The Oromo people need Protection, urgently!

 

The Oromo people need Protection, urgently. As the largest ethnic group the Oromo nation have suffered variations of atrocity crimes perpetrated by successive regimes. Because of their numerical strength and their huge, strategically located, and resource-rich homeland, the Oromo have been seen by the architects of the hegemony as a vast treasure trove of wealth to loot and a strategic anchor for further expansion and predation. Naturally, the Oromo have mounted an epic struggle to resist dictatorship . Times, regimes, circumstances, and fortunes have changed, but the struggle has continued.

Under Abiy Ahmed and his Prosperity Party (PP), the plight of the Oromo has worsened. Initially Abiy’s partially Oromo heritage and his meteoric rise to fame as a man of peace and Nobel Peace Laureate caused many to see a glimmer of hope. But that was not only premature; it was entirely misplaced. PP turned out to be ideal vessels for a new and more lethal variant of fascism.

Currently Oromos collectively face massive, vicious & well-coordinated assault that has the hallmarks of a rare and multi-faceted form of Genocide, ethnically, nationally, and culturally. The all out campaign against Oromo started long before the outbreak of the war in Northern Ethiopia . The Rose Terror, as I described it elsewhere, has ravaged much of Oromia largely in the dark. Oromo politicians, political parties, civic and professional organizations, traditional elders, religious leaders, artists, students, traders, farmers, businessmen, journalists, media outlets, ordinary villagers have been marked for mass incarceration, torture, targeted assassination, or mass slaughter.

The mysterious death of a human rights lawyer during political turmoil in Ethiopia

 The civil war in northern Ethiopia has gotten most of the media attention lately. But in the south, the government has launched a huge crackdown against its political adversaries. This is the story of a human rights lawyer, his mystery death and a government fighting for its survival. Here's NPR's Eyder Peralta.

EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: As Soraya Kadir (ph) explains it, her husband has always been a pain for the Ethiopian government.

SORAYA KADIR: (Through interpreter) He's not afraid. He argues strongly with the government about injustice in the law. He has deep knowledge of the law, and he's a headache for them.

PERALTA: Abduljebar Hussien was one of Ethiopia's most prominent human rights lawyers. No matter who was in power, when an opposition leader was unjustly detained, he took the cases that no one wanted. So when the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed began rounding up politicians in his home region of Oromia, Abduljebar took on the most prominent cases. Soraya says it's also when the threats began - text messages to his phone. And one time, a lady showed up at their house.

KADIR: (Through interpreter) She warned me that he had to stop before death came to my house.

PERALTA: Abduljebar was angry that people he assumed were government agents threatened his family. Soraya heard him shout on the phone, kill me, but leave my family alone.

KADIR: (Through interpreter) He was telling me he is doing the right thing, and he was just working to defend justice and the constitution.

PERALTA: A month later, Soraya received a call from Abduljebar's cellphone. The person who called said her husband had collapsed. Soraya found his lifeless body dumped in a seedy side street. She rushed him to a hospital on a rickshaw.

KADIR: (Through interpreter) They stopped us outside. They didn't let him in, and they didn't even care.

PERALTA: Government officials told her and the Ethiopian public that he died of complications from diabetes. But this happened in August as the country was embroiled in the civil war and as the government rounded up thousands of political dissidents. Soraya knew their story did not add up.

KADIR: (Through interpreter) I never thought that death would come to my house, but it happened. And it is coming to every house. Every house is mourning. We are living in complete darkness.

PERALTA: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power in 2018, following years of protests by Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, the Oromos. They felt marginalized under the authoritarian regime led by ethnic Tigrayans. Abiy, himself an Oromo, promised to respect human rights. But within a couple of years, he went to war against the Tigrayans and broke ranks with many Oromos, some of whom have joined the civil war against Abiy's government.

AWOL ALLO: I think what happened in Oromia is really tragic.

PERALTA: That is Awol Allo, a professor of law at Keele University in the U.K. He says Abiy ended up siding with factions of Ethiopia's second largest ethnic group, the Amharas, who have pushed for a more imperial premiership. As elections drew closer, Awol says that Abiy made a political calculation that in order to win, he had to sideline his political adversaries in Oromia. With opponents in jail or boycotting because of the harassment, Abiy ran essentially unopposed.

ALLO: I think fundamentally what we see with Abiy - that this is someone that is determined to use whatever tactics, whatever strategy is necessary to consolidate his power.

PERALTA: It took a few days and a few changes in meeting places before I finally meet Hamza Mohammed, a prominent Oromo activist. He's a skinny guy with a shy smile. He sinks into his seat almost as if he doesn't want to be seen. He fears he'll be snatched up at any moment.

HAMZA MOHAMMED: I can't leave to - my home. Even I can't work. I can't move in freedom.

PERALTA: Back in June, the government held him for three months, accusing him of smuggling SIM cards into the house of Abiy's top political opponent. Hamza was thrown into the infamous Maikelawi prison. Abiy's government had closed the jail, vowing to end state terrorism. But it's back in use. Hamza says he was held naked in a refrigerated cell.

MOHAMMED: Cold (unintelligible). We don't have any clothes.

PERALTA: When we asked the prime minister's office about these claims. a spokeswoman said we were simply hearing from a few malcontents. But the government's own human rights commission has documented mass indiscriminate arrests of Oromos. It found even children had been detained. Hamza says he's documented a thousand young Oromos under arrest. The worst part, he says, is that he hasn't spoken to his mother for more than a year. He doesn't want the government to trace his calls or go after his mother the way they've gone after his father.

MOHAMMED: My father is jailed over three times in Hararghe. If I post anything on Facebook, they immediately arrested my family, immediately tortured my family.

PERALTA: Hamza hated Ethiopia's previous government. He led acts of civil disobedience against it. But Abiy's Ethiopia, he says, is worse.

MOHAMMED: We're going to war. He's torturing - he's detaining everyone. So this country can't be saved.

(SOUNDBITE OF RUSTLING ON VIDEO)

PERALTA: The video is shaky, but you can see the face of Abduljebar Hussien, a human rights lawyer. The man who took the video and shared it with NPR doesn't want to be named because he fears retribution. Gutema Khalil Buru (ph), a sheikh, was on call at the hospital that day to wash the bodies of the deceased.

GUTEMA KHALIL BURU: When we washed his body, there is government and security that follow us.

PERALTA: That's why the video is shaky - they are trying to film while security agents surround the room. You see Gutema's hands in the video. You see him gingerly removing surgical material.

(SOUNDBITE OF RUSTLING ON VIDEO)

PERALTA: You see that Abduljebar's face is swollen. And then as they turn his head, you see a huge gash in the back of his head.

KHALIL BURU: There are many injuries at the back of his head. (Unintelligible) It's like a knife or something.

PERALTA: Gutema says it took him an hour and a half to wash the blood off his body.

KHALIL BURU: All of us see this person is assassinated.

PERALTA: After he said those words - assassinated - he received so many threats, he had to flee Ethiopia. Abduljebar's wife, Soraya, says as soon as she publicly doubted he died of diabetes, threats came her way, too. Her family warned her, you'll be killed. But what hurts the most, she says, is that a man who gave his life to fight for justice is likely never to get it for himself.

source; Eyder Peralta, NPR News in the Oromia region of Ethiopia.

link;The mysterious death of a human rights lawyer during political turmoil in Ethiopia : NPR

ABBA GADAA UNION SAYS MISSING MEMBER OF KARRAYYU GADAA LEADERSHIP DEAD, DOZENS UNDER CUSTODY

 ABBA GADAA UNION SAYS MISSING MEMBER OF KARRAYYU GADAA LEADERSHIP DEAD, DOZENS UNDER CUSTODY

The remaining people who were said to have gone missing after the contradicting reports surrounding the killing of 14 members of the Karrayyu Gadaa leadership were found in a detention center in Mojo, reports said. The secretary of Abba Gadaa union and Abba Gadaa of the Tulama, Gobana Hola confirmed that the remaining members of the Karrayyu Gadaa leadership are detained in Mojo and that one of them died. Residents of Fentale woreda spoke of tensions running high as the crackdown on the community escalated over the days following the killings and abduction of the Gadaa leadership.

An eye witness said that government forces abducted a total of 14 men including Abba Gadaas, Abba Boku, prominent community members and young men from the seat of the Gadaa leadership, Karra, where a prayer ceremony, Waaq Kadhaa was taking place on Wednesday December 1, 2021. The Oromia regional government however refuted the allegations and blamed the attacks on Shanee (a term used by government officials to refer to Oromo liberation army, OLA). The OLA on its part issued a statement attributing the attacks to government forces.

Gada Hawas Boru, the brother of the late Karrayyu Abaa Gadaa Kedir Hawas Boru, expressed dismay in the attack on the leaders. He detailed that the Karrayyu community including Abba Gadaas were harassed by government bodies

“WE REJECT THE GOVERNMENT’S REPORT SURROUNDING THE KILLINGS. WE DEMAND A CLEAR INVESTIGATION.”

ABBA GADAA GOBANA HOLA, ABBA GADAA OF THE TULAMA AND SECRETARY OF ABBA GADAA UNION

He also recalled a meeting the Abba Gadaa union held in Adama with officials from the Oromia regional government including the deputy president of Oromia regional state, Awelu Abdo and officials from Oromia tourism bureau where the union condemned the killing of Karrayyu Abba Gadaas. “There are contradicting reports coming out, preventing the union from identifying the perpetrators while different parties trading blames,” he said. 

Moreover, Roba discussed the dire situation that the Karrayyu community is in. He stated that movement has been restricted since the killing of the Abba Gadaas on December 1, discontinuing market activities and preventing the pastoralist community from traveling in search of water and cattle feed. “The people have been subject to harassment and indiscriminate mass imprisonment. Whoever is spotted in urban areas to seek health care or buy goods is beaten and taken to jail.” While putting the number as high as 200 people including women and the elderly, Roba described the conditions of their detention, “It is impossible to visit or bring food to the detainees. A lot of people don’t know whether their loved ones are dead or alive.”

Ethiopian authorities arrested Oromia News Network journalist Dessu Dulla and his colleague Bikila Amenu in Addis Ababa, the capital, on November 18. As of late 2021, they were both detained in a police station in the town of Sebata.

 

Dessu is the editor-in-chief of the Oromia News Network, a YouTube- and Facebook-based broadcaster, according to previous reporting by CPJ and two people familiar with his work who spoke to CPJ via messaging app on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

Dessu also hosts “Under the Shadow of Democracy,” a weekly ONN program focused on the threats and opportunities of democracy in Ethiopia and Oromia regional state, and he appears as a guest on the broadcaster’s other programs, according to CPJ’s review of the outlet.

On November 18, Bikila and Dessu failed to arrive for work as expected, and were initially thought to be on an unannounced assignment, according to one of those people who spoke to CPJ, who also works at ONN.

The Oromia Media Network, another privately owned broadcaster that covers Oromia, later reported that Bikila had been arrested. The colleague who spoke to CPJ said that ONN learned the two journalists were detained at a police station in Sebata, a town in the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa that is under the jurisdiction of the Oromia regional government.

Though some of the journalists’ friends were able to visit the Sebata police station in late November, Bikila and Dessu were not allowed to speak with them, according to the two people who spoke to CPJ.

Those people said that they did not believe the two journalists had been brought before any court as of late November. The cause of their arrest was unclear, but the colleague said they thought Bikila and Dessu were targeted for their work, given authorities’ history of arresting ONN journalists. That person also said the two journalists could have been swept up in a mass arrest as a result of the recently declared state of emergency. 

Amid an escalating civil war in northern Ethiopia, the federal government declared a nationwide state of emergency on November 2, according to media reports and the state of emergency proclamation. The declaration empowered security officers to detain individuals suspected of links to “terrorist organizations” without producing them in court.

At least 1,000 people were arrested following the declaration of the state of emergency, according to a November 16 statement by Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Under previous states of emergency in Ethiopia, journalists were repeatedly arrested and faced restrictions on their work, as CPJ has documented.

Bikila was previously arrested alongside former colleagues from Sagalee Bilisummaa Oromo (SBO), the media wing of the Oromo Liberation Front opposition party, and was freed after several weeks without charge, as CPJ documented at the time. Police in Oromia previously arrested Dessu alongside his colleagues in March 2020 and ignored court orders to release them.

Several ONN journalists, including Dessu, were arrested again in September 2020, while they were recording a program at an Addis Ababa hotel, and were detained for two weeks without charge, according to media reports. 

Oromia regional state Police Commissioner Arasa Merdasa told CPJ in a phone interview in November that he was not aware of Bikila and Dessu ’s detentions and promised to investigate.

Getachew Balcha, the Oromia regional state communication bureau head, did not respond to CPJ’s phone calls in late November 2021.