The Oromo Nation:  Toward Mental Liberation and Empowerment[1]

Asafa Jalata and Harwood Schaffer

(Paper Published in The Journal of Oromo Studies, 2016)

(L) Dr. Asafa Jalata, Professor of Sociology and Global and Africana Studies, University of Tennessee, Department of Sociology, Knoxville, Tennessee USA; (R) Dr. Harwood Schaffer, Research Assistant Professor, University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, Knoxville, Tennessee USA

In the second decade of the 21^st Century, the Oromo people face a monumental national crisis that requires their urgent recognition and resolution. The Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government has clearly recognized the potential of the Oromo nation and is determined to destroy and/or suppress it by engaging in state terrorism and genocidal massacres, conducting mass arrests, violating human rights, and eliminating opposition leaders and their potential successors while replacing them with Afaan Oromo speaking nafxanyas (colonial settlers) and Oromo collaborators. The current regime continues to expropriate Oromo economic resources—including land—and transfer them to Tigrayans and their regional and global capitalist supporters. This regime has also begun the practice of enslaving and selling young Oromo girls and girls of other nationalities to Arab countries that have no respect for human dignity and rights. All these have  occurred in the era of globalization or transnational capitalism, as global, regional, and local forces have been integrated through the intensification of globalizing processes known as deepening and broadening.[2] As a result, with the financial, military, diplomatic, and intelligence support of global and regional powers, the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian regime has been focused on dismantling and destroying the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)—the hallmark, symbol, pride, and hope of the Oromo nation—and other independent Oromo civic and political organizations.[3]

The attack on independent Oromo political and civic organizations and institutions was intensified before the Oromo national movement managed to achieve maturity. The consolidation of the Oromo national leadership and the maturation of Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism) are still incomplete. As such, the movement’s ability to defend itself from internal and external enemies has been significantly compromised. These challenges confronted the Oromo national struggle before the Oromo leadership was able to develop the ideological coherence and organizational capacity to catapult the Oromo national movement to an advanced stage. The crisis of the Oromo national leadership has emerged from both external and internal sources and Oromo nationalists urgently need to address both in order to find an appropriate solution. The impacts of external forces (e.g. Amhara-Tigray colonial structures and global capitalism) have been adequately addressed in books and scholarly articles.[4] We now need to focus on the internal crises facing the movement’s leadership.

In our attempt to examine this internal dilemma, we address four major interrelated issues. First, we provide historical and cultural background to contextualize the problem in question. Second, we explore how Ethiopian colonialism has affected the process of the formation of Oromo elites and leaders. Third, we identify and examine the connections between liberation knowledge, the inferiority complex, and mental liberation in the development of a revolutionary consciousness. Fourth, we share some ideas on how to promote the development of mental liberation as a means of constructing a revolutionary consciousness. In addition, we suggest ways to cultivate Oromummaa (culture, identity, and nationalism) so that a united Oromo national leadership may be forged—from the bottom up—around a common denominator, thus ensuring the survival and liberation of the Oromo nation and other captive nations from the yoke of Ethiopian colonialism and global imperialism.[5]

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Conquest and colonial subjugation within the Ethiopian Empire

Before Abyssinia/Ethiopia colonized the Oromo and other nations in the Horn of Africa with the help of European powers in the late 19^th century, the Oromo presided over a form of republican government known as the gadaa/siqqee system.[6] From the 15^th until the mid-17^th century, the gadaa/siqqee government was organized on three levels: national, regional, and local. According to Lemmu Baissa, the Oromo government “was led by an elected luba council formed from representatives of the major Oromo moieties…under the presidency of the abba gadaa and his two deputies…. The national leadership was responsible for such important matters as legislation and enforcement of general laws, handling issues of war and peace and coordinating the nation’s defense, management of intra-Oromo clan conflicts and dealing with non-Oromo peoples.”[7]

However, due to the geographical expansion of the Oromo territory and an increasing population, the central gadaa/siqqee government declined beginning in the mid-17^th century and autonomous regional and local republics took its place. These regional and local governments formed pan-Oromo confederations to defend themselves from external enemies.[8] The rule of law and social equality were the guiding principles of the gadaa/siqqee system.[9] Although we have limited knowledge of Oromo history before the sixteenth century, it is reasonable to think that these people did not invent the gadaa/siqqee system while they were establishing Biyyaa Oromoo (what we now call Oromia). Historical studies suggest that during the 16^th and 17^th centuries, while various peoples were fighting over economic resources in the Horn of Africa, the Oromo were effectively organized under the national gadaa government for both offensive and defensive wars. According to Virginia Luling, “from the mid-16^th to the mid-19^th century the  [Oromo] were dominant on their own territories; no people of other cultures were in a position to exercise compulsion over them.”[10]

The gadaa/siqqee government organized and ordered society around political, economic, social, cultural, and religious institutions.[11] Bonnie Holcomb notes that the gadaa system “organized the Oromo people in an all-encompassing democratic republic even before the few European pilgrims arrived from England on the shores of North America and only later built a democracy.”[12] This system exhibits the principles of checks and balances (through periodic succession of leaders every eight years), division of power (among executive, legislative, and judicial branches), balanced opposition (among five parties), and power sharing between higher and lower administrative organs to prevent power from falling into the hands of despots.[13] Other principles of the system included balanced representation of all clans, lineages, regions and confederacies; the accountability of leaders; the settlement of disputes through reconciliation; and respect for basic rights and liberties.[14] There were five miseensas (parties) in gadaa; these parties have different names in different parts of Oromia.[15] All gadaa officials were elected for eight years by universal adult male suffrage.

Colonialism and the Underdevelopment of Oromo Leadership 

The Ethiopian colonial state destroyed the leaders of the conquered nations in the Horn of Africa who fought against Abyssinian/Ethiopian colonialism, co-opting those leaders who would collaborate with the system as intermediaries.[16] Abyssinian access to European guns, cannons, technology, diplomacy, and administrative skills were utilized in colonizing these various nations, the largest of which was the Oromo. This paper focuses on the experience of the Oromo as a case study of the ways the Abyssinian/Ethiopian rulers have systematically destroyed the leadership capacity of the conquered peoples.

The Abyssinians systematically engaged in massacring and repressing Oromos while reorganizing Oromo society in order to control and exploit the Oromo people and their resources. Since the colonization of the Oromo people (as we shall see below), one of the goals of the Ethiopian state has been the destruction and underdevelopment of the Oromo people and their leadership; the Amhara-Tigray state has used both violent and institutional mechanisms to ensure that the Oromo people remain leaderless while it continues to repress and exploit them. To ensure its colonial domination, the Ethiopian state destroyed and/or suppressed Oromo institutions (e.g. the aforementioned gadaa/siqqee system, as well as an indigenous Oromo religion known as Waaqeefata) while glorifying, establishing, and expanding the Amhara-Tigray government and Orthodox Christianity. The state also sought to suppress Oromo history, culture, and language while promoting that of the Abyssinians.

Ethiopian settler colonialism was firmly established in Oromia through the imposition of five institutional arrangements in order to tightly control Oromo society and intensify its exploitation: (1) garrison cities and towns, (2) slavery, (3) the colonial landholding system, (4) the nafxanya-gabbar system (semi-slavery), and (5) the Oromo collaborator class.[17] The colonialists have been concentrated in garrison cities and towns and formulated political, economic, and ideological programs that they used to oppress their colonial subjects.[18] The settlers expropriated almost all Oromo lands, and forced most Oromos to work on these lands without payment. The Oromo intermediaries have been used in subordinating the Oromo people to the colonial society. Many people were enslaved and forced to provide free labor to the colonial ruling class, while others were reduced to the status of semi-slaves so they could provide agricultural and commercial products and free labor for their colonizers. As a consequence of these efforts, the Ethiopian state successfully destroyed and/or suppressed Oromo institutions and independent leaders and replaced them with its own leaders and political, religious, and educational institutions; colonialism also fractured Oromo culture and identity.

The Ethiopian state targeted any sense of Oromoness (Oromummaa) for destruction and established colonial administrative regions to suppress the Oromo people and exploit their resources. As a result, Oromo relational identities were localized and disconnected from the collective identity of national Oromummaa. On a national level, the Oromo were separated from one another and prevented from exchanging goods and information for more than a century. As a result, their identities were localized into clan families and colonial regions. They were also exposed to different cultures (i.e., languages, customs, values, etc.) and religions and have adopted some elements of these cultures and religions because of the inferiority complex that Ethiopian colonialism sought to create in them. Consequently, until Oromo nationalism emerged, Oromoness primarily remained on the personal and the interpersonal levels since the Oromo were denied the opportunity to form national institutions. In addition, today there are members of Oromo society and elites who have internalized clan and externally-imposed regional and/or religious identities because of their low level of political consciousness or because of opportunism on their part, exhibiting the lack of a clear understanding of Oromummaa or Oromo nationalism.

Overcoming several obstacles, the founding fathers and mothers of Oromummaa created two pioneering organizations in the 1960s and 1970s: the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association and the Oromo Liberation Front respectively. These organizations acted as a roadmap for the burgeoning Oromo national movement. Unfortunately, the national movement has since been confronted externally by the forces of Ethiopian colonialism – with assistance from their global supporters – and internally by an Oromo collaborator class that serves the interests of the oppressor of the Oromo people. Some Oromo elites have become raw materials for the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian regime and have implemented its terrorist and genocidal policies in the puppet parliament, the administration, and the army, and have participated in imprisoning and killing Oromo nationalists. These internal agents of the Ethiopian government have also participated in robbing Oromo economic resources. As Frantz Fanon notes, “The intermediary does not lighten the oppression, nor seek to hide the domination…he is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native.”[19] The Oromo national struggle has to solve the internal problem of Oromo society before it can fully confront and defeat its joined external enemies.

It is estimated that the Oromo intermediary elites are the numerical majority at the lower echelons of the Ethiopian colonial institutions. These intermediaries have joined the Tigrayan-created and -led organization known as the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) to satisfy their personal interests at the cost of the Oromo nation. It is true that every colonized nation has a collaborator class that fulfills its interests and the interest of its colonial masters. However, a few elements of this class clandestinely defend the interest of their people. For example, some Eritrean and Tigrayan intermediaries under the Amhara-led Ethiopia protected the interests of their respective people. What makes the Oromo collaborator class different, however, is its total commitment to serve the oppressor (except in a few cases) without being sympathetic to their own people. Ethiopian history demonstrates that key Oromo collaborators have been king makers and have protected the Ethiopian Empire without seeking authority for themselves and their people. “The oppressed learn to wear many masks for different occasions;” Frantz Fanon notes, “they develop skills to detect the moods and wishes of those in authority, learn to present acceptable public behaviors while repressing many incongruent private feelings.”[20]

Most Oromo members of the OPDO clearly exhibit such public behaviors. In every colonized society, those who collaborate with the dominant society are less competent and less accomplished, and yet they are “rewarded extravagantly with fame, fortune and celebrity status simply by their confirmation that the master’s consciousness and his reality is the correct way to think.”[21] While imprisoning or killing independent Oromo leaders, the successive Ethiopian regimes have promoted to positions of authority less competent Oromo collaborators who have internalized and manifested their masters’ worldviews. The Oromo collaborator elites are politically ignorant and harbor an inferiority complex that has been imposed on them by the Amhara-Tigray colonial institutions. According to Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, “Prolonged oppression reduces the oppressed into mere individuals without a community or a history, fostering a tendency to privatize a shared victimization.”[22] Since they have been cut from their individual biographies and the collective Oromo history, members of the Oromo collaborator class only know what Amhara or Tigrayans have taught them and, as a result, they constantly wear “Ethiopian masks” that have damaged their psyches.

The colonizer was never content with occupying the land of indigenous peoples and expropriating their labor; he also declared war on the psyches of the oppressed.[23] By introducing an inferiority complex, the Amhara-Tigray state attacked the Oromo culture and worldview in order to alter the perspective of the colonized Oromo from independence to dependence; consequently, every colonized Oromo subject who has not yet liberated his/her mind wears an Ethiopian mask by associating his/herself with Ethiopian culture and identity. As Fanon asserts, “All colonized people—in other words, people in whom an inferiority complex has taken root, whose local cultural originality has been committed to the grave—position themselves in relation to the civilizing language…. The more the colonized has assimilated the cultural values of [the colonizer], the more he [or she] will have” imitated his/her masters.[24]  As European colonialists did, the Amhara-Tigrayan colonizers have manufactured the Oromo collaborator elites in order to use them in their colonial projects. According to Bulhan, “in prolonged oppression, the oppressed group willy-nilly internalizes the oppressor without. They adopt his guidelines and prohibitions, they assimilate his image and his social behavior, and they become agents of their own oppression. The oppressor without becomes…an oppressor within…. They become auto-oppressor as they engage in self-destructive behavior injurious to themselves, their loved ones, and their neighbors.”[25] It is no wonder that some members of the OPDO, from ordinary individuals to high officials, engage in imprisoning, killing, and robbing members of Oromo society, particularly those whom they suspect of sympathizing with or supporting the Oromo national struggle.

The Oromo self has been attacked and distorted by Ethiopian colonial institutions. The attack on Oromo selves at personal, interpersonal and collective levels has undermined the self-confidence of some Oromo individuals by creating an inferiority complex within them. Consequently, the manufactured Oromo elites are abusive to their people and they confuse their individual ambitions and interest with those of the Oromo nation. What Fanon says about other colonial intermediary native elites applies to the Oromo elites: “The European elite undertook to manufacture native elite. They picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as with a red-hot iron, with the principles of Western culture; they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth.”[26] Since most Oromo elites who have passed through Ethiopian colonial institutions have not yet achieved psychological liberation, they consciously or unconsciously prefer to work for their colonial masters rather than work as a team on the Oromo liberation project.

What Walter Rodney says about the consequences of the colonial educational system in Africa also applies to the situation of Oromo intermediaries: “The colonial school system educated far too many fools and clowns, fascinated by the ideas and way of life of the European capitalist class,” he says. “Some reached a point of total estrangement from African conditions and the African way of life…. ‘Colonial education corrupted the thinking and sensibilities of the African and filled him with abnormal complexes.’”[27] Similarly, some Oromo intermediaries who have passed through the Ethiopian colonial education system have been de-Oromized and Ethiopianized, and have opposed the Oromo struggle for national liberation. Colonial education creates submissive leaders who facilitate underdevelopment through subordination and exploitation.[28]  Considering the similar condition of the African Americans in the first half of the 20^th century, Carter G. Woodson characterized the educated Black as “a hopeless liability of the race,” and schools for Blacks as “places where they must be convinced of their inferiority.”[29] He demonstrated how White oppressors controlled the minds of Blacks through education: “When you control a man’s [or a woman’s thinking] you do not have to worry about his [or her] actions. You do not have to tell him [her] not to stand here or go yonder. He [or she] will find his [or her] ‘proper place’ and will stay in it.”[30] The behaviors and actions of the educated Oromo intermediaries parallel what Woodson claims about the educated African-Americans. But, starting in the mid-20^th century, most African-American elites developed nationalist political consciousness by overcoming their inferiority complex and participating in their national struggle for liberation.

There are also biologically and culturally assimilated elements that like to disassociate themselves from anything related to the Oromo. Most biologically and culturally assimilated former Oromos, like their Habasha masters, are the defenders of Habasha culture, religion, and the Amharic language and the haters of Oromo history, culture, institutions, and Afaan Oromoo.  Explaining similar circumstances, Fanon notes, “The individual who climbs up into white, civilized society tends to reject his black, uncivilized family at the level of the imagination.”[31] The slave psychology of such assimilated Oromos has caused them also to prefer the leadership of the Amhara or Tigrayan oppressor.[32] Through his seven years of experimentation and observation in Martinique, Frantz Fanon concluded that the dominated “black man’s behavior is similar to an obsession neurosis…. There is an attempt by the colored man to escape his individuality, to reduce his being in the world to nothing…. The [psychologically affected] black man goes from humiliating insecurity to self-accusation and even despair.”[33]

These conditions apply to all colonized, repressed, and exploited peoples. Therefore, some Oromos also face similar problems. Furthermore, the attack on Oromo families and national structures introduced psychological disorientations to Oromo individuals, and incapacitated their collective personality. The family—as a basic institution of any society—provides guidance in values, norms, and worldviews and acts as the educational and training ground for entry into that society.[34] Because Oromo families have lived for more than a century under colonial occupation and because Oromo national institutions were intentionally destroyed or disfigured by Ethiopian colonial institutions, the Oromo people lack the educational, cultural, ideological, and experiential resources to guide their children in the process of building national institutions and organizational capacity. Oromo individuals who have lived under such conditions face social, cultural, and psychological crises and become conflict-ridden.

Due to these complex problems, the low level of political consciousness, and an imposed inferiority complex, those who claim that they are nationalists sometimes confuse their sub-identities with the Oromo national identity or with Ethiopian identity. According to Fanon, “The neurotic structure of an individual is precisely the elaboration, the formation, and the birth of conflicting knots in the ego, stemming on the one hand from the environment and on the other from the entirely personal way this individual reacts to these influences.”[35] The Ethiopian colonial system—as well as cultural and religious identities—was imposed on the Oromo creating regional and religious boundaries. Under these conditions, personal identities (e.g. religious affiliation) replaced Oromoness—with its unique values and self-schemas—and Ethiopianism replaced Oromummaa. Colonial rulers saw Oromoness as a source of raw material that was ready to be transformed into other identities. Since most of these individuals are psychologically damaged, they run away from the Oromo national identity. Are genuine Oromo nationalists free of these psychological crises?

The Psychological Legacy of Ethiopian Colonialism

Through political, educational, and religious institutions and the media, the Ethiopian colonial elites and their successive governments have continuously created and perpetuated negative stereotypes and racist values regarding the Oromo people[36] and have led some Oromos to think negatively about themselves. That is why some Oromo parents reject Oromo names and give Amhara or Arab names to their children in order to assimilate them into the cultures they consider superior. Some educated Oromos also develop self-hatred and self-contempt and wear the masks of other people. Ethiopian colonialism and racism have made some Oromo elites hate their culture and language and avoid self-discovery. The process of de-Oromization creates alienation among some Oromos and imbues them with distorted perceptions of their own people. Everything Amhara-Tigray is praised and everything Oromo is rejected and denigrated; the colonialists have depicted the Oromo as barbaric, ignorant, evil, pagan, backward, and superstitious.

In order to avoid these perceived characteristics, some Oromo elites who pass through the Ethiopian colonial education system are Amharized and Ethipianized The colonization of the Oromo mind has indoctrinated Oromo students in order to isolate them from their families and communities and distort their identities by disconnecting them from their heritage, culture, and history.[37] Oppressors don’t just want to control the body of the oppressed; they want to control their minds, thus ensuring the effectiveness of domination and exploitation. Na’im Akbar succinctly explains how the mental control of the oppressed causes personal and collective damage: “The slavery that captures the mind and imprisons the motivation, perception, aspiration and identity in a web of anti-self-images, generating a personal and collective self-destruction, is [more cruel] than shackles on the wrists and ankles. The slavery that feeds on the mind, invading the soul of man [or woman], destroying his [or her] loyalties to himself [or herself] and establishing allegiance to forces which destroys him [or her], is an even worse form of capture.”[38]

The mental enslavement of most Oromo elites is the major reason why the Oromo, who comprise the majority of the population, are brutalized, murdered, and terrorized by the minority Tigrayan elites. What about the Oromo nationalist elites who are struggling for Oromo national self-determination? Are they mentally free? Why have they failed to build a united Oromo national leadership? There is no question that most of the founding fathers and mothers of Oromummaa or Oromo nationalism were mentally liberated heroes and heroines; that was why they created the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association and the Oromo Liberation Front and paid the ultimate sacrifice. There have been thousands of Oromo nationalists who have followed in their footsteps and paid dearly. What about other Oromo nationalists (particularly leaders) who have partitioned the Oromo national movement by dividing it into different political factions? Oromo nationalists have failed to unite Oromo divided communities, which have been easily infiltrated by the enemies through clan and/or religious bonds. In addition, because of the inferiority complex that the enemies have inculcated in the Oromo mind, some Oromos have failed to respect Oromo leadership, just as Oromo leaders have failed to respect their followers. The nationalist Oromo elites, by failing to overcome the deeply entrenched divisions that the enemies of the Oromo created, have drastically failed to establish a united national movement.

Generally speaking, the necessity of liberating the Oromo mind from psychological oppression through liberation knowledge and consciousness-raising is totally ignored or unrecognized. Due to their political ignorance and ineptitude, Oromo intellectuals and political leaders have failed to organize the masses into a grassroots movement. As a result of psychological crises and oppressive institutions, Oromo collective norms and organizational culture are at a rudimentary level at this historical moment. Therefore, the enemies of the Oromo have found ample political opportunity to mobilize some Oromos against the Oromo national movement. Without the emancipation of Oromo individuals from the inferiority complex and without overcoming the ignorance and the worldviews that the enemies of the Oromo have imposed on them, the Oromo cannot have the self-confidence necessary to facilitate individual liberation and Oromo emancipation. Although it is uncomfortable to recognize the impacts of the psychology of oppression on the Oromo minds, the Oromo national struggle must engage in mental liberation by building liberation knowledge and political consciousness.

Liberation Knowledge, Consciousness-building, and the Politics of Empowerment

In order to achieve psychological liberation via the development of political consciousness, it is essential to understand the process of oppression by learning about the bankruptcy of assimilated Oromo elites and the crises in both individual Oromo biographies and collective Oromo history. As Bulhan asserts, “The experience of victimization in oppression produces, on the one hand, tendencies toward rebellion and a search for autonomy and, on the other, tendencies toward compliance and accommodation. Often, the two tendencies coexist among the oppressed, although a predominant orientation can be identified for any person or generation at a given time.”[39] The oppressed are chained physically, socially, culturally, politically, and psychologically; hence it is difficult to learn about these problems and search for ways to overcome them. Conscious elements of the oppressed “opts for an introspective approach and emphasizes the need to come to terms with one’s self—a self historically tormented by a formidable and oppressive social structure.” [40]

As the current national crisis unfolds, Oromo nationalists in general and leaders in particular should start to engage in critical self-evaluation in order to identify the impact of oppressive and destructive values and behaviors on the Oromo political performance. Psychological liberation from ideological confusion and oppression requires fighting against the external oppressor and the internalized oppressive values. Most oppressed individuals understand what the oppressor does to them from outside, but it is difficult to comprehend how the worldviews of the oppressor are imposed on them and control them from within. As Bulhan explains, “institutionalization of oppression in daily living … entails an internalization of the oppressor’s values, norms, and prohibitions. Internalized oppression is most resistant to change, since this would require a battle on two fronts: the oppressor without and the oppressor within.”[41]

The Ethiopian colonial system has denied education to almost all the Oromo in order to keep them ignorant and submissive. Even those few who have received colonial education have not been provided with a critical education and knowledge for liberation. As Woodson says, colonial education is “a perfect device for control from without.” [42] So it has been difficult and challenging for most Oromo elites to engage in a two-front struggle—liberating themselves from the values and worldviews of Ethiopians and Ethiopian colonial institutions and structures. Because of the lack of political consciousness, the oppressed individuals and groups learn the behavior of the oppressor, engage in conflict, and abuse one another. Attaining a critical political consciousness enables the oppressed individuals and groups to regain their identity, reclaim their history and culture, and regain self-respect internally while fighting against the oppressor externally. Those people who are disconnected from their social and cultural bonds are disorganized, disoriented, and alienated; lacking a critical understanding of individual biographies and collective history, they cannot effectively organize and fight against the values and institutions of their oppressors.

If the occupation of land…entailed the occupation of psyches, then the war for liberation had to be waged on two fronts: The colonizer residing not only without, but also within had to be confronted on both fronts. Otherwise, the vicious cycle of domination would continue. To battle the colonizer without first assumes a degree of self-respect and self-validation, a conviction that one is at least as good and as human as he is. It also assumes the existence of a bond with others, a sharing of similar experiences and determination…. The colonized had been reduced to individuals without an anchor in history, alienated from themselves and others. So long as this alienation prevailed, the colonizer without could not be challenged. His abuses, humiliations, and suffocating repression permeated everyday living, further undermining the colonized [person’s] self-respect and collective bonds.[43]

Colonialism attacks the individual psyche and biography, as well as the collective history, of a given people. These damaging processes occur through various forms of violence, including colonial terrorism. “Violence is any relation, process, or condition by which an individual or a group violates the physical, social, and/or psychological integrity of another person or group. From this perspective, violence inhibits human growth, negates inherent potential, limits productive living, and causes death” [Emphasis given in original].[44] Nationalist projects of the oppressed emerge to deal with these complex problems. A few Oromo nationalists who gained political consciousness and self-respect by overcoming the psychological and cultural impacts of Ethiopian colonialism in the 1960s and the 1970s began to engage in Oromo nationalist projects by creating a self-help association, a musical group, and a liberation front, while most Oromo elites were serving their own interests and the interests of their colonial masters.

When some elements of the colonized people develop political consciousness, organize, and engage in the struggle for freedom, they turn their internalized anger, hostility, and violence that destroyed relationships among them against the colonizers. The nascent Oromo nationalists face monumental political problems as the result of the decadent Ethiopian political system. In addition to brutal violence and repression, the oppressor uses various methods of social control. “The oppressed is made a prisoner within a narrow circle of tamed ideas, a wrecked ecology, and a social network strewn with prohibitions. Their family and community life is infiltrated in order to limit his capacity for bonding and trust. His past is obliterated and his history falsified to render him without an origin or a future. A system of reward and punishment based on loyalty to the oppressor is instituted to foster competition and conflict among the oppressed.”[45] The Oromo have been living under political slavery for more than a century; they have been denied the freedom of self-expression, organization, and assembly. The colonialists and their collaborators have committed various crimes against Oromo culture, history, language, and psychology. The founding fathers and mothers of Oromo nationalism understood these complex problems and tried to solve them by developing social, economic, cultural, and political projects.

Human beings have basic attributes that Bulhan characterizes as “essential human needs and essential human powers,” both of which are necessary in order to survive and fully develop.[46] The people who were colonized and dominated cannot adequately satisfy their basic needs and access their self-actualizing powers. These include “(a) biological needs, (b) sociability and rootedness, (c) clarity and integrity of self, (d) longevity and symbolic immortality, (e) self-reproduction in praxis, and (f) maximum self-determination.”[47] Human beings must satisfy their basic biological needs, such as food, sex, clothing, and shelter in order to survive. However, these biological needs can only be satisfied in a culture that provides sociability and rootedness. Those people whose culture has been attacked and disfigured by colonialism are underdeveloped; their basic needs are not satisfactorily met and their self-actualizing powers are stagnated; “For to acquire culture presupposes not only a remarkable power of learning and teaching, but also an enduring capacity for interdependence and inter-subjectivity. Not only the development of our higher power of cognition and affect, but also the development of our basic senses rest on the fact that we are social beings.”[48]

Colonialism can be maintained by committing genocide or ethnocide and/or by organized cultural destruction or mental genocide and the assimilation of a sector of the colonized population. Ethiopian colonialists expropriated Oromo economic resources and destroyed Oromo institutions and cultural experts and leaders; they have also denied the Oromo the opportunity to develop the Oromo system of knowledge by preventing the transmission of Oromo cultural experiences from generation to generation. All these colonial policies were designed to uproot the Oromo cultural identity and to produce individuals who lack self-respect and are submissive and ready to serve the colonialists. Under these conditions, the Oromo basic needs and self-actualizing powers have not been fulfilled. In other words, the Oromo biological and social needs have been frustrated. “If failure to satisfy biological needs leads to disease and physical death,” Bulhan notes, “then denial of human contact, communication, and affirmation … leads to a social and psychological ‘starvation’ or ‘death’ no less devastating than, and conditioning, physical death.”[49]

The Ethiopian colonialists—having caused the physical death of millions—have further attempted to introduce social and cultural death to the Oromo people. Both the Amhara and Tigrayan elites have attempted to destroy or control the Oromo selfhood in order to deny the Oromo both individual and national self-determination. From all angles, the Habasha have tried their best to prevent the Oromo from achieving clarity and integrity of the Oromo self; they have prevented the Oromo from establishing cultural and historical immortality through the reproduction and recreation of their history, culture and worldview, and from achieving maximum self-determination. “The pursuit of self-clarity is … intimately bound with the clarity developed first about one’s body, the body’s boundary and attributes, and later one’s larger world. This pursuit of clarity has survival, developmental, and organizing value. It entails both a differentiation from as well as integration with others and with one’s past. Without some clarity of the self, however tentative and tenuous, there can be no meaningful relating with others, no expression of inherent human potentials, no gratification of essential needs.”[50]

The founding fathers and mothers of Oromo nationalism purposely engaged in political praxis to save the Oromo from psychological, social, cultural, and physical death. Without a measure of self-determination, a person cannot fully satisfy his/her biological and social needs, self-actualize, and engage in praxis as an active agent to transform society and oneself. “Self-determination refers to the process and capacity to choose among alternatives, to determine one’s behavior, and to affect one’s destiny. As such, self-determination assumes a consciousness of human possibilities, an awareness of necessary constraints, and a willed, self-motivated engagement with one’s world.”[51] As individuals and groups, the Oromo must struggle to achieve their personal and national self-determination. The Oromo have the internal power to make their choices from the best possible alternatives and to have control over what they do. The Ethiopian colonialists have assumed almost complete control over the Oromo in an attempt to deny them the right of self-determination, both individually and collectively.

Unfortunately, the oppression is not limited to national borders. Ethiopian colonialists have had psychological impacts on some Oromos in the diaspora, and have infiltrated diaspora communities and their organizations in order to dismantle them. Oromo individuals and groups who do not clearly comprehend the essence of self-determination and who do not struggle for it are doomed to both psychological and cultural death. “History and social conditions present [not only] alternatives but also constraints. We can choose to act or not act. But even when we lack alternatives in the world as we find it, we do possess the capacity to interpret and reinterpret, to adopt one attitude and not another. Without the right of self-determination, we are reduced to rigid and automatic behaviors, to a life and destiny shorn of human will and freedom.”[52] At this historical moment, most of the Oromo in the diaspora are passive; they do not struggle effectively for their individual and national self-determination. This has left their communities vulnerable to infiltration by Oromo collaborators, who then attempt to turn Oromos against one another.

The founding fathers and mothers of Oromo nationalism as a social group reclaimed their individual authentic biographies and Oromo collective history and defined the Oromo national problem; they sought the political solution of national self-determination. In order to continue the policy of social, cultural, psychological, and physical death and control the Oromo society, the Ethiopian colonial state killed or destroyed these leaders. The present Tigrayan-led regime of Ethiopia has continued the same policy. Without psychological liberation and organized, conscious, and collective action, the Oromo people cannot fulfill the objectives of the Oromo national movement. Currently, most Oromo elites and leaders do not realize the problems they are causing for the Oromo national struggle because of their socio-cultural and psychological crises and their failure to critically understand the national crisis. The continuation of these crises and the absence of a united Oromo national leadership allow the continuation of the psychological, social, cultural, and physical death of the Oromo people.

Physical, social, or psychological death is too heavy a price for an accustomed passivity, a corrosive apathy, self-defeating individualism, and predictability of stagnation. Psychological work with the oppressed must give priority to organized and collective activity to regain power and liberty. One critical focus of intervention has to do with unraveling, through active involvement and demonstrations in the social world, the self-defeating patterns of relating, the tendency toward betrayal of the self and/or others, the internalized script for failure and disaster, as well as the conditioned fear of taking a stand or even fear of freedom—all of which derive from a contrived system of socialization, and elaborate formula to produce willing victim. Another crucial focus is the comprehension and refinement of strategies as wells as tactics for regaining power and liberty.[53]

In the capitalist world system, might is right. Those people who cannot empower themselves through liberation knowledge, psychological recovery, and the will to organize and defend themselves in a united movement cannot survive as a people.  We know that one of the major reasons why the colonialists were able to destroy most indigenous peoples in the world was the result of these peoples’ lack of unity and strong organization. It is not enough to know about the impact of colonialism without recognizing and solving the internal crises of the colonized or the oppressed. “A psychology of liberation would give primacy to the empowerment of the oppressed through organized and socialized activity with the aim of restoring individual biographies and a collective history derailed, stunted, and/or made appendage to those of others. Life indeed takes on morbid qualities and sanity becomes tenuous so long as one’s space, time, energy, mobility, and identity are usurped by dint of violence.”[54] The Oromo elites and leaders must realize that the Oromo cannot achieve the liberation objectives without understanding and overcoming the internalized values that they have learned from their oppressors and the inferiority complex that they are suffering from: “To transform a situation of oppression requires at once a relentless confrontation of oppressors without, who are often impervious to appeals, to reasons or compassion, and an equally determined confrontation of the oppressor within, whose violence can unleash a vicious cycle of auto-destruction to the self as well as to the group.”[55]

For instance, vicious cycles of auto-destruction recently arose in the Oromo diaspora communities due to clan and regional politics, as some Oromo groups engaged in the destruction of the OLF from a distance. This was the result of a failure on the part of the Oromo leadership to confront the oppressor within. Without using the tool of liberation knowledge to build political consciousness and restore their usurped biographies and history, the Oromo cannot confront and defeat the oppressor within. The Oromo national movement is still suffering from the oppressor within and the lack of effective leadership. Since the Oromo masses are not organized and educated in the politics and psychology of liberation, they have been passive participants in the Oromo national movement. They have been waiting to receive their liberation as a gift from Oromo political organizations. This is a serious mistake. Oromo liberation can only be achieved by the active participation of an effective portion of the Oromo people. As Gilly Adolfo states, “Liberation does not come as a gift from anybody; it is seized by the masses with their own hands. And by seizing it they themselves are transformed; confidence in their own strength soars, and they turn their energy and their experience to the tasks of building, governing, and deciding their own lives for themselves.”[56] Developing Oromummaa or Oromo nationalism among the Oromo elites and masses is required to increase Oromo self-discovery and self-acceptance through liberation education. Without overcoming the political ignorance and inferiority complex among all sectors of the Oromo people, the Oromo national movement continues to face multi-faceted problems. The Oromo can challenge and overcome multiple levels of domination and dehumanization through multiple approaches and actions. As Patricia Hill Collins puts, “People experience and resist oppression on three levels: the level of personal biography; the group or community level of the cultural context…and the systematic level of social institutions.”[57] Developing individual political consciousness through liberation knowledge generates social change. This is essential to the creation of a sphere of freedom by increasing the power of self-definition, which is absolutely necessary for the liberation of the mind. Without the liberated and free mind, we cannot resist oppression on multiple levels.

The dominant groups are against mental liberation, and they use institutions such as schools, churches or mosques, the media, and other formal organizations to inculcate their oppressive worldviews in our minds. According to Collins, “Domination operates by seducing, pressuring, or forcing … members of subordinated groups to replace individual and cultural ways of knowing with the dominant group’s specialized thought. As a result … ‘the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situation which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.’ Or…‘revolutionary begins with the self, in the self.’”[58] Every Oromo must be educated and acquire liberation knowledge to fight for his/her individual freedom and empowerment. Without the liberation and empowerment of the individual, we cannot overcome the docility and passivity of our people and empower them to revolt and liberate themselves. “Empowerment involves rejecting the dimensions of knowledge, whether personal, cultural, or institutional, that perpetuate objectification and dehumanization … individuals in subordinate groups become empowered when we understand and use those dimensions of our individual, group, and disciplinary ways of knowing that foster our humanity as fully human subjects.”[59] As Oromos, we have been objectified and made raw materials for others who have state power. How much longer will we tolerate such deplorable conditions?

Discussion and Conclusion

The only way the Amhara-Tigrayan state elites continue their colonial domination and exploitation of our people is by controlling our mental power and preventing our mental liberation. They have continued to disrupt our consciousness-building process through different mechanisms, particularly by infiltrating our communities and organizations and dividing and turning us against one another. These colonial elites have imprisoned and tortured or killed our self-conscious individuals and bribed and promoted those Oromos who are not politically conscious or those opportunists who cannot see beyond their individual self-interests. According to Akbar, “Human beings have consistently worked to create the circumstances to maximize their consciousness and to insure that each subsequent generation will know fully who and what they are. On the other hand, whenever human beings chose to oppress or capture other human beings, they also did all that they could do to undermine any expansion of consciousness by the oppressed…. They understand that ultimately the control of the people was in the control their thinking, in control of their minds, in control of their consciousness.”[60]

By preventing the restoration of the Oromo heritage, culture, history, and institutions, the colonialists have limited the expansion of Oromo consciousness and self-knowledge. These colonialists have also continued to disseminate lies or distorted information to the Oromo people and others using the media, education, and religion, leading to their continued acceptance of the worldviews of their oppressor.  Every Oromo must know and understand Oromo history, culture, heritage, worldview, and religion from antiquity to the present time in order to build his/her national consciousness and self-knowledge. We also need to learn about all of our heroes and heroines and Oromo accomplishments throughout history. People who do not know their culture and history are mentally dead, and any group that has military power and knowledge can easily impose its worldview on those who do not.

We must teach our people and children the correct information about their conditions. Explaining the conditions of African Americans, Akbar notes, “It is through self-celebration that we heal our damaged self-esteem. Yes, feeling good about oneself is a legitimate activity of cultures. In fact, any culture, which does not make its adherents feel good about them, is a failure as a culture. It is through the energy of self-worth that humans are motivated to improve and perpetuate themselves.”[61] The process of mental liberation requires courage, hard work, discipline, and commitment; it involves individual, family and community. “Since the new consciousness can take a lifetime to begin to show tangible results,” Akbar writes, “it takes a great deal of courage to persist in breaking the chains of the old consciousness and developing a new consciousness.”[62]

Those of us who are a part of the diaspora beyond Ethiopian political slavery must not waste our time and energy on trivial and unproductive issues; we must build our brains and communities to overcome the lonely and ill-equipped road to freedom. We do not need to wait for activists or politicians to engage us in mental liberation and community building since they are not any better than we are. Every Oromo nationalist has a moral and national obligation to promote and engage in consciousness-building projects. Colonialists use community divisions to keep mental shackles on their subjects, even in the diaspora. They use divide-and-conquer strategies, replete with tricks and deceit, in order to destroy Oromo community life. This is one of the reasons why many Oromo communities in the diaspora face substantial problems and are overwhelmed by perpetual conflicts.

Most Oromos—despite the fact that they brag about it—forget their gadaa/siqqee tradition, which was based on democracy, solidarity, and collectivity. We must realize that there is strength in democracy, solidarity, and unity, and there is weakness in loneliness and fragmentation. “As we gain greater knowledge and information, many of those divisions will disappear because they cannot stand under the light of Truth and correct information.”[63] In the capitalist world system, the less informed are the less organized. The less organized are the ones who are physically and mentally controlled by those who are organized. In forming solidarity and building our communities, we do not need to agree on everything; our unity must be built on our common denominator. As Akbar states, “In the process of liberation, it is important to recognize that unity does not require uniformity. We can stand together and preserve our separate qualities which serve to enhance further the objectives of freeing ourselves and all of our people.”[64]

We need to have faith in ourselves, both individually and collectively. We have many talented individuals in many areas, which can play central roles in the process of mental liberation and consciousness- and community-building. “We must work to re-educate ourselves and our young people by seeking and studying new information. We must find every opportunity to celebrate ourselves and we must challenge the fear that causes us to hesitate in taking the chains out of our minds. We must work together and we must have faith that our struggle will be successful, regardless of the opposition.”[65] We must also stand with our heroes and heroines who have broken the Ethiopian physical and psychological prison house by shedding their blood and sacrificing their precious lives to send us around the world as Oromo diplomats to contribute toward the liberation of the politically enslaved, psychologically chained, and economically impoverished Oromos.

At this historical moment, we the Oromo in the Diaspora should overcome our passivity, political ignorance, individualism, naiveté, anarchism, fatalism, perceived inferiority, and community divisions by actively engaging in our psychological and mental liberation. How can we accomplish all these urgent tasks? We must attack the internalization of oppression and victimization by rejecting the worldview of our oppressors through un-brainwashing our entire people. This can be made possible by promoting quality informal and formal education through establishing alternative schools, study circles, cultural centers, and related institutions for engaging in small group workshops, discussion groups, seminars, lectures, etc. These kinds of engagements help us in overcoming our weaknesses and in fighting the basis of our powerlessness through participating in political actions that can be demonstrated every day. This array of activities can facilitate the further mobilization of our material, cultural, and intellectual resources to further develop Oromo communities. Once our communities are internally built and consolidated, it will be possible to disempower the agents of our oppressors who stand among us.

If we continue to allow these agents to divide and demobilize us, we will remain a weak society that always serves the interests of others. On the contrary, if we build strong communities, we can easily build alliances with progressive individuals and communities based on our political and social objectives. This is an important step forward for securing recognition for our nation and national movement from the international community. Furthermore, our political activism and actions must be expanded. We, the Oromo in the diaspora, must immediately take the following concrete steps to contribute to the survival and liberation of our people:

First, we must initiate town hall meetings in every town where an Oromo community lives and discuss the fate of the Oromo people, focusing on their achievements, failures, challenges, opportunities, and constraints as a nation. This is not openly possible in Oromia because the Oromo people are denied the freedom of self-expression, organization, and the media.

Second, the Oromo in the diaspora must stop the politics of self-destruction by refusing to engage in inter-clan, inter-religious, and inter-regional politics, and by isolating the Oromo mercenaries from every Oromo community. Since the Oromo mercenaries use clan, religious, and regional politics to divide the Oromo people and turn them against one another, the Oromo community must reject them and their politics. The Oromo community must disempower them by maintaining a sense of the unity of the Oromo community across clan, religious and regional identities in the face of their self-destructive ideologies. The Oromo must achieve a sense of Oromummaa at the deepest level[66] so that they are not distracted from the task of achieving psychological and physical liberation.

Third, the Oromo Diaspora must challenge the Oromo activists, who have built their separate organizations, to break down barriers among different Oromo organizations and unite them—around a common denominator under one structured organization and leadership.

Fourth, Oromo youth and women should be encouraged to actively participate in national dialogues and town hall meetings. They must play a leading role, since they are less corrupted by the ideologies of egoism, clan, religious and regional politics.

Fifth, Oromo nationalists must establish a rule of law based on the principles of gadaa/siqqee and other democratic traditions and use them in the administration of their community and national affairs.

Sixth, since unconscious people cannot liberate themselves from the internalization of the inferiority complex, victimization, and colonial domination, the Oromo diaspora should cultivate liberation knowledge through regular dialogues, seminars, conferences, workshops, lectures, and study circles. We must learn about our history, culture, language, and traditions from antiquity to the present, and about the world around us. At this historical moment, the number one enemy of our people is political ignorance; Oromo nationalists must smash this enemy. By building our political consciousness and organizing ourselves, we are going to play a historic role commensurate with our number. When our sleeping giant nation is awakened, others cannot use us as raw material. One of the main reasons why the forty million Oromos are terrorized and ruled by the elites that emerged from about four million Tigrayans is the low level of our political consciousness. A low level of political consciousness results in passivism and fatalism.

Seventh, every self-respecting Oromo must realize that he or she has the power to determine the destiny of Oromia. Every Oromo must be educated about his or her potential power and what he or she must do to translate it to real power.

Eighth, the Oromo diaspora movement must start building from bottom-up a confederation of Oromo political, religious, community, and self-help organizations to create a Global Gumii Oromiyaa that will contribute ideological, organizational, and financial resources for consolidating the Oromo struggle, the Oromo Liberation Army, and self-defense militias in Oromia. The Global Gumii Oromiyaa will play a fundamental preparatory role in creating and building an Oromiyaa state fashioned after our gadaa/siqqee system. This state will be a key element of a democratic, federated multinational state in the Horn of Africa. In order to do this, the Oromo national movement needs to retrieve, refine, adapt, and practice the principles of our gadaa/siqqe system.

The idea of creating and building a national Gumii Oromiyaa must be given top priority by all progressive and revolutionary Oromos in order to revitalize, centralize, and coordinate the Oromo national movement. All nationalist Oromos should be encouraged and invited to participate in a united Oromo national movement and to own their movement. All Oromo activists and nationalist leaders should begin to search for ways of enabling Oromos to participate in the united Oromo national movement by providing ideas, resources, expertise, and labor. Although the fire of Oromo nationalism was lit by a few determined revolutionary elements, the Oromo national struggle has reached a level where mass mobilization and participation is required. In this mobilization, the united Oromo national movement should use the ideology and principles of democracy which must be enshrined in Oromummaa in order to mobilize the entire nation spiritually, financially, intellectually, ideologically, militarily, and organizationally to take a centralized and coordinated political and military action.

Ninth, most members of the Oromo diaspora must engage in public diplomacy by introducing the Oromo and their plight to the international community. In order to successfully do this, every Oromo in the diaspora must adequately learn about Oromo history, culture, and civilization and be able to teach others by refuting the lies and propaganda of the colonialists and their supporters.

Tenth, Oromo nationalists in the diaspora must start to build a well-regulated system that can provide support and security for individual Oromos who are determined to advance the Oromo national interest whenever they face hardship beyond their control.

Finally, the Oromo must believe that they will liberate themselves. There is no doubt that, despite hardships and sacrifices, the Oromo “social volcano” that is fermenting will soon burn down the Ethiopian colonial structures that perpetuate terrorism, genocide, disease, absolute poverty, and malnutrition in Oromia and beyond. The Oromo people and their leaders must intensify their commitment, hard work, and determination, and be ready to make the necessary sacrifices to restore Oromo democracy and to achieve national self-determination, sovereignty, statehood, and multinational democracy.

Endnotes

[1] Paper Presented at the Oromo Community Meeting of the United Kingdom, May 19, 2012.
[2] For further understanding of transnational capitalism and its impacts, see William I. Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World, (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2004); William I. Robinson, Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective, (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2008).
[3] See Asafa Jalata, Contending Nationalisms of Oromia an Ethiopia, (Binghamton, NY: Global Academic Publishing of Binghamton University, 2010); Asafa Jalata, “The Tigrayan-Led Ethiopian State, Repression, Terrorism and Gross Human Rights Violations in Oromia and Ethiopia,” Horn of Africa, vol. xxviii, 2010, pp. 47-82.
[4] For example, see Asafa Jalata, Oromia & Ethiopia, (Trenton, NJ: The Re Red Sea Press, 2005); Bonnie Holcomb and Sisai Ibssa, The Invention of Ethiopia, (Trenton: NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1990).
[5] The liberation of the Oromo is inextricably intertwined with the liberation of all of the peoples under the rule of the rule of the TPLF-led government. For a discussion of the relationship of Oromummaa to liberation of all oppressed nationalities in the Ethiopian Empire see Asafa Jalata, “Theorizing Oromummaa,” Journal of Oromo Studies 22 (1), 2015: 1-35.
[6] For further understanding, see Asafa Jalata and Harwood Schaffer,  “The Oromo, Gadaa/Siqqee and the Liberation of Ethiopian Colonial Subjects,” with Harwood Schaffer, AlterNative: An International Journal of  Indigenous Peoples, Vol. 9, Issue 4: 2013, 277-295.
[7] Lemmu Baissa, “The Oromo Gada System of Government: An Indigenous African Democracy,” Ed. Asafa Jalata, State Crises, Globalisation and National Movements in Northeast Africa, (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 101.
[8] Tsega Etefa, “Pan-Oromo Confederations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” The Journal of Oromo Studies 15 (1), 2008: 19-40; Tsega Etefa, “A Great African Nation: The Oromo in European Accounts,” The Journal of Oromo Studies, 17(1), 2010: 87-110.
[9] Virginia Luling, “Government and Social Control Among Some Peoples of the Horn of Africa,” (MA. Thesis, the University o London); Asmarom Legesse, Gadaa: Three Approaches to the Study of African Society, (New York: The Free Press, 1973).
[10] Virginia Luling, ibid. 191.
[11] See, Asmarom Legesse, Gada: Three Approaches to the Study of Africa Society, (New York: Free Press, 19730.
[12] Bonnie K. Holcomb, “Akka Gadaatti: The Unfolding of Oromo Nationalism-Keynote Remarks,” Proceedings of the 1991 Conference on Oromia, (University of Toronto, Canada, 3-4 August, pp. 1-10.
[13] Asmarom Legesse, ibid.
[14] Lemmu Baissa, The Democratic Political System of the Galla [Oromo] of Ethiopia and the Possibility of its use in Nation-Building, MA Thesis, George Washington University, 1971); Lemmu Baissa, “The Political Culture of Gada: Building Blocks of Oromo Power,) Paper Presented at the Oromo Studies Association Conference, (University of Toronto, Canada, 31 July- 1, August 1993).
[15] Dinsa Lepisa, “The Gada System of Government and Sera Cafee Oromo,” (LLB Thesis, Addis Ababa University, 1975); Sisai Ibssa, “Implications of Party and Set for Oromo Political Survival,” Paper Prsented at the 35^th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, (Seattle, Washington, Nov. 20-23, 1992).
[16] For further discussion, see Asafa Jalata, Contending Nationalisms of Oromia and Ethiopia; and Asafa Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia.
[17] For further discussion, see Asafa Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia.
[18] For detailed discussion, see Asafa Jalata, Contending Nationalisms of Oromia and Ethiopia.
[19] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington, (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1963[1961]), p. 38.
[20]Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression,      (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), p. 123.
[21] Na’im Akbar, Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery, (Tallahassee, FL: Mind Productions and Associates, 1996), p. 41.
[22]Ibid.
[23]Fanon, Frantz, A Dying Colonialism, translated by Haakon Chevalier, (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1967[1965]), p. 65.
[24]Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Richard Philcox, (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 2008[1952]), pp. 2-3.
[25] Hussein Abdilahi Bulihan, ibid. pp. 125-126.
[26] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 7.
[27] Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press,), pp. 248-249.
[28] Walter Rodney, ibid. p. 241.
[29] Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-education of the Negro, (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, Inc., 1990 [1933], pp. xiii, 2.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Walter Rodney, Ibid. p. 42.
[32] Carter G. Woodson explains similar conditions in the African American society, ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid. p. 127.
[35] Ibid. p. 62.
[36] For detailed discussion, see Asafa Jalata, Fighting against the Injustice of the State and Globalization: Comparing the African American and Oromo Movements, (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012[2001].
[37] Begna F. Dugassa, “Colonialism of Mind: Deterrent of Social Transformation,” Sociology Mind, 1(2): 55-64.
[38] Na’im Akbar, Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery, (Tallahassee, FL: Mind Productions and Associates, 1996), pp. v-iv.
[39] Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression, p. 55.
[40] Ibid. p. 56.
[41] Ibid. p. 123.
[42] Carter G. Woodson, ibid., p. 96.
[43] Ibid. p. 139.
[44] Ibid. p. 135.
[45] Ibid. p. 123.
[46] Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression, p. 262.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid. p. 263.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Ibid. p. 264.
[51] Ibid. p. 265.
[52] Ibid. pp. 265-266.
[53] Ibid. p. 276.
[54] Ibid. p. 277.
[55] Ibid. pp. 277-278.
[56] Gilly Adolfo. [1965] 1967. “Introduction,” A Dying Colonialism, ibid. p. 2.
[57] Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 227.
[58] Patricia Hill Collins, ibid., p. 229.
[59] Ibid., p. 230.
[60] Na’im Akbar, Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery, p. 30.
[61] Ibid. p. 39.
[62] Ibid. p. 41.
[63] Ibid. p. 42.
[64] Ibid. p. 43.
[65] Ibid. p. 46.
[66] Jalata, Asafa, “Theorizing Oromummaa,” Journal of Oromo Studies, 22 (1), 2015, pp. 1-35.

Damee Boruu irraa

Qeerroon Bilisummaa Oromoo Adoolesa 17, 2016 Daamsa Hatattamaa uummata Oromoo dabrsee jira. Waamchi yaroo isaa eegate waan dhufeef ilmaan Oromoo onnumaan fudhachuu qabna jedheen amana. Bakka jirru marati gamtaan saba keenya wajjin dhaabbachuu fi aarsaa barbaachisu keennuuf of qopheessuuu nu irraa eegama. Gummaachi qabsoo bilisuummaa saba keenyaaf goonu dacha dachaan dabaluu qaba.

Mootummaa faashitii ilmaan Oromoo lafa irraa duguugee balleessaa jiru kana wajjin qabsoo karaa nagaa ni goona jechuun funyoo mormatti of hidhanii of fanisuu irraa adda hin  tahu.  Mootummaan TPLF sagalee nagaan rakkina furuu jedhu hiikaa isaa hin beeku. Kan beeku afaan qawween furuu duwwaa dha. Mirga keenya meeshaa qabnu maraan karaa dandeenyuu falmachuun haqa dhalootaan qabnu yoo tahu Waaqayyos akka nuyi wajjin jiru dagachuu hin qabnu. Filmaatni qabnu humnaa fi meeshaa qabnuun diina faashitii kana of irraa ittisna yookaan duguugamnee baduu dha. Amma yoonaatti qabsoon keenya karaa ifa taheen filmaata kana lamaan keessaa  murteefatee hin jiru . Garuu ammaan kana eejjennaan fudhatame jiraachuu saba Oromoof murteessaa dha.

Qabsoo bilisummaa biyya lafaa irratti godhame keessatti  yarooitti uummatni bal’aan gartuu waraana xiqqoon aangoo mootummaa cabse  aangoo qabate hin jiru. Hojiin humna garee waaraana uummata damaqisuu, ijaaruu fi dhidhachiisuu dha.  Mootummaa kan humnaan cabsuu danda’u gaafa uummtni bal’aa gamtaan kaa’ee  duraa dhaabbate qofa. Lolli bilisummaa lola uummata bal’aati malee lola humni muraasni mootumaa cabsee bilisummaa mirkaneessu miti. Haalli kun adda bahee hubatamuu qaba. Hojiin ijaarsaa daaba bilisummaaf dhaabbatee kaayyoo bilisummaa dhaabbateef irratti hundeefatee  uummata bal’aa  dhamqisuu, ijaaruu fi hidhachiisuuf qabsaa’uu dha.  ABO waggaa afurtmaan darbaan kana keessaa qabsoo bilisummaa uummatni Oromoo har’a itti jirru kana argamsiisuu wareegama amma kana jedhamee himamuu hin dandeenye baasee jira. Gootonni Oromoo hedduun itti aarsaa tahanii jiru. Damaqinsi uummata keenyaa sadarkaa har’a jiru kana irra gahuu kan danda’e tasa lafaa ka’ee akka hin taane bareechinee hubachuu qabana.

Baatii jahan darban kana keessa uummtni Oromoo kumaatamaan bahee mirga keenya barbaannaa jedhee, iyyachaa, himachaa, dhaadachaa fi kadhachaa jira.  Karaa biraa Mootummaan TPLF kan tuffii uummata Oromoon bokokkee jiru uummataa gaaffii karaa nagaa gaafachuu jiru: xiqqaa fi guddaa utuu hin jedhiin, dhiiraa fi dubartii utuu adda hin baasiin ajjeessaa, hidhaa fi akka harree uleen tumaa jira. Hammeenya kana hundaa kan raawwachaa jiru humna Wayaanee nama shaniin uummata Oromoo kuma shantamaan lakkawamu  irratti bobbaasuu dhaani.

Ammaan kana qawwee bitachuu qabna yaroo jennu qabsoon keenya akka sadarkaa olaanatti tarkaanfataa jiru agarsiisa malee meeshaan waraanaa nuyi bitachuu dandeenyu yoom iyyuu  kan diina keenyaa wajjin wal gituu hin danda’u. Diinni keenya taankii fi xiyaaraa kan uummatni  utuu horii qabatee iyyuu  bitachuu hin daneenye qaba. Warri kun meeshaa ittiin nama doorsisan malee meeshaa lola uummataaf tahan  miti.  Meeshaa waraanaa caalaa waan baayyee nu barbaachisuu murannoo fi onnoomuu dha. Meeshaa waraanaa horiin yoo argamee amma tokko  bitachuun ni danad’ama. Onnee garuu bitachuun hin danda’amu. Ummatni  keenya Kaaba amma Kibaa, Bahaa amma Dhihaa damaqee harka wal qabatee kaa’ee  jira.  Qawwee bituu wajjin hojiin guddaan nu eegatu wal gootomsuu fi wal onnoomsuu dha.  Artiistonni Oromoo utuu hidhamaa, waxalamaa fi ajjeessamaa jiranii uummata Oromoo gootomsuu fi onnoomsuu irratti aarsaa guddaa kennaa jiru. Meeshaa waraanaa Wayaaneen baatee biyya Oromoo keessa yaatu hunduu qabeenya uummata Oromoo ti.  Wal  gurmmeessinee Wayaanee machooftee karaa irra bulaa jirtu irraa meesha hikachuuf gamnuumaa  fi dandeetti qabaachuu qabna.

Baayyeen keenya karaa midiyaa Adooles 15, 2016 biyya Turkii keessatti  humni waraanni mootumaa galagalshee yaroo taankii guuratee karaatti bahuu uummtni biyya Turkkii onnummaan ka’ee loltotaa taankkii keessa akka hantutaa morma qabee gototee baasee karaa irratti akka darbaa turee agareerra. Kilaashinkoof itti utaalee yaroo irraa butee fudhatu uummata Oromoo duwwaaf utuu hin uummata biyya lafaaf fakkeenya gaarii kan tahuu natti fakkaata. Akkuumma kana naannoo Adoolesa 15, 2016 biyya Gondor keessatti yaroo TPLF namoota Amaaraa qabuu dhaqtu waliif dirmataanii qaanessuu dhaan  of irraa ariihuu irra darbanii qabeenyaa TPLF tahe ibdaan akka barbadeessan agarree jirra.

Yoo garaa jabaannee of irratti lololle malee diinni kun safuu uummata keenyaaf hin qabu.  Saba Oromoo baayyee tufachaa jira.  Akka tufatamnuis kan of godhe nuyi.  Baayyee garaa laafna.  “Garaa laafetiin firaa ulfoofti” jedhu warri keenya. Waan baayye namatti ulfaatu fi himachuun isaas nama qaanesu, bakka hundura fincila xummura Garbumma dhohetti Gincii keessatti yaroo Agaaziin Esheetuu Warquu Morodaa ajjeessuu dhiifnee boyyichatti deebi’uu dha. Uummatni Oromoo Gincii keessa jiraatu konkolaataa Agaazii tokko miti, taankii Agazii dhiba tokko iyyuu gubuuf humna qaba. Lakkobsi uummata keenyaa  humna tahuu isaa amma iyyuu adda baafnee argaa hin jirru. Maaliif Wayaaneen uummtni ishee gara miliyoona shan Oromoon gara miliyoona shantamaa nu bituu dndeesse ? jennee yoo of gaafanne: inni duraa waan sodaannuuf, inni lamaffaa waan meeshaa qabduuf, inni sadaffaa jalee akka OPDO waan of jalaa qabduuf, kan biraas jiraachuu danda’a. Deebbiin kunii fi kan kana fakkaatu quubsaa hin tahu.

Jeneral Tadassa Biruu bara kudha sagalii fi jatamaan keessa jireenya uummata  karaa nagaan  foyyeessuuf hawwii guddaa qaba. Maqaa Waldaa Meecaa fi Tulamaan nama Oromoo wal barsiisuuf isaa badaa Arsii keessatti Oromoota walitti qabee jiru Mootummaan Hayile Selaasee tankii f imadifiin waraana itti erge. Namni Jeneral Tadassee Dubbalee jedhamu dhaqee ammaa fi ammatti wal gahii kana facaasii jedhee Jeneral Tadasaaf ajaja kenna.  Badi asii atis jeneral anis jeneral si irra ajaja hin fudhadhu jedhee dida.  Yaroo sana namoonni Oromoo  isa wajjin jiran sodatanii rommuu jalqaban jennan “hin soodaatiina, isin dura anaan haa jeessan. Maaloo akka garaan keessan gubatuuf mimixa nyaadhaa” jedhe  kadhate. Yaroo Waraaqsa Ameerikaa (March 23^rd 1775) Patrick Henry akkana jedhe “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!” Jecha isaa kana keessa amma tokko yoon hike,” Yaa Waaqayyo Guddaa,namootni biraa daandii kam akka fudhatan hin beeku, garuu anaaf bilisummaa yookaan du’a kenni” jedha.

Utuu har’a Jeneral Tadasaa Biruu jiraatee dhaloota Qeerroo kana argee garaan isaa inni gubate aanan dhuga. Warri sodaatu haa sodaatuu malee inni dhiga isaa dabrsee saba  isaaf dhangalaasuudhaan xurree bilisummaa nuuf baasee irra murannoo guutuun hordofaa jirra. Humni biyya lafaa keessaa Mootumaa TPLF halkan tokkotti gobsuu danda’u humna uummata bal’aa Oromoo qinda’e qofa.

Guyyaa qabsoon keenyaa kun gara qabsoo lola uummatatti  tarnkanfatuu waan godhamuu qaban keessaa:

1. Karaa qindaa’een namoonni mana hidhaa keessa jiran meeshaa uummatni qabuun halkan tokkichaa Oromiyaa guutuutti mana hidhaa cabsinee baasuun tarkaanfii duraa tahuu qaba.
2. Qabeenya diina uummatni saamuu hin dandeenyee fi deeb’ee diinaaf dhima baasuu dnada’u ibdaan barbadeessuu qaba.
3. Naamota diinaaf hojjetan kan akka OPDO fi namoota TPLFf meeshaa tahaa jiran dhaloota kami iyyuu haa tahan garaa laafina tokko malee dhabamsiisu.
4. Waajiraa OPDO tahe kan Federalaa kan biyyaa Oromoo keessaa jiru akka lamaffaa deebi’ee diinaaf dhimma baasuu hin dandeenye gochuu.
5. Dhoksaa Mootummaa TPLF waan qabuuf, meeshaa kan akka komputeraa amma danda’ametti utuu hin badiin fudhachuu.
6. Ilmaan Oromoos tahan namoota biraa hidhatanii Motummaa TPLF wajjin hojjechaa jiran hidhanaa isaanii wajjin akka gara qabsoo bilisummaatti makamaan waamicha gochuu.
7. Qe’ee, mandaraa fi magaalaa isaa bilisoomsuuf Oromoon hunduu itti gaafatama qaba.
8. Bakka humni TPLF jabaatee bobba’etti, iyyaa labsii walii dabarsuudhaan walii dirmatanii gaaga’ama guddaa gahuuf deemu irraa wal oolchuu.
9. Murtii kana wajjin rakkinni nuyi hin yaadni dhufuu malu, hin dhufa jenne kan yaadnu yaroon furuu of qopheessuu.
10. Goodaansa qabsoo keenyaa kana keessatti uummatni naannoo naanno isaatti of bulchuu fi nageenya wal eeguuf hubannaa akka qabaatu gochuu

Injifannoo Uummata Oromoof!
Oromiyaan Ni Bilisoomti!

By Worku Gadissaa

INTRODUCTION

The abstract of this paper was submitted to OSA under the title of “Negotiation Politically Correct Lunacy” for presentation at the Conference of July 29-30, 2016, but has not been accepted.

 It must be noted that in August 2015, OSA Annual Conference I gave analytical report on the history of land robbing “The Territories Surrounding Finfine and Evil Master Plan.” It is not coincident I presented that paper and what has happened then and the event that led to the Oromo up rising. Now I see new major danger that our rulers are trying to use negotiation/mediation deception tactics as new weapon to stop Oromo struggle.  It is important that we wake up and reject any negotiation with the dangerous consequence for Oromo people.

 The Revision History of Negotiation with Habesha Rulers.

The purpose of this paper is to learn and refresh ourselves from past negotiation the Oromos have made with Habesha rulers. It tells how prominent Oromo leaders were cheated and fooled many times in their attempt to negotiate with the Habesha rulers.

We live in a time when people can instantly search for answers to their problems, how to make peace and unite through negotiation and reconciliation. Negotiation or reconciliation is a means of building consensus through dialogue and compromise.

Recently, there has been a great deal of discussion on public media  about negotiation and reconciliation among various Ethiopian political groups, including the Oromos.

We are also facing the worst racism, hate, and war of genocide in our history. I want to make sure you were aware of the negotiation or mediation scam that is circulating in Ethiopia and abroad. As part of this scam you may attend conference calls from various political groups abroad and even with the Ethiopian Government. These scammers will often try to coerce you into negotiation engagement and signing up a deal with the oppressive regime in Ethiopia. Their goal is get you out of the present Oromo struggle.

Historically the Oromos pride themselves in solving their common disputes and quarrels or wider conflicts with their tribal neighbors through “jarsuma” a tradition of mediation and arbitration. To settle their differences, the opposing sides select wise and pious elderly figures [adage] for mediation and reconciliation. Any peace agreement reached is concluded by oath or kakuu and it is binding.

Over a period of 130 years there are ample historical records and evidences where Oromo were engaged in political peace negotiations and treaties with feudal kings and other rulers and where all ended up in betrayal and double-crossings. It simply means it is difficult to negotiate in fairness, openness and truth with our governing classes.

To learn how the Habesha rulers cheated and fooled the Oromos, let us travel to the late 1870s from Atse Yohannes IV. And work our ways through the event that lead up to the short lived OLF. Partnership with TPLF.

Ate Yohannes IV.

Yohannes  concurred  Wollo and forced Oromo Muslims to accept Christianity or be killed. Wollo was conquered and more than 40,000 Oromos  died  at the Battle of Boru- Medaa.

Kubee the Rayaa Azeboo ruler was converted to Christianity with Yohannes as his   godfather. Kubee revolted against Yohannes but surrendered without fight and after peace negotiation and reconciliation. Once he  surrendered and gave himself up, vengeance begins. All of his fighting force of 2,000 men were lined up in a narrow passage and were mercilessly beheaded one – by- one while Yohannes watching the execution with pride. Kubee was beheaded and his head was carried around as a victory trophy.

Here is a poem of Yohannes cruelty:-
“Atmenew Tigren bemil begezete”
Kiristina ansitew Kuben gedelut
“Yabelutal enge yatetutal enge”
“Endet yigedelal lehonulet lije”

A short translation; never trust the Tigreans even if under oath.

Workit,  Wollo Ruler    

Workit   (balabat) of Wollo Oromo played a prominent role in helping Menelik to escape from Mekdela prison. Workit and another Wollo ruler, Mestawet and Gobena Dache helped Menelik to fight and defeated Bezabih who was then ruler of Showa. Menelik then took control of Showa and become king.

Despite her great contribution in helping Menelik gain back his Showa kingdom and establishment of empire building, Workit was betrayed and at last thrown into  prison and her kingdom given to Ras Ali the father of Lij Eyassu.

Gobena Dache

Even Gobana Dache who played the major role in the conquest of Oromia was at last poisoned to his death. Gobena was given a sub- kingship as a ruler with Menelik. Without Gobena it was unlikely that Menelik would have conquered Oromia.

Despite the central role the Oromos have played in shaping present Ethiopia, Oromos history has been neglected, ignored, twisted and even actively suppressed.

Gobena , because of his role in the conquest of Oromia is greatly respected in Habeshas  circles, while because of his selfish ambition and vain glory, the Oromos recognize him as a traitor.

The Genocide at Anolee

A clear example how negotiation works is the Anole Genocide.

After his victory in Arsi, one of Menelik’s war lord,  Ras Darge invited the Arseans for peace talk and reconciliation at a place called Anolee. Darge put people march into narrow passage and the mutilation began of men’s right arms and women’s right breast chopped off one- by-one. Thousands were mutilated. The most heinous and most cruel crime of which Oromo history has recorded have been committed by Menelik.

Menelik committed ethnic cleansing in Oromia and all other nationalities in the South. In the face of such a horrific tragedy, instead of asking full responsibility and remorse, the Habesha rulers deny the massacre in Anolee and justified the massacre without shame and regret. In the event of such horrific tragedy, even the pop star singer Teddy Afro, in his glorification of Menelik recently commented that, the war of conquest of Oromia  was  a “ holy war of unity” ( jihad war)

The Ethiopian leaders deny the crime of shame committed and when you feel shame, you start to lie.

This is one of the many examples where mediation or reconciliation (erqe, deredir or shimgelina) does not serve at all. It only prolonged our sufferings and enslavement.

Lij Eyassu

The Wollo Ras Ali also known also as Negus Michael, the father of Eyassu was one of those Oromos who played a prominent role keeping Ethiopia united during Atse Yohannes and Menelik’s era. Ali marched to Showa with a large Wollo Oromo army to fight Haile Selassie who was then a crown prince. The Showeans had no knowledge of the surprise advance and were not prepared for war. Before the war began, Haile Selassie sent his wise man F. Habte Georges, a skilled master of  Habesha intrigue for a peace treaty with Ras Ali. While negotiations was going on Haile Selassie was secretly receiving  more arms from abroad and  getting ready for war.

The Wollo army had a devastating defeat at the Battle of Sagaale. Lij Eyassu was captured and deported to Gara- Mulata, Hararge.  The battle of Sagalle was not only a catastrophic defeat to Ras Ali but also the end of Wara -Yimenu and Yeju Oromo dynasty as rulers. We should also to remember that the battle of Sagale changed the course of history as it was the launching platform for Haile Selassie to rise to power as Emperor of Ethiopia.

The Bale Oromo Revolts

One quick example of how mediation was used as a trap is the Bale Oromo revolts

The Bale people who suffered under feudal rules had many armed revolts and uprisings  during Haile Selassie’s rule.  Small groups of revolutionary freedom fighters like General Wako Gutuu often fought against Ethiopian Government forces and Neftegna land owners. All of the revolts were put down under dubious peace treaty and reconciliations.  Once they surrendered and gave themselves up, vengeance began. Those who had risen up in rebellion, were expelled from their land or killed

Many Oromos are lied to, deceived and fell into the trap of clever scam of mediation. After the peace treaty and surrender, people were falsely accused, tried and thrown into prison or even killed.

Tadesse Birru

Even the legendary G. Tadesse Birru who earned admiration and respects for being a hero for Oromo cause was cheated by negotiation tactics. G. Tadesse was the champion of Literacy Campaign, active supporter of Metch Tulama and bold fighter of Oromos cause.

Quite often when the Ethiopian leaders wanted negotiation scam and vicious mediation with the Oromo’s, regular method was to deploy popular Oromo leaders. However incase of G.Tadesse, their tactics was to use the church. The Orthodox Church is historically in holy alliance with the government and work in tandem to rule over Oromia.

After failed coup d’état attempt and accusation for treason the General fled to Meta Robi.  Quite often Ethiopian rulers deploy God’s concept to accomplish their political tactics.  Abune Tewoflos and Aba Habte Mariam (present Abune Melketsedik of California) went after him for the arbitration and mediation. They made him change his mind and he return to Finfine with them.

They gave him assurance that no criminal charges be made against him by the emperor. Tadesse from his strong religious believe and faith obeyed the two religious leaders and followed them back to Finfine and asked the king for apology.

As usual mediation is a ploy, with double standard and betrayal and criminal charges loaded against the General and he was thrown into prison. Well the rest is history.

Many Oromos leaders have been lied to and deceived in similar manner after entering mediation deal with the Abyssinians.

Do we Oromo’s learn from past mistakes? The wise learn from the mistakes of others, while fools repeat them.  Remember that those who enter into negotiation signed their own death warrant! The historian, Edo Boru said “ woorii harkaa kenne Harkaa dhabe” ( no time to explain)

Villagaiztion Program

After the Land Policy of 1974 the Derg regime introduced the huge Villagaiztion Program for development of rural inhabitants. The government forcibly moved rural farmers to new location under its false policy of Villagaiztion scheme.

Tens of millions to abandon their homes move to new locations with their cattle, promising the basic services, roads, electricity, water health centers etc.  Massive eviction by force was  carried under the pretext of better services and improvement of the life style of rural farmers.

Villagaiztion was a deliberate plan specially targeted Oromia for the destruction of socio economical and cultural structure of Oromos. It was also a wicked and deliberate scheme by neftegnas to permanently remove  Oromos from their land and impoverishing them.

Article   39

The famous constitution of ethnic federalism and self-determination, Article 39 was immediately scrapped, tossed out and nullified by TPLF. Everybody knows that Article 39 is an empty phrase, a scam and means nothing. Why it is so hard for the Oromo’s to learn from history?

The Algiers Agreement

Here is another dubious negotiation scam example

I have no time, but we all remember the Algiers agreement between EPRDF and Eretria that was void and nullified by EPRDF.

Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)

There is other case in which the lesson of the past negotiation is sadly ignored and unlearned by Oromo leaders and political groups.

We all have witnessed how the short lived partnership of OLF with the EPRDF ended. While OLF leaders were engaged into peaceful negotiation, with Shabia being intermediary, TPLF was plotting, surrounding and attacking OLF forces. The ABO army was tricked, voluntarily disarmed and put into camp and at last systematically eliminated. Having said that, I do not want to pass judgment to those martyrs and fallen heroes who paid heavy price in their lives for the cause of freedom. I do not want to say how it happened and why it happened into the politically correct lunacy negotiation, but the fact that 20,000 fighters laid down their arms and surrendered is shocking and mind boggling! How could such a terrible mistake happen?

The Woyane regime is forcing new war on the Oromo people, harsher and more evil.  And today, more than ever, there are some specific Oromo political groups and individuals who like to negotiate with TPLF.  The TPLF puffed up with their victory, greed, pride, fear and hatred will never treat us with dignity or equals. In an attempt to buy time or for their strategy and tactics they may embark to negotiate but do not expect any rational thinking from negotiations with the TPLF. Negotiation from your weakness, you can only decrease your potential, increase their appetite for more aggression and suppression. It is better people understand that Ethiopians socio-political system have no mentality or common sense of negotiation with Oromo’s.

Guess what I am afraid of? I am afraid of those specific groups at home who were handpicked by Woyane regime and opposition political factions abroad who are trying to make negotiation engagement with Woyane. There are also some self appointed individuals who directly or indirectly are trying to negotiate at any price, ruining and throwing down the drain the sacrifices gained by KERROO.

I hope you will remember when one of the political faction group delegates went to Finfine to negotiate with the TPLF. They were kicked out of Ethiopia same day with first available flight before even the negotiation began. Why are the lessons from history so easily forgotten?

No one should be under the illusion that constructive engagement to promote peace negotiation with Woyane is hard if not impossible. If something is going on and on, we must stop and ask ourselves , what do our rulers wants?

Do you want to negotiate with a regime that carries  AK- 47 in one hand and negotiation on the other? They will stab you from the back. I only want to say that do not waste your time and energy, negotiation is only rehotric!

So then, why would anyone enter into discussion with the Woyane regime?

What Do 0ur Rulers Want?

That is one question, but the better question is what do the Oromos want? How do we get there the way our rulers wants us to be. We tried for more than a century but, we can’t be good enough to achieve equality and respect. So then, you may ask me, terror regime is killing our people daily, every day hundreds are going to prison, and millions are dying of hunger, what sense does it make to refuse not to negotiate? To which I answer, there can be no compromise to our freedom! Freedom is not for negotiation. In the first place how can you negotiate with those who do not even accept your values as Oromo?

Oromia is always in crises but today may be more serious suffering, more racial hatred than ever. It is a period of unparallel land-grabbing, death, terror and a period of sheer cruelty manifested against the Oromo people. We gave them our land, culture, adopted their language even our identity as an Oromo.  They have taken away everything they wanted and they did everything in their power.  They leave no stone unturned until they destroy Oromia. They are never satisfied. They do not settle for anything.

In 1939, Mussolini asked Hitler “what do you want”? “You want land corridor”? Hitler replied “I want war! War!, Douches umber ales”! (Germans above all)

That is exactly what our rulers want.

Make no mistake, even if you are really going to try to meet all their demands, it will not have enough left over to live on, the more you obey and accept their terms it will not help you at all.

WHY DO THE OROMOS INTER INTO NEGOTIATION? 

Throughout history the Oromos were cheated so much that we must continue to ask ourselves, why do we enter into negotiation?   

There are no easy answers but, although the issues very vast, for simplicity, can be categorized as follows:-

1. Many do not know or understand the history of political peace negotiation with Habesha rulers and have fallen into traps. So often we do not understand what they are up to. We do not understand how certain events could have resulted after negotiation. It is only after terrible results we start to see how mediation might works.
2. There are those opportunists who have got responsibility without authority who enter into negotiation from their selfish ambitions and vain glory. They exchange Oromuma for glory and getting high rank and serving their slave masters as an instrument of suppression. In some cases our self-inflicted problems and wounds are worse than by our enemies.
3. In many cases ignorance and an attitude of slave mentality lead them to accept “gabruma.” So they do not believe in themselves, they sell their Oromouma to resemble Ethiopiawent or Amharanet. They are forged or counterfeited Oromos! You can also call them recycled Oromos.
4. There are those bribed and cheated and working to destroy Oromia internally more than external enemies. Sometimes, accepting negotiation comes from lack of courage and conviction.

My advice is, do not downgrade yourself and never make a peace treaty from a position of weakness. If you do, you can only decrease and diminish your potential and increase their appetite for more.

An old adage, a friend Obo Dissasa from Ambo who was put into prison by the Derg  for six months told me that “ I have never bowed down , bend my knee and beg for pardon from Derg. If you do, they will stand on your neck and knock you to the ground.” You are trying to find better ways to explain it and you are begging and pleading and doing your best to convince them but you will achieve nothing! It is also true that we are divided and weak, no unity among groups. There is a great mystery in the realities, the one in which we are strong when we are weak. It was Charles Darwin who said “ it was the best of time and worst of time”

We are strong in our patriotism, solidarity and resilience among us is even stronger today than any time.

Look, from what is going on in Oromia today. I see it as proof that we have never been more energized and united in our desire to take Oromia in a new direction. There is a better tomorrow for us! KEERROOS KEEP OUR HOPE AND ASPIRATION HIGH!

The world like braves, they respect and listen to braves. Remember “the survival of the fittest”.

NEGOTIATION AN OLD HABESHA GAME

But you may say that, it is not easy when you are defeated and weak and it feels like there is little chance for success? But know this, even if you give all they demand and surrender, you find yourself in far worse danger. You keep on trying to submit to their demands forgetting all their evil deeds to you and get nothing. There is no shame or sorrow to their actions. Look what the Agazi is doing to innocent empty handed peace demonstrators? The TPLF regime is leading state sponsored terrorism. They are killers and corrupt from top to bottom. Make no mistake that our rulers  are very clever people, that when they call for reconciliation and peace engagement, they just have very different ideas in mind than true and honest reconciliation. Their strategies is one in which they sweet talk, while cooking up a scheme to destroy you.

I am sick and tired hearing the rhetoric of illusive idea of negotiation with our rulers! Some of you might say, let old wounds must be healed and let us forgive and forget the past. My friend, there are new constant wounds added every day and no time to heal.  Notice in the entire list of names given above not only did negotiation failed but all the participants were punished, either thrown into jail or killed. Negotiation is designed to punish those who surrendered. My friends what I want make clear is that not one among many mediations or negotiations were accepted and honored.

There is a saying in Oromifa “ gufuun dhagaa yoo ganama mana batu yoo sirukutee, galgala moo  yoo debitu yoo sirukute, si tuu dhagada” If you hit a stone at your door step in the morning and you hit the same stone in the evening, then you are a stone.

Generation comes and goes, rulers rise and fall, the feudal kings Menelik and Haile Selassie, or the military junta Derg, and the Woyane terror regime comes, Ethiopian leaders never change their attitude towards Oromo.  If there were changes, it is only in style. There is a metaphor in Amharic :“ nebir zengurgurnatun aylewitem”.

CAN WE GO INTO NEGOTIAION ?

Negotiation is an old tactics often used by Ethiopian ruling classes when they are treated. We want no evolution or transformation, no cosmetic change, no time buying change, we want real change. We want freedom, justice and equality.

For more than a century we were cheated so much that we continue to ask ourselves if we can get into any negotiation.. The answer is yes you engage into negotiation but you have to be very conscious that negotiation past and present is a scam. If you want to engage in negotiation be aware and vigilant. You ought to take heed of making foolish agreement. In your negotiation with the Habesha leaders think trice not twice. It may be necessary to enter into negotiation, but, never pin your whole faith on any  leaders!

There are lots of nice things you can do with sands. But do not try building a house on it.

Negotiation is like a double-edged sword to Oromo’s. If you handle it improperly, it will cut you. It is not something to be handled carelessly and like being cut by a razor blade, you won’t even know you are bleeding until you got a mess on your hand.

Notice in all of the above examples, not only did negotiation fail but the participants were punished. They all met the same fate, imprisonment or death. They pronounced their own death warrant. Make no mistake, we are seized by force and they do not want sharing political power with us.

Where there is no liberty, freedom, equality or justice, negotiation or any agreement has no meaning at all. The TPLF has been intoxicated with greed,

Corruption, ethnic hatred, cruelty, deception, lies, you name it. They will never negotiate even on basic human right issues.

Remember that you are trying to negotiate peace in an honest manner but from experiences and observations it is difficult, if not impossible to even seat and discuss in honesty, fairness and truth with our rulers. That is why I say negotiation is politically correct lunacy.

There  is a saying “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”

Say to a person seating next to you, if you not learn from history, you will live and die like – Kube, like- Gobena, like Eyassu.

This is a real world  of the strongest , the survival of the fittest.

Here is a poem by the writer Kebede Mikael
“ Yalefew siresagne mechewn salawkew”
“Ene meche yihon yemitanekekew”?

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Remember what Nelson Mandela said “Never make deal under defeat. Only free man can negotiate” That is a truth!

Freedom is achieved, never given!
THERE IS BRIGHT TOMORROW FOR US.!
KERROO IS OUR HOPE AND ASPIRATION!

By Leenjiso Horo

Oromia: Under the brutal regime’s rule

Make the male lines like trees that have had their roots cut;
Make the female lines like rooks that have dried up in winter;
Make the children and grandchildren like eggs smashed against rooks;
Make the servants and followers like heaps of grass consumed by fire; ….
In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.

–The Fifth Dalai Lama’s instruction to repress Tibetan rebels in 1660.

The Tigran genocidal extremist political elites have learned the methods of committing genocide from the above instruction. This instruction has become for the Tigran political elites a political religious faith book. It adopted this instruction to implement in Oromiyaa against the Oromo people. One need to understand, the nature of Tigran culture from their successive political leaders like Ras Mikael Sehul, Emperor Yohannes IV and Meles Zenawi and his political collogues.

Tigran fascism has a long history. Its history of fascism extends back to Ras Mikael Sehul of the 18th century and Emperor Yohannes IV of the 19th century. Both men sowed seeds of fascism to which Meles Zenawi and his TPLF are the heirs. Indeed, todays Tigran genocidal elites are the products of their history. It is for this, the current Tigran elites have been continuously following the legacies of Ras Mikael Sehul and Emperor Yohannes IV. Ras Mikael Sehul was said to have killed Oromo and Amhara prisoners of war and then peeled their skins off; made the skins into sacks; then he filled those sacks with straws and displayed in public in Gondar to be seen. Emperor Yohannes IV was said to have used “force, fire, and sword” to eliminate Oromo Muslims and Waqeftaa in Wollo who were refused to be converted to Christianity. He mutilated the limbs of those who refused. That is, he cutoff the breasts of women and hands, ears, and tongues of men. It has been said he pulled out one eye from each of his victims. The purpose was to force them into accepting the religion of his choice and at the same time to teach the others the consequence of refusal to accept. Similarly, in 1991, Meles Zenawi, upon entering Finfinnee/Addis Ababa, ordered his army to set on fire Military depot (storage of chemical weapons) in the city. The explosion of the storage of chemical weapons terrorized residents, killed many of them and destroyed many homes. The toxic chemical that released into the air and water is still today causing serious harm to the residents of the city and its vicinities. With this, the brutality of TPLF accelerated with murder, violence, and terror, and the seeds of its plan for the extermination of the Oromo implemented Oromiyaa wide. And, the Oromo people are exposed to the ruthless slaughter. This consistent pattern of crime shows time and again that the Tigrans have inherently greater cultural propensity for hatred, violence and cruelty. Hence, it is clear that the Tigrans political elites have an insatiable propensity to commit crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crime against humanity.

Since 1991 to date, the Tigran political elites-led regime, its state, and its military and security forces have been committing genocide against the Oromo people. These genocidal fascist elites have already exterminated hundreds of thousands of the Oromo men, women and including pregnant women, children and elderly for no reasons than being Oromo. Not on this, millions have been evicted from their lands. Being an Oromo in and of itself is seen by the Tigran political elites as their enemy. Since Oromiyaa is placed under the administration of military Command Post, marshal law is declared. With this, mass murder, kidnapping, torture, and disappearances without trace have been carried out both in towns, villages, and rural areas. The Tigran army’s and security forces’ savagery, barbarism and ruthless cruelty in rural areas include the killing of the infants grabbing by the leg from mothers’ arms and dashing head on the ground and then shooting the mothers to death are common occurrence. In Oromiyaa, kidnappings, forced disappearances, eviction from homes and lands, arrest, torture and killings have been institutionalized. In addition to the annihilation of men, women, children and elderly, it has also targeted the Oromo political leaders, religious leaders, academics and intellectuals and business and communal leaders and journalists at all levels for annihilation. Its centrally planned, centrally organized and state-sponsored violence, killings and evictions of people from their land and homes have touch all nations and nationalities in Ethiopia. This annihilation is and has been undertaken by the centrally organized and government-directed forces.

The TPLF’s target of killing is not just only Oromo men who might organize themselves to fight back in order to defend their people and country, but it also targeted women and children. It targeted women because they are the bears of the next generation and the children are targeted because they are the next generation. The purpose of killing women and children is to destroying a nation “root and branch” of a targeted population. In this case, the targeted population is the Oromo people and the aim is to destroy the “root and branch” of the Oromo nation. This is a policy of exterminating current generation and the future generation of the Oromo nation. Furthermore, today the fascist TPLF’s murderous political repression, violence, genocide, ethnic cleansing and crime against humanity have plagued Ethiopian empire state. Hence, the nations and nationalities in Ethiopia are under the extremist genocidal elites’ state-organized physical extermination. No one is spared from this except the Tigran ethnic group. Particularly, the annihilation of the Oromo people has become the state policy in the Tigran extremist led Ethiopian state. As it is clear to all, State violence has been institutionalized in Oromiyaa. Genocide has become the ultimate expression of the Tigran led state’s aim to annihilate the Oromo population. This policy of repression, violence and genocide is not spontaneous but it is the outgrowth of the decisions made by the Tigran powerful political and economic elites who have access to the significant state resources-the judiciary, the army, the police force, the security, intelligence and the economy. In order to implement this policy, the institution of violence- the notorious Agazi Special Force has been created; military and concentration camps have been expanded; technique of torture have been refined and organizational criminal intelligence networks and killing squads have been established throughout the country whose purpose are to destroy nations and nationalities in Ethiopia.

Genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crime Genocide

The general framework for analysis on the question of genocide in Ethiopia is the following based on the UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of crime of genocide Article II of 1948. It is oftentimes referred as crime of crimes. It states “genocide means any of the following acts Committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

On basis of this article, the two fundamental elements of the crime are the first is intention, and the second is the act committed include at least one of the five criteria cited above. Based on the Article II the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of crimes of genocide, under the TPLF, the Oromo people have been intentionally killed (Article II a); the regime’s inhumane treatment of a serious bodily and mental harm have been inflicted upon the Oromo, Sidama, Somali, Gambella, Amhara and etc. (Article II b). Furthermore, this Tigran perpetrator regime has been subjecting the Oromo, Anuak and the Amhara to a systematic expulsion, eviction and forced removal from their homes and farmlands and subsequently settling its nationals on those lands. It has undertaken deprivation of means of livelihood by confiscating property, destruction of homes, looting and denial of housing that are tantamount to a deliberate act to inflict on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction (Article II c). Furthermore, land is the life of the people. Hence, expulsion of the people from their land is a deliberately inflicting on the people, conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole, or in part (Article II c). It is therefore clear according to Article II a, b, and c, genocide is clearly committed by the TPLF led-regime of Ethiopia.

Here it is important to understand the basic difference between crime against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing and crimes of war. Genocide is understood to be the state-organized, state-sponsored systematic mass murder of innocent and helpless men, women, and children with the purpose of eradicating a group from a territory and subsequently populating that territory by the nationals of the perpetrators. For this, it commonly describes campaigns of mass extermination. It is a form of annihilation. It includes physical disappearance (the body destruction) and symbolic disappearance (the destruction of the memory of their existence). For these, it is oftentimes said that the main objective of genocidal destruction is the transformation of the victims into “nothing” and the survival into “nobodies.”

Ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing is defined as forcible removal, unlawful displacement, relocation, deportation, forced transfer and expulsion of an ethnic group from a given territory. It is a forced permanent removal of one group of people by another from a region or territory and the subsequent occupation of that territory by ethnic group of the perpetrator as though the target group had never existed there. It includes the removal of all physical reminders of the targeted group through the destruction of historical sites such as shrines, monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship. With ethnic cleansing, the group’s attachment to the land and its environment will be destroyed through destruction of the group’s homes, social service centers, farms, institutions and the societal infrastructures. Methods for carrying out ethnic cleansing among other things include, such as:

• forced expulsion, or voluntary evacuation through violence, intimidation, fear and genocide;
• Murder;
• Torture;
• Arbitrary arrest and detention;
• Extra‐judicial executions;
• Rape and sexual assaults’ as well as deportation and military assaults against civilians and etc.

Ethnic cleansing is related to genocide. It is a form of genocide. If so, one may ask a question as to what makes genocide distinct from ethnic cleansing. One distinctive difference is ethnic cleansing is focused more closely than genocide on territory and on forced removal of ethnic groups from specific areas. The purpose is to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas belonging to perpetrator ethnic group. Another difference between the two is the intent of genocide is to destroy the group, whereas the intent of ethnic cleansing is to displace the group. Hence, intent to displace is not intent to destroy. However, the overlap between ethnic cleansing and genocide takes place when forced removal of population leads to a group’s physical and symbolic destruction. In this case, ethnic cleansing becomes genocide. Genocide is the ultimate form of permanent removal.

Again another similarity is ethnic cleansing takes on extermination. At this stage mass killings begin. Killing becomes sport. At this time, the perpetrators dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, cover up evidence, and intimidate witnesses. Leaders of the guilty regimes block investigations of crimes, and often remain free from punishment of their crimes. The question one may raise is as to causes for ethnic cleansing. The primary objective for ethnic cleansing are ethnic difference, pursuit of land-grab, economic goal and political power. It is the function of unchecked political power-the power that commits crime of ethnic cleansing to achieve its objective of land-grabbing, of capturing natural resources, economic wealth and consolidate its political power base. Not only these, the TPLF’s ethnic cleansing also based on its hate, prejudice, intolerance for other ethnic groups and on its complete disregard for the sanctity of human life. These are what the Tigran political elites have been doing in against the nations and nationalities in the Ethiopian empire state

Crime against humanity

Crime against humanity means atrocities and offences committed against any civilian population. It constitutes mass killings of large number of individuals. It is a crime committed as a part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population. Methods of committing crime against humanity include:

• Torture;
• Murder;
• Extermination;
• mass systematic rape;
• Enslavement;
• enforced disappearance of persons;
• Forcible transfer of population;
• Persecution against collectivity on racial, national, ethnic, cultural, gender, religion, political
  or other grounds;
• Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty and etc.
• Arbitrary arrest and detention;
• Extra‐judicial executions; and etc.

Here one may raise question as to what makes genocide distinct from crimes against humanity. The answer is this, contrary to the crime against humanity, genocide has different focus. It focuses not on killing of individuals, but on the physical destruction of the groups. This means the intent of genocide is to destroy, to annihilate the group. That is to deny a particular group of people the right to exist. Thus, the victims of genocide is the group, not individual. For instance, a single isolated act could be qualified as a genocide (e.g. Sidama massacre at Loque in 2002), whereas a single isolated act against a civilian does not qualify as a crime against humanity because the crime against humanity must be committed within the context of a widespread or systematic attack on any population. Sometimes, persecution is combined and intertwined with genocide. For instance, a charge with crime against humanity is attached to the individual who is charged. Whereas a charge with genocide is attached not only to that person who is charged but to his or her ethnic group as well. The legal definitional criteria for genocide is intent. That is, intent is what distinguishes genocide from crimes against humanity. For example, the late PM Meles Zenawi’s statement of the “Majority can be made minority” is the statement of intent to destroy the majority in whole, or in part. This statement was made in reference to the Oromo people. It is the intent to commit crimes of genocide to reduce the majority to a minority status. On the basis of this, his regime has been committing genocide against the Oromo people since 1991 to-date. It must, therefore, be clear that a charge of the Tigran political elites with genocide not only attaches with the elites themselves, but also to their ethnic group as well.

War crimes

War crimes are the wilful violations of the laws or customs of war, including:

• Atrocities or offences against persons or property;
• Murder, ill treatment of the civilian population in occupied territory;
• Murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war;
• killing of hostages;
• Torture or inhumane treatment, including biological experiments;
• maiming;
• plunder of public or private property;
• Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages; and etc.

With the understanding of the fundamental distinctions between the types of these crimes, the question then remains as to under which type of crime the TPLF, its associates and allies be charged with upon the fall and demise of the TPLF fascist regime. Here, the associates include-among others, accomplices, aider and abettors, conspirators, crime facilitators, accessories, land-grabbers and etc. These are individuals with the actual and full knowledge of genocide, ethnic cleansing, crime against humanity and war crimes committed against Oromo and other peoples and yet choose to benefit or profit from such crimes. The fact is, such are individuals who have been involved in committing crimes against their own people in alliance or in association with the fascist TPLF colonial regime. For instance, if diaspora based individuals’ bought a piece of Oromo land or properties or received the land or property from the TPLF led fascist regime in the name of “investor”, they will be charged with either genocide, or ethnic cleansing or crime against humanity or with war crime depending upon the type of the crime committed. The fact is this, these individuals have been and are willingly and voluntarily engaged in the Oromo land-grab for selfish reasons with actual and full knowledge of crime being committed against the Oromo people. Consequently, these land-grabbers deprived our people life, liberty, land, and homes. These benefits or profits are made on the blood of the Oromo people. Under this condition, one thing must be clear that upon the demise of the TPLF led fascist regime, the people who were evicted from their lands or properties were taken from have full right to retake their lands or properties back.

The failure of International Community

The international community has a responsibility to use appropriate means to prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Ethiopia. However, it has failed to stop the Tigran fascism. It knew the early warning for these crimes. It knew, the Tigrans are a minority that constitutes four and half percent of 102 million population. Despite this, this minority totally controls the government. Hundred percent of the leadership is concentrated in the hands of Tigran minority ethnic group with hostility toward other ethnic groups. This minority has a complete monopoly over the Army, police forces and security and intelligence. Furthermore, the parliament is hundred percent its party, no opposition. Judicial system services the state. The Foreign Service are populated with the Tigran ethnic group. This minority ethnic group has also a total control over the economy and finance. At the same time, there is no free press. In the light of all these, the international community has overlooked the factors that should have drawn its attention about the likelihood of genocide, ethnic cleaning, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Ethiopia. This failure of international community has encourage, the TPLF led-regime to commit crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes against the peoples in the Ethiopian empire.

In sum, the TPLF is a megamurder regime. It is a radical bloodthirsty regime. Since it militarily seized power in 1991, it has been committing genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes against the people. The cruelty, savagery and intensity of its crimes against the peoples are unparalleled in the history of Ethiopian state. Hence, it is not a mischaracterization to call it, the regime of death and destruction the Ethiopian empire has ever seen. As it is stated in the above paragraphs, genocide has been perpetrated by the Tigran genocidal elites against the Oromo people. It has planned, coordinated and executed a policy of violence, terror, and annihilation of the Oromo and other peoples, their supporters, and their sympathizers. Such crimes have been carried out both domestically and beyond national borders. It has failed to comply with the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and other crimes to which the Ethiopian state is a signatory. At the same time, the Ethiopian judicial system is at the service of national security state. Consequently, it has also failed in Ethiopia with regard to human rights violations and crimes against humanity. Moreover, the international community is also not willing to confront the Tigran led-regime for its crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. This means it turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the crimes that the Tigran fascist regime is and has been committing against the peoples. Consequently, it too has failed to defend the people against genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in the case of Ethiopia. The only way of bringing justice to the people of Ethiopian empire state regarding the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity is through the establishment of Special International Tribunals. It is, therefore, time for the international community to confront head on and stop this genocidal violence against the people before it reaches catastrophic proportions.

However, one thing must be clear. No one will come to stop the genocide, crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing against the Oromo and other peoples. As history has shown time and again, no a nation ever came to save the Armenians from the Ottoman Empire committed genocide as one and half million were destroyed in three years; no a nation came to save the Jews from German committed genocide until after six million were perished; and no a nation came to save Tutsi from Hutu committed genocide until after one million were perished in three months. So, it is to be naive to expect the world community to come to the Oromo’s aid to stop genocide that the genocidal fascist Tigran elites are being committing against them. The genocide committed against the Jews, the Armenians and Tutsi were committed by the majority, whereas today the genocide against the Oromo people is being committed by the minority regime. The TPLF’s genocide against the Oromo people can only be stopped by the Oromo people alone. This demands organization, leadership, and a political will to act. For this, the Oromo people must be organized and armed in order to fight and removal this enemy and its horror of genocide from Oromiyaa. At the same time, it is incumbent upon the peoples of the Ethiopian empire state to join together in the fighting against this barbarous common enemy, to remove its horror of genocide, its crime against humanity and its ethnic cleansing and to bring it to justice. Here one has to be realistic that there is no help coming from external powers to stop the TPLF genocide against the Oromo and other peoples. Hence, it is time to take ones destiny into one’s own hands in order defend oneself, to fight and defeat this dangerous enemy-the TPLF. For this, it is time to organize, mobilize and army the population to fight in order to dismantle the TPLF led genocidal fascist regime, to remove its horror of genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, its laws and its institutions.

Oromiyaa Shall BE Free!

Boruu Barraaqaatiin

Kutaa 1ffaa

Oromoonni Matakkal gosa Oromoo Maccaa jalatti beekamu. Kufaatii Dargii dura kutaa Gojjaam keessatti waamamuu turani. Yeroo ammaa ammoo Naannoo Bulchiinsa Beenishaangul jalatti bulaa jirani. Akka qorannoon seenaa manguddoota Oromoo naannoo kanaa irraa sassaabame ibsutti, akkaataan qubsuma ummata keneya kanaa bifa lama kan hordofe ture. Kan duraa gama Baha Wallaggaa irraan Dangab yookiin Dibaax naannoo jedhamu kan qubatanii dha. Kan lammaffaa ammoo gama Dhiha Wallaggaa lafoota akka Najjoo, Gidaamii, Muggii, Boojji fi Sibuu irraa laga Abbayyaa cehanii bakka amma Wanbaraa jedhamu kan qubatani. Kun kan tahe jaarraa 16ffaa yeroo itti Oromoon daga isaa duraan halagootaan qabatamee ture deebisee toyachuuf bal’inaan sosso’aa ture san irraa eegaleeti jedhama.

Oromoonni yeroo ammaa bulchiinsa naannoo Benishaangul Gumuz jalatti bulaa jiran miidhaan sabummaa irra gahaa jiraachuu dubbatu. Akka fakkeenyaatti rakkoolee gurguddoo ummatni Waanbaraa himachaa jiru haa laallu.

Akka dargaggoonni Oromoo naannoo kana keessatti dhalatanii hiree barnoota olaanaa argatan qorannoo geggeessanitti, yeroo ammaatti akka Oromootti jiraachuun Oromoota Waanbaraa gaaffii keessa galee jira. Kana kan nama jechisisu keessa qabxilee muummee ta’an tokko tokko tuqun barbaachisaa dha. Isaanis:

• Jaarroleen biyyaa bara 1987 hanga Finfinneetti dhufanii waa’ee Oromoon mirga dhabuu iyyatanillee hiika hin arganne;
• Bara 1986 waraanni irratti banamee namootni heeddun dhumaniiru, manni gubateera, qabeenyis barbadaa’ee jira;
• Namni 30 Naqamteetti ergamani Afaan Oromoon leenjii barsiisummaa argatanii yoo deebi’anis ‘Kun biyya Oromoo miti, yoo barbaaddan biyya isaa dhaqaa barsiisaa, kanaan achi yoo waan biraan leenjii keessan hin fooyyessitan ta’e Afaan Oromootiin hojii hin argattan’ jedhamanii waan baratan gatii akka dhabu godhamee jira;
• Uummatni martinuu yeroo saba isaatiin gurmaa’u Oromoon dhorkamee jira. Qaama Dh.D.U O irraa namootni Oromoota Waanbaraa gurmeessuuf dhufan qaama aanaa kanaan ari’amanii tarkaanfiin tokkoyyuu hin fudhatamne;
• Oromoon dhaloota biyyaa ti malee abbaa biyyaa miti (ye haager tewallajji injii ye haager baale beet ayidellem) jechuudhaan erga abbaan biyyaa argaate dhuftuun (maxxee) irratti dhalatte ammo argatti jechuun ijoolleen Oromoo carraa barnoonta ol aanaa fi hojii akka hin arganne balballi itti cufameera. Haala adda addaan utuu sabummaan isaanii hin beekamin yoo miliqanii keessa darbanis guddina akka hin arganne godhamuudhaan gocha Afriikaa Kibbaa durii waliin wal fakkaatu naanichaan raawwatamaa jira;
• Mirga hawaasaa fi siyaasaan alas gama dinagdee fi haaqa seeraan loogiin hojjetamu Oromummaa Oromoota aanaa kanaa irratti dhiibba guddaa gochaa jira.
• Ijoolleen Oromoo filmaata dhaban Oromummaa isaanii jijjiiranii Sinishuummaatti galmaa’uudhaan hojii argachuuf dirqamaa jiru. Kunis uummaticha haasofsiisuun kan mirkanaa’uu danda’amuu dha; akkasumas,

Uummatni Oromoo baayyinni isaa akka lakkoofsa bara 1984tti (A.L.A) koonyaa Matakkalaa harra zoonii ta’e keessatti 55,501 ture, yeroo lakkoofsa bara 1994 (A.L.A)tti waggaa 10 keessatti 3,332 qofa dabaluun 58,833 qofaa ta’ee jira. Kunumtuu yeroo akka Goojjamitti bara 1984 (A.L.A) lakkaa’ame kan Oromootin zooniilee Kamaashii fi Asoosaa itti hin dabalamin 55,501 ture. Kun akkamittiin gurmuudhaan kan Oromoo Waanbaraa caalan Oromootni zooniilee lamaa itti dabalamaanii haala baayyinni uummataa Itiyoophiiyaa keessaa itti dabalaa ture % 2.9 tiin kan Oromoo Benishaangul gumuz keessa jiruu garuu kana duwwaa ta’e gaaffiin jedhu deebii hin arganne.

Ummatni Sinichoo duris ammas zooniidhuma Matakkalaa aanaaleedhuma durii sadan armaan olitti eeraman keessa qofa jiratu. Garuu lakkoofsa bara 1984tiin (A.L.A) 17,840 ture irraa bara 1994 (A.L.A) waggaa kudhan keessatti 14,265 dabaluudhaan gara 32,105tti ol guddachuun isaanii lakkoofsi Oromoo garuu akka gadi qabamu loogiin godhamuu isaa sirriitti mul’isa. Utuu dhugaadhaan %2.9 tiinuu shallagamee (projection) Oromoon Zoonii Matakkalaa utuu warra zoonii kaaniiyyuu hin dabalatin gara 74,588tti, kan Sinichoos gara 32,105tti utuu hin ta’in gara 23,975tti guddata ture. Amma garuu kan mullatu Oromoon waggaa kudhan keesaa % 1 gadiin, Sinichoon ammoo % 6 tiin akka dabalaniidha. Kun ammo kan dhugaa irraa baayyee fagaatee ta’uun isaa ifa.  Xinxala istaatistiikii armaan gaditti gabateen kaa’ame irraa hubachuun ni danda’ama.

Xiinxala Baayyina Uummata Oromoo Matakkalaa kan Lakkoofsa Estaatistikii Bara 1984 fi 1994 A.L.A Irratti Hundaa’e

Maddeen odeeffannooKutaa 2ffaa barruu kanaa keessatti furmaata malu irratti xiyyeeffanna.

• Manguddoota biyyaa naannichaa
• Waraqaa qorannoo eebbaa (dissertation) barattoota Oromoo dhalootaan naannoo sanii
• Wikopedia
• Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia

Abdii Boruutiin

Gaafii akka mata dureetti dhiyaate kanaaf deebii otuu hin barbaadin dura, garaagarummaa fi walfakkeenya sochiilee lamaanii kana hubachuun barbaachisaa dha. Walfakkeenya caalaa garaagarummaan waan heddoomuuf, mee dura walfakkeenya sochiilee kanaa gabaabumaan ilaalla.

Walfakkeenya

Musiliimonni kan gaafachaa turan mirgi amantii keenyaa nuu haa eegamu; mootummaan dhimma kana keessa seenee nuuf murteessuu ykn nurratti murteessuu hin danda’u; namoota nuti barbaadne fi filannetu nu hogganuu qabu; amantii nuti hordofnu otuu jiruu kan biraa alaa dhufee nurratti fe’amuu hin qabu fi kkf yoo ta’u sochiin kun yeroo dheeraa booda jijjiirama tokko otuu hin fidin dhaabbate.

Karaa biraatiin sochii uummata Oromoo yoo ilaalle ammoo, gabaabumatti ka’umsi isaa Maastar Plaanii wajjin walqabatee, yoo xiqqaate mirgi seerri fi heerri biyyattiidhaaf lafa kaayame nuu haa kabajamu kan jedhu ta’ee, kunoo ji’oota sagal keessa jira. Walumaagalatti walfakkeenyi sochiilee lamaaniitu gaafii mirgaa ti jechuu dha. Gaafiin Oromoo garuu kan asitti dhaabbatu qofaa miti. Waayee kanas armaan gaditti ilaalla.Gama deebii Wayyaaneen kennituun yoo ilaalles, namoota reebuu, dararuu fi hidhuun sochiilee lamaan keessattu kan mul’atuu dha. Wayyaaneen akkuma barte sochiilee kana humnaan dhaabuu ykn dhabamsiisuu yaaluu ishii ti.

Garaagarummaa

Garaagarummaan sochiilee lamaan kana jedduu jiru baay’ee bal’aa waan ta’eef, hunda isaatuu kaasuun yoo danda’amuulle baate, qabxiilee gurguddoo tokko tokko kaasuun ni danda’ama.

Tokkofaa, sochiin uummata Oromoo fi gaafiin isaa har’a sadarkaa ol aanaarra haa gahu malee, erga uummatni Oromoo gabrummaa Habashaa jalatti kufee kaasee, hanga har’aatti kan deemaa jiru; gaafii bu’uraa; gaafii eenyummaa; gaafii bilisummaa fi Abbaabiyyummaa waan ta’eef baay’ee bal’aa fi hanga kun guutumaa guutuutti deebii argatutti dhaabbachuu kan hin dandeenye dha.

Lammaffaa, uummata sochiileen kun lamaan hammatan yoo ilaalle, sochiin uummata keenyaa Oromiyaa kaabaa-kibba, bahaa-dhiha akkasumas jiddugaleessa kan kakaase yoo ta’u, walumaagalatti sochii biyyoolessaa ti jechuu ni danda’ama. Sochiin Musiliimotaa garuu harka caalaan magaalota keessatti waan ta’e natti fakkaata.

Sadaffaa, tooftaaleen sochiilee lamaanii garaagarummaa guddaa qabu. Tooftaalee uummatni keenya itti fayyadamani fi ittifayyadamaas jiran, biyyatti sana keessatti kan mul’atee ykn argamee hin beekne yoo ta’u, diinagdee Wayyaanee laaffisuurratti gahee guddaa taphatan.

Afraffaa, gaafiin uummatni Oromoo kaase fi kaasaas jiru ijoon isaa gaafii eenyummaa ykn gaafii jiruu fi jireenyaa ti. Uummatni tokko yoo eenyummaan isaa jiraate fi lafa qabaate bilisummaa fi abbaabiyummaa hawwa. Haalli nuti har’a keessa jiru garuu baay’ee yaaddessaa waan ta’eef uummatni keenya baduurraa of baraaruuf qabsaa’aa jira. Gaafiin/sochiin akkanaa ammoo guutumaa guututti hanag deebii argatutti waan dhaabbatuu miti.

Shanaffaa, sochii Musiliimotaa dhaabuuf Wayyaaneen Poolisoota itti bobbaaftee turte. Kan uummata keenyaa dhaabuuf ykn dhabamsiisuuf garuu har’a kunoo Oromiyaa guutuu waraana ishiitiin bulchaa jirti. Bulchuurra unkuraa jirti jechuu wayya. Lammiileen keenya kan waraanni Agaazii ajjeese lakkofsi isaanii sirriitti hin beekamu. Kan hidhame, ajjeefame fi bakka buuteen isaanii hin beekamnes akkasuma.

Egaa, gara gaafii mata dureetti deebi’uudhaaf, wanti biraallee yo hafe, garaagarummaa asitti tuttuqaman kanaayyuu yoo fudhanne fi ijoo dubbii yoo laalle, sochiin uummata Oromoo waan dhaabbatu hin fakkaatu. Bakkee tokkotti waan qabbanaaye fakkaatee, bakkee biraatti ka’aatuma ittifufa malee hin dhaabbatu jechuu dha. Hangam akka turu fi jijjiiramni inni fidu beekamuu baatullee akka sochii Musiliimotaa sana waan dhaabbatee hafu natti hin fakkaatu; hin ta’as jedhee hin amanu. Haa ta’u malee, gaafiin “Jijjiirama hoo fidaa?” kan jedhu waa baay’eerratti hundaaya.

Inni guddaa fi hangafti garuu tokkummaa uummata keenyaa fi humna keenya jabeessuu dha. Qabsoo kana keessatti hunduu dirqama Oromummaa bahuu dha. Gahee fi qoodni kiyya maali jedhanii ofgaafachuu dha. Waan namarraa eegamu godhuun yeroon isaa har’a malee boruu akka hin taane hubachuu dha.

Sochii uummata Oromoo kana keessatti gaafiilee adda addaatu ka’u. Fakkeenyaaf, uummattootni Itoophiyaa maaliif callisanii taa’u? Maaliif uummata Oromootiif gargaarsa hin goone? Maaliif ka’anii waliin hin sochoone?… Gaafiilee kana kaasuun gaarii dha. Haa ta’u malee, wanti hubachuu qabnu tokko, olola Habashootaatiin baroota dheeraaf keessumaayuu Wayyaanotaan godhama ture fi jiru irraa kan ka’e, uummatni Oromoo bilisummaa fi abbaabiyyummaa isaa deebisee yoo argate, uummattoota biraatiif sodaachisaa akka ta’u waan itti himamaa tureef; kunis sammuulee uummattootaa keessa waan jiruuf; hanag rakkoo walfakkaataan dhaqee balbala isaanii rurrukututti har’a hunduu callisuu filatan. Uummattoota Habashaa dhiisii warrumti akka keenyaatuu warri kibbaa callisuun isaanii waanuma olola kanarraa madde natti fakkaata. Kan ta’es ta’u, Oromoon wal malee gargaarsa biraa akka hin qabne yoomiyyuu caalaa hubachuu qaba. Kanaaf, tokkummaa fi humna Oromoo cimsuu qofaatu furmaata nuuf ta’a.

Tokkumman Oromoo akkamitti cimuu danda’a?

Akkuman kanaan duras barreessaa ture fi har’as irradeebi’ee jechuu fedhu, tokkummaan nuti dhabne ykn bakkeen hir’inni jiru tokkummaa qabsaa’otaa fi jaarmayoota Oromoo bira. Uummatni keenya akka uummataatti tokkummaa qabaachuu isaanii jechaan qofaa otuu hin taane, hojiidhaan lafarratti agarsiisanii jiru. Tokkummaan har’a dhabame tokkummaa jaarmayoota keenyaa ti. Yeroo baay’ee tokkoomne ykn walhubanne jechaatuma as gahanii jiru. Tokkummaan dhugaa garuu jaarmayoota keenya jidduutti mul’atee hin beeku. Kun waan nama gaddisiisu fi qaanessuu dha. Har’a illee yeroo uummatni keenya ijoollee sabiyyii dabalatee diinaan ajjeefamaa jiran kanatti, jaaramayootni Oromoo biyya alaa jiran, gadi bahanii waliigalle jedhanii; sana booda garuu sagaleen isaanii dhabamuun isaanillee qaanessuu qaba. Uummata keenyatti qoosaa jiruyii? Yeroon ammaa yeroo waan jedhan hojiidhaa agarsisan malee, akkuma dur barame, ibsa baasaniituma manatti deebi’anii taa’anii miti!! Kun isaaniifis nuufis qaanii hamma kana hin jedhamnee dha.

Biyyatti deebi’anii, uummata keessatti argamanii waliin qabsaa’uu yoo baatan, tokkummaa dhugaa uumanii sagalee tokko dubbachuunuu uummata biyya keessa jiruuf hamilee ta’aa bar!! Lakkii, kana godhuurra amaluma barame sana ittifufuu filatanii jiru. Isaan tokko tokko mooraa QBO keessatti tokkummaa qabsaa’otaa uummuurra jaarmayoota alagaa biroo wajjin tumsa uumuun bu’aa waan qabu ykn tooftaa gaarii akka ta’e waan yaadan fakkaatu. Tumsa uumuun badaa miti. Keessumaayuu uummattoota akka keenyaa fi hiree walfakkaata qabnu wajjin tumsa uumuun barbaachisaa dha. Humnoota fedhii uummata keenyaa hin qabne fi kaayyoo QBO hin kabajne waliin tumsa yaaduun eessanuu nu hin gahu. Mooraadhuma keenya humneessuu fi cimsuutu furmaata caaluu dha. Keessumaayyuu humnoota kaayyoo fi galii keenya hin barbaadne wajjin maalirratti waliigaluuf jennee ammas yeroo keenya gubna? Isaan kun eenyummaa keenyaa hin fudhatanii bar!! Itoophiyummaa fi alaabaa ishii fudhachiisuuf haal-duree uumuu bar!

Tokkummaan jaarmayootaa kan dhugaa ta’e yoo jiraate wanti qindeeffamu fi hojjetamu hunduu bu’aa agarsiisa. Yoo kun hin jiraanne akkamitti dandeettii, beekumsa fi qabeenya keenya qindeessinee humna uumuu dandeenya? Gara gara faffaca’uun akka bu’aa hin qabne waanu argaa as geenye dha. Aariidhaa (Emotionally) barreessu natti hin ta’inii, jaarmayootni keenya kan biyya alaa jiran kun tokkoomuu kan danda’an, hoggansi jaarmayoota hundaatuu kan amma jiru kun gutumaa guutuutti jijjiiramee, dhaloota haar’aadhaan yoo bakka buufame qofaa dha jedheen yaada. Warri hanga har’aatti asiin gahan gaheen isaanii “gorsa kennuu” otuu ta’ee irra caalaatti jijjiirama tokko fiduu danda’a jedheen amana. Beekumsa, dandeettii fi mooyxannoo qabaniin dhaloota (hoggana) haaraa bira yoo dhaabbatan galiin isaan barbaadanillee bakka gahuu danda’a. Kun isaan achi dhiibuuf otuu hin taane, humna haaraadhaan qabsoo sadarkaa ol aanaarra gahe kana caalaatti finiinsanii gabrummaa xumuruuf gargaarsa ta’a jedheen amana.

Yeroo baay’ee akka haasa’amaa ture fi jirutti, humna waraanaa Oromoo cimsuun filannoo barbaadamaa (Preferred Option) akka ta’e amanama. Haa ta’u malee, waraana ijaaruun jaarmayaa tokko ta’e fi hoggansa cimaa qabu, kan uummata Oromootiin deeggarsa guddaa qabu jalatti yoo ta’e malee waa hundaa qindeessuun rakkisaa ta’a. Uummatni keenya qabeenyaan gargaaruuf hamileedhaan kan ka’u jaarmayaan akkanaa yoo jiraate qofaa dha. Jaarmayaa waa hundaa sossoosuu danda’u (an organization which can mobilize all recourses) yoo hin qabaanne, gargaarsi uummataas laafaa ta’uu danda’a jechuu dha. Egaa, gara xumura barreeffama kiyyaatitti deemuuf, jaarmayootni keenya kan biyya alaatti gargar hiramanii jiran waayee kana ittiyaaduu qabu. Otuu isaan asii fi achi jedhanuu uummatni isaan gatee deemee akka fagaate waan hubatan natti fakkaata. Kanaafuu, silaa isaantu cimee uummata dursa ture; amma garuu uummatatu isaan dursee jira. Uummatatu waan isaan hogganaa jiru fakkaata. Bakkee adda addaatti bibixxilamanii hafuurra, yeroon walitti deebi’anii tokkummaa dhugaa uuman yeroon isaa amma.

Galatoomaa!

“The suffering which falls to our lot in the course of nature, or by chance, or fate, does not seem so painful as suffering which is inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.”

By: Yared Terfassa

From reading a recent article by the well-seasoned historian, Dr. Mohammed Hassen, titled “… continuous attack on Oromo identity…,” one can surely pick up the agony and powerlessness felt by the author for the violence and brutality endured by his people – the Oromo. And, that man of conscience, Mr. Felix Horne of the Human Rights Watch, expressed his utter revulsion at the extent of brutality the current Ethiopian Government is perpetrating against the Oromo in the phrase, “Such a Brutal Crackdown,” a title he gave to the recent report.

Unquestionably, the political sentiments of both of these good people are shared by all those who stand for peace and human dignity.  But, there are ideas and attitudes that underpin “Such A Brutal Crackdown” and “continuous attack on Oromo identity”.  Understanding of these underpinnings is imperative to finding ways out of the perennial problem of violence in Ethiopia. My premise here is that “violence is never a question of a single act in the here and now.” It is a “phenomenon that has history.” And, more often than not, it is preceded by some sort of generalized belief or prejudicial judgment.

The violence against the Oromo did not commence in November 2015. It has been going on since the inception of the Ethiopian State.  Of course, there are those who completely forget, deny, rationalize, and/or relativize the history of violence against the Oromo. These individuals have the luxury of “historical amnesia and incuriousness about” it. For the Oromo, however, the Ethiopian State violence is a “lived experience of expropriation, whose effect constitute…daily humiliation…”

Prior to the importation of the idea of nation-state into Africa from Europe in the 19^th century, the Oromo had lived as a pre-nation, independent people under an indigenous, democratic, administrative system, the Gadaa. They are people of ancient origin. The initial act of the formation of the Oromo as a linguistic-cultural group can be adequately explained by the principles of ease, least effort, congeniality, and pride in one’s own culture. And, the longevity of its existence can be attributed to the coherence and soundness of the foundational ideas Oromo for communal living, the commitment of its adherents, and of course, historical fortune.

The Gadaa system, which has served the Oromo well since time immemorial to live in peace, proved inadequate in the face of an emerging politico-military organization imported from Europe. The Oromo did not transition from direct democracy to a centralized, national, republican form of government in time to successfully fend off threats to their independent survival. Though the absence of centralized national leadership at a critical juncture has made the Oromo vulnerable to the military adventures of chieftains, it was the political tutorial and bullet handouts of the Europeans to local chiefs that was decisive in changing the Oromo’s historical fortune. The Europeans gave out the tutorials and handouts on a first come basis to local chieftains who would give or give up something in return. The Europeans help was never based on considerations of individual merit of the chieftains or evaluations of the languages, traditions, or social organizations of indigenous groups. In politics then, as it is today, what mattered was “who you know.”

Be that as it may, since the completion of the founding of the Ethiopian State violently in early 20^th century, the Oromo fate in Ethiopia has been in limbo until 1991. During that period, a modus vivendi has been “worked out” between the Ethiopian State and the Oromo in which the latter “simply knew” their position in the Ethiopian social hierarchy. They were expected to abide by the realities of the prevailing system. Whatever resistance the Oromo had showed was viciously suppressed. In 1991, however, social changes that occurred in Ethiopia pushed the Oromo issue to the fore. The power to be, the TPLF, declared its commitment to address ethnic/national issues through “Revolutionary Democracy” – respect and recognition for the sovereignty of ethnic/national groups. For the first time in Oromo history, Oromia, Oromo country, obtained legal and political recognition in Ethiopia.

Merely a year into its rule, however, the TPLF wavered from its “convictions” and replaced them with its narrow, group “interests.” It replaced “Revolutionary Democracy” with the so-called “Developmental State” program. The essence of this program is the creation of a middle class whose members would be chosen, directly or indirectly, by the TPLF and perpetuate Tigrean hegemony for a long, long time to come. Accordingly, the TPLF adopted England’s 18^th century “primitive accumulation of capital” model to create wealth to its leaders and benefactors. It involves “suddenly and forcibly” divorcing farmers from their “subsistence farm” for the purpose of raising capital. It should be noted that when this took place in England, the country had already had over three hundred years of existence as a nation, which is far different from the ethnic and national realities of Ethiopia in the 21^st century.

The Oromo have naturally rejected the imposition of these “horrifying barbarisms” and the rationalization of irrational means (impoverishing millions of Oromo) to an end (creating a few capitalists, mainly Tigreans). The Oromo view TPLF’s paternalism (and/or parasitism) as the worst form of affront toward their dignity. As a result, the Oromo, from Wollo to Borena and from Wellega to Hararghe, have taken to the streets in opposition to TPLF’s project of dispossession. Obbo Ibsa Gutema, that man with iron in his soul, has proudly characterized the recent Oromo resistance/mobilization as “…unseen… (at least) in the region…since the 16^th century.”

One cannot fault the TPLF, or any other group, for having or pursuing its own social, economic or political interest. Interests can be negotiated and an amicable solution can be found. But, when one’s interests are elevated to the status of rights, they become non-negotiable. Thus, the TPLF has to defend its newly devised non-negotiable interests via the rule of violence as it is doing now, and not through the rule of law.

Successive Ethiopian governments have made use of extreme violence against opposition groups, ideological or ethnic/national. But, the violence against the Oromo has been going on for so long and the ubiquitous prejudice against them have made the perpetrators and a lot of observers unsympathetic and unempathetic. It is a historical fact that the Ethiopian ruling class and its adjunct intellectuals have been propagating ethnic/national prejudice against the Oromo. Some of the prejudicial judgments about the Oromo in Ethiopia include describing or characterizing them as “late comers or foreigners,” “uncivilized,” “pagans,” “tribalist,” “narrow nationalist”, “extremist,” “threat to Ethiopia,” “agents of foreign powers,” and more.

Remember the old adage: “There has never been a bite without previous barking.” Without such generalize beliefs, the violence against the Oromo could not have been sustained with such frequency and intensity for so long. These beliefs are, of course, literally absurd. They are based on faulty and inflexible generalizations. They cannot be rationally accounted for by the objectively known traits of the Oromo or their deserved reputation. But, they have been serving a purpose justifying and/or masking the economic advantage, social status and political power that the rulers derive from the subjugation of the Oromo. These prejudices are then passed on from generation to generation.

Some of the ways that anti-Oromo prejudices are propagated and recycled from generation to generation are:

• Jokes and derisive languages as methods of proving the “inferiority” of Oromo and exalting the attributes of others.The jokes one tells or gets amused by say a lot about the decency and soundness of one’s character. Of course, some get a sense of superiority/release in the most deranged of ways, including via depraved and debased jokes.A few use of the epithet “gala” not only to characterize a person’s membership but also to disparage and reject him. The use of this epithet is to dehumanize the Oromo and influence how they are perceived and how they are written about and thought about by the general public in Ethiopia. For the user of this epithet, the proper name Oromo strikes him as absurd; the Oromo language strikes him as ludicrous; the mention of the Oromo name sends him into paroxysm of fear, or a frenzy of anger.
• Denial of the existence of the Oromo nation and/or oppression against them so as to justify the rule of violence.Some of the deniers of the existence of the Oromo nation set about deconstructing the Oromo identity in an attempt to show the illogicality and falsity of the facts of Oromo history. They argue that since there are no “pure Oromos” in Ethiopia, those who profess real Oromo identity are “self-serving fakes,” whose demand for social justice should be dismissed as mere trouble making.These deniers fail to understand that national identity is not a biological concept although ancestral lineage has traditionally been accorded much weight in the literature. They also fail to appreciate the sense of pride and purpose the Oromo identity produces and the passion it engenders that are instrumental in the struggle for freedom and justice. There is no moral error in claiming, asserting, and promoting one’s ethnic/national identity. Furthermore, the only way to find out whether the Oromo nation exists is to ask the people – a project that requires political will and the audacity to take responsibility.Some other deniers make every effort to find an alternative “national problem” with a view to put the Oromo question on the back burner. Some of the problems identified to undermine or hide ethnic/national problems are income inequality (class struggle), corruption, border issues, religion, threat from external enemy, and so on. Of course, Ethiopia has these problems and much more. Yet, the articulation of one problem and the attempt to find one sovereign solution does not seem a rational or practical approach to address the multi-headed demon facing the country, including the most potent – ethnic/national issue.

  Still, others present ethnic/national problems as economic questions, and proceed to look for solutions in the Marxian school of thought. They are of the opinion that “class makes for a rational political behavior because it associates people on the basis of their common interests, in pursuit of an individual emancipation.” They theorize ethnic identity as “false consciousness.” The Ethiopian experience of class warfare under the Derg clearly demonstrated the absurdity of this belief, though. Driven by “envy, resentment, and paranoia,” the so-called class struggle had turned into a justification for arbitrary imprisonment, torture, judicial and extra-judicial killings. The experiences of almost all countries who chose similar journeys had been even more horrifying.  The affirmation of the Oromo identity is not “false consciousness” that needs violent absolution. Rather, it is a human rights issue demanding urgent politico-legal solutions.

  Also, traditional liberal democracy is inadequate to address the deep-seated, extremely discriminatory socio-political problems in Ethiopia. It has failed to appreciate the dynamic interrelationship between individual rights and group rights. Advocates of liberal democracy also miserably fail to see that the free choice, civil society, and property rights they advocate could not be achieved or sustained in a country where there are ethnic/national prejudice and discrimination. The sad culture of “copy and paste” of the Ethiopian literati has proved to be an additional impediment to finding peaceful, egalitarian solutions for ethnic/national problems.

  Sometimes, however, the denial of the existence of the Oromo as a group or the oppression against it are based upon sheer habituation to the status quo, and not on malicious intent. Some people are accustomed to the prevailing social system that they think it is eternally fixed and entirely satisfactory to the Oromo. Such people do not have malicious intent, thus are amenable to change through information and learning.

• Fabrication of myths to create the illusion that the current social order has moral superiority because it has historical priority.All nation-states create or use myths about themselves that they wish to perpetuate. One motive for the formulation of myths could be the desire to enhance national pride or status, or to provide a heritage to live up to. In Ethiopia, however, a variety of myths have been fabricated to discredit, defame, and denigrate the Oromo. Some of these myths have been fabricated to create the illusion that the current social order has always been accepted and hence, it is beyond reproach or contestation. History of antiquity is employed as a device to suppress legitimate demands for justice. In most cases, those who manufacture the destructive myths in Ethiopia are individuals with some kind technical training. They write articles, blogs, books which give them a veneer of respectability and a modicum of success in spreading their fables since their writings are quite widely distributed. Even with the best of intentions, the utility of myths in forming lasting national unity is fatally undermined when the ruling class perpetuates discrimination and violence against a significant segment of the population, as is the case against the Oromo.
• Employment of primordialist theories to trivialize and delegitimize the Oromo quest for freedom and equality. In addition, rationalization of the actions of the Ethiopian Government, relativization of the suffering of Oromo, and blaming the Oromo for their predicament have all been used for the same effect.Some characterize the Oromo’s demand for recognition as “tribalism,” or “primordialist.” They argue that such a demand is an “irrational sentiment” that has survived from past tribalism, and not fit for the modern personality. Some even have borrowed the phrase, “lack of imagination” from Mr. Obama’s speech to give credence to their myopic and defective reasoning. They describe Oromo nationalist as “cultural fools, doomed to reproduce their world endlessly and mindlessly.”These prejudiced individuals condemn the Oromo in the most condemnatory terms possible. The critical weakness of these arguments is that they fail to recognize again that ethnicity is not a genetic concept. The fact that the Oromo identity is not biological reality does not mean it does not have social significance. In fact, the Oromo identity in Ethiopia likely determines or greatly influences an Oromo individual’s personal security, socio-economic mobility, and the like. And, approaching ethnicity or nations in terms of genes/DNA is not just wrong but dangerous. The argument these bad-faith Ethiopians are pursuing and the position they are advocating is a species of sociological racism and may become a doctrine of extermination.The other category of ill-thinkers attempt to rationalize the suffering and oppression of the Oromo. They invoke the Darwinian theory of evolution in such a way to justify the subjugation of the Oromo by a “fit” ethnic group. They chide the Oromo for their “stubborn refusal to modernization.” But, modernization is not a neutral concept; it is a contested one. Modernization can be viewed as not an instrument of modernity but its subversion. For instance, colonization as an instrument of modernization carried to other peoples, to construct auxiliary instruments of labor, is the antithesis to modernity. Thus, the Oromo demand for cultural right and socio-political recognition cannot be dismissed on the premise of modernity.

Deconstructing history, fabricating fables, denigrating the Oromo are simple intellectual tasks; they do not involve difficult moral choices. But, their impact on the Oromo individual is all too real.

Naturally, the Oromo individual has devised ways to survive the persistent blows of contempt and violence directed toward him/her in Ethiopia. He/she has employed various tactics/mechanisms to survive the scourge of ethnic prejudice and national oppression. And, the choice of tactics/mechanisms depended on the individual’s own life experiences: how he/she was trained, how severe his/her suffered from persecution, his/her philosophy of life, etc.  Some of these are:

• Selective self-preservation and passivity: many individuals, particularly in urban settings, have resorted to the tactic of playing the clown, ingratiating themselves, pretense, etc. in the interest of survival and social mobility.
• Denial of membership: is the simplest response. This device comes easy for those who do not have Oromo names, appearance, or accent, and who do not in fact feel any loyalty or attachment to the Oromo. Perhaps, they are, figured by tradition, only a half, a quarter, or an eighth inheritors of the Oromo tradition. Also, there are some who deny their group by conviction and regard it as desirable for all others to lose their identities as fast as they can. But, often, the individual who denies his/her allegiance to his group suffers considerable conflict.
• Self-hate: a few have come to dislike their Oromo heritage. These types have a sense of shame for having an Oromo name, Oromo parents, or any of the negative qualities ascribed to the Oromo by irrational and immoral others. They want to lose themselves totally into another culture as soon as their custom, speech, and wealth makes them indistinguishable from that culture. They mentally identify with the practice, outlook, and prejudice of the existing system. I do not know how such individuals could be “cured.”
• Fighting back: the reactions of many Oromo individuals can be summarized by a quote from Spinoza. “He who conceives himself hated by another and believes that he has given him no cause for hatred, will hate that other in return.” Hate is not a virtue; fighting for one’s dignity is.
• Enhanced striving: many Oromo individuals have chosen making the extra spurt of effort to surmount the challenges of everyday prejudice they face in Ethiopia. Consequently, many have achieved and become paragons of success. Although there is nothing unethical in this approach, it does not provide much political inspiration.

Here, it should be absolutely clear that such tactics of survival are not exclusively of Oromo invention or experience.  The Tigreans under the Derg, the Amharas under the TPLF, have employed similar methods of survival and mobility at various levels. In fact, that such methods have been employed throughout history by every group of people who has ever been subjected to constant violence by the power that be. Furthermore, the Oromo do not claim that the indignities they have been enduring are worse than that of the Gurages, the Kembatas, the Wolaitas, and others. Rather, the Oromo have chosen to reject subordination and demand recognition as part of the universal struggle for human dignity. Given their history, demography, geography, economy, and the culture of resistance they have developed, the Oromo has the capacity and a historical responsibility to bring about a new politico-moral order of which human dignity is the foundation, and peace, stability and development are paramount.

Nonetheless, none of the tactics adopted by individuals could bring about lasting, nay fleeting, change. National or ethnic prejudice is the most difficult to overcome on an individual basis. The violence against the Oromo people would not stop if and when an Oromo individual achieves a certain economic or social status. Individuals can rise and fall, succeed or fail. But, discrimination and stigma are a common, group fate, and it requires collective action for group rights. National oppression or ethnic prejudice is not an individual issue, and mass escape is never possible. That is, the Oromo demand for recognition cannot be reduced to be a matter of individual self-determination.

The Oromo nation is not a group of individuals who have come together for a certain political project, and who would cease to be Oromo after achieving it. Neither is it a collection of individuals who have found their way into the nation by their own paths, one person or family at a time. It definitely is not a collection of individuals who joined the group because the TPLF is persecuting them. Rather, an Oromo individual is discriminated against and persecuted because of his/her group membership – because he/she is Oromo.

The Oromo are people with a sense of pride in a rich received tradition, a longing for generational continuity, and loyalty to the Oromo national identity. Of course, individuals can break away, and commit themselves to the difficult process of self-formation. But, the vast majority of Oromo people do not want to see the Oromo nation dissolved. They do not want to abandon their language or traditions. They do not want to forfeit their national identity for the sake of being accepted as “pure Ethiopians. They passionately want to be recognized as a group, as an independent source of human activity, with a will of its own. This is what the Oromo are struggling for.

To conclude, the recent violence against the Oromo in Ethiopia is not a new, one-time, accidental phenomenon. It is one that has been going on with varying levels of intensity, with a purpose, since the founding of the Ethiopian State. The absence of a democratic founding covenant or a subsequent ethical or democratic tradition have made violence an acceptable method of state building in Ethiopia. Functional or pathological, the prejudice against the Oromo has been real and pervasive. And, there has been a direct relationship between the prejudicial view hold by the bearers and the brutality they inflicted upon the Oromo. The absence of an Oromo national organization with centralized leadership has also contributed to the continuation of the perpetration of violence. Today, in the 21^st century, the Oromo are under a power that follows the tired modus operandi of despots of the 19^th century.  In fact, the political and security cost of living in Ethiopia is exorbitantly high for the Oromo. For instance, that staunch advocate of peace, Obbo Bekele Gerba, is being charged a price that even an ascetic cannot afford.

All is not bleak, though; there is hope. The ongoing Oromo struggle has earned the respect and admiration friends and foes alike. Many of the ethnic/national groups in Ethiopia are tired of tyranny. The Americans and the Europeans also have begun looking at the Oromo as a viable partner for peace and democracy in the Horn of Africa. The only remaining obstacle is the intransigence of the TPLF. The TPLF also has to either abandon its violent ways and dictatorship out of self-inspection or through pressure from the Oromo, the Amhara, the Sidama, and others before things go out of hand.

“There are some abuses that are genuinely intolerable, and some excuses for these abuses that are insupportable.”

By DJ

Prisons in Ethiopia

The African American experience in the United States is one of the most tortured histories than any other American citizen. Even though African Americans have been in the United States for the past 400 years, longer than most white European immigrants to the continent, they face a daily indignity, racist affronts, taunts, and a plethora of other inhumane treatments.

Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, activists such as Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and in recent years, young grass root activists in Chicago Illinois, coined the term “we charge Genocide” because they were targeted and killed by the City Police.

Hence, we Oromos, damn right, charge genocide by Tigre Liberation Front and its Leadership for extrajudicial killings of 500 plus unarmed Oromo youth and other Oromo citizens in Oromia!

The convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The Imperial Ethiopia regime was among the states that signed and ratified the General Assembly Resolution # 260. All those states that signed the convention were advised to prevent and punish actions of genocide during times of conflict and peacetime.

The Convention defines genocide as killing on the basis of race, or “killing members of the group” ..any intention to destroy in whole or in part, a national, racial, ethnic or religious group”  is according to the Convention is genocide–thus the Convention also states ” causing serious bodily or mental harm to a member of the group”  is genocide, as well as “killing members of the group”

The Ethiopian empire is a signatory to the above said Convention and we maintain, therefore, the Wayannee/TPLF leadership who usurped the state power from the previous Ethiopian regime should be charged of the crime of genocide on the Oromo citizens of the Empire. The cruel and inhuman documented crimes of TPLF and its leaders against the Oromo people in the Empire are of the gravest concerns to all Oromos. We call upon all people of good will in Africa, Europe and the United States to call the TPLF and its leadership to account to the extrajudicial killings, mass arrests, and acts of terror to destroy the Oromo People.

We present the documented crimes of the regime’s Stormtroopers known as “Agazi”  that, according to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Freedom House, and many others who monitor human rights  violation, have committed heinous acts of extrajudicial killing of more than 500 Oromos since November 2016. These crimes of awful magnitude, planned, coordinated and executed   by The Tigre People’s Liberation Front leaders, aiming at the essential foundation of Oromo people, its culture and its existence is genocide!

The United Nation’s General Assembly has affirmed that “genocide is a crime under international law whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds….any act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group…as such: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group ….a systematic and structural destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus is genocide”

The Wayannee Gestapo army under the order of TPLF leaders committed brutal and grotesque acts that eclipsed a civilized international standard of crowed control. They used live bullets to quell teenagers whose only weapons were their love of their lands and the Oromo farmers who have been forcefully evicted from their farms. These massacred youth were protesting the vulgar acts of expelling Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands. The resistance and martyrdom of heroic Oromo youth whose blood drenched the Oromia soil, whose tortured, maimed and mangled bodies were strewn allover Oromia’s hills and farm lands is our anguish, and these are crimes against humanity and Damn Right We Charge Genocide!

Fayyeeraa N. Sobbooqsaa

“Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and Apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.” ~ Nelson Mandela

Do You Know an Oromo Culture  – ‘Garaacha Uffachuu?’

 The purpose of writing this story is to leave behind some historical record about our cultures, traditions and ways of life. It also helps us to compare the prosperity of our forefathers before the conquest of Oromia in contrast to the current Oromo generation. It should neither be considered as nostalgia for the past nor failure to recognize the existence of the various types of modern business enterprises.

My grandfather was always telling us about the nostalgic past and the life styles his grandfather was enjoying. He usually likes telling us the abundance and wealth of his grandfather, Jiruu Barii, the grandson of Gadaa Kunee. The whole community knows the wealth of Jiruu Barii and they also tell his story in relation to an Oromo culture known as “Garaacha Uffachuu.” They often say, “Inni Oromoo loon kuma bobbaasee fi dhibba elmachaa ture”, which means Jiruu Barii had a thousand cattle and a hundred more cows for milk. He was one of the very rich Oromos in the region who have celebrated the ceremony of “garaacha uffachuu”, that is, the tradition of celebrating and cherishing wealth with families, relatives, friends and the whole community members in the area.

Jiruu Barii invited all his relatives and friends from near and far to his home. He offered them to choose the best oxen they liked for slaughter. A big pool was made from milk and people were watching Jiruu Barii while he was swimming in the milk pool to celebrate and cherish the abundance of his wealth according to the Oromo culture of “garaacha uffachuu.”

There was another Oromo, Didhaa Abbaa Bashaadaa, who has also celebrated and cherished his wealth in Bokkuu Incinnii after Jiruu Barii. Obbo Ida’oo Boruu also told me that the families of Obbo Shimellis Adugna, a former officer of the Dergue regime, have celebrated and cherished their cattle wealth – garaacha uffachuu  in Odaa Nabee region of Oromia.

After our land was taken over by the expansionist Abyssinian Emperors and land lords, however, the cattle were looted by the gun carrying settlers from the north. In addition, our people didn’t have enough grazing land for their cattle since their lands were taken over by force. The road to powerlessness and impoverishment started in such manners. Here we have a very famous and popular poem that has almost become like a national anthem for the Oromo people: 

Inxooxxoo dhabbatanii
Caffee gad ilaaluun hafe,
Finfinnee loon geessanii,
Hora obaasuun hafe
Tulluu Daalattii irratti
Yaa’iin Gullallee hafe
Gafarsatti dabranii
Qoraan cabsachuun hafe
Hurufa Bombii irratti,
Jabbilee yaasuun hafe
Bara jarri dhufani,
Loon keenyas ni dhumani
Edda Mashashaan dhufee
Biraadummaan hin hafe.

(Source: Wolde Yohannes Warqineh and Gammachu Malkaa; ‘Oromiyaa: Yetedebeqew Yegif Tarik,’ 1994)

English translation: (by Geresu Tufa)

No more standing on Intottoo,
to look on meadows blow.
No more taking cattle to Finfinnee,
to water at the mineral springs.
No more gathering on Daalattii,
where the Gullallee assembly used to meet.
No more going beyond Gafarsaa,
to chop firewood.
No more pasturing calves,
on the meadows of Hurufa Bombi.
The year the enemy came,
our cattle were consumed.
Since Mashasha came,
freedom has vanished.

Wolde Yohannes Warqineh is a close relative of Suphaa Tolasaa, one of the unsung Oromo heroes who were brutally executed by the very backward, repressive, exploitative and brutal feudal regime of Emperor Haile-sellassie I. I am a living witness to the lynching of Suphaa Tolasaa and many other unsung heroes who have been killed while bravely resisting and fighting against the Abyssinian occupation army. There is a work in progress to document the heroic resistance of these unsung heroes – Guddisaa Raggaasaa, Hirkisaa Naggasaa, Mormataa Toltii, Suphaa Tolasaa and many others on the North side of Tulluu Roggee, in Dirree Incinnii. There were people like Shiferraa and Jamamaa on the South side of Tulluu Roggee in Ammayyaa county, Central Oromia. More research work is needed to complete the documentation of their resistance struggle too before the elders who know them pass away.

Here are some of the ‘geerarsa’ they have left behind for the next Oromo generation just few minutes prior to lynching on a busy market day at Gabaa Robii, in Diree Incinnii. There were two open market days in Dirree Incinnii during that time, Wednesday and Saturday. If they make it on Saturday, many students may miss to see it. Therefore, the intention of choosing Wednesday is to instill fear and terrorize both the students, their parents and the rest of the people through their scare tactic known as: “Ineen yaayyeh teqaxaa”which is like saying “see me and refrain from fighting me.”Lynching was used as a very strong tactic of threatening the people to stop resisting against tbe Imperial feudal monarchy..

Geerarsa Suphaa Tolasaa:

Abbaa Soorii yaa suphaa,
Homaa hin hoorin yaa gurbaa.
Incinnii buuta hin jennee,
Wadaroon duuta hin jennee,

Geerarsa Mormataa Toltii
Eessa roobeetu eessa otoo hin roobin hafaa?
Warri eenyuu boyeetu, warri eenyuu otoo hin booyiin hafaa?
Ya Abbaa koo yaa Toltii, haadha koo ishee na deesse,
Bakka garaa koo hin geenyee, daanyaatu  natti murteesse.

Continuing the Legacy of Gadaa Kunee: The Struggle Against Conquest, Domination, Oppression and Exploitation

“Warruma dur lolatu amma illee lolachaa kan jiru.” ~ Obbo Daandanaa Gurmuu at the notorious Ma’ikelawwi torture facility and detention center. I didn’t  inherit fear. I inherited heroism, courage and determination. Guddisaa Raggaasaa and many others tried their best to resist occupation, domination and dispossession and passed away.

I have tried to document the fight over land between the two Oromo clans, Warra Kunee and Warra Arfinjoo, and presented it on the 2015 annual conference of the Oromo Studies Association. As I have tried to explain on the research paper, the fight over land ownership between these two clans started prior to the conquest of Oromia and that conflict was effectively exploited by Emperor Haile Sellassie’s regime.

As a first generation who has got the chance to have access to college education,

I was interested to study political science and international relations at Addis Ababa University. However, my friends advised me it is a very risky business for Oromos to study politics. They were quoting the infamous saying, “Polotikaa innaa korreentii beruuquu nawu.” It is like saying, “politics and electricity from afar.” One of my friends was saying, “People who have our caliber can study politics on their own by reading books, journals, magazines and newspapers.” We didn’t study politics. However, all of us (including my advisors) were severely and adversely affected by both domestic and international politics.
So, where are those who were saying, “Those of you who have been studying other professional careers such as Accounting instead of politics were just 12+0?” We don’t even hear their voices in any Oromo community activities except that of a lackey and collaborator  of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front, Dina Mufti, the so called Ethiopian Ambassador who was shamelessly denying the killings of the Oromo people during #OromoProtests. Dina Mufti has chosen political science and international relations at Addis Ababa University and he was denying the killings and the persecution of the Oromo people during a televised interview with an Eritrean Ambassador to Kenya on a Kenyan Television. I was not surprised at all because George Orwell has already put on record the realities of contemporary politics on one of his books, Why I Write, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

As a citizen of Oromia, it is a duty bound responsibility to continue the legacy of defending my motherland, Oromia, both from internal and external intruders and invaders. Although it was started as a scattered resistance, the spirit and courage of the freedom fighting struggle that was started by Guddisaa Raggaasaa and his other comrades against the Abyssinian colonial army has left a lasting impact on me to confront tyrant and autocratic dictatorial regimes. As a management employee of Ethiopian Airlines, I had a better opportunity to flee the country but I have decided to stay and do something.

“Having Comfort With the ‘Enemy’ You Fight With”

The following story was told by an Oromo military officer who was living in Forto Military Camp in Asmara in the1980s. It was in the mid 1980s. I have been in one of the residence homes in a military camp on top of a hill in Asmara city, Eritrea. The officer was an Oromo who was married to an Eritrean woman. They had a pretty little girl. I went there to secure pension for a deceased soldier who died by car accident while he was on duty in Asmara city.

The officer took me to the Kagnew military base to talk to the concerned authorities regarding the pension fund. Two Soviet military attaché` were walking in front of us to enter Kagnew Station. The officer was saying, “Look at our bosses. They will not be searched to enter the military base but both of us will be searched. You will see it.” As he said, the two Soviet military attaché` were not searched on the gate. However, both of us were searched as he told me to enter that military base.

The officer was showing me the huge scraps and wreckages collected from the war fronts. There were too many disabled IFA military trucks, various types of military vehicles that were manufactured in the Soviet Union, tanks, helicopters, various types of heavy artillery and so on in the vast compound of the huge military base. That officer was saying, “We are just cash cows for the Soviet Union. They don’t want the war to end. Look at the fence of Kagnew Station itself. It is built from scraps collected from tank, mortar and the various types of artillery and military equipments he was naming that I have never heard of before that day. He was saying, “What you are seeing here is perhaps 0.01% of the total wreckage lying in the deserts of Eritrea, Tigray and Ogaden.”

He was also saying, “As you have seen it in my home in Forto military camp, there is no problem between individuals. I love my Eritrean wife and my cute daughter.” He also said, ‘Nama nan jaaladha jechuu malee, namni na jaalata jechuun hin dabda’amu.’ It is like saying, ‘you cannot certainly say someone loves me but you can say I love someone.” He continued telling me a story of a General who had an Eritrean wife who went to her parent’s home the night Kagnew Station was bombed. He suspects that she had some prior information about the bombing of the military base from the Eritrean Liberation Front. He was showing me the armament storages and other buildings that were destroyed by bombs set by the guerrilla fighters.

He continued telling me his concerns, “Who knows the heart of my own wife too? She may withhold such vital information from me too like the wife of that General if she gets some tip that Forto Military Camp would also be bombed by the Eritrean Liberation Front.” He was leading a life full of controversy, suspicion and fear. He sighed and said, “In the military life, you can die any moment. Therefore, we have no other choices except having comfort with the ‘enemy’ we are forced to fight with.”

I managed to secure 41.00 Ethiopian Birr per month, (which was about $19.80 U.S. Dollars at the exchange rate of the time @2.07) as a pension fund for the four family members of the deceased soldier who died while serving his “Revolutionary Motherland Ethiopia!.” It is even very hard to imagine how $4.95 per month could feed a child, cover clothing costs, pay for house rent, lumbar for cooking food, electricity for lighting a home, water bills, transportation expenses and cover other miscellaneous expenses. Telephone, Radio, television and gas are a luxury that only the privileged few are entitled to have access to.

The irony is even today, there are too many Oromos who do not know they are under persecution. It is very relevant to recite Harriet Tubman’s observation here: “I have freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” That is why they have been denying us the right to have access to quality education to keep us in the dark and exploit our resources. Now, they have started giving very inferior quality education to our kids to continue the legacy of keeping them in the dark and exploit both our human and natural resources.

On the flip side, the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was saying, “There is no such thing as a community. There is only a family.” In contrast, the European colonial powers and their client states were destroying strong and powerful families in Africa and elsewhere. That is why the Oromo people say, “Kan tokkoof badii, tokkoof badhaadha.” It is like saying, ‘Some ones’ profits could be at the expense of the other person.” While those who were looting our resources are only focusing on the pursuit of happiness for themselves and their family members, the looted Africans who were once strong and prosperous families like mine are now struggling to rebuild their impoverished and disempowered Oromo communities around the globe.

I always remember how Oromo soldiers who were involved in the various war fronts used to write the slogan of the time, “Revolutionary Motherland or Death!” at the end of their letters they were writing to their family members. Is it really a “motherland” worth dying for? What they were calling a “motherland” was not even taking care of their family members, both when they were alive and after their death. On the other hand, the Dergue military regime has never hesitated spending  billions of dollars on killing machines despite the unimaginable misery of the people. It was such enormous injustice that was extremely hard to ignore that has forced me to get involved instead of becoming a bystander.

According to World Genocide Watch, “perpetuating poverty” is one of the tactics often used by ruthless regimes that are engaged in committing genocide against the ethnic and religious groups they have targeted to exterminate and cleanse them to vacate and occupy their space. Prevent Genocide International also observed it perfectly, “The genocidal purpose of destroying or degrading the economic foundation of national groups was to lower the standards of living and to sharpen the struggle for existence, that no energies might remain for cultural or national life.” As a result of such genocidal policies, we are also significantly shrinking and our body weights and heights are becoming smaller as compared to our foremothers and forefathers. My grandfather was also telling me how he was much smaller in body weight and shorter in height as compared to Cuucar Kunee, a brother of Gadaa Kunee and how I was even much smaller than my father and himself. He was also telling me the festive wedding of his elder son, my own father, and the number of cattle he has slaughtered and how life would become much harder for my generation. The objective is obviously to make us physically and psychologically unfit to resist their exploitative and repressive brutal governance systems.

We have been discussing the shrinkage of our body weights and heights with many Oromo activists like Obbo Tamaam Yousuf and even during this annual conference of Oromo Studies Association with Obbo Jayilu Danboobaa, Obbo Tsagaye Gelgelu other Oromos. Obviously, # OromoProtests are the outcome of these severe political, social, economic and cultural crises.

Unintended Consequences of Conquest and Occupation

The unintended consequences of the destruction of our cultural heritages and Safuu and Safeeffannaa – the set of ethical and moral values that were nurtured and developed by the Oromo Gadaa Democratic System of governance over hundreds of years have been replaced by a very inferior culture of governance that has led us to such severe social, cultural and economic crises. What were not very common in the past few decades and despised by our people such as begging are becoming very common. Awfully bad cultures such leaving our homestead and becoming  refugees in foreign countries, the disruption of male-female ratio as a result of the endless wars that have been waged to use our youth as cannon fodders and income generating creatures under the guise of peace keeping forces has also led to other social crises such as prostitution and polygamy. There are also too many widows and single mothers who are struggling to raise children alone since their husbands were killed in the various war fronts.

The hitherto unprecedented human greed and culture of nepotism and corruption that was put in place to exploit and dispossess our people is another social crisis. Dishonesty, greed and lies of the coward technocrats and collaborators like the so called Ethiopian Ambassador who has been working with both the Dergue and the TPLF/EPRDF regimes are becoming prime examples of immorality and bad governance cultures. It truly reflects the degradation of our Safuu and Safeffanaa and there is no other crime that is much greater than aligning yourself with those regimes who commit genocide on your people to advance personal fame and get some leftovers and share from the wealth that is being looted from the resources of Oromia and other marginalized nations and nationalities in the Ethiopian Empire. I personally believe that it is only the posterity measures and documentations of ethnic cleansing and the genocidal extra-judicial killings of our people and the courage to speak against their savagery and barbarity to name and shame that would expose their torture techniques and deter the Oromo collaborators not to align themselves with the Tigrean Peoples’ Liberation Fromt (TPLF).

It was because of such unbearable injustices that our generation was also saying “The Dergue Regime Must Go!” We didn’t have the social media like the Qubee Generation. There were no Facebook, Tweeter, YouTube Videos, TV and Radio that were there to support our struggle during that time. There were no books, journals and newspapers that we could read and enrich our knowledge about the Oromo people. The very few books I managed to read in Ethiopia that discuss Oromo issues while  being under fear of persecution for simply reading them were. Gadaa Melbaa, Cultural Survival – Politics and the Ethiopian Famine by Sisai Ibsa and Bonnie Holcomb, a series of articles/blogs, The Kindling Point, also by Bonnie Holcomb and Sisai Ibsa and Ethiopia and the Challenge of Independence by Haggai Erlich were the very precious historical records for our generation. Unlike our generation, there are now abundant books, journals, Websites, and the social media such as Facebook, Tweeter, YouTube and other types of electronic media.

The Dergue Regime collapsed but those who replaced it have even become the worst and the most vicious of all the previous Ethiopian regimes. The Qubee Generation is also saying, “The TPLF/EPRDF regime must go!” Yes, it must go.

What the United States Meant to Me as a Person:
“U.N. official, panels address issue of torture at Washington Conference” ~catholicphilly.com, Catholic News Service (CNS)

Six great moments I had here in the United States of America Are:

1. The Light Africa Conference at the Library of Congress in the Thomas Jefferson Hall because I have been blogging on Ayyaantuu.com how I was inspired by what Thomas Jefferson has written in the last quarter of 18^th century.
2. The invitation at the presidential campaign by Senator Hilary Clinton at Daughters of the American Revolution Hall in year 2008. I was among the very few Hillary supporters when too many people were supporting the Obama campaign and I had a valid and justifiable reason for doing that because I know from my own life experiences that children, women and the elderly are the most vulnerable groups in conflict areas. Therefore, it was just more than politics for me since I know many “untold stories”about violence against women.
3. My personal testimony about torture at the Catholic University of America on a joint conference by the International Crisis Group, Amnesty International and TASSC- International. The conference was sponsored by TASSC- International. The keynote speaker was the Special Raporteur for the United Nattion’s Convention Against Torture (UN-CAT), Professor Juan Mendez, who is also a torture survivor from Argentina. Mendez is also a member of TASSC- International.
4. My personal testimony at the United States Congress – Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on June 25, 2015.
5. I have been invited to attend an interfaith conference at the Washington Hebrew Congregation
6. I have been invited to attend an interfaith conference on World Refugee Day at the ADAMS Mosque in Sterling, Virginia. The keynote speakers were the United States Secretary of State, John F. Kerry and the United Nattion’s Goodwill Ambassador for refugees, Angelina Jolie.

Some may consider this as self-aggrandizement. However, as a person who has endured unimaginable magnitude of human brutality, I would rather say it is truly American values, “Having pride in what you do.” I have never expected the United States to solve all problems of the world. There are already too many problems that the United States itself has created and the Horn of Africa is one of such regions. While asking them not to prop up dictators, it is also up to us to solve our own internal problems. It is never too late to leave behind the culture of fragmentation and we must come forward as a united political force to lead that troubled region and bring about lasting peace, freedom, democracy and sustainable economic development.

I would like to thank the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC) – International for encouraging me and giving me the opportunity to talk to the people and government of the United States of America. I believe that we have tried our best to empower Oromo women through the eponymous name to commemorate the martyred Oromo freedom fighter girl, Ayyaantuu, and it is really very interesting to connect her with an Oromo freedom fighter and genocide survivor Urjii Dhaabaa.

There is also another girl whose name is Ayyaantuu and she is in the shadow and she doesn’t even know that she has become a genocide survivor through the tactic of perpetuating poverty. The Shakespearean Ayyaantuu may use her knowledge of theatrical arts to connect the dots since I have already told the ‘untold stories” to other people and a Stanford University professor the various tactics of domination, oppression and exploitation of the Oromo people. I would also like to thank the Stanford University professor, a friend of TASSC- International, for giving me counseling and assistance to reunite with my family members who were forced to live in three continents –Africa, Europe and North America.

SEENAA  Y.G(2005)  kutaa  2ffaa

Tokkummaan Humna!!

Walabummaa Oromiyaa fi Bilisummaa ummata keenyaa hawwinee yeroo onneen nu dhikkifattuu, yeroo bilisummaa warra kaanii ilaallee, hinaaffaan guggubannuu, wayita miidhaa Ummata keenya irra ga’aa jiru ilaallee garaachaa ciincofnuu,,,waan biraas yeroo of irratti uumnuu, gaaffii of gaafachuu qabnuutu jira. Ani maalan gumaachee ? isa jedhu. yoo qabxii kana irratti deebii quubsaa kennitan, rakkoo waan jettan guutummaatti hiiktu. Gubachuun hafee qabbanooftu. Yoo ta’uu baatee garuu waan jiru miti isa hin jirrellee dhabamsiisuuf ifaajjitu. Hanguma qabsoon yeroo fudhataa deemu ammoo, siyaasi addunyaa fi gabroomsaa akkasuma jabaataa, gaaffii keenya irratti gaaffii biraa kaasisaa fi dantaan humnoota adda addaa dabalamaa deemuu irraa, haala wal xaxaa seenuun waan hin hafnee. Yeroo qabsoo komannu, jajjaboo keenya, qabsaa’oota cichanii jiranitti, qeerrootti quba qabnuu, jalaqaba ani maal keessan jiraa ? jedhanii of gaafachuun dansaadha. Rakkataan yoo du’uun carraa isaatii jennee, du’uun lammii ofiis akkasumaan bira tarra. Isa olchuf hin dhimminu. Du’i isaas akkasuma. Garuu, rakkataa sanaaf waa gumaachinee du’ee waa lama yaaduu eegalle.yoon durseema isa gargaaree jennee gaabbina. Inni lammaffaa ammuma gargaaran saniin of jajjabeessan. Itti dabalata, madda rakkoo nama Sanaa irratti hojjatanii furmaata dhumaa soqan.

Qabsoo Oromoo yeroo xiinxalluu yaada afaanii haga funyaanii irratti rarra’uu dhiisanii, yaadoota hegaree siyaasa tokkof firii argamsiisan irratti yaada laachuutu gaariidha. Tattaaffiin diinni soofaa irra ciisee keessa keenya argatuu taasiisuun, gonkumaa ummata kanaaf yaadu miti. Sobboonummaa warra gawwaa yoo hin ta’iin. Baayyeen keenya Diina keenya jennee kanneen tarrifnuu, wayyaanee, Amaaraa jennee dhaabbanna.kun dogoggra guddaadha. Akka kiyyatti jara akkasi irraa waan hubadhuu, warri siyaasaa fi haala qabsoo Oromoo mata-duree ummannee dhiheessinu kun , yaada dheedhii ta’uu qofaa osoo hin taanee, abbaan waan sana dubbatuu Ummata miliyoon 45 dura dhaabbachuuf ga’uumsa akka hin qabneettin gorsa. Keessattu waan ofii hojjatan ummatatti osoo asi hin baasiin, dhaabbilee siyaasaa mitii maatii gammachuu qabu osoo hin uumiin, callisaniima quba namatti qabuun wallaalummaadha. Diinni keenya meeqa ? diina nutti heddummaatu kana gidduu galeessa godhannee tarsiimoo fi toftaan ba’uu kan akkamii ta’uu qaba ? kkfn Raawwachuu fi raawwachiisuu keessatti wareegama barbaachisuu kafaluuf kan hin qophaa’iin, komeen akka ija xaafii facaafnuu , kan nu fayyisuu moo, dhukkuba keenya kaa jabeessuudha ?

Rakkoo gama hundaa dandamannee har’a bakka jirru irra geenyee jirra. Diinni jabaatee karaa nu eeggatu dagachiifnee, karaa inni hin yaadiin itti dhufnee keessa isaa burkuteessinee jirra. Oromoon Intarneeta irraa qabsaa’oota qeequ kun ABOn ijoollee kana waliin hin jiru jedhee ragaa ABO kennuun soofaa wayyaanootaaf ga’uu barbaadu kun, dubbii dhiisee bu’aan Oromoon wareegama ijoollee isaan argateen maaliif hin gammadu. Hin boonu.lakkii bakka jirtanitti gurmaa’aa yeroo jedhamu dhiqqaa na qabaa jechaa, waan caasaan hojjatamu yoo isa bira ga’uu didee maaliif deebi’ee of hin ilaalu. Waa dhaabni hojjatu isa fuunfachiisuun dirqamaa? ABOn humna hin qabu jedhu. Wayyaaneen ammoo lultuu WBOn qabadhee jetti. Hogganni ABO hin jiru jedhu. Hoggaana dhaabaa keessaa wal ga’iin Faranjiinuu waamtu irratti marii gaggeessuu dhageenya ykn daawwanna. Garaagarummaan kun maal irraati ?

Qabxiilee kanneen barruu kiyya kutaa xumuraa irrattin itti deebi’a. akka yaada walii galaatti, kutaa har’aa keessatti muuxannoo qabsoo Biyyootaa yk  dhaabbilee siyaasaa kaaseen, dhuma irratti maaltu nu eeggataattan deebi’aa obsumaan dubbisaa. Waa’ee Biyyoota kanaa gadi fageenyaan hin kaasuu na ofkalchaa. Maaliif jennaan, yeroo dheeraa barbaada. Waanuma keessaa barachuu dandeenyu qofaan keessaa fuudhaa narra hin ilaaliinaa. Hangumaa karaa gabrummaa lakkaa’uun nutti jabaattee, Bilisummaan nutti dhihaachunis nutti jabaachaa jirtiti waan ta’eef!!!!!!

AFRIIKAA KIBBAA:-

Biyyi kun ega Bilisoomtee waggoota lakkofsiftee jirti. Garuu warri kaleessa gamtaan Appaartaayidiin waliin falmaa ture, har’a amma tokko wal falmaa jiran. Adeemsa Bilisummaa isaanii mirkaneessun dura, ANC Maandeellaan Hogganamu keessatti garaagarummaan yaadaa tureera. Garaagarummaan kun kaayyoo dhaabaa irratti miti. dhaabbileen siyaasaa tura hundi bilisummaa jedhu turan, garaagarummaan isaanii attamiin warra adi jalaa baanaa isa jedhu irratti. Maandeellaan,,,,warra aditti hin buunuu gaafa miila lamaan dhaabbannee isaan dorgomnee Biyya keenyaa dhuunfannaa yaada jedhuu of keessaa qaba. inni kaan ammoo yerooma hin laannuf ariineema baafnaa ka jedhu. Maandeellaan hammeenya isaanii hammeenyaan osoo hin taanee , jaalalaan moonaatti harkifata. Yeroo xumura gabrummaa irra turanitti, Afriikaa kibbaa keessa Lammillee Ingilizii qofti 350,000 ol turan. Qabeenyaan guutuun isaan harka turte. Har’allee garri caalu.. Warri gurraachaa ammoo, waggoota dheeraan akka biyyaa baqatanii of wallaalan taasifamaa ture. akkuma wayyaanee kana qaroo ajjeessaa , hidhaatti guuraa fi Biyyaa baasaa jiraatan. Kana Biraan miidhaan eenyummaa isaanii irra ture isa hunda caalu. Xumura irratti yaadi maandeellaa injifatee fi fudhatama argatee, faranjiin Biyyi kan gurraachaa ta’uu amantee akka lammii Biyya sanaatti akka jiraatan taasifame. Yeroo san Maandeellaan waraana jara sochoosu hin qabu. Fincila isaan fonqolcu garuu qaba ture. waan isaan mana hidhaa taa’aani hojjatan, hirmaannaa Ummataan bakka argatee, hidhaa ba’uun iyyuu kabajaan taate.

Maandeellaan yaada suuta Biyya harkaa fuunaa san maalii filatee ? yoo jennee waa hedduu ta’anis, tokko qofaa kaafna. Qabeenyaa %98  faranjii irra jiru mitii, humna Biyya bulchuu fi waajjira Bulchu of harkaa hin qabu ture. hin gurmeesine, hin ijaarree, hin leenjifne. kanaaf akka araarri ta’een, Biyya guutuutti gargaarsaan manneen barumsaa ijaaree barsiisuutti taa’ee. Keessa keessaan lammiileen isaanii Biyyatti akka deebisan taasisan. Gama biroon Lafti kan gurraachaa ta’uu ega fudhachisee booda, bakka warra adiif hayyamamu hundaa diigee gurraacha qubsiise. Gabaabaatti caasaa mootummaa fi dhaabbilee adda addaa keessatti, kaleessa adii 30 gurraacha tokko ture , har’a galagalchii gurraacha 30 adii tokko ta’aa jira. Dingdeenis akkasuma. Manneen murtii hundi adii qofaa turan . har’a garuu miti. kana hundaa ta’ee Afiriicaan kibbaa miila lamaan hin dhaabbatiin jirt. Bilisummaaf dhumanii, Bilisummaa keessatti nagaan jiraachuu rakkachaa jiran. Seera dhablummaa fi saamtummaa akkasumas hattummaa kaleessa warri adii keessa gadi dhaaban keessaa hin baane. Waan Appaartaayidii faranjii fi Maandeellaa kana irratti dubbi gabaabaan haa kaa’uu, Maandeellaan waan yaada isaa waggaa dheeraaf irratti qophaa’een waggaa dheeraa booda milkoome. Mana hidhaa keessatti dizaayina kana baasee.yeroo fudhatee hojjate. Gaafa Bilisoomnu hin jenne hubadhaa. Warri adiin ammoo yoo fincilli gurraachaa itti hammaatee sadarkaa xumuraa amma ga’uutti dura dhaabbatan waan irra ga’uu malu akeekkatan. Lammiilee isaanii kuma 350 Biyyatti deebisuuf deemu. Dingadee Biyyatti addatti achitti omishanii Biyya isaanitti fe’an dhabu. Kanaaf gaaffii warra gurraachaa fudhachuuf dirqamuu malee, Appaartaayidi sanitti gaabbanii miti. bakka Ingiliziin jirtu kanuma. Waan kana irraa waa hubannu inni guddaan, qulfiin furmaataa Biyyatti Ingilizoota harka ture isa jedhu. Maandeellaan dhiigaan furmaata argate dhugaadha. Warri adii kan waa fudhatan, dhiiga dhangala’uun osoo hin taanee, dantaa isaanii waliin waa hundaa hayyamanii hubadhaa.

SUDAAN KIBBAA / KIBBA SUDAAN :-

Diraamaan naannoo kana jiru ammoo, hedduu nama raaja. Bilisummaan sudaan argamuuf wareegamni itti kafalamuus, atu hin yaadamiin yeroo gabaabaa keessatti dhugoomuun isaa garuu , Ummata sanaaf bu’aa osoo hin taanee badii ulfaataa irratti uumaa jiraachuuf raga ta’aa . Bilisummaan kibba sudaan kun sagantaan isaa kan warra abbaa Biyyaa miti. yeroo Bilisummaan duraa, dhugumaa SPLn waraana albashiriin baasuu danda’aa turee ? kun gaaffi  guddaadha. Faallaa isaa , Albashiiriin humna dhabsiisuuf, Sudaan Kibbaaf walabummaan barbaachisaadhaan sagantaa warra dhihaa gaaffii hin qabu ture. kana qofaa mitii, Albashiir boba’aa naannoo Sanaa fudhachuu jechuun maal akka ta’ee beekamaa waan ta’ee fi sanas daangeessuuf , humnoonni siyaasaa kibba sudaan muuxannoo Biyya bulchuu qabaachuu irra osoo hin ga’iin, leenjiin atu hin laatamiin akka raawwatamu ta’ee. Maddi rakkoo sudaan kibbaa har’aa, rakkoo dandeetti fi beekumsa Biyya bulchuu of keessaa qaba. inni har’aa wal hiranii wal haleelan maqaadhaa. Sammuu waliin haasa’uu fi ummataaf dursa kennuu hin qaban. Kana deeffachuun hedduu yeroo gaafata. Ammasitti rakkoon har’a arginu itti fufa.

Kana cinaan kan ilaalluu, rakkoo keessa warra sudaan kibbaa caalaa , dantaa Biyyootaatu raaree keessa ishee gataa jira. Wayyaaneen Ameerkaa fi warra dhihaatti aantee jirti.kan hedduu nama raajuu, du’aa Joon gaaraangiin akkatti ibsan, Joon gaaraang yaada maandeellaa qaba ture. keessatti of jabeessinaa. Warri iadiin ammoo Albashirin biratti yaadan. Wal ta’uu !!! Warri har’aa wal hammacan ammoo faallaa isaa. Isayyuu ta’ee yeroo isaanitti osoo hin taanee, sagantaa namaaf jedhanii Bilisummaa fudhatan. Wayyaaneen, karaa Sudaan kibbaa ABOn dahoo argata jettee jeequmsa amma loltuu seensiftee nama ajjeeftutti geessee nama barbaaddu irra kaa’uuf hojjachaa jirti. Albashiris warra adii qaaneessuuf amma danda’uu irratti hojjata. Inni kaan boba’aan akka hin baanee lafa irra harkisa. Inni kaan seenee saamuuf, yeroo wallaalummaan jiranitti guurrachuuf, Hogganoota matta’aa barsiisanii doolaaraan maachaa’aa jiru. jarri Biyya Bulchiinaa waliin jedhan muuxannoo Biyya kamiitu hin qaban. Ummati isaanii dammaqiinsa tokkollee hin qabu. Walitti deebi’ee wal akaa’aa jira. Kana ilaallee dammaqiinsa ummta keenyaa har’aa argaa jirra. Kana dinqisiifachuu qabna. Kan amaaraa garuu tigiree ari’uu fi ajjeesuun eegalee. Qawween eegalee jennee bilchina keenya bishaan itti naqina. Waan yeroo isaa hin eegnee akkuma sudaan kibbaa kana uuma. Ammas kan irratti xiyyaaffachuu qabdan, furtuun Biyya sudaan kibbaa warra Bilisummaaf manaa ba’ee osoo hin taanee, dantaa warra alaa gama hundaan ilaallatu ta’uu , dhiiga har’aa dhangala’aa jiru irraa hubachuu barbaachisa.furmaanni isaanii hedduu fagoodha. Akka Iraaqi, Siriyaa, ,,,,,,kkf.

SOMAALIYAA :-

Somaaliyaa bara Zayid baarreen booda jirtu kan gabrummaati. Waan har’a irra jiranis kan dharaati. Maqaatu jira malee, Biyyi hin jirtu. waan irratti hojjatamaa jiru gonkumaa waan hubatan hin fakkaatu. Shirri kun hundi nu irratti maaliif hojjatama jedhanii illee waan qorannoo taasisan natti hin fakaatu. Maaliif waan hin mul’anneen gabroomnee ? jedhanii of hin gaafatiin jiru. maaliif jennaan kan caalaa isaan balleessuu qophaa’aafii jira.somaaliyaa sadarkaa kanaan kan ga’ee, shira warra dhihaa 1ffaa yennaa ta’uu , inni lammaffaa , diyaaspooraa ayidolojii faranjii taargeetii isaaniin isaan geessu warra fudhatanii . Alshabaab,,,,Itihaad,, kkf jedhamanii kan odeessamu anaaf sadarkaa lammaffaa irra jiran. Maaliif gaaffiin jedhu kaanaan, gaaffiileen biroo dursanii deebii argachuu qaban ni jiru. jarri kun bara zayide baarree tureni? addunyaa irraa Ummata Afaan tokko fi amantii tokko qabu jedhamee galmeeffamee, har’aa maaltu giddutti dhalate ?

ani rakkoon hangafaa, akkuma Sudaan Kibbaa, boba’aa bara 2020 gabaa addunyaatti dhihaachuuf jiruudha. Waggaa amma kana waraanni fi jeequmsi dhaga’uuf nama nuffisiisuu osoo gaggeeffamuu warshaan boba’aa saa’uudiin dorgomuu Ameerikaan ijaaramee , isayyuu lafa jalaa fi bishaan keessatti ijaaramee dhumuun isaa nama hin raajuu ? bara 2020 kaaseemmoo somaaliyaa keessatti nagaan barbaachisaa jedhamee, biyyi biraa jeequmsaaf qopheeffamaa jirti. Itoophiyaa yk Keniyaa. Wayyaaneen ammoo waan gooftaan ishee jedhanii somaaliyaa keessatti raawwachuuf tole jechuun, isa haqaa Ummata Biyya Sanaa furuuf osoo hin taanee, mooraa ABO guutummaatti achi jiru dhabamsiisuudha. Alshabaabitti osoo hin dhukaafnee, suduudaan waajjira ABO fi Hogganoonni dhaabaa eessa akka jiran adda baafattee itti dultee humnaan Biyyatti deebifte. Kaan hiitee ajjeefte.

Somaaliiyaaf yaaddoo guddaan, sadarkaa addunyaatti buqqai’iinsa irratti gaggeeffamaa jiruudha. Addunyaa irratti lammiilee Afiriikaa gara awuroppaatti baqachiifamanii sammuun dhiqamaa jiru tokkoffaan somaaliyaadha. Warri Idolojii warra dantaa yoo fudhataman Biyya dhaqanii Pirazadantii faa’aa ta’aa jira. Badiin inni lammaffaa hegaree isaanii miidhu ammoo, Addunyaa irraa saba Afaan tokko fi Amantii tokko qabu jedhamee faarfamu, shira heera mootummaa qopheeffatan keessatti, Somaaliyaan sirna Fedaraalaan akka bultu taasifamuuf taa’uu isheeti. Oromiyaan Sirna Fedaraalaan buluu. Saba tokko bakka sagalii fi isaa olitti adda baasuu. Guddittiin somaaliyaa haftee, xixinnoo 10 ta’uuf deeman.kana irrattis gadi fageenyaan kan hubachuu qabnuu, Dantaan warra alaa furtuu taatee akka jirtuudha. Furtuun isaanii kun akka hin cinneef ammoo, warrumti Nuutii somaliyaa ofiin jedhan karaa irra deeman wallaaluu jiraachuu isaaniitii. Ammas taanaan, waraanni warra dhihaa addatti ameerikaa, warshaa baayyee guddaa sana eeguuf qubachuun dirqama. Kana milkeessuuf, warra yaada isaanii fudhatan hanbisanii kaan buqqisuu, walitti naquu , nagaa dhabsiisuun itti fufa. Gaafa dantaa isaanii maallaqatti geeddaruu barbaadan ammoo, nagaa eenyullee hin jeeqine uuman. Addatti waan qabeenyaa isaanii ilaallatuun. Akeeki akkasii Afriikaa guutuuf jira. Kanaaf waraanni  UN Afiriikaa keessa BAKKA Afuuri qubachuu qabaa jedhamee irratti hojjatamaa jira.

Biyyoota 3n kana irraa maal hubanna? waan keessa jirru irraa kaanee , maaltu nu hafaa? mee walbira qabaa ilaalaa? akka hawaasaatti, akka siyaasaatti, akka dhuunfaatti of gaafadhaa irratti hojjadhaa . dirree siyaasaa qofa irratti wal mudduu irra, ogummaa fi beekumsa keenyaan gurmoofnee dhaloota itti aanuuf waan hojjachuu qabnuu hin jiru? Biyyoota hafan Kutaa 3ffaatti walitti deebina.

GALATOOMAA !!!!

HORAA BULAA !!!!

1. TOKKUMMAAN HUMNA !!!!->->->HUMNA TOKKUMMAA !!!! Kutaa 1ffaa

By Olaanaa Saboonaa

This is a note to update the following article that was posted few months ago. This article is reposted as a reminder that we have to seriously work on organizing a civil defense force of our people if we want us to survive as a nation. The TPLF fascists have confirmed time and again that they have come to dispossess us of our land, our culture and heritage by committing genocide in a manner that is confirmed to be worse than what the Italian fascists did.

We just saw the response of this TPLF animals to the peaceful demonstrations held all over Oromia and Gonder. As it stands, they still believe that they can suppress the will of the people by killing innocent children, women, the young and the elderly.

It is incumbent upon us to encourage our people to be organized just like they did to fight the Italian invaders. The TPLF fascists came as colonizers to occupy land that does not belong to them as the Italian fascists did. They have done this not only to the Oromo people but also to the people of Walqait Gonder and Amhara in general, Gambela, Konso, Afar, Ogaden and to the Southern peoples and nations.

The Oromo nation has to build on the solidarity it has managed to create with the People of Gonder (Amhara) and make the whole Ethiopian empire the burial place of the TPLFites.

For this to happen, we cannot only insist on pursuing a peaceful means of struggle among uncivilized beasts that do not understand what peaceful means of struggle is. We have to arm our people and allow them to defend themselves to prevent ultimate genocide to which the TPLF and its generals are heading.

One best way of arming oneself as indicated in the following article is by taking away arms from their soldiers and their garrisons. Oromo civil defense system should as quickly as possible evolve into a guerrilla style warfare. The guerrilla style that Oromo people and the other people of Ethiopia wage against the TPLF will be legitimate as it is conducted in self defense against genocide committed by the TPLF Agazi forces whose name sounds like Graziani forces.

It is also important to reiterate that the Oromo people and all other oppressed people of Ethiopia need to send a clear message to the Ethiopian defense, security and police forces. These forces have to know that they are taking part in the genocide of their own people and that they are killing the people that pay them through tax and various other means.

We need to make our struggle all encompassing by creating more solidarity with other peoples of Ethiopia, guarding our victories, and getting ready to defend our nation and show that we can be reliable partners to other nations and nationalities in that cursed empire and in East Africa in general. This will never be achieved by peaceful means alone. Peaceful means of struggle has to be accompanied by a force that can at least protect the gains achieved. If this is not the case, we are just preparing our people for another cycle of brutal suppression and struggle.

The following is an article posted in the past

TPLF FASCISTS HAVE BEEN BITING THE HANDS OF THE OROMO PEOPLE THAT FED THEM FOR THE LAST 25 YEARS

The peaceful resistance of the Oromo people has to be accompanied by a civil armed (guerrilla) resistance movement.

• The tigryan fascists and their stooges should not be allowed to continue murdering Oromo youth, women and the elderly with impunity.
• These fascists have still the audacity to rule over the Oromo people and the rest of the Ethiopian people after having murdered hundreds of innocent Oromos, after having maimed, imprisoned tortured and expelled thousands of innocent citizens from their homeland.
• The resistance movement using various cells formed by trained Oromo fighters must keep on punishing those who have ordered the occupation and genocide against the Oromo people including the TPLF fascist leaders and their stooges residing and operating from Finfinee and all over Oromia.
• The generals that are leading the massacre of the Oromo people in their so called 8 districts and all that take part in this genocidal activities are legitimate targets of Oromo people’s self defense.
• We must all know that what these fascists rely on is mainly the weapons that they are armed with. Oromo guerrilla resistance movement should learn from the heroic fights of our forefathers against the Italian fascists. Disarming each of their killers, raiding their garrisons to arm the Oromo fighters, raiding each of their fascist prison camps and freeing Oromo prisoners and demoralizing the enemy in every corner, and supporting all resistance movements all over Ethiopia is one of the key ways to expedite the downfall of these inhumane murderers.
• Working on their secret service and their army is an important thing to persistently work on. Being able to make the army turn its weapons against these fascists is something that should be worked on.
  • Distributing various pamphlets among the army members with a warning can help at least some of them understand what is going on.
  • The key issue here is to let the army know that they are not paid with the money from the TPLF fascists as they try to make them think. We must let them know that they are paid with the money collected from the people through tax and various other means. Hence, they should think twice before executing the order to murder and maim the innocent people that pay them. The warning should be explicit in that if they do not listen to this and continue executing the bids of the few TPLF fascists and their stooges, they will be doomed to face their end on Oromo’s soil.
• The Tigryans, with the help of their western and lately with their Chinese handlers have come thousands of kilometers to invade loot and expropriate the Oromo land.
  • They came on bare feet and are now millionaires and billionaires with the courage to build mansions with the replica of Axum’s obelisk in their backyard in Finfinee while millions are starving
• If the TPLF fascists think that they will rule the Oromo people under their martial law for ever, they must understand that they are expediting their end.
  • When one follows the history of what they did over the last 25 years in Oromia, one can conclude that they have also been preparing for this kind of doomsday scenario.
  • From the very beginning when they landed their feet on Oromo land, they have been working on disarming the Oromo people.
  • There were even times when they declared that no Oromo can have their traditional sticks (ulee or menchaa) coming to the market. What is left to do for them was to only prohibit all Oromo families to not even have knives to use when they cook their dishes. This has shown the extent to which the tigryans have paranoia for Oromo gallantry and heroism and the extent to which they fear an armed Oromo. It seems that they have learnt how strong and heroic the Oromo people are, not only from just history but also from the heroism of the Raya and Azebo Oromos in their backyard.
  • That is also why they have been running around like mad dogs for the last 25 years to make sure that Oromos do not have any base and support from any neighboring country to arm themselves and conduct an effective armed resistance
• Now that the new generation and the whole Oromo people are up in arms with the system, things have changed. Disarming the fascists and turning their weapons against them will be a major means to wage an effective armed resistance movement besides any kind of peaceful resistance to end their tyranny.

OROMO LAND WILL BE THE IMMEDIATE BURIAL SOIL FOR THOSE WHO HAVE COME TO MURDER OUR CHILDREN. TIGRYAN FASCISTS AND THOSE WHO CONDUCT THEIR BIDS WILL FACE THE GALLANTRY AND HEROISM OF THE GREAT OROMO NATION IN ARMED BATTLES BEGINNING FROM FINFINEE TO ALL CORNERS OF OROMIA. THIS BATTLE WILL NOT HAPPEN AT THE TIME OF THEIR CHOICE BUT AT THE CHOICE OF OUR GALLANT UNDERGROUND (GUERRILLA) FREEDOM FIGHTERS.

LET US SUPPORT THOSE WHO ARE GIVING THEIR PRECIOUS LIVES FOR OUR FREEDOM!!

By Itana Gammadaa

The only viable choice for nations or peoples under colonial occupation is to set forth their goals, become organized and united in their stated objectives, and fight for their freedom, independence, justice, and dignity. Because of infringements of colonialism and imperialism on the way of life of indigenous peoples, never in human history has colonialism or imperialism gained acceptance by any society aspiring to freedom, independence, peace, and progress. In the past, wars and other struggles for national liberation throughout the world—in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Indian sub-continent, and the Middle East—have managed to dismantle colonial empires and establish democratic, free, and independent nations from the ruins of such. As a result, they have enjoyed peace, freedom, democracy, stability, and social progress.

Unfortunately, the Oromo nation and other nations and nationalities in the Horn of Africa have remained colonial subjects of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), suffering genocidal occupation, physical destruction, barbaric repression, and wars of ethnic cleansing for the past hundred-plus years. Since the late 19th century, the Oromo have been locked up in fighting Abyssinian colonialism, whose main objectives are to dispossess and brutally suppress them, take over their lands, and plunder their resources at will. It is a historical fact that despite the barbarous Abyssinian method of occupation, Oromos have never stopped fighting back against the colonial onslaught; rather, they have continued to put up stiff resistance, all the way up until the present day. So far, however, they have not succeeded in ending Abyssinian colonial rule, because successive colonial regimes have managed to acquire high-tech war machinery and military training from western global powers and have been the recipients of military intelligence from them.

From the very first colonial incursion into Oromo territory to the present time, the Oromo have defended the fatherland with bravery, upholding their cultural heritage and national pride in order to achieve the desired national objective. The battles against Abyssinian colonial aggression at Aannole, Abichuu, Ambaalage, Baalee, Calanqoo, Horroo-Guduruu (Korkor), Hambaaboo, and Qobbo, to mention just a few, are all reminders of the Oromo people’s love of freedom and patriotism, as demonstrated in the anti-colonial wars in which thousands—nay millions—of martyrs have laid down their lives for the sake of freedom, independence, justice, and human dignity.

Following the demise of the Derg dictatorial regime and with the support of the United States and other western countries, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a tiny minority, took over the reins of power in the Abyssinian empire. Their primary goal has been to eradicate the Oromo people by systematically waging a genocidal war against them. The TPLF has carried out its most barbarous program of genocide in Oromia, by employing tactics of a Nazi-style campaign of terror, including incarceration, torture, mass uprooting, land takeovers, plunder of resources, and mass murder. For the past 25 years, the tyrannical TPLF/Abyssinian regime, which has always had an insatiable thirst for Oromo blood, land, and resources and the labor of the Oromo people, has set out not only to dispossess the Oromo of everything they own but also to systematically liquidate their physical, social, economic, and cultural bases, with the aim of turning the Oromo nation into a permanent Abyssinian neo-colonial territory. To carry out this program, in 2003 the TPLF fascist leader Males Zenawi of Tigre issued an official order to eradicate the Oromo people; this edict was proclaimed in the TPLF’s party journal, Hizbawi Adara (“public custodian”).

The following practices are being used by the TPLF to speed up the process of eliminating the Oromo people and culture: 1) fabrication of reasons to wantonly arrest, imprison, torture, kidnap, assassinate, and murder people, especially educated youths and others who are perceived as potential future leaders; 2) removal of Oromo communities from their ancestral lands and subsequent repopulation of the vacated lands with Abyssinians (Tigrians) from the north; 3) appropriation of Oromo lands, water, and other natural resources, and then making them available in global markets for sale, lease, and other commercial ventures to foreign countries, companies, and domestic “investors,” as well as for free distribution among Tigrian beneficiaries and their comrades in arms; 4) federalization of major cities in Oromia, not only to deny Oromos the right to ownership of their land but also to administer those lands and lend legitimacy to the acquisition of urban property by the powers-that-be.

The intent of the aforementioned practices is to systematically deprive Oromos of their ancient lands, which is the highest form of fascist colonial order and exhibits the most flagrant form of physical, social, and cultural genocide that the world has ever seen. The so-called master plan (in actuality, master genocide) is a useful tool in the uprooting of the Oromo in the name of expanding Finfinnee (the original Omoro name for the city that later came to be called Addis Ababa), which is simply the continuation of the Abyssinian style of colonial expansion that was initiated by Menelik II in the late nineteenth century. Now the TPLF is using this tool for the purpose of total eradication of the indigenous population.

What makes this modern-day form of the previous Abyssinian colonial expansion so sinister—indeed criminal—is that this time the plan was to start from the core of the Oromo nation, Finfinnee, and expand outwards in all directions, in order to fulfill the wildest dreams of the TPLF to eventually swallow up all the nations and nationalities in the Abyssinian empire and beyond. This deadly attempt at occupying the heart of the Oromo nation was pivotal in igniting the nationwide peaceful demonstration of Oromo students in 2014, which called for abrogation of the plan. The regime’s response was a brutal crackdown that took the form of unleashing a murder squad (the Agazi special force that engaged in mass incarceration) and included indiscriminate killing, maiming, injuring, and torture of unarmed students and their parents for simply demanding their legitimate national rights. Despite the brutal crackdown, the protests continued in a more organized manner, leading to the ongoing all-out war in Oromia.

The already simmering situation in Oromia, mainly due to the removal of Oromo people and takeovers of their land, was the cause of the ongoing war that triggered the historic Oromo mass uprising which began on November 12, 2015 in the town of Gincii, 30 miles north of Ambbo. In response to this revolutionary uprising, the TPLF sent in its security forces with an order to evict the community and to clear the Cillemo forests, which had existed for millennia. These forests were then sold to foreign “investors,” who were invited to divide up the Oromo land among themselves. For the Oromo community in Gincii, the land—especially the forests—has always been a symbol of pride, a sacred treasure, and an integral part of their life. It was unthinkable that the land would be sold, or even exchanged for something else. As local students began demonstrating, the community decided to join them in confronting the TPLF’s invading land-bandit forces; as a result, the Oromo were able to effectively stop those forces.

In no time, however, the scene turned into a war zone. The desperate regime resorted to the use of its own military forces and also ordered in reinforcements from Ambbo—its notorious murder squad, the Agazi army—to silence the full-fledged mass uprising. As the news of Gincii carnage echoed throughout Oromia via social media and other communication networks, simultaneous mass protests led by students at all levels—from universities, high schools, and even elementary schools—flared up in all corners of Oromia within less than three days of the Gincii incident. This Oromo mass uprising and resistance came as a shock a surprise, and a source of bewilderment, to the enemy and friends alike, but not to the Oromo children who had been suffering for so long under the TPLF’s brutal repression, victimization, intimidation, and humiliation; not to the uprooted Oromo farmers who had been evicted from their lands and left homeless, thrown out on the street like a piece of cheap meat; and not to the millions of educated people who were left jobless, with no way to support themselves. The uprising clearly reveals the depth of the popular resentment to the colonial occupation, the level of Oromo political consciousness, and the existence of a solid sense of unity in Oromo society, including a determination to fight for freedom and independence.

Unable to stop the surging Oromo revolution, the panicked genocidal regime declared all-out war on the Oromo people, putting the Oromo nation under martial law and ordering the use of lethal force to silence the popular uprising. The gruesome mass killings of schoolchildren, pregnant women, and unarmed civilians by fascist forces—the army, the federal police, and the notorious murder squad, the Agazi army—infuriated fathers, mothers, and grandmothers, who joined the protesting crowd to shield and save their children from the fascist tanks, guns, and bullets, risking their own lives in the process. Within just a few days, news and pictures of the carnage spread throughout central Oromia and sent a shock wave throughout Oromo communities all over the world, who promptly responded with simultaneous protests in cities in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Middle East, Europe, other parts of Africa, and elsewhere. The Oromo protests and stiff resistance continued, as did the TPLF’s brutal crackdown. Death, injury, imprisonment, and disappearances were increasing daily in Oromia, and the uprising became a political and social force that could not be ignored, garnering worldwide attention to and recognition of this just national struggle. Reports of it not only exposed the TPLF’s genocidal regime but also led to condemnation of it by a number of countries, as well as by Amnesty International and many other human rights organizations. During the past six months, the carnage and atrocities have continued in Oromia, and there has been an alarming increase in the number of student and civilian deaths.

Courageous and determined Oromo youth, who constitute the most powerful force in this mass uprising, have poured into the front, which now engulfs all the cities and towns—and even the remote rural areas—of Oromia. They have managed to effectively close all the major roads, virtually paralyzing troop movements and blocking transportation lines countrywide. Despite the enormous extent of the injury and loss of life sustained by the Oromo people, they have never backed down from their goal, which continues to shine with the torch of freedom in their hands. Theirs has proved to be a formidable force, leading to an irreversible people’s revolution, born out of cumulative outrage at the unbearable repression imposed on the Oromo people by the Abyssinian colonial regime.

The Oromo students and youth who have a desire for freedom and independence have been united from east to west and from north to south, and they have stood up with one voice and one goal: liberation of the Oromo nation. Our youth and patriotic nationalists set out to energize the national liberation struggle and to allow it to continue at any cost, including bodily injury, broken bones, maiming, torture, and loss of life. They have unequivocally articulated what it takes to liberate Oromia from colonial occupation. With slogans such as “Oromia is for Oromos… our land is our bones” and “Oromia is not for sale,” they have made it crystal clear that they are willing to defend their country regardless of the cost. The mass uprising in Oromia has elicited a new and unprecedented assertiveness on the part of the Qubee generation that many have found deeply inspiring and that paves the way for future Oromo struggles.

The TPLF’s main objective is not merely to keep the Oromo people in a permanent state of submission, but rather to wipe Oromia and its people off the face of the Earth. The removal of Oromos from their ancient land, combined with the land takeovers and repopulation of them with Abyssinians (Tigrayans) from the northern part of Abyssinia, makes their goal plain and clear.

The removal of a people from their ancestral land and attendant repopulation of it with aliens is the most lethal weapon a fascist regime can use to exterminate a society. Land is the source and sustenance of life. Without land, there is no production, no consumption, no extension of family, and no development or progress. A land and its people are inseparable. By any definition, removal of a people from the land of their birth is an act of genocide.

As part of its territorial expansion and eradication of the Oromo people and of people from the southern part of Ethiopia, the TPLF has a plan to resettle millions of Tigre families in Oromia and on the southern people’s fertile lands—this on top of other atrocities that have already been perpetrated against them. Other silent but effective weapons of this mass eradication program include famine, sterilization of women, castration of men, denial of health care, and poisoning of the food supply and the soil by use of toxic materials.

With the whole world watching, the TPLF is now gearing up to carry out the mass eradication program which was declared by Meles Zenawi 13 years ago. When Zenawi was asked about the empire’s population ratio, his answer was a simple one, “yepopulation gudai qalal naw; yistakakalal,” meaning that the population issue is no big deal; it can be adjusted. Clearly, the enemy wasn’t joking then, because we see it happening now. Today, forced sterilization of Oromo women with the help of the South Korean government is proceeding at a rapid pace in Adama, Central Oromia, without the consent and knowledge of the Oromo people. Destroying the fertility of Oromo women is tantamount to destroying the future of the Oromo people and the Oromo nation. All Oromos, in Oromia and elsewhere, must be made aware of the danger of our people being annihilated.

The hunger, starvation, and famine in Ethiopia that has been in the news is not new at all. It has been going on for some time, and it will continue as long as Ethiopia continues to be a colonial empire. Famine, hunger, and starvation are an integral part of the occupation. There are 12–15 million hunger-stricken people in the empire, and millions of Oromos are facing severe food shortages even though Oromia is known as the breadbasket of the Horn of Africa. This is just another means of accelerating the killing of people that the regime does not want. Ethiopia is the largest exporter of meat, grain and other staple food products, and raw materials in all of Africa. In spite of this, the number of deaths due to hunger and misery in the empire is increasing with every passing year, while the tyrannical TPLF regime is busy stockpiling grain and other resources, and is intensifying economic development in Tigre using resources that are being looted from the nations of Oromia, Hadiyya, Sidama, Konso, Anuak, Kambaatta, Waliyta, and the Ogaden, as well as from people in the Omo Valley.

The sale and lease of land and natural resources to foreign countries and “investors” from the Arab world, Asia, Africa, and Europe, or even to the Abyssinians, is not only a license to plunder and pillage the land and its resources but part and parcel of the genocidal program to do away with the Oromo people and nation of Oromia. The nature of the human, material, and environmental mass murder and physical destruction taking place in Oromia today is very similar to the Nazis’ wanton destruction of the Jewish people in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and other European nations during World War II. Although the Oromos are not the only people in Abyssinia to be removed from their ancestral land, towns, and cities, millions of Oromos have been targeted for eradication and have deliberately been exterminated for no reason other than being Oromos and demanding their legitimate national rights.

After cunningly crafting a fake federalism (the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia), the TPLF claimed that the lands in the empire are the private property of the TPLF itself, and that it has the right to sell or lease land, remove or exterminate the indigenous people, repopulate the land with Tigrayans, and take total ownership of the empire. In referring to colonial land occupation, John Menrick Clark once wrote: “Belgians acquired all of the Congo, which for a number of years was ruled as the private property of King Leopold of Belgium. Belgian rule and misrule in Congo was a disaster transcending the status of the Holocaust. The wholesale murder and mutilation of Africans in the Congo caused an international investigation in which colonists expressed condemnation and shame for the crimes of another colonialist.” Undoubtedly, Males Zenawi of Abyssinia was the Leopold of Oromia, Sidama, Hadiya, Ogaden, and Anuaks, as well as of other nations in the southern part of the empire. There exists stark evidence of the systematic takeover of Oromia and other nations in the empire, such as assigning names to historic and strategic places in Oromia which had never before been used there: “ Males Zenawi Park”, the Azeb Mesfin farm, the Hagos building, the Tekeste skyline, the Samora building, the Mohammed el-Amoudi farming industry, the Mohammed el-Amoudi Shakiso gold mine, etc.

According to a popular Oromo saying, “Lafaaf haadha manaa namaaf hin kenanii,” meaning that land and a wife can’t be a gift to anyone. When a person surrenders the land he inherited from his forefathers without a fight, it constitutes not only self-destruction but also disintegration of the entire family. This is true for a nation as well. It is for these reasons that our legendary leaders, patriotic nationalists, compatriots, heroes, heroines, and gallant Oromo liberation fighters have shed their blood, broken their bones, and sacrificed their precious lives instead of surrendering the fatherland to the enemy. The TPLF has no legitimacy to come out of Tigrai and rule over other nations; it has only the economic and high-tech military aid it is receiving from its colonial partners. This is a crucial life-and-death situation for the people of Oromia, Sidama, Hadiyya, Anuak, and the Ogaden, as well as the Konso people and others who have been the targets of systematic uprooting, land takeovers, land sales, mass incarceration, mass murder, and plunder of resources.

To avert this fascist genocidal disaster, what is needed now is unity of the people of the entire affected region in a war against the occupiers. Such a struggle against the common enemy would help to create a basis for the strengthening of trust, confidence, cooperation, and solidarity among these nations and nationalities. There is no other solution that would put a stop to the continuing genocide, carnage, and other atrocities the TPLF is perpetrating against our people. As history tells us, colonial forces cannot occupy any nation, regardless of its economic power or military might, without the collusion of internal traitors. In order to bring about the occupation of Oromia, the Abyssinian colonialists from Menelik II to the current fascist TPLF have utilized the most suitable tools of genocidal occupation: traitorous Oromos and collaborators. Despite the military might it inherited from the Derg and the economic backing it is getting now, the TPLF could not have managed to occupy Oromia without the help of the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO). The members of this group of collaborators, which was founded in Tigre by Tigrayans to serve the interests of the TPLF, were willing to be used—as subservient facilitators of occupation, resource plunderers, incarcerators, torturers, and mass uprooters—by the occupying forces to help achieve the Abyssinian colonialist objective. They were and are the conduits through which the genocidal regime reaches out with its tentacles and gets a stranglehold on the veins of the Oromo nation, sucking dry the blood and life of the Oromo people.

The members of the OPDO are servile, faithful lackeys who compete among themselves for high positions in the government. These super traitors, serve implement various genocidal programs, and transfer money (billions of dollars thus far!), and other resources to the Tigre regional state.

In such circumstances, it can be difficult to separate the external enemy from the internal one. Those who serve the occupying forces and are antagonistic to the Oromo national interests are enemies and must be dealt with accordingly. Freedom and independence cannot be achieved without restraining the enemy’s internal collaborators. Oromos who continue to serve the tyrannical TPLF regime must cease to act as agents of the occupying forces. Our people must understand that the enemy within is worse than the enemy itself. Because the colonialists are socially remote, hampered by the language barrier and a difference of culture, it is difficult for them to gain access to the society at large. Instead, they rely on the efforts of the collaborators, who are steeped in the Oromo language and culture, and as such make ideal puppets of the colonialists. The OPDO’s commitment to serve the regime that occupies our nation and is bent on eradicating our people is the most shameful act of treachery.

The Oromo people have not had total control over their national resources in the last one hundred plus years. In order to achieve the desired national objective, the national resources must be liberated from the colonial occupation forces that are impeding freedom and national self-determination.

Beginning with the barbaric invasion and occupation of Oromia in the late 19th century by Abyssinian ruler Emperor Menelik II, and continuing to the present day under the fascist TPLF, the wealth of the Oromo nation has been subjected to alien control and to being looted and drained of everything, depriving the Oromo people of the benefits of their land and other resources. The intention of the deadly Abyssinian style of occupation  is to destroy the indigenous peoples and nations. As history tells us, any economy built on a colonial structure will never be beneficial to the needs of the indigenous people; in fact, it will strangle them. As the author of How Europe Under Developed Africa, Walter Rodney summarizes the situation as follows: “When citizens of Europe own land and mines in Africa, this is the most direct way of sucking the African continent… so long as foreigners own land, mines, factories, banks, insurance companies, means of transportation, then so long will the wealth flow outward into the hands of those elements.” Unfortunately, today the vast wealth of the Oromo people is owned by the citizens of Abyssinia (Tigrayans). At the same time, we should not lose sight that the rights and freedom of the people in the Abyssinian empire have been compromised by global powers who are using the TPLF regime in the Horn of Africa to fight their own proxy wars and advance their own economic interests.

The wealth of the Oromo people has been looted without limitation for far too long a time by Abyssinians, enabling the perpetuation of colonial rule in Oromia. The whole purpose of the sale and lease of land and commercial ventures in which the TPLF is engaging with multinational corporations and foreign governments is to help the regime in its war of eradication and occupation. These multinational corporations and governments are not really “investors”; instead, they are partners to the illegal occupation of lands that the TPLF uses as support bases in its war of occupation in Oromia, Ogaden, and the southern regional states. Today, the TPLF is financing its killing campaign with Oromo resources. Unless these resources are liberated and returned to the legitimate owners, the occupation will continue forever. Therefore, it is the duty and obligation of all Oromos to help bring Oromo lands, national treasures, and resources under the control of the Oromo people.

Today, our nation Oromia is under siege. The torture chambers and concentration camps in Mekele, Ziwai, Qalitii, Xoola, Dhidheessa, and Qilinxoo, and the hidden Gestapo-style jails in various places, are filled with Oromos who are facing stepped-up brutalization, dehumanizing torture, and murder, which occurs by the thousands every day. The TPLF is now speeding up its systematic targeted assassinations and mass murdering of Oromos, the overwhelming majority of whom are young people that, it was hoped, would have become the future leaders in the struggle for the liberation of our suffering people. Regardless of the crimes the enemy may commit to stifle that struggle, victory over the colonialist occupiers depends solely on our people’s determination to liberate themselves.Through the blood and sacrifices of our youth in recent times and the atrocities suffered by our people in past liberation struggles, the Oromo struggle for freedom has garnered global recognition and respect for the Oromo people and exposed the fascistic nature of the TPLF regime. Thus this is an ideal time for the people who believe that they are living under the Abyssinian occupation to unite and struggle for their national rights, justice, and dignity. It is a disservice to the Oromo people’s struggle to wait for the inept diaspora leaders or leaderships. There is an urgent need to organize a collective force that will protect the Oromo nation and rights and work hard to develop a capable and dedicated visionary leadership that will do whatever it takes to liberate Oromia.

In this dire situation, the collective readiness and determination of all the occupied peoples in the empire is needed to put a stop to the TPLF’s genocidal programs. Unity is the greatest weapon on this planet in efforts to achieve human survival, national defense, and social progress. Nothing is more encouraging and powerful than the unity and determination that Oromo people exhibited in the recent uprising, which is still causing the regime to shake.

Conclusion

The Oromo mass uprising greatly inspired all oppressed nations and nationalities in the empire by setting a brilliant and heroic example of resolutely standing against the genocidal regime. The successive Abyssinian colonial regimes that have invaded and occupied Oromia have attempted to eradicate the Oromo people with modern military machineries received from Western powers, and continue to do so to this day. In the history of freedom and independence struggles, there is no people or nation that has gained national rights without a persistent armed mass uprising. The Oromo masses have risen up and stood their ground unarmed against the fascist TPLF and its surrogates. Today, hundreds and thousands of our youth, children, and women are being butchered in cold blood as the entire world watches. In the face of a fascist onslaught such as this, the enemy should be greeted with the collective force of the people so that they will be rendered powerless and dismantled once and for all.

There is no other magical solution to TPLF’s genocidal war other than assembling a people’s armed force that is guided by a firmly structured organization. This organization should be led by those who will be unwavering in their leadership until there is total defeat of the the genocidal regime and its servile.

In the state of war that the Oromo people are in now, unity and determination are the only decisive weapons available to them to stop the genocidal programs and other atrocities of the Tigre regime and its internal collaborators. Oromo needs a unity of purpose which is based on a common cause and objective, and a common dignity that must be protected and defended—at all times and at any cost. The Oromo cause is much larger than the sum of the interests of the current citizens, because it will never die or disappear from the hearts and minds of the Oromo people. It is eternal.

What is needed is for all Oromo who believe in the liberation of Oromia to unite in a common effort to determine their own future and to commit to making the sacrifices that are necessary to guarantee the freedom of the people. The Oromo have every right to use every means necessary to defend and protect their national interests against the occupying forces. Freedom and independence can be achieved only when the occupied people decide to overcome opportunism and ego-driven personal agendas and work together under a common principle: the struggle for national liberation. This is an essential task, especially given that Oromo youth rose up and demanded their national rights and many of them became fallen martyrs for the sake of freedom. This is not the time to be on the sidelines waiting for the total annihilation of Oromia; rather, this is the time to pay the price and liberate the nation. The Oromo people’s just struggle against Abyssinian colonial occupation is emblematic of the struggle of all the nations and nationalities that are suffering under Abyssinian colonial occupation.

Expecting to gain freedom without sacrificing for the cause would be a delusion. To liberate the nation, we need to increase the level of political consciousness and determination, and to develop and maintain a strong organization that will stick with the struggle until success is achieved.

Unity is power! Victory to the oppressed people!

Awol Allo Special to CNN

A picture taken on December 15, 2015 shows Ethiopians from the Oromo group blocking a road in Ethiopia after protesters were shot dead by security forces in Wolenkomi, some 60km West of Addis Ababa.

Eidtor’s Note: Awol K. Allo is LSE Fellow in Human Rights at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights. He writes on the issues behind several months of protests by Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromos. Around 100 people died following clashes with security forces and demonstrators at the weekend, according to Amnesty International.
The opinions shared below are solely that of the author’s.

LONDON (CNN) —Ethiopia is facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude, yet its government and Western enablers refuse to acknowledge and recognize the depth of the crisis.

The nationwide protest held on Saturday by the Oromo people, the single largest ethnic group both in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, is clear evidence of a crisis that is threatening to degenerate into a full-scale social explosion.

The protests are the most unprecedented and absolutely extraordinary display of defiance by the Oromo people and it is by far the most significant political developments in the country since the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the strongman who ruled the country for over two decades.

The protests took place in more than 200 towns and villages across Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest region, and were attended by hundreds of thousands of people. According to Oromia media Network, security forces used live bullets against peaceful protestors, killing over 100 protestors.

Annexation

Oromos have been staging protest rallies across the country since April of 2014 against systematic marginalization and persecution of ethnic Oromos. The immediate trigger of the protest was a development plan that sought to expand the territorial limits of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, into neighbouring Oromo villages and towns.

Dr. Awol Allo

Oromos saw the proposed master plan as a blueprint for annexation which would further accelerate the eviction of Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands.

When the protest resumed in November of 2015, the government dismissed the protestors as anti-peace elements and accused them of acting in unison with terrorist groups — a common tactic used by the government to crackdown on dissent and opposition.

The government used overwhelming force to crush the protest, killing hundreds of protestors and arresting thousands. In its recent report titled “Such a Brutal Crack Down”, Human Rights Watch criticized the “excessive and lethal force” used by security forces against “largely peaceful protestors” and puts the number of deaths at over 400.

The figure from the activist group is considerably higher.

Historic Injustices

The Oromo make up well over a third of Ethiopia’s 100 million people. Historically, Oromos have been pushed to the margin of the country’s political and social life and rendered unworthy of respect and consideration.

Oromo culture and language have been banned and their identity stigmatized, becoming invisible and unnoticeable within mainstream perspectives.

Ethiopians from Oromo group marching a road after protesters were shot dead by security forces in Wolenkomi, Addis Ababa, December 15, 2015

Oromos saw themselves as parts of no part — those who belong to the country but have no say in it, those who can speak but whose voices are heard as a noise, not a discourse.

When the current government came into power a quarter of a century ago, it pursued a strategy of divide and rule in which the Oromos and Amharas, the two largest ethnic groups in the country, are presented as eternal adversaries.

Oromos are blamed as secessionists to justify the continued monitoring, control, and policing of Oromo intellectuals, politicians, artists and activists.

By depicting Oromo demands for equal representation and autonomy as extremist and exclusionary, it tried to drive a wedge between them and other ethnic groups, particularly the Amharas.

This allowed the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and Tigrayan elites to present themselves as the only political movement in the country that could provide the stability and continuity sought by regional and global powers with vested interest in the region.

Although these protests are triggered by more recent events, they are microcosms [of] a more enduring and deeper crisis of political representation and systematic marginalization suffered by the Oromo people.

In its 2015 comprehensive country report titled “Because I am Oromo”, Amnesty International found evidence of systematic and widespread patterns of indiscriminate and disproportionate attack against the Oromo simply because they are Oromos.

US Influence

The United States see the Ethiopian government as a critical partner on the Global War on Terror.

This led administration officials to go out of their way to create fantasy stories which cast Ethiopia as democratic and its leaders as progressive. In 2012, then US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, described Meles Zenawi, the architect of the current system, as “uncommonly wise” and someone “able to see the big picture and the long game, even when others would allow immediate pressures to overwhelm sound judgment.”

In 2015, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman praised Ethiopia as “a democracy that is moving forward in an election that we expect to be free, fair, credible, open and inclusive.” She further added, “”Every time there is an election, it gets better and better.” That election ended with the ruling party winning 100% of the seats in parliament by wiping out the one opposition in the previous parliament.

In 2016, President Obama became the first sitting American president to visit Ethiopia amid widespread opposition by human rights groups. Obama doubled down on previous endorsements by administration officials by describing the government as ‘democratically-elected.”

A police state

However, consistent reports by the US government itself and other human rights organizations depict an image of a police state whose apparatus of surveillance and control permeates the entire society down to household levels.

The US led ‘war on terror’, started by President George Bush, provided the government with a political and legal instrument with which the government justified severe restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly, and association.

The 2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, one of the most draconian pieces of anti-terrorism legislations in the world, enabled the government to stretch its power of prosecution and punishment beyond what is permissible under standard criminal and constitutional law rules.

In recent years, terrorism trials have become the most significant legal instrument frequently used by the authorities to secure and consolidate the prevailing relationship of power between the ruling ethnic Tigrayan elites and other ethnic groups in the country.

Under the pretext of ‘fighting terrorism’, the regime exiled, prosecuted and convicted several opposition leaders, community leaders, journalists, bloggers, and activists; paralyzing criticisms of any type.

In its 2015 report titled Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Law: A Tool to Stifle Dissent, the Oakland Institute details the ways in which Ethiopian authorities systematically appropriate the anti-terrorism law to annihilate dissent and opposition to the policies of the ruling party.

Denial

As of July, the protests have been spreading into the Amhara region, home to the second largest ethnic group in the country.

The Amharas and Oromos, which constitute well over two-third of the country’s population, are seen as ‘historical antagonists’. The ruling party transformed this antagonism between the two ethnic groups into a productive political tool.

According to the governing narrative, Oromos are narrow-minded and exclusionary people who seek to disintegrate Ethiopia into smaller republics while Amharas are chauvinists who seek to restore the old feudal order, leaving the ruling party as the only political force that can rescue Ethiopia from both threats.

These governing narratives are being exposed as the two groups begun to see how these narratives were crafted and are expressing solidarity towards each other as victims of the same system.

The Ethiopian government is in denial and making the same promises of restoring ‘law and order’ through further repression and crackdown.

However, this can only exacerbate the situation and throws the country into chaos in an already volatile region.

The opinions shared below are solely that of the author’s.

Bulbulaa Tufaa (Miseensa Gadaa Meelbaa)

Qabsaawonni Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo (ABO/OLF), kaayyoo bara 1976 lafa kaawwatan sana dhugoomsuuf, alaabaa bifa kanaa gadi qabu kana qabatanii qabsoo hidhannoo kutannoon jalqaban. Sana dura, Oromoon qabsoo irra hin turre jechuu miti. Qabsoon bara kana eegalame, prograama qindoomeen hammatamee, alaabaa kana jalatti gaggeeffamun isaa, qabsoo duuraan ture caalaatti akka finiisuu taasisuu isaati. Har’a, alaabaan kun mallattoo dhiiga ilaaman Oromoo ta’ee jira. Garboomfatootaaf ammoo, haddhaa (summii) ta’eera. Si’a kana keessa otuma itti haddhaawuu waan unachaa jiran fakkaatu.

Baandiraan Habashaa (Toophiya), inni  halluun isa magariisuu–keelloo–diimaa ta’ee jiru sun, alaabaa garboomfatootaa ti. Ta’uu isaa Oromoo ta’ee kan haalu ykn mormu yoo jiraate, irra deebi’ee of ilaaluu qaba. Eegga sirna diimookraasii gadaa Oromoo ukkaamsee, alaabaa abbaa gadaa Oromoo jiksee  irratti  of dagaagsuu jalqabee waggaa  150 ol lakoofsisee jira.

Kun Alaabaa Qabsoo Bilisummaa Oromoo(AQBO), isa Addi Bilisummaa Oromoo (ABO/OLF) prograama qindaaye jalatti qabsoo hidhannoo jalqabe dha. Har’a uummata Oromoo biratti mallattoo (symbol) bilisa basaa bira taree, alaabaa Biyya Oromoo(National Flag) ta’aa jira.

Alaabaan Qabsoo Bilisummaa Oromoo, sirna bittaa Dargii fi  sirna faashistummaa Wayyanee-Tigray biraatti “mallattoo shororkeesitootaa” jedhamee fudhatameera. Garboomfataa (colonialists) irraa kan eegamus kanuma. Garboomfataan yoo dirqisiifamee muddame malee, “garbichi” isaa dhala namaa ta’uu isaa tasa hin beeku, amanees hin fudhatu.

Akka seenaa irraa barachuu dandeenyee fi ijaan argaa, gurraan dhagayaa jirrutti (guddannetti), Habashoonni waan uummata Oromoof ta’u maraa, “hin ta’u” jechuu irraa kan hafe, “ni ta’a” jedhanii hin beekan. Kan biraa haa hafuu, hayyoonni (intellectuals) isaanii, “Oromo yemmibaal hizb yellem; jechuun, uummanni Oromoo jedhamu hin jiru” jedhanii afaan guutanii nu biratti dubbachaa turan. Amma illee taanaan, abdii otoo hin kutatiin irratti hojjechaa jiru. Haa, ta’u malee, akkuma uummanni Oromoon injifannoo galmeessaa dhufeen, dabtaroonni isaanii abdii “kutachaa” waan dhufan fakkaatu. Alaabaan qabsoo bilisummaa Oromoos, akka billaacha qilleensa birraa, Oromiyaa keessa innaa balali’u argaa jiru. Alaabaan garboomfataa isaanii ammoo gara mana dhaloota isaa duriitti deebi’uuf, guyyuma guyyaan gadi sigigaachaa innaa deemuu argaa jiru. “Otoo kana hin argiin yaa Waaqi maaliif na hin ajjjeesiin” jedhanii of abaaraa jiru.

Haa ta’u malee, tibba kana keessa,“Amaaraa”[1] warri ofiin jedhan, Alaabaa Qabsoo Bilisummaa Oromootiin “ye Oromoo yetigil baandiraa” jechuu eegalaniiru. Qabsoo uummanni Oromoo gochaa jirus kallattiin balaleeffachuu irraa waan “of qusachaa” jiran fakkaatu. Fakeenyaaf, Ji’a (baatii) sagal fuuldura, meediyaan Habashaa kan maqaan ESAT jedhamu, Afaan Oromootiin yoo tamsaase, sataalaaytiin isaa akka jalaa caccabutti dubbachaa ture. Qabsoon Oromoo biyyatti finiinaa dhufnaan  saatalaayitii sun “caba irraa hafee”, Afaan Oromootiin tamsaasuu eegale. Ijoollee Afaan Oromoo beekanisa qaxaree hojjechiisuu jalqabe. Kun martuu bu’aa dhiiga ilmaan Oromoo, kan rasaasa Toophiyaatiin dhangala’aa jirutu dirqisiise. Qabsoon uummata Oromoos, diina isaa ni jilbeeffachiisa; hamma birmadummaan deebitee dhuftutti dhiigaa ilmaan Oromootiin itti fufa.

 Baandiraa Garboomfataa fi Asxaa Isaa

Baandiraa Wayyaanee Toophiyaa isa bara 1995(?) seeraan tumamee labsame.

Seenaa uummata Oromoo keessatti, baandiraan Habashaa kun  Oromoo wajjin qunnamtii attamii qaqba? jedhamnee yoo gaafatamne, deebiin keenya maal ta’uu qaba? Gabaabumatti, uummata Oromoof, alaabaa garboomfataa ti jechuu irraa kan hafe, waan biraa ta’uu hin danda’u.

Halluun baandiraa Toophiyaa kun (the tri-colour), mootummaa  Toophiyaa kamiinuu jijjiiramee hin beeku. Kan jijjiiramu, akkuma diktaatorri isaanii kudeetaan (coup d’etat) wal jijjiiran,  asxaa isaa  duwwaatu jijjiirama. Kanaafuu, halluun baandira isaanii kun, mallatttoo eenyummaa fi sabboonummaa ilmaan Habashootaa (Amaaraa fi Tigre) karaa maara (karaa amantii, polotikaa, qalbii, waraanaa kkf) waloon waan dhugoomsuuf hawaasa ortodoksi Habasha birattii ulfina guddaa qaba. Abbaan waan ofiif ulfina kennuun seeruma. “Kan kee gatii-abaarii,  kan koo eebsii, tiksii naa faarsi” jechuun seeraa ala;  gonkumaa fudhatama hin qabu.

Tarii, adeemsa keessa, jijiiramni ilaalchaa uummata sana keessatti yoo dhalate, jijjiiramni halluu baandiraa kanaa ykn akkaataan taa’umsa isaa jijjiiramuu danda’a. Biyyooleen hedduun, jeequmsi sirna polotikaa fi bulchiisaa innaa biyya isaanii keessatti dhalatu, akkuma jijjiirraa seeraa  godhan, jijjiirraa bifa alaabaa ykn akkaataa taa’umsa isaa irratti ni godhan. Fakkeenyaaf, faashistiin Xaaliyaanii innaa Abyssinia[2] (Toophiyaa) weerarte, alaabaa kana qabdi ture. Alaabaan kunis waggaa shaniif(1936-1941) alaabaa Toophiyaa  ta’ee  Finfinnee keessa balali’aa ture.

Bandiraa Toophiyaa Bara Bulchiisaa Xaaliyaanii (1936-1941)

Sirni nugusummaan fi sirni faashistummaa Mussoluniin gaggeeffamu eegga dhaabate booda, bara 1948 Xaaliyaaniin “Republic” ta’uu ishii labsite. Alaabaan Xaaliyaaniis isa kanaa gadi  jiru  ta’ee akka hojiirra oolu seeraan murtaa’ee, amma har’aatti tajaajilaa jira. Kan Biyya Jarmanis eegga Nazin (Hitler) mo’amee booda jijjiirraan hedduun irratti godhameera.

Alaabaa Xaaliyaanii bara 1948 irraa kaasee hamma har’aatti kan jiru

Baandiraan Habaasha, Biyya Abbaa Gadaa Oromoo eegga  guyyaa “qinnyi ager” godhate irraa kaasee, bullukkoo fi wandaboo irraa mulluqee “dabaloo”  isaa fidee itti uwwise.  Hamma Axee Minilik, humna qawween Toophiyaa har’aa kana Oromoo irratti ijaaretti, biyyi sirna nugusaan bulu, biyya sirna diimokraasii gadaa Oromoo  garboomfatee hin beeku. Sirni nugusaa eegga Oromiyaa garboomfatee booda, Abyssiniyaa jalatti galchee “Toophiyaa” jedhee walitti qabee waamuu eegale. Baandiraan Toophiyaa kunis, sirna bulchiisa nugusaa fi amantii taabootaa wajjin dhufee Oromoo irratti fe’ame. Waggaa 150 asii kaasee, miila lamaan Oromiyaa irra dhaabatee Toophiyaa  faarsaa jira. Har’a garuu otoo hin jaalatiin alaabaa  qabsoo bilisummaa Oromootiin innaa injifamaa jiru agaa jirra.

Biyya keessatti, alaabaa bilisummmaa kanaan kan fuulduratti deemaa fi adeemsisaa jiru QEERROO BIRMADUMMAA OROMOO ti. Yeroo  gabaabduu keessatti alaabaan kun Tulluu Diimituu (Dhaqaa Araaraa) irratti ol bayee akka balali’u  mamii hin qabu.

Seenaan halluu baandira Habashaa, seenaa amantii, taabootaa fi sirna bulchiisa “zewudaawii aggezaaz“ fi “wattaaderawwii agezaaz” otoo mirkaneessaa jiru, sirna bulchiisa diimookraasii Gadaa Oromoo ta’uu hin danda’u.

          Alaabaan Gadaa Oromoo ni Jige Malee hin Dhangalaane 

Baandiraan Habashaa, inni  halluun isa magariisuu–keelloo–diimaa ta’ee jiru  sun, alaabaa abbaa gadaa durii sana  jiksee kan bakka of buuse dha. Akkuma bandiraan Mussolunii (Xaaliyaanii) dhufee baandiraa Hayile Sillaasee (Abyssinia) buusee bakka of buuse sana jechuu dha.

Alaabaa Birmadummaa Oromoo

Halluun alaabaa  kanaa,  falaasama, ilaacha, aadaa, amantii, seena fi uumama dachee  Oromoo (geographical relief) wajjin kan  walqabatee jirudha. Sirna dimookraasii gadaa Oromoo irratti hundaayee waan uumameef, alaabaan kun mallattoo (symbol) birmadummaa  (sovereignty)  fi abbaa biyyummaa uummata  Oromoo ti.  Alaabaan Qabsoo Bilisummaa Oromoo kun (AQBO) uummata Oromoo, dachee, qilleensa, bosonaa fi bineensa  Oromoo duwwaa bilisa baaasuuf otoo hin ta’iin, alaabaa Abbaa Gadaa kana illee  deebisee dhaabuuf qabsaawa. Alaabaan Abbaa Gadaas ni jige malee hin dhangalaane.

Jalqaba bar-dhibbee kudha-jahaffaa keessa (16th century) innaa Portugaalii fi  Habashaan karaa kaabaa, Turkii fi Misiriin (Egypt)  ammoo karaa bahaa biyya Oromoo dhufanii qabatan, Oromoon alaabaa kana qabatee diina irratti duule. Biyya diina hamaan qabamee saamamaa jiru sana,  bilisa baasee deebisee harkatti galchate. Hamma Minilik bar-dhibbee 19ffaa keessaa faranjiin (Inglizi, Faransaayii, Xaaliyaanii, Russiyaa) gargaaramee dhufee Oromoo garboomfatutti, naannoo sanatti nagaan akka bu’u taasise ture. Haa ta’u malee, sirni nugusoota Habashaa, kan nagaaf hin dhaabanne, nagaa argame sana deebisee booresse. Oromoonis garbummaa hamaa jalatti kufee amma har’aatti hacuucamaa jira.

Akka seenaan dhiyeenya kana bareeffamee jiru nu ibsutti, duulli Oromoon bara sana godhe,  ajajaa waraana lama jalattii gumaayuu isaatti. Isaanis, waraana Abbaa Duulaa Abbayyii Baabboo fi  waraana Abbaa Duulaa Jirmoo Barii jedhamuu” jedha seenaan barreeffame kun[3]. Qophii dheeraa booda, waraanni kun jarsoolii, yuubotaa fi dubartootaan Madda Walaabuutti eebbaan gaggeeffame. Duulli karaa lama bobba’e kun diina mancaasee injifannoo duraan argamee hin beekne galmeesse. Biyya Abbaa Gadaa fi biyya Haadha Siiqqee  kan Portugaala, Habashaa fi Turkiin qabamaa jiru, deebisee bilisa baase. Alaabaan Gadaa Oromoos iddoo diinni buqqise sanatti deebi’ee akka dhaabatu taasise. Qeerroon bara sanaa  kakuu seenee fi waadaa walii gale otoo hin cabsiin, akkuma eebbaan bahe eebbaan deebi’ee gale. Eebbi  abbooti gadaa fi haadha siiqqeen itti biifee bobbaase, waraana Oromoo kanaaf  “happhee” ta’ee injifanoo gonfachiise. Dhaloonni Qubee Birmaduummaa Oromoos akkuma eebbaan qabsootti bobba’e, eebba injifannoon akka xummuurratee galu mamin hin qabnu.

Xummuura

Alaabaa Qabsoo Bilisummaa Oromoo (AQBO) warri jalqaba duraa dirree qabsootti   qabatanii bobba’an, ilmaan Oromoo warra birmadummaa Oromiyaa guutummatti deebisanii dhaabuuf kakuu walii seenan dha. Warri birmadummaa Oromiyaatti hin amanne: (1) Dura kakuu seenan cabsan. (2) Itti aansanii qawween bilisummaaf qophooftee manaa baate, akka rasaasa hin tuftee “fashaleeessan”. (3) Itti fufanii, alaabaa qabsoo bilisuumaa iddoo sadii-afuritti akka addaan bahu godhan. (4) Qabsaawonni Oromoo diina dhiisanii akka walirratti xiyyeeffatan taasisan. Haa godhan malee, dheebuu uumman Oromoo bilisummaaf qabu, aannan barbaadu sana dhugee dheebuu akka hin  baane dhaabu hin dandeenye.

Har’a kaayyoon ganama lafa kaawwamte sun, alaabaa qabsoo bilisummaa wajjin “dhalootaa Abugidaa” gattee deemtee jirti. Dhaloota qubee (Qeerroon: Q=Qawwee, Ee=Eeboo, R= Rasaasa, O= Oromoo ti) harka seentee jirti. Kana booda murteessaan “Qubee Oromoo” ti malee, “Abugidaa Toophiyaa” ta’uu hin danda’u. Fuuldureen Oromiyaas maal ta’u qaba? gaaffii jedhu irratti “Abugidoonni” waan irratti wal-lolaaniif hin qaban.

Dhaloonni Qubee Oromoo sodaa tokko malee  garboomfataa Habashaa, kan  har’a shororkeesitoota Tigreen hoogganamaa jiru, hagayyaa 6, 2016 Alaabaa Birmadummaa Oromoo, Finfinneetti fidanii akka dhungatan godhanii jiru. Boru, Tulluu Diimtuu(Dhakaa Araaraa) irra dhaabuuf kutannoonni bobba’aa waan jiraniif, ilmaan Oromoo warri “Abugidaa Toophiyaa” irraa fagaattanii jiraattan, akka waan qabdaniin bira dhaabattan (dhaabannu),dhiigni ilmaan Oromoo fashiistootaaan  dhagala’aa jiru nu gaafachaa jira. Hagayya 6, 2016 irraa kaasee harka maranii garboomfataa fi ashkaroota garboomfataa, “nagaa nuu buusi, nagaa nuu fidi” jedhanii gaafachuun (kadhachuun)  dhaabachuu qaba.

Qabxii tuqamuu qabu: Rakkinni Oromoo guddaan handhuura Oromiyaa keessa jirti. Rakkinni kunis, maqaa kiristinna ishiitiin, “Addis Ababaa” jedhamtee waamamti. Kana boodaa “Addis Ababaan” kun waa lama keessaa waa tokko filachuun dirqama. (1) Handhuura Oromiyaa  taatee jiraachuu duwwaa otoo hin ta’iin, qaama guutuu Oromiyaa taatee  filattte jiraachuu; yookiin, (2) Kun yoo ta’uufii dide, bakka barbaaddetti Finfinnee irraa kaatee godaanuu. Dhukkuba hamaa kana, Qeerroon Birmadummaa Oromoo xiyyeeffannaa cimaa keessa galchee irratti  hojjechuu qaba.

“Nama Gumaa aafatu malee,  nama Gumaa nyaatu nu hin taanu!!”.

[1] Waa’ee Amaraa ilaalchisee Paul Baxter Akkasi jedha:”From an Oromo view point, an Amhara is anyone who is either born into Amhara society and culture or chooses to enter these by speaking Amharic in domestic situation, by adopting Amharic life style and by acting in public situation in support of Amhara values, in particular by following the fasting rules of the Coptic Church”. See Paul Baxter in Nationalism and Self- determination in the Horn of Africa. I.M. Lewis (ed), 1983.p.137
[2] Xaaliyaaniin innaa dhute biyya sana qabattu,Maqaa Abyssinia jedhamuun dhufte qabatte. Jaarmaan “League of Nations” jedhamus maquma Kanaan ishii beeka.Seenan bara 1940 duuba barreeffamanis maquma Abyssiniatti dhimma baha. (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/italy-1900-to-1939/abyssinia/ )
[3] Aadam Tiinnaa Jaarraa fi Muusaa Haaji Addam Saaddoo. Seenaa Oromoo fi Madda Walaabuu: Iccitii Jaarraa 16 heesso, Muddee bara 2004/Dec 2011

Ezekiel Gebissa, Special to Addis Standard

(Addis Standard) — In the last two years, the Oromia region has gone through tumultuous times. New political realities are emerging. A new generation of Oromos has arisen demanding respect for constitutionally-guaranteed, universally-accepted human rights. The awakening of a new demand-bearing generation is a new political reality signifying the Oromo struggle for human dignity has now reached a stage of irreversibility. This is a new experience that gives hope to future generations of Oromos. Every generation has passed on ideas worth fighting for to the succeeding generation.

In the current political dispensation in Ethiopia citizens are constantly harangued to accept the charade that the rule of violence is required to achieve democracy, development, and peace. However, the current young generation of Oromos has not given in to despondency and cynicism. In fact, members of this generation have rebelled against double-talk and demonstrated their willingness to turn their lives into a testing ground for the idea of dying for consistency between work and life. That is a frighteningly beautiful idea championed by the generation some callqeerroo, and others refer to as the qubee generation.

For this generation, to live is to work, to function according to design. It is a generation who has shown that to live in freedom requires paying the ultimate price for it. It is a generation of young people who have a clear sense of who they are. It is a generation that has realized that the Oromo have committed no offense, nor violated any principle to deserve to be subjected to the perpetual violation of their human dignity, let alone to be deprived of their citizen rights. It is a generation that has decided to overcome the moral and existential ambiguity of the political class’s double-entendre. Rather than live in the subliminal state of being alive but without really living as human beings, the new generation of Oromo has decided to take the riskiest of paths and has chosen never to negotiate their right to be free. The historic Oromo Protests of 2014-16 is their defining moment as a generation. It is an epochal event that has revealed, tested and shaped the new Oromo generation. I call it the dinnee generation.

The protests have created a new chapter in the history of the Oromo people’s struggle for freedom. They have opened a new era in which all political organizations that claim as their objective the realization of a political system that respects Oromo human rights must reassess their reason for existence. Only those that succeed in repurposing themselves can continue to provide leadership at a particularly difficult time in the history of the Oromo nation. In this article, I focus on a political party, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO). My intention is not to privilege the OPDO over other organizations or to single it out for criticism. I address the OPDO because it is a party that could do the most harm to the Oromo cause and to the Oromo nation. Conversely, it could take the Oromo struggle and nation to a new plane if it successfully adjusts to the new situation created by the Oromo protests.

Diagnosis or prescription
In his co-authored book, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading, Ronald Heifetz, Professor of Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, states that success in resolving human problems of any nature begins with proper diagnostic work of separating technical problems from adaptive challenges. According to Heifetz, technical problems can be addressed with known solutions or existing know-how. Problems that are not amenable to authoritative expertise or standard operating procedures are adaptive challenges. Solutions to such problems involve significant (and often painful) shifts in people’s habits, status, role, identity, and ways of thinking. Heifetz posits that these problems call for “adaptive leadership” which mobilizes people and units that frequently have different needs, priorities and perspectives toward new ways of working and ways of thinking.

According to Heifetz, the “most common cause of failure in leadership is produced by treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems.” If Heifetz is correct, all indications are that OPDO officials have gotten off to a terrible start defining what the protests are all about. High ranking leaders of the OPDO have been musing about the causes of the protests. Almost universally, they seem to define the Oromo Protest as an issue of mismanagement that could be solved with good governance practices. In an interview with Horn Affairs, Feqadu Tesema Degefa, the Oromia government spokesperson, went beyond the issue of good governance, almost seeming to take credit for the protests. I have quoted him in extenso:

After a bitter struggle, the OPDO has built a new order in which political, economic and social rights have been fully respected. We have built a new order and a politically-conscious population that is not satisfied with the demands that have been met. We have created a population that has rising expectations that looks for more victories, wishes for more development, and is relentless in demanding more rights. We have said that the Oromo have achieved political rights and glowing victories. In the protests, we see the fulfillment of our objective to create a population that is able to defend its rights at any time. … Oromia is a huge part of our country’s development, which has in turn created a demanding people who are aware of their rights. … The people made it clear to us that they are not satisfied with the work we are doing during the 5th round national election. By protesting, they wanted us to be accountable. We see [the protests] as a fruit of our struggle. We are not ashamed of it. We don’t see it as a sign of weakness. We struggled to create a demand-bearing people. We did not struggle to produce students who don’t raise demands, those that are satisfied with their condition and sit back quietly. In the future, we like to see people with more expansive demands. The goal of our struggle has always been to create people who refuse to live in trepidation under an oppressive government. We understand that the people are sovereign over us. As an organization and myself as an individual, we are gratified to see the fruits of our struggle. The protesters’ demands are about several issues related to good governance; second, they are attributable to our failure to explain the true objectives of the Master Plan. … The people protested to hold accountable a government they voted with 100 percent of their vote. People voted in massive numbers and the next day went to development work. And by protesting they expressed their vote of confidence for the party and for the government.

This is the latest iteration of the OPDO version of the causes of the historic protests. We are now told that the uprising wasn’t a problem that required a reasoned response but a victory to celebrate and a vote of confidence in the government. To the extent that the spokesperson explained the OPDO’s take on the cause of the Oromo Protest, he mentioned the lack of good governance and the lack of clarity in explaining the objectives of the Addis Abeba Integrated Development Master Plan. Elsewhere in the interview, he also added unnamed transnational activists who exploited the situation to advance a hidden political agenda.

To be sure, the way the OPDO official defines the protests does not comport with either side of Heifetz’s two categories of organizational problems. It doesn’t make any sense to argue that young people spilled their blood to hold their government accountable or express their vote of confidence in the government they overwhelmingly “elected” only a few months previously. The mind-warping assertions aside, it looks the OPDO’s take on the Oromo Protests is a classic case of what Heifetz describes as the “most common failure of leadership.” Looked at in Heifetz’s framework, it is clear that the causes of the Oromo Protests were not technical problems that could be fixed by administrative reform. The protests presented adaptive challenges that required new ways of thinking and working, and significant (and often painful) shifts in habits, status, role, and identity.

In this vein, the OPDO must first recognize that the Oromo protests have changed the political environment. Technical fixes not only fail to solve the problem but also cause irreparable damage that actually increase the cost of rebuilding exponentially. When faced with adaptive challenges, it is the organization that must adapt to the changed environment. In this case, it is the OPDO that must adjust to the post-Oromo protests political dispensation. Adaptive challenges require adaptive work which, according to Heifetz, demand three “very tough, human tasks: first, figuring out what to conserve from past practices; second, figuring out what to discard from past practices; and third, inventing new ways that build from the best of the past.” Here is how Heifetz’s three human tasks may apply to the OPDO case.

What to conserve
In organisms, successful adaptations take the best from the organism’s history into the future. Similarly, organizations remain true to their roots and adapt to the changing surrounding environment. What does this suggest in the case of the OPDO? Three decade ago, Oromia was a concept in the minds of Oromo nationalists, the qubee script a fancy dream of an Oromo organization striving to educate Oromos in the use of a foreign script, and being an Oromo a great obstacle to self-improvement in a world dominated by Amharic hegemony. Today Oromia is a self-governing entity with delineated boundaries and institutions of governance recognized by the Ethiopian government. The qubee script is the sole means of written Afaan Oromoo, and the Oromo language is the medium of administration, instruction, justice and modern sector commerce in Oromia. The Oromo people have proudly embraced their heritage as individuals and as a collective. These achievements are the foundations of Oromo identity, unity, and nationhood along with the civil society institutions that support them. Finfinne (Addis Abeba) is the umbilicus of all. The OPDO cannot afford to risk the mistake of 2003 when it relocated to Adama.

The OPDO should see to it that these gains and the structures that support them, the constitution and the federal arrangement, are here to stay. A successful transformation of the so-called “prison house of nations” into a democratic, multinational state which the OPDO advocates will not only solve the Ethiopian empire-state’s vexing problems of nationalism but also will set a model that nations with problems of ethnic, racial and national questions can adapt to address their own situations. As the Oromo scholar Asafa Jalata put it in his book Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization: Comparing the African American and Oromo Movement, democratic multiculturalism has a good chance of bringing about fundamental political, economic, and social transformation. But the kind of rhetorical flourishes and the gloating that permeates the OPDO spokesperson’s interview, saying that they have built a new democratic federal unity, is not what will conserve the gains. Building a political arrangement that accommodates the Oromo people‘s will is a project no Ethiopian ruling party is willing to undertake. The EPRDF regime has made it clear that it is not willing to share power. The intransigence of the ruling class should not force the OPDO to overhaul the vision of democratic unity. It should guard it vigilantly.

What to discard
An organism discards or rearranges the DNA that no longer serves the species’ current needs. As an organization, the OPDO should do the same. It could begin by discarding terrible claims that don’t even make for good propaganda. The idea extant in the spokesperson’s words, i.e., that a political party created people who demand their rights, is outrageous. It is true that the Oromo people today are united and aware of their rights. They are willing to pay any price to preserve the victories they have gained and to fight for more. The OPDO may ultimately take a place in history for contributing to the making of the Oromo nation and the victories attained. But to claim that the OPDO is responsible for the creation of Oromo national consciousness and the present generation of politically conscious Oromos is historically inaccurate. The OPDO knows it has a distinct history that it may not recite with pride.

The OPDO spokesperson also repeats the constant refrain used by regime officials – that the lack of good governance in its multifarious facets and the failure to explain the “true” intention of the Master Plan caused the protests. He also asserts that crafty “agents of destruction” exploited the crisis situation. OPDO officials should always keep in mind that their most important target audience is the Oromo people. The notion that some faceless activists exploited the muddied field created by the regime’s failure to consult the people denies the fact that the protesters have legitimate political, economic and social rights. The spokesperson’s claim, that Oromo protesters who were martyred actually paid with their lives in order to demand marginal rights, is non sequitur.

In fact, the spokesperson goes as far as suggesting the protests were an expression of the political consciousness that the OPDO itself created and that, as such, it is a cause for celebration. The OPDO knows that its public claims are simply false because in closed meetings its officials talk the truth. Both Abbadula Gammada and Fekadu Tessema’s voices have been leaked to the public affirming their knowledge of the truth. Overall, the cost of repeating lame excuses that both the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and House Speaker Abbadula Gammada have repudiated diminishes credibility, a rare commodity any government needs in order to have even marginal legitimacy.

Denying that the problem exists isn’t the place to start solving problems. The problems that led to the massive protests are real. If we judge by the slogans that the demonstrators showed, people demanded respect for their human and constitutional rights at the minimum. The Oromo protested marginalization, discrimination because of their identity and exclusion from consultation in political or economic decisions. The new Oromo gave their lives for genuine grievances to be redressed, not for the luxury of encouraging officials to do more development or holding them accountable for mismanagement. The OPDO should abandon charades such as 100 per cent electoral victory and its officials should adjust to the new situation. Nothing can be hidden from the Oromo public. This is the emerging reality. If the OPDO chooses to continue business as usual, as Abbadula Gammada himself once said in one of the party’s deliberately leaked tapes, “the flood of the protests will wash away” both the party and the government.

What to innovate
An organism creates DNA arrangements that give the species the ability to flourish in new ways, in more challenging environments. It is not a secret that OPDO was created by the TPLF during the final offensive against the Derg as its forces moved into Oromo areas. The founding members were prisoners of war from the Derg military who happened to speak the Oromo language. At the time, most were descendants of the Amhara settlers in Oromo areas who knew the Oromo language enough to echo the OLF, but not quite committed to the Oromo cause owing to their non-Oromo background. These were the Oromo infiltrators.

Once in power, the OPDO began to recruit new members. The first new OPDO recruits were members of the Oromo elite who had come through the Derg era either as apolitical bureaucrats who serve any government that comes to power or political opportunists who joined the incoming rebel groups in order to gain clemency for the crimes they had committed as members of the Derg era institutions. They offered their expertise to the OPDO in return for protection and stability in their personal lives. These are the Oromo opportunists who had no qualms renting out their expertise in exchange for personal improvement or immunity.

As the TPLF consolidated its power and the OLF gradually disappeared from the scene, some Oromos joined the OPDO to try and work within the legal framework to improve the lives of the Oromo people. Their objective of this group is not to prevent independent Oromo groups coming to power. This group believes in gradual change and is led by the belief that the political space should not be ceded to those who have no interest in advancing the Oromo cause. This group was the Oromo pragmatists.

In its early days, thus, the OPDO was a fractured party composed of three groups: the non-Oromo infiltrators, the Oromo opportunists and the Oromo pragmatists. In the aftermath of the national elections debacle of 2005, many university graduates joined the OPDO. Some joined to obtain government jobs. Others did as so as pragmatic nationalists who felt they could advance the Oromo cause incrementally within the increasingly restricted atmosphere of an EPRDF regime reeling from the shock of an ignominious electoral defeat. Under the presidency of Abadula Gammada, the OPDO has accomplished several things that would prove enduring for the Oromo people. This was made possible because the lower to middle level administrative positions of the Oromia government’s bureaucracy was occupied by the fourth generation OPDO members. By the end of the decade, many of them had managed to become mayors, woreda administrators, schools’ directors, kebele managers, party chair persons at woreda and zonal levels, and leaders of various party affiliated ‘development’ associations. In a way, this is the cohort that the late Prime Minister Meles sardonically described: “if you peel off the OPDO surface, you will find the OLF.” He could have quite appropriately called them Oromo nationalists. In time, this group turned the OPDO into a vehicle of resistance against EPRDF excesses.

The clearest signal that the OPDO is capable of resistance to the administrative fiat of the federal government came in 2009 when the Oromia government, unable to get the House of Representatives to promulgate legislation governing Oromia’s special interest in Addis Abeba, established a ‘Special Zone’ of towns and districts that surround Addis Abeba. This was the act that led to the creation of the “Integrated” Development Master Plan. Without this act, Addis Abeba would have annexed land from the Oromia region as it had done for two decades prior.

The most dramatic resistance from the OPDO came at a meeting held in Adama town on April 12-14, 2014 for the Oromia regional state employees who were designated to implement the plan. In a performance whose historical import was not immediately evident, OPDO officials raised serious concerns about the Master Plan. The stage was set by a speaker who stated: The issue of Finfinne and the Oromia Special Zone towns is not a question of city management. Looked at from any direction, it is clearly a question of identity. Successive speakers objected to the Master Plan’s implementation citing that it violates several provisions of the constitution, federal jurisdictional boundaries, constituency representation and principles of popular sovereignty. The participants even questioned the paternalistic approach by which the federal government prescribed the kind of development projects the Oromia region needs. Where the officials left off, university students picked up and rose in protest against the Master Plan.

The OPDO has come a long way. In its evolution, it has shown in many instances that the desire of the overwhelming majority of party members is to be on the side of the people. At this stage, the behavior of party officials reveal the conundrum of being organizationally tied to the EPRDF but emotionally attached to the plight of the Oromo. But divided loyalty is a recipe for organizational failure. There is an ancient scriptural wisdom: one cannot serve two masters. It is also a contemporary philosophy. In his famous essay, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” philosopher and historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin, states: “Some among the Great Goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose.” The notion that one can have both ways is not only unattainable but self-delusional. OPDO must choose. At the moment when it has outlived its usefulness to its TPLF patrons, survival should dictate the choice: become the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization.
_____________________________________//_________________________________

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

By Dr. B.K.DERESSA

Adjusted Copy to:

• Secretary-general united nations Mr. Ban ki moon
• Secretary of state John F. Kerry
• President of the European Commission Mr.  Jean Claude Juncker

In medical terminology Cancer, also called malignancy, is an abnormal growth of cells. There are multiple types of cancer, including breast cancer, skin cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and lymphoma. Symptoms vary depending on the type. Cancer treatment may include chemotherapy, radiation, and/or surgery and also the most common causes of death worldwide.

Today, I am not going to discuss about the cancer that originate from the abnormal growth of cells but I would like to discuss about the leading cause of death worldwide the man made cancer . That is absence of freedom, democracy and peace.

According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START project), based at the University of Maryland: “For evidence that authoritarian states create an enabling environment for terrorism, one has only to look at the location and origins of the major terrorist groups active today. The Islamic State, for example, metastasized amid the Syrian dictatorship’s war with opposition rebels and the sectarian divisions sown by increasingly authoritarian Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. An affiliate of the group has emerged in Egypt, where coup leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is cracking down on all forms of dissent. And Boko Haram has radicalized and expanded its reach amid extrajudicial killings and other ineffective tactics by the corruption-plagued Nigerian security forces. Given this reality, the most effective way for democracies to combat terrorism at home over the long term is to foster democratic governance abroad.”

If the reality is promoting peace democracy and freedom in order to fight the burning global issues like terrorism why the USA, Europe and UN support the barbaric Ethiopia TPLF government and minority rule with full act of state terrorism ????

Concomitantly with my question I would like to congratulate the powerful western nations, world leaders and international institutions by announcing the remedies to cure world cancer. The remedies called Oromumma. The name of the therapy originate from the root of the truth called Oromo nations.

Most minor problems can be handled easily under democratic rule However, when the problems get worse rule of law overcome all the complex issues under democratic law. But under dictatorial rule (rule of gun) minor problems leads to torture, unlawful imprisonment and death. When the problems getting worse under rule of gun (like TPLF government) leads to genocide (currently ongoing open and silent genocide against Oromo nations by TPLF government) Despite all unhuman atrocities against Oromo nations for more than 120years the Oromo peoples still persistent in keeping intact and exercising daily the truth (nation of peace, nation of love, nation of freedom, nation of democratic belief, nation of generosity, nation of respect for all creatures and nation of equality). In order to clarify the facts let us look the issues deeply:

Oromo people are egalitarian society. Historically their democratic system of government known as “Gadaa” governed the social, economic political affairs of the Oromo people. Under Gadaa, Oromo women developed their own unique institution known as “Siiqee”. Oromo women used Siiqee institution to defend their rights, promote their interests and challenge male domination.

What happen to this Oromo nations with holistic approach of humanity:

After the Oromo people are colonized in 1880s all Oromo institutions are either totally banned or incapacitated. Since then the Oromo people are denied the right to determine on their social, economic, political and cultural affairs. For example, banning or incapacitating  Siiqee hindered the Oromo women defending their rights. The colonial power is not only banned and incapacitated Oromo institutions but also introduced and widened discriminatory social practices (changing Oromo name to colonized names and gave order to the city administration to change the  Oromo cites to be called in the colonized language and declare psychological war among Oromo’s in order to hate their identity and find jobs with their Oromo names).

What kinds of action has been taken by Oromo nations to defend the truth

• Raya and Azebo during 1928-30
• Bale revolt led by hero of the Oromo people general Waqo Guutu in 1960^th
• Mecha-Tulema movement led by hero of the Oromo people general Tadesse Biru in 1965
• OLF leadership with popular mass movement and imprinting Oromummaa. Oromo liberation front (OLF) is the heart and mind of all Oromo people which confronts the colonization by all kinds of means namely (diplomatic and military approach) and works in multiple ways with international community and leaders to end the colonization.
• Qube generations supported by Qeerroo leadership with historic mobilization of the Oromo people to eradicate the colonization (December 2015-2016) resulted with European parliament resolution.
• Grand Oromia protestors (more than 200 Oromo cites) to end ones and for all the colonization (august 2016)

Why the USA, Europe and UN support the barbaric Ethiopia TPLF government

During recent protests from December 2015 until now the TPLF government committed serious atrocities against Oromo peoples, namely  more than 700 Oromo’s are dead, countless were unlawfully imprisoned and tortured. The atrocities were documented by international organization and agencies, namely (HRW, AI, UN, former USA president and European union). Despite diverse tangible evidences of the holistic side of Oromo people and documented evidences of TPLF government atrocities the powerful western nations remain supporting the barbaric Ethiopia TPLF government. Let us look some facts:

In 2014 the Ethiopian Government receive around 30 million euro for the financing of multiple projects while the innocent Oromo civilians are slaughtered by TPLF soldiers in Ambo town 125km (80 miles) west of Addis Ababa (according to BBC reports in 2014, 47 were killed by the security forces) The protestors demanding respect of their constitutional rights and halting brutal act of TPLF soldiers (Agazi commando):their detail demands were:

• Stop land grapping
• Stop killings of Oromo children
• Stop killings of Oromo students
• Stop raping of Oromo Women’s
• Respect rule of law and reject rule of gun
• Abide by real definition of democracy and stop TPLF defined democracy (rule of gun, death, torture imprisonment, rape and harassment).

In 2015  The USA president  Barack Obama visit Ethiopia and shows his appreciation for the contributions of troops to an AU peacekeeping force battling al-Shabaab in Somalia  Again he mentioned also “The Ethiopian government has made extraordinary progress in bringing greater development and opportunity to its citizens,” he said, “but there are very significant restrictions that are not consistent with the universal values that we stand up for, for instance the need for a free press and we’ve seen too much intimidation, and even imprisonment of journalists, and the need for a viable space for civil society and political opposition in the country. So the president will be certainly raising issues related to human rights in Ethiopia”

In the same year of President Barack Obama visit the Oromo people’s in general (child, man, women, young, old, students, intellectuals, farmers,  sick or health) were hunted down like fox in their own country, backyard and home. All those atrocities led to the mass protest of Oromo nations in December 2015 and still in august 2016 going on.

In 2016 I myself wrote a letter to the European parliament regarding the open and silent genocide against Oromo people: Here is the essential part of their reaction:

“The European union are closely following reports on the situation in Oromia, but also in the other parts of Ethiopia. The EU delegation and EU member states present in Addis have carried out field monitoring visits to the Oromia region and continue to monitor the situation. Since its December 2015 statement on the events in Oromia, the EU has raised its concerns on several occasions with the Ethiopian authorities, for example: with prime minster Hailemariam Desalgn and Minster Tedro’s A We have called for independent investigations on the events, and for accountability for all acts of violence and abuses perpetrated against protestors”.

From this 3 tangible evidences my analysis as follows: The western powers fail to understand the brutal and barbaric nature of the Ethiopia TPLF government and the total absence of knowledge about Oromumma vision (yes in january 2016 the European parliament passed resolution by condemning the Ethiopia government military action against Oromo people). But what still missing is the translation of that resolution to action.

The OLF is working very hard in order to enhance the translation of that resolution into action but the Oromo intellectuals and Oromo people’s especially Oromo living in diaspora has to do their part through individual actions or by supporting OLF initiative through multiple ways:

• The Western powers defending their interest. So we have to show them that we are able to protect their interests better than TPLF Mafia government by further promoting Oromo nations through Oromummaa agenda and vision.
• Misunderstanding of the nature of the Ethiopia TPLF government and absence of knowledge about Oromummaa vision. That shows us our colonizers like TPLF government is able to sell false issues to the world body and we are unable to tell the truth to the world body. The solution is be able to expand the value and importance of Oromummaa on the international arena.
• The evidence of the century long humiliation, subjugation, and inequalities against Oromo peoples by colonizers and deafening of international bodies, it encourage us in order to redouble our abilities to install Oromummaa. Oromummaa Advocates for democracy, freedom, peace, equality, respect of human right and rule of law.

Action taken by Oromo intellectuals, Oromo political leaders, and Oromo voices reflects the truth:

Oromo peoples are now colonized for more than a century. During those long period of time they scarify enormous lives and properties to eradicate colonization and to regain their freedom in order to exercise their god given right.

For this freedom and human right realization the Oromo leaders and intellectuals always follow the path of truth, democratic road and humanity (the exact definition of their root called Oromo nations).

The actions taken by our leaders  and intellectuals  shows the powerfulness of the truth (Oromo nations) and commitment of Oromummaa for peace, freedom democracy, equality, respect of human right and rule of law. But Our colonizers are always choose to follow the path of destruction, non-democratic road map and path of anti-peace. Let us look some evidences from countless examples:

• The Ethiopian Emperor Hailesilasse fail to defeat Bale Oromo revolt and demand peace deal with Our hero General Waaqoo Guutu. General Waaqoo Guutuu accept the peace plan in order to solve all issues peacefully. Our colonizers as their habit after they made peace agreement and disarm the Oromo people they start to kill, torture, imprisonment and humiliation of the Oromo people to the level of dog.

2-   In 1991 the Oromo people under leadership of their vanguard Organization OLF form a transitional government with the current barbaric TPLF government. OLF accept to disarm and put his soldiers in temporary military camp for the sake of peace and democracy in order to foster new Era in the Ethiopian empire to bring eternal peace for all oppressed nations. Again our colonizers with anti-peace and anti-democracy gene code  in their DNA force OLF to leave the transitional government, and declare total war on Oromo people (start to kill Oromo civilians and start to kill and torture the disarmed soldiers in the peace camp).

• Bekele Gerba the vice chairman of OFC and the university teacher is unlawfully imprisoned, humiliated and denied any medical care for promoting peace, equality and democracy to everybody (inclusive our enemy). Mr. Bekele Gerba and his fellow innocent Oromo peoples are still languishing in prison camp without any criminal charge. This reflects also the exact character of our colonizers for more than a century (they are allergic for peace, freedom and democracy).
• Leenco Lataa the former founder of the OLF and the current president of ODF accept all humiliation for the sake of peace and travel to Ethiopia to explore peaceful solution. But the TPLF government force him to leave his own country and his own people (while they are the colonizers and occupiers). This episode also clarify that our colonizers are suffering from metastases of the world cancer (anti-peace, anti-democracy and violators of human rights).
• Oromo TV, TVOMT, OMN, qaanqee show, gadisa dhuga , Simbirtu radio, OVR, seife nebelbal radio, sagale afura biyya radio,Gadaa website, Ayyantuu news, Qeerroo website, Bilisummaa website, Oromia times, Advocating for Oromia website….etc are working hard to promote the truth (Oromo nations) through Oromummaa road map. But still we are fail to liquidate the traitors and opportunistic individuals, fail to promote the organization or movement which fight the ultimately battle for our nations, fail to bring our truth under world attention. So I would like to thank you for the job that all of you have done for our nation and we have to move step further together to glorify our nations.

My people as I have mentioned above our enemies understand very well that Oromo peoples are nation of peace. To implement their destructive policies and to dismantle the Oromo uprisings for freedom and democracy they use the word Peace and they use rule of gun instead of rule of law for implementation.

Secondly they sell false information and incorrect messages to the international community about their promises and vision while they are blackmailing the real facts and truth “Oromo nation”.

Call to Oromo people and international community:

Oromo people are nation of peace, nation of democratic rule, nation of justice and equality, nation of heroes, nation of generosity, nation of rich in culture, tradition and nature. I am proud to be born from this holistic and collective quality of nations. My people the task in front of us is enormous in order to build our nations. Our tasks are not only defeating the current barbaric TPLF government. It is also about our future that faces our nations like I have mentioned in my previous article “Nation-building is the product of conscious statecraft, not happenstance.  Nation-building is always a work-in-progress; a dynamic process in constant need of nurturing and re-invention. Nation-building never stops and true nation-builder never rest because all nations are constantly facing up to new challenges. Nation-building is therefore about building the tangible and intangible threads that hold a political entity together and gives it a sense of purpose.” 

Dear brothers and sisters

• wake up and ask yourself about your contribution in this historical national issues,
• take your responsibility to deliver your parts in order to defeat our enemies and glorify our nations,
• dedicate yourself to continue our struggle against humiliation and colonization,
• prepare yourself for ultimate scarifies to liberate your people from century long voice-less-ness and colonization,
• be ready to give all necessary support (information, material and financial).

International community: Especially the powerful states and world body (USA, European union and UN). Supporting and assisting the Oromo people in their struggle for peace, freedom  and democracy  would have enormous contribution for international community policies. Namely:

• Eradicating fundamentalist ideology and terrorism through encouraging Oromummaa vision the promotor of peace, freedom and democracy. Oromummaa Vision will bring eternal peace in Ethiopian empire, horn of Africa and Africa in general.
• Protecting and promoting western nation interest: There is no any other concrete, stable and trustful solution than Working with Oromo people in order to safeguard the western interest. The concrete evidence for this realities are as follows:
• For centuries long the pillar of economic power of the Ethiopian empire is Oromia.
• Rich in agricultural products like Teff (medically also essential)
• Rich in natural resources like Gold, mercury, marmar…etc
• The exporter of the best coffee in the world
• The heart of business arena
• The host of international organization like African Union and international embassies.
• It is also an international obligation and essential time before too late to look carefully the lies and character of Ethiopia TPLF government and assessing and analyzing the truth of Oromo people in order to safe all nations in Ethiopian empire, the horn of Africa and keeping in place the strategical aspect of Oromia.

Conclusion:

Dear brother and sister, For Oromo peoples there is only one way. That is promoting the truth (Oromo nations) through Oromummaa vision and strengthen our vanguard organization OLF. If we need to destroy our enemies and eradicate the chain of colonization we have to redouble our duties as a patriotic citizens. Supporting and strengthen OLF in all aspects (through corrective idea’s, diplomatically, militarily and financially)will lead to enhance our victories, strengthen our position on the world stage and promote our truth.

I hope the international community will look all the facts carefully and seriously in order to stand with Oromo people. It is also the essential time to translate in to action the January 2016  resolution by European parliament against barbaric act of TPLF government in order to punish the Ethiopia TPLF junta and support Oromummaa vision to bring the lasting peace, freedom and democracy in order to cure the world cancer.

Victory to the Oromo people!

Dr. B.K.DERESSA, Medical degree in internal medicine, specialized in Gastro-Hepatology diseases. University Hospital of Brussels-Belgium

By Moses Karanja (CIPIT), Maria Xynou, Arturo Filastò

(Quartz) — Nearly 100 deaths and thousands of arrests have been reported in Ethiopia over the last days, as part of protests against the marginalization and persecution of the Oromos and Amharas, Ethiopia’s two largest ethnic groups. But the attacks and arrests may not have been the only forms of retribution carried out by the Ethiopian government in its crackdown against protesters.

Last weekend, the internet was reportedly shut down in the country.

In an attempt to understand whether the internet was in fact shut down, we looked at some public sources of data that contain information about internet traffic. Such data provides strong indicators that the internet was most likely shut down during the Ethiopian protests last weekend, though it remains unclear if this occurred in all regions and/or on all types of networks across the country.

Ethiopian protests

Ongoing protests have been carried out by Ethiopia’s Oromo people since November 2015, marking one of the most significant political developments in Ethiopia in recent years. These protests were sparked by the introduction of the Addis Ababa City Integrated Master Plan, which aims to expand the territorial limits of the country’s capital into neighbouring Oromo towns, threatening to displace millions of Oromo farmers and bring the Oromo-dominated region under Tigray-led federal government.

The unprecedented wave of protests has resulted in more than 400 deaths over the last months, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report.

More protests sprung up in the Amhara regional state, with protesters requesting for political reforms and specifically, the Welkait community demanding that ancestral land currently administered by the Tigray regional state be moved into the neighbouring Amhara region.

The new-found unity between the two historically antagonistic communities of the Oromo and Amharas against a common adversary, the TPLF-led government, seems to have raised the tension in the country. The security forces response has been extreme, with observers comparing it to the 2005 post-election violence where nearly 200 people were killed. This time though, at least 30 people were reportedly killed in the Amhara region in one day alone.

Internet shutdown

Protesters relied on the internet to plan, mobilize and coordinate with each other and this may have prompted the Ethiopian government to pull the plug on the internet even before the planned protests started.

But this is not the first time that the Ethiopian government appears to be restricting access to the internet this year.

Last month, the government reportedly blocked social media sites across the country after University entrance exams were leaked on Facebook by an Oromo activist, as a form of protest against the government.

Public data from last weekend indicates that the internet was shut down in Ethiopia during the heat of the protests, but it remains unclear if this occurred nationwide.

The graphs below illustrate that while internet traffic appeared to be originating from Ethiopia up until August 5th, such traffic was suddenly terminated until August 8th, indicating that the internet was probably shut down.

Google products traffic for users from Ethiopia from July 22nd to August 8th

NDT measurements started by users from July 20th to August 8th

The following graph, which we created based on tweets geotagged in Ethiopia from 3rd-9th August, also illustrates a decrease of Twitter activity.

Similarly, Tor metrics data below illustrates that there was a decrease in the usage of Tor last weekend, which could be viewed as an indicator of the internet being restricted or shut down in certain types of networks.

Tor metrics data for direct connecting users

The data included in the graphs above shows that while the internet was likely shut down in certain regions and/or types of networks, it probably wasn’t shut down completely across Ethiopia. It might also have been the case that access to certain websites was restricted in regions and/or networks where the internet was accessible, though we unfortunately don’t have any recent OONI measurements from Ethiopia to verify this.

#KeepItOn campaign

Internet shutdowns effectively pose restrictions on demonstrations and on human rights generally.

In the recent case of Ethiopia, shutting down the internet in the middle of intense protests likely not only had an effect on the mobilization and coordination of protesters, but also on the communication between families and friends of victims. This also likely had an effect on journalists reporting on the protests in real-time on the ground, if they were using networks that were blocked.

An Al Jazeera reporter in Addis Ababa cited difficulties to connect to the internet and restricted travel to protest zones as a cause for limited coverage of the protests.

But Ethiopia is not the only country restricting access to the internet during political events.

At least 20 cases of internet shutdowns have been documented worldwide over the last six months alone. In response to this, Access Now is leading a campaign in collaboration with organizations around the world called #KeepItOn.

The #KeepItOn campaign aims to document and raise awareness about internet shutdowns around the world. We support this campaign, and we hope you will too.

This article was drafted as part of a collaboration between OONI and the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) department of Strathmore University.

By Gabisso Halaale

“I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Marthin Luther King Jr.

#OromoProtests The outlawed resistance flag is back in Addis /Finfinne after 25 years

In the past ten months, the gallant Oromo nation unequivocally rejected slavery and demanded freedom. Freedom from political and social marginalization, and wanton economic exploitation by the colonial regime of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).  Their unflinching determination and burning desire for liberty in the face of wholesale and pitiless slaughter by the Agazi killing squad has been unprecedented in the history of the Ethiopian empire in the past 130 years or so.  To date, over 600 civilians have been brutally massacred while over 50,000 Oromo civilians have been imprisoned and made to disappear without trace.

TPLF is committing crimes against humanity in Oromia before the eyes of the international community. The political crises in the middle east and other parts of Africa cannot in any way justify tacit endorsement of massacre by the western powers who prop up this rogue regime with financial aid. No legitimate alliances can be made on war on terror with a regime that terrorises its own civilians on daily basis. In spite of the massive human cost, the Oromo nation refuses to capitulate because freedom is never given voluntarily by the colonizers; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

A minority rule or a colonial rule

To confront our oppressor, it is essential to understand its salient characteristics. It is my conviction that among the oppressed nations of the south, only the Oromo nation and to some extent the Somali nation who clearly understand the innate characteristics of the oppressor.  It is exactly because of their higher national consciousness that the Oromo are confronting the oppressor armed to the teeth with bare hand while other oppressed nations remain in the shadow. I am afraid that the rest of us the oppressed nations do not comprehend who our oppressor is. And I believe that our inaction in the past 10 months against the repeated plea to stand by the Oromo nation emanates from lack of understanding of the oppressor. How does the south perceive the TPLF rule? Is the TPLF rule a minority dictatorship in a country that is a home to all nations, or a subtle colonial extension of an infamous empire imposed on hitherto independent nations who are still today treated as inferior conquered subjects to be ruled at any cost? The answer is unambiguous for two reasons.

First, TPLF or its predecessor, the Tigray National Organisation (TNO), was created in 1974 with the sole objective to secede from the Ethiopian empire and create an independent state of Tigray. Without doubt therefore the TPLF was fundamentally against the Ethiopian empire and had no commitment to protect and preserve its territorial integrity. TPLF’s unwavering support for the independence of Eritrea in 1993 is a living testimony of this fact. The question one should then ask is why did the TPLF occupy the rest of the Ethiopian empire it helped to partly disintegrate when the military regime collapsed in May 1991? The TPLF would tell us that it updated its manifesto from seceding and creating an independent Tigray state to “ensuring the rights of the Ethiopian peoples to self -determination” and that it occupied the south to “liberate” them. The TPLF would lament, as it does today, that it was committed to create a new country where the “rights of all nations to self-determination” were fully respected.  The truth of the matter is TPLF had no business fighting to liberate Oromia, Sidama, Somali, Afar, Gambela, or any other nations of the south for the simple reason that it was and is solely a Tigray political organisation.

Most nations already had political movements which were the counterpart of TPLF that were fighting against the Ethiopian empire even before the creation of TNO or TPLF, regardless of their successes or failures to topple the incumbent regime/regimes. The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) founded in 1973 was older than TNO or TPLF and had unwavering support from the Oromo nation and had fought gallantly against both the imperial and the military regime. The Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM) established in 1973, the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) created in 1976, and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) founded in 1984 all fought against the military regime concurrently with the TPLF and EPLF.

The victory against the equally repressive military regime was therefore not solely attributable to the TPLF and the bravery of its fighters as the TPLF colonial rulers would want us to believe today. The military regime crumbled due to relentless opposition from all nations of the empire, low military morale, the collapse of the domestic economy and the global socialist system. It did not collapse solely due to the bravery of the TPLF fighters!

Political organisations of the oppressed nations had similar objectives and desire for liberty for their respective nations as TPLF had for Tigray. Therefore, had TPLF’s change of heart not to secede from the empire been genuine, it would have agreed to work with the OLF, SLM, ONLF and other political organisations of the oppressed nations to ensure self-determination of the oppressed nations.  But instead, TPLF branded these organisations as its nemesis and occupied the rest of the empire.  TPLF’s expansion and occupation of Oromia and the south at large after 1991 was therefore indisputably a new colonial expansion and occupation to takeover and rule the remaining parts of the empire. It was an empire building project. The Transitional Government created in 1991 in which OLF, SLM, ONLF other opposition political organisations participated was a hogwash and a publicity stunt to hoodwink the global community and the unsuspecting south.

Second, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) was a cover-up to legitimise the colonial takeover of the remaining parts of the empire. The timing of the creation of EPRDF is a living proof. EPRDF was created hastily in 1989, just two years before the collapse of the Derg regime, as a coalition between TPLF and the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), formerly known as the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement, a splinter group from the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP). ANDM was supported and mentored by the TPLF to pacify the Amhara whom the latter regard as chauvinists.

Having “secured legitimacy” among the former rulers, the Amhara through ANDM, TPLF’s next move was to delegitimise liberation movements in the south by fabricating pseudo-political organisations. Consequently, to delegitimise the OLF, which was and still today is the vanguard of the Oromo liberation struggle, the TPLF gathered the Oromo war captives and Oromo defectors from the military and created the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO) in 1990.  OPDO was then immediately added to the EPRDF’s colonial shopping cart. When the military regime was overthrown in 1991, it was already clear that the TPLF was ready to institute an alternative colonial rule in Oromia and purge the OLF.

In the same manner, the TPLF fabricated “people’s democratic organisations” and “democratic parties” in Sidama, Somali, Afar, Gambella, Hadiya and elsewhere as local TPLF structures and purged SLM, ONLF and other legitimate political organisations. In 1993 the TPLF unilaterally dissolved the 5 independent regions of the south, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 and created Southern Ethiopia Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State and subsequently Southern Ethiopia Peoples Democratic Movement (SEPDM). Immediately the SEPDM was added to the EPRDF colonial shopping cart.

Three peripheral regions, Ogaden, Gambella and Benishangul-Gumuz were not directly added to the EPRDF colonial shopping cart due to economic and geopolitical reasons. Nonetheless, they remained under the tight control of the TPLF. By purging ethnic-national political institutions and country wide political opposition and replacing them with tightly controlled local political tentacles, the TPLF created new indirect colonial rule across the remaining parts of the Ethiopian empire.

The use of indirect rule by occupying colonial powers is not unique to TPLF. Both Britain and France, the two most powerful colonial powers, used indirect rule. They used pre-existing local structures or local structures fabricated by them to govern parts of their empires which were often referred to as protectorates or trucial states. This was primarily because they did not have adequate human resources to man government structures in all parts of their empires. It was  not because they wanted to ensure self-determination of their colonial subjects.

Likewise, the TPLF used SEPDM, OPDO, Somali, Gambella, Benshinagul people’s democratic parties, not due to legitimacy problems as some would argue, nor to ensure self-rule by the oppressed people but simply because they did not have enough human resources to govern each and every corner of their new empire.

Therefore, it is naïve to believe that the TPLF rule in the Ethiopian empire is a rule of a minority among equals. It is not. This is important because it is only when we understand our oppressor’s characteristics fully that we will be able to confront it adequately.   A minority ruler does not treat fellow peaceful citizens of the country as enemy combatants. It does not unleash full military might against the unarmed youth, children, elderly men, elderly and pregnant women. It is only colonial rulers who slaughter subjects indiscriminately. It is only colonizers who jail tens of thousands of civilians for demanding basic freedom from slavery.  This is what TPLF is doing in Oromia today. What TPLF is doing bears the hallmark of a colonial regime. Therefore, in all its characteristics the TPLF rule is a colonial rule and should be rejected unequivocally by all oppressed nations of the south.

Can Oromia invoke the constitution to achieve freedom?

One of my introductory quotes by the most famous African American civil rights activist, Marthin Luther King Jr. reads: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” This is so true. At no time in human history did the oppressor willingly hand over freedom to the oppressed without the latter demanding it. It baffles me when some of our most respected scholars entertain thoughts of constitution and the rule of law in the Ethiopian empire.  Are we so naïve to think that TPLF as a colonial oppressor was willing to develop a constitution to bestow freedom on the colonial subjects it fought hard for 17 years to conquer and rule. The answer is no.

The oppressed nations should clearly understand that the colonial constitution of the Ethiopian empire is not meant to give them freedom. It is not even meant for them. It is true that the 106 article constitution boasts about the unlimited freedom for the nations and nationalities in the empire including Fundamental rights and freedoms (Article 13), Human rights (Articles 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 27, 28), and Democratic rights (Article 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, etcetera). The fact of the matter is not a single provision in the so-called constitution has been respected by the TPLF in the past 25 years. Some argue that the constitution is not worth the paper it is written on. I beg to differ; the constitution was not written to grant freedom to the oppressed nations in the first place. It was a tool to legitimise the indirect colonial rule in the eyes of the international community and the local collaborators. Otherwise, why does he TPLF writes the most liberal constitution and respects not a single provision in it. Therefore, the TPLF constitution is the tool to oppress the Oromo, the Sidama, the Somali, the Gambella, the Afar, and the south at large and not to free them. The only constitution that will guarantee freedom to the Oromo nation is the one written by the blood of its fallen heroes.

Draconian labels of terrorism and anti-terror laws

Having firmly established that TPLF breaches every fabric of the supreme law of the empire, the constitution, it promulgated, what recourse in law or otherwise does it have to label any other political organisation or individual citizen of the empire a terrorist. If at all there is a terrorist in the Ethiopian empire today, it is the TPLF. TPLF is a terrorist organisation because it occupied nations without their will and imposed an indirect colonial rule over them thereby inflicting untold suffering on them directly or indirectly through its local collaborators. It terrorised the oppressed nations for a quarter of a century by unleashing an elite military killing squad, Agazi, which massacred the Sidama in Loqqe in May 2002, the Somali in 2007 and 2013,  Gambella in 2003, continue to massacre the Oromo civilians since 2015 and before.

The oppressed nations should reject the hypocritical colonial label of terror against the OLF and ONLF and should educate the TPLF the unmitigated terror it has committed against the occupied nations in the past 25 years. Thought out the human history, one nation’s hero was always the oppressor’s terrorist and TPLF is no exception.  The draconian terrorism law is a bizarre extension of such reign of terror inflicted on the oppressed south.

The terror being inflicted on the occupied nations of the empire flies on the face of the growth and transformation narrative the regime employs to hoodwink the west.  In spite of the much hyped double digit growth for over a decade, the occupied nations are economically worse off today than ever before.  Rain failure for one year due to the El Nino effect exposed lack of any rural development efforts in the past 25 years. Over 18 million people have been ravaged by famine since last year. Access to information and communication technology is the lowest in the world. While 70% of the population in neighbouring Kenya have access to internet in 2015, in occupied Ethiopia, access to internet was 3% in 2015.  The empire is kept in dark to preserve the colonial occupation. Otherwise, how would a regime block its own citizens from accessing information and communication technology that is taking the world by storm. Especially in an empire where economic opportunity is limited and millions of youth are unemployed.  Even this meagre service is regularly switched off to block the oppressed nations from organising to demand political, social and economic freedom.

Solidarity with the Oromo nation now

The Oromo nation, the most enlightened of the all the oppressed nations in Ethiopia, has rejected slavery and demanded freedom. The Oromo struggle for freedom is irreversible. Emancipation from the colonial yoke is inevitable regardless of the unfolding human tragedy. The Oromo nation will achieve freedom whether the other oppressed nations stand by its side or not. This does not mean however that the solidarity of nations is unimportant to lessen the human suffering in the course of liberation struggle. The recent protests in the Amhara region are welcome developments.

While political coalition between the Oromo, Somali, Sidama, Gambella and Benishagula-Gumuz is crucial for freedom in the long term, in the short term, civilians in all these regions should mobilise and standby the Oromo nation. I was encouraged to learn that among a dozen university students expelled from Haramaya university by the regime for alleged sympathy with the Oromo freedom rallies, two were Sidama while all the rest were Oromo students.  These students epitomise resilience of the oppressed nations and what we can achieve when we stand together. A number of Sidama businessmen and civil servants are languishing in Qilinxo prison (transferred from Maikelawi recently) in Oromia for alleged support to the Oromo freedom movement. This is encouraging but not adequate given the scale of human tragedy in Oromia.   Our peoples should stand shoulder to shoulder from cornet to corner for freedom in our life time.  Liberty with danger is better than peace with slavery.

Kalkidan Yibeltal &Tesfalem Waldyes

(Addis Standard) — Less than a year after the Oromo People’s Democratic Party (OPDO), part of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), celebrated its 25^th founding anniversary the Oromo protests took the region OPDO is seemingly in charge of by a sheer storm. The protests, which broke out on November 12, 2015 in Ginchi, a small town 82 km west of Addis Abeba, were originally against a proposed integrated master plan for the capital Addis Abeba, which was, at the very least, unconstitutional.

Officials of the Oromia regional state looked helplessly, and at times totally disoriented, as protests gradually morphed into an expression of political discontent and frustration accumulated over the 25 years of OPDO’s presence as a party.

Picking up pace and spreading throughout the entire regional state, the Oromo protests persisted in various shapes and differing magnitudes; but unlike several protests in the past, they have accentuated an issue that had been a subject of heated debates (albeit on and off) among the Oromo nation for 25 years: the legitimacy of OPDO as the only party that is representing a region of more than 35 million people.

The current Oromo protests have, more than any time in the past, wide opened the doors for sincere reflections on the legitimacy and relevance of the party that constitutes the larger share to the coalition of the ruling EPRDF.

In the beginning there was no OPDO

Together with three parties, – the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM), OPDO makes up the ruling EPRDF. But its critics have long criticized it as illegitimate, weak and ineffective.

Such criticisms do not exist in a vacuum.

When EPRDF assumed power in 1991 after overthrowing the Marxist Derg regime, a new federated Ethiopia came into being. Carrying the burden of righting the wrong the Oromo people have suffered under previous regimes was the OPDO, which, unlike TPLF and ANDM, was just about two years old. Compared to TPLF, which had been engaged in armed struggles since the mid-1970s and ANDM, which metamorphosed from its precursor, the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (ENDM), the OPDO came to the coalition with no significant military background of its own as a freedom fighter.

“The OPDO was formed towards the demise of the Derg. Although many of its founders were not new to the armed struggle (some of them were part of the ENDM while others have served in the Derg army and were even held as prisoners of war), as an organized party, the OPDO had not been in the scene [of the armed struggle] as long as the TPLF. In fact its existence was needed to fill a void.” says a political analyst based in Addis Abeba who wishes to remain anonymous.

“The void” our interviewee referred to was a void left by the Oromo Liberation Front, (OLF), an armed group which spent decades fighting for the independence of the Oromo people, but which was eventually rendered unlawful by the Ethiopian Parliament. “When the OLF, which, strictly speaking is a deceased entity now, walked out of the coalition in 1991 for one reason or other, the Oromo people were left with no representative; there was no plan B than strengthening the existence of the newly created OPDO,” says the analyst, who closely watches  political events within the OPDO.

A statement by the OPDO published to commemorate its 25^thfounding anniversary underscores this point. Under the subtopic “On the Effort to Work with the OLF Ending in Vain,” the publication maintains that early founders of the EPRDF travelled to Khartoum, the Sudan, and sat down with the then leaders of the OLF to arrive at a consensus that would help them work together. The attempt failed because the OLF “lacked political commitment and had a deficit at its base,” the publication claims.

For our interviewee, therefore, OPDO’s problem began at its inception as a party. “It has a top-down formation. It was created because there was a missing puzzle to make EPRDF full. And we will not be wrong if we call this a birth defect,” he says.

Dr. Negasso wants an objective answer from those who claim that the OPDO is created to decimate the OLF

But Dr. Negasso Gidada, a former president and a senior member of the OPDO during the first 10 years, strongly disagrees with the assertion that OPDO suffers from a political ‘birth defect’. According to him1980 was the time when TPLF had to work hard to create Coalitions/Fronts of Organization to join it to fight against the military Derg. “Around mid ‘80s an agreement was signed between TPLF and OLFmembers to jointly fight against the Derg and the Soviet intervention…while continuing to discuss on their differences,” Dr. Negasso told this magazine.

According to him“one of the practical implementations was the agreement to send [TPLF] personnel to train OLF fighters.” But the deal collapsed and the trainers went back to TPLF’s base. Dr. Negasso admits “there is still conflicting explanations” on why this agreement collapsed. Since then, according to him, there was no sign of the two groups working together until the 1991 collapse of the militarist Derge.

In the meantime, “some Oromo members of the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (EPDM), [the predecessor of today’s ANDM], began to organize themselves in line with the TPLF experience. [These include] OPDO heavy-weights (both former and current) such as Kumaa Damaksaa, Ibrahim Malkaa, Abba Duulaa Gammadaa, Bachaa Dabalee, Getachew Bedhaane, and Ynatan Dhibbisaa. Some of them were freed Prisoners of War (PoWs) sent to Tigray by [their liberators] the TPLF. It was this group that finally organized itself as OPDO and joined the EPRDF (a front of two organizations: TPLF and ENDM) in 1989/90.

Dismissing as baseless the argument that OPDO lacks the political legitimacy to represent the Oromo because it was created, among others,as theOLF antithesis, Dr. Negasso refers to a historic incident in which, in 1991, members of OLF and EPRDF had jointly fought against the military Derg and Sudan’s SPLM armies in Asosa and Wallagga in western Ethiopia. “In fact it is said that it was Abbaa Duulaa of EPRDF and Abbaa Chaalaa of the OLF who led the armies of the two organizations which liberated Dembi Dollo [now in western Wallagga of the Oromia region]. It was then agreed that the OLF takes over the administration of western Wallagga while the OPDO could open offices in the major towns of the area,” Dr. Negasso said, adding, “I want an objective answer from those who claim that the OPDO is created to decimate the OLF.”

A ‘disparaging lack of narrative’

Critical of the ‘birth defect’ theory, Dr. Negasso says that from the very inception of OPDO, its members, although few in number, actively participated in the final battles against the Derg.

However, for our anonymous interviewee, apart from the political ‘birth defect’ the other problem which keep on haunting OPDO in the face of the EPRDF coalition – and perhaps in the eyes of its own constituency – is its “disparaging lack of narrative.”

“If you take a look at TPLF or ANDM you are met with a narrative so well-structured, a historical journey so prideful. You can find a romanticized, tantalizing story of a bunch of youngsters who, against all odds, managed to defy an atrocious regime. You find stories of defiance, commitment, and triumph. You can’t find that within OPDO.” OPDO, for him, is “a rootless organization with no attachment to the conscious of the constituency it claims to represent; it is a party that couldn’t even settle where it was conceived.”By this he is referring to last year’s controversial decision senior OPDO officials took to celebrate the 25^th founding anniversary of the party in Adet, a small village in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, as the birth place of the party. This came after OPDO was celebrating the previous anniversaries in North Shewa, Darra Woreda of the Oromia regional state, in a village called Harbu Meskele.

For many political analysts, it was a decision that signified the bottomless exploitation of the OPDO by “their masters” within the EPRDF coalition, another reason why OPDO keeps on struggling to win the hearts and minds of its constituency.

Similar manipulations have eventually created an extraordinary asymmetry within the ruling EPRDF, which further robbed the OPDO of the much needed legitimacy in the eyes of its  constituency, according to Solomon Seyoum, who has written extensively on the genesis of the OPDO. “OPDO has no historical, intellectual and moral background to compete neck and neck with [the rest of the parities within the ruling EPRDF]”, he told this magazine.

Solomon has another theory to add: “Ethiopian heroism narrative is yet in its version of military adventure. Civil adventure is at its infancy. Regarding the military adventure, OPDO is far more behind TPLF,” he said, adding that in the eyes of the other members of the coalition, “this robs OPDO of the freedom fighter heroism status,” which in turn significantly affects its relations with the people of Oromia.

Being OPDO is never easy

Ever since its emergence as a partyOPDO has been known as, among others, “the sick child”and “the troubled kid” within the ruling EPRDF.Some of the reasons associated with this are the fact that unlike the other three major parties, OPDO has been hit by high presidential turnover;suffers from lackof a political seat where it can solidify its power. Although officially Addis Abeba is the seat of the Oromia regional state, OPDO has failed to secure even some of the constitutionally guaranteed provisions under the special interest of Oromia on Addis Abeba. OPDO is also a party that lost to exile the highest numbers of former senior party members including two former presidents – Hassen Ali and Junadin Sado. “These contribute to the unhealthy state the OPDO is in,” our anonymous interviewee says.

But for Dr. Negasso isolating OPDO as “a sick child” or “the troubled kid” is an outrageous claim. “What about the situations in the other members of the EPRDF or the EPRDF [as a whole]? If OPDO is not healthy, does it not mean that EPRDF is not healthy as well?” he asks.

In the ten years (1991-2001) “I worked in the organization I know that only Almaz Makko, former speaker of the House of People Representatives, and Hassen Ali, former president of the region, left OPDO and now live in exile.[Other senior members such as] Yonatan Dhibbisa, Diriba Harqo, and General Kamal Galchu defected. Ibrahim Malka and Hailu […] were expelled from the organization, but live in the country. Asfaw Tune and I resigned and live in the country,” he says. “Compare this with the endless number of senior TPLF members who were expelled from the TPLF in early 2000. Do not forget the rank and file of thousands of TPLF members who were expelled or left the organization earlier (around 1991/1992 and in 1994).”

According to an official document published by the OPDO in 2015, in the first ten years since 1991, there had been at least four occasions in which the OPDO had to evaluate itself. On each of those occasions some officials, including high level officials, were expelled while some were simply demoted from their positions.

Solomon Seyoum believes more often than not OPDO had to struggle to assert its legitimacy and relevance

Solomon Seyoum doesn’t bite his tongue when discussing about the endless purges OPDO is often “forced to execute”, which plays a significant role in disorienting the party from its core. He also adds that OPDO central committee does not only suffer from perpetual purges but mysterious killings and disappearances of its members such as Mekonnen Fite and Bayu Gurmu who, according to Solomon, were killed by “government security agents in Sept. 1997”. “Hassan Ali, the then president of Oromia, and other OPDO central committee members were discussing the death of Mekonnen and Bayu when Alemayehu Desalegn, another OPDO central committee member and head of the Oromia finance bureau, was mysteriously gunned down and explained away as a suicide.”

Solomon further referred to an August 2001 statement given by Almaz Meko, the former house speaker who is now in exile: “The EPRDF government has brought untold miseries and sufferings on the Oromo people. [The] OPDO is … reduced to a rubber stamp for TPLF’s rule in Oromia.”

But Dr. Negasso disagrees and says “it is too simplistic to conclude that the OPDO is not healthy because few of its senior members left and live in exile or defected,” he says, “rather, other symptoms must be shown and the root causes must be looked for. Besides, root cause of the illness should not only pile upon the OPDO and [we should] not forget to investigate on whether EPRDF itself, from top to the lowest level, is healthy or not. OPDO cannot be sick if the EPRDF is not sick. If the OPDO is not healthy, EPRDF is not healthy.”

Our anonymous interviewee agrees that there are problems within other members of the EPRDF and the front itself.The problem of corruption, for example, is deeply rooted within the OPDO, but it is also rampant within the EPRDF in general. But there are some problems that can only be attributed uniquely to OPDO, he says. “When we evaluate OPDO as a sister party to the coalition, especially in light of TPLF’s strength, the differences between the two members of the same front become crystal clear,” he says. “For instance, TPLF has a firm base within the Tigray elites; a heavy presence within the intelligence, the army, the diaspora and business people. OPDO can’t boast of such level of acceptance. It doesn’t have the Oromo elite with it.”

This, according to Solomon, often sends the party off balance, costing it the little faith its constituency want to entrust in it, if for lack of choice. Every now and then, therefore, “OPDO had to struggle to assert its legitimacy and relevance back from square one”, Solomon told this magazine during an interview.

But in addition to its political weakness, being OPDO in itself comes with a price tag on it. On the one hand OPDO as a party is a subject of constant scrutiny from the mother party for harboring Oromo nationalist members who sympathize with the long outlawed OLF. On the other hand, the party comes under constant attack by nationalist Oromos who accuse it of being the OLF antithesis. For our anonymous interviewee, “being OPDO is never easy.” “OPDO, for some is narrow nationalist, while for others it is not nationalist enough,” he says, adding: “many Ethiopianist political observers see OPDO as a threat, as a haven for narrow, and possibly secessionist, nationalists. But for many radical nationalists who want more self-autonomy for the Oromo people or generally for the Oromia State, OPDO is a deserter. It is very difficult to reconcile these two diametrically opposing demands.”

 But is there anything OPDO canhold on to?

Solomon Seyoum sees nothing in a form of political redemption for OPDO. According to him, the current Oromo Protests show that the party has long “crossed the Rubicon.” OPDO is irredeemable mostly because its founders remained ardent political loyalists to the all too powerful TPLF. Although the new generation of OPDO members have shown time and again that the party can indeed be redeemable and can become the people’s party, its founders and the “patron-client” relationship they maintain with the dominant TPLF has made them become the “Achilles heels.”

However, despite the enormous challenges, Dr. Negasso and our anonymous interviewee insist on the pragmatic outlook. Under the OPDO, “services of communication have expanded much in Oromia region”, Dr. Negasso says, listing the party’s accomplishments. Although the quality needs a serious reflection, the same holds true for roads, health posts, schools, higher education, and vocational training institutes.

But if OPDO wants to regain the much needed trust from its constituency, the work ahead is monumental. To this end, according to Dr. Negasso, even if some of the problems the region faces can be attributed to the country in general, OPDO has failed to even implement the rights of the Oromo people which are guaranteed in the constitution. A case in point is the “Oromia State’s special interest in Addis Abeba”, which, twenty years after it was written, is not supported by guiding proclamations. “There is problem in the justice system, too. And our election system and the absence of constitutional court have led to the situation that only OPDO dominates in Oromia.”

For our anonymous interviewee, apart from the administrative achievements, OPDO has registered successful accomplishments in making up to historical injustices and opening up opportunities for an entire generation of self-assertive youth who are proud of their identity. And for all its problems, OPDO remains “the largest, strongest and most structured Oromo organization ever,” he says.The problems that have tangled the OPDO should not therefore be diagnosed as OPDO problems only. “OPDO’s health and sickness has a wider ramification to the EPRDF as a ruling party, as well as to the country. That is why it is important for the party to tidy up its house.”

According to him “Ethiopian politics is predictably unpredictable.” But from where things stand today OPDO has two choices to make: putting all the focus in the past and getting lost in the maze or looking ahead and assume leadership.“If OPDO keeps undermining itself by playing the role of the little kid in the house, if it continues to be burdened by its own, or for that matter the country’s past, I don’t see a way of [redemption]. I’d recommend for it to focus on the future and get closer to the demands of the people it leads.”

In what came for many as the latest weave of purge, in an emergency meeting of the Oromia Regional Parliament(Caffe Oromia) held in the first week of June, OPDO announced it removed DemozeMame and Boja Tadesse, President and vice President of the region’s Supreme Court, and stripped the immunity from Zelalem Jemaneh, former OPDO executive committee member andhead of the region’s bureau of agriculture. While the former two were replaced by Addisu Kebenessa and Hussien Adam respectively, Zelalem was detained by the police suspected of corruption just a day after he lost his immunity.

The second round of high level purging since the beginning of Oromo Protests in November last year, this latest act of purge has left critics guessing whether itwas the long awaited road to redemption or just another political maneuver that will leave the party in yet anotherround of disarray.

By Baaroo Keno Deressa, Dr.

August 16, 2016 (Ayyaantuu) – The Oromo people were colonized during the last quarter of the nineteenth century by a black African nation – Abyssinia – with the help of the European colonial powers of the day. During the same period, of course, the Somalis, Kenyans, Sudanese and others were colonized by European powers. The fact that  the Oromo were colonized by another black African nation makes their case quite special.

For more than 100 years, the Oromo people has been at war with enemies sworn to its destruction. Oromo people has done and still is doing all kinds of struggle in order to eradicate all those injustices and to regain his own god given freedom, full right to live as human being and rebuild his own country Oromia. The Oromo’s paid a heavy price to build Ethiopia but when it comes to power and money they are the last to touch the desk and when it comes to the human-right and equality they are the first to be victim of the system.  None of us on the earth choose to be born where we are born but once born, for example in my case, as an Oromo, there is no way I can change it. Unlike religion, behavior and attitudes towards nature, ethnic belongingness cannot be changed. That is why I cannot stop reminding at every chance I got the international community, TPLF elite and their puppet collaborators that as an Oromo, I am oppressed and I want my freedom and equality.

I am asking myself day to day, month to month and year to year why 50million of Oromo nation is languishing for so long time, so badly and inhumanly under minority rule ( previous one 25million and current TPLF rule 5 million) and while most of the Oromo’s are confronting our enemies with bare hands gallantly, why some of Oromo individuals and groups are working for our enemies TPLF junta. Like OPDO and individuals working in the embassies like ambassador Dina Mufti…etc and individuals in foreign business companies.???

Many Oromo intellectuals try to give diverse explanation to this humiliation namely:

• Effects of colonial injustices and oppression on both individuals and collectivities (Destruction, dependency or assimilation): In all spheres of life, discrimination, subjugation, repression and exploitation of all forms were applied. Everything possible was done to destroy Oromo identity – culture, language, custom, tradition, name and origin.
• Passivity of the Oromo’s sided with colonial state: One explanation for passivity is that precisely the power and pervasiveness of the colonial state has created deep fear, especially among people with family obligations, vulnerable employment and with moderate commitments to democratic freedoms. This group of citizens is aware of cases where colonial powers have affected other citizens who were involved in critical activities, causing job loss and broad suffering and are not willing to sacrifice their security and the welfare of their families.
• Ignorance: those peoples or groups who are not aware of the size, scope and activities of the colonial state. Their practical behavior speaks to the notion that ‘since I am not directly affected it must not exist’. Embedded in everyday life, making a living, enjoying leisure time, entertainment, sports, family and concerned only about household budgets. This mass is so embedded in their personal ‘micro-world’ that it considers the macro-economic and political issues raised by the colonial state as ‘distant’, outside of their experience or interest: ‘I don’t have time’, ‘I don’t know enough’, ‘It’s all ‘politics’. The widespread apoliticism of the public plays into its ignoring the monster that has grown in its midst.

My answer to this question is as follows. It is Stockholm syndrome, is a psychological phenomenon described in 1973 in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness. Stockholm syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other. The FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly eight percent of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome (FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin July 1999).

Today Oromo peoples (approximately 50 million) are kept hostage by Tigrian mafia organization called TPLF(Tigray people’s revolutionary Front). The new document reveals that the hostages are beside the standard atrocities like humiliation, torture, killings and harassment they are building underground diverse building for future civilized Tigray nations, namely (modern military equipment depo’s, fully organized hospitals, tunnels..;etc). The most horrific acts of this mafia groups TPLF junta are their act of wildness (killing of those peoples who builds the underground buildings to keep the facilities secret). Normally when your brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and injustices against human being you have to raise up against those atrocities, but those Oromo organization of individuals who works for them is suffering from Stockholm syndrome (traumatic bonding). That explains also the historic background of the OPDO leaders they are all hostages. My message to the Oromo people, Write down every missed/disappeared family member of you. One day we will bring them to justice those mafia TPLF leaders or we will bring justice to them in front of those secret buildings.

The second topic of my concern is today about our struggle against colonialism with multi faces and stability of our future nations (post-colonial era):

Before I am going to enter the core issues: Let us look two African countries with fundamental characteristics Botswana and Somalia. Both have: (1) one large dominant ethnic group divided into clans; (2) both are sparsely populated in semi-arid conditions; (3) at independence, both depended on livestock for the livelihood of a majority of the population.  While the Botswana leadership was collectively focused and had a vision of what it wanted to do with the country, the leadership in Somalia was divided against itself.  As a result, Botswana learnt to harness its limited resources for generally agreed objectives.  It learned to survive under the shadow of apartheid South Africa.  And it learned to manage its diamond resources well when those resources started flowing in. Somalia, on the other hand had a divided leadership, some of whom wanted to build Greater Somalia by military means, while others simply wanted to get on with running the country they inherited from colonialism.  As a result, the Somali leadership lacked focus and vision, and often fought itself through conspiracies and military coups.  Somalia also went to war with its neighbors.

Currently our leaders are dealing with rapidly changing tactics of struggle(peaceful solution and militarily) namely

• Education, persuasion
• Legal politics: lobbying, lawsuits
• Demonstrations: show numbers or intensity of concern (marches, rallies, petitions)
• Economic pressure (Boycotts, selective buying)
• Confrontation, disruption, civil disobedience
• Property damage
• Military confrontation

In such kinds of condition as organization and leaders we have to be:

• Clever and creative enough to be competent,
• determined, wise and intelligent to keep our question or our goal moving forward,
• flexible and transparent for accepting critics and ideas of your people.

In today’s world, skills, industriousness, productivity, and competitiveness are the determinant factors of national greatness. Not even the possession of the nuclear bomb is enough to make a nation great without reference to the industriousness and creativity of its citizens.

The Oromo people have many natural and God gifted chances in order to be great nations and prevent crisis like Somalia, Libya and Syria. Let us look some facts:

1. Nation of peace: we have God given gifts and character of solving all problems peacefully.
2. Nation of heroes: Heroes are fighting the enemy and protecting the family and friends (so we are never kill each other).
3. All province of Oromo’s are rich in natural resources, so there is no need of creating conflict among ourselves. Contrary, our unity is necessary to form powerful force in order to keep the greatness of our nation and utilize our resources adequately.
4. Our peoples are wise, intelligent and nation of love, so we have a cocktail of problem approaching way of life

The worst and the destructive entity of our struggle and the obstacle of our unity are the dormant political organization and weak leaders. Their characteristics are non-productive, invisible in the public, non-creative and absence in the international arena of advocacy.

Weak leaders of Oromo organization especially living in diaspora: At this crucial moment when your mothers and fathers are humiliated in their home, when your brothers and sisters are hunted down like fox and gun down without any criminal activities, when millions of Oromo peoples are bleeding, when Oromo doctors and peasants are paying great sacrifices, when our peoples are crying for help you are doing nothing and calling yourself a leader it is shameful and disgracing.  My proposition is as follows:

• stop making business in the name of our peoples blood
• stop laughing and playing cards on their graves
• Stop calling yourself leader of political organization and go work or study to learn how to help yourself in order to help further your people.
• If you remain to be leader come to the public, tell your history, show your action, organize your community and advocate in the international arena.

Safe yourself from historic national responsibility, you can choose between distractors or unifiers. If you are continuing as now with dormant and non-productive ways you will be remembered as distractors and if you are halting your distractive activities and start to work towards the most essential value of our time empowering our peoples struggle, you will be remembered as unifiers and  hero.

Conclusion: To overcome the atrocities of our enemy, to eradicate the colonization, to expose the open and hidden genocide of TPLF junta, to regain our freedom and our country we have to redouble our duties:

1. We have to elevate our support to OLF and Qeerroo movement in order to empower and strengthen them to crash our enemies. They are ready as always to build mechanized fighters and special commando’s to eliminate the barbaric act and state terrorism. I would like to salute Mr. Daawud Ibsa The chairman of OLF and his comrades for their sacrifices, determination and persistence in order to eradicate the colonial rule under very difficult and complex geopolitical situation, rare resources and time of uncertainty.
2. Our intellectuals, if you are afraid to participate in the confrontational ways wake up to empower your nations in many ways. Namely, communication technology teaching of your people in order to create another form of knowledge to suffocate our enemies,  inventing healthy and agricultural policies and technology in order to treat our peoples, soldiers and commandos.
3. Diplomacy: Towards everybody we have to work day and night. To rich and poor countries, to powerful and powerless countries, to individual and groups, to international and local organizations , to colleges and universities we have to advocate and elevate Oromo nations and our goal.
4. In my previous article on May 24, 2016 I have proposed: “Our leaders has pursued various strategies to solve all kinds of injustice peacefully with our enemies. But their reaction was/is humiliation, destruction and hopelessness. So i am proposing one day, one victory with enormous sacrifice. My proposition as follows, instead of dying a shameful death in the hands of TPLF militia’s, instead of end up in the torture chamber of TPLF, instead of end up building underground building in Tigray and assassination, instead of living unhuman and humiliating life in our birth place, instead of watching powerlessly gang rapes of our mothers, wives, and sister it is time to empower ourselves in order to enhance our freedom and regain our God-given right and true peace.  So my proposition is we are around 50 million peoples, if we are determine to sacrifice ourselves with a big number in one day the remaining of Oromo’s are living free and safe.  Today I will ask our political leaders and Qeerroo movement to organize this issue creatively and consciously together with WBO in order eradicate colonization and to finish ones and for all the TPLF atrocities against Oromo people and all oppressed nations. The co-ordination of this eradication process has to include the exposition of underground buildings complex in Tigray where our brothers and sisters were assassinated.

Dear brothers and sisters, we must find the resources and knowing how in ourselves if we are to succeed in our struggle in order to liberate our nation; otherwise, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “default would be not in our styles but in ourselves”.

Victory to the Oromo people!

Dr. B.K.DERESSA, Medical degree in internal medicine, specialized in Gastro-Hepatology diseases. University Hospital of Brussels-Belgium