It is deeply troubling to see the OPDO playing the Oromo people to its tune. Let’s be honest. It has stolen the rhetoric of the Oromo people’s cause without any substance to it. Now, OPDO is playing victim within the EPRDF ruling party and expects the Oromo people to comfort it. Some even want to be celebrated as heroes.
But for what? What did the OPDO do for the Oromo people? Which agenda of the Oromo people did they carry out? Forget the agenda, are they even defending the Oromo people they claim to govern from internal and external attacks? The answer is BIG NO!
Let’s look at the Somali Janjaweed Militia invasion and aggression on Oromia over the last six months. Let’s look back for a moment. OPDO was and is the governing party of Oromia while the Somali Janjaweed Militia was created, trained and armed to the teeth and readied for over ten years to invade and attack the Oromo people.
What was OPDO doing over the last ten years while the Somali Region was creating, training and arming standing militia with the tax money that was collected from the Oromo people? OPDO was disarming and impoverishing the Oromo people. Let’s play the fool and assume the OPDO did not expect the invasion from the Somali Janjaweed Militia and there is nothing they could do.
But, what about after the large-scale invasion and aggression by the Somali Janjaweed and its allied militias over the last six months? Let’s lay open this fact. Over the last six months, the Somali Janjaweed Militia invaded five Oromia Zones and fourteen Weradas. It displaced over 600,000 from the invaded five Oromia zones and fourteen Woredas. In addition, the Somali Janjaweed evicted, uprooted and deported about 100,000 Oromos from the Somali Region.
What was OPDO’s response to this humiliating failure to defend the Oromo people from attacks? In pathetic and the most disgraceful measure I have ever seen from any governing party that claim to lead fifty million plus strong population, OPDO is asking the Oromo people to provide humanitarian aid to the displaced, the evicted and the uprooted instead of mobilizing the Oromo people to defend themselves, take back their territory and resettle those displaced. Is OPDO a humanitarian organization? Is it our Oromia Red Cross or Red Crescent? Or is OPDO a governing party with the responsibility to defend Oromia and uphold the rule of law?
The tragedy does not end there. The OPDO, one of the members of the governing EPRDF, is claiming or pretending to claim that it is in power struggle with the TPLF and that it is the TPLF that is organizing the Somali Janjaweed Militia against the Oromo. Let’s assume that is true and that is the case.
Then, what is the OPDO doing in the EPRDF where the TPLF is orchestrating ethnic cleansing against the Oromo people? The OPDO should leave the EPRDF and dismantle that criminal enterprise. The OPDO should tell all its members to resign and leave the EPRDF. After all, what is the OPDO doing in the EPRDF if it is the EPRDF organizing, mobilizing and invading the Oromo people?
Let’s take the matter a bit back. Last year, the EPRDF security forces murdered over 700 Oromo civilians at the Irreechaa 2016 Celebration. As Human Rights Watch confirmed by its recent report, there is no dispute that the EPRDF security forces, of which the OPDO is the member, caused the killings of our people. What did the OPDO do to bring to justice the perpetrators of those crimes? Nothing!
Then, what is the role of the OPDO in the EPRDF? Whose interest is it representing if it is not representing the Oromo people? Unless as Mr. Bekele Gerba asserted the OPDO is representing the interests of the EPRDF in Oromia not the interests of the Oromo people, then EPRDF should be dismantled and all members of the OPDO should leave and abandon this organization. What are they really doing in the front that kills and imprison the Oromo people?
On August 28, 2017, meeting with the Oromo Abbaa Gadaas in the town of Bushoftu President Lemma Megerssa claimed that they pardoned over 17,000 Oromo political prisoners. That is his word: over 17,000 Oromo political prisoners. Remember, they used to claim that there are no Oromo political prisoners in Ethiopia!? Again, they said they pardoned over 6,000 more last week. That will put the number of Oromo political prisoners pardoned from Oromia prisons alone to more than 23,000.
Imagine these numbers. The number of Oromo political prisoners just pardoned are bigger than any medium size Oromia cities. Imagine all these people. The livelihood lost. The human cost to the Oromo people. And how could the Oromo people cope with resettling and rehabilitating all these people without the compensation for being unjustly imprisoned? And why did the OPDO imprisoned all these people in the first place? Admittedly as political prisoners, they are all unjustly imprisoned for speaking for the Oromo people. Then how could the OPDO claim to stand for the Oromo people while imprisoning those who speak for the Oromo people?
Let’s push the curtain of the Oromo political prisoners’ saga a bit more! What about the tens of thousands in the so-called federal prisons? ICRC Ethiopia Office sources indicate that there are over 37,000 Oromo political prisoners arrested in connection with the OLF since the early 1990s.
On August 1, 2007, Dr. Nagasso Gidada, the former president of Ethiopia and member of the OPDO, told Jake Grovum of The Minnesota Daily that he knew the existence of over 25,000 such political prisoners. Where are these people now? What happened to these Oromos? Could the OPDO just wash off the blood of these Oromo political prisoners?
Over the last two years alone, according to Human Rights Watch, tens of thousands Oromos were arrested because of the Oromo protests. Add to these thousands of Oromo Federalist Congress leaders and members incarcerated including Dr. Merara Gudina!
When will the OPDO stand for the life of the Oromo people beyond the rhetoric and the deception? OPDO as the coalition member of the EPRDF is directly responsible for the misery and the blood of these Oromos whose only crime is standing up for the rights of the Oromo people.
Then, what is the OPDO doing for the Oromo people today if it does not defend the Oromo people from internal and external attacks and unlawful imprisonment? Will it ever do anything for the Oromo people at all?
One thing is certain, the Oromo people must not take the OPDO off the hook on all and every crime committed against the Oromo people until justice is served and this tentacle of the enemy amongst our people is fully and completely uprooted and dismantled.
In the meantime, the so-called "the new breed OPDO team under the leadership of Lemma Megerssa" must stand up to the task to address the immediate crisis facing the Oromo people:
1. The OPDO and the Oromia National Regional Government must adopt a clear self-defense policy with a clear goal to take back Oromia territories occupied by the Somali Janjaweed Militia and resettle the over 600,000 Oromo civilians evicted and displaced from their ancestral lands by the invading Janjaweed militia. Oromos evicted and displaced from their land inside Oromia must be resettled on their land with clear security guarantee by placing armed Oromia national guards that defend the Oromia territory from the Somali Janjaweed Militia and other similar militias.
2. The Oromia National Regional government and the OPDO must take firm stand and should withdraw all forms of collaboration and relationship including withholding all forms of financial and business relationship with the Somali Region until justice is served by paying just and fair market value compensation for the stolen property and land of all Oromo deportees and evictees as well as by disarming, dismantling and removing from power of the Somali Janjaweed Militia that uprooted and deported about 100,000 Oromo civilians from the Somali Region and displaced over 600,000 Oromo civilians inside Oromia.
3. OPDO and the Oromia National Regional Government must withdraw from the EPRDF until those responsible for training, arming and mobilizing the Somali Janjaweed Militia to invade and attack the Oromo people are brought to justice. OPDO cannot have it both ways. It cannot claim to be for the Oromo people while it is partying with the EPRDF coalition members who kill, uproot and evict the Oromo people from their land including through proxy wars as in the case of the Somali Janjaweed Militia invasion. If the OPDO does not stand up now against the enemy of the Oromo people, when will they stand up? If OPDO will not leave the EPRDF now when will it leave the EPRDF? What else should the enemy do against the Oromo people to warrant the response of the OPDO beyond what they have already done?
4. The OPDO and Oromia National Regional Government must establish an independent commission that will investigate and bring to justice those who were responsible for the killing of over 700 Oromo festival goers at the Irreechaa 2016 Massacre. How on earth does OPDO dare to erect a memorial statute without bringing those responsible for these heinous crimes to justice? OPDO federal appointees including those serving the federal parliament must be instructed to table this agenda at the national level including at the House of Peoples Representatives!
5. The OPDO and the Oromia National Regional Government must release all Oromo political prisoners including those in the federal prisons. How could the Oromo people trust and expect an OPDO to represent the interests of the Oromo people when it cannot even speak up for the release of the Oromo leaders? And what purpose will OPDO’s membership in the EPRDF serve if it does not enable it to stop killing, arresting and dispossessing of the Oromo of their land, their country and their personhood by supposed coalition partners with the OPDO?
6. If OPDO and the Oromia National Regional Government fails to take the above measures, the Oromo people should seriously consider holding
a national election to elect and establish a government of the people by the people for the people based on the existing Gadaa rules and practices
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