Waa’ee Maastar Pilaanii TPLF | Statement of ULFO on TPLF’s Master Plan

Countering ‘The Addis Ababa Master Plan’ with a Coherent National Master Plan of Liberating Oromiya

November , 2015

The predicament that is besieging Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) today has a historical root directly linked to the empire-building project of Minilik. Without studious understanding of the genesis of this root, it will be a futile exercise to attempt to address the current fiasco surrounding the so-called ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan.’ The debacle of Finfinnee is intertwined with that of Oromiya. It is a subset of the multifaceted problems that Oromiya faces today. Therefore, it should be fitting to acknowledge that it is the undoing of the colonial project entrenched on Oromiya that can once for all do away with the recurrent onslaughts that Finfinnee sustains under the Abyssinian colonial order of various strands.

Under Minilik, the architect of the Ethiopian empire, Finfinnee and its indigenous Oromo residents, particularly Gullallee, Eekkaa, and Galaan kinfolks, sustained what amounts to near annihilation from the wave of unrelenting campaigns geared to making room for the political seat of his newly emerging empire. Finfinnee witnessed environmental degradation of an unprecedented proportion with the slush and burn policy of Minilik and actions of his invading army that cleared its virgin forest and lush vegetation in order to set a permanent footprint – a home for Abyssinian settler colonialism. The natives of Finfinnee – who survived the extermination mission of Minilik – were displaced and headed south and settled with their fellow Oromos. As a result, the once thriving host ofCaffee Tuulamaa – known for its altruistic democratic discourse that served as the prime spring of the rules of law that respected the balance of nature and the rights of its citizens – was replaced with forces of Minilik and members of his oligarchy and court establishments – the source of draconian rules of alien settlers.

Praising Minilik as their trailblazer, the descending Abyssinian rulers to this date followed his suit in shaping the fate of Finfinnee. Haile-Silassie, in his zest for ‘modernizing Ethiopia,’ had embarked on expanding Finfinnee to make it an international city at the expense of Oromos residing on the fringe of the ‘core city of Addis Ababa’ – one that Minilik established for his warlords and their accompanying setters. This expansion further uprooted the Oromo people from the surrounding areas.

Similarly, Mengistu left his own marks on Finfinnee. His land proclamation that confiscated land from feudal lords sent shock waves that forced Abyssinian settlers to flock to ‘Addis Ababa’ from across the empire. This exodus had in turn brought about incessant displacement of Oromo families from the vicinity of Finfinnee.

With the advent of the TPLF brand of Abyssinian rule, Finfinnee has been put on a unique trajectory never envisaged over 130 years of its history. As soon as it came to power, the TPLF, with a proclamation, gave Finfinnee a chartered city status. While this proclamation on paper grants defined and unique rights to the Oromo people, in practice, TPLF has been working on the remaking of Finfinnee; that is, on progressively diminishing the identity of Finfinnee as an Oromo city. Not only Finfinnee, as known under the so-called ‘Charter,’ but also the surrounding suburban towns are being slated for de-Oromonization. This TPLF political project that appears engulfing Finfinnee like a tumor is fast-spreading to the rest of Oromiya.

Unlike its predecessors, the TPLF has grand and subtle social engineering plans to alter the demographic and ethnonational make-up of Finfinnee. The ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan’ is a litmus test. If the Oromo eviction test on the Finfinnee experimental plot fully succeeds, the TPLF will not take much time to implement similar plans throughout Oromiya. In fact, it has already embarked on evicting Oromos and massively resettling its own people in Finfinnee and other urban centres in Oromiya. The scramble for Finfinnee has long started under the guise of development. Elevating the scope of the scramble for Finfinnee beyond its ‘domestic partners’ to the international level, it is relentlessly working to displace the Oromo people from Finfinne and the surrounding towns. In effect, it has put Finfinnee up for ‘sale’ to the best bidders in both domestic and international markets.

The crime that the TPLF has so far committed on the Oromo people is colossal. It has uprooted over 150,000 thriving farming families from Finfinnee and its surrounding towns and reduced them to live in beggary. It has displaced millions Oromos in various parts of Oromiya and exposed them to abject poverty. According to its ‘Master Plan of Addis Ababa,’ it is gearing up to evict over two million more Oromos residing within the geographic area of its plan. In every measure, this act of TPLF clearly attests its genocidal agenda against the Oromo people.

As the ethnic cleansing policy of the TPLF got more glaring, the resistance of the Oromo people has significantly escalated. In an effort of quashing any resistance, the TPLF has been mercilessly murdering and incarcerating Oromos en mass. It is fresh in our memory that it went on killing rampage over a year ago and massacred over a hundred students who peacefully demonstrated against its hidden agenda of the ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan.’

The United Liberation Forces of Oromiya (ULFO) condemns in the clearest term possible the barbaric actions that the TPLF took against the Oromo people in Finfinnee and Oromiya at large. It opposes vehemently the so-called ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan’ and warns that the TPLF stop its implementation.

WHY RESIST THE ADDIS ABEBA MASTER PLAN? – A CONSTITUTIONAL LEGAL EXPLORATION

When,in mid April 2014, the government in Ethiopia announced its readiness to implement what it called the “Addis Abeba Integrated Regional Development Plan” (the “Master Plan” for short), which proposes to annex most of the city’s surrounding areas belonging to the National Regional State of Oromia, it provoked an immediate reaction from university students across the state of Oromia. But through the instrumentality of its security forces (such as the Federal and State Police, the Army, and the Special Forces), the government responded with brutal repression of the protests.

Fuelled by anger triggered by the reckless words and utter disdain expressed in the course of a televised discussion between the Addis Abeba City Administration and the mayors and other executives from the surrounding towns over the Master Plan, and informed by a history of killing, mutilation, dispossession, and political marginalization (all of which continue unabated), the protests were more a spontaneous reaction than a planned resistance. In a series of campus-based and street protests that barely lasted for two weeks, countless innocent Oromos were killed and jailed.

Although unfounded claims that some of these students were released on July 9th in the wake of President Barak Obama’s visit to Ethiopia, many of them remain jailed and are appearing in a court of law charged with the country’s infamous anti-terrorism proclamation.
In this piece, I seek to make a close reading of the constitutional-legal frame within which to situate the Master Plan. Accordingly, first, I seek to explore the constitutional-legal context within which the Master Plan should be considered and analyzed. Next, I will present a summary of four major constitutional-legal arguments against the Master Plan.

Constitutional context

The point of departure is the assumption that – the important debate about legitimacy aside – the constitution is ‘the supreme law of the land’ against which the validity of all laws, decisions, and practices is measured. According to the constitution, the Ethiopian state is federal in structure (arts 1 and 50-52). Ethiopia is a ‘nation of nations’ that can be considered a multinational federation. In the language of the constitution, ‘Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ are the locus of sovereignty (art 8) and have the right to self-determination (art-39). As sovereign entities, they are the ‘building blocks’ that have a co-equal share in the founding of the contemporary Ethiopian polity. As subjects with the right to self-determination, they have, inter alia, the right to a ‘full measure of self-government’ (art 39(3)). Accordingly, most of these ‘nations,’ based on the four-fold criteria: settlement pattern, language, identity, and consent of the people concerned’ (art 46(1)), have established the nine states that constitute federal Ethiopia (art. 47), one of which is the state of Oromia.

Addis Abeba (which Oromos call Finfinne) is designated as the “capital city of the federal” government (art 49(1)) whose ethnically diverse people have a right to self-government (art 49(2)) that is ultimately responsible to the federal government (art 49(3)). Being an Oromo city (albeit the constitution talks only about its ‘location’ in Oromia), it is also the capital city of the state of Oromia. This was stated in both the old and revised constitutions of Oromia (Art 6 of the 1995 constitution and Art 6 of the revised 2001 Constitution as amended in 2005). Owing to its being an Oromo city, the constitution clearly recognizes Oromia’s ‘special interest in Addis Abeba’ particularly in relation to social services, natural resources, and joint administrative matters (art 49(5)).

The articulation of the content of this special interest has been a matter of quiet controversy between the Oromia government and the federal government. The law envisaged to come to effect in order to articulate it was never made. Oromia’s request for the law fell on deaf ears; and its formal request for interpretation from the constitutional interpreter (the House of Federation cum Council of Constitutional Inquiry) was rejected by the latter on the ground that they do not give ‘advisory opinion’ in the absence of ‘case and controversy’. In the meantime, the formal and informal land-grabbing continued to spread into the neighboring towns and districts. There being no formal institution that regulates inter-governmental relations –and the federal government being indifferent to the concerns of Oromia and the city government virtually absent from the scene since 2005 – the matter became increasingly irritating to the Oromia officials. Frustrated, in 2009, the legislature of Oromia, the Caffee, established a ‘Special Zone’ of towns and districts that surround the city of Addis Abeba. This, they hoped, would give them a focused mode of operation in relation to the specific problems of these towns that are hard hit by the spillover effect of Addis Abeba’s problems (such as wanton destruction of the forest, environmental pollution due to emissions from factories and flower farms, illegal constructions and settlements, all of which was buttressed by absence of governance and corruption).

The boundary of the city was long agreed to be the boundary of the city as circumscribed in 1992 (as per Proclamation No.7/1992 which identified the city as one of the 14 Regions). According to the constitution, the boundaries of states is subject to review either through referendum organized in relation to self-determination (art 39), or through a formal constitutional amendment process (art 105(2)). To date, no such referendum was heldnor was there any attempt to amend the constitution.

Four legal arguments against the Master Plan:

The whole thrust of this piece is to argue that the Master Plan is legally indefensible. Contrary to what government lawyers claim (arguing that the plan is part of constitutional mandate to create one ‘economic’ and ‘political’ community),the plan violates the letter and the spirit of the constitution on many levels. In this section, I present four arguments that indicate that the plan is unconstitutional. As I do so, I will touch upon the content, process, and consequence of the plan and its political implications.

Argument from federalism

The plan violates the principle of federalism. In particular, it violates the principle of comity and mutual respect (art 50(8)) and the proper mode of managing intergovernmental relations pertaining to cities. This seems to emanate from a fundamental misunderstanding of federalism. In an unending turn of irony, the government is blaming the Oromo public for misunderstanding the ‘true goal’ of federalism. This misunderstanding is also compounded by the belief held among many that Addis Abeba belongs to the federal government. It also stems from mistaking the federation for a decentralized unitary system. Nothing typifies this more than the heavy reliance on the Master Plans of cities in a unitary country, namely Paris and Lyon of France.
As indicated above, the Master Plan also wrongly conceives Addis Abeba as a federal territory when what it actually is, is the seat of the federal government. In other words, it is wrongly thought that Addis Abeba is the territory of the federal government. In reality, Addis Abeba is not a federal capital territory. It is an Oromo city which serves as the capital city of both the federal government and the government of Oromia.That this has not been clearly spelt out in the constitution has caused an immense sense of insecurity and agitation among Oromos for a long time. The fact that the constitution speaks about it in terms of its ‘location in Oromia’ makes the issue of ownership ambiguous thereby reinforcing the sense of insecurity among Oromos. The ambiguity has also caused the confusion as to who the host is and who the guest is.

As a self-governing city ultimately accountable to the federal government, Addis Abeba is governed through its own city charter and its own Master Plan (which, legally, is expected to be revised every ten years). The city’s charter defines the powers and responsibilities of the different organs of the city government (the council, the Mayor and the Executive (the Cabinet/the Bureau Heads, and the General Managers), and the Municipality Court. It also defines the powers and responsibilities of the sub-cities (alias Kifle-Ketema) and districts (Kebeles). The city’s territorial limit is defined and the competence/jurisdiction of the city government has been clearly established. The boundary of the city ends at the outer limits of the ten Kifle-Ketemas.

As one of the nine constituent states of the Ethiopian federation, Oromia has its own jurisdiction over its own bounded territory, with its own government that operates (ideally) in accordance with its own constitution. The powers of the states (exclusive and shared as concurrent) are clearly defined in the federal constitution (arts 51-52). The Constitution of Oromia is the supreme law of the territory of Oromia (art 9). Caffee Oromia is the legislature and the supreme political organ in the parliamentary system of government that the state has adopted for itself (art. 50(3) of FDRE and art 46 of the Oromia Constitution). As such, the Caffee is responsible for making any decision (legislative, financial, and political) over matters in its territory within its jurisdictional competence. Needless to say, it does not involve in the administration of the city of Addis Abeba—although one expression of its special interest is its involvement in joint administration of the city.

Group dynamics, Re(li)gionalism and Unity in Oromo

Introduction

Few days ago a friend asked me a strange question; How old I am in relation to thegandee/gandumma, amantummaa, Goobana, sabboona, tokkummaa and other related buzzy words frequently used in Oromo socio-political discourse. I didn’t have a cutting answer thou. Later, I realized that I am very young for these words except “tokkummaa” from Nuhoo Gobana song, which has been stacked in my memory for about 15 years now. The first and last encounter of my own with one of these terms however is very recent, June, 2014 when someone labeled me as ‘gandee’ and I have to called out for friendly assistance in its contextual meaning. The fact of the matter is that our people wishfully praise some of these concepts as the only means to achieve Oromo causes while they blame the others as evil and source of all sorts of failure. Progressing in our political journey is very much about progressing in understanding conceptual meanings and the logical orders that can follow them. Having this in mind, I decided to write this piece to nudge fellow Oromos to see on the bright side of what we often blame. To do so, I use the concept of group and group dynamics to illustrate how much ‘gandumma/amantummaa’ can help to strengthen ‘tokkumma’ in Oromo.  I know, some people may rash to abandon reading this piece from as beginning as this line, assuming that I am trying to marry enemies. But the reality is not that. The law of group dynamics tells us that it is very natural and humanly to have smaller groups in bigger once. To make that point clear, let me start from the nature and characteristics of group life.

The nature of group life

A (social) group consists of two or more people who interact with one another and who recognize themselves as a distinct social unit. Frequent interaction leads people to share values and beliefs, cause them to identify with one another. Identification and attachment, in turn, stimulate more frequent and intense interaction. Groups are important both to their members and to the society at large. Through encouraging regular and predictable behavior, groups form the foundation upon which society rests. Individual human beings have meaningful existence only because group of people exist and groups exist because their meaningful members exist. The dilemma of the social being and group has remained the dilemma of egg and chicken.

            Various social science studies indicated that people tend to behave differently in different group settings. The type and size of the group affects people's behavior, attitudes, and perceptions in a different ways (Gastil, 2009). The general conclusion is however that groups are essential for social life, in large part because they play an important role in the socialization process and provide emotional and other support for their members. Sociologists argue that the influence of groups on individuals is essential for social stability. Social stability results because groups induce their members to conform to the norms, values, and attitudes of the groups themselves and of the larger society to which they belong. However, conformity to the group, has a downside effect if it means that people might adopt group norms, attitudes, or values that are bad for some reason to hold, if it leads to restrictions in anyways, if leads to ethnocentric perception of their group and may even result in harm to others. Conformity is thus a double-edged sword. 

            Although there are many different ways of classifying a group, writers made a clear distinction between primary and secondary groups. Primary group is small, long-term groups characterized by face-to-face interaction and high levels of cohesiveness, solidarity and member identification. Secondary groups are larger, less intimate, more goal-focused groups typical of more complex societies. This classification of group indicates the importance of group size for the functioning of a group, the nature of its members' attachments, and the group's stability. The law of group dynamics is all about how the size of the group affects the intimacy and intensity of interaction, member`s self-identification and group stability. Sociologists Georg Simmel studied the effects of groups of different sizes on group dynamics. The smallest possible group he identifies is the two-person group also known as dyad. In these smallest groups, Simmel noted, relationships can be very intense emotionally, but also very unstable and short lived. This is because dyad ends when one of the group members ends the relationship. 

            When the group size increases to three-person, also known as triad, the group involves relationships that are still fairly intense, but it is more stable than a dyad. A major reason for this, said Simmel, is that if two people in a triad have a dispute, the third member can help them reach some compromise that will satisfy all the triad members. Even if one of the group members opts out of the group the remaining two people can decide to continue as dyad. This is probably why Oromo elders bless and advise newly married couples to have kid as soon as possible. The downside of a triad is that two of its members may become very close and increasingly disregard or exclude the third member, reflecting the old saying that “three's a crowd.”

            From this we can understand that as groups become larger, the intensity of their interaction and bonding decreases. This is because each member of the group has the chance to interact with more people, which negatively affect the intimate relations. As the saying goes “the friend of all is the friend of none”. However, group stability increases because even if some people opt out of the group the remaining (two and more) people can continue as group. For example, in a dyad only one relationship exists, that is between the two members of the dyad and there is only one chance to keep the existence of the group, which is to have both members in a relationship. In triad there are three relationships. It takes three steps to end the group. In a group of four people there are six relationships and it take six steps to end the group. 

            Group stability thus increases in larger groups because there is a chance to continue to have smaller groups even if members opt out. Larger group are also stable because they experience less interaction, less emotional attachment, low expectation from group members and higher chance of having smaller groups within. The chances to have smaller groups within larger groups start from a group of four people. In a group of four it is possible to have two dyads. In a group of five, it is possible to have one dyad and one triad. In a group of six, it is possible to have two triads or three dyad but also being the member of the larger group. 

            This tendency of having smaller groups within the larger group is often accidental and spontaneous. Situations that increase intensity and intimacy of interaction led to the creation of small groups. Small groups are source of identity, because it involves sharing secret, builds trust and reduce risks. The type of trust that develops in smaller and larger groups also differs. In smaller group members develop a trust called particularistic trust. In this case people trust each other because they know each other on personal bases and they share something in common and that push them pay cost to help or align with each other. In larger groups they develop generalized trust, a trust that people have only because you belong to the same larger group. In this case you pay less attention because you have many people who share the same bonding with you. With this theoretical background let us resort to how re(li)gionalism works in Oromo; benefits and drawbacks.

Re(li)gionalism as a law of group dynamics

Religion and region are structuring institutions of a given society. It is a way of creating relatively smaller group with personalized interaction and bonding or sharing the third member/deity they revolve around. The only viable means to structure bigger societies is to sub-divide it into manageable units. However, re(li)gionalism remains the biggest group we recognize at national level and it is very obvious that there are many smaller groupings within it. The law of group dynamics tells us that in a group of four and more, it is natural to have a downsized grouping structure to make effective and efficient interaction and trust possible. But regional and national identities and grouping are both large and secondary group with diffused and generalized trust. The fact that small identity crafting groups are anonymous to both regional, religion and national group make the difference between regional and national groups insignificant in many ways. The bottom line of this argument however is that it is very much in the natural framework for people to identify themselves in smaller groups like family, village, community etc. After all, we are all born in family, raised in community, socialized in village, administered in district, region and country. 

            Sometimes smallness is beauty simply because you can control, administer, trace and know things easily. People try to narrow down thing to what they can make sense of and to what they can attach themselves better. Oromo elders clearly ask you which lineage (balbalaa) are you from, to just make informed and personalized

Gabra 'Oromo' Cultural Night in Nairobi Kenya Nov 14, 2015

Kenya put to task over missing Oromo leader Dabassa Guyo Saffaro by African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR)

Kenyan newspaper ‘Daily Nation’ reports

Kenya put to task over missing Oromo leader Dabassa Guyo Saffaro

by STELLA CHERONO

The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights is seeking information from the Kenyan government over the disappearance of Oromo leader Dabassa Guyo Saffaro who was under UNHCR protection.

 Africa’s top human rights body on Monday put Kenya to task over the disappearance of Oromo community leader Dabassa Guyo Saffaro.

Mr Saffaro, according to ACHPR Commissioner Maya Sahli Fadel, has been missing since September 27, with his family claiming the government may know where he is.

She said the Ethiopian refugee, who moved to Kenya in the early 1970s fleeing political persecution, lived in Mlolongo, Machakos County with some members of his family.

“It is alleged that the government had on several occasions accused him of being a leader of an Oromo community that practiced terror,” she said.

Mr Saffaro lived under the protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and was in the process of renewing his expired Kenyan identity card and travel documents when he disappeared. His family has been asking the UN refugee agency to help trace him.

The government representatives at the forum are on Tuesday, expected to respond to the questions directed to them by the commissioners who seemed to

The Oromo Concept of Reality or Dhugaa-Ganama Part 4

In my previous article, Part III, I tried to elucidate the way in which the Oromo’ understanding andinterpretation of Reality (i.e. Uuma, Waaqa, Ayyaanaa) has eventually led to pluralistic interpretations of the universe. In so doing, I clearly indicated how the Oromo have adopted and developed a philosophic method of enquiry (i.e. the ilaa-fi-ilaamee-philosophic-mode-of-thought) to identify and determine the tenable form of interpretation whenever various competing interpretations arise. In the present article, I explicate why one should adhere to an ilaa-fi-ilaamee-philosophic-mode-of-thought to properly identify the tenable form of an interpretation to the case in question. In line with my previous article, I single out Gumii Gaayo as the possible justification for an ilaa-fi-ilaamee-philosophic-mode-of-thought.

In an ilaa-fi-ilaamee-philosophic-mode-of-thought, what identifies and determines the possibility or the tenability of an answer to the case in question is not a form of an interpretation that an individual employs, but the case in question itself. In Gumii Gaayo, the tenability of the solution has nothing to do with the form of an interpretation that one offers. It is, rather, determined by what the problem at issue is. When Gumii meets every eight years and a long debate is held between hayyu — councilors, and ya’a — assemblies, what becomes apparent first is not the proclamation of or the interpretation of the new laws. Nor, is it the resolving of whatever major conflicts could not be resolved at lower levels of their judicial organization. It is rather, the reality of various forms of questions that essentially arise from a life-crises in the jiruu-fi-jireenya-nama, crises which every individual and the community have experienced with in different Gadaa classes.

The Gumii sees and discusses what the Gadaa has done for the country during the last eight years. The Gumii shows the right direction to the Gadaa, and whenever they are on wrong ways, it suggests ways of filling the gaps observed in the duties of the Gadaa. The Gumiideposes the Gadaa who misuses the power of the people; and Oromo is governed or administered by the laws formulated by human beings (the rule of law) in contrast to the divine or religious rules; and there is no more witness than the function of Gumii for this. (Dirribi, 2011, p. 258)

As such, each interpretation and its understanding must be radically based on the reality of the class then in leadership which will last for eight years. Hence, the period of eight years provides horizons through which individuals must echo the life-crisis that they have gone through and experienced.

In this manner, whenever competing interpretations arise, one can clearly identify as well as determine the tenable mode of interpretation to the problem at hand. It would thus be absurd to try to offer a tenable answer without a proper knowledge of what the case at issue is. Therefore, the philosophical thought that characterizes Gumii Gaayo can be subsumed under three claims:

(1) A tenable solution to any problem is determined by the case in question that comes to be identified during every Gadaa class of eight years.

(2) The mode of interpretation used for the problem at issue is a determinant of the tenability of a solution to a life-crisis in the jiruu-fi-jireenya-nama— ontological characteristic of human being.

(3) Ergo, it is not impossible for the latter claim to be unconditionally determined by the former claim, but not viceversa.

As I have argued above, Gumii is not the debater’s arena but a place for sober reflection. The main reason is that once the case in question is identified, there should be little room for the radical mode of thought. A radical mode of thought is a peculiar fallacy that inherently involves defending or refuting any form of a thesis on the grounds that it was the answer when one’s own method of enquiry was used. However, ‘x’ or ‘y’ does so without admitting that, wittingly or unwittingly, a correct thesis can only be arrived at by the case in question rather than a method of enquiry of one’s choosing.

Therefore, the assumption that the case in question essentially determines any form of interpretation and its tenability is the crux of an ilaa-fi-ilaamee-philosophic-mode-thought. Consequently, the mode of reasoning and an individual’s very intention is neither to justify his/her interpretation nor to dismiss that of the others. Rather, it is to give a proper and tenable form of interpretation in accordance with the case in question. As such, an individual should arrive at two judgments: (a) a decision to successfully dismiss any radical mode of though; and (b) a decision to impartially identify a tenable solution to the problem at hand. In this manner, one can dismiss some pseudo-epistemological assumptions inherent not only in one’s interpretation, but also in that of others. Asmarom is thus quite right when he explicitly affirms the basic principles that underlie Gumii: “Do not look for the worst in what others have said in order to undermine their position and to win an argument; look for the best they have to offer, so as to find the common ground for the meeting of minds.” (Asmarom, 2000/2006, p. 213)

OFC Urges Ethiopian Govt to Stop the Master Plan of Eviction Against Oromo Farmers, and to Respect Constitutional Rights of the People | OFC Also Calls for Public Meeting in Burraayyuu on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2015 (Sadaasa 28, 2008 ALH)

The Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) has written a letter to the various organs of the Ethiopian government – urging the government to stop the Addis Ababa Master Plan, whose goal is to evict millions of Oromo farmers from their ancestral land in the name of ‘development’ around the city of Finfinne; in the same letter, OFC has also urged the Ethiopian government to respect the constitutional rights of the people, especially Article-49 of the Constitution – which deals with the special interests of the State of Oromiyaa over Finfinne.

Meanwhile, OFC will hold a public meeting in Burraayyuu at the town’s stadium on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2015 (Sadaasa 28, 2008 ALH) – from 9am (or 3 in the morning – local time) to 1pm (or 7 in the afternoon – local time) to discuss with the public about the Addis Ababa Master Plan

OFC’s Letter to Ethiopian Government Organs:

OFC’s Upcoming Meeting in Burraayyuu (Nov. 8, 2015 @ 9am —Sadaasa 28, 2008 @ 3) at the Stadium: