TPLF’S Long Term Political Objective and Its dreadful Impact For Oromos

By Riyad B. Ebrahim 

Oromo elders have been practicing Gadaa system for well over 500 years.  Social scientists of diverse backgrounds at different times have studied the Gadaa system. Many of them have testified that it is uniquely democratic. The above three sentences partially clears that our ancestors were ruling our land democratically since long time back. Starting from 70’s we have been struggling to get back that right of we had lost under Menelik’s Empire, it was self-determination of Oromoiyyaa. Indeed, we shall get back our right for two main reasons, firstly we are capable of ruling our land, secondly it’s our natural right to posses and govern our land. The young generation has to show its super effort to secure those rights by what ever it takes. ‘’We should say enough for once again!’’ TPLF should not rule our land for the coming years in the presence of us.

The latest event of ethnic cleansing that is being  perpetrated against the Oromos in Eastern Hararge zone is a continuation of a grand design of the TPLF-led regime of Ethiopia to undercut the demographic weight of the Oromo and the territorial expanse of Oromiyyaa.  This design, one which its leaders in many occasions in such obvious boldness have spoken about, is framed to fulfill its long-term political and economic objectives.

The obvious political objective of the TPLF-led regime of Ethiopia is primarily the restraint of the Oromo political life. The regime with a minority constituent base is always scared of the Oromo population size with its potential political weight. To overcome this fear and sense of insecurity, it has been determined to maintain its political hegemony and keep Oromiya under its occupation by all what it takes. To achieve their devilish political interest they had to go through different mechanisms .One of among their methods is preying young Oromo generation who are vibrant and insuperable in political stage.  Frankly TPLF have chosen to squeeze our political knowledge superiority by using their aggressive power. As we still see they are exercising their power by carrying out worst actions like Imprisoning, torturing, killing, chasing of Oromo patriots.

With the intent of ethnic cleansing, the TPLF has directly launched a silent war on the Oromo people over the years. However, such a war meant to extinct a community of people has often been masked under the heading of “human rights violation”. In effect, what the TPLF has been and is still carrying out on the Oromo nation should be taken as a designed action of ethnic cleansing. Its actions that clearly attest to this fact are many.  Other actions of the TPLF have violated the very existence of Oromo communities during its rule. Man-made famines it help created resulted in starvation that took heavy tolls in life in many parts of Oromiya and most notably in Borena, Hararge, and  Arsi that the international media once referred to it as ‘green famines’. Its barbaric act of environmental terrorism has equally brought about destruction of ecosystems and exacted an inordinate number of human lives and loss of habitats for rare flora and fauna. Suffice to mention here two notorious cases that illustrate the TPLF’s acts of brutality on the environmental resources of Oromiya: The blazing and decimation of the forests in Bale and most recently in Iluu Abbaa Boora. The immediate impact of this act on the present generation of the affected communities is enormous. Furthermore, looking at this heinous crime of the TPLF from a larger scope, it is conceivable that such a destruction of ecosystems would have far-reaching implications on generations to come. It would undoubtedly check the population growth of the communities, a desired result that the TPLF leaders are hoping to secure.

Despite relentlessly working at its silent ethnic cleansing grand plan over the last two decades, the demographic weight of the Oromo people has still remained upsetting for the TPLF led-regime.

For the TPLF regime, pitting one ethnic group against another has served as a political survival means for so long. It would continue using this wild political card for as long as it is in power. Should all ethnic groups who have lived in harmony side by side for millenniums and shared a common political history fail to see its divide and conquer policy and rise up in unison and challenge it, the policy will continue serving its purpose. This would mean all oppressed ethnic groups will remain prey of this parasitic regime.

For at least two decades, genocidal massacres against Oromo have been framed that way in order to cover-up the deliberate effort by TPLF elites to either reduce Oromo by attrition to a minority population or to destroy them fully so that Tigireans can take over Oromia and its resources. That is their long-term plan.

With absolute military, economic and diplomatic powers, Tigirean elites have ever been emboldened to destroy the Oromo nationality and its material, cultural and intellectual properties. They are accountable to no one–not to their laws, not to international law and not to moral principles. TPLF elites’ arrogance is becoming limitless, soaring. While they engage in genocidal activities in Oromia, the international community has afforded them the complete silence they so want. However, the human and material destruction caused by Tigire elites in Oromia is equivalent crisis to Syria and Darfur. Although, we should have to get limited interference of international community to calm current genocidal deeds of TPLF. We shouldn’t wait their help, we have to strengthen our struggle as much as we can . I will conclude this short article with Martin Luther king saying   ‘’freedom is never voluntarily given by oppressor, it must be demanded by oppressed ‘’.

Oromiyyaa for Oromos !!

Riyad B. Ebrahim

=>bilisummaa

In Ethiopia, more land grabs, more indigenous people pushed out

A journalist’s visit to South Omo, where rights groups say police have raped women and otherwise pressured locals to leave an area tagged to become a huge sugar plantation, was quickly curtailed by authorities.

By Will Davison | September 16, 2013

HAILEWUHA VILLAGE, SOUTH OMO, ETHIOPIA

(Christian Science Monitor) — As night wore on in a remote valley in southern Ethiopia, one policeman dozed and another watched a DVD comedy on a battery-powered laptop.

Close by, in a clutch of thorn trees and grass huts, an ethnic Mursi man tried to explain to outsiders why he is so concerned for his people, who have lived here as semi-nomads for generations but may soon be evicted to make way for a giant sugar plantation.

“We Mursi [people] do not accept this ambitious government ideology,” the man said of an official state plan to house them in new villages in exchange for their compliant departure. He is speaking in the village of Hailewuha, his face lit by flashlight. Cattle shuffle and grunt nearby.

“What we want is to use our own traditional way of cultivation,” he says.

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Ethiopian officials say the Mursi, like a growing number of ethnic or tribal groups in Ethiopia, are voluntarily moving out of their ancient lands; human rights groups say this is untrue.

The ongoing controversy is not new in Ethiopia, and “land grabs” by governments for lucrative leasing deals have become a story across the continent.

For example, in Ethiopia’s lush Gambella region, in the western area bordering Sudan, locals have been forcibly relocated to make way for the leasing of farms to foreign firms. This year, the World Bank and British aid agencies were swept into controversy over charges they helped fund the relocation including salary payments to local officials involved in the clearing of land.

The Mursi have lived in Omo for centuries. Partly for this reason they get frequent visits by tourists and anthropologists alike. Tall and elaborately decorated, their scarified bodies are daubed with paint and ornamented by hooped earrings and bicep bangles.

But now the Mursi may be those most affected by government operations to overhaul South Omo, an area that officials in Addis Ababa are calling economically and socially backward.

The plan would turn this scrub and savanna into about 700 square miles of state-owned sugar plantations that would in turn require building Ethiopia’s largest irrigation project.

The water to feed the sugar cane year-round is to come from the Omo river, and is made possible by Gibe III, a partly Chinese-funded hydropower dam that may be completed as early as next year. The cane will be processed at some five local factories.

The people of this valley, the Mursi, Bodi, and Karo, some of whom number only a few thousand, would need to reduce their cattle — their most prized possessions. Then many if not all will move into enlarged permanent villages.

Controlling the flow of the river will mean the end of an annual flood that makes fertile a strip of land for crops once the seasonal waters recede. An ongoing attempt to control Mursi traditions now means that at public meetings, state authorities implore the group to end “very bad” cultural practices like stick fighting and their characteristic lip-plates.

To be sure, Ethiopian authorities promise new jobs, public services, and plenty of irrigation for every Omo household that agrees to move out.

But this is not the view of international human rights groups who claim that Ethiopia is broadly and constantly harming locals as part of an authoritarian model of development.

In the most recent salvo, the Oakland Institute accused the state of using killings, beatings, and rapes as methods of forcing South Omo residents to accept the sugar cane projects. The California-based advocacy group also accused Western aid agencies and some US and British officials of covering up evidence of the abuses they heard about on research missions.

Instead of investigating claims made by Survival International, Human Rights Watch, and the Oakland Institute, Ethiopian authorities smear them as anti-development.

These groups help “drag Ethiopia back to the Stone Age,” is how the prime minister’s spokesperson, Getachew Reda, recently described Oakland’s agenda.

“We have a scar from them [critics],” says the chief administrator of South Omo, Molloka Wubneh Toricha, about the activists and journalists who make the 400 mile journey from Addis Ababa to the Kenya-border area, hoping to monitor developments. “They try and blacken our image.”

Yet in the single nighttime interview the Monitor was able to conduct with the Mursi, the criticism of the rights groups were echoed: “The government uses our ignorance and backwardness to control us,” said the Mursi man. “They force us to do farming…. Those who have been in the bush shall settle together in common village and be brothers. But our leaders do not accept this.”

It is impossible to verify whether these comments reflect the community’s opinion since officials and police prevented further inquiries by reporters in a trip there in August.

While regional officials at first permitted access to the Mursi, a few hours later, the administration backtracked.

Reporters on an independent visit were forced to camp next to the Hailewuha police station. A security commander regularly called in on a shortwave radio to check that the journalists were still corralled. Senior regional police arrived the next morning to escort them back to the regional capital, Jinka.

Later, apologetic officials in Jinka all had the same explanation: there had been a “misunderstanding.”

Yet rather than a genuine mix-up, the obstruction seemed to stem from a basic mistrust of outside eyes and voices. Mr. Molloka said journalists frequently “divert” the views of residents: “This is what burns our hearts,” he says, “at public meetings we told all the people not to give information to journalists.”

With media muzzled and most civil society initiatives stifled by restrictive laws, there is little independent information about what is happening in South Omo.

Along with the plight of the Mursi, for example, little is known about the impact of as many as 700,000 migrant workers that may move here to work on the sugar cane plantations.

Tewolde Woldemariam, a scholar and senior figure in the ruling party, who left in 2001, and an academician, Fana Gebresenbet, argue that the people, cultures, language and rights of South Omo people, which are theoretically protected by the constitution, are threatened by the new influx of migrant workers.

“Unless the problem is realized and mechanisms to tackle it are put in place, this demographic change puts the cultural and linguistic rights of the indigenous ethnic groups…at great risk,” they wrote for a conference in April at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University. ”If we will be mixed with external people, perhaps we will be exposed to some contagious diseases like HIV/AIDS which we have never experienced in life.”

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The sugar and resettlement projects are well-intended but note little authentic official response about possible adverse effects, they wrote.

“The attitude of lumping everyone who raises the possibility of negative consequence of the development project on the local culture as one who wants to permanently perpetuate the pastoral lifestyle for tourist purposes is rampant at all levels of the region,” they said.

An important failing of trying to engineer and control the future of Omo is that local residents are kept from the design and involvement in policies concerning themselves, is the consensus view of a number of analysts sympathetic to the nomads.

As the Mursi man who we spoke to asked reporters late at night: “The government forces us to accept this project. Do you think this is a good way?”

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