Oromo Rally in Washington-DC Against Human Rights Violations of the Ethiopian Government in Oromia

On August 1, 2014, Oromos held a massive rally protesting the human rights violations by the Ethiopian government in Oromia; the rally was organized as part of the Macha-Tulama Association’s 50th-year anniversary. The protesters demanded freedom and justice for the Oromo students and civilians murdered by the Ethiopian government, and freedom for those Oromo nationals languishing in the Ethiopian prisons.

Over the last year, the Ethiopian government has intensified killing, imprisoning and harassing Oromo civilians, especially students, as a result of the ongoing protest against the ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan,’ which was made public by the Ethiopian government in April 2014. The ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan’ seeks to expand the Addis Ababa (Finfinne) city and jurisdiction limits by taking millions of hectares of land from districts of the State of Oromia located near the capital, thereby evicting millions of Oromo farmers from Central Oromia. According to the Oromo public opposing the plan, the ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan’ is a plan of ethnocide and genocide as it will lead to the de-Oromonization and killing by evictions of the Oromo in Central Oromia; in short, the current plan is an extension of the Menelik ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan’ that de-Oromonized and cleared the originally Oromo region of Finfinne and re-named it as “Addis Ababa” at the turn of the 20th century.