Water ministers of the three countries are visiting the US to gain knowledge about the Colorado River
Egypt (Daily News) — Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel Aaty continued his meetings with World Bank representatives in Washington DC, along with his counterparts from Ethiopia and Sudan.
The visit included a tour of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, and focused on sharing experiences about building dams in different countries, managing the dams’ flow, and stored water.
The World Bank had earlier invited the ministers of the three countries to this meeting, in a bid to facilitate talks between them. The initiative comes as 70% of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) construction is completed.
The Colorado River is considered the main river located in the southwest of the United States and the Northwest of Mexico. It’s 1,450 miles long and is 637 sqm, passing by a severely drought area in seven states in the US and two Mexican cities.
The GERD has strained relations between Ethiopia and Egypt since construction began in 2011, with relations reaching their lowest point in 2013.
In early June, Egypt’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said it is finalising the deals with the consulting agencies to assess the impact of the GERD. In December, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan signed the Khartoum Document, addressing ways to enforce and execute the declaration of principles.
Nader Nour El-Din, water resources professor at Cairo University, previously told Daily News Egypt that “those consulting studies are completely useless”, stating that the studies are expected to take an average of 17 months, while the GERD’s completion is scheduled for October 2017. The results of these studies are also non-binding.
No religion condones repression, the subjugation of one sect of society and the dominance of the other and the exploitation of the weak by the strong. When this happens, it is incumbent upon religious leaders to counsel the powerful and to challenge them to turn from their wrongful ways. Unfortunately, this is not what we observe from our religious leaders at the moment. It is conspicuous that religious leaders of today rather sit down with the government, contrive ways to defeat a movement that is fighting an injustice, and confer their blessings on security forces before sending them out to crush dissidents. Their pretentious prayers are repugnant before God and humans alike.
These so-called religious leaders pull out all the stops to break the spirit and resolve of the people, often with the tired slogan that their “religion is not a religion of violence”. There aren’t people who naturally harbor a desire for violence. Most importantly, these religious leaders know at heart that demanding one’s right does not constitute an act of violence, but they support the repressive government nonetheless. While we note with disappointment their failure to fulfill their duty as guardians of the truth, we would still like to remind them to stop pouring cold water on the resistance movement of the people of Oromia.
Taken from Bekele Gerba’s letter from Kilinto, a jail in Ethiopia (Translation from Afan Oromo to English by Michael C.Mammo)
Calls for an international investigation in Ethiopia have surfaced after more than 100 people were killed in demonstrations.It is a conflict that has led to 400 deaths since November, 100 of them in the last week alone, according to human rights groups.The Ethiopian government is cracking down on ethnic Oromos and Amharas, who are calling for political reforms.Human rights groups have called the reponse ruthless. And the United Nations wants to send international observers to investigate.Ethiopia has denied that request, saying it alone is responsible for the security of its citizens. But what can be done to ensure the Ethiopian government respects human rights?Presenter: Folly Bah ThibaultGuests:Getachew Reda – Ethiopian communications affairs minister.Felix Horne – Ethiopia reseracher for Human Rights Watch.Ezekiel Gebissa – Profesor of History and African studies at Kettering University.- Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe– Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish– Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera– Check our website: http://www.aljazeera.com
Ethiopian migrants, all members of the Oromo community of Ethiopia living in Malta, protest against the Tigray-minority government. Reuters
Country-wide demonstrations by the Oromo in Ethiopia have flared up again. Ethiopia’s authorities reacted with heavy force, resulting in the death of 100 civilians. The Conversation Africa’s Samantha Spooner asked Professor Asafa Jalata about the country-wide protests.
The Oromo are the single largest ethno-national group in northeast Africa. In Ethiopia alone they are estimated to be 50 million strong out of a total population of 100 million. There are also Oromo communities living in Kenya and Somalia.
Ethiopia is said to have about 80 ethno-national groups. The Oromo represent 34.4% while the Amhara (Amara) 27%. The rest are all less than 7% each.
The Oromo call themselves a nation. They have named their homeland “Oromia”, an area covering 284,538 square kms. It is considered to be the richest area of northeast Africa because of its agricultural and natural resources. It is often referred to as the “breadbasket” of the region. 60% of Ethiopian economic resources are generated from Oromia.
The capital city of Ethiopia is located in the heart of Oromia. What the world knows as Addis Ababa is also known to the Oromo as their capital, “Finfinnee”. When the Abyssinian warlord, Menelik, colonised the Oromo during the last decades of the 19th century he established his main garrison city in Oromia and called it Addis Ababa.
Despite being the largest ethno-national group in Ethiopia, the Oromo consider themselves to be colonial subjects. This is because they have been denied equal access to their country’s political, economic and cultural resources. It all started with their colonisation by, and incorporation into, Abyssinia (the former Ethiopian empire) during the Scramble for Africa.
Today, comprising just 6% of the population, Tigrayans dominate and control the political economy of Ethiopia with the help of the West, particularly the US. This relationship is strategic to the US who use the Tigrayan-led government’s army as their proxy to fight terrorism in the Horn of Africa and beyond.
The Oromo community has been demonstrating since November last year. What triggered the protests?
The Oromo demonstrations have been underway for over eight months, first surfacing in Ginchi (about 80 kms southwest of the capital) in November 2015. It began when elementary and secondary school students in the small town began protesting the privatisation and confiscation of a small soccer field and the selling of the nearby Chilimoo forest.
The sentiment quickly spread across Oromia. The entire Oromo community then joined the protests, highlighting other complaints such as the so-called Integrated Addis Ababa Master Plan and associated land grabbing. The master plan was intended to expand Addis Ababa by 1.5 million hectares onto surrounding Oromo land, evicting Oromo farmers.
Last year’s demonstrations were the product of over 25 years of accumulated grievances. These grievances arose as a result of the domination by the minority Tigrayan ethno-national group. Because of this dominance the Oromo people have become aliens in their own country, lost ownership of their land and have become impoverished.
What was different about these demonstrations was that, for the first time, all Oromo branches came together in coordinated action to fight for their national self-determination and democracy.
Which part of the Oromo community is organising the rallies?
It is believed that underground activist networks, known as Qeerroo, are organising the Oromo community. The Qeerroo, also called the Qubee generation, first emerged in 1991 with the participation of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in the transitional government of Ethiopia. In 1992 the Tigrayan-led minority regime pushed the OLF out of government and the activist networks of Qeerroo gradually blossomed as a form of Oromummaa or Oromo nationalism.
Today the Qeerroo are made up of Oromo youth. These are predominantly students from elementary school to university, organising collective action through social media. It is not clear what kind of relationship exists between the group and the OLF. But the Qeerroo clearly articulate that the OLF should replace the Tigrayan-led regime and recognise the Front as the origin of Oromo nationalism.
What are their demands?
Their immediate demands are for the Ethiopian government to halt the so-called Addis Ababa Master Plan, land grabbing, corruption, and the violation of human rights.
Their extended demands are about achieving self-determination and sovereignty by replacing the Tigrayan-led regime with a multi-ethno-national democratic government. These demands gradually emerged to create solidarity with other ethno-national groups, such as the Amharas, who also have grievances with the regime.
How has the government reacted to the protests?
The government reaction has been violent and suppressive. Despite Oromia being the largest regional state in Ethiopia, it has been under martial law since the protests began. The government has been able to use this law to detain thousands of Oromos, holding them in prisons and concentration camps.
Security structures called tokkoo-shane (one-to-five), garee and gott have also been implemented. Their responsibilities include spying, identifying, exposing, imprisoning, torturing and killing Oromos who are not interested in serving the regime.
There have also been deaths and reports of thousands of Oromos who have been maimed as a result of torture, beatings or during the suppression of protests. For example, during the Oromia-wide day of peaceful protest on July 6 the regime army, known as Agazi, massacred nearly 100 Oromos. According to Amnesty International, 400 Oromos were killed before July 6. But in reality nobody knows exactly how many Oromos have been victims of violence.
What impact have these protests had on the country?
The Oromo protest movement has started to change the political landscape of Ethiopia and shaken the regime’s foundations. Erupting like “a social volcano”, it has sent ripples through the country with different groups changing their attitudes and standing in solidarity with the Oromo. The support of the Ahmaras has been particularly significant as they are the second largest ethno-national group in Ethiopia.
For the first time in history, the plight of the Oromo people has also received worldwide attention. International media outlets have reported on the peaceful protests and subsequent government repression.
This has brought about diplomatic repercussions. In January the European Parliament condemned the Ethiopian government’s violent crackdown. It also called for the establishment of a credible, transparent and independent body to investigate the murder and imprisonment of thousands of protesters. Similarly, the UN Human Rights Experts demanded that Ethiopian authorities stop the violent crackdown.
Not all global actors are taking a strong stance. Some are concerned about maintaining good relations with the incumbent government. For example, the US State Department expressed vague concern about the violence associated with the protest movement. In sharp contrast they signed a security partnership with the Ethiopian government.
Nevertheless, the momentum of the Oromo movement looks set to continue. The protests, and subsequent support, have seen the further development of activist networks and Oromo leadership, doubling their efforts to build their organisational capacity.
Is this the first time that the Oromo have demonstrated their grievances in this way?
No. The Oromo have engaged in scattered instances of resistance since the late 19th century when they were colonised.
In the 1970s the Oromo started to engage in a national movement under the leadership of OLF. The front was born out of the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association, which was banned in the early 1960s and other forms of resistance such as the Bale Oromo armed resistance of the 1960s. Successive Ethiopian regimes have killed or sent Oromo political and cultural leaders into exile.
How do you believe their grievances can be resolved?
Critics believe the Tigrayan-led minority regime is unlikely to resolve the Oromo grievances. Oromo activists believe that their national struggle for self-determination and egalitarian democracy must intensify.
I am sure that, sooner or later, the regime will be overthrown and replaced with a genuine egalitarian democratic system. This is because of the size of the Oromo population, abundant economic resource, oppression and repression by the Tigrayan-led government, the blossoming of Oromo political consciousness and willingness to pay the necessary sacrifices.
Many sources indicated TPLF have been destroying civilians and opposition parties in increasingly trend overtime. Mechanized countries kept silent of such massacres and genocides. Demonstrations to TPLF over years appeared now a kind of selecting demonstrators and devil them with punishment. Demonstrations to industrialized countries never restrained from channeling huge resources to TPLF, and TPLF rejected request of powerful organization including UN to investigate the crisis, nor such organization have ever seen overstepping on TPLF. Hadn’t the direction already a lesson so?
Diaspora
Except TPLF and their affiliated, Diaspora disliked the TPLF in damaging people. Diaspora also contributed quite happy for investing in land, house, and so on that strengthen resources for TPLF and offensively and egoistically displace poor farmers. Simple: cease investing at back- home and enhance investment in destroying the criminal TPLF. How to go about on the later?
Role of Ethnicity in this Revolution
Obviously, TPLF used divide and rule but such approach is obsolete now. A clear collusion between Oromo and Amhara are expected to remove TPLF. However, there is a worry about further ethnic conflicts including and beyond these two groups in the aftermath.
Oromo needs self-rule. Ogaden needs self-rule. Amhara needs self-rule. I mean all of them cannot afford oppressive TPLF. That is a civilization. That is freedom. That is liberty. That is democracy.
On TPLF
TPLF sit in the central government, pool military forces from one region and dispatch them to other region for storming citizens. Uprooting TPLF from this means making them powerless and this is the only realist course of action for all. What about TPLF? TPLF has an option to rule Tigray if this front even explores a chance to exist very soon.
Who will rule the country? As any developed countries, no region rule over the other. Each region will rule their own. The country wouldn’t bear further centralization that oppresses one ethnicity over the other-albeit-after stability, peace and self-rule of each region is ensured, say, for a year, each region will discuss whether cohabitation, economic integration, labor exchange and other cooperation is possible. Every region need to rethink its stability and sustainability in this manner that enhance its local military and civil administrations.
Priority of intervention points in the current context are:
Deny any meeting, communication, and negotiation with TPLF and its agents.
Implement defection from TPLF’s military forces through recruitments.
Execute defensive on top priority along with massive demonstration.
Deny any meeting, communication and negotiation with TPLF and its agents
Collectively the most important element is refusing any meeting and obstructing any financial sources to the TPLF’s military speed up loss of army. Stop any communication including asking for demonstration, political dialogues. No more negotiation to see a resignation of TPLF peacefully because there was/is no scope for that but that should be mandatory after all.
Implement defection from TPLF’s military forces through recruitments
Key practical role of Diaspora: work more days to contribute $200 monthly for military forces than to waste time in rallying, and demonstration. Rallying and demonstration is still valid though. These resources should be an excess to pay defector military forces, for example, how many Oromo and Amhara are abroad who are above 18 years old, working as a family or single! Flexibility of such fundraising in practical terms-be it through various organization including political party, community , and then directly channel it to military force is appreciated (there is no such restriction of mandate, roles and so forth beyond paper works). Recruiting the military forces from TPLF is cheap because these forces are already trained and likely also access to more weapons and it deplete TPLF’s military forces and make expensive to TPLF to retain the forces. Locally and vastly, the call for defection can be more effective through family of the military forces.
Execute defensive on top priority along with massive demonstrations
Army defectors and all competent people with rifles and shotgun but restrict grenades to optimize selective defense approach. And hold strategic positions including houses which has a hole, window or from roofs. Call massive peaceful demonstration around those strategic places. Still there are remnants agents of TPLF but innocuous, so continue the peaceful demonstration. If violent agents/military forces of TPLF start to harm people, just then selectively act defensive actions from there.
(Addis Standard) — Less than a year after the Oromo People’s Democratic Party (OPDO), part of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), celebrated its 25th founding anniversary the Oromo protests took the region OPDO is seemingly in charge of by a sheer storm. The protests, which broke out on November 12, 2015 in Ginchi, a small town 82 km west of Addis Abeba, were originally against a proposed integrated master plan for the capital Addis Abeba, which was, at the very least, unconstitutional.
Officials of the Oromia regional state looked helplessly, and at times totally disoriented, as protests gradually morphed into an expression of political discontent and frustration accumulated over the 25 years of OPDO’s presence as a party.
Picking up pace and spreading throughout the entire regional state, the Oromo protests persisted in various shapes and differing magnitudes; but unlike several protests in the past, they have accentuated an issue that had been a subject of heated debates (albeit on and off) among the Oromo nation for 25 years: the legitimacy of OPDO as the only party that is representing a region of more than 35 million people.
The current Oromo protests have, more than any time in the past, wide opened the doors for sincere reflections on the legitimacy and relevance of the party that constitutes the larger share to the coalition of the ruling EPRDF.
In the beginning there was no OPDO
Together with three parties, – the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM), OPDO makes up the ruling EPRDF. But its critics have long criticized it as illegitimate, weak and ineffective.
Such criticisms do not exist in a vacuum.
When EPRDF assumed power in 1991 after overthrowing the Marxist Derg regime, a new federated Ethiopia came into being. Carrying the burden of righting the wrong the Oromo people have suffered under previous regimes was the OPDO, which, unlike TPLF and ANDM, was just about two years old. Compared to TPLF, which had been engaged in armed struggles since the mid-1970s and ANDM, which metamorphosed from its precursor, the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (ENDM), the OPDO came to the coalition with no significant military background of its own as a freedom fighter.
“The OPDO was formed towards the demise of the Derg. Although many of its founders were not new to the armed struggle (some of them were part of the ENDM while others have served in the Derg army and were even held as prisoners of war), as an organized party, the OPDO had not been in the scene [of the armed struggle] as long as the TPLF. In fact its existence was needed to fill a void.” says a political analyst based in Addis Abeba who wishes to remain anonymous.
“The void” our interviewee referred to was a void left by the Oromo Liberation Front, (OLF), an armed group which spent decades fighting for the independence of the Oromo people, but which was eventually rendered unlawful by the Ethiopian Parliament. “When the OLF, which, strictly speaking is a deceased entity now, walked out of the coalition in 1991 for one reason or other, the Oromo people were left with no representative; there was no plan B than strengthening the existence of the newly created OPDO,” says the analyst, who closely watches political events within the OPDO.
A statement by the OPDO published to commemorate its 25thfounding anniversary underscores this point. Under the subtopic “On the Effort to Work with the OLF Ending in Vain,” the publication maintains that early founders of the EPRDF travelled to Khartoum, the Sudan, and sat down with the then leaders of the OLF to arrive at a consensus that would help them work together. The attempt failed because the OLF “lacked political commitment and had a deficit at its base,” the publication claims.
For our interviewee, therefore, OPDO’s problem began at its inception as a party. “It has a top-down formation. It was created because there was a missing puzzle to make EPRDF full. And we will not be wrong if we call this a birth defect,” he says.
Dr. Negasso wants an objective answer from those who claim that the OPDO is created to decimate the OLF
But Dr. Negasso Gidada, a former president and a senior member of the OPDO during the first 10 years, strongly disagrees with the assertion that OPDO suffers from a political ‘birth defect’. According to him1980 was the time when TPLF had to work hard to create Coalitions/Fronts of Organization to join it to fight against the military Derg. “Around mid ‘80s an agreement was signed between TPLF and OLFmembers to jointly fight against the Derg and the Soviet intervention…while continuing to discuss on their differences,” Dr. Negasso told this magazine.
According to him“one of the practical implementations was the agreement to send [TPLF] personnel to train OLF fighters.” But the deal collapsed and the trainers went back to TPLF’s base. Dr. Negasso admits “there is still conflicting explanations” on why this agreement collapsed. Since then, according to him, there was no sign of the two groups working together until the 1991 collapse of the militarist Derge.
In the meantime, “some Oromo members of the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (EPDM), [the predecessor of today’s ANDM], began to organize themselves in line with the TPLF experience. [These include] OPDO heavy-weights (both former and current) such as Kumaa Damaksaa, Ibrahim Malkaa, Abba Duulaa Gammadaa, Bachaa Dabalee, Getachew Bedhaane, and Ynatan Dhibbisaa. Some of them were freed Prisoners of War (PoWs) sent to Tigray by [their liberators] the TPLF. It was this group that finally organized itself as OPDO and joined the EPRDF (a front of two organizations: TPLF and ENDM) in 1989/90.
Dismissing as baseless the argument that OPDO lacks the political legitimacy to represent the Oromo because it was created, among others,as theOLF antithesis, Dr. Negasso refers to a historic incident in which, in 1991, members of OLF and EPRDF had jointly fought against the military Derg and Sudan’s SPLM armies in Asosa and Wallagga in western Ethiopia. “In fact it is said that it was Abbaa Duulaa of EPRDF and Abbaa Chaalaa of the OLF who led the armies of the two organizations which liberated Dembi Dollo [now in western Wallagga of the Oromia region]. It was then agreed that the OLF takes over the administration of western Wallagga while the OPDO could open offices in the major towns of the area,” Dr. Negasso said, adding, “I want an objective answer from those who claim that the OPDO is created to decimate the OLF.”
A ‘disparaging lack of narrative’
Critical of the ‘birth defect’ theory, Dr. Negasso says that from the very inception of OPDO, its members, although few in number, actively participated in the final battles against the Derg.
However, for our anonymous interviewee, apart from the political ‘birth defect’ the other problem which keep on haunting OPDO in the face of the EPRDF coalition – and perhaps in the eyes of its own constituency – is its “disparaging lack of narrative.”
“If you take a look at TPLF or ANDM you are met with a narrative so well-structured, a historical journey so prideful. You can find a romanticized, tantalizing story of a bunch of youngsters who, against all odds, managed to defy an atrocious regime. You find stories of defiance, commitment, and triumph. You can’t find that within OPDO.” OPDO, for him, is “a rootless organization with no attachment to the conscious of the constituency it claims to represent; it is a party that couldn’t even settle where it was conceived.”By this he is referring to last year’s controversial decision senior OPDO officials took to celebrate the 25th founding anniversary of the party in Adet, a small village in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, as the birth place of the party. This came after OPDO was celebrating the previous anniversaries in North Shewa, Darra Woreda of the Oromia regional state, in a village called Harbu Meskele.
For many political analysts, it was a decision that signified the bottomless exploitation of the OPDO by “their masters” within the EPRDF coalition, another reason why OPDO keeps on struggling to win the hearts and minds of its constituency.
Similar manipulations have eventually created an extraordinary asymmetry within the ruling EPRDF, which further robbed the OPDO of the much needed legitimacy in the eyes of its constituency, according to Solomon Seyoum, who has written extensively on the genesis of the OPDO. “OPDO has no historical, intellectual and moral background to compete neck and neck with [the rest of the parities within the ruling EPRDF]”, he told this magazine.
Solomon has another theory to add: “Ethiopian heroism narrative is yet in its version of military adventure. Civil adventure is at its infancy. Regarding the military adventure, OPDO is far more behind TPLF,” he said, adding that in the eyes of the other members of the coalition, “this robs OPDO of the freedom fighter heroism status,” which in turn significantly affects its relations with the people of Oromia.
Being OPDO is never easy
Ever since its emergence as a partyOPDO has been known as, among others, “the sick child”and “the troubled kid” within the ruling EPRDF.Some of the reasons associated with this are the fact that unlike the other three major parties, OPDO has been hit by high presidential turnover;suffers from lackof a political seat where it can solidify its power. Although officially Addis Abeba is the seat of the Oromia regional state, OPDO has failed to secure even some of the constitutionally guaranteed provisions under the special interest of Oromia on Addis Abeba. OPDO is also a party that lost to exile the highest numbers of former senior party members including two former presidents – Hassen Ali and Junadin Sado. “These contribute to the unhealthy state the OPDO is in,” our anonymous interviewee says.
But for Dr. Negasso isolating OPDO as “a sick child” or “the troubled kid” is an outrageous claim. “What about the situations in the other members of the EPRDF or the EPRDF [as a whole]? If OPDO is not healthy, does it not mean that EPRDF is not healthy as well?” he asks.
In the ten years (1991-2001) “I worked in the organization I know that only Almaz Makko, former speaker of the House of People Representatives, and Hassen Ali, former president of the region, left OPDO and now live in exile.[Other senior members such as] Yonatan Dhibbisa, Diriba Harqo, and General Kamal Galchu defected. Ibrahim Malka and Hailu […] were expelled from the organization, but live in the country. Asfaw Tune and I resigned and live in the country,” he says. “Compare this with the endless number of senior TPLF members who were expelled from the TPLF in early 2000. Do not forget the rank and file of thousands of TPLF members who were expelled or left the organization earlier (around 1991/1992 and in 1994).”
According to an official document published by the OPDO in 2015, in the first ten years since 1991, there had been at least four occasions in which the OPDO had to evaluate itself. On each of those occasions some officials, including high level officials, were expelled while some were simply demoted from their positions.
Solomon Seyoum believes more often than not OPDO had to struggle to assert its legitimacy and relevance
Solomon Seyoum doesn’t bite his tongue when discussing about the endless purges OPDO is often “forced to execute”, which plays a significant role in disorienting the party from its core. He also adds that OPDO central committee does not only suffer from perpetual purges but mysterious killings and disappearances of its members such as Mekonnen Fite and Bayu Gurmu who, according to Solomon, were killed by “government security agents in Sept. 1997”. “Hassan Ali, the then president of Oromia, and other OPDO central committee members were discussing the death of Mekonnen and Bayu when Alemayehu Desalegn, another OPDO central committee member and head of the Oromia finance bureau, was mysteriously gunned down and explained away as a suicide.”
Solomon further referred to an August 2001 statement given by Almaz Meko, the former house speaker who is now in exile: “The EPRDF government has brought untold miseries and sufferings on the Oromo people. [The] OPDO is … reduced to a rubber stamp for TPLF’s rule in Oromia.”
But Dr. Negasso disagrees and says “it is too simplistic to conclude that the OPDO is not healthy because few of its senior members left and live in exile or defected,” he says, “rather, other symptoms must be shown and the root causes must be looked for. Besides, root cause of the illness should not only pile upon the OPDO and [we should] not forget to investigate on whether EPRDF itself, from top to the lowest level, is healthy or not. OPDO cannot be sick if the EPRDF is not sick. If the OPDO is not healthy, EPRDF is not healthy.”
Our anonymous interviewee agrees that there are problems within other members of the EPRDF and the front itself.The problem of corruption, for example, is deeply rooted within the OPDO, but it is also rampant within the EPRDF in general. But there are some problems that can only be attributed uniquely to OPDO, he says. “When we evaluate OPDO as a sister party to the coalition, especially in light of TPLF’s strength, the differences between the two members of the same front become crystal clear,” he says. “For instance, TPLF has a firm base within the Tigray elites; a heavy presence within the intelligence, the army, the diaspora and business people. OPDO can’t boast of such level of acceptance. It doesn’t have the Oromo elite with it.”
This, according to Solomon, often sends the party off balance, costing it the little faith its constituency want to entrust in it, if for lack of choice. Every now and then, therefore, “OPDO had to struggle to assert its legitimacy and relevance back from square one”, Solomon told this magazine during an interview.
But in addition to its political weakness, being OPDO in itself comes with a price tag on it. On the one hand OPDO as a party is a subject of constant scrutiny from the mother party for harboring Oromo nationalist members who sympathize with the long outlawed OLF. On the other hand, the party comes under constant attack by nationalist Oromos who accuse it of being the OLF antithesis. For our anonymous interviewee, “being OPDO is never easy.” “OPDO, for some is narrow nationalist, while for others it is not nationalist enough,” he says, adding: “many Ethiopianist political observers see OPDO as a threat, as a haven for narrow, and possibly secessionist, nationalists. But for many radical nationalists who want more self-autonomy for the Oromo people or generally for the Oromia State, OPDO is a deserter. It is very difficult to reconcile these two diametrically opposing demands.”
But is there anything OPDO canhold on to?
Solomon Seyoum sees nothing in a form of political redemption for OPDO. According to him, the current Oromo Protests show that the party has long “crossed the Rubicon.” OPDO is irredeemable mostly because its founders remained ardent political loyalists to the all too powerful TPLF. Although the new generation of OPDO members have shown time and again that the party can indeed be redeemable and can become the people’s party, its founders and the “patron-client” relationship they maintain with the dominant TPLF has made them become the “Achilles heels.”
However, despite the enormous challenges, Dr. Negasso and our anonymous interviewee insist on the pragmatic outlook. Under the OPDO, “services of communication have expanded much in Oromia region”, Dr. Negasso says, listing the party’s accomplishments. Although the quality needs a serious reflection, the same holds true for roads, health posts, schools, higher education, and vocational training institutes.
But if OPDO wants to regain the much needed trust from its constituency, the work ahead is monumental. To this end, according to Dr. Negasso, even if some of the problems the region faces can be attributed to the country in general, OPDO has failed to even implement the rights of the Oromo people which are guaranteed in the constitution. A case in point is the “Oromia State’s special interest in Addis Abeba”, which, twenty years after it was written, is not supported by guiding proclamations. “There is problem in the justice system, too. And our election system and the absence of constitutional court have led to the situation that only OPDO dominates in Oromia.”
For our anonymous interviewee, apart from the administrative achievements, OPDO has registered successful accomplishments in making up to historical injustices and opening up opportunities for an entire generation of self-assertive youth who are proud of their identity. And for all its problems, OPDO remains “the largest, strongest and most structured Oromo organization ever,” he says.The problems that have tangled the OPDO should not therefore be diagnosed as OPDO problems only. “OPDO’s health and sickness has a wider ramification to the EPRDF as a ruling party, as well as to the country. That is why it is important for the party to tidy up its house.”
According to him “Ethiopian politics is predictably unpredictable.” But from where things stand today OPDO has two choices to make: putting all the focus in the past and getting lost in the maze or looking ahead and assume leadership.“If OPDO keeps undermining itself by playing the role of the little kid in the house, if it continues to be burdened by its own, or for that matter the country’s past, I don’t see a way of [redemption]. I’d recommend for it to focus on the future and get closer to the demands of the people it leads.”
In what came for many as the latest weave of purge, in an emergency meeting of the Oromia Regional Parliament(Caffe Oromia) held in the first week of June, OPDO announced it removed DemozeMame and Boja Tadesse, President and vice President of the region’s Supreme Court, and stripped the immunity from Zelalem Jemaneh, former OPDO executive committee member andhead of the region’s bureau of agriculture. While the former two were replaced by Addisu Kebenessa and Hussien Adam respectively, Zelalem was detained by the police suspected of corruption just a day after he lost his immunity.
The second round of high level purging since the beginning of Oromo Protests in November last year, this latest act of purge has left critics guessing whether itwas the long awaited road to redemption or just another political maneuver that will leave the party in yet anotherround of disarray.
Dr. Awol Allo is LSE Fellow in Human Rights at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Sociology. Prior to joining LSE in 2013, Dr. Allo was the Lord Kelvin/Adam Smith Scholar at the University of Glasgow. He holds degrees from Addis Ababa University, University of Notre Dame, and the University of Glasgow.
Dr. Allo’s research interests are in the areas of the sociology of law, critical social theory, political theory, human rights, post-colonial studies, and the African Union. Dr. Allo is interested in understanding and explaining how law constitutes and regulates the social world by observing how its discourses, practices, and institutions operate in the real world and generate effects. His scholarship examines empirical data – court files, trial transcripts, and historical archives – to describe and explain the behaviour of legal actors.
His forthcoming monograph, Law and Resistance: Toward a Performative Epistemology of the Political Trial, is a genealogical enquiry into law’s conditions of possibility for progressive change and transformation. Drawing on the works of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, the monograph explores the tension between the normative and the performative dimensions of law and argues that the normative in law is merely a metaphysical placeholder for the performative. Questioning the kinds of logic, the forms of rationality and modes of reasoning with which law constitutes and regulates the social world, the project brings sociological inquiry into the orbit of law and legality.
Dr. Allo is the editor of The Courtroom as a Space of Resistance: Reflections on the Legacy of the Rivonia Trial, published by Ashgate in 2015. The book is both a celebration and a reflection: a celebration of the life and struggle of the man who led South Africa’s long walk to freedom, Nelson Mandela, and a reflection on the spatial dimension of resistance and struggle in the courtroom. Through an engagement with Mandela’s compelling deployment of law both as a sword and a shield, leading social theorists from Africa, Europe and the United States join forces to address the multifaceted functions of trials.
Selected Publications:
Books
Allo A. (Forthcoming 2017) Law and Resistance: Toward a Performative Epistemology of the Political Trial, The Routledge Series in Social Justice
Allo A. (2015) The Courtroom as Space of Resistance: Reflections on the Legacy of the Rivonia Trial (eds.) Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Articles and Book Chapters
Allo A. (2016) Marwan Barghouti in Tel Aviv: Occupation, Terrorism, and Resistance in the Courtroom, Social & Legal Studies
Allo A. (2016) The Courtroom as a Site of Epistemic Resistance: Mandela at Rivonia, Law, Culture, and the Humanities
Allo A. & Tesfaye B. (2015) Spectacles of Illegality: Mapping Ethiopia’s Show Trials, African Identities Journal.
Allo A. (2015) ‘Black Man in a White Man’s Court’: Mandela’s Performative Genealogies, in Allo A. (eds.) The Courtroom as Space of Resistance: Reflections on the Legacy of the Rivonia Trial, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 189-212.
Allo A. (2015) The Courtroom as a Space of Resistance, in Allo A. (eds.) The Courtroom as a Space of Resistance: Reflections on the Legacy of the Rivonia Trial, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 1-20.
Allo A. (2012) Law and the Stranger, (eds.) ‘Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, And Martha Umphrey, Review Essay, 15 (2) New Criminal Law Review, 333-345.
Allo A. (2010) The Show in the Show Trials: Reconceptualising the Politicization of Truth and Justice in the Courtroom, 15 Barry Law Review, 41-72.
Allo A. (2010) Ethiopia’s Military Intervention in Somalia: Assessing the Legality of Self-Defense in Response to the Threat of Terrorism, 39 Den. J. Int. L. & Pol. 139-167.
Allo A. (2009) Mayhem in Darfur: The Accountability, Peace and Immunity Debate, 3(1) Mizan Law Review, 70-104.
Allo A. (2009) Derogations or Limitations: Rethinking the African Human Rights System of derogation in the Light of the European System’, 2(2) Journal of Ethiopian Legal Education.
Allo A. (2009) Counter-intervention, Invitation, Both or Neither: An Appraisal of the Ethiopian Military Intervention in Somalia, 3(2) Mizan Law Review, 201-239.
Book Reviews
Allo A. (2010) Book Review, ‘Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust’, 4(1) Mizan Law Review.
Demonstrations began popping up in Ethiopia in November 2015 in the Oromia region, which surrounds the capital, due to a government plan to expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa. By Lea-Lisa Westerhoff (AFP/File)
Addis Ababa (AFP) – A massive deployment of police in Ethiopia’s restive Oromo and Amhara regions prevented fresh anti-government protests over the weekend, an opposition leader said Monday.
“The situation is very tense,” said Beyene Petros, chairperson of MEDREK, an opposition coalition.
“The army, the federal police and plain clothes policemen are heavily deployed. They beat (the protesters). They chase them. They even go house to house threatening the parents.”
Small-scale protests were however reported over the weekend in at least three locations in Amhara region in the north and one in the central Oromo region. Last week, simultaneous protests were held for the first time in Oromo and Amhara regions, home to Ethiopia’s two biggest ethnic groups.
They were violently suppressed by security forces who opened fire on crowds in several places leaving at least a hundred dead, according to rights group Amnesty International.
Further rallies are expected in the coming days but the traditional, weak opposition parties claim to have little control over a protest movement they say is coordinated by youth activists using social media.
“People are coming out spontaneously. Political parties are bypassed,” said Petros. “We’re just watching and try to advise both sides so the damage will be minimised.”
Ethiopian opposition parties have been decimated by the arrests of leaders and members in recent years, often under a broadly-applied anti-terrorism law.
The ruling EPRDF coalition — in power for a quarter of a century — won every parliamentary seat in last year’s elections, triggering a wave of angry protests, according to Petros.
“This has enraged the population who has given up on EPRDF when it comes to bringing about a democratic system in this country,” he said.
“We are challenging the ruling party to open the political space.”
This story is part of special IPS coverage of World Humanitarian Day on August 19.
Workers in Djibouti Port offloading wheat from a docked ship. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
DJIBOUTI CITY, Aug 15 2016 (IPS News) – Bags of wheat speed down multiple conveyor belts to be heaved onto trucks lined up during the middle of a blisteringly hot afternoon beside the busy docks of Djibouti Port.
Once loaded, the trucks set off westward toward Ethiopia carrying food aid to help with its worst drought for decades.
“The bottleneck is not because of the port but the inland transportation—there aren’t enough trucks for the aid, the fertilizer and the usual commercial cargo.” — Aboubaker Omar, Chairman and CEO of Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority
With crop failures ranging from 50 to 90 percent in parts of the country, Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest wheat consumer, was forced to seek international tenders and drastically increase wheat purchases to tackle food shortages effecting at least 10 million people.
This resulted in extra ships coming to the already busy port city of Djibouti, and despite the hive of activity and efforts of multitudes of workers, the ships aren’t being unloaded fast enough. The result: a bottleneck with ships stuck out in the bay unable to berth to unload.
“We received ships carrying aid cargo and carrying fertilizer at the same time, and deciding which to give priority to was a challenge,” says Aboubaker Omar, chairman and CEO of Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority (DPFZA). “If you give priority to food aid, which is understandable, then you are going to face a problem with the next crop if you don’t get fertilizer to farmers on time.”
Since mid-June until this month, Ethiopian farmers have been planting crops for the main cropping season that begins in September. At the same time, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has been working with the Ethiopian government to help farmers sow their fields and prevent drought-hit areas of the country from falling deeper into hunger and food insecurity.
Spring rains that arrived earlier this year, coupled with ongoing summer rains, should increase the chances of more successful harvests, but that doesn’t reduce the need for food aid now—and into the future, at least for the short term.
“The production cycle is long,” says FAO’s Ethiopia country representative Amadou Allahoury. “The current seeds planted in June and July will only produce in September and October, so therefore the food shortage remains high despite the rain.”
Port workers, including Agaby (right), make the most of what shade is available between trucks being filled with food aid destined to assist with Ethiopia’s ongoing drought. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
As of the middle of July, 12 ships remained at anchorage outside Djibouti Port waiting to unload about 476,750 metric tonnes of wheat—down from 16 ships similarly loaded at the end of June—according to information on the port’s website. At the same time, four ships had managed to dock carrying about 83,000 metric tonnes of wheat, barley and sorghum.
“The bottleneck is not because of the port but the inland transportation—there aren’t enough trucks for the aid, the fertilizer and the usual commercial cargo,” Aboubaker says.
It’s estimated that 1,500 trucks a day leave Djibouti for Ethiopia and that there will be 8,000 a day by 2020 as Ethiopia tries to address the shortage.
But so many additional trucks—an inefficient and environmentally damaging means of transport—might not be needed, Aboubaker says, if customs procedures could be sped up on the Ethiopian side so it doesn’t take current trucks 10 days to complete a 48-hour journey from Djibouti to Addis Ababa to make deliveries.
“There is too much bureaucracy,” Aboubaker says. “We are building and making efficient roads and railways: we are building bridges but there is what you call invisible barriers—this documentation. The Ethiopian government relies too much on customs revenue and so doesn’t want to risk interfering with procedures.”
Ethiopians are not famed for their alacrity when it comes to paperwork and related bureaucratic processes. Drought relief operations have been delayed by regular government assessments of who the neediest are, according to some aid agencies working in Ethiopia.
And even once ships have berthed, there still remains the challenge of unloading them, a process that can take up to 40 days, according to aid agencies assisting with Ethiopia’s drought.
“I honestly don’t know how they do it,” port official Dawit Gebre-ab says of workers toiling away in temperatures around 38 degrees Celsius that with humidity of 52 percent feel more like 43 degrees. “But the ports have to continue.”
The port’s 24-hour system of three eight-hour shifts mitigates some of the travails for those working outside, beyond the salvation of air conditioning—though not entirely.
Scene from Djibouti Port. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
“We feel pain everywhere, for sure,” Agaby says during the hottest afternoon shift, a fluorescent vest tied around his forehead as a sweat rag, standing out of the sun between those trucks being filled with bags of wheat from conveyor belts. “It is a struggle.”
To help get food aid away to where it is needed and relieve pressure on the port, a new 756 km railway running between Djibouti and Ethiopia was brought into service early in November 2015—it still isn’t actually commissioned—with a daily train that can carry about 2,000 tonnes, Aboubaker says. Capacity will increase further once the railway is fully commissioned this September and becomes electrified, allowing five trains to run carrying about 3,500 tonnes each.
Djibouti also has three new ports scheduled to open in the second half of the year—allowing more ships to dock—while the one at Tadjoura will have another railway line going westward to Bahir Dar in Ethiopia. This, Aboubaker explains, should connect with the railway line currently under construction in Ethiopia running south to north to connect the cities of Awash and Mekele, further improving transport and distribution options in Ethiopia.
“Once the trains are running in September we hope to clear the backlog of vessels within three months,” Aboubaker says.
The jam at the port has highlighted for Ethiopia—not that it needs reminding—its dependency on Djibouti. Already about 90 percent of Ethiopia’s trade goes through Djibouti. In 2005 this amounted to two million tonnes and now stands at 11 million tonnes. During the next three years it is set to increase to 15 million tonnes.
Hence Ethiopia has long been looking to diversify its options, strengthening bilateral relations with Somaliland through various Memorandum Of Understandings (MOU) during the past couple of years.
The most recent of these stipulated about 30 percent of Ethiopia’s imports shifting to Berbera Port, which this May saw Dubai-based DP World awarded the concession to manage and expand the underused and underdeveloped port for 30 years, a project valued at about $442 million and which could transform Berbera into another major Horn of Africa trade hub.
But such is Ethiopia’s growth—both in terms of economy and population; its current population of around 100 million is set to reach 130 million by 2025, according to the United Nations—that some say it’s going to need all the ports it can get.
“Ethiopia’s rate of development means Djibouti can’t satisfy demand, and even if Berbera is used, Ethiopia will also need [ports in] Mogadishu and Kismayo in the long run, and Port Sudan,” says Ali Toubeh, a Djiboutian entrepreneur whose container company is based in Djibouti’s free trade zone.
Meanwhile as night descends on Djibouti City, arc lights dotted across the port are turned on, continuing to blaze away as offloading continues and throughout the night loaded Ethiopian trucks set out into the hot darkness.
“El Niño will impact families for a long period as a number of them lost productive assets or jobs,” Amadou says. “They will need time and assistance to recover.”
Are Oromo protesters demanding an end to confiscation of their land “criminals and terrorists”?
Are we now witnessing the rise of the “Amhara retards” and the Oromo “criminals and terrorists ” in Ethiopia?
The T-TPLF (Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front) and its handmaidens say Amharas and Oromos are just a bunch slobbering “retards, idiots, low lifes, criminals and terrorists”.
This is what one T-TPLF hate-monger had to
say
(translated into English below; Amharic transcript of statement available here ):
… Did I speak in Tigrinya? Yes, what was I just saying was? Like the voice of Meles said, what’s the translation in Chinese? Ha ha! When you translate it from that, hee, hee, hee, hee hee… What did he say? He [Meles] brought an example which said, ‘Even if you die in the air, you will not be buried in the air. Ok. What I wanted to say is that I am not criticizing what’s his name Gobezay [name of a man?] by any means. I understand his feelings and he’s right.
Unfortunately, the Amharas in different ways are scheming to create some kind of conflict among Tigreans, to divide them, to tear them apart, that’s what they want. And using different forms, they are trying to cause us [Tigreans] mental anguish. And because they [Amharas] have a strategy to swoop on Arat Kilo [symbol of T-TPLF power]. But we have caught on their scheme for some time now.
You are right. Our brothers [TPLF rebel fighters] have paid the ultimate sacrifice. They have fought and given up their lives. For that equality, those of our brothers who have died, they have paid a huge price for this equality, for this equality and reality to happen in Ethiopia.
Those who cannot stomach this, the people who hate this, the people tending goats in Eritrea, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee… Ok. Anyway, those who came from one area, they are retards.; it means retards. Where do they come from?
Yes the Gojames (Amhara people) are called retards. Gonderes (another Amhara people) are enemies. They should not be given awards. They are retards. In terms of thinking, their brains, they are low, very low. They are low retards. They are in a separate category. They represent a retarded idea, a retarded way of doing things. They are a type that follow a way of doing things that is un-Ethiopian. Because they are failures and low-lifes. We need to refer to them. If we have to refer to them [saying], ‘You low-lifes. You don’t represent us. You don’t dare talk to me like this.’ We can even call them low-lifes, retards and idiots.
This is a type of thinking that has rolled and fell yesterday [outmoded]. We don’t have time to dig it up. We are marching forward. We are building Hidase Dam. We are laying rail lines. And, hee, hee, hee,… these retards unfortunately, they are not filtered. The vast majority of them spend their time on paltalk. I mean the retards. Ninety percent spend their time on paltalk. They have nothing to do. They have nothing. During the Derg [military regime] time, they were majors, lieutenant this or that.
Whether you like it or not, we have come to power after we paid a price. End of story. For the next time, we will pay for them. I wonder what militia will come. Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee hee. Anyway…. [Emphasis added.)
T-TPLF villification and humiliation of Amharas and Oromos continues unabated.
The T-TPLF’s driving organizational force from the very beginning has been hatred for and advocacy of the total annihilation of the Amharas, a fact meticulously explained by Gebremedhin Araya, the former treasurer and top leader of the TPLF, who left the TPLF and distinguished himself as a fearless and uncompromising patriotic Ethiopian truth-teller.
According to Gebrenedhin (move clip on video to 7 minutes 26 seconds), T-TPLF leaders taught their members, followers, and supporters:
… The Amhara are the enemy of the Tigray people. Not only that, Amhara are the double enemy of the people of Tigray. Therefore, we have to hit Amhara. We have to annihilate Amhara. If the Amhara are not destroyed, if the Amhara are not beaten up and uprooted from the earth, the people of Tigray cannot live in freedom. And for the government we intend to create, the Amhara are going to be the obstacle. That is what it means…
(For a detailed analysis of the T-TPLF’s politics of hate, see my November 2014 commentary “ The de-Ethiopianization of Ethiopia.”)
This sentiment continues to be repeated by T-TPLF mastermind Sebhat Nega who regularly brags in the hotle lobbies and bars about the need to cleanse “Amharas” and members of the “Orthodox” church to ensure the supremacy of the T-TPLF.
Of course, the T-TPLF represents no one but its corrupt leaders and their cronies and supporters. It has no moral or political legitimacy to claim representation of any other group in Ethiopia.
The T-TPLF has vilified and demonized peaceful Oromo protesters and called them “criminals and terrorists”. The T-TPLF “speaker of the parliament” had to issue a public “rebuke” to those making the outrageously false charges.
T-TPLF supporters spew hate like their demi-god, the late T-TPLF thugmaster Meles Zenawi, who loved to demean and demonize Amharas and Oromos.
Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice in her eulogy of Meles in 2012 recounted that Meles was “tough, unsentimental and sometimes unyielding. And, of course, he had little patience for fools, or idiots, as he liked to call them.”
Meles reserved some mean and nasty words for his opponents, especially Amharas.
Meles often talked about his opponents as “dirty chaff”, “mud smearers” (mud people), “enemies” and “terrorists”.
T-TPLF leaders, members and supporter,s consider all Ethiopians “retards, fools and idiots”.
The T-TPLF will not miss an opportunity to humiliate even Amhara political prisoners. According to “Eyewitness accounts who were present at court said General Asaminew Tsige told the court that his torturers were hurling ethnic insult at him saying, “Amhara shintam new!” … and “men tametalachihu?” meaning “Amahras are cowards who piss on themselves, what are you going to do?”
Thugmaster Meles Zenawi seemed to have a morbid fascination with genocide.
Whenever the going got tough for him and his criminal band of brothers, he would whip out the specter of Rwandan-style “interhamwe” (which in Kinyarwanda or Rwanda means “those who stand, work, fight, attack together”) in Ethiopia.
When Zenawi decided to jam Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts in Ethiopia in 2010, his justification was that the VOA was promoting genocide:
We have been convinced for many years that in many respects, the VOA Amharic Service has copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda in its wanton disregard of minimum ethics of journalism and engaging in destabilizing propaganda.
At the time, I challenged Meles Zenawi’s genocidal speculations in my May 2011commentary “In Defense of the Voice of America”.
The hateful rants of T-TPLF supporters are not only deeply offensive but also provide a window into the dark souls of the T-TPLF thugs and “thugesses”.
Those who are vectors of hate, fear and smear must always be exposed and challenged. Silence is to hate as gasoline is to fire. Silence breeds hate. Silent indifference to T-TPLF hate-mongering is the moral equivalent of complicity.
What motivates T-TPLF supporters and mouthpieces to launch vicious and unprovoked slanderous verbal attacks on ALL Amharas and Oromos can only be explained by their monstrous and revolting hatred for ALL Amharas and Oromos.
It is easy to dismiss T-TPLF hate-mongers as inconsequential ideologues. But that would be a grave mistake.
The T-TPLF supporters have weapons of mass media distraction and destruction in their hands. They can easily spark and unleash a genocidal civil war with their media hate-talk.
That is precisely what happened at the onset of the Rwandan Genocide.
Ferdinand Nahimana, Hassan Ngeze and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza used Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a private FM they operated as regime cronies, tobroadcast inflammatory and rabid propaganda against Tutsis, moderate Hutus, Belgians, and the United Nations mission.
The three disk jokeys of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines coordinated the genocide by describing Tutsis as “cockroaches” and communicating the location of Tutsis and moderate Hutus for execution by Hutu thugs.
The Rwandan disk jockeys fiercely urged, “You have to kill the Tutsis, they’re cockroaches.”
For using Radio Mille Collines in the Rwandan Genocide, Ferdinand Nahimana, Hassan Ngeze and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza were prosecuted at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2003, convicted and given very long prison sentences.
Are we waiting for a radio broadcast from the T-TPLF messengers of hate to deliver the message, “You have to kill Amharas. They are retards.”
What is the difference between what the Rwandan disk-jokeys’ description of Tutsis as “cockroaches” and the T-TPLF hate-mongers who repeatedly describe Amharas as “retards”?
There is little difference. What is a “cockroach” for one is a “retard” for another.
There is only one unanswered question: When will the crimes against humanity inflicted on the Rwandan “cockroaches” be inflicted on the “Amhara retards” ?
The Nazis launched a propaganda campaign to exterminate and sterilize “mentally retarded people” and others with disability.
The “mental retards” of Nazi Germany were not capable of doing things the Aryan way; just like the T-TPLF hate-mongers articulate the Amhara “retards” are a “a type that follow a way of doing things that is un-Ethiopian.”
In Nazi Germany, the “mental retards” were considered “low lifes” just like the T-TPLF hate-mongers consider Amharas “retards”.
The Nazis used a slightly different word to describe Aryans (Ubermenschen [supermen]) and non-Aryans (Untermenschen [subhumans]) in Germany.
The T-TPLF hate-mongers proclaim, “Our brothers [TPLF rebel fighters] have paid the ultimate sacrifice. They have fought and given up their lives.”
The T-TPLF hate-mongers’ unmistakable suggestion is that Amharas, Oromos and others are cowards and wimps who will never raise arms to defend their honor or dignity. What they are saying is that Amharas, Oromos and others would prefer to live like slaves than “pay the ultimate price” and gain their honor, dignity and freedom.
That is why T-TPLF hate-mongers say they have earned their place as supermen and as undisputed rulers of the thugdom they have established in Ethiopia.
But for the T-TPLF, Amharas “are retards. In terms of thinking, their brains, they are low, very low. They are low retards. They are in a separate category.”
In “a separate category of” subhumans?
Are the “Amhara retards” the T-TPLF’s new Untermenschen and the T-TPLF the Ubermenschen of Ethiopia?
Are T-TPLF hate-mongers campaigning for the extermination of the “Amhara retards”?
Or is the T-TPLF and its appointed hate-mongers challenging the “Amhara retards” and “Oromo criminals and terrorists” to rise up? Up from T-TPLF slavery!
Pray for the “retard” Amharas?!
Reaction to the rants of T-TPLF hate-mongers ranges from disappointment to outrage.
Some suggest responding to trash-talking loud-mouth T-TPLF hate-mongers is the equivalent of dignifying their hateful messages.
There are some who believe hate-mongers will go away if they are ignored and overlooked.
I don’t believe in giving a free pass to hate-mongers; it does not matter to me if the hate-mongers are called Donald Trump-aryans or Trump’s African Clones (corps).
The undeniable truth is that what the trash-talking hate-mongers are talking in the media are exactly the things the T-TPLF leaders, members and supporters talk in the privacy of their homes, behind closed doors and in their conference and boardrooms.
It is easy to be disgusted by all of the hate-filled statements of the T-TPLF and its supporters and turn a deaf ear. It is easy to dismiss them as gabby hate-mongers as “tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The fact is that the T-TPLF leaders, members and supporters are on the same page when it comes to hating Amhara and Oromo people.
The T-TPLF hate-mongers articulate the hate, fear and loathing burning ceaselessly in the hearts and minds of the T-TPLF leaders, members and supporters.
The trash-talking hate-mongers get their hate talking points straight from the very, very top of the T-TPLF leadership. They are ordered to monger hate.
That’s the way the T-TPLF comrades talk everyday when no outsider is listening.
I know because they tell me.
Make no mistake: There are some (a few) among the T-TPLF who believe they are Ethiopians first and foremost before they are T-TPLF or anything else. Not all who wear T-TPLF stripes are T-TPLF in the heart. Bless their hearts!
There may be some who may be tempted to mudsling it out with the T-TPLF hate-mongers.
Not me. Like George Bernard Shaw, “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig [or a sow]. You get dirty, and besides, the pig [sow] likes it.”
As I have often said, you can take the thug out of the bush, but you can never take the bush out of the thug. No amount of fine jewelry, designer suits and handbags can ever change a thug or thugess. A thug is for life! A fact of life!
But those hate-mongers who point an index finger and insult and vilify an entire ethnic group as “retards, idiots and fools” should take a careful look at where their three fingers are pointing.
T-TPLF hate-mongers mock the “Amhara retards” by offering to “pray” for them.
They should save their prayers for themselves and their T-TPLF partners-in-crime. They are going to need it more than the “Amhara retards”.
Since the T-TPLF hate-mongers present themselves as praying (preying?) people, they can learn from Scripture: “He who troubles his own house will inherit wind, And the foolish will be servant to the wisehearted.”
The T-TPLF hate-mongers offering their prayers should also remember from Scripture, “There is a time for everything.”
It is now time to be free of the T-TPLF scourage!
The T-TPLF, its leaders, members and supporters will inherit the wind on their way to the trash heap of history.
All indications are the “Amhara retards” are defiantly standing their ground declaring: “Praise the Lord! Pass the ammunition.”
But the “retard Gojames” have a final and irrevocable answer for the T-TPLF:
Gojam is [land of ] of heroes. We will die for our country.
Welqait is ours.
We want a strong leader not a blind one.
Ethiopianity is our language.
Weyane are a bunch of cowards.
What is the business of a front established to liberate Tigray in Ethiopia?
The military belongs to the people.
The boundary of Tigray is Tekeze.
Release political prisoners.
Andargachew Tsigie is our leader, not a terrorist.
Andualem Aragie is our leader, not a terrorist.
Bekele Gerba is our leader, not a terrorist.
There can be no negotiation in the case of Col. Demeke.
End of the story for the T-TPLF?
The T-TPLF hate-mongers say it is “the end of the story” for the “Amhara retards”?
Really?
It sure looks like the end of a horrendous story that began 25 years ago.
For 25 years, the T-TPLF has ruled the “Amhara retards”.
For 25 years, the T-TPLF has ruled Oromo “criminals and terrorists”.
But the T-TPLF is learning belatedly and much to their surprise the “retards, criminals and terrorists” are actually awakening tigers who have pretended to be in slumber for 25 years.
The Tigers are rising. The Tigers are growling. The Tigers are on the prowl!
Ecce Tigris! (Behold the Tiger!)
The T-TPLF no longer has the Tigers by their tails.
The Tigers have set themselves free.
The T-TPLF is looking straight into the eyes of the Ethiopian Tigers, assembled together — fearless, defiant and hungry.
The T-TPLF is now facing the TRUTH: The Ethiopian Tigers!
Can the T-TPLF handle the TRUTH?
The T-TPLF believes it can handle the Ethiopian Tigers by massacring them, arresting, jailing, torturing and persecuting them.
The T-TPLF cannot win a war on the Ethiopian people when it has lost the battle for their hearts and minds.
There is no military might on earth that can defeat or contain the rage and outrage of a people who have been subjected to a long train of abuses, daily indignities and mistreatment.
There is no military might that can defeat the Ethiopian people UNITED.
The Ethiopian people UNITED, can never be defeated!.
I have often reminded the T-TPLF to think about an eternal truth spoken by Gandhi: “I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always.”
T-TPLF’s ONLY Option: Massacre innocent citizens on an industrial Nazi-scale to cling to power
The T-TPLF has many options to save itself and the country. But it will not take any of them because the T-TPLF leaders, members and supporters believe they can, once more, outwit, outthink, outsmart, outplay, outfox and outmaneuver the “Amhara retards”, the “Oromo ciminals and terrorists” and all of their opposition in all parts of the country.
The T-TPLF is said to be doing contingency planning for direct martial law (military rule) if things cannot be controlled in short order.
Like that is going to make a difference.
The T-TPLF is in power today only because it has control of the military, but that control is actually minimal. Though nearly all of the “officers” are T-TPLF cadres and the rank and file from the other groups, the T-TPLF will be making a big mistake if it believes it can maintain its killing machine by feeding the rank and file extra cash and perks.
The T-TPLF should heed the words of Ho Chi Minh from another time fighting against the most powerful military power in the world: “You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.”
The T-TPLF will lose. The odds are against it. Do the simple arithmetic!
Let the T-TPLF be forewarned in the words of MLK: “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness.”
In the end, that T-TPLF strategy of making Ethiopia its killing fields will fail because the rank and file in the military will not stand for it.
But one cannot kill a people who feel living under T-TPLF is the equivalent of a thousand deaths.
In one recent video online, a man in the street is heard saying, “Under TPLF rule, we are already dead. Worse than dead. We can’t be anymore dead than we already are.”
But the T-TPLF underestimates the bravery of the Ethiopian people in general. They underestimate the fierce capacity of a people who successfully fought and defeated one of the mightiest European colonial powers not once but twice.
The T-TPLF in their ignorant arrogance believe Ethiopians are cowards, “retards” “fools”, “idiots”, criminals” and “terrorists” and only they are the bravest of the brave.
Meles Zenawi believed he and his T-TPLF could remain in power forever by using crushing force and dividing Amharas and Oromos, Tigreans and all the rest.
Exactly four years ago to the month, Meles died from a terminal disease called HATE.
In August 2016, the T-TPLF is ready to harvest the hate it had sowed for the last 25 years.
To the T-TPLF who believe Amharas and Oromos are gutless cowards and wimps, I say you are wrong, dead wrong.
Amharas and Oromos are brothers and sisters to Tigreans, Sidamans, Welayita, Hadiya, Afar, Gamo, Ogadeni, Anuak… Christians, Muslims…
They are all ETHIOPIANS before they are anything else.
We rise up or fall down as ETHIOPIANS!
It has long been told in Scripture that “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands to God.”
That time is NOW!
Ethiopians need to stretch out their hands and embrace each other in peace, brotherhood, sisterhood and friendship. That is the holy way.
For those T-TPLF leaders, members and supporters “praying” for the “Amhara retrads”, I will remind them one more time the old prophesy told in the lyrics of a song of African slaves from the harrowing days of slavery in America: “God gave Noah the Rainbow Sign: No more water. The fire next time!”
Can you see the rainbow Ethiopian nation of Oromo, Amhara, Tigray, Gurage, Sidama, Welayita, Hadiya, Afar, Gamo, Ogadeni, Anuak… Christians, Muslims, Animists, young, old, men, women… embracing each other, holding hands and rising up together as one?!
15 August 2016 (The Centre for Human Rights) – The Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, is deeply concerned by the ongoing human rights violations in Ethiopia following popular anti-government protests in the Amhara and Oromia regional states, as well as in the capital, Addis Ababa.
The Centre is particularly dismayed by the use of force against protesters and the killing of civilians by the police, security and military forces during the protests. According to reports, nearly 100 people have been killed in the recent Amhara and Oromo protests, while more than 400 people have been killed during the earlier Oromo protests which began in November 2015.
The Centre is further concerned by the fact that the government of Ethiopia continues to suppress the human rights and fundamental freedoms of citizens including the rights to life, assembly, peaceful demonstration and the freedom of expression and association.
Considering the fact that Ethiopia is the seat of the African Union, and is regarded as a symbol of freedom against colonialism, the Ethiopian government is expected to have an exemplary human rights record to other African states. On the contrary, the government has been continually using force against peaceful protesters, which has often resulted in the death of a considerable number of people so far.
This is particularly distressing as there have been no signs of holding the perpetrators accountable. The government has often brought charges against the leaders of protests—who are often demanding human rights—while the very persons who are responsible for the deaths and injuries of many people go scot free.
Although Prime Minister Haile-Mariam Desalegn has apologised for the loss of lives and the injuries sustained by protestors earlier this year, the government has not shown improvement in handling protests, and in holding perpetrators accountable. Instead, it continues to hold a firm stand against protesters as it is shown—again—when the Prime Minister threatened that ‘measures will be taken’ against protesters. The fact that government officials, alongside members of the security forces, are involved in these human rights violations highly hampers the quest for justice at the domestic level.
The Centre is further concerned that, despite these gross violations of human rights, there has been inadequate pressure from the African Union, international organisations and the ‘international community’ in general.
Therefore, the Centre calls upon the African Union and the international community to take steps to ensure that the Ethiopian government produces tangible results with regards to its human rights record.
In particular, the Centre calls upon:
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to condemn the human rights violations in the country; to undertake an urgent visit to the country, and to report the human rights situation in the country to the African Union Assembly;
The Government of South Africa to condemn the serious human rights violation by the Ethiopian government, and work together with other African states towards a common AU position and action towards this issue.
The Centre also calls upon the Government of Ethiopia:
To immediately stop violence against, and the killing of protesters, as well as to respect and protect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people, including the right to life, the right to peaceful assembly, the right to freedom of expression, the right not to be tortured, and the freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention;
To take precautionary measures to prevent the use of force during peaceful assembly;
To address all the issues raised by the people, in a democratic manner, according to the Ethiopian Constitution and the human rights treaties to which Ethiopia is a party;
To note that the right to peaceful assembly and peaceful demonstration should not be impeded by arbitrary restrictions in the pretext of protecting law and order;
To bring to justice government officials and members of security forces, who are responsible for the attack and killings as well as to provide adequate remedy for people whose properties have been destroyed and looted during the protests, and;
To promptly establish an independent and impartial commission of inquiry to investigate, report, and where required, to prosecute perpetrators.
For more information, please contact:
Prof Frans Viljoen
Director, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
Tel: +27 (0) 12 420 3228 / 3810
Mobile: +27 (0) 73 393 4181
Email: frans.viljoen@up.ac.za
Sifan Hassan (Oromo: Siifan Hassan; born on January 1, 1993 in Adama, Oromia) is an Oromia-Dutch middle- and long-distance runner. She is the Dutch indoor record holder for the 1500 metres and 3000 metres and was the under-23 winner at the 2013 European Cross Country Championships. Hassan won the gold medal at 1500 m at the European Athletics Championships Zürich 2014.
As a 15 year old girl in 2008, Sifan Hassan came to the Netherlands as a refugee. After some years staying in different places she picked up her running again. She found out she had the talent to compete internationally and decided to not only focus on her nursing study but on running as well. Therefor she moved to the National Training Centre in Papendal which turned out to be a good choice.
Sifan made huge progressions by lowering her 800m, 1500m and her 3000m personal bests. She won the 1500m at the Ostrava Golden Spike meeting, finished second behind Abeba Aregawi in the Lausanne Diamond League, and took the third place in Stockholm. Only Meseret Defar and Mercy Cherono were faster that day.
After Sifan received her Dutch passport in November 2013, she traveled to the European Cross Country Championships in Belgrade as one of the favorites for the U23 title and she won her first European title.
The 2014 season brought her new personal bests and national records as she broke the 2:00 barrier in the 800m, the 4:00 barrier in the 1500m and the 8:30 barrier in the 3000m. She set a world leading time of 3:57.00 in the Paris Diamond League. Sifan travelled to the European Championships in Zurich with this WL time and as the clear favorite for gold, but therefor she had to beat Sweden’s Abeba Aregawi. Abeba could not follow Sifan in the final meters and placed second behind European Champion Sifan Hassan. As the newly crowned European Champion, all competitors in the 5000m were keeping an eye on Sifan. But she could not win the race due to a tactical mistake and some tiredness from the 1500m final. She won a beautiful silver medal behind Meraf Bahta.
The 2015 season started off really well for Sifan by breaking the national record in the 1500m indoor (4:00.46). Later on she won the golden medal at the European Indoor Championships in Prague. She continued winning races and breaking records in the outdoor season. She ran a fast 3:56.05 in Monaco which was another National Record for her. At the World Championships in Beijing she won the bronze medal behind Dibaba and Kipyegon.
The indoor season in 2016 went really well for Sifan Hassan as she won the gold medal at the World Championships Indoor in Portland. She started her outdoor season at the European Championships in Amsterdam where she won the silver medal in the 1500m.
2016 Summer Olympics – Athletes Sifan Hassan Finalist in 1500m
Genzebe Dibaba
Genzebe Dibaba Keneni (Afaan Oromo: Ganzabee Dibaabaa; born 8 February 1991 in Bokoji, Oromia) is an middle- and long-distance runner. She is the sister of three-times Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba and Olympic silver medallist Ejegayehu Dibaba, and the cousin of former Olympic champion Derartu Tulu.
She was the 2012 World Indoor Champion for the 1500 m, and is the reigning 2014 World Indoor Champion and World Indoor Record Holder in the 3000 m. She represented Ethiopia at the 2012 Summer Olympics and has twice competed at the World Championships in Athletics (2009 and 2011). She was highly successful as a junior (under-20) athlete, having won two junior world cross country titles and one world junior 5000 m gold medal. At the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, she became World Champion in 1500 m as well as claiming the bronze medal in the 5000 m event. She was named Laureus Sportswoman of the Year for the 2014 year alongside male winner counterpart Novak Djokovic and was 2015 IAAF World Athlete of the Year.
She is the current world record holder for the 1500 m (both indoor and outdoor), the indoor 3000 m, the indoor 5000 m, the indoor mile, and the indoor two mile.
