Oromo people demand equal rights in protests

Largest ethnic group in Ethiopia continues to rally against the government despite crackdown.

Wolonkomi, Oromia- Six-year-old Abi Turi and her nine-year-old brother Dereje have not been attending classes in Wolonkomi.

Their school was closed in January as the Ethiopian government began what its critics call a crackdown on protests by the Oromo, the country's largest ethnic group.

It is uncertain how many people have died in clashes between security forces and protesters since November, when a series of demonstrations began.

Local estimates put the figure at between 80 and above 200. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has said that more than 200 people may have died in about six months, a figure the government denies.

"With regards to allegations from human rights groups or self-styled human rights protectors, the numbers they come with, the stories they often paint, are mostly plucked out thin air," Getachew Reda, the information minister, told Al Jazeera.

Abi and Dereje's mother was among those shot in January. She was hit by a bullet in the neck. Despite receiving medical treatment, she died of her wounds in March.

"The little girl cries and keeps asking where her mother is. We feel her pain," said the children's grandfather Kena Turi, a farmer. "The older one cried when his mother was shot and died, but now it seems he understands she's gone."

Oromo students began rallying to protest against a government plan they said was intended to expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa, the capital, into Oromia's farmland.

Protests continue

Oromia is the country's largest region, and many there believe the government did not want to redevelop services and roads, but that it was engaged in a landgrab.

Though the government shelved its "Integrated Development Master Plan" due to the tension, protests continued as the Oromo called for equal rights.

In February, another anti-government rally turned violent. Nagase Arasa, 15, and her eight-year-old brother Elias say they were shot in their legs while a demonstration happened near their home.

"I was in the back yard walking to the house when I was shot," Nagase told Al Jazeera.

"My brother was in the house. I couldn't walk I was bleeding. Then I was hit again when I was on the ground I felt the pain then my brother came to help me and he was shot too."

Ethiopia has an ethnically-based federal system that gives a degree of self-rule to the Oromo people.

But the Oromo opposition, some of whose members have been detained, says the system has been corrupted by the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front.

A 'marginalised' community

Merera Gudina, an Oromo politician, said that members of his community feel marginalised — excluded from cultural activities, discriminated against because of their different language, and not consulted in political or economic decisions.

With double-digit growth over the last decade, Ethiopia has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, but the majority of the Oromo remain poor.

"Until the Oromo's get their proper place in this country I don't think it [dissent] is going to go. The government wants to rule in the old way; people are resisting being ruled in the old way," Gudina said.

Reporting and recording human rights abuses is also risky, activists told Al Jazeera. Local and foreign journalists said attempts were made to intimidate them, with some detained.

Al Jazeera spoke with local reporters who said they were too afraid to even try and cover the issue.

"It's very dangerous. Everybody is living in fear. They imprison people every day. People have disappeared. Doing this work is like selling my life," a human rights activist told Al Jazeera, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

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Unrest in Ethiopia "Grumbling and rumbling"

AN OUTBREAK of public protest unprecedented in its duration and spread since the ruling party took power in Ethiopia in 1991 is stirring a rare cocktail of discontent. Demonstrations started in November mainly by members of the Oromo ethnic group, which accounts for about a third of Ethiopia’s 97m-plus people, have refused to die down. Indeed, they have spread. The government has dropped its plan, the original cause of the hubbub, to expand the city limits of Addis Ababa, the capital, into Oromia, the largest of the federal republic’s subdivisions of nine regional states and two city-states. But the protests have billowed into a much wider expression of outrage. People are complaining about land ownership, corruption, political repression and poverty. Such feelings go beyond just one ethnic group.

Human-rights advocates and independent monitors reckon that at least 80 people and perhaps as many as 250, mostly demonstrators, have been killed since the protests began. The government says the true figure is much lower and instead lays stress, as it always does, on terrorist and secessionist threats to the country’s stability. It points out that foreign-owned factories have been attacked, churches burnt down and property looted by organised gangs during the protests. Last month seven federal policemen in the south were killed by local militiamen during a particularly violent wave of disturbances.

All the same, most of the protests have been peaceful. The Oromo particularly resent the sale or lease of land (almost all of which is state-owned) by the government to foreign investors. The government’s decision to shelve its master plan to expand Addis Ababa is regarded by the assorted opposition as a rare step in the right direction. But the protesters say the government must now allow Ethiopians to exercise their constitutional right to express dissent, or discontent could escalate.

Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Law: A Tool to Stifle Dissent, A Legal Analysis by International Lawyers

Oakland, CA—With human rights as the special focus of the 26th Summit of the African Union that gets underway today in Ethiopia, the Oakland Institute and the Environmental Defender Law Center (EDLC) released a new report, Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Law: A Tool to Stifle Dissent. This timely report, authored by lawyers from leading international law firms, provides an in-depth and damning analysis of Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. Building on the substantial number of earlier legal analyses prepared by a wide range of critics of the law, the report examines how the law, enacted in 2009, is a tool of repression, designed and used by the Ethiopian Government to silence its critics.

“While legitimate anti-terrorism laws exist, Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation criminalizes basic human rights, especially freedom of speech and assembly. The law defines terrorism in an extremely broad and vague way so as to give the government enormous leeway to punish words and acts that would be perfectly legal in a democracy,” said Lewis Gordon, editor of the report and Executive Director of the Environmental Defender Law Center. “It also gives the police and security services unprecedented new powers, and shifts the burden of proof to the accused. Worse still, many of those charged report having been tortured, and the so-called confessions that have been obtained as a result have been used against them at trial,” he continued.

“Through our extensive work on land related issues in Ethiopia, we have witnessed firsthand how the anti-terrorism law has been misused to curb peoples’ opposition to forced land evictions and land grabbing by domestic and foreign investors,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of The Oakland Institute. “We are grateful to the legal community for providing this essential analysis of the dire situation in Ethiopia. It is time for the international community and donor countries to demand that this law, used to oppress and intimidate political speech and freedom is struck down immediately,” Mittal continued.

“The conclusions reached in this report are not those of a few fringe lawyers or policy organizations,” said Lewis Gordon. “This law has been harshly criticized by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, numerous UN Special Rapporteurs, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, the governments of the US and UK, and the EU. Given our findings, we must, as an international community, demand that until such time as Ethiopia revises this law to bring it into conformity with international standards, it repeal or suspend the use of this repressive piece of legislation.”

Those who have been charged as terrorists under the law include newspaper editors, indigenous leaders, land rights activists, bloggers, political opposition members, and students

ETHIOPIA DETAINS JOURNALISTS COVERING OROMO PROTESTS

Press freedom in Ethiopia is dwindling in light of recent anti-government protests and the severe drought in the Horn of Africa state, according to a journalists’ association.

Two journalists and a translator were arbitrarily detained for 24 hours on Thursday when reporting on the protests in Oromia, according to a statement issued by the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of East Africa (FCAEA) on Monday. Bloomberg correspondent William Davison and freelance journalist Jacey Fortin, along with their translator, were not given any reason for their detention. Their phones and identification cards were taken during the arrest.

Protests among the Oromos, who constitute Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, have been ongoing since November 2015 and were originally directed against plans by the federal government to expand the capital Addis Ababa. At least 140 protesters were killed between November 2015 and January, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). The Addis expansion plans were dropped in January but the protests—which have morphed into a general expression of dissatisfaction with the government among Oromos—have continued and demonstrators are still being subjected to “lethal force,” HRW said on February 22. The Ethiopian government has said that “destructive forces” —including some from neighboring Eritrea—have hijacked the protests and would be dealt with decisively.

Davison told Newsweek that the risks of reporting on certain topics in Ethiopia is too high because of the threat of detainment. “It was a shock to be held overnight in a prison cell and not be given any explanation of what we were being held for,” says Davison. The “very heavy and militarized response” to the Oromo protests “raises the chance that reporters are going to be obstructed from doing their work,” he says.

The FCAEA said that the detentions marked “a worrying escalation” in Ethiopia, which already has a poor record for allowing journalists to operate freely. Ethiopia was ranked 142nd out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom in 2015 by non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders, which recorded six newspapers closing and more than 30 cases of journalists fleeing abroad in 2014. “Ethiopia is well-known for its tough stance on journalists but this is a worrying spike of arbitrary detention of media workers at a time of increased interest in Ethiopia,” says Ilya Gridneff, chairman of FCAEA. “Journalism is not a crime and those in Ethiopia should not be treated as criminals.”

Newsweek contacted the Ethiopian Embassy in London but was yet to receive a reply at the time of publication.

What Right do the Oromo people have to Finfinne?

Since November 2015 to today (March 3, 2016), Oromia has been engulfed by massive political protests. The protest is the biggest ever recorded in Oromia region. As of today about 400 people have been killed, hundreds wounded and thousands imprisoned.  Initially, the
protesters have been demanding the following:

1. Return confiscated Oromo land to the Oromo farmers.
2. “No!” to the Addis Ababa master plan (a plan intended to evict Oromo farmers and expand the cityinto Oromia).
3. Bring Finfinne (Addis Ababa) back under Oromia’s jurisdiction as it belongs to the Oromo people both geographically and historically.
4. Make the Oromo language one of the federal government’s working languages.
5. End the structural, socio-economic marginalization of the Oromo people.
6. Ensure true representation of the Oromo people in a genuine federation structure in the Ethiopian state.

As the Ethiopian government simply intensified the killing and the imprisonment of the protesters, the protestors added more political slogans:

7. Stop the killings, torture, mass imprisonments and detentions in Oromia.
8. Release political prisoners and bring the perpetrators to justice.
9. Pay compensation to the victims of the killings, torture and
   unlawful imprisonments.

As the protests continued, the protesters noticed that privately and publicly owned
corporations were siding with the Ethiopian government. This created more slogans.

10. The Oromo natural resources belong to the Oromo people.
11. Bring Dire Dawa & Awaday back under Oromia’s jurisdiction.
12. We need to have self-rule
13. No military rule
14. “No! “to TPLF/OPDO rule

In response to the political demand “No to the Addis Ababa master plan”, the Oromo Peoples Democratic Organization (OPDO), believed to have been formed by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and controlled by the TPLF led Ethiopian government, declared that they would stop the master plan. They also said they would form a study group that would identify the right of the Oromo people to Finfinne. In this paper, I intend to provoke discussion around this point.
Before I identify what constitutes the right of the Oromo people to Finfinne, I want to briefly explore the history and the processes of the making of Finfinne as the Ethiopian capital. In addition, I will explore the wrongs that flowed from making the capital and the discriminatory social policies of consecutive Ethiopian regimes.

Oromia was conquered by the Abyssinian king Menelik II, supported by the European empire builders in 1880s. Soon after the conquest, the wife of the king visited Finfinne then a village and she liked the place and named it Addis Ababa = New Flower.  As a result, the name of the Oromo village Finfinne was changed to Addis Ababa and made the Ethiopian capital.  The Abyssinian invasion was brutal; many Oromos were killed and some of them were sold into slavery.  In addition, from Finfinne and surrounding areas thousands of people were evicted from their homes and until quite recently- they were not allowed to resettle.

This means resulting from the conquest five major wrongs occurred, in Oromia and Finfinne in particular. The first wrong is that Oromo social institutions were banned and their social support systems were delegitimized. The second wrong is that the Oromo people were evicted from their lands with no compensation and forced to flee in different directions.  Those who stayed behind became serfs and were forced to provide free labor and give three-quarters of their harvests to the Abyssinians.

Third, Oromo political institutions such as Gadaa were banned and policy making and decision-making powers were left for Abyssinians. Fourth, the Oromo culture, language and religious institutions i.e. Qaalu were banned and replaced with the Abyssinian culture and institutions. The fifth wrong is that the natural forests of Oromia were destroyed and this damaged the natural environment of Oromia.  In summary, in the colonial conquest, the social, economic, political, cultural and environmental rights of the Oromo people were violated. This means the rights of the Oromo people to live dignified lives were disregarded.

The violation of the social, economic, political, cultural and environmental rights are known to increase exposure to biological, chemical, physical, psycho-chemical and ergonomic hazards. It is responsible to poverty, diseases higher illiteracy, and lack of clean water. Indeed, the Oromo oral story suggests that evictions from their homeland of Finfinne were not pleasant experiences. Oromos expressed their feelings in phrases such as Garaa nugubatee = Gut-wrenching, Dhukubaa Onee Nuti Ta’e = Heart rending, Boquu Nucabee = Emotionally shattering,  Ilkaan Nyaataa Nuhambisse = made us life time grit our teeth. For these reasons, Finfinne (Addis Ababa) also known as Shagari. The word Shagar is derived from the Amharic word ችግር = chigiri, which means hardship. The name Shagari came after the conquest and it is referring to the place where the Oromo people faced extreme hardship.

Ethiopia is one of the founders of the United Nations (UN). However, consecutive Ethiopian regimes never respected the human rights principles on which the UN was formed.  The UN promotes the member states respect the inherent dignity of the human person.  This necessitates the TPLF leadership to move away from the old colonial and racist mindset, driven to benefit one ethnic group into inclusive politics and guarantee the fair distribution of privileges and risks.  To regard the rights of the Oromo people to Finfinne, the wrongs done to them should be recognized and corrected.  Recognizing the wrongs and correcting them creates healthy social conditions in which Oromo people and others can live dignified lives.