The Oromo movement is engaging in struggle to empower the Oromo people in order to
restore their control on their economic resources such as land and cultural resources and to
overcome the effects of Ethiopian state terrorism and globalization. The Oromo people were
colonized and incorporated into Abyssinia, present Ethiopia, and the capitalist world
system during the “Scramble for Africa” by the alliance of Ethiopian colonialism and
European imperialism. This colonization involved terrorism and genocide in order to
transfer Oromo economic resources, mainly land, through destroying Oromo leadership and
the cultural foundation of the Oromo society. The Oromo resistance that started with the
colonization of the Oromo was transformed into the anti‐colonial movement in the 1960s
and still continues in various forms. On their part, successive colonial Ethiopian
governments have been using various forms of violence to destroy the Oromo struggle for
national self‐determination and democracy. Starting in 1992, the Tigrayan‐led Ethiopian
government has been imposing state terrorism, genocide, and political repression, with the
assistance of big powers and international institutions on the Oromo, the largest ethnonational
group, and other groups in order to destroy the Oromo national movement led by
the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and to dominate the political economy of Oromia (the
Oromo country) and Ethiopia in order to transfer economic resources, particularly land, to
Tigrayan state elites and their domestic and international supporters.
This paper first provides the historical background for these complex issues.
Second, it outlines theoretical and methodological approaches of the paper. Third, the piece
explains the role of big powers in supporting the Ethiopian state at the cost of democracy
and human rights in order to promote “savage development” (Quan 2013) or “violent
development”(Rajagopal 2003) in this age of globalization. This section also explores how
the Tigrayan‐led Ethiopian government and its international supporters are using the
discourses of democracy, human rights, and economic development while terrorizing the
Oromo and other indigenous peoples by dispossessing them of their rights and their
ancestral land and natural resources. Fourth, it explains how the ongoing peaceful Oromo
mass protest movement has emerged in Oromia, how and why the regime is violently
cracking down on protestors, including Oromo school children and university students,
farmers, and other sectors of the Oromo society, and why the West is facing a political
dilemma regarding supporting a government that is openly massacring peaceful protestors
and violently repressing dissent. Finally, the piece explores the larger political and
economic consequences of the Oromo protest movement in bringing about a fundamental
transformation to the political economy of Oromia and Ethiopia.
Background
The Ethiopian colonial terrorism and genocide that started during the last decades of the
nineteenth century with the assistance of England, France, and Italy still continue in the 21st
century with the support of global powers (Jalata 2010). During Ethiopian (Amhara‐Tigray)
colonial expansion, Oromia, “the charming Oromo land, [would] be ploughed by the iron
and the fire; flooded with blood and the orgy of pillage” (de Salviac 2005 [1901]: 349).
Martial de Salviac (2005 [1901]: 349) called this event “the theatre of a great massacre.”
The Oromo oral story also testifies that the Abyssinian armies destroyed and looted the
resources of Oromia and committed genocide on the Oromo people and others through
terrorism, slavery, depopulation, cutting hands or breasts, and creating a series of famines
and diseases during and after the colonization of Oromia. According to Martial de Salviac
2005 ([1901]: 8), “With equal arms, the Abyssinia [would] never [conquer] an inch of
[Oromo] land. With the power of firearms imported from Europe, Menelik [Abyssinian
warlord] began a murderous revenge.”
The colonization of Oromia involved human tragedy and destruction: “The
Abyssinian, in bloody raids, operated by surprise, mowed down without pity, in the country
of the Oromo population, a mournful harvest of slaves for which the Muslims were thirsty
and whom they bought at very high price. An Oromo child [boy] would cost up to 800 francs
in Cairo; an Oromo girl would well be worth two thousand francs in Constantinople” (de
Salviac 2005 [1901]: 28). The Abyssinian/Ethiopian government massacred half of the
Oromo population (5 million out of 10 million) and their leadership during its colonial
expansion (Bulatovich 2000: 68). The Amhara warlord, Menelik, terrorized and colonized
the Oromo and others to obtain commodities such as gold, ivory, coffee, musk, hides and
skins, slaves and lands. Menelik controlled slave trade (an estimated 25,000 slaves per year
in the 1880s); with his wife he owned 70,000 enslaved Africans; he became one of the
richest capitalists. He invested in American Railway Stock; “Today the Abyssinian ruler had
extended the range of his financial operations to the United States, and is a heavy investor in
American railroads . . . with his American securities and his French and Belgian mining
investments, Menelik has a private fortune estimated at no less than twenty‐five million
dollars.” (New York Times, November 7, 1909).
The destruction of Oromo lives and institutions were aspects of Ethiopian colonial
terrorism. The surviving Oromo who used to enjoy an egalitarian democracy known as the
gadaa system ((Legesse 1973; 2006) were forced to face state terrorism, genocide, political
repression, and an impoverished life. Alexander Bulatovich (2000: 68) explains about the
gadaa administration: “The peaceful free way of life, which could have become the ideal for
philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century, if they had known it, was completely
changed. Their peaceful way of life is broken; freedom is lost; and the independent, freedom
loving [Oromo] find themselves under the severe authority of the Abyssinian conquerors.”
The Ethiopian colonialists also destroyed Oromia’s natural resources and beauty. Oromia
was “an oasis luxuriant with large trees” and known for its “opulent and dark greenery used
to shoot up from the soil” (de Salviac 2005 [1901]: 21–2). The colonialists devastated “the
forests by pulling from it the laths for their houses and [made] campfires or firewood for
their dwellings.” Bulatovich (2000: 21) applied to Oromia the phrase “flowing in milk and
honey” to indicate its abundance of wealth in cattle and honey before and during its
colonization.
The Ethiopian colonial state gradually established settler colonialism and developed
five major types of colonial institutions, namely, slavery, the colonial landholding system,
the nafxanya‐gabbar system (semi‐slavery), the Oromo collaborative class, and garrison and
non‐garrison cities (Jalata 2005 [1993]). It introduced the process of forced recruitment of
labor via slavery and semi‐slavery (Holcomb and Ibssa 1990: 135). The Haile Selassie
government consolidated these institutions and practices between the 1930s and 1970s.
Furthermore, the military regime that emerged in 1974 under the leadership Colonel
Mengistu Haile Mariam continued state terrorism, dictatorship, and Ethiopian colonial
policies. When Oromo activists and citizens started to resist the military regime, it
intensified its state terrorism and political repression. The military regime had committed
massive human rights violations in the 1970s and 1980s in the name of the so‐called
Revolution with the assistance of the so‐called socialist countries such as the former Soviet
Union and its satellite countries. As Norman J. Singer (1978: 672–73) notes, those who
were killed during the initial three months of “the campaign of the ‘ Terror’ . . . numbered
around 4000–000 in Addis Ababa alone; the killings continued in March 1978, spreading
to the rest of the country . . . Those detained for political instruction numbered from 30,000
upwards . . . Torture methods . . . included severe beating on the head, soles of the feet . . .
and shoulders, with the victim hung by the wrists or suspended by wrists and feet from a
horizontal bar . . . sexual torture of boys and girls, including pushing bottles or red‐hot iron
bars into girls’ vaginas and other cruel methods.”
In 1980, one Oromo source said, “The Oromo constitutes the majority of the more
than two million prisoners that glut Ethiopia’s jails today” (The Oromo Relief Association
1980: 30). In the 1980s, thousands of Oromo activists or nationalists were murdered or
imprisoned; the regime also terrorized Oromo farmers and students. The military
government terrorized the Oromo population by holding mass shooting and burying them
with bulldozers: “Over years this procedure was repeated several times. When the method
did not work and the Oromo population could not be forced into submission, other methods
were used. The victims were made to lie down with their heads on stone, and their skulls
were smashed with another stone . . . . When the Oromo movement could not be quenched
by shooting or by the smashing of skulls, [the government] came up with a new idea. Men’s
testicles were smashed between a hammer and an anvil, ” Gunnar Hasselblatt (1992: 17–19) writes. As explained below, Ethiopia has maintained its terrorism and oppressive and
repressive structures on the Oromo and other colonized peoples by the assistance of
successive global powers, namely, Great Britain, the United States, the former Soviet Union,
and China. Before continuing the analysis, the introduction of the theoretical and
methodological approaches is needed.
Theoretical and Methodological Considerations
This work draws from an analytical framework that emerges from theories of the world
system, globalization, nationalism, and social movements. It combines a structural approach
to global social change such as globalization, neoliberalism and capital accumulation with a
social constructionist model of human agency of the Oromo social movement. In this era of
neoliberal globalization, in the name of democracy, development, and human rights the
Ethiopian state and its global supporters are engaging in dispossessing land and other
resources of the Oromo and that of others while repressing and terrorizing civil societies
and their social movements, particularly that of the Oromo. A few scholars, who have
understood these contradictory processes, see the capitalist/socialist development as the
process of violence or call it savage development. Balakrishnan Rajagopal (2003: 3)
This study also requires critical social history that looks at societal issues from the bottom
explains how “in large part due to the realization among social movements and progressive
intellectual that it is not the lack of development that caused poverty, inflicted violence, and
engaged in destruction of nature and livelihood; rather it is the very process of bringing
development [to indigenous peoples] that has caused them in the first place.”
Claiming that they promote development, the Ethiopian colonial state, big powers,
and global institutions such the World Bank and the International Money Fund are joined in
implementing the policies that massively violate the human rights of indigenous peoples
such as the dispossession of land and forced resettlements by destroying livelihoods and
cultures (Oakland Institute 2013, 2014, 2015; Amnesty International 2014, 2015
Adequately understanding these complex and contradictory conditions requires employing
critical approaches, interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and comparative methods to
examine the dynamic interplay among repressive political structures and human agency.
This study also requires critical social history that looks at societal issues from the bottom
up, specifically critical discourses and the particular world system approach that deal with
long‐term and large‐scale global social changes. Furthermore, serious attention is given to
the role of the Oromo social movement in resisting the globally and regionally imposed
colonialism and neoliberalism and their associated structures and policies and in promoting
an alternative option of development, self‐determination, and egalitarian multinational
democracy.
The critical understanding of the essence of global capitalism and its political
structures and injustices are necessary to clearly recognize the principles for which the
national struggle of the Oromo has developed. The Oromo have been denied basic aspects of
their humanity since they were forced to enter into the global capitalist world system via
slavery and colonialism that were facilitated by the alliance of Ethiopian dependent
colonialism and global imperialism (Holcomb and Ibssa 1990; Jalata 2005). The capitalist
world powers and their regional or local collaborators used superior military forces to
enslave and colonize pre‐capitalist societies in order to exploit their labor power and/or to
dispossess their economic resources through coercion, terrorism, looting, piracy, genocide,
annexation, and continued subjugation. The development of global capitalism and the
accumulation and concentration of capital or economic resources through the separation of
the actual producers from their means of production such as land led to the
racialization/ethnicization and socialization of labor (Marx 1967: 17). The process of
expropriation of land, racial slavery, and settler colonialism resulted in the total or partial
destruction of indigenous peoples such as indigenous Americans, Australians and others
(Jalata 2011) and or hierarchical organization of world populations through the creation of
an elaborate discourse of race or racism.
As the meaning of race is illusive and complex, so is that of racism. Race and racism
are socio‐political constructs since all human groups are biologically and genetically more
alike than different (Malik 1996). To justify slavery, colonialism, colonial terrorism,
genocide, the ideology of racism was developed in scientific and religious clothing and
matured during the last decades of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. National
or social movements of the colonized and subjugated peoples have been challenging these
ideologies and practices in various forms, but they could not totally stop them. The more
things changed, the more they remained the same. Mainstream scholarship and even
opposition one ignore or superficially address the impact of capitalist or socialist
development on indigenous peoples. Since the 1970s, with the intensification of the crisis of
the process of capital accumulation and the declining of the US hegemony in the capitalist
world system, the West under the leadership of the US has started to promote a policy
known as neoliberalism to revitalize global capital accumulation (Harvey 2005). Through
the policy of neoliberalism the neo‐liberal state has intensified the process of capital
accumulation by dispossession of economic resources and rights; the “fundamental mission
[of the neo‐liberal stat] was to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on
the part of both domestic and foreign capital” (Harvey 2005: 7). In the name of
development, neoliberal globalization has continued state terrorism and massive human
rights violations that started during direct colonialism: “Over the last fifty years, millions
have been uprooted from their homelands, communities have been destroyed, and the
environment has been desecrated in the process of transforming ‘traditional’ or ‘peasant’
economies into ‘modern’ economies. Many more millions have been the subject of state and
private violence in the name of modernization and development” (Rajagopal 1999: 16)
Accumulation of capital by dispossession involves state terrorism and genocide as
the case of the Oromo illustrates (Jalata 2011). State terrorism is a systematic governmental
policy in which massive violence is practiced on a given population group with the goal of
eliminating any behavior which promotes political struggle or resistance by members of
that group. The main assumptions of such a state are that it can control the population by
destroying their leaders and their culture of resistance. States that fail to establish
ideological hegemony and political orders are unstable and insecure; hence, they engage in
state terrorism (Oliverio, 1997: 48‐63). Bruce Hoffman (2006: 40) “defines terrorism as the
deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the
pursuit of political change . . . . Terrorism is specifically designed to have far‐reaching
psychological effects beyond the immediate victim(s) or object of the terrorist attack.”
Although the struggle of the Oromo and other peoples forced the Ethiopian colonial state to
“nationalize” the land and make it “collective property” between 1975 and 1991, the United
States supported the emergence of the Tigryan‐led Ethiopian government that has
intensified state terrorism, genocide, and capital accumulation by dispossessing the land of
Oromo farmers and that of other ethnonational groups Ethiopia (Jalata 2005).
Both the Ethiopian colonial state and the big powers of the capitalist world system
as well as China have allied in intensifying capital accumulation, including land
dispossession, by any means necessary. “The process of integration of neocolonial states
into the global economy, seeking the protection of the imperial state,” Berch Berberoglu
(2003: 108) writes, “has been to a large degree a reaction to a perceived threat to the
survival of capitalism in the Third World—ne that is becoming a grave concern for both
imperialism and the local repressive capitalist states.” As the Oromo national movement has
continued to resist the criminal policies of the Ethiopian government, the regime has
increased its terrorist activities and dispossession of land and other resources with the
support of Western powers, emerging powers of China, India, and some Arab countries, as
well as international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund. Since the international system, particularly the United Nations, lacks a single standard
for humanity in a practical sense, states such as that of Ethiopia get away with the crimes
they commit against their own citizens and other peoples (Jalata 2011).
The lack of demanding responsibility from certain states such as that of Ethiopia in
the international system leaves a room for engaging in state terrorism and committing
genocide. Despite the fact that the United Nations theoretically recognizes the problems of
state terrorism and genocide, it did not yet develop effective policies and mechanisms of
preventing them because powerful countries and their client states that commit such crimes
against humanity have dominated this international body. Article II of the United Nations
Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Kurt Jonassohn (1998: 9) also defines
genocide as the planned destruction of any economic, political or social group.” “GENOCIDE
is a form of one‐sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a
group, as that and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator,” Frank Chalk and Kurt
Jonassohn (1990: 23) define. Chalk and Jonassohn (1990: 23) identify two major types of
genocide: the first type is used to colonize and maintain an empire by terrorizing the people
perceived to be real or potential enemies. In this case, the main purpose of practicing
genocide is to acquire land and other valuable resources. Then the maintenance of
colonial domination by state elites requires the establishment of a cultural and ideological
hegemony that can be practiced through repression and genocidal massacres. By destroying
elements of a population that resists colonial domination, hegemony can be established on
the surviving population. This is the second type of genocide; this form of genocide is called
ideological genocide. Jonassohn (1998: 23) notes that ideological genocide develops “in
nation‐states where ethnonational groups develop chauvinistic [and racist] ideas about
their superiority and exclusiveness.” As further demonstrated above, since their
incorporation into the racialized capitalist world system through Ethiopian dependent
colonialism, the Oromo and other peoples have been facing state terrorism, genocidal
massacres, and dispossession of economic and cultural resources that they have been
fighting against in various forms.
Global Powers and the Neocolonial Ethiopian State
Since t he mid‐twentieth century, the US government as the hegemonic power of the
capitalist world system has supported and protect the neocolonial Ethiopian state, except
between 1977 and 1991, at the cost of the colonized ethnonational groups such as the
Oromo. Between the early 1950s and the 1970s, the US introduced its “modernization”
programs to the Ethiopian Empire and supported the Haile Selassie government. Several
scholars demonstrated that the US foreign policy toward Oromia and Ethiopia consolidated
the racial/ethnonational hierarchy that was formed by the alliance of Ethiopian colonialism
and European imperialism (Holcomb and Ibssa 1990). When the Haile Selassie government
was overthrown by the popular revolt of 1974, a military dictatorship emerged and allied
with the former Soviet Union until 1991, when it was overthrown. With the support of the
former Soviet Union, the military regime protected and extended the interests of the
colonial settlers in Oromia and other colonized regions. Ethiopia maintained its neocolonial
status in the global order with the help of British global hegemonism until the US inherited
this role in the mid‐20th century. Despite the fact that the US, encouraged decolonization
and self‐determination in the colonized world in order to gain spheres of influence, it did
not care for these issues in the Ethiopian Empire. Since Ethiopia was informal colony of
Europe and America, there was no need to address these issues. Because of its interest in
the Horn of Africa, the US was receptive to the Ethiopian request and sent a Technical
Mission in 1944 to help build the Ethiopian political economy. The Haile Selassie
government and its officials effectively used the state bureaucracy and American
connections to accumulate wealth and capital just as the US government this ruling class to
its strategic and economic advantage in the region. The alliance between the Ethiopian
colonialists and the US imperialists emerged strongly in the early 1950s. As the hegemonic
power, the US had the responsibility to maintain client states such as that of Ethiopia in the
capitalist world economy; between 1946 and 1973, it spent more than $62 billion
worldwide on military assistance programs (U.S. Agency of International Development,
1974: 6). US hegemony was built in the less developed world through military assistance to
the ruling classes and their governments (Magdoff, 1970), and the Ethiopian client state was
a beneficiary. In fact, the Ethiopian state was mainly interested in dependable security
against internal and external forces.
On its part, the US was interested in securing continuing base rights in Asmara, and
in developing a major military and monitoring station there. Describing the importance to
US strategic interests of a base in the Horn of Africa, Peter Schwab (1979: 91) says that the
region is “Close to the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, it flanks the oil‐rich states of
Arabia, controls the Babel Mandeb Straits, one of the narrow arteries of Israel’s lifeline . . .
dominates an area of the Gulf of Aden and of the Indian Ocean through which oil tankers are
constantly moving, and overlooks the passage at which the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and
the Indian Ocean converge. It is a major geopolitical area of the world.” As part of its global
strategy to maintain hegemony in the capitalist world economy and to prevent the influence
of the Soviet Union, the US sought to dominate this part of Africa. The US also considered
“its political investment in Ethiopia as an investment toward the future realization of its
wider interests in Africa” (Agyeman‐ Duah 1984: 209). The defense treaty closely linked
Ethiopian colonialism to American hegemonism (Ottaway and Ottaway, 1978: 150). The
Americans expanded their Asmara base and modernized the Ethiopian military by training
and equipping it with modern weapons.
An American military advisory group replaced the British Military Mission in
Ethiopia. “Between 1951 and 1976 Ethiopia received over $350 million economic aid from
the U.S.A. and a further $279 million in military aid. In the years 1953‐75, 3,552 Ethiopian
military personnel were trained in the U.S.A. itself,” Halliday and Molyneux (1981: 215)
note. When the British military mission withdrew in 1951, “the Ethiopian army was still
only partially organized and poorly trained and equipped. It was under such conditions
Haile Selassie turned to the United States for assistance” (Agyeman‐Duah, 1984: 110), and
he was successful in obtaining US military aid (Schwab, 1979: 92). As the events unfolded in
the 1960s—n attempted military coup, the emergence of various anti‐colonial movements,
and the appearance of a radical student movement—he modernization approach of the US
through state‐building strategy proved vulnerable. Consequently, the politics of order began
to emerge. “The military, in conjunction with other security forces,” Baffour Agyeman‐Duah
(1984: 179) writes, “became the instrument for social control and counterinsurgency
during the turbulent years of the 1960s, and an active American support in all this was by
no means limited.”
Despite its claim of democratic ideals, the US helped the Ethiopian colonial regime
to stay in power by suppressing the peoples. “The United States sent in counterinsurgent
teams, increased its military aid programs, and expanded its modernization and training
program for the Ethiopian military. An extensive air force was also created with United
States vintage jets” (Schwab, 1979: 95). There is no doubt that the US military and economic
assistance had prolonged Haile Selassie’s regime. In the 1960s, the decolonization of British
and Italian Somaliland, the Soviet alliance with the newly emerged Somali state, the anticolonial
movements in the empire and internal rivalry within the Ethiopian ruling class had
threatened the foundation of the Haile Selassie regime. Harold Marcus (1983: 114) points
out that “By forcing Washington continuously to increase its commitments, Addis Ababa
made the United States an actor in Ethiopia’s internal politics.” The US alliance with
Ethiopia was mainly for strategic and geopolitical reasons, not economic ones, and US
business investment was insignificant (Mohammed 1969: 76).
The US modernization programs were both economic and educational. To integrate
closely the US‐Ethiopian ideological alliance, the Point Four program under the US
International Cooperation Administration was extended to Ethiopia in 1952. The stated
purpose of this program was to improve the socioeconomic conditions of the less developed
world through providing technical and administrative expertise (Luther, 1958: 132). But, in
practice, the US was interested mainly in consolidating the Ethiopian ruling class, which had
little knowledge of the modern world in technical and administrative fields. The US
modernization programs continued in the 1960s and the 1970s. Thousands of Peace Corps
volunteers were sent to implement such programs. For almost twenty‐six years, the U.S
dispatched its diplomats and intellectuals to apply its modernization principles in building
and maintaining the Ethiopian Empire in accord with US national and global interests. With
the overthrow the Haile Selassie government the military regime led by Mengistu allied
with the former Soviet Union. Consequently, the influence of the US on Ethiopia declined
between 1974 and 1991.
Neoliberal Globalization, State Terrorism, and Dispossession
At the end of the 1980s, a structural crisis that manifested itself in national movements,
famine, poverty, and internal contradictions within the ruling elite factions eventually
weakened the Amhara‐dominated military regime and led to its demise in 1991. Using this
opportunity, the US government reestablished its relations with the Ethiopian Empire by
allying this time with the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which emerged from
about 7 million Tigrayans. Opposing the Soviet influence in Ethiopia and recognizing that
the Amhara‐based Ethiopian government had lost credibility, the US started to support the
TPLF in the 1980s and prepared it financially, ideologically, diplomatically, and militarily to
replace the Amhara‐led military regime by creating the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary
Democratic Front (EPRDF) from three puppet organizations it created known as the Oromo
People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), the Amhara National democratic Movement
(ANDM), and the Southern Ethiopia People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM). With the use
of Western relief aid and financial support, the TPLF leaders converted the famine‐stricken
Tigrayan peasants and those militias who were captured at war fronts into guerrilla fighters
in the 1980s. The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front also played a central role in building
the TPLF/EPRDF army.
One of the major reasons why the US government chose the TPLF was that the
Tigrayan elites were perceived as a legitimate successor to an Amhara‐led government
because of the racist assumptions of the West. Another reason was that these elites were
ready to be agents of global imperialism in the Horn of Africa at any cost. With the
emergence of the Tigrayan‐led Ethiopian government in 1991, the US reestablished its
hegemony in Ethiopia by claiming that it promotes democracy and human rights. However,
the main rationale of US policy makers’ involvement in Ethiopia is to maintain political
order and to fight against global “terrorism” in the Horn of Africa. Of course, the big powers
of the capitalist world system as well as China have allied with the Tigrayan‐led Ethiopia
government in order to maintain global capitalism through intensifying capital
accumulation by any means necessary. “The process of integration of neocolonial states into
the global economy, seeking the protection of the imperial state,” Berch Berberoglu (2003:
108) writes, “has been to a large degree a reaction to a perceived threat to the survival of
capitalism in the Third World—ne that is becoming a grave concern for both imperialism
and the local repressive capitalist states.” The US, the European Union, China and others
have built and consolidated the Tigrayan‐led Ethiopian regime to perform the following
important services: “(1) adopt fiscal and monetary policies that ensure macroeconomic
stability; (2) provide the basic infrastructure necessary for global economic activity
(airports and seaports, communication networks, educational systems, etc.); and (3)
provide social order, that is, stability, which requires sustaining instruments of social
control, coercive and ideological apparatus” (Robinson 2008: 33).
The Tigrayan‐led regime has become an organ of capital accumulation for Tigrayan
and transnational elites, and it uses terrorism and massive human rights violations to
separate the indigenous communities such as the Oromo and others from their land and
other resources (Jalata 2005). Furthermore, the World Bank, IMF, UN, EU, the African Union,
and some NGOs as structures of global capitalism are the facilitators of regional and global
capital accumulation, and they are less interested in promoting human rights and
democracy in peripheral countries like Ethiopia. The political and military leaders of the
Ethiopian government are literally gangsters and robbers; they use state power to
expropriate lands and other resources in the name of privatization—ll with the supporting
and blessing of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In achieving its
political and economic objectives, the regime has been engaging in political repression, state
terrorism, genocidal massacres, and gross human rights violations in Oromia and other
regional states. Since the Oromo people have been resisting to Tigrayan colonial policies,
they have been targeted by the Tigrayan‐led Ethiopian regime; they have been also attacked
and terrorized because of their economic resources, and their refusal to submit to the
orders of Tigrayan authorities and their collaborators.
This regime has banned independent Oromo organizations including the OLF and
declared war on this organization and the Oromo people. It even has outlawed Oromo
journalists and other writers and closed down Oromo newspapers. “The attack on the free
press has literally killed the few publications in the Oromo language in the Latin alphabet.
The death of Oromo publications . . . has been a fatal blow to the flowering of Oromo
literature and the standardization of the Oromo language itself. The Oromo magazines that
have disappeared include Gada, Biftu, Madda Walaabuu, Odaa, and the Urjii magazine . . .
Since 2002, there has not been a single newspaper or magazine that has expressed the
legitimate political opinions of the Oromo in Ethiopia,” Mohammed Hassen (2002: 31)
asserts. Almost all Oromo journalists are either in prison or killed, or in exile. The regime
also banned Oromo musical groups and all professional associations. Expanding their
political repression, regional authorities formed quasi‐government institutions known as
gott and garee to maintain tighter political control of Oromia; they “imposed these new
structures on . . . communities . . . . More disturbing, regional authorities are using the gott
and garee to monitor the speech and personal lives of the rural population, to restrict and
control the movements of residents, and to enforce farmers’ attendance at ‘meetings’ that
are thinly disguised OPDO political rallies” (Human Rights Watch 2005: 2).
Generally speaking, this government has continued to eliminate or imprison
politically conscious and self‐respecting Oromo. Today, thousands of Oromo are in official
and secret prisons simply because of their nationality and their resistance to injustice. After
jailed and released from prison after six years, Seye Abraha, the former Defense Minister of
the regime who had previously participated in the massacring and imprisoning thousands
of Oromo, testified on January 5, 2008, to his audience in the state of Virginia in the U. S. that
“esir betu Oromigna yinager,” (“the prison speaks Oromiffa [the Oromo language]”) and also
noted that “about 99% of the prisoners in Qaliti are Oromos.”1 The Tigrayan state
bureaucrats believe that Oromo intellectuals, businessmen and women, conscious Oromo
farmers, students, and community and religious leaders are their enemies, and, hence,
should be eliminated through terrorism and genocide.2 The cadres, soldiers, and officials of
the regime have frequently raped Oromo girls and women to demoralize them and their
communities and to show how Tigrayan rulers and their collaborators wielded limitless
power. As Bruna Fossati, Lydia Namarra and Peter Niggli report, "in prison women are often
humiliated and mistreated in the most brutal fashion. Torturers ram poles or bottles into
their vaginas, connect electrodes to the lips of their vulva, or the victims are dragged into
the forest and gang‐raped by interrogation officers."3 State‐sanctioned rape is a form of
terrorism. The use of sexual violence is also a tactic of genocide that a dominant
ethnonational group practices in order to destroy a subordinate ethnonational group. What
Catherine MacKinnon (1994: 11‐12) says about ethnic cleansing in Croatia and Bosnia‐
Herzegovina applies to the sexual abuse of Oromo women by the Tigrayan‐led regime: “It is
also rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape to kill and to make the victims wish they were
dead. It is rape as an instrument of forced exile, rape to make you leave your home and
never want to go back. It is rape to be seen and heard and watched and told to others: rape
as spectacle. It is rape to drive a wedge through a community, to shatter a society, to destroy
a people. It is rape as genocide.” The Tigrayan‐led regime has used various mechanisms in
repressing, controlling and destroying the Oromo people. It has imprisoned or killed
thousands of Oromo women and men. Its agents have murdered prominent community
leaders and left their corpses for hyenas by denying them burial to impose terror on the
Oromo people. Furthermore, relatives of the murdered Oromos are not allowed to cry
publicly to express their grievances, a once cultural practice.4 For instance, in 2007, the
regime’s militia killed twenty Oromo and left their corpses for hyenas on the mountain of
Suufi in Eastern Oromia.5 According to Human Rights Watch (2005: 1‐2), “Since 1992,
security forces have imprisoned thousands of Oromo on charges of plotting armed
insurrection on behalf of the OLF. Such accusations have regularly been used as a
transparent pretext to imprison individuals who publicly question government policies or
actions. Security forces have tortured many detainees and subjected them to continuing
harassment and abuse for years after their release. That harassment in turn has often
destroyed victims’ ability to earn a livelihood and isolated them from their communities.”
Although it is impossible to know exactly at this time how many Oromo have been
murdered by this government, Mohammed Hassen (2001: 30) estimates that between 1992
and 2001, about 50,000 killings and 16,000 disappearances (euphemism for secret killings)
took place in Oromia; he also notes that 90 percent of the killings were not reported.6 The
government hides its criminal activities and “does not keep written records of its
extrajudicial executions and prolonged detention of political prisoners.”7 Furthermore, the
massive killings and genocide committed on the Sheko, Mezhenger, Sidama, Annuak, and
Ogaden Somali peoples have shocked some sections of the international community.8 The
president of Genocide Watch, Gregory Stanton (2009), wrote on March 23, 2009, an open
letter to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights admiring the action that the
ICC took in issuing a warrant for the arrest of President Omar al‐Bashir of the Sudan and
calling upon them to investigate the crimes Meles and his government have committed and
still are committing against humanity in the Horn of Africa.9 Stanton demonstrates in this
letter how the Tigrayan‐led government has committed heinous crimes by being involved
“in the inciting, the empowerment or the perpetration of crimes against humanity, war
crimes and even genocide, often justified by them as ‘counter‐insurgency.”
He also states that the government organized Ethiopian National Defense Forces
and civilian militia groups to ruthlessly massacre 424 persons from the Annuak people in
Gambella on December 2003 in order to suppress opposition and to “exclude them from any
involvement in the drilling for oil on their indigenous land.” According to Stanton, as militia
groups chanted “Today is the day for killing Annuak,” both the military and militias used
machetes, axes and guns to kill the unarmed victims, frequently raping the women while
chanting, “Now there will be no more Annuak children.” Reports from Amnesty
International, the US State Department, and the Human Rights Watch have been continuing
to list Zenawi’s government extensive record of chilling crimes against the politically and
economically oppressed peoples such as the Oromo. The Meles regime recently passed the
so‐called anti‐terrorism law to legalize its crimes against humanity and to legally intensify
its own repressive and terrorist activities. Ethiopia’s anti‐terrorism “law could provide the
Ethiopian government with a potent instrument to crack down on political dissent,
including peaceful political demonstrations and public criticisms of government policy that
are deemed supportive of armed opposition activity” (Human Rights Watch 2009: 1).
Generally speaking, the policies and practices of the Meles regime have forced millions of
Oromo to become political refugees in Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America.
The alliance of the West with this regime has frightened neighboring countries such
as Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan, and Yemen, and turned them against the Oromo struggle and
Oromo refugees. Using the leverage of Western countries, the Meles regime has pressured
neighboring governments to return or expel Oromo refugees from their countries. The
United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has even failed to provide
reasonable protection for thousands of Oromo refugees in Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan, Somalia,
and Yemen. For example, on December 21 and 22, 2000, while five thousand Oromo
refugees were refouled to Ethiopia, the UNHCR office in Djibouti denied any violation of its
mandate had occurred (The Oromia Support Group 2002: 17). Between 2000 and 2004,
hundreds of Oromo refugees were forced to return to Ethiopia from Djibouti to face
imprisonment or death (The Oromia Support Group 2003: 16‐18). “The continuing
refoulement of refugees from Djibouti,” notes the Oromia Support Group 2002: 18‐19),
“especially the large scale refoulement of December 2000 and the 28 associated deaths by
asphyxiation and shooting, should be publicly acknowledged by UNHCR and the Djibouti
government.”10 The security agents of Ethiopia and neighboring countries still capture
thousands of Oromo refugees and return them to Ethiopia.
By crossing borders and entering Somalia and Kenya, agents of the Ethiopian regime
assassinated prominent Oromo leaders. And still today, the regime is killing prominent
Oromos in Kenya and Somalia. For instance, in 2007 and 2008, Ethiopian security forces
assassinated Oromos in Somalia and Kenya. One human rights organization notes that on
February 5, 2008, the combined security forces of Ethiopia and Puntland, Somalia, bombed
two hotels and consequently murdered 65 Oromo refugees and seriously injured more than
100 people.11 In 2009, the regime killed four Oromos by poisoning their food in Puntland
(Human Rights League 2009). When it comes to the Oromo, international organizations do
not pay attention even if terrorist attacks occur and international laws are broken. The
Oromo are being denied sanctuary in neighboring countries and are also even being denied
the right to be refugees to some degree. Peripheral states such as that of Ethiopia “lack the
capacity to meet the demands and rights of citizens and improve the standard of living for
the majority of population” (Welsh, 2002: 67‐68). Consequently, they engage in state
terrorism and genocidal massacres in order to suppress the population groups that struggle
for political and economic rights and to dispossess their economic resources. The Tigrayanled
Ethiopian government accepts state violence against the Oromo and others as a
legitimate means of establishing political stability and order.
It does this despite its adoption in its constitution the principles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenants on Human Rights. As Lisa
Sharlach (2002: 107) attests, state terrorism and genocide occur when a “dominant group,
frightened by what its members perceive as an onslaught of . . . internal movements for
democracy and socioeconomic change, harnesses the state apparatus to destroy the
subordinate group altogether.” State terrorism is associated with issues of control of
territory and resources and the construction of political and ideological domination.
Annamarie Oliverio (1997: 52) explains two essential features of state terrorism “First, the
state reinforces the use of violence as a viable, effective, mitigating factor for managing
conflict; second, such a view is reinforced by culturally constructed and socially organized
processes, expressed through symbolic forms, and related in complex ways to present social
interests. Within increasing economic and environmental globalization, gender politics, and
the resurgence of nationalities within territorial boundaries, the discourse of terrorism, as a
practice of statecraft, is crucial to the construction of political boundaries.” The Tigrayan‐led
regime mainly targets the Oromo because of their economic resources and political
resistance. According to “Because the Oromo occupy Ethiopia’s richest areas and comprise
half of the population of Ethiopia, they are seen as the greatest threat to the present
Tigrayan‐led government. Subsequently, any indigenous Oromo organization, including the
Oromo Relief Association, has been closed and suppressed by the government. The
Standard reason given for detaining Oromo people is that they are suspected of supporting
the OLF” (The Oromia Support Group 1997: 1),
The regime’s activities include the systematic assassinations of prominent Oromos,
both open and hidden murders of thousands of ordinary Oromo, initiation of villagization
and eviction in Oromia, the expansion of prisons in Oromia, and the incarceration of
thousands Oromo in hidden and underground concentration camps. Umar Fatanssa, an
elderly Oromo, says: “We had never experienced anything like that, not under Haile Selassie,
nor under the Mengistu regime: these people just come and shoot your son or your
daughter dead in front of your eyes” (quoted in Fossati, Namarra and Niggli, 1996: 43).
Ethiopian state terrorism manifests itself in different forms such as war, assassination,
murder (including burying people alive, throwing off cliffs, and hanging them), castration,
torture, and rape. The police and the army are forcing the Oromo people into submission by
jailing, intimidation, beating, torturing, and killings as well as by confiscating their
properties (Pollock, 1996). Former prisoners have testified that their arms and legs were
tied tightly together against their backs and that their naked bodies were whipped. Large
containers or bottles filled with water were fixed to their testicles, or if they were women,
bottles or poles were pushed into their vaginas. Some prisoners have been locked up in
empty steel barrels and tormented with heat in the tropical sun during the day and with
cold at night. Prisoners have been forced into pits so that fire could be made on top of them.
According to Trevor Trueman (2001: 3), “Torture—especially arm‐tying, beating of the
soles of the feet, suspension of weights from genitalia and mock execution—s
commonplace, at least in unofficial places of detention. Female detainees estimate that
several soldiers and policemen on several occasions rape 50% of women during detention,
often. The Minnesota Center for Victims of Torture has surveyed more than 500 randomly
selected Oromo refugees. The majority had been subjected to torture and nearly all of the
rest had been subjected to some kind of government violence.”
Unfortunately, the successive U.S. administrations of George Herbert Bush, Bill
Clinton, George Walker Bush, and Barack Obama have fully heartedly supported this
criminal regime while giving lip service to the promotion of democracy and protection of
human rights. The U.S., other Western countries, and China have indirectly financed state
terrorism and genocide in Oromia and Ethiopia through bilateral (i.e. governmental
institutions) and international institutions such as the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. The Tigrayan‐led Ethiopian regime is now completing the forced removal of
Oromo farmers from the areas surrounding Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) (Worku 2008: 97‐
131). It has tried to implement the so‐called Addis Ababa Master Plan that the Oromo called
“the Master Genocide” in 2014, and the Oromo in general and the Oromo students in
particular have been peacefully resisting this genocidal policy that has been intended to
totally uproot Oromo farmers around the capital city and to transfer their lands to
Tigrayans colonial elites and their supporters. Furthermore, by evicting the Oromo farmers
from their homelands with nominal or without compensation, the regime has already leased
several millions hectares of Oromo land to so‐called investors from Ethiopia, China,
Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, UK, Israel, as well as from Europe (Rahmato
2011; Giorgis 2009).
The local and transnational capitalists have intensified the process of capital
accumulation by dispossession of the Oromo and others under the leadership of the
Tigrayn‐led Ethiopian government. If the policy of land grabbing is allowed to continue,
Tigrayans, Amharas, Chinese, Djiboutians, Indians, Malaysians, Nigerians, Arabs, English,
Jews, Asians, Europeans and others will soon replace the Oromo people in Oromia and
beyond. However, the Tigrayan state elites have never sold or leased Tigrayan land, but
have expanded modern agricultural and industrial development in their homeland, Tigray.
Tamrat G. Giorgis (2009: 1), Addis Fortune staff writer, explains as follows: “A new global
trend is rising whereby companies from emerging economies grab vast land in poor host
nations to grow and export cereals and grains to their home countries. It has happened here
in Bako [Oromia,], where people from India have been granted tens of thousands of hectares
of land for commercial farming. The locals, however, are unhappy.” The Tigrayan regime
also sells Oromo minerals and other natural resources while evicting and impoverishing the
Oromo people. Whenever the Oromo resist, the regime mercilessly brutalizes or kills them.
In this era of globalization, the Tigrayan regime is advised, financed, and legitimized by the
transnational capitalist class. Global powers such as the US, the European Union, and
countries of emerging economies have collaborated with the Tigrayan‐led regime to
suppress the OLF and the Oromo people in order to expropriate the economic resources of
the Oromo people
Millions of Oromo who have lost their economic resources and those who are
targeted for their political views have immigrated to the Middle East, Australia, Europe, and
North America and to different countries in Africa. They have been mistreated in some
African countries and the Middle East, and they have been denied the right to be refugees.
When the Oromo are facing abject poverty and hunger, Tigrayan elite who depended on
international food aid in the 1980s for their survival, are rich and powerful today. The
regime also sells Oromo minerals, forests, and other natural resources while evicting and
impoverishing the Oromo people. Whenever the Oromo resist, the regime mercilessly
brutalizes or kills them. Amnesty International (2014: 8) in its paper entitled, “Because I am
Oromo,” notes, in peaceful opposition to land dispossession and the so‐called Integrated
Addis Ababa Master Plan, “Between 2011 and 2014, at least 5,000 Oromos have been
arrested as a result of their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government,
based on their manifestation of dissenting opinions, exercise of freedom of expression or
their imputed political opinion.” In 2014, the regime also massacred over 78 university
students in Ambo for peacefully protesting against the so‐called Addis Ababa Master Plan.13
Large‐scale arrests, massive shootings, rapes, tortures, extra‐judicial executions, and
deaths due to tortures or lack of medical treatments are common events in Oromia.
Students were accused of organizing demonstrations and arrested and tortured; singers
were detained and tortured for cultivating Oromo nationalism and for not praising the
government; people were detained and tortured for not providing false testimonies against
other peoples or being accused of supporting the OLF (Amnesty International 2014: 7). The
policy of violent development has been also devastating the peoples of the Lower Omo
region and Gambella; the ethno‐national minority groups, including Kwegu, Bodi, Suri,
Mursi, Nyangatom, Hamer, Karo and Dassenach have been targeted for destruction through
land dispossession and forced resettlements (Oakland Institute 2013: 1‐2; 2013; 2014;
2015). When the US, UK and the World Bank have provide the so‐called development aid,
the Ethiopian government has used its defense force to violently dispossess the land and
other resources of these peoplse and forcing them to settle in new areas that are hostile to
their livelihoods and their cultural traditions. Ethiopia received “$3.5 billion on average
from international donors in recent years, which represents 50 to 60 percent of its national
budget” in development aid from the US, UK, and the World Bank (Oakland Institute 2013:
1).
The so‐called development strategy developed in 2010 aimed at the removing “1.5
million people from areas targeted for industrial plantations under the government’s
‘villagization’ program” (Oakland Institute 2013: 1). The European Union, Australia, Italy,
Germany, Irish Aid, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank Group have also
financed the programs of land dispossession and forced resettlement in the Lower Omo
region. In these violent development processes of enriching Tigrayan and transnational
capitalist elites, “a long list of human rights violations, including, ‘arbitrary killings;
allegations of torture, beating, abuse, and mistreatment of detainees by security forces;
reports of harsh and at times life‐threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and
detention … infringement on citizens’ privacy rights … allegations of abuses in the
implementation of … ‘villagization’ program; restriction of academic freedom; restrictions
of freedom of assembly, association and movements’” have occurred (Oakland Institute
2013: 7‐8).
The current Ethiopian government has dispossessed and leased about 2.5 million
hectares of lands to Tgrayan elites and global investors such Djiboutians, Indians, Turkeys,
Sudanese, Pakistanis, Saudi Arabians and others (Jeffrey 2016). Although the opposition to
land grabbing policies triggered the current Oromo protest movement, collective grievances
such as colonial domination, the denial of self‐determination, the absence of democracy,
gross human rights violations, cultural destruction, political and economic marginalization,
poverty, and rampant unemployment have mobilized the entire Oromo society against the
Tigrayan‐led government. These grievances have accelerated the process of the Oromo
struggle for control of economic and cultural resources, self‐determination, statehood, and
egalitarian democracy by facilitating the mobilization of the entire Oromo society to
participate in the ongoing protest movement.
The Current Oromo Protest Movement and its Ramifications
The accumulated grievances, the recent intensification of land grabbing policies,
particularly the so‐called Integrated Addis Ababa Master Plan, and the development of the
political consciousness of the Oromo people starting from the national struggle of the 1960s
have resulted in the current Oromia‐wide peaceful protest movement. The ongoing Oromo
protest movement is going for more than five months. It erupted in Ginchi, near Ambo, on
November 12, 2015, and shortly covered all Oromia like wild fire. The Oromo elementary
and secondary students this small town ignited the current peaceful protests because of the
privatization and confiscation of a small soccer field and selling of the nearby Chilimoo
forest to be cleared and deforested (Jeffrey 2016). Supporting the peaceful protests of these
students, the entire Oromo from all walks of life joined the peaceful protests all over Oromia
by also opposing the so‐called Integrated Addis Ababa Master Plan. For the first time the
revolutionary flame of Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism) has tied all Oromo branches
together to take a coordinated action to defend their national interest. The so‐called master
plan was intended to expand Addis Ababa to 1.5 million hectares of surrounding Oromo
lands by evicting Oromo farmers and by destroying Oromo identity, culture and history
(Thomson and Lóez 2015) and replacing them by Tigrayans and their collaborators. The
Oromo interpret this policy as the replication of the policy of the Amhara‐led government
that uprooted and destroyed the Oromo in Finfinnee and replaced them by Amhara colonial
settlers and their collaborators during the formation and development of Addis Ababa as
the capital city of the Ethiopian Empire.
Through the accumulated experiences of the past twenty‐five years, the Oromo
people have realized that the Tigrayan colonial elites with the help their Oromo
collaborators have been expropriating Oromo lands and other resources and transferring to
themselves and their domestic and global supporters. In these processes, the Oromo people
have become alien in their own country, and Oromia has been owned by Tigrayans.
Consequently, the Oromo people were impoverished and lost hope. Educated Oromo have
become jobless while most Tigrayans are dominating and controlling the political economy
of Oromia and Ethiopia. The Tigryans who were suffering from poverty and famine in the
1980s have become millionaires and billionaires. The Tigrayan colonial elites have been
transferring famine to Oromia and other regions by expropriating the land and resources of
Oromo and that of others to themselves and their collaborators and global supporters. At
the same time, the Oromo national struggle that started in the 1960s has been penetrating
the psyche of the Oromo people. This struggle has been revitalizing the Oromo national
culture, history and identity. Consequently, Oromo nationalism or national Oromummaa has
blossomed and become a revolutionary flame.
The Tigrayan state elites and their Oromo collaborators who used to think that the
Oromo people were collections of “tribes” who could be used as raw materials and firewood
cannot understand the essence of the current Oromo protest movement. They still believe
that by beating, torturing, castrating, decapitating, raping, and murdering Oromo students,
farmers, educators, and merchants can stop the Oromo struggle for statehood, sovereignty
and egalitarian democracy. The Oromo activists and revolutionaries are inclusive and
inviting all peoples who are suffering under Tigrayan colonialism and neoliberal globalism
that facilitates violent development. The ongoing Oromo protest movement has opened a
new chapter in the history of Oromia and Ethiopia. This history is written by Oromo blood,
and the relationship between the Oromo and their colonizers has been changed forever.
However, the final chapter of this history is not yet written. Many things have changed as
the result of the Oromo protest movement. The cost the Oromo have paid in lives and
suffering is very high; within five months more than 500 Oromo including school children,
pregnant women, and elderly people were massacred. Tens of thousands of Oromo have
been imprisoned or collected in undisclosed concentration camps where they are beaten,
tortured, exposed to diseases and famine and eventually probably decimate. Despite all
these tragedies, the Oromo people have restored their national pride, patriotism, and
bravery that they enjoyed between the 16th and mid‐19th centuries.
During these centuries, the Oromo had their republican government under the
gadaa/siqqee system; they had a formidable military organization. The Oromo had no
mercenaries who joined the enemy to fight against them because they successfully
defended themselves from their internal and external enemies during these centuries.
Biyyaa Oromo that we call today Oromia was sovereign and no enemies exercised their
political power on it. Young Oromo protesters are equipped with the ideology of national
Oromummaa, which has uprooted the divisions that the enemies of the Oromo created
among different Oromo branches. Some Oromo elements that have been suffering from the
internalization victimization are forced to start to rethink about their Oromo national
identity and the Oromo national struggle. Particularly, the Oromia Diaspora are learning
about national Oromummaa and rallying behind the Oromo national struggle in Oromia. The
Oromo Diaspora all over the world has showed solidarity with Oromo protesters by
demonstrating and financially and diplomatically supporting them.
Oromo collaborators and opportunists who have been evicting Oromo farmers from
their ancestral lands by joining the Tigrayan fascists are shocked and started to feel national
shame. The Oromo protest movement is demonstrating that it can destroy Oromo
intermediaries or mercenaries who work for the enemy at the cost of the Oromo nation.
That is why the Tigrayan military rule has replaced the OPDO in Oromia. The Oromo are
practically showing that they cannot accept submissive and subservient leaders that the
enemy created for them. They only accepted leaders are those have struggle on behalf of
them. Calling the names of Oromo heroines and heroines who have sacrificed their precious
lives for them as OLF leaders and fighters, Oromo protesters show the Oromo flag and say
the OLF is our leader without any fear and intimidation from the TPLF government and its
OPDO collaborators. The Tigrayan‐led regime has labeled Oromo peaceful protesters
“terrorists” and used anti‐terrorism laws to delegitimize and violent crackdown the protest
movement (Thomson and Lóez 2016).
Since Oromo protesters only have targeted on their enemy, diverse national groups
in Ethiopia have somewhat changed their attitudes toward the Oromo people and their
national struggle. What is amazing is that many Amhara elites who used to suspect and hate
the Oromo struggle have become neutral or sympathetic to the Oromo activists and
protesters. Many of them have openly denounced Tigrayan state terrorism and invited their
fellow citizens to join the ongoing Oromo protest movement. Oromo protesters have
practically demonstrated that they struggle to establish a democratic system that will
exercise the principles of national self‐determination and egalitarian multinational
democracy that are in line with their democratic tradition. Overall, all Oromo who lost hope
in their national struggle have restored their dreams of liberation, freedom, and democracy.
Furthermore, peoples like the Sidama, Hadiya, Benishangul, Annuak, Ogaden‐Somalis, and
even some Amharas can ally with the Oromo people to dismantle Tigrayan colonialism and
the fascist minority regime of the TPLF. These are great psychological, ideological and
diplomatic victories for the Oromo national movement. All these victories are achieved by
Oromo blood and suffering. Until now about 500 Oromo have been massacred, and
thousands Oromo have been imprisoned, kicked, beaten, torture, and decapitated. In fact, at
this time, we do not have enough data on the killings, imprisonments, and other crimes on
the Oromo.
Globally and diplomatically, the Oromo protest movement has won world attention
because of its political maturity, determination, inclusiveness, and for totally disproving the
ideology and political program of the Tigrayan‐led minority Ethiopian government. For the
first time in Oromo history, the world media outlets such as Washington Post, BBC,
Newsweek, AFP, the Guardian, and other reported on the Oromo protest movement and its
brutal crackdown by the Tigrayan‐led Ethiopian government. This peaceful movement also
for a limited degree has broken international silence on the Oromo struggle. For instance,
on January 21, 2015, the European Parliament condemned the violent crackdown of Oromo
protesters, and called for the establishment of a credible, transparent and independent
body for investigating the murdering and imprisoning thousands protesters in Oromia.14
Similarly, the UN Human Rights Experts demanded the Ethiopian authorities to stop the
violent crackdown on Oromo peaceful protesters.15 The US Department of State vaguely
expressed its concern about the violent associated with the protest movement. But,
expressing its firm support for the regime, the US signed security partnership with the
Ethiopian government to exchange “logistics, services, supplies” and planned “for a future
security cooperation activities designed to meet mutual defense priorities.”16
Conclusion
The Oromo movement for control of economic and cultural resources, statehood and
egalitarian democracy is gaining momentum as the current Oromo protest movement
demonstrates. It has also demonstrated that the Oromo have developed their national
Oromummaa, determination, and capacity to confront and defeat the policies of violent
development and gradually decide their destiny one way or the other. Consequently, the
ongoing Oromo protest movement has shaken the foundation of the Tigrayan authoritarian
terrorist regime and its surrogate organization, OPDO, in Oromia and beyond. So a new
Oromo‐based system emerging and replacing the dying the Tigrayan colonialism and its
terrorist and repressive political structures. Oromo activist networks and leadership must
double its efforts to build its organizational capacity and develop specific principles of
national self‐determination and egalitarian multinational democracy to open a new chapter
in Oromia, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in collaboration with progressive communities
and peoples. As other social movements of the 21st century that are engaging in egalitarian
democratic movements and globalization from below (Rajagopal 1999, 2003), the Oromo
movement in its different forms challenges the strategy of violent development and
modernity, and seeks to establish the autonomy of people in order to facilitate the
formation of an egalitarian democratic state and an alternative form of development.
Paper presented at the Conference on New Directions in Critical Criminology, University of
Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, May 6‐7, 2006.
Asafa Jalata
No comments:
Post a Comment