By Duresso Maati
A FOLLOW-UP – “IYYA BILISUMMAA!” (Ayyaantuu.com 2-14-16)
The fire of resistance in Oromia is still flickering and very much alive over three months after it was first ignited at Gincii in November 2015. The TPLF minority regime is responding to the legitimate and peaceful protests with bullets, clubs, tortures, and arbitrary detentions under appallingly inhuman conditions. Death toll has climbed to well over 400 so far The detainees are estimated to be over 35000 across Oromia since November alone. The cruelty with which the tyrant regime deals with the protest knows no bounds and the victims include a long list of children under ten-year old, elders over 80, and multiple members of families. One of the latest victims on 2-27-16 is a 7-month pregnant housewife and a mother of six children in Arsi who was riddled with five bullets by TPLF’s “Agazi” special force in cold blood at her home while on her knees begging to spare her children’s and her own lives. The gruesome and revolting picture of a naked corps of a woman with protruding belly riddled with bullets as briefly shared by Ayyaantuu.net is not only an iconic symbol of the diabolical nature of the TPLF regime that descended upon the Oromo nation but also is a defining act of barbarism that depicts TPLF as an evil curse to humanity at large. It is regrettable if Ayyaantuu removed the image for good. The one matching gruesome image the picture of the dead pregnant Oromo woman evokes in human history is the picture captured in Vietnam of the naked little girl in agony from napalm gas attack. That picture marked the beginning of the end of war in Vietnam. It will be a shame to humanity in general and the Oromo in particular if TPLF is allowed to get away with this abhorrent atrocity on a defenseless pregnant mother under her own roof and in front of her little children.
The declared military siege is not only in Oromia region. It is a war on Oromummaa as the pain being inflicted is felt by every Oromo national anywhere in the world. If the battle with a regime that intends to impose perpetual domination and plunder of Oromo resources at the expense of the economic welfare and national dignity of the nation knows no boundaries, the collective struggle against such naked oppression and humiliation should also be global. The crucial question that lingers in every Oromo’s mind in Diaspora is how to define the role of Oromo in Diaspora and what needs to be done to live up to it. This is a brutal war between unequal foes: the Oromo has a clear numerical advantage but lacks sufficient organizational preparedness to defend itself in the circumstance that a minority group (less than 7% of the population) targets the largest ethnic group (40%) for perpetual tyranny and naked plunder.. The crucial resource the movement relies on is its unflinching faith in Oromummaa. The TPLF regime’s numerical limitation in terms of its power base is offset by the abundant resources and guns at its disposal. “IYYA BILISUMMAA!” is just a voice among the many that try to pin point some concrete course of actions that could help the nation pull itself out of this shameful national tragedy in a shortest time possible. It ia a voice among the many voices that pleads for a collective focus on the enhancement of the nation’s organizational capacity to end perpetual tyranny under Abyssinian occupation force. The cry to scrutinize and implement the forwarded concrete courses of action is loud and clear. The public response, so far, is deafeningly mute. One factor for the inaction could be the deeply entrenched tradition of a tendency to embrace constructive ideas and leave them to “others” to follow up on and implement. But who do we think those “others” are and what are our shares of responsibility as individuals?? When everybody counts on everybody else to do the footwork, nothing can be accomplished. The other major factor could be the equally unproductive tendency to give undue precedence to one’s group affiliation than to the larger cause the group claims to stand for. Some seem to overlook the basic fact that organizations are formed as a means to attain a specific end and are only tools to serve the purpose they are intended for. They are not ends in themselves and are not meant to be viewed as idols for blind worship. Some appear to be so engrossed with their personal passion for the groups they affiliate with or individuals they admire and view them as sacrosanct beyond any form of reproach or fallibility. They voluntarily shut themselves off from considering objective assessments of human failures or from seeking alternative routes to the intended end. That is a problem that needs to be addressed. At this critical moment in the history of the nation, the one and only priority need to be how to pull our ideas and resources together and stand up in unison to overcome the tragedy imposed on us by the TPLF regime. Intended or not, any other consideration that conflicts with the primary call of the day amounts to compliance with the status quo. Nor is it the right time to sit idle and expect the challenges we encounter will go away by themselves. We can’t wait for knocks at our doors by UPS or DHL to deliver a package of freedom. That will never happen. We either earn it or we don’t deserve it!!!
The short- and long-term consequences of allowing the on-going movement to die out due, partially, to our inaction are too dire to risk.
This article is in response to some private suggestions to elaborate on the proposed actions as narrated in “IYYA BILISUMMAA!’. I try to address the first two proposals: one is a call for the establishment of Global Oromo Communities Association and the second is on national Oromo conference.
GLOBAL ASSOCIATION: the main aim of Oromo Community Associations (OCA)
is to promote and satisfy the socio-economic needs of their members irrespective of the members’ creed, gender, or political affiliations. They thrive to serve as bridges to the cultural roots of Oromummaa and nurture the identity, language, values, and other traits of being an Oromo. They attend to the needs of the younger generations to keep in touch with their root and identity. Ideally, community associations are non-partisan and attempts to add group political agendas to the mix tend to poison the atmosphere and compromise healthy relationships among the members. It tends to weaken than strengthen the associations. Thus, it is important to protect associations from succumbing into being an extended arm of a political group specially when there are multiple political groups vying for using associations as a platform to advance their partisan agendas. The proposal assumes OCA’s focus on satisfying the common social and economic needs of their members to the extent their resource capabilities permit. The proposal is to enhance the role of OCAs’ capabilities to satisfy their noble goals through creating a global net work by getting organized first on state levels and move on to establish continental body to eventually form an international union. This is stipulated to greatly strengthen the resource capabilities and allows all to share ideas and resources in times of relative peace. It provides more efficient forum/channel to coordinate activities in times of major collective crisis. Campaigns to realize a given goal gets better attention when addressed by a wide-based community than by local associations. There already are on-going efforts to realize this goal. This call is only to accelerate it in view of the urgency due to the current national crisis we find ourselves in.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE: This proposal is based on the appreciation that the current Oromo resistance movement is not a consequence of a deliberate and planned agenda of any given Oromo group but is a spontaneous eruption of accumulated grievances over the years. The movement heavily relied on the opportunities advances in communication technology rendered it. Oromummaa being the primary factor, the verbal and visual media coverage of events on the ground and the encouraging news that Oromoes around the globe rallied behind the protests seem to be the second most important driving force behind its sustenance. In this sense, one may call it a media-driven revolution. The campaign being staged lately to portray the movement as being engineered by invisible hands is a shameless claim to obscure our inherent organizational deficiency and lull the Oromo public into inaction. This is part of the usual familiar make-believe tactics to sustain false hopes that recognize a potent force that can’t prove its existence in any meaningful way. It is self-evident that the Oromo in Diaspora made successful and commendable efforts to publicize the legitimate cause of the resistance and to expose the brutal nature of the TPLF occupation force. These are achievements coordinated by OCAs, Oromo NGOs, Oromo media outlets, religious groups, Oromo associations, and individual activists. Commendable and lofty as they are, these achievements in themselves are not adequate enough to sustainably nurture the movement and help it advance to a higher phase. A vacuum is created due to a yawning gap between the evident popular resolve to do away with tyranny under TPLF bandits and the equally evident lack of a universally accepted leadership body capable enough to shoulder the enormous task of guiding and empowering the movement. Oromo nationals in Diaspora need to ACT to fill the vacuum in a shortest possible time. The call for a national conference is the first step towards seeking ways of filling this gap. The crucial plea of the day both from home and abroad is the quest for a single voice representing the voiceless Oromoes under siege. The primary aim of the conference will be to establish a capable body to a) be a life line to the movement and b) explore lasting solution to Oromo organizational problems. It shall serve as a single point of contact in matters of representing, coordinating, planning, and executing the supports to the movement. Other ad-hoc committees may be formed to handle urgent tasks like fund-raising, establishing secure cyber discussion forum, documentation, and public relations. PR’s tasks may include formulating immediate demands like the release of prisoners, re-admission of expelled students over the years, withdrawal of the trigger-happy Agazi and Federal forces from Oromia, compensations for victims of Woyane forces, full account of mining operations in Oromia by the exploiter Al Amoudi and others, etc. Such demands carry more weight and are given more attention when uniformly echoed everywhere as one voice. The details as to when, where, and how such conference can be conducted is subject to discussions and proposals. But the urgency to do it as soon as possible can’t be over emphasized..
Why one body and one voice at this time?
- All forms of support need to continue for the home front battle and the scope of the urgent needs is increasingly growing beyond the Oromo Diaspora’s ability to satisfy them through personal contributions alone. The effort needs to be coordinated and handled under a single recognized body
- In the events that TPLF gives up on its untenable grand schemes of perpetually dominating the rest of the country and coils back to its shell in Tigrai, who is mandated to represent Oromo interests and be part of the solution to the problem? The amhara have their Ginbot 7 and Ogadenia has a an organization with tested and seasoned army to back it up. Would the existing Oromo factions stage a street fist fight among each other in Finfinne or would the Oromo transition to perhaps even worse tyranny under new guests? Would potential claimants of the throne even give us time to settle our differences??
- There is a dire need for a single body strong enough to handle the huge task of convincing the world community that the Oromo is capable of handling its own affairs under a single centralized leadership. Otherwise, the world wouldn’t heed our quest for justice and will assign a guardian for us as was done in 1990.
- Power comes only out of unity. Working unity is only when it is based on defined common goal and strategy. To call for “Unity” for the sake of unity is neither practical nor attainable. It is desired only when it is based on purpose.
I humbly appeal to everybody concerned to take these and other issues seriously and refine them for implementations.
The Oromo in Diaspora is being challenged by circumstances to re-evaluate the established habits of thought on how the nation fairs in terms of its organizational capabilities. It needs to master the courage to look into new venues if it finds old strategies obsolete and unproductive. The challenges we encounter loom larger than our allegiances to a given political group or our reverence for individuals. Such allegiances and reverences need not deter any one from seeking immediate solutions to our current troubles based on these proposals as those individuals can as well pursue internal courses of action to smoothen up the bumps, if suspected, on the path of their respective organizations to enable them move in pace with the demands of the day. Oromo movement in general can be back on track in a shorter time than we think if our efforts focus on the struggle as its only center-piece and do what we can to support it. In this critical time of trials and tribulations, whatever each of us does is like a drop of rain which feeds the rivers that join to make the oceans. It shouldn’t be too much to ask everyone to be just a drop to unite and grow into an ocean.
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1. IYYA BILISUMMAA!