Saturday, June 7, 2014

THE TORTURE AND BRUTAL MURDER OF ALSAN HASSEN BY ETHIOPIAN POLICE WILL SHOCK YOUR CONSCIENCE

alsanHassan(OPride) A 21-year old Oromo student, Nuredin Hasen, who was abducted from Haromaya University late last month and held incommunicado at undisclosed location, died earlier this month from a brutal torture he endured while in police custody, family sources said.

Members of the federal and Oromia state police nubbed Hassen (who is also known by Alsan Hassen) and 12 other students on May 27 in a renewed crackdown on Oromo students. Friends were not told the reason for the arrests nor where the detainees were taken.
Born and raised in Bakko Tibbe district of West Shawa zone, Alsan, who lost both of his parents at a young age, was raised by his grandmother.
The harrowing circumstances of his death should shock everyone's conscience. But it also underscores the inhumane and cruel treatment of Oromo activists by Ethiopian security forces.
According to family sources, on June 1, a police officer in Dire Dawa called his counterpart at West Shewa Zone Police Bureau in Ambo and informed him that Alsan “killed himself” while in prison. The officer requested the local police to tell Alsan's family to pick up his body from Menelik Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital.
The West Shewa zone police relayed the message to the district police station in Bakko Tibbe and the latter delivered the message to Alsan’s family. Three family members then rushed to the capital to collect the corpse of a bright young man they had sent off, far from home, so that he can get a decent shot at college education.
Upon arrival, the hospital staff told the family to search for his body from among 30 to 40 corpse’s kept in a large room. According to our sources, what they saw next was beyond the realm of anyone's imagination. The details are too gruesome to even describe.
They found their beloved son badly tortured, his face disfigured and barely recognizable. His throat was slit leaving only the muscles and bones at the back of his neck connecting his head to the rest of the body. There were large cuts along his eyelids, right below the eyebrows as if someone had tried to remove his eyes. There were multiple wounds all over his face and head. Both of his arms were broken between his wrists and his elbows.
It appeared as if the federal forces employed all forms of inhumane torture tactics, leaving parts of his body severely damaged and disjointed. The family could not grasp the cruelty of the mutilation carried upon an innocent college student.
Their ordeal to recover Alsan's body did not end there either. Once the body was identified, the federal police officer who brought the body from Harar told the family to pay 10,000 birr (roughly $500) to cover the cost of transportation the government incurred. They were informed that the body will not be released unless the money is paid in full.
The family did not have the money, nor were they prepared for the unexpected tragedy. After friends and relatives raised the requested sum to cover his torturers costs, Alsan's body was transported to Bakko Tibbe, where he was laid to rest on June 2. There was little doubt that Alsan was murdered while in detention, but in police state Ethiopia, the family may never even know the full details of what happened to their son, much less seek justice.
In an increasingly repressive Ethiopian state, being an Oromo itself is in essence becoming a crime. To say the gruesome circumstances surrounding Alsan's death is heart-wrenching is a gross understatement. But Alsan's story is not atypical. It epitomizes the sheer brutality that many Oromo activists endure in Ethiopia today.
NimonaTilahunOn June 6, another Oromo political prisoner, Nimona Tilahun passed away in police custody. Tilahun, a graduate of Addis Ababa University and former high school teacher, was initially arrested in 2004 along with members of the Macha Tulama Association during widespread protests opposing the relocation of Oromia's seat to Adama. He was released after a year of incarceration and returned to complete his studies, according to reports by Canada-based Radio Afurra Biyya.
Born in 1982, Tilahun was re-arrested in 2011 from his teaching job in Shano, a town in north Shewa about 80kms from Addis Ababa. He was briefly held at Maekelawi prison, known for torturing inmates and denying legal counsel to prisoners. And later transferred between Kaliti, Kilinto and Zuway where he was continuously tortured over the last three years. Tilahun was denied medical treatment despite being terminally ill. His death this week at Black Lion Hospital is the third such known case in the last two years.
On August 23, 2013, a former UNHCR recognized refugee, engineer Tesfahun Chemeda also died  under suspicious circumstances, after being refused medical treatment. In January, a former parliamentary candidate with the opposition Oromo People's Congress from Calanqo, Ahmed Nejash, died of torture while in custody. These are the few names and stories that have been reported. Ethiopia holds an estimated 20 to 30 thousand Oromo political prisoners. Many have been there for more than two decades, and for some of them not even family members know if they are still alive.
While Alsan, Chemeda, Nejash and Tilahun's stories offer a glimpse of the brutality behind Ethiopia's gulags, it is important to remember thousands more face similar heinous abuses everyday.
Since Oromo students began protesting against Addis Ababa's unconstitutional expansion in April, according to eyewitnesses, more than a 100 people have been killed, hundreds wounded and many more unlawfully detained. While a relative calm has returned to university campuses, small-scale peaceful protests continue in many parts of Oromia. Reports are emerging that mass arrests and extrajudicial killings of university students are far more widespread than previously reported. Last month, dozens of students at Jimma, Madawalabu, Adama and Wallaggauniversities were indefinitely dismissed from their education. In addition, an unknown number of students from all Oromia-based colleges are in hiding fearing for their safety if they returned to the schools.
Given the Horn of Africa nation's tight-grip on free press and restrictions on human rights monitoring, in the short run, the Ethiopian security forces will continue to commit egregious crimes with impunity. But the status quo is increasingly tenable. For every Alsan and Tilahun they murder, many more will be at the ready to fight for the cause on which they were martyred. As long repression continues unabated, the struggle for justice and freedom will only be intensified. No amount of torture and inhumane treatment can extinguish the fire that has been sparked.
*The writer, Amane Badhasso, is the president of International Oromo Youth Association, and a political science and legal studies major at Hamline University. Badhatu Ayana is an Oromo rights activist.

Waxabajjii 20, 2014: Waamicha Hiriira Mormii Haawaasa Oromoo Awroopaa Maraaf Brussels

Gadaa.com
Waa’ee Qotee bultoota Oromoo handhuura Oromiyaa irra buqqisuu, qabeenya isa saamuu, ajechaa fi hidhaa barattoota Oromoo irra gahaa jiru mormachuuf jecha, hawaasotni Oromooo biyyoota Awuroppaa jirru gamtaadhaan Hiriira Mormii bahuuf murteesinee jirra.
Haaluma kanaan, qaamotni dhimmi kun nu ilaala jettan hundi yeroo murtessaa kanatti hiriira mormii gamtaa kana irratti argamuun aantummaa saba keessanii akka agarsiiftan kabajaan gaafanna.
Arihatama, saamichaa fi ajechaa sukanessaa saba Oromoo irra gahaa jiru handhuura Awuroppaa kana taate Belgium, magaala Brussels ti argamuun Parlamaa fi angawoota kanatti akka iyyannu karoorfamera.
Kotta saba keenyaaf sagalee haa taanu !!!
Guyyaa: Waxabajjii 20, 2014 (Jimaata) ykn (Friday, June 20, 2014)
Sa’aa: 10:00–13:00
Bakka ka’umsaa: Parlamaa Awuroppa Fuldura
European Parliament, Leopold park
Belliardstraat 125, 1000 Brussels
Koree Qiindesitu Hiriira Mormii Hawaasa Oromoo Awuropaa
Brussels, Belgium
Email: oromoeuprotest@gmail.com

Twitter: @oromoeuprotest
Mobile:
+32 489 367 123 – Mootummaa
+32 466 418 066 – Solan
Tokkummaan Humna!

Ethiopia: Has the Government suspended Mayor of Addis Ababa?

Khartoum (HAN) June 6, 2014. Ethiopian News Opinion By, MINILIK SALSAWI, Breaking News. Abadula Kuma Mayor of Addis Ababa has suspended from any type of activities, Stripped-off their passport and fall under 24 hours surveillance. the ruling party took such radical measure and start to swallow even his own loyalists following the dispute of Adis Ababa master plane expansions. No one knows where to end perhaps it may go further down to the grassroots level. Eradicate all the Network planted by Abadulla and his compatriots for the past two decades is not going to be an easy task with out that “evil genius” who used to manipulate the balance power.
“Those who make peaceful evolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” ~John F. Kennedy

The Tigray ruling party tplf  of 6% that controls over 98% of the military leadership of some of the 90 million Ethiopians from the time it arrived to addis as well as using divide and rule tactics of survival of the minority over the majority will now engage in mobilizing Amhara patriots from corner to corner against Oromos.
That is for the purpose of weakening the Oromo people’s rights, in general as well as in the coming 2015 make believe one party election acrobat, while currently Amara patriots are gleeful and too much over glad, just similar to the bygone time in 2005 election period when the tplf banished Oromia administration office form Addis Ababa to Adama to clear the ground for CUD’s land slide victory that almost swallowed the tplf and its leader from existence on spot, but again now Amara patriots saying “what goes round, comes round” to oromos while they themselves are now living the flowery days in their ususal opinion while waiting for the right occasion and for their turn to be an object of  TPLF’s devious attack that is sure to happen just when the current dust concerning the Addis plan settles down and the Amara jubilation slowly but surely cools down to realities.
Oromo people are asking themselves, Why Oromo region is under military rule?


General Samora Muhammad Yunis said the military ae in Oromo regional state specific area because “of the violence in Bangkok and many parts of the country that resulted in loss of innocent lives and property, [which] was likely to escalate”.
General added: “We ask the Ethiopian public not to panic and to carry on their lives normally.”
A curfew has just been declared some parts of Oromia, so the Ethiopian military is obviously making efforts to make sure there is no immediate response to its announcement.