civil societies and their social movements, particularly that of the Oromo. A few scholars, who have understood these contradictory processes, see the capitalist/socialist development as the process of violence or call it savage development. Balakrishnan Rajagopal (2003: 3) explains how “in large part due to the realization among social movements and progressive intellectual that it is not the lack of development that caused poverty, inflicted violence, and engaged in destruction of nature and livelihood; rather it is the very process of bringing development [to indigenous peoples] that has caused them in the first place.”

Claiming that they promote development, the Ethiopian colonial state, big powers, and global institutions such the World Bank and the International Money Fund are joined in implementing the policies that massively violate the human rights of indigenous peoples such as the dispossession of land and forced resettlements by destroying livelihoods and cultures (Oakland Institute 2013, 2014, 2015; Amnesty International 2014, 2015 Adequately understanding these complex and contradictory conditions requires employing critical approaches, interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and comparative methods to examine the dynamic interplay among repressive political structures and human agency. This study also requires critical social history that looks at societal issues from the bottom up, specifically critical discourses and the particular world system approach that deal with long-term and large-scale global social changes. Furthermore, serious attention is given to the role of the Oromo social movement in resisting the globally and regionally imposed colonialism and neoliberalism and their associated structures and policies and in promoting an alternative option of development, self-determination, and egalitarian multinational democracy.

The critical understanding of the essence of global capitalism and its political structures and injustices are necessary to clearly recognize the principles for which the national struggle of the Oromo has developed. The Oromo have been denied basic aspects of their humanity since they were forced to enter into the global capitalist world system via slavery and colonialism that were facilitated by the alliance of Ethiopian dependent colonialism and global imperialism (Holcomb and Ibssa 1990; Jalata 2005). The capitalist world powers and their regional or local collaborators used superior military forces to enslave and colonize pre-capitalist societies in order to exploit their labor power and/or to dispossess their economic resources through coercion, terrorism, looting, piracy, genocide, annexation, and continued subjugation. The development of global capitalism and the accumulation and concentration of capital or economic resources through the separation of the actual producers from their means of production such as land led to the racialization/ethnicization and socialization of labor (Marx 1967: 17). The process of expropriation of land, racial slavery, and settler colonialism resulted in the total or partial destruction of indigenous peoples such as indigenous Americans, Australians and others (Jalata 2011) and or hierarchical organization of world populations through the creation of an elaborate discourse of race or racism.

As the meaning of race is illusive and complex, so is that of racism. Race and racism are socio-political constructs since all human groups are biologically and genetically more alike than different (Malik 1996). To justify slavery, colonialism, colonial terrorism, genocide, the ideology of racism was developed in scientific and religious clothing and matured during the last decades of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries. National or social movements of the colonized and subjugated peoples have been challenging these ideologies and practices in various forms, but they could not totally stop them. The more things changed, the more they remained the same.  Mainstream scholarship and even opposition one ignore or superficially address the impact of capitalist or socialist development on indigenous peoples. Since the 1970s, with the intensification of the crisis of the process of capital accumulation and the declining of the US hegemony in the capitalist world system, the West under the leadership of the US has started to promote a policy known as neoliberalism to revitalize global capital accumulation (Harvey 2005). Through the policy of neoliberalism the neo-liberal state has intensified the process of capital accumulation by dispossession of economic resources and rights; the “fundamental mission [of the neo-liberal stat] was to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital” (Harvey 2005: 7). In the name of development, neoliberal globalization has continued state terrorism and massive human rights violations that started during direct colonialism: “Over the last fifty years, millions have been uprooted from their homelands, communities have been destroyed, and the environment has been desecrated in the process of transforming ‘traditional’ or ‘peasant’ economies into ‘modern’ economies. Many more millions have been the subject of state and private violence in the name of modernization and development” (Rajagopal 1999: 16)

Accumulation of capital by dispossession involves state terrorism and genocide as the case of the Oromo illustrates (Jalata 2011). State terrorism is a systematic governmental policy in which massive violence is practiced on a given population group with the goal of eliminating any behavior which promotes political struggle or resistance by members of that group. The main assumptions of such a state are that it can control the population by destroying their leaders and their culture of resistance. States that fail to establish ideological hegemony and political orders are unstable and insecure; hence, they engage in state terrorism (Oliverio, 1997: 48-63). Bruce Hoffman (2006: 40) “defines terrorism as the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change . . . . Terrorism is specifically designed to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate victim(s) or object of the terrorist attack.” Although the struggle of the Oromo and other peoples forced the Ethiopian colonial state to “nationalize” the land and make it “collective property” between 1975 and 1991, the United States supported the emergence of the Tigryan-led Ethiopian government that has intensified state terrorism, genocide, and capital accumulation by dispossessing the land of Oromo farmers and that of other ethnonational groups Ethiopia (Jalata 2005).

Both the Ethiopian colonial state and the big powers of the capitalist world system as well as China have allied in intensifying capital accumulation, including land dispossession, by any means necessary. “The process of integration of neocolonial states into the global economy, seeking the protection of the imperial state,” Berch Berberoglu (2003: 108) writes, “has been to a large degree a reaction to a perceived threat to the survival of capitalism in the Third World—one that is becoming a grave concern for both imperialism and the local repressive capitalist states.” As the Oromo national movement has continued to resist the criminal policies of the Ethiopian government, the regime has increased its terrorist activities and dispossession of land and other resources with the support of Western powers, emerging powers of China, India, and some Arab countries, as well as international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Since the international system, particularly the United Nations, lacks a single standard for humanity in a practical sense, states such as that of Ethiopia get away with the crimes they commit against their own citizens and other peoples (Jalata 2011).

The lack of demanding responsibility from certain states such as that of Ethiopia in the international system leaves a room for engaging in state terrorism and committing genocide. Despite the fact that the United Nations theoretically recognizes the problems of state terrorism and genocide, it did not yet develop effective policies and mechanisms of preventing them because powerful countries and their client states that commit such crimes against humanity have dominated this international body. Article II of the United Nations Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Kurt Jonassohn (1998: 9) also defines genocide as the planned destruction of any economic, political or social group.” “GENOCIDE is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator,” Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn (1990: 23) define.  Chalk and Jonassohn (1990: 23) identify two major types of genocide: the first type is used to colonize and maintain an empire by terrorizing the people perceived to be real or potential enemies. In this case, the main purpose of practicing genocide is to acquire land and other valuable resources.            Then the maintenance of colonial domination by state elites requires the establishment of a cultural and ideological hegemony that can be practiced through repression and genocidal massacres. By destroying elements of a population that resists colonial domination, hegemony can be established on the surviving population. This is the second type of genocide; this form of genocide is called ideological genocide. Jonassohn (1998: 23) notes that ideological genocide develops “in nation-states where ethnonational groups develop chauvinistic [and racist] ideas about their superiority and exclusiveness.” As further demonstrated above, since their incorporation into the racialized capitalist world system through Ethiopian dependent colonialism, the Oromo and other peoples have been facing state terrorism, genocidal massacres, and dispossession of economic and cultural resources that they have been fighting against in various forms.

Global Powers and the Neocolonial Ethiopian State

Since t  he mid-twentieth century, the US government as the hegemonic power of the capitalist world system has supported and protect the neocolonial Ethiopian state, except between 1977 and 1991, at the cost of the colonized ethnonational groups such as the Oromo. Between the early 1950s and the 1970s, the US introduced its “modernization” programs to the Ethiopian Empire and supported the Haile Selassie government. Several scholars demonstrated that the US foreign policy toward Oromia and Ethiopia consolidated the racial/ethnonational hierarchy that was formed by the alliance of Ethiopian colonialism and European imperialism (Holcomb and Ibssa 1990). When the Haile Selassie government was overthrown by the popular revolt of 1974, a military dictatorship emerged and allied with the former Soviet Union until 1991, when it was overthrown. With the support of the former Soviet Union, the military regime protected and extended the interests of the colonial settlers in Oromia and other colonized regions. Ethiopia maintained its neocolonial status in the global order with the help of British global hegemonism until the US inherited this role in the mid-20^th century. Despite the fact that the US, encouraged decolonization and self-determination in the colonized world in order to gain spheres of influence, it did not care for these issues in the Ethiopian Empire. Since Ethiopia was informal colony of Europe and America, there was no need to address these issues. Because of its interest in the Horn of Africa, the US was receptive to the Ethiopian request and sent a Technical Mission in 1944 to help build the Ethiopian political economy. The Haile Selassie government and its officials effectively used the state bureaucracy and American connections to accumulate wealth and capital just as the US government this ruling class to its strategic and economic advantage in the region. The alliance between the Ethiopian colonialists and the US imperialists emerged strongly in the early 1950s. As the hegemonic power, the US had the responsibility to maintain client states such as that of Ethiopia in the capitalist world economy; between 1946 and 1973, it spent more than $62 billion worldwide on military assistance programs (U.S. Agency of International Development, 1974: 6). US hegemony was built in the less developed world through military assistance to the ruling classes and their governments (Magdoff, 1970), and the Ethiopian client state was a beneficiary. In fact, the Ethiopian state was mainly interested in dependable security against internal and external forces.

On its part, the US was interested in securing continuing base rights in Asmara, and in developing a major military and monitoring station there. Describing the importance to US strategic interests of a base in the Horn of Africa, Peter Schwab (1979: 91) says that the region is “Close to the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, it flanks the oil-rich states of Arabia, controls the Babel Mandeb Straits, one of the narrow arteries of Israel’s lifeline . . . dominates an area of the Gulf of Aden and of the Indian Ocean through which oil tankers are constantly moving, and overlooks the passage at which the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean converge. It is a major geopolitical area of the world.” As part of its global strategy to maintain hegemony in the capitalist world economy and to prevent the influence of the Soviet Union, the US sought to dominate this part of Africa. The US also considered “its political investment in Ethiopia as an investment toward the future realization of its wider interests in Africa” (Agyeman- Duah 1984: 209). The defense treaty closely linked Ethiopian colonialism to American hegemonism (Ottaway and Ottaway, 1978: 150). The Americans expanded their Asmara base and modernized the Ethiopian military by training and equipping it with modern weapons.

An American military advisory group replaced the British Military Mission in Ethiopia. “Between 1951 and 1976 Ethiopia received over $350 million economic aid from the U.S.A. and a further $279 million in military aid. In the years 1953-75, 3,552 Ethiopian military personnel were trained in the U.S.A. itself,” Halliday and Molyneux (1981: 215) note. When the British military mission withdrew in 1951, “the Ethiopian army was still only partially organized and poorly trained and equipped. It was under such conditions Haile Selassie turned to the United States for assistance” (Agyeman-Duah, 1984: 110), and he was successful in obtaining US military aid (Schwab, 1979: 92). As the events unfolded in the 1960s—an attempted military coup, the emergence of various anti-colonial movements, and the appearance of a radical student movement—the modernization approach of the US through state-building strategy proved vulnerable. Consequently, the politics of order began to emerge. “The military, in conjunction with other security forces,” Baffour Agyeman-Duah (1984: 179) writes, “became the instrument for social control and counterinsurgency during the turbulent years of the 1960s, and an active American support in all this was by no means limited.”

Despite its claim of democratic ideals, the US helped the Ethiopian colonial regime to stay in power by suppressing the peoples. “The United States sent in counterinsurgent teams, increased its military aid programs, and expanded its modernization and training program for the Ethiopian military. An extensive air force was also created with United States vintage jets” (Schwab, 1979: 95). There is no doubt that the US military and economic assistance had prolonged Haile Selassie’s regime. In the 1960s, the decolonization of British and Italian Somaliland, the Soviet alliance with the newly emerged Somali state, the anti-colonial movements in the empire and internal rivalry within the Ethiopian ruling class had threatened the foundation of the Haile Selassie regime. Harold Marcus (1983: 114) points out that “By forcing Washington continuously to increase its commitments, Addis Ababa made the United States an actor in Ethiopia’s internal politics.” The US alliance with Ethiopia was mainly for strategic and geopolitical reasons, not economic ones, and US business investment was insignificant (Mohammed 1969: 76).

The US modernization programs were both economic and educational. To integrate closely the US-Ethiopian ideological alliance, the Point Four program under the US International Cooperation Administration was extended to Ethiopia in 1952. The stated purpose of this program was to improve the socioeconomic conditions of the less developed world through providing technical and administrative expertise (Luther, 1958: 132). But, in practice, the US was interested mainly in consolidating the Ethiopian ruling class, which had little knowledge of the modern world in technical and administrative fields. The US modernization programs continued in the 1960s and the 1970s. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers were sent to implement such programs. For almost twenty-six years, the U.S dispatched its diplomats and intellectuals to apply its modernization principles in building and maintaining the Ethiopian Empire in accord with US national and global interests. With the overthrow the Haile Selassie government the military regime led by Mengistu allied with the former Soviet Union. Consequently, the influence of the US on Ethiopia declined between 1974 and 1991.

Neoliberal Globalization, State Terrorism, and Dispossession

At the end of the 1980s, a structural crisis that manifested itself in national movements, famine, poverty, and internal contradictions within the ruling elite factions eventually weakened the Amhara-dominated military regime and led to its demise in 1991. Using this opportunity, the US government reestablished its relations with the Ethiopian Empire by allying this time with the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which emerged from about 7 million Tigrayans. Opposing the Soviet influence in Ethiopia and recognizing that the Amhara-based Ethiopian government had lost credibility, the US started to support the TPLF in the 1980s and prepared it financially, ideologically, diplomatically, and militarily to replace the Amhara-led military regime by creating the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) from three puppet organizations it created known as the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), the Amhara National democratic Movement (ANDM), and the Southern Ethiopia People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM). With the use of Western relief aid and financial support, the TPLF leaders converted the famine-stricken Tigrayan peasants and those militias who were captured at war fronts into guerrilla fighters in the 1980s. The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front also played a central role in building the TPLF/EPRDF army.

One of the major reasons why the US government chose the TPLF was that the Tigrayan elites were perceived as a legitimate successor to an Amhara-led government because of the racist assumptions of the West. Another reason was that these elites were ready to be agents of global imperialism in the Horn of Africa at any cost. With the emergence of the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government in 1991, the US reestablished its hegemony in Ethiopia by claiming that it promotes democracy and human rights. However, the main rationale of US policy makers’ involvement in Ethiopia is to maintain political order and to fight against global “terrorism” in the Horn of Africa. Of course, the big powers of the capitalist world system as well as China have allied with the Tigrayan-led Ethiopia government in order to maintain global capitalism through intensifying capital accumulation by any means necessary. “The process of integration of neocolonial states into the global economy, seeking the protection of the imperial state,” Berch Berberoglu (2003: 108) writes, “has been to a large degree a reaction to a perceived threat to the survival of capitalism in the Third World—one that is becoming a grave concern for both imperialism and the local repressive capitalist states.” The US, the European Union, China and others have built and consolidated the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian regime to perform the following important services: “(1) adopt fiscal and monetary policies that ensure macroeconomic stability; (2) provide the basic infrastructure necessary for global economic activity (airports and seaports, communication networks, educational systems, etc.); and (3) provide social order, that is, stability, which requires sustaining instruments of social control, coercive and ideological apparatus” (Robinson 2008: 33).

The Tigrayan-led regime has become an organ of capital accumulation for Tigrayan and transnational elites, and it uses terrorism and massive human rights violations to separate the indigenous communities such as the Oromo and others from their land and other resources (Jalata 2005). Furthermore, the World Bank, IMF, UN, EU, the African Union, and some NGOs as structures of global capitalism are the facilitators of regional and global capital accumulation, and they are less interested in promoting human rights and democracy in peripheral countries like Ethiopia. The political and military leaders of the Ethiopian government are literally gangsters and robbers; they use state power to expropriate lands and other resources in the name of privatization—all with the supporting and blessing of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In achieving its political and economic objectives, the regime has been engaging in political repression, state terrorism, genocidal massacres, and gross human rights violations in Oromia and other regional states. Since the Oromo people have been resisting to Tigrayan colonial policies, they have been targeted by the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian regime; they have been also attacked and terrorized because of their economic resources, and their refusal to submit to the orders of Tigrayan authorities and their collaborators.

This regime has banned independent Oromo organizations including the OLF and declared war on this organization and the Oromo people. It even has outlawed Oromo journalists and other writers and closed down Oromo newspapers. “The attack on the free press has literally killed the few publications in the Oromo language in the Latin alphabet. The death of Oromo publications . . . has been a fatal blow to the flowering of Oromo literature and the standardization of the Oromo language itself. The Oromo magazines that have disappeared include Gada, Biftu, Madda Walaabuu, Odaa, and the Urjii magazine . . . Since 2002, there has not been a single newspaper or magazine that has expressed the legitimate political opinions of the Oromo in Ethiopia,” Mohammed Hassen (2002: 31) asserts. Almost all Oromo journalists are either in prison or killed, or in exile. The regime also banned Oromo musical groups and all professional associations. Expanding their political repression, regional authorities formed quasi-government institutions known as gott and garee to maintain tighter political control of Oromia; they “imposed these new structures on . . . communities . . . . More disturbing, regional authorities are using the gott and garee to monitor the speech and personal lives of the rural population, to restrict and control the movements of residents, and to enforce farmers’ attendance at ‘meetings’ that are thinly disguised OPDO political rallies” (Human Rights Watch 2005: 2).

Generally speaking, this government has continued to eliminate or imprison politically conscious and self-respecting Oromo. Today, thousands of Oromo are in official and secret prisons simply because of their nationality and their resistance to injustice. After jailed and released from prison after six years, Seye Abraha, the former Defense Minister of the regime who had previously participated in the massacring and imprisoning thousands of Oromo, testified on January 5, 2008, to his audience in the state of Virginia in the U. S. that “esir betu Oromigna yinager,” (“the prison speaks Oromiffa [the Oromo language]”) and also noted that “about 99% of the prisoners in Qaliti are Oromos.”[1] The Tigrayan state bureaucrats believe that Oromo intellectuals, businessmen and women, conscious Oromo farmers, students, and community and religious leaders are their enemies, and, hence, should be eliminated through terrorism and genocide.[2] The cadres, soldiers, and officials of the regime have frequently raped Oromo girls and women to demoralize them and their communities and to show how Tigrayan rulers and their collaborators wielded limitless power. As Bruna Fossati, Lydia Namarra and Peter Niggli report, “in prison women are often humiliated and mistreated in the most brutal fashion. Torturers ram poles or bottles into their vaginas, connect electrodes to the lips of their vulva, or the victims are dragged into the forest and gang-raped by interrogation officers.”[3] State-sanctioned rape is a form of terrorism. The use of sexual violence is also a tactic of genocide that a dominant ethnonational group practices in order to destroy a subordinate ethnonational group. What Catherine MacKinnon (1994: 11-12) says about ethnic cleansing in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina applies to the sexual abuse of Oromo women by the Tigrayan-led regime: “It is also rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape to kill and to make the victims wish they were dead. It is rape as an instrument of forced exile, rape to make you leave your home and never want to go back. It is rape to be seen and heard and watched and told to others: rape as spectacle. It is rape to drive a wedge through a community, to shatter a society, to destroy a people. It is rape as genocide.” The Tigrayan-led regime has used various mechanisms in repressing, controlling and destroying the Oromo people. It has imprisoned or killed thousands of Oromo women and men. Its agents have murdered prominent community leaders and left their corpses for hyenas by denying them burial to impose terror on the Oromo people.  Furthermore, relatives of the murdered Oromos are not allowed to cry publicly to express their grievances, a once cultural practice.[4] For instance, in 2007, the regime’s militia killed twenty Oromo and left their corpses for hyenas on the mountain of Suufi in Eastern Oromia.[5] According to Human Rights Watch (2005: 1-2), “Since 1992, security forces have imprisoned thousands of Oromo on charges of plotting armed insurrection on behalf of the OLF. Such accusations have regularly been used as a transparent pretext to imprison individuals who publicly question government policies or actions. Security forces have tortured many detainees and subjected them to continuing harassment and abuse for years after their release. That harassment in turn has often destroyed victims’ ability to earn a livelihood and isolated them from their communities.”

Although it is impossible to know exactly at this time how many Oromo have been murdered by this government, Mohammed Hassen (2001: 30) estimates that between 1992 and 2001, about 50,000 killings and 16,000 disappearances (euphemism for secret killings) took place in Oromia; he also notes that 90 percent of the killings were not reported.[6] The government hides its criminal activities and “does not keep written records of its extrajudicial executions and prolonged detention of political prisoners.”[7] Furthermore, the massive killings and genocide committed on the Sheko, Mezhenger, Sidama, Annuak, and Ogaden Somali peoples have shocked some sections of the international community.[8] The president of Genocide Watch, Gregory Stanton (2009), wrote on March 23, 2009, an open letter to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights admiring the action that the ICC took in issuing a warrant for the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir of the Sudan and calling upon them to investigate the crimes Meles and his government have committed and still are committing against humanity in the Horn of Africa.[9] Stanton demonstrates in this letter how the Tigrayan-led government has committed heinous crimes by being involved “in the inciting, the empowerment or the perpetration of crimes against humanity, war crimes and even genocide, often justified by them as ‘counter-insurgency.”

He also states that the government organized Ethiopian National Defense Forces and civilian militia groups to ruthlessly massacre 424 persons from the Annuak people in Gambella on December 2003 in order to suppress opposition and to “exclude them from any involvement in the drilling for oil on their indigenous land.” According to Stanton, as militia groups chanted “Today is the day for killing Annuak,” both the military and militias used machetes, axes and guns to kill the unarmed victims, frequently raping the women while chanting, “Now there will be no more Annuak children.” Reports from Amnesty International, the US State Department, and the Human Rights Watch have been continuing to list Zenawi’s government extensive record of chilling crimes against the politically and economically oppressed peoples such as the Oromo. The Meles regime recently passed the so-called anti-terrorism law to legalize its crimes against humanity and to legally intensify its own repressive and terrorist activities. Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism “law could provide the Ethiopian government with a potent instrument to crack down on political dissent, including peaceful political demonstrations and public criticisms of government policy that are deemed supportive of armed opposition activity” (Human Rights Watch 2009: 1). Generally speaking, the policies and practices of the Meles regime have forced millions of Oromo to become political refugees in Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America.

The alliance of the West with this regime has frightened neighboring countries such as Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan, and Yemen, and turned them against the Oromo struggle and Oromo refugees. Using the leverage of Western countries, the Meles regime has pressured neighboring governments to return or expel Oromo refugees from their countries. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has even failed to provide reasonable protection for thousands of Oromo refugees in Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. For example, on December 21 and 22, 2000, while five thousand Oromo refugees were refouled to Ethiopia, the UNHCR office in Djibouti denied any violation of its mandate had occurred (The Oromia Support Group 2002: 17). Between 2000 and 2004, hundreds of Oromo refugees were forced to return to Ethiopia from Djibouti to face imprisonment or death (The Oromia Support Group 2003: 16-18). “The continuing refoulement of refugees from Djibouti,” notes the Oromia Support Group 2002: 18-19), “especially the large scale refoulement of December 2000 and the 28 associated deaths by asphyxiation and shooting, should be publicly acknowledged by UNHCR and the Djibouti government.”[10] The security agents of Ethiopia and neighboring countries still capture thousands of Oromo refugees and return them to Ethiopia.

By crossing borders and entering Somalia and Kenya, agents of the Ethiopian regime assassinated prominent Oromo leaders. And still today, the regime is killing prominent Oromos in Kenya and Somalia. For instance, in 2007 and 2008, Ethiopian security forces assassinated Oromos in Somalia and Kenya. One human rights organization notes that on February 5, 2008, the combined security forces of Ethiopia and Puntland, Somalia, bombed two hotels and consequently murdered 65 Oromo refugees and seriously injured more than 100 people.[11] In 2009, the regime killed four Oromos by poisoning their food in Puntland (Human Rights League 2009). When it comes to the Oromo, international organizations do not pay attention even if terrorist attacks occur and international laws are broken. The Oromo are being denied sanctuary in neighboring countries and are also even being denied the right to be refugees to some degree. Peripheral states such as that of Ethiopia “lack the capacity to meet the demands and rights of citizens and improve the standard of living for the majority of population” (Welsh, 2002: 67-68). Consequently, they engage in state terrorism and genocidal massacres in order to suppress the population groups that struggle for political and economic rights and to dispossess their economic resources. The Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government accepts state violence against the Oromo and others as a legitimate means of establishing political stability and order.

It does this despite its adoption in its constitution the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenants on Human Rights. As Lisa Sharlach (2002: 107) attests, state terrorism and genocide occur when a “dominant group, frightened by what its members perceive as an onslaught of . . . internal movements for democracy and socioeconomic change, harnesses the state apparatus to destroy the subordinate group altogether.” State terrorism is associated with issues of control of territory and resources and the construction of political and ideological domination. Annamarie Oliverio (1997: 52) explains two essential features of state terrorism “First, the state reinforces the use of violence as a viable, effective, mitigating factor for managing conflict; second, such a view is reinforced by culturally constructed and socially organized processes, expressed through symbolic forms, and related in complex ways to present social interests. Within increasing economic and environmental globalization, gender politics, and the resurgence of nationalities within territorial boundaries, the discourse of terrorism, as a practice of statecraft, is crucial to the construction of political boundaries.” The Tigrayan-led regime mainly targets the Oromo because of their economic resources and political resistance. According to “Because the Oromo occupy Ethiopia’s richest areas and comprise half of the population of Ethiopia, they are seen as the greatest threat to the present Tigrayan-led government. Subsequently, any indigenous Oromo organization, including the Oromo Relief Association, has been closed and suppressed by the government. The Standard reason given for detaining Oromo people is that they are suspected of supporting the OLF” (The Oromia Support Group 1997: 1),

The regime’s activities include the systematic assassinations of prominent Oromos, both open and hidden murders of thousands of ordinary Oromo, initiation of villagization and eviction in Oromia, the expansion of prisons in Oromia, and the incarceration of thousands Oromo in hidden and underground concentration camps. Umar Fatanssa, an elderly Oromo, says: “We had never experienced anything like that, not under Haile Selassie, nor under the Mengistu regime: these people just come and shoot your son or your daughter dead in front of your eyes” (quoted in Fossati, Namarra and Niggli, 1996: 43). Ethiopian state terrorism manifests itself in different forms such as war, assassination, murder (including burying people alive, throwing off cliffs, and hanging them), castration, torture, and rape. The police and the army are forcing the Oromo people into submission by jailing, intimidation, beating, torturing, and killings as well as by confiscating their properties (Pollock, 1996). Former prisoners have testified that their arms and legs were tied tightly together against their backs and that their naked bodies were whipped. Large containers or bottles filled with water were fixed to their testicles, or if they were women, bottles or poles were pushed into their vaginas. Some prisoners have been locked up in empty steel barrels and tormented with heat in the tropical sun during the day and with cold at night. Prisoners have been forced into pits so that fire could be made on top of them. According to Trevor Trueman (2001: 3), “Torture— especially arm-tying, beating of the soles of the feet, suspension of weights from genitalia and mock execution—is commonplace, at least in unofficial places of detention. Female detainees estimate that several soldiers and policemen on several occasions rape 50% of women during detention, often. The Minnesota Center for Victims of Torture has surveyed more than 500 randomly selected Oromo refugees. The majority had been subjected to torture and nearly all of the rest had been subjected to some kind of government violence.”

Unfortunately, the successive U.S. administrations of George Herbert Bush, Bill Clinton, George Walker Bush, and Barack Obama have fully heartedly supported this criminal regime while giving lip service to the promotion of democracy and protection of human rights. The U.S., other Western countries, and China have indirectly financed state terrorism and genocide in Oromia and Ethiopia through bilateral (i.e. governmental institutions) and international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Tigrayan-led Ethiopian regime is now completing the forced removal of Oromo farmers from the areas surrounding Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) (Worku 2008: 97-131). It has tried to implement the so-called Addis Ababa Master Plan that the Oromo called “the Master Genocide” in 2014, and the Oromo in general and the Oromo students in particular have been peacefully resisting this genocidal policy that has been intended to totally uproot Oromo farmers around the capital city and to transfer their lands to Tigrayans colonial elites and their supporters. Furthermore, by evicting the Oromo farmers from their homelands with nominal or without compensation, the regime has already leased several millions hectares of Oromo land to so-called investors from Ethiopia, China, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, UK, Israel, as well as from Europe (Rahmato 2011; Giorgis 2009).

The local and transnational capitalists have intensified the process of capital accumulation by dispossession of the Oromo and others under the leadership of the Tigrayn-led Ethiopian government. If the policy of land grabbing is allowed to continue, Tigrayans, Amharas, Chinese, Djiboutians, Indians, Malaysians, Nigerians, Arabs, English, Jews, Asians, Europeans and others will soon replace the Oromo people in Oromia and beyond. However, the Tigrayan state elites have never sold or leased Tigrayan land, but have expanded modern agricultural and industrial development in their homeland, Tigray. Tamrat G. Giorgis (2009: 1), Addis Fortune staff writer, explains as follows: “A new global trend is rising whereby companies from emerging economies grab vast land in poor host nations to grow and export cereals and grains to their home countries. It has happened here in Bako [Oromia,], where people from India have been granted tens of thousands of hectares of land for commercial farming. The locals, however, are unhappy.” The Tigrayan regime also sells Oromo minerals and other natural resources while evicting and impoverishing the Oromo people. Whenever the Oromo resist, the regime mercilessly brutalizes or kills them. In this era of globalization, the Tigrayan regime is advised, financed, and legitimized by the transnational capitalist class. Global powers such as the US, the European Union, and countries of emerging economies have collaborated with the Tigrayan-led regime to suppress the OLF and the Oromo people in order to expropriate the economic resources of the Oromo people.[12]

Millions of Oromo who have lost their economic resources and those who are targeted for their political views have immigrated to the Middle East, Australia, Europe, and North America and to different countries in Africa. They have been mistreated in some African countries and the Middle East, and they have been denied the right to be refugees. When the Oromo are facing abject poverty and hunger, Tigrayan elite who depended on international food aid in the 1980s for their survival, are rich and powerful today. The regime also sells Oromo minerals, forests, and other natural resources while evicting and impoverishing the Oromo people. Whenever the Oromo resist, the regime mercilessly brutalizes or kills them. Amnesty International (2014: 8) in its paper entitled, “Because I am Oromo,” notes, in peaceful opposition to land dispossession and the so-called Integrated Addis Ababa Master Plan, “Between 2011 and 2014, at least 5,000 Oromos have been arrested as a result of their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government, based on their manifestation of dissenting opinions, exercise of freedom of expression or their imputed political opinion.” In 2014, the regime also massacred over 78 university students in Ambo for peacefully protesting against the so-called Addis Ababa Master Plan.[13]

Large-scale arrests, massive shootings, rapes, tortures, extra-judicial executions, and deaths due to tortures or lack of medical treatments are common events in Oromia. Students were accused of organizing demonstrations and arrested and tortured; singers were detained and tortured for cultivating Oromo nationalism and for not praising the government; people were detained and tortured for not providing false testimonies against other peoples or being accused of supporting the OLF (Amnesty International 2014: 7). The policy of violent development has been also devastating the peoples of the Lower Omo region and Gambella; the ethno-national minority groups, including Kwegu, Bodi, Suri, Mursi, Nyangatom, Hamer, Karo and Dassenach have been targeted for destruction through land dispossession and forced resettlements (Oakland Institute 2013: 1-2; 2013; 2014; 2015). When the US, UK and the World Bank have provide the so-called development aid, the Ethiopian government has used its defense force to violently dispossess the land and other resources of these peoplse and forcing them to settle in new areas that are hostile to their livelihoods and their cultural traditions. Ethiopia received “$3.5 billion on average from international donors in recent years, which represents 50 to 60 percent of its national budget” in development aid from the US, UK, and the World Bank (Oakland Institute 2013: 1).

The so-called development strategy developed in 2010 aimed at the removing “1.5 million people from areas targeted for industrial plantations under the government’s ‘villagization’ program” (Oakland Institute 2013: 1). The European Union, Australia, Italy, Germany, Irish Aid, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank Group have also financed the programs of land dispossession and forced resettlement in the Lower Omo region.  In these violent development processes of enriching Tigrayan and transnational capitalist elites, “a long list of human rights violations, including, ‘arbitrary killings; allegations of torture, beating, abuse, and mistreatment of detainees by security forces; reports of harsh and at times life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention … infringement on citizens’ privacy rights … allegations of abuses in the implementation of … ‘villagization’ program; restriction of academic freedom; restrictions of freedom of assembly, association and movements’” have occurred (Oakland Institute 2013: 7-8).

The current Ethiopian government has dispossessed and leased about 2.5 million hectares of lands to Tgrayan elites and global investors such Djiboutians, Indians, Turkeys, Sudanese, Pakistanis, Saudi Arabians and others (Jeffrey 2016). Although the opposition to land grabbing policies triggered the current Oromo protest movement, collective grievances such as colonial domination, the denial of self-determination, the absence of democracy, gross human rights violations, cultural destruction, political and economic marginalization, poverty, and rampant unemployment have mobilized the entire Oromo society against the Tigrayan-led government.  These grievances have accelerated the process of the Oromo struggle for control of economic and cultural resources, self-determination, statehood, and egalitarian democracy by facilitating the mobilization of the entire Oromo society to participate in the ongoing protest movement.

The Current Oromo Protest Movement and its Ramifications

The accumulated grievances, the recent intensification of land grabbing policies, particularly the so-called Integrated Addis Ababa Master Plan, and the development of the political consciousness of the Oromo people starting from the national struggle of the 1960s have resulted in the current Oromia-wide peaceful protest movement. The ongoing Oromo protest movement is going for more than five months. It erupted in Ginchi, near Ambo, on November 12, 2015, and shortly covered all Oromia like wild fire. The Oromo elementary and secondary students this small town ignited the current peaceful protests because of the privatization and confiscation of a small soccer field and selling of the nearby Chilimoo forest to be cleared and deforested (Jeffrey 2016). Supporting the peaceful protests of these students, the entire Oromo from all walks of life joined the peaceful protests all over Oromia by also opposing the so-called Integrated Addis Ababa Master Plan. For the first time the revolutionary flame of Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism) has tied all Oromo branches together to take a coordinated action to defend their national interest. The so-called master plan was intended to expand Addis Ababa to 1.5 million hectares of surrounding Oromo lands by evicting Oromo farmers and by destroying Oromo identity, culture and history (Thomson and López 2015) and replacing them by Tigrayans and their collaborators. The Oromo interpret this policy as the replication of the policy of the Amhara-led government that uprooted and destroyed the Oromo in Finfinnee and replaced them by Amhara colonial settlers and their collaborators during the formation and development of Addis Ababa as the capital city of the Ethiopian Empire.

Through the accumulated experiences of the past twenty-five years, the Oromo people have realized that the Tigrayan colonial elites with the help their Oromo collaborators have been expropriating Oromo lands and other resources and transferring to themselves and their domestic and global supporters. In these processes, the Oromo people have become alien in their own country, and Oromia has been owned by Tigrayans. Consequently, the Oromo people were impoverished and lost hope. Educated Oromo have become jobless while most Tigrayans are dominating and controlling the political economy of Oromia and Ethiopia. The Tigryans who were suffering from poverty and famine in the 1980s have become millionaires and billionaires. The Tigrayan colonial elites have been transferring famine to Oromia and other regions by expropriating the land and resources of Oromo and that of others to themselves and their collaborators and global supporters. At the same time, the Oromo national struggle that started in the 1960s has been penetrating the psyche of the Oromo people. This struggle has been revitalizing the Oromo national culture, history and identity. Consequently, Oromo nationalism or national Oromummaa has blossomed and become a revolutionary flame.

The Tigrayan state elites and their Oromo collaborators who used to think that the Oromo people were collections of “tribes” who could be used as raw materials and firewood cannot understand the essence of the current Oromo protest movement. They still believe that by beating, torturing, castrating, decapitating, raping, and murdering Oromo students, farmers, educators, and merchants can stop the Oromo struggle for statehood, sovereignty and egalitarian democracy. The Oromo activists and revolutionaries are inclusive and inviting all peoples who are suffering under Tigrayan colonialism and neoliberal globalism that facilitates violent development. The ongoing Oromo protest movement has opened a new chapter in the history of Oromia and Ethiopia. This history is written by Oromo blood, and the relationship between the Oromo and their colonizers has been changed forever. However, the final chapter of this history is not yet written. Many things have changed as the result of the Oromo protest movement. The cost the Oromo have paid in lives and suffering is very high; within five months more than 500 Oromo including school children, pregnant women, and elderly people were massacred. Tens of thousands of Oromo have been imprisoned or collected in undisclosed concentration camps where they are beaten, tortured, exposed to diseases and famine and eventually probably decimate. Despite all these tragedies, the Oromo people have restored their national pride, patriotism, and bravery that they enjoyed between the 16^th and mid-19^th centuries.

During these centuries, the Oromo had their republican government under the gadaa/siqqee system; they had a formidable military organization. The Oromo had no mercenaries who joined the enemy to fight against them because they successfully defended themselves from their internal and external enemies during these centuries. Biyyaa Oromo that we call today Oromia was sovereign and no enemies exercised their political power on it. Young Oromo protesters are equipped with the ideology of national Oromummaa, which has uprooted the divisions that the enemies of the Oromo created among different Oromo branches. Some Oromo elements that have been suffering from the internalization victimization are forced to start to rethink about their Oromo national identity and the Oromo national struggle. Particularly, the Oromia Diaspora are learning about national Oromummaa and rallying behind the Oromo national struggle in Oromia. The Oromo Diaspora all over the world has showed solidarity with Oromo protesters by demonstrating and financially and diplomatically supporting them.

Oromo collaborators and opportunists who have been evicting Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands by joining the Tigrayan fascists are shocked and started to feel national shame. The Oromo protest movement is demonstrating that it can destroy Oromo intermediaries or mercenaries who work for the enemy at the cost of the Oromo nation. That is why the Tigrayan military rule has replaced the OPDO in Oromia. The Oromo are practically showing that they cannot accept submissive and subservient leaders that the enemy created for them. They only accepted leaders are those have struggle on behalf of them. Calling the names of Oromo heroines and heroines who have sacrificed their precious lives for them as OLF leaders and fighters, Oromo protesters show the Oromo flag and say the OLF is our leader without any fear and intimidation from the TPLF government and its OPDO collaborators. The Tigrayan-led regime has labeled Oromo peaceful protesters “terrorists” and used anti-terrorism laws to delegitimize and violent crackdown the protest movement (Thomson and López 2016).

Since Oromo protesters only have targeted on their enemy, diverse national groups in Ethiopia have somewhat changed their attitudes toward the Oromo people and their national struggle. What is amazing is that many Amhara elites who used to suspect and hate the Oromo struggle have become neutral or sympathetic to the Oromo activists and protesters. Many of them have openly denounced Tigrayan state terrorism and invited their fellow citizens to join the ongoing Oromo protest movement. Oromo protesters have practically demonstrated that they struggle to establish a democratic system that will exercise the principles of national self-determination and egalitarian multinational democracy that are in line with their democratic tradition. Overall, all Oromo who lost hope in their national struggle have restored their dreams of liberation, freedom, and democracy.  Furthermore, peoples like the Sidama, Hadiya, Benishangul, Annuak, Ogaden-Somalis, and even some Amharas can ally with the Oromo people to dismantle Tigrayan colonialism and the fascist minority regime of the TPLF. These are great psychological, ideological and diplomatic victories for the Oromo national movement. All these victories are achieved by Oromo blood and suffering. Until now about 500 Oromo have been massacred, and thousands Oromo have been imprisoned, kicked, beaten, torture, and decapitated. In fact, at this time, we do not have enough data on the killings, imprisonments, and other crimes on the Oromo.

Globally and diplomatically, the Oromo protest movement has won world attention because of its political maturity, determination, inclusiveness, and for totally disproving the ideology and political program of the Tigrayan-led minority Ethiopian government. For the first time in Oromo history, the world media outlets such as Washington Post, BBC, Newsweek, AFP, the Guardian, and other reported on the Oromo protest movement and its brutal crackdown by the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government. This peaceful movement also for a limited degree has broken international silence on the Oromo struggle. For instance, on January 21, 2015, the European Parliament condemned the violent crackdown of Oromo protesters, and called for the establishment of a credible, transparent and independent body for investigating the murdering and imprisoning thousands protesters in Oromia.[14] Similarly, the UN Human Rights Experts demanded the Ethiopian authorities to stop the violent crackdown on Oromo peaceful protesters.[15] The US Department of State vaguely expressed its concern about the violent associated with the protest movement. But, expressing its firm support for the regime, the US signed security partnership with the Ethiopian government to exchange “logistics, services, supplies” and planned “for a future security cooperation activities designed to meet mutual defense priorities.”[16]

Conclusion

The Oromo movement for control of economic and cultural resources, statehood and egalitarian democracy is gaining momentum as the current Oromo protest movement demonstrates. It has also demonstrated that the Oromo have developed their national Oromummaa, determination, and capacity to confront and defeat the policies of violent development and gradually decide their destiny one way or the other. Consequently, the ongoing Oromo protest movement has shaken the foundation of the Tigrayan authoritarian terrorist regime and its surrogate organization, OPDO, in Oromia and beyond. So a new Oromo-based system emerging and replacing the dying the Tigrayan colonialism and its terrorist and repressive political structures. Oromo activist networks and leadership must double its efforts to build its organizational capacity and develop specific principles of national self-determination and egalitarian multinational democracy to open a new chapter in Oromia, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in collaboration with progressive communities and peoples. As other social movements of the 21^st century that are engaging in egalitarian democratic movements and globalization from below (Rajagopal 1999, 2003), the Oromo movement in its different forms challenges the strategy of violent development and modernity, and seeks to establish the autonomy of people in order to facilitate the formation of an egalitarian democratic state and an alternative form of development.

Endnotes

[1] Seye Abraha was a founder and former political bureau member of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. He was a chauvinist Tigrayan who did not hide his negative attitudes about the Oromos and the OLF, when he was the Defense Minister of Ethiopia; See “The Prison speaks Oromiffa,” Ethiopian Review, January 17, 2008. Seye was jailed in Qaliti prison.
[2] See Hizbawi Adera, a TPLF/EPRDF Political Pamphlet, December 1996-February 1997, Vol. 4, No. 7.
[3] Bruna Fossati, L. Namarra, and Peter Niggli, The New Rulers of Ethiopia and the Persecution of the Oromo:  Reports from the Oromo Refugees in Djibouti, (Dokumentation, Evangelischer Pressedienst Frankfurt am, 1996, p. 10.
[4] For example, the wife of Ahmed Mohamed Kuree, a seventy year-old elderly farmer, expressed on February 21, 2007, on the Voice of America, Afaan Oromo Program the following:[4] “We found his prayer beads, his clothes and a single bone of his which the hyenas had left behind after devouring the rest of his body, and we took those items home. What is more, after we got home, they [government agents] condemned us for going to Gaara Suufii and for mourning. For fear of repercussions, we have not offered the customary prayer for my husband by reading from the Qur’an. Justice has not been served. That is where we are today.”
[5] Ahmed Mohamed Kuree was one of these Oromos. Another Oromo, Ayisha Ali, a fourteen year-old teenager, was also killed and eaten by hyenas. Her mother said on the Voice of America, Afaan Oromo Program the following: “After we heard the rumor about the old man [Ahmed Mohamed Kuree] I followed his family to Gaara Suufii [in search of my daughter]. There we found her skirt, sweater, underwear and her hair, braided . . . That was all we found of my daughter’s remains.” Ayisha was probably raped before she was killed.
[6] Mohammed Hassen “Is Genocide Against the Oromo in Ethiopia Possible,” Paper Presented at the Fourth International Biennial Conference of the Association of Genocide Scholars, Radisson Hotel, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 10, 2001.
[7] Ibid, p. 30.
[8] In 2002, when the Sheko and Mezhenger peoples demanded their rights, the regime killed between 128 and 1,000 people. Nobody knows exactly how many people were killed since the government and the victims give different numbers. Similarly, on June 21, 2002, between 39 and 100 Sidamas were killed when government soldiers fired at 7,000 peaceful demonstrators in Hawas (Awash). Again government forces and colonial settlers committed genocidal massacres on the Annuak people of Gambella in December 2003 and beginning 2004; they killed 424 people and displaced about 50, 000 people. Currently, the regime is engaged in genocidal massacres, imprisonment, and massive human rights violations in Ogadenia and Oromia.
[9] Stanton, George. 2009. “An Open Letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for   Human Rights,” Website: www.genocidewatch.org, accessed on April 1, 2009.
[10] Ibid, December 2002, no. 38, pp. 18-20; July 2003, no. 39, pp. 18-19.
[11] http://www.humanrightsleague.com/press_Releases.html, 2008
[12] In this process, some Oromos have been uprooted from their communal ancestral lands, alienated, and impoverished. As William I. Robinson (2008: 23) notes, “There is . . . the rise of a new global “underclass” of supernumeraries or “redundants” who are alienated and not absorbed into the global capitalist class economy and who are structurally under- and unemployed. Hundreds of millions of supernumeraries swell the ranks of a global army of reserve labor at the same time as they hold down the wages and leverage ability among those absorbed into the global economy. The supernumeraries are subject to new forms of repressive and authoritarian social control and to an oppressive cultural and ideological dehumanization…. This culture of global capitalism glorifies policing and militarization, constructs all those who resist, or even question the logic of the dominant order as incomprehensible, even crazed, Other.”
[13]file://Oromo Protests and Ethiopian Repression Overview Oromo Oromia Gadaa.com-FinfinneTribune.html, accessed on 04/11/2016
[14] see “European Parliament resolution on the situation in Ethiopia,” http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+MOTION+P8-RC-2016-0082+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN, accessed on 04/14/2016.
[15] See “UN experts urge Ethiopia to stop violent crackdown on Oromia protesters,” http://www.somalistate.com/un-experts-urge-ethiopia-to-stop-violent-crack-down-on-oromia-protesters/, accessed on 4/14/2016.
[16] See “US, Ethiopia sign new agreement, enhance security partnership,”
http://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2016/Apr/104913/us_ethiopia_sign_new_agreement_to_enhance_defense_and_security_partnership.aspx, accessed on /14/2016.

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Ezekiel Gebissa, Special to Addis Standard

Since the creation of the modern Ethiopian state a little more than a century ago, the polity has failed to achieve three objectives: peaceful political transition, democracy, and national unity. The efforts to achieve all three have always been characterized by violence. Some Ethiopian and expatriate intellectuals posit that the repeated failures are because the models of change that have been adopted did not take account of Ethiopian realities. Indeed, indigenous assets and resources are rich in models of desirable political change that can obviate another failure and violent political transition.

But it is important to review how and when Ethiopia failed to achieve these three objectives in the first place.

Political transition

Political transitions in Ethiopia have always been effected through violence. In the early 20th century, power was transferred from Lij Iyasu to Haile Sellassie by a palace coup; in 1974 Mengistu Haile Mariam overthrew Emperor Haile Sellassie by a popular uprising; and in 1991 Mengistu Haile Mariam lost power to Meles Zenawi through a triumph of guerilla forces.

In addition there were unsuccessful transitions such as attempted assassinations (on Emperor Haile Sellassie by Negash Bezabih in 1951, Takkele Wolde Hawariat in 1942, 1946 and 1969; on Mengistu in 1975 and many more times since); mutinies (Abba Wuqaw in 1928, Gugsa Wole in 1930, Belay Zeleke in 1943, Negale in 1973, and Nacfa in 1988, to mention but a few); purges (Aman Andom in 1974, Tafari Benti in 1976, Atnafu Abate in 1977); and abortive coups d’etat (in 1960 against the imperial regime of Haile Sellassie, and in 1989 against the regime of the military Derg).

Derailed Democracy

With regard to democracy or citizen participation in politics and development, Ethiopia has had what the renowned scholar on Ethiopia the late Donald Levine calls a “structural opening” or opportunities for transformative political change. These opportunities were: the abortive coup of December 1960; the ferment of 1974; the regime change of 1991; the Ethio-Eritrean war of 1998; and the May 2005 national election. All of these moments were opportunities for democratic change. Instead they were turned into “missed opportunities” that led to an escalating valorization of murder and violence as the sole means to effect social change.

National unity

National unity is a goal that has also spilled a lot of blood in the history of modern Ethiopia. From conquest to assimilation to demand to tow the official line, the efforts to forge national unity have meted out untold violence on the people of the periphery. As the political scientist John Markakis argues in his 2011 book ‘Ethiopia: the last two frontiers’ all of the efforts failed because the elite at the center refused to share power in any meaningful way with the periphery, the physical lowland border lands and the politically excluded highland periphery, notably the Oromo inhabited areas, and the economically un-integrated lowland periphery among the Anuak, the Surma, the Somali and the Afar.

The specter of violence

Unfortunately, the specter of yet another violent political transition has now returned. The historical pattern and factors that in the past have led to a violent transition seem to be converging. These are economic crisis epitomized by severe drought/famine, discontent and instability, and a government that is suddenly responsive to public demands.

In Ethiopia’s recent past, economic crises epitomized by famine have always presaged a fall of a regime. The near successful coup d’etat of 1960 was preceded by a famine in 1959. The 1974 fall of Emperor Haile Sellassie was precipitated by dire economic times that resulted from the global energy crisis of 1973 and the Wello famine of the same year. The collapse of the Derg regime was occasioned by a persistent negative economic growth, the impact of which was compounded by the 1984-85 famine which affected eight million people and killed about a million.

When confronted with an apparently insurmountable crisis, each regime became less arrogant and more responsive to public concerns. In 1974, when severe economic conditions fueled popular unrest and persistent strikes by students, teachers and cabbies occasioned a sense of chaos in the capital, the Haile Sellassie government responded by reducing gasoline prices, dropping price controls on basic essentials, and raising military pay. Prime Minister Aklilu Habte Wold took the unprecedented but courageous step of resigning. His successor Endalkachew Mekonnen, promised broad reform measures. The effort yielded a breathing space for the ailing regime, but did not stop the slide into oblivion.

In 1990, when the Derg regime was in tatters after a long period of a stagnant economy and a series of major military defeats, Mengistu announced the end of socialism in Ethiopia, the replacement of the exclusive Worker’s Party of Ethiopia with the relatively more open Ethiopian Democratic Unity Party, and the demise of the command economy. Political prisoners were released. Some individuals even felt courageous enough to publicly criticize Mengistu and his policies, including one that demanded his resignation. The reforms had obvious effects in rural areas where the Derg’s peasant villages were dismantled, land redistributed, and the orders of party cadres and government functionaries were disobeyed by the emboldened public. Mengistu continued tinkering with his ideology and government, for example, replacing hardliners with liberal officials. Alas! No amount of reform was sufficient to save the regime.

The three conditions that have preceded the downfall of the imperial and military regimes once again appear to be gathering momentum on the current Ethiopian political scene. The Oromo protests of 2014 and 2015-16 have exposed the reality that the regime’s hold on power has always been tenuous. In Oromia, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization’s (OPDO) structure is completely broken at the district level with no prospect of reorganizing itself and reasserting control. The protests have also exposed that the economy is in a more difficult state without a continuous infusion of direct foreign assistance. The financial sector is in such a terrible shape that the lack of credit and liquidity for private banks is threatening to take the economy down. And the number of people that need food aid today, according to the UN and USAID, could reach over 20 million. The level of discontent in the country is terrifyingly high.

Confronted by the grim reality, the regime has suddenly become responsive to public demands. The omniscient government that, only a few months ago, was arrogantly telling everybody what to think now appears to be in retreat. Uncharacteristically for an Ethiopian government, it has taken responsibility for its incompetence in delivering services, issued tepid apologies for its use of lethal force against peaceful protestors and announced intentions to rescind its land-grabbing schemes altogether.

It is too little too late. No amount of public contrition or magnanimous gestures such as reduction of gasoline prices will be sufficient to help the government regain its footing and legitimacy. The problem now is the government itself.

Another ‘structural opening’?

The Oromo protests have now offered Ethiopia another ‘structural opening’ for a nonviolent transition. Ethiopians should not once again miss this opportunity as a people to embark on a genuine path of democratization, sustainable development, lasting peace, and respect for human rights. But in order to seize this opportunity Ethiopians should, first and foremost, accurately acknowledge the problem as the country faces it today. The main problem that needs to be addressed is one that is identified by John Markakis. At this stage, Markakis says:

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the incumbent regime in [Addis Abeba] is engaged in the same battles that exhausted its predecessors, impoverished the country, and blasted peoples’ hopes for peace, democracy and an escape from dire poverty. One of the last frontiers Ethiopia’s rulers have to cross is to redress the imbalance of power that marginalizes the majority of its people and is the cause of endless strife that holds them in bondage. The failure to cross this “last frontier’ makes it impossible to forge a system of government based on consensus and legitimacy, and to complete the process of nation-state building with political integration.

Ethiopians should also reject the option of borrowing foreign models of social change and start looking inward for workable models in the indigenous systems of Ethiopia’s peoples. Ethiopia’s prominent political figure and academician, Leencho Lata, in his book, Horn of Africa as Common Homeland, has called for implementation of innovative solutions based on the knowledge and practices of grassroots communities to resolve problems and avoid uncritical embrace of transplanted democratic forms.

Ethiopia needs renewal and there is an opportunity for constructing a new, democratic Ethiopia. As it stands now the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has lost credibility, legitimacy and the capacity to cross the political frontiers that have made national integration impossible. Crossing this political frontier requires meeting Ethiopia’s marginalized periphery where they are because the new democratic Ethiopia should be free of cultural, political and economic domination of one group of people by another.

When a structural opening occurred for renewal in 1974, Donald Levine offered a social scientists’ view of a new Ethiopia in his book, Greater Ethiopia, which expressed his wishes to see a multinational country that has synthesized the socio-cultural systems of the country’s two major ethno linguistic communities, the Amhara and the Oromo. Levine’s portrait shows the individualistic, hierarchical, competitive Amharas with a highly flexible society, confronting the solidaristic (or cooperative), egalitarian, socially-accommodating Oromos. His was an idea rooted in Hegelian dialectics in which the Oromo, the majority within the country, are viewed as (unfortunately) constituting the antithesis of the Amhara thesis. Regardless, his analysis shows the “hierarchical individualist” Amhara and the “egalitarian solidaristic” Oromo resolving their differences at a higher level of creative incorporation that produces Ethiopia as a culture area.

I raise Levine’s ‘Greater Ethiopia’ synthesis not because I am oblivious to the academic rancor his idea of Ethiopia as a single culture area has generated since the book’s publication. What I am interested in is his idea of resolving political differences in Ethiopia at a higher level of social consciousness. This might well obviate another episode of violent transition.

ED’s Note: Ezekiel Gebissa is a Professor of History and African Studies at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. 

Part two:

By Geremew Nigatu Kassa | Oslo, Norway

Continuation of Part One

Last time I have investigated whether Gada system is an age-set system or democratic political system. The first part of the article clearly indicates the difference between age-set as a social role and Gada system as a democratic political, social, administration and cultural institution.  However, in this second part of the article, I will try to discuss Gada system’s deeper political process, democratic culture and its institutional function.

1.3) Gada Political process, democracy and its institutional function

This part of Gada theory and ­practices is based not only on theoretical reflection of literature and relevant studies of Gada system, but  also  on personal participation and emic observation during my own stay among the Oromo-Boranas for many years. Based on my experience, I will discuss how Gada system’s political process, institutional function and culture of democracy works. This section of the article gives us a full understanding of what Gada political, institutional and democratic culture is.

The relationship between traditional institution and political organization can be summed up as an interdependent issue. According to Douglas (1987), there is a close cultural and value based interconnection between existing traditional institution and political organization. Traditional institution stands for general and abstract values and norms of the whole society while political organization stands, in most cases, for specific and concrete goal of certain organized group. In other words: political organization can be seen as ‘materialized expressions’ of the general notion of traditional institution of the whole society.

A political organization can also serve as an empirical representation as well as realization of the concept of traditional institution of the society. Then, it can be argued that many political organizations can be consolidated under a given traditional institution of that society. In this case, there is a reasonable concept in the Gada system of traditional institution to understand the current political and organizational confusion, lack of unity and the problem of political pathway, not on the Ethiopian government national politic but within the Oromo and none Oromo opposition political camps. In a sense, if we understand the essence of Gada political system and recognize at least some of its important ideas, we can find an alternative political pathway to our desired common political solution to all parties and stakeholders.  We can for example use some of our democratic culture, methods of conflict resolution, accommodative intuitional approach, behavioral appropriation and code of conducts in Gada system as an instrument for future common political forward moving. However, it is not my immediate intension to analyse this perspective in this section of this article. The main concern of this section is just to put Gada system’s political system, institutional function and democratic nature on the surface to the readers.

1.4) The Five Political Lines ( the five gogeessas) of Gada political process

There are five political lines (gogeessas) in the Oromo Borana Gada system namely: 1) Gogeessa Adii Dooyyoo, 2) Gogeessa Boruu Galmaa, 3) Gogeessa Liiban Kusee, 4) Gogeessa Areeroo Geedoo, and 5) Gogeessa Bulee Dabbaasa (see also Kjærland 1976). Everything in Oromo-Borana is named after Abbaa Gadas as a good leader is considered as a hero or important figure in the society. Therefore, these five Borana gogeessas bear the name of individual persons who first established each gogeessa. Every Borana man is expected to be a member of one of these political lines (gogeessa shaneenii) while it is not clear whether women are excluded or included in the five political lines.

The concept of the five political lines (gogeessa shaneenii) in the Gada system in different Oromia regions is similar, but the local terms used to name these five political lines differ.  For instance, “[t]here are five Gadaa grades in a cycle of forty years in Ambo [Western Shoa region] namely Roobalee, Birmajii, Horata, Michillee and Duuloo” (Kelbessa, 2001:67).  In the Borana case, the whole society is divided into five gogeessas by which every individual joins one of the five gogeessas either by birth or through guulaa rights (the rights to change one’s own gogeessa (political party)  by choice and joining another gogeessa. Withdrawing from one gogeessa and joining other gogeessa happens only by personal decision, not by force or external pressure.  This is due to the fact that a person is born in his gogeessa and he joins it by birth and nobody can suspend or dismiss him from the party he has got by nature or birth unless he himself chooses to become guula.

It is interesting to note that members of one family with different political lines live together in one house without any conflict over their political differences. Which means members of a single-family can have different gogeessas (political lines). For example, son(s) and father, elder and younger brothers, sisters and other relatives in one household and village can join different gogeessas while they are living together as one family. What makes Oromo Gada political system different from other political systems is that there can be different political membership classes (lubas) across the same clan and moieties. There can also be different gogeessas and lubas in one family. There can be the same gogeessas, but different lubas in one family and clan. There are also different gogeessas and lubas or the same gogeessas and lubas in the same family and clan. It is not common to have such radically democratic family institution even in the modern and advanced societies in which  one family members belong to different political parties while they are living together in harmony in the same house. This can be considered as one of the unique features of Oromo Gada political and democratic system.

Table 1. Lists of five Oromo-Borana political lines (gogeessa shaneenii)

Source Kjærland 1976 and Bassi 2005:58

These five gogeessas are permanent and have been rotating turn by turn throughout Borana political life for centuries. The main purpose and the common goal of these five political lines are to maintain Oromo Gada democratic culture, norms, values, identity and to advance common Gada political ideological.  Within their respective gogeessa all gogeessa shaneenii recruit and supply personnel for Gada office during their 8 years Gada term regardless of their clan belongings (kinship). Their role to organize mediator between individuals or groups within the Gada system, each gogeessa has its own administrational structure.  In order to understand how the above five political lines are formulated or work, we need to understand how the key political and civil administrative institutions (Gada Arboora, Medhicha and Garba), spiritual institution (Qaalluu),  military institution (hirre warana), and other Gada institutional relations are formulated.

1.5) The Three Institutional Pillars of the Borana Gada System: The Gada Arboora, Medhicha and Garba Institutions

In local language terms in Oromo Borana area, there are three highest and central Gada institutions known as Gada Arboora, Medhicha and Garba respectively.  Those three institutions are called all together Yaa’a Gada Sadeenii (the three institutional pillars of the Gada system).  This makes Gada system either not a single man headed system, nor a single political party political system, nor a single institutional function, but the system was established on  the principle of single ideological foundation.   The notion of Gada system as a multi-headed institution was introduced by Bassi but only in their institutional categories, not in their integrated institutional function as Yaa’a Gada Sadeenii or the three central institutions (Bassi 2005:171).  Gada system is neither a single man nor a single institution headed system. Rather it is  a ‘polycephalus’ or a triple or triangular institutional headed and pentagonal political system, but it is based on extremely unified ideological system employing senior-junior-opposition headed institution, consensus political process and administration system.

Gada Arboora institution is the most senior position of the three-pillared institutions both in its institutional form and in its leadership position. Gada Arboora has six executives and ranks over the other two institutions (Medhicha and Garba). Medhicha is the second ranking institution of the three pillars of Gada institutions. Medhicha institution has 18 leaders with three sub-division of its branch. The third ranking institution of the three pillars of Gada is the Garba institution. Garba institution is formed from four of the five political lines (gogeessas) which are not in power during the Gada office (eight years). Garba institution is led by 12 highly skilled and aged councillors who are usually selected and appointed from the four opposition political lines during one Borana Gada term. One Gada term in Oromo-Borana has a total of thirty six (36) senior-junior institutionalized political and administrative leaders who hold different positions within the Gada institution known as in local terms Yaa’a Gadaa Sadeenii or the three pillars of Borana Gada system (Gada Arboora, Medhicha and Garba).

In Borana Gada system, the three Borana Gada institutional pillars or Yaa’a Gada Sadeenii (Gada Arboora, Medhicha and Garba) function as a single Borana political and administrative institution. “The Oromo polity has three heads. The leaders of these institutions are recruited in different ways and balanced against each other” (Legesse 2000:29). Because of analytical limitation, this paper cannot discusses the issue of how those 36 central leaders work in Gada traditional government system.  However, Kjærland (1976) states that among those thirty six central Gada leaders, there are individuals who are interested in various subjects such as in meteorology, history, veterinary, health, law, politics, military, information etc. This paper considers this as a subject for further research studies. However, it is necessary to explain the main institutional structure of one Gada term, institutional branches and sub-branches as well as the distribution of power among those thirty six-leadership positions and integrated institutional structure of the Gada pillars. Each institution has three different sub-branches and distribution of leadership positions as follows:

1. Gada Arboora institution has 6 senior executive Gada councillors
2. Medhicha institution has 18 lateral junior Gada councillors
3. Garba institution has 12 junior Gada councillors

A) The Three Sub-Branches of Gada Arboora (‘The Senior Council’) Institution

The Gada Arboora has six most senior Gada councillors. From those six senior executive, Abbaa Gada  is  the leader of one Gada term, but  every decision is usually given in the form of team rather than in the form of a single man or personalized decision.  The Gada leaders are collectively referred to as the “Warra Arboora” (Legesse 2000:104) in which Gada leader works with the rest of the three senior executive councillors. The division of their sub-branches and works can be understood as follows:

1) Arboora sub-branch has 4 senior councillors, that means the Gada leader (Abbaa Gada Fiixee) who is the leader of whole Borana people for one Gada term of 8 years and 3 other senior councillors. Those three senior councillors work with the Gada leader as a single body. In other words 1 Abbaa Gada and 3 senior councillors work together

These six senior Gada councillors hold the most senior position and they are leaders for eight years or one Gada term of office. They have collective responsibility checking and advising each other on every decision they may take.

B) The Three Sub-Branches of Medhicha (‘Lateral Council’) Institution 

Medhicha has 18 junior or second ranking councillors who work within the same political line of Gada Arboora or the leaders of ruling political line. Medhicha institution is institutionally and symbolically considered as the senior over Garba but its members are not as aged and experienced as the leaders of Garba institution. The eighteen Medhicha counsellors belong to the same ruling political group that is in power for eight years.  Members of Medhicha get this position when their own political line takes over power for eight years. Medhicha has also the following three sub-branches.

Although, those eighteen Medhicha councillors are symbolically considered as the second ranking of the pillars, they have less power than the Garba leaders who are selectively appointed from the four other political lines. The role of the Garba institution, which is an opposition institution elected for one term is to work as opposition challenging the ruling political party in charges of one Gada term.

C) The three Sub-Branches of Garba (‘the Junior Council’) Institution

Garba has 12 councillors who work within its three different sub-branches as one of the three institutional pillars of the Gada system. Garba is an institution set for the members of the four remaining political lines which are not in power during the eight year Gada term. Garba institution is made up of three selected individuals from each of the four gogeessas, and composed of the most experienced, skilled and aged persons who are recruited and elected from the opposition political lines. The three sub-branches can be formulated as below:

The above twelve Garba junior councillors are themselves senior members of their respective political lines which they represent during one Gada term. Their own political lines are not in power during the eight-years Gada term but those appointed 12 Garba institution’s leaders represent their political lines. The Garba institution is considered as an opposition institution and its leaders work together with the ruling political lines to check and balance power. Their duty is to challenge the ruling political line or gogeessa by applying checks and balances mechanism in everyday decision process. Their main goal is to avoid power monopoly and misuse. In this way, they protect the remaining majority interests and the rights of weakest parties of the people in the society. They are usually considered as the experts of their own gogeessas and knowledge of Gada law.

It is these three integrated institutions and a combination of elected and selected leaders from the five political lines (gogeessas) that make Gada political system a unique system. In this way, the Gadaa system shares institutional and administrative power and guards against power monopolization, and thereby provide check and balance. The three pillars of Gada administration and five political systems were described by Legesse (2000:29) as “Oromo polity is neither mono-cephalous (one head) nor ‘acephalous’ (no head) but a type of polity which is referred to as ‘polycephalous’ which means “a system having a plurality of heads who hold different kinds of offices that are linked to each other by body of laws”. Gada leadership is a collective leadership led by three institutions: two from the same ruling political line and one composed of carefully selected individuals from the remaining four political lines. Those three institutions always work together as a single integrated institution.  “The Oromo polity is neither a centralized political system headed by a king or chief, nor is it “acephalous” or “stateless” or segmentary” i.e. lacking all forms of institutionalized political leadership. It is, most assuredly, not an “ordered anarchy”. The Oromo are one of the most orderly and legalistic societies in Africa and many of their laws are consciously crafted rules not customarily evolved habits” (Ibid: 29).

The ethnographic evidence also confirm that Borana Gada system has triple institutional heads or three constant institutional pillars which always function together as a single head of Gada system (see Fig.4). The three pillars of Borana-Oromo Gada system consist of two institutional angles from the ruling gogeessa (Gada Arboora and Medhicha) and one official opposition angle (Garba). Among them, Garba are perceived as the most aged, experienced and talented. They challenge the ruling gogeessa, but they are not working to take over the power or rank or position from the members of the ruling gogeessa in office. Instead, they compete to be best in Gada knowledge, wisdom and skills through logical reasoning. The three institutional pillars of the Borana Gada system (Yaa’a Gada Sadeenii) can be understood as follows:

Fig. 4. The three institutional pillars of Gada system (Yaa’a Gada Sadeenii) in Borana Oromo

What makes the Oromo Gada system unique is that politics, ideology and power are viewed not as something over which to oppose each other as enemies but over which to compete with each other wisely in order to win friends by the power of wisdom, skills and reasoning. In order to show their skill and wisdom about Borana traditional knowledge and culture, the leaders of Gada Arboora, Medhicha and Garba are  engaged in peaceful internal competition directed towards the achievement of a common ideological goal that is security, identity, equality, unity and egalitarianism(see Fig. 7). For example, competition between Garba and Medhicha leaders are intensive, but the goal of the competition is not to take over the power or seniority position of Medhicha leaders, but to demonstrate their knowledge of Gadasystem. Garba leaders can be a senior to Medhicha leaders in terms of age, experience or skills and knowledge of Gada system because Garba leaders are considered as the sons of the elders (ilmaan jaarsa), whereas Medhicha leaders are, symbolically, considered as seniors to Garba leaders. This seniority, according to Borana, is only symbolical, not actual. They say that Medhicha leaders are the sons of younger (medhichii ilman kormaati) which means those who are not far advanced in life.

The leaders of one Gada term are elected according to the principles of the Gada system and only stay in office for the eight years period, and then hand over power, in peaceful way, in a public and formal ceremony following the general assembly (Gumii Gaayoo).  Most of their duties during one term in office are to maintain the society’s social, political, economic, judicial and institutional order. Power in Borana Gada system lays in the hands of Arboora, Medhicha and Garba institutions collectively that check and balance each other in addition to limit the duration of power. Power, in Gada system, is limited through mechanisms of institutional integration, collective leadership and responsibilities.

The limitation of power in Gada system is based on the principle of institutional power sharing and limiting the duration of power for the maximum of eight years, rather than monopolization of power in the hand of a single leader or single institution or group. Power in Gada system is held in the hands of collective institutions and the people at large. The power of a Gada leader and his duty during eight years in office is to keep those institutions functioning together as a single accommodative leading institution according to principles of Borana customs and laws (aaada and seeraa Borana).

1.6) The Spiritual Institution

The Oromo spiritual institution known as the five branches of ‘Qaalluu Bracelet’ (Laduu Qaalluu Shaneenii) is one of the most important institutions we find in the Oromo Gada system.  Qaalluu institution can be viewed as one of the causes for the emergence and continuity of Gada system.  Some traditional genealogies show the existence of Oromo spiritual institution that goes back to thirteenth century (Kjærland 1976). Moreover, conjectures based on legendary and linguistic evidences show that Qaalluu institution has existed among Oromo possibly from 1^st century B.C. Qaalluu institution is an ancient Oromo spiritual institution, and it is one of the ethical and institutional foundations of Gada system. A spiritual leader (Qaalluu) does not hold administrative or military power in Gada office. The Borana Qaalluu institution is separated from both Gada political, military and administrative offices.

The two spiritual leaders of the Karrayyuu clan from Sabboo moiety and Odituu clan from the Goona moiety, and the three spiritual leaders of Garjeedaa, Kuukkuu and Karaaraa from Sabboo moiety of Maxxaarrii sub-clan form the five branches of spiritual institution. Qaalluu (priest) works as the spiritual leader of the society. The Qaalluu Karrayyuu and Odituu are the two most seniors.  In contrast to the Gada leader, the Oromo spiritual leadership is not acquired, but passed through the hereditary kinship system (Bassi 2005:74-75, Legesse 2000). Borana have two major and three minor hereditary spiritual leaders called qaalluu who are intimately associated with fertility and peace (Bassi 2005, Baxter 1996, Legesse 2000, Sahlu 2002). Only by Qaalluu (man) and Qaallitii (wife of the spiritual leader) that the laws of exogamy rule can be, legally, broken because they are ‘above’ culture (Arero 2002). Marriage within the same moiety is not only traditionally permitted, but required (Bassi 2005). Each of the five spiritual leaders has messengers (makala or assist) under them.

Qaalluu village is known as Yaa’a qaalluu shaneenii. Qaalluus have four Hayyuu-Garbas who serve qaalluus as the advisor. These four Hayyuu-Garbas can be selected from any of the Gogeessas. Like Yaa’a Gada, they must be replaced every eight years, but unlike Yaa’a Gada, they are directly chosen by Qaalluus themselves from respective warra qaalluu descent groups (Bassi 2005). According to Baasi the transformation of qaalluu title is identified with the transformation of Laduu affected through the Qaallittii (mother of qaalluu or institutional wife of the qaalluu who qaalluu must marry after the death of his mother because there cannot be two qaallittii at the same time).

The most important rituals in the ceremonial cycle relative to the Yaa’a Qaalluu are the pilgrimages known as Muuda  organized every eight years (Baasi 2005:77).  There are two kinds of Muuda pilgrimages, Muuda Qomichaa (warra qaalluus pilgrimage in which one must hold at least once in his life time) and Muuda Gada (usually made in every eight years by members of Yaa’a Gada by every political line or gogeessa when they occupy the Gada office. In Gada system, power cannot be transferred without Muuda Gada by Qaalluu. Although, spiritual leaders (Qaalluus) play significant roles in ritual ceremonies through spiritual affairs and symbolic values and influences within the Gada system, they have never been appointed to Gada administration office and vice-versa. However, their institution is concerned with the influence of ideas on Gada institutions. The Qaalluu plays an important role in legitimating the final Gada power transfer from the outgoing Gada leaders to the incoming leaders, and during the inauguration and power blessing ceremonies held between Dirree and Liiban at a place called Qilxa Godoo at Arda Odaa in the first day. The second day the legal power transfer between new nominees (doorii) and old Gada leaders (hambisas) take place at Arda Dooralli. It is here the new nominees are formally inaugurated or take over power and they formally declare their next Gada term where the old Gada leaders (hambisas) become retired and change their class name hambisa (from doorii to Gada, from Gada to Hambisa, from hambisa to yuubaa) (see Table 3).

It is on this final ceremonial day that the newly inaugurated ruling political line (gogeessa) presents their eight years political program. On this day, the new Gada leader (Abbaa Gada) will deliver his proclamation known as lallaba. The spiritual leader (qaalluu) who plays the leading role during this ceremony will not give any comment on the formal administration and political program proclamation made by the new Gada leader.

This shows that, in the Gada system, politics and religion are ideologically separated, but institutionally supporting and maintaining each other.   Religion, in Gada system is defined by ritual practice and conditioned by political factors, i.e, politics and religion can influence each other without interfering with each other. The spiritual leaders (Qaalluus) may speak of conflict prevention and resolution in ideational terms, they are restricted from participating in conflict, administration and political activities. However, Qaalluu “judge major conflicts and, above all, play a significant role in election of Gada leaders. Like women, in many respects: they do not go to war, carry arms, defend themselves nor kill animals. They even style their hair like women. They symbolize peace, godliness and restraint” (Sahlu 2002:6). One can also find this type of peace and belief system in other universal theological principles (Christianity, Muslim, Hindu, etc).

1.7) The Military institution

The defence institution led by a military commander known as Abbaa Duulaa is one of the other institutions separated from the three pillars of Gada system (Yaa’a Gada Sadeenii). The defence institution is excluded from the three pillars of Gada system, in case of internal affairs, but inter-related with Gada system which can be controlled by a Gada leader (Abbaa Gada), in case of external fright. During peace time, the defence institution does not function totally. The institution does not participate in Gada decision making process, or in other civil institution such as peace meetings. It also has no institutional place in Gada administration system.

The institution was formed only for the purpose of defence in case of a war waged from the outside and territorial conflict. Just, like a spiritual institution, the defence institution is separated from the Gada political and civil administration institutions and systems. A war commander (Abbaa Duulaa) position is only acquired by personal heroism in war, not by age seniority, wealth, social status, and clan or kinship relations.  Not only institutionally, but also personally, the war commanders (Abbaa Duulaa) are excluded from getting involved in internal political and civil administration matters. The reason is to avoid military involvement in any internal political and power competition within the five political lines (gogeessas) system. Military institutions only function when war become declared against the Borana from outside Borana territories. Abbaa Gada does command the Abbaa Duulaa but to declare war he must consult his senior thirty-six Gada councillors. Both defence institution and its leaders are excluded from the three institutional pillars of Gada system, but they are attached to the holistic Borana institution and its headquarter (Gooroo Borana) (Fig.5). The  separation of military institution and its leaders from internal affairs indicates how the Gada system is deeply democratic, and that the military institution is completely separated from economic, social, administrational and political system. The weak side of the Gada system is that the system does not encourage, even it does not allow, military offensives such as pre-emptive war. It does not allow power building or maintaining through military means. This ideological  believe has a considerable effect on the Oromo, and is still affecting the Oromo political life in Ethiopia, because in African political systems especially in the Ethiopian political culture.   However, military institution always belongs to the ruling political party and military action is also the only option through which one party can come to power and sustain its power in Ethiopia. However, the military issue, in Gada, is only raised during outside attack or only in the war time.

In gada system, one cannot wage war without reaching on consensus, once the consensus is reached to go and fight, it is not easy to the enemy to wine Gada war because, except women, children, spiritual leaders (Qaalluus) and the retired elderly men (Gadammojjii), almost all men become involved in the fighting just like conventional war.

1.8) Gada political and Ideological foundation

will come soon

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1. Gada Theory and Practices, Part One