Oduu, Barruu haala yeroo irratti hundaa’e, gaaffii fi deebii artisti Naafsifaay Addunyaa waliin, akkasumas SBO Sagantaa Afaan Amaaraa.

Nuyi Jaarmayootni qabsoo bilisummaa ummata Oromoo fi walabummaa Oromiyaa afur haala warraaqsaa Oromiyaa walgahee bulchiinsa yakkamaa Adda Bilisummaa Ummata Tigray (EPRDF/TPLF) rooraase, cimsuu fi, hegeree qabsoo bilisummaa, mirga hiree-murannaa Oromiyaa fi hariiroo ummatoota naannoof addunyaa waliinii irratt, hojiif dirqama keenya wal-hubannoodhaan akkaataa itti fiixa baafnu marii xumurachuu keenya ibsna. Warraaqsi Oromiyaatti ji’oota shanii- ol adeemaa jiru, itti fuffinnsa qabsoo bilisummaa Oromoo kan sirna abbaa-irrummaa EPRDF/TPLF, sirna saaminsaa fi cunqursaa daanga-dhableen diduu irraa akka tahee ifaadha. Sababaan samicha lafaa naannoo Finfinnee haa-tahuu malee, warraaqsi ummataa hundeedhaan, gaaffii mirga abba-biyyoomaa, mirga dhala-namaa, mirga hiree-murannaa fi dhabaminsa dimokraasii dhugaa irraan kan dhoohe. Bulchitoonni EPRDF/TPLF gaaffii ummatni mirga heera ittiin biyya bulchina jedhaniin beekkame, hiriira nagayaa bahuudhaan gaafatu, karaa nagayaa deebii kennuu mannaa, ka’ima jaarsaa jaartii, daa’imman odoo hinhafiin, ummata hidhannoo hinqabne, rasaasa itti roobsuudhaan, hanga ammaa dhibboota baay’ee ajjeesani, dhibboota baay’ee madeessanii, kuma baayyee hidhaatti guuranii dararaa jiraachuu gaddaa fi aarii guddaan yaadanna.

Badii tanaaf gaafatamni sadarkaa duratti kan matootii EPRDF/TPLF ti. Namoonni badii hojjatan, seeraan akka gaafataman taasisuutti humnoota kana deeggeran wajjiin hojjachuun dirqama. Kunis tahee, dhibdee politikaa maraaf ammayyuu daandiin nagayaa soqamuu itti fufuu qaba jenna. Akeeka kanaan, ummata Oromof, EPRDF/TPLF, ummatoota Itophyaa fi humnoota dantaa Ganfaa Afrikaa qabaniif dhaamsa dabarsina.

Yaa ummata Oromiyaa!

Qabsoon tee qabsoo haqaati. Ajeechaan, sobaa fi gochi yakkaa si- hin injifatu. Lafa bulchiinsa xuraawaa EPRDF/TPLF irraa haqxe irratti shanee bulchiinsaa jaarrattee nagayaa fi tasgabii uumuun kee boonsaa dha. Kanas akka itti fuftu hin mamnu. Dhiigni EPRDF/TPLF dhangalaasee fi lafeen isaan cabsan dhagaacha-xuubii galma bilisummaa, dmokraasii jaaramuun, walabummaa Oromia akka ta’u amanna. Qondaalotiin EPRDF/TPLF badii hojjataniif itti gaafatamuun isaani hinhafu. Lubbuun isaan qisaasan, kan madeessanii fi hidhaatti guuran ragaan galmeeffamuu itti fufuu qaba. Warraaqsaa kankee qaamaa qalbiin utubuu fi humnoota badii hojjatan gaafatamatti dhiheessuu maqaa wareegamtootaatiin deebisnee mirkaneessina. Jaarmoni qabsoo bilisummaa fi Walabummaa Oromiyaa qabsoo isaanii bifa hundaan si cina dhaabachuu itti fufna. EPRDF/TPLF lubbuu fi qabeenya jiraattota dhalootaan Oromo hintahinii balleessuu faa fi galmoota amantii faa gubuun sabootaa fi hordoftoota amantii garagaraa walitti naquudhaan, badii humnoota Oromoti jedhee maqaa kee fi maqaa keetiifi warraaqsa
keetii yakkuu yaaluu hin lakkifne.

Bonbii ofii awwaale humna biraatu hojjate jedhee odoo sobu qabamuun EPRDF/TPLF ni yaadatama. Warraaqsa kee gaggeeysaa, lubbuu fi qabeenya hundumaaf tikni gochaa jirtu nu boonse. Gocha addunyaan dinqisiifatee, mararfannaa siif burqise akka itti fuftu mamii hin-qabnu.

Hooggana EPRDF/TPLF,

Akkuma bulchitoota gabroomfatoo dabran geeddarama gaaffii ummataa deebisuu xiyyeeffate lagachuudhaan, galaani warraaqsaa akka si-nyaachisuuf jiraatu isin akeekachiisna. Daandii haasawaa fi marii hordofuuf carraa yoo ofii kennitan’mmoo,humnoonni bilisummaa Oromo dhibdee politikaa hundumaa daandii nagayaatiin furuuf qophiidha. Kun ta’uu hafuun qabsoo bilisummaa Oromoo bakkaan gahuuf godhamaa jiru
bifa hunadaan kan itti fufnnu ta’uu mirkanneesina. Seer-dhablummaa fi abbaa-irrummaa EPRDF/TPLF kan ummata Oromiyaa huffisiisee odoo
xiyyitii itti facaasuu mirga dhala-namaa fi dmokraasiif falmaatti kaase, isinis miidhaa akka jiru waliin beekana. Humnootni mirga dhala-namaa fi dmokraasiitti amanan, sochii ummanni Oromiyaa godhu waliin dhaabbachuun ofii keessanis gargaaruudha. Dhiibbaa EPRDF/TPLF bir’achuudhaan ummata Oromiyaa wajjin ifaan hiriiruu baattanis, gatiin mirga dhala-namaa, dmokrasii fi hiree-murannaadhaf ummanni Oromiyaa kafalaa jiru, mirga cunqurfamoota maraatiif tahuu carraa kanaan isiniif mirkaneessina.

Humnoota Gaanfa Afrikaa irraa dantaa qabdaniif!

Sirnichi akka jaamaa dukkana keessa qareetti deemuu daddaaqaa waan jiruuf, badii daangaa-dhablee oolchuuf, EPRDF/TPLF daddaffiin daandii nagayaa akka hordofu,wakkiilota Ummata dhugaa wajjin marii akka jalqabuu EPRDF/TPLF irratti dhiibbaa akka gootan gaafanna. Yoo kun tahuu hanqate gaaga’ma biyyoota ollaa garii faa mudatterra hammaadhaa Itophyaa hagoguuf akka jiru beekuu feesisa.

Jaarmayoota Bilisummaa Oromoo afran:

Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo (ABO)
Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo, “Tokkoomei”
Adda Dimokraatummaa Oromoo
Kallacha Walabummaa Oromiyaa

May 1, 2016
South Haven, Minnesota

By Geremew Nigatu Kassa, M.A/Phil. in Gada institution, political process and system of conflict resolution. Oslo, Norway.

Part one:

This paper was presented at Oromo Study Association (OSA) annual conference at the University of Minnesota, USA, on 14th-15th July 2012 as a contribution to the effort to understand our own culture, norms and tradition.

The paper addresses the question of how the Oromo traditional democratic institution,
Gada System, interact with the modern Oromo political organization in the process of
Oromo struggle against Ethiopian government oppression. It also discusses some ideas of Gada political or ideological philosophy and culture of democracy. This article is of interest not only for the Oromos, but also for other Ethiopians who are interested in knowing what Gada system really is. The article provides information about the original essence of Gada political philosophy and democratic ideas as one of the homegrown democratic cultures in Ethiopia and African as well.

Glossary of some Oromo language terms used in this part of Oromo local dialects

Click here to read full research paper

Dhaabota Qabsoo Bilisummaa Oromoo Jedduutti Araara Bu’e Ilaalchisee  Ibsa Gabaabaa Qeerroo Bilisummaa Oromoo  irraa Kenname!!

Caamsaa 02/2016, Finfinnee

Mariin Araara buuse, Ararri Wal Hubachiisee Tokkummaa Hawwamuun Gaha.

Nuti Qeerroon Bilisummaa Oromoo walitti dhufeenyaa fi araaramuu dhaabota qabsoo bilisummaa  Oromoo (ABO, KWO, ADO, ABO tokkoomee) Yeroo dhageenyu bilisummaa Ummata Oromoo fi walabummaa Oromiyaa dhiyeessuun Umurii gabroomfataa gabaabsee,  Injifannoo maayyiin nu gahuutu  nutti dhagaa’ame.

Tokkummaan Uummata Oromoo akka sabaattis ta’ee akka qabsoo bilisummaa Oromootti lafee fi dhiiga gootota qaaliin ijaaramee ture. Qabsaa’onni Oromoo haalota adda addaan wal hubachuu dhabuun gargar bahanii diina innikaa kan taate sirna Wayyaanee irratti qabsaa’urra gufuu wal jala kaahuun fedhii fi dantaa Ummata Oromoo miidhee kan gabroomfataa gabbisaa turuurraa Oromoon hin aarre, hin gubanne hin turre. Har’a garuu sun hundi seenaa ta’ee akka hafutti dhaaboleen Qabsoo Bilisummaa Oromoo walitti dhufanii mari’achuun dantaa saba Oromoof dursa kennanii araara buusuu isaanii yommuu dhagahamuu nu hundaaf akka sabaatti gammachuu gammachuu oliiti. Kanaaf yeroo ammaa kana Oromiyaan gammachuu keessa jiraachuu ibsuu barbaanna.

Ararri bu’e gaafii Ummata Oromoo fi qabsaa’ota Oromoo maraa kan ta’e tokkoomuu jaarmayoota Oromoof bu’ura akka lafa kaahametti hubatna. Akkuma ibsa bakka bu’oota dhaabolee bilisummaa Oromoo araaraman irraa dhagame wareegamni nuti Qeerroon bilisummaa Oromoo, dargaggoo fi shamarran Oromoo, abbootii fi hawwan keenya FDG – FXG  yeroo dhiyoo as baasaa turree fi jirru, akkasumas injifannoolen cululuqoon mooraa QBO keessatti galmeeffame Araara kanaaf dhiibbaan uumne jiraachuu amanna. Ammas akkuma abbootiin keenya dhiigaa fi lafee isaaniitiin tokkummaa Ummata Oromoo mirkanessanii nuun gahan hubachuun nuti Qeerroon bilisummaa Oromoo mooraa qabsoo bilisummaa Oromoo tasgabbeessuun tokkummaa Jaarmayoota Oromoo bu’urri taa’e kana fiixaan baasuu keessatti gahee nurraa eegamu akka bahannu beeksisuu feena.

Akka Oromootti aadaa bareeda qabnu keessaa tokko waldhabdee ilaa fi ilaalmeen hikkachuu danda’uu keenya. Manguddoonni keenya jabeessanii qabeenyi nuuf tiksuu qaban aadaa bareedaa fi qabsoo bilisummaa Oromoof murteessaa ta’e kanaa dha. Manguddoonnii fi hayyoonni Oromoo araara kana milkeessuuf dadhabdan dirqama keessan sirnaan bahattaniittuu gaalatoomaa jechaa ammas daandiin hedduun akka isin hafee jiru yaadachiisuu barbaanna.

Nuti Qeerroon Oromoo warraaqsa biyyoolessaa bifa qindaa’ee fi ijaarameen Ebila 11/2014 ifaa fi labsiin eegalle yeroo irraa gara yerootti muuxannoo horanneen Ummata keenya ijaarrataa, humna keenya jabeeffachuun sochii keenya bal’ifatnee wareegama qaaliin abbaa irree kan ta’e Wayyaanee raasuun dhaadannoo aanga’oota wayyaanee “likki Inaasgabaachawaallen” jedhanitti akka gaabban taasisuun dandeenyeerra; kana irra kan nu boonsu akeeka kaaneef galmaan gahuuf afaanii fi afuura tokkoon dhaaboleen Qabsoo Bilisummaa Oromoo nu waliin dhaabbachuu keessan.

Kanaaf tumsi guddaan isin irraa barbaannu afuura tokkummaa, ilaalcha tokkummaa, jaalala Oromummaa kan walitti nu ijaaruu fi wal nu abdachiisu eegaltan hojiin nutty mul’isuu keessan. Kun jiraannaan karoorri FXG  marsaa 5^ffaa Qeerroo Bilisummaa Oromoon  qophaa’ee gara balbala bilisummaa Oromootti nu geessu daandii sirrii qabatee ariitiin galma keenya akka dhyaataa jirru yaadachiifna.

Maayyiirratti  dhaamsi dhaabolee bilisummaa Oromoo oduu gammachiisaa fi hamlachiisaa kana nuun geessan arfaniif qabnu  miseensotni fi deeggartootni keessan hundi,  waliigalattii uummata Oromoo sabboonaa fi sabboontuun, Qeerroo fi Qarreen, qabsa’onni  dirree fi gootota barattootni Oromoo hundi karoora FXG kan marsaa 5ffaa, bara 2016 fiixaan baasuu keessatti gaheen keessan olaanaa ta’uu hubattanii qabsooftanii qabsoofsiftan dhaammanna.  Warraaqsaa FXG marsaa 5ffaa gaggeessinu cinattiqabsoo bilisummaa Oromoof eeggannoo cimaa akka goonuu fi lootee galtuu ergamtuu diinaa dammaqinsaan akka of irraa eeggannuu dhaammachuun walitti dhufeenyi fi araarri  ABO fi dhaabolee qabsoo bilisummaa Oromoo gammachuu guddaa nutti dhaga’amee fi gaaffii uummataa keenyaa fi sabboontoota Oromoof deebii kennuu keessaniif galatoomaa jechaa, dhimma araaraa fi tokkummaa kana ilaalchisee fuunduratti ibsa bal’aa uummata keenyaaf akka kenninu beeksifna.

Injifannoon Uummata Oromoof!!
Gadaan Gadaa Bilisummaati!!
Tokkummaan Humna!!
Qeerroo Bilisummaa Oromoo

GaraGalchaa

• Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo (ABOf)
• Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo Tokkoomef
• Kallacha Walabummaa Orormiyaaf fi
• Adda dimokiraatawaa Oromoo  (ADO)

Girma Tiruneh
Warraaqsaa fi qabsoo Oromoo Xaxaa diinaa keessa gale kana qulqulleessuu fi daandii qajeelaa qabsiisuun Dirqama oromummaati jedheen amana.Of qusannoo fi sodaa tokko malee dhiiga ilmaan oromoo kumaatamaan dhangal`aa jiruu gatii fi firii itti gochuun dirqama tokkoon tokkoon keenyaati.Kunis kan ta`uu danda`u, kan daandii jallaa irra jiru soroorsuun,diinaa fi fira adda baasnee beekuun,kan balleesse badii isaa ifaan itti himuun,nama waan inni uffatee fi waan inni dubbateen otoo hin taane, waan inni dalguu,bu`aa buusee fi waan namni suni ta`een adda baafachuutu dhaloota qubee irraa eeggama.

Jara keenyaa sababan kana jedheefin qaba. Edda waa`een Girmaa xurunaa ka`ee namoonni heddu maqaa ofii bifa danda`ameen qulqulleessuuf yaalaa jiru.Gariin otoo eenyummaa isaa hin beekiin waliin hojjataa dhaqee gaafa diinummaa isaa irratti baru akka dhaabe,gariin otoo hin beekiin amma ammaatti qunnamtii isaa akka qabsaa`aa oromoo tokkootti waliin qabaataa akk jiru fi Kan addaa fi gaaffii cimaa natti ta`e biraan ammoo”Diinummaa isaa ni beekna garuu nu ajjeesa jennee waliin hojjataa jirra” jecha jedhuu dha.Diinummaa isaa ni beeku garuu lubbuu ofii baraaruuf ilmaan oromoo kumaatamaan dhiigni dhangala`aa jiru gargaartuu ta`anii dhagaa darbaa jiru..Qaanii akkamiiti jechi kuni? Warreen jecha fokkataa fi salphinaa kana dubbatanii maqaa ofii qulqulleessuuf yaalan kuni Ijoollee sagalee Qeerroo irra dalaganii dha.Hayyee isaanumaaf deebiseen gaaffii qaba.Girmaa xurunaa yeroo lakkoofsa hin qabneef Ijoollee oromoo ijaaree ,qabsiisee ,ragaa irratti bahuu isaa ragaa heddutu jira.Yeroo qabsiisu ammoo waliin qabamuun isaas amala. Hayyee warri sagalee qeerroo dabarsan kunneen Yoo diinummaa isaa beekuuyyu ta`e oduu armaan gadii kan dabarse Eenyu?Maaliif? ‘DAANDIIN SOBAA DHAQA MALEE GALA HIN SIMATU.,

For more Read

By Ibsaa Guutama  | Gubirmans

WASHINGTON, DC  (VOA Afaan Oromoo) — Dhaabonni siyaasaa Oromoo afur walitti-dhufanii mari’achuun, Dilbata dabre kana jechuun Caamsaa tokko, bara 2016, waliin hojjechuuf walii-galtee wal-hubannaa mallatteessanii jiran. Dhaabonni walii-galtee kana mallatteessan Adda Dimookitraatawa Oromoo, Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo, Kallacha Walabummaa Oromoo fi ABO Tokkoome jedhamani.

Kutaa Michigaan keessa ka jiru, Keetering Yunivarsitii irraa hayyuun seenaa fi xiinxalaan siyaasaa, Dr. Iziqeel Gabbisaa akka jedhanitti, uummatni Oromoo bal’aan biyya keessaa mirga isaaf falmachuu irratti tokkummaan inni baatiilee dabraan keessa agarsiise madda kaka’insa marii geggeeffamee fi walii-galtee tolfamee ti.

Dhaabonni kun sagantaalee siyaasaa adda addaa ka qabanii fi walaba ta’an iyyuu waa’ee abbaa-biyyummaa Oromoo, waa’ee lafa Oromoo fi waa’ee eenymmaa Oromoo irratti adda addummaa hin qaban, ka jedhan, Dr. Iziqeel, kana irratti waliin hojjechuuf walii-galuun isaanii tarkaanfii gaarii ta’uu isaanii dubbatu. Dhaabonni kun akka dhuunfaattis tahe akka walootti haalawwan keessa dabran irraa muuxannoo argatan walii-galtee ammaa kanaaf gumaachuu isaa illee eeran.

Dhaabonni siyaasaa Oromoo haga itti-galli yokaan galmi isaanii tokko ta’etti adda-addummaa tarsiimoo fi toftaa qabaachuun isaanii wal isaan lolsiisuu hin qabu. Wal-hubannaan jiraannaan dhaabota adda addaa biyya tokkos tahe uummata tokko keessaa qabaachuun uummtichaas carraa keessaa filachuu ba’aa waan kennuuf gaarii dha, jedhu, Dr. Iziqeel Gabbisaa.

Caamsaa 05,2016) Waraanni Bilisummaa Oromoo Godina Bahaa Diina Haleelee Injifannoo Boonsaa Galmeesse.

Abdii fi Gaachanni ummata Oromoo WBOn Godina Bahaa Ebla 28,2016 hamma Caamsaa 02,2016tti Bahaa fi Lixa Harargee Onoota gara garaa keessatti tarkaanfilee waraana diinaa irratti fudhateen injifannoo boonsaa galmeessee jira.

Haaluma kanaan WBOn Godina Bahaa Ebla 28,2016 Lixa Harargee Ona Bookee Xiqqoo bakka Haroo-Bareedaa jedhamutti kutaa waraana wayyaanee 13ffaa Dirre-Dhawaa qubatee jiru irraa ka’ee WBO sakatta’uuf bobba’e rukutuun kasaaraa guddaa irraan gahee jira. Tarkaanfii kanaanis loltootni diina 12 ajjeefamanii 15 ammoo madeeffamuu fi qawween AKMn 9 fi meeshaaleen gara garaa hedduun irraa dhuunfatamuu Ajaji WBO Godina Bahaa beeksiseera.

WBO Godina Bahaa tarkaanfii isaa itti fufuun Caamsaa 01,2016 Baha Harargee Ona Fadis bakka Facaatuu jedhamuttis humna diinaa kan sakattaaf ba’e rukutee 6 irraa ajjeesuun, 9 madeessee jira. Lola kana irrattis qawween AKM 3 fi mi’ootni biroo diina irraa booji’amaniiru.

Caamsaa 02, 2016tti ammoo Humni Addaa WBO Baha Harargee magaalaa Harar biratti kan argamu bakka keellaa Dakkar jedhamee beekamutti humna diinaa bakkicha qubatee jiru irratti dhukaasa banuun loltoota diinaa 2 ajjeesee jira.

Walumaagalatti WBOn Godina Bahaa tarkaanfilee guyyoota kanneen keessatti fudhateen loltoota diinaa 20 yeroo ajjeesu, 24 ol ammoo madeessuun waliigalatti lolto Caamsaa 05, 2016) Waraanni Bilisummaa Oromoo Godina Bahaa Diina Haleelee Injifannoo Boonsaa Galmeesse.

Abdii fi Gaachanni ummata Oromoo WBOn Godina Bahaa Ebla 28, 2016 hamma Caamsaa 02, 2016tti Bahaa fi Lixa Harargee Onoota gara garaa keessatti tarkaanfilee waraana diinaa irratti fudhateen injifannoo boonsaa galmeessee jira.

Haaluma kanaan WBOn Godina Bahaa Ebla 28, 2016 Lixa Harargee Ona Bookee Xiqqoo bakka Haroo-Bareedaa jedhamutti kutaa waraana wayyaanee 13ffaa Dirre-Dhawaa qubatee jiru irraa ka’ee WBO sakatta’uuf bobba’e rukutuun kasaaraa guddaa irraan gahee jira. Tarkaanfii kanaanis loltootni diina 12 ajjeefamanii 15 ammoo madeeffamuu fi qawween AKMn 9 fi meeshaaleen gara garaa hedduun irraa dhuunfatamuu Ajaji WBO Godina Bahaa beeksiseera.

WBO Godina Bahaa tarkaanfii isaa itti fufuun Caamsaa 01,2016 Baha Harargee Ona Fadis bakka Facaatuu jedhamuttis humna diinaa kan sakattaaf ba’e rukutee 6 irraa ajjeesuun, 9 madeessee jira. Lola kana irrattis qawween AKM 3 fi mi’ootni biroo diina irraa booji’amaniiru.
Caamsaa 02,2016tti ammoo Humni Addaa WBO Baha Harargee magaalaa Harar biratti kan argamu bakka keellaa Dakkar jedhamee beekamutti humna diinaa bakkicha qubatee jiru irratti dhukaasa banuun loltoota diinaa 2 ajjeesee jira.

Walumaagalatti WBOn Godina Bahaa tarkaanfilee guyyoota kanneen keessatti fudhateen loltoota diinaa 20 yeroo ajjeesu, 24 ol ammoo madeessuun waliigalatti loltoota 44 ol hojiin ala gochuu Ajaji WBO Godina Bahaa ifa godheera.ota 44 ol hojiin ala gochuu Ajaji WBO Godina Bahaa ifa godheera.

Akka oduun naannoo sanii bahu addeessutti godina Kaaba Shawaa Ona Mooritii fi Jirruu ganda Inewasriitti qabeenya diinaa irratti boombiin darbatamuun balaan irra geessifameera. Kaabinootni lamas waytuma kana akka du’anii fi namootni 10 akka madaa’anii dha maddeen kan gabaasan.
Tarkaanfiin kun kan fudhatame tibbana ta’uunis ibsameera. Erga FXGn jalqabamee bakka bakkatti tarkaanfileen ummataan fudhataman babal’ataa akka jiran ifaa dha.

Ethiopia Rated 1st Most Religous Cuntry in the World

According to this news statistic released by the Pew Research Center data and shared by the World Economic Forum, Ethiopia is the 9th country in the world with strong religious views. Blow is the full list

ODUU GADDAA Kamisa Guyyaa 27/8/2008 Arraa Sa.a 7:30 iraa eegalee magaalaa dirree dawaa keessatti balaa galaanattiin qabeenyahedduu kan akka makiinaa guuruu isaa agarreera fakkiin makiinaa kameraadhaaf nuuhinmijjoonye ture lubbuu galaanaan darbe amma duree ganaa hindhageenye hagasuu turtii gaarii

‪#‎Oromia‬/Ethiopia ’11 %’ growth: Daandiin Roobee irra gara Ginnir Geessu akkana fakkaata.

‪#‎OromoProtests‬ Harari People’s Regional Government have been warned not to go ahead with the plan of evicting thousands of Oromo farmers from their own land. We know this is TPLF’s cooked plan that is going to be implemented through your forgery administration to make the indigenous Oromo people homeless. It’s impossible to evict a single Oromo from his land if so the consequence is so expensive and unpleasant.
===============
‪#‎OromoProtests‬ Naannoon Hararii gaafuma hundeeffamtu saniillee seeraab ala hundeeffamte. Naannoon Hundeeffamuuf abbaa qabeenyummaa lafaa, sabni irra jiraatu, afaan dubbatamuu fi fedhii ummata sanii irratti xiyyeeffachuun dirqamadha. Harariin gaafuma hundeeffamtullee ulaagaa kanaa fi kan biroollee hin guuttu, guutuufis hiree tokkollee hin qabdu. Lakkoofsa Manaa fi Ummataa bara 1999 ALI taasifameen ummanni Naannichaa 180,000 kan hin caalle yoo tahu kana keessaa 150,000 saba Oromooti. Oromootti aansee saba Amaaraatu hedduudha. Sabni Hararii lakkoofsaan muraasaa fi 8% ummata kanaa kan hin geenye yoo tahuu sunuu Oromoota Fadisii fi Jaarsoo irraa gara magaalaa Harar dhufanii bara Oromoon cunqursaa hamaa jala turee fi Oromummaa himachuu hin dendeenye Hararii(Adaree) himatee jiraachuu dirqametti Hararii ofiin jedhaniidha. Gabrummaan waan hin taane nama gooti. Adaree Oromoon lafa kenniteefii qubsiifteetu har’a wayyaanee dahoo godhatee Oromoo lafa kenneefii waggoota dheeraaf jiraachisaa ture hiraarsaa jira. Barana immoo warra Finfinnee irraa baratanii qonnaan jiraattota Oromoo lafarraa buqqaasanii lafa baballifachuu egalan. Oromoo ka’aa ni falmannaa

Waaree Aartii Magaalaa Walloo Kamiseetti Qophaa'e. from OBS TV on Vimeo.

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

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

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

MARRIAGE CEREMONIES OF OROMO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oromo Voice Radio (OVR) Broadcast- 7 May 2016

Kun qophii keenya Caamsaa 7 bara 2016. Qophii keenya har’aa keessatti Oduu fi Waarii Marii qabannee dhiyaanneerra. Waariin Marii dhimma yeroo ammaa Girmaa Xurunaan walqabatee adeemaa jiru qophii kutaalammaffaa fi isa xumuraa qabannee dhiyaanne. Kana irratti Qeerroo Bilisummaa fi ABO illee dubbifnee jirra.

Keessummeessituun Sirkanan Ahmad.
Itti dhiyaadhaa!
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Oromo Voice Radio broadcasts to Oromia on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Mondays at 7:00 PM local time at 16 MB or 17850 kHz. Oromo Voice Radio is operated by Madda Walaabuu Media Foundation.

SBO Caamsaa 08, 2016. Oduu, Ibsa Ejjennoo Dhaabota Oromoo Walta’anii, Ibsa Qeerroo Waliigaltee Dhaabota Oromoo irratti, Gaaffii fi Deebii Art. Naasifaay Addunyaa Kutaa Xumuraa fi Qophii Biroo

A Struggle with an Independent Oromo State In Sight *

Mekuria Bulcha

Introduction

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

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

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

Purpose of this article

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

2014 – A decisive juncture in Oromo politics

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

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

A decisive shift in Oromo attitude

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

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

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

The banner of Oromo struggle was raised and engrained

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

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

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

A shocking but liberating moment

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

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

“Oromoo! Walmalee fira hinqabnu!”

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

“Black man, you are on your own!”[14]

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

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

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

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

The November 2015 Oromo Revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Number matters

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

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

Unity of purpose and ideology matter  

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

Embeddedness

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

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

A peaceful resistance against a regime that does not understand peace

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

Asafa Jalata

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

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

Background

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

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

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

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

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

Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global Powers and the Neocolonial Ethiopian State

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

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

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

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

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

Neoliberal Globalization, State Terrorism, and Dispossession

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Current Oromo Protest Movement and its Ramifications

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Endnotes

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

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