(Nairobi) – Ethiopian authorities have subjected political detainees to torture and other ill-treatment at the main detention center in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian government should take urgent steps to curb illegal practices in the Federal Police Crime Investigation Sector, known as Maekelawi, impartially investigate allegations of abuse, and hold those responsible to account.
The 70-page report, “‘They Want a Confession’: Torture and Ill-Treatment in Ethiopia’s Maekelawi Police Station,” documents serious human rights abuses, unlawful interrogation tactics, and poor detention conditions in Maekelawi since 2010. Those detained in Maekelawi include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies. Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 35 former Maekelawi detainees and their relatives who described how officials had denied their basic needs, tortured, and otherwise mistreated them to extract information and confessions, and refused them access to legal counsel and their relatives.
“Ethiopian authorities right in the heart of the capital regularly use abuse to gather information,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director. “Beatings, torture, and coerced confessions are no way to deal with journalists or the political opposition.”
Since the disputed elections of 2005, Ethiopia has intensified its clampdown on peaceful dissent. Arbitrary arrest and political prosecutions, including under the country’s restrictive anti-terrorism law, have frequently been used against perceived opponents of the government who have been detained and interrogated at Maekelawi.
Maekelawi officials, primarily police investigators, have used various methods of torture and ill-treatment against those in their custody. Former detainees described to Human Rights Watch being slapped, kicked, and beaten with various objects, including sticks and gun butts, primarily during interrogations. Detainees also described being held in painful stress positions for hours upon end, hung from the wall by their wrists, often while being beaten.
A student from Oromiya described being shackled for several months in solitary confinement: “When I wanted to stand up it was hard: I had to use my head, legs, and the walls to stand up. I was still chained when I was eating. They would chain my hands in front of me while I ate and then chain them behind me again afterward.”
Detention conditions in Maekelawi’s four primary detention blocks are poor but vary considerably. In the worst block, known as “Chalama Bet” (dark house in Amharic), former detainees said their access to daylight and to a toilet were severely restricted, and some were held in solitary confinement. Those in “Tawla Bet” (wooden house) complained of limited access to the courtyard outside their cells and flea infestations. Investigators use access to basic needs and facilities to punish or reward detainees for their compliance with their demands, including by transferring them between blocks. Short of release, many yearn to be transferred to the block known as “Sheraton,” named for the international hotel, where movement is freer.
Detainees held in Chalama Bet and Tawla Bet were routinely denied access to their lawyers and relatives, particularly in the initial phase of detention. Several family members told Human Rights Watch that they had visited Maekelawi daily but that officials denied them access to their detained relative until the lengthy investigation phase was over. The absence of a lawyer during interrogations increases the likelihood of abuse, and limits the chances for documenting abuse and obtaining redress.
“Cutting detainees off from their lawyers and relatives not only heightens the risk of abuse but creates enormous pressure to comply with the investigators’ demands,” Lefkow said. “Those in custody in Maekelawi need lawyers at their interrogations and access to their relatives, and should be promptly charged before a judge.”
Human Rights Watch found that investigators used coercive methods, including beatings and threats of violence, to compel detainees to sign statements and confessions. These statements have sometimes been used to exert pressure on people to work with the authorities after they are released, or used as evidence in court.
Martin Schibbye, a Swedish journalist held in Maekelawi in 2011, described the pressure used to extract confessions: “For most people in Maekelawi, they keep them until they give up and confess, you can spend three weeks with no interviews, it’s just waiting for a confession, it’s all built around confession. Police say it will be sorted in court, but nothing will be sorted out in court.”
Detainees have limited channels for redress for ill-treatment. Ethiopia’s courts lack independence, particularly in politically sensitive cases. Despite numerous allegations of abuse by defendants, including people held under the anti-terrorism law, the courts have taken inadequate steps to investigate these allegations or to protect defendants complaining of mistreatment from reprisals.
The courts should be more proactive in responding to complaints of mistreatment, but that can happen only if the government allows the courts to act independently and respects their decisions, Human Rights Watch said.
Ethiopia has severely restricted independent human rights investigation and reporting in recent years, hampering monitoring of detention conditions in Maekelawi. The governmental Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has visited Maekelawi three times since 2010 and publicly raised concerns about incommunicado detention. However, former detainees told Human Rights Watch that Maekelawi officials were present during those visits, preventing them from talking with commission members privately, and questioned their impact.
Improved human rights monitoring in Maekelawi and other detention facilities requires revision of two repressive laws, the Charities and Societies Proclamation and the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. These laws have significantly reduced independent human rights monitoring and removed basic legal safeguards against torture and ill-treatment in detention.
Ethiopia’s constitution and international legal commitments require officials to protect all detainees from mistreatment, and the Ethiopian authorities at all levels have a responsibility both to end abusive practices and to prosecute those responsible. While the Ethiopian government has developed a three-year human rights action plan that acknowledges the need to improve the treatment of detainees, the plan does not address physical abuse and torture; it focuses on capacity building rather than on the concrete political action needed to end the routine abuse.
“More funds and capacity building alone will not end the widespread mistreatment in Maekelawi and other Ethiopian detention centers,” Lefkow said. “Real change demands action from the highest levels of government against all those responsible to root out the underlying culture of impunity.”
=>hrw
Friday, October 18, 2013
East Africa: Ethiopian Dam Plans Spark Regional Tensions
BY REHAB ABD ALMOHSEN, 18 OCTOBER 2013
The project's potential impact on water supplies in Egypt and Sudan is causing friction, finds Rehab Abd Almohsen.
A group of Egyptian academics and experts have declared their opposition to the current plans for the US$4.8 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - on which work has started, and which will be Africa's largest hydroelectric power plant when completed - because they believe it will damage their country.
Egypt's Nile Basin Group was set up to assess the possible threat from the dam, which will lie close to Ethiopia's border with Sudan. Its members warn that the structure could slash the Nile's flow, especially in Egypt and Sudan, which depend on the river's waters.
Haider Yusuf Bakheit, a Sudanese hydrologist, was reported in an article in Infrastructure News as saying that the dam "will hold back nearly one-and-a-half times the average annual flow" of the Blue Nile, one of the Nile's two main tributaries, and "drastically affect the downstream nations' agriculture, electricity and water supply".
"Given the massive size of the dam, it could lose as much as three billion cubic metres of water to evaporation each year," he warned.
Enlarged plans
There was alarm in Egypt when the plan to build the dam was announced in 2011 - with some MPs talking off the record about Egypt's right to retaliate militarily - but much of the opposition now focuses on Ethiopia's decision to increase the size of the reservoir behind the dam.
"The original plan was to create a lake that would store 14 billion cubic metres of water, which is enough to generate electricity, but then the lake's capacity was increased to 74 billion cubic metres," Nader Noureddin, a member of the Nile Basin Group and professor of soil and water resources at Cairo University, tells SciDev.Net. Planned electricity output has also risen, from 5,250 to 6,000 megawatts.
Noureddin says that when Ethiopia decided to increase the height of the primary dam from the 90 metres in the original design to 170 metres, the planners were forced to include a secondary 'saddle dam' to help confine the vast reservoir created by the main dam and prevent stored water from escaping back to the Blue Nile.
"For the first time in history, we find a secondary dam that is four times as large as the original dam, which indicates the aim behind building such a huge dam is not generating electricity, but to use the dam as a way to control Egypt," argues Noureddin. In effect, he says, it would enable Ethiopia to turn off Egypt's water supply.
He favours sticking to the dam's original height and scrapping the idea for the saddle dam.
Rapid water take
Another concern is the speed at which Ethiopia plans to fill the reservoir.
Egyptian experts say that the huge proposed reservoir would normally take up to 20 years to fill, but Ethiopia intends to achieve this in just five years, consuming about a fifth of the Blue Nile's annual flow. That, argues Noureddin, would lead to "catastrophic" impacts on Egypt's agriculture.
Mohamed Mohieddin, a social policy consultant and professor of sociology at Egypt's Menoufia University, and a member of the three-country committee that is negotiating the project's next steps, suggests asking Ethiopia to extend the time allowed to fill the main dam by five or six years.
Through the committee, Egypt would be a partner in the dam's operations and have a say in how the water is released, he tells SciDev.Net.
Tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia, the source of 85 per cent of the Nile's water, rose in June, as soon as Ethiopia started work on diverting some of the river's flow as part of the project.
Aggressive response
Both countries, as well as Sudan, see the project as affecting their national interest, which has sparked tough and aggressive comments from non-scientists.
"Egypt is always sceptical of what Ethiopia might think and do on the Nile," Tatek Kebede, the national coordinator of the Ethiopian National Youth Coalition on Climate Change, tells SciDev.Net.
He says Ethiopia is advancing economically and would not allow Egypt's diplomatic and even military pressures to deter its development ambitions, of which the dam is part.
Ethiopia's national electricity corporation has said potential buyers of electricity from the dam, scheduled for completion in 2018, include Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and maybe even Egypt.
An Ethiopian ecologist, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, tells SciDev.Net that, since construction was nearly a quarter complete, "it would be good to find common ground and it would be good for the Egyptian side to deal with their concerns by working closely with the Ethiopian government and maybe even finding a way to benefit from it".
But Noureddin blames the Ethiopian government for "raising the hope of its people to a very high level", making it hard to compromise for fear of appearing weak.
Earlier this month, Ethiopia's prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, attempted to defuse tensions by emphasising the importance of good relations with Egypt. He described the dam as a common resource that will benefit all three countries.
But with passions still running high, Ana Elisa Cascão, a programme manager at policy organisation the Stockholm International Water Institute, believes cooperation is the only solution.
"The only hope for Egypt and Sudan is to have a share in the dam by funding it, and to cooperate with Ethiopia to jointly manage the dam," she tells SciDev.Net.
The next step in this unfolding story is a meeting of the Ethiopia-Sudan-Egypt dam committee. But even that is caught up in national and regional politics: it was due to meet on 20 October but now - due to recent rioting in Sudan over the lifting of fuel subsidies - all that has been agreed is that it will take place at some point in the next few weeks.
Rehab Abd Almohsen currently holds an IDRC/SciDev.Net science journalism internship award.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Judge Woldemechael Meshesha’s Recent Judgement on Tesfaye Gebreab’s writings: Desperate Out of Touch Outcry
By Abbaa Malkaa | October 16, 2013
Having read the long story written by Judge Woldemicheal, about Tesfaye’s work, past and present, I came to the conclusion that it is worth replying in brief terms. I am forced to do this firstly because I am an Oromo person whose pain is addressed in the very eloquent terms of this marvellous author, Tesfaye Gebreab. So I feel obliged to write this response. I will try to tell facts and ask relevant questions all of which shall be meant to help us understand some facts as to who these authors are. In fact it would be a misnomer to call Judge Wolde an author, because what he wrote this time around is more of a loud shout, it didn’t convey any coherent message even couldn’t make sensible meaning. It looks a child’s painting, which is disorderly, messy but full of colour. So in this short message to him and his co-authors I would like to say that I am treating Judge Woldemichael as a judge though he chose to delve in to an area that doesn’t belong to him as a judge. I mean there was no point for him to mix literature with legal argument and legal theories with story telling. In fact the legal theories, which he used to beautify his story, reflected how poor level of understanding of how those theories should be applied in real life.
In short, despite his effort to use some flashy words such as presumption of innocence and his attempt to dramatize how he managed to apply this principle in his professional life Judge Wolde in fact revealed in his article posted on Ethioimedia was nothing more than a cry for attention. Like a child does when they want something he said the same thing again and again as a poor deprived child do. Judge Wolde grabbed few points from here and there and tried to make his point, but failed to make any sensible point, even by using his Amharic words after all. To make his story spicy he brought in the presumption of innocence and tortured Oromos but his story turned out to be an old Abyssinian tale-tale as usual. He begun by telling the extent to which he was disgusted by the alleged stroy of Oromos as televised by TPLF media on ETV that as OLF soldiers they plotted to bomb some part of the capital city. According to him, he trusted the broadcasters right away and was disgusted by the intention of those culprits. According to his own explanation, he was foolish enough to be fooled by what he heard; that he believed it completely. Despite what he tells us about his knowledge about presumption of innocence his minds worked otherwise when it comes to Oromos’.
New global index exposes 'modern slavery' worldwide
The index included victims of human trafficking and forced labour
Nearly 30 million people around the world are living as slaves, according to a new index ranking 162 countries.
The Global Slavery Index 2013 says India has the highest number of people living in conditions of slavery at 14 million.
But Mauritania has the highest proportional figure with about 4% of its population enslaved.
The report's authors hope it will help governments tackle what they call a "hidden crime".
'Better measure'
The index was compiled by Australian-based rights organisation Walk Free Foundationusing a definition of modern slavery that includes debt bondage, forced marriage and human trafficking.
"A lot of governments won't like hearing what we have to say," WFF chief executive Nick Grono told the French news agency Agence France-Presse.
"Those governments that want to engage with us, we will be very open to engaging and looking at ways in which we can better measure the issue of modern slavery."
The organisation's estimate of 29.8 million slaves worldwide is higher than other attempts to quantify modern slavery. The International Labour Organisationestimates that almost 21 million people are victims of forced labour.
India, China, Pakistan and Nigeria have the highest numbers of people enslaved, the charity said.
Together with five other countries, they account for three-quarters of the total estimated number of people in modern slavery worldwide.
The report said India's ranking was mostly due to the exploitation of Indians citizens within the country itself.
While the highest proportion of slaves is in Mauritania, with many people inheriting slave status from their ancestors, Haiti is second in the index and Pakistan is third.
The new survey has the backing of world figures including former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Mrs Clinton said that although the index was not perfect, it provided a starting point, according to the Associated Press.
"I urge leaders around the world to view this index as a call to action, and to stay focused on the work of responding to this crime."
=>bbc
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Commemorating 50 Years of Oromo Struggle led by General Waqo Gutu
by Mohammed Ademo(OPride) – In early 1960s, Oromo dissidents from the Bale province in southeastern Ethiopia organized a small band of combatants to end the repressive and exploitative Amhara settler rule and the unscrupulous expropriation of Oromo land by absentee landlords.
It proved to be one of the biggest landmarks in Oromo people’s struggle for freedom and equality.
“God created us, man enslaved us, God did not create this man free and us slaves,” one of the pioneers, Colonel Hussein Bune Darara, once told a local journalist explaining the movement’s purpose. “It is to uproot this injustice that we embarked on the struggle for freedom.”
As noted in Ethiopia: Power and Protest by Gebru Tareke, the Bale province was only incorporated into the Ethiopian empire "in the late 188os after a brutal campaign mainly directed against the Awetu and Rayitu of Arsi Oromol clan.” Even then, Tareke contends that there was little cross-cultural contact between the chauvinistic Amhara-christian northerners and the predominantly Muslim Bale Oromos.
The launch of Bale uprising, in early 1960s, by revolutionary Oromo fighters under the leadership of General Waqo Gutu Usu marks a major turning point. It signifies the beginning of a coordinated Oromo armed resistance to unshackle the masses from Ethiopia’s feudalist and absolutist rule, according to Hangasu Waqo Lugo, 58, who joined the movement at a tender age of 8.
This extraordinary decade – otherwise known as the Sixties – saw tremendous social transformation among the broader Oromo populace including the founding of the Macha Tulama Association, the birth of Afran Qallo musical troupe, and severaldisconnected resistance movements around Oromia, the Oromo homeland.
The methods may be different but the grievances that spurred Oromo resistance in various locales were the same: to see an end to the feudal lordship which had usurped their land and dispossessed the peasantry. The Oromo, Ethiopia’s single largest ethnic group, make up about 50 percent of 92 million Ethiopian population.
To commemorate the 50th year of this movement’s beginning and its far reaching legacy, Oromo activists are organizing a grand event on Oct. 20 at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minn. While many of the movement’s pioneers, including its leaders General Waqo Gutu, Haji Adam Jilo Webo, Musa Bati and countless others have passed away, next week’s event is expected to feature, for the very first time, prominent revolutionaries like Colonel Aliyi Chiri who ignited the flame of Oromo emancipation.
A watershed event in the history of Oromo struggle, the Bale Oromo movement began with a simply motto: to uproot injustice for once and all, or raise a generation of revolutionaries to fight on. The rallying cry, which captured the imagination of a whole generation, was the seizure of farmland back from feudal landholders and making the state cognizant of the masses growing social and political discontents.
The start of a guerilla warfare against a heavily armed feudal state did not have an auspicious start per se. First, this was unthinkable considering the fact that Haile Selassie was regarded as Elect of God and the whole country prostrate before him – as if in worship – let alone challenge his regime with a poorly equipped band of a peasant army. Second, the largely uneducated militants did not have access to modern weapons or military training. Rooted in local grievances, the movement weathered early setbacks to become one of the long drawn-out armed confrontations in Ethiopia.
Historical accounts differ, but sometime in the early 1960s, Waqo Gutu and few companions embarked on a mission to neighboring Somalia to acquire military training and modern weapons. Shortly after, they returned to Madda Walabuu, about 600kms south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to militarily challenge feudal landlords. Incidentally, this makes Madda Walabuu – the cradle of Oromo civilization – also the birthplace of modern Oromo armed resistance.
The Oromo rebels, even if poorly trained, registered early momentous victories against Haile Selassie's imperial army, the largest in all of sub-Saharan Africa at the time, forcing the regime to redouble its offensive. According to Lugo, one of the organizers of next week’s commemorative event, several subsequent battles took place in Oborso, Madda Walabuu, Welmal, Dayyuu, Cirrii, Hangeetu, Dalloo Bunaa, Bulluq, Harana, Malka Amana, Saweena, Gindhir, Bidiree, Biddime, Shaawwee, Meexxii, Barbaree, Rayitu, and etc.
In one of the landmark battles at Malka Anna near Ganale River in 1963, the Oromo combatants took down two military helicopters using a vintage non-automatic rifle called Dhombir. Hence, the period from 1963 to 1970 is locally known as “Towra/Sowra Dhombir” – the Dhombir war – after the gun used by Oromo fighters. The battle of Dhombir at Malka Anna was critical in that the Oromo rebels were able to capture and take a lot of weapons from the enemy – boosting their defensive capabilities. The band of rebel fighters proved their mantle. Forced to the wall, they fought like lions and to the death to defend their children, wives, and cattle.
Waqo Gutu, the legendary leader of Oromo armed resistance, was born in 1924 near Madda Walabuu, at the village of Odaa. A member of traditional sacred Oromo spiritualists, Qallu, he grew up witnessing the dispossession of Oromo farmers, the heavy taxation paid to the state, and the humiliation of Oromo people as second-class citizens in their own homeland. By custom, a Qallu was not supposed to raise arms. His doing so spoke of the depth of grievance and desperation.
One key aspect of this movement absent from the mainstream Oromo literature is the movement’s broad support base among the Borana, Guji, Sidama, and Somali pastoralists. At the height of this movement, the Oromo fighters controlled or made vast swaths of land in Bale and Sidamo provinces virtually ungovernable.
By the end of that extraordinary decade, unable to squash this generational revolt, Haile Selassie sought to personally negotiate an armistice to end the Bale Oromo uprising. In 1969, Somalia cut off military aid for the rebels making it difficult to sustain the campaigns. A year later, the emperor travelled to Bale to sign a truce with the rebels where he also appointed two Oromo generals Wolde Selassie Baraka and Jagama Kello as provincial governor and military commander to pacify Oromo nationalist sentiments.
The Bale Oromo uprising along with other disparate upheavals elsewhere in the country, no less the student protests of 1960s, served as “the prelude to the 1974 revolution which swept away altogether monarchical absolutism and feudalism,” according to Tareke. The Dergue regime, which inherited the emperor’s rule by promising social economic and political changes, largely maintained the the imperial ways and structures of the Ethiopian state. While the rest of Africa saw a radical political reformation in 1970s, with almost all countries gaining independence from their European colonial masters, the marginalized colonial subjects in Ethiopia saw little change.
Oromo revolutionaries would only have a window dressing, including the appointment of few governors who spoke Afan Oromo and the rural land proclamation of 1975 which sought to redistribute the land formerly held by feudal officialdom to the peasants. Absent satisfactory political changes, Waqo and his comrades reignited the torch of their struggle against autocratic state, structural and otherwise.
The launch of Bale uprising, in early 1960s, by revolutionary Oromo fighters under the leadership of General Waqo Gutu Usu marks a major turning point. It signifies the beginning of a coordinated Oromo armed resistance to unshackle the masses from Ethiopia’s feudalist and absolutist rule, according to Hangasu Waqo Lugo, 58, who joined the movement at a tender age of 8.
This extraordinary decade – otherwise known as the Sixties – saw tremendous social transformation among the broader Oromo populace including the founding of the Macha Tulama Association, the birth of Afran Qallo musical troupe, and severaldisconnected resistance movements around Oromia, the Oromo homeland.
The methods may be different but the grievances that spurred Oromo resistance in various locales were the same: to see an end to the feudal lordship which had usurped their land and dispossessed the peasantry. The Oromo, Ethiopia’s single largest ethnic group, make up about 50 percent of 92 million Ethiopian population.
To commemorate the 50th year of this movement’s beginning and its far reaching legacy, Oromo activists are organizing a grand event on Oct. 20 at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minn. While many of the movement’s pioneers, including its leaders General Waqo Gutu, Haji Adam Jilo Webo, Musa Bati and countless others have passed away, next week’s event is expected to feature, for the very first time, prominent revolutionaries like Colonel Aliyi Chiri who ignited the flame of Oromo emancipation.
A watershed event in the history of Oromo struggle, the Bale Oromo movement began with a simply motto: to uproot injustice for once and all, or raise a generation of revolutionaries to fight on. The rallying cry, which captured the imagination of a whole generation, was the seizure of farmland back from feudal landholders and making the state cognizant of the masses growing social and political discontents.
The start of a guerilla warfare against a heavily armed feudal state did not have an auspicious start per se. First, this was unthinkable considering the fact that Haile Selassie was regarded as Elect of God and the whole country prostrate before him – as if in worship – let alone challenge his regime with a poorly equipped band of a peasant army. Second, the largely uneducated militants did not have access to modern weapons or military training. Rooted in local grievances, the movement weathered early setbacks to become one of the long drawn-out armed confrontations in Ethiopia.
Historical accounts differ, but sometime in the early 1960s, Waqo Gutu and few companions embarked on a mission to neighboring Somalia to acquire military training and modern weapons. Shortly after, they returned to Madda Walabuu, about 600kms south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to militarily challenge feudal landlords. Incidentally, this makes Madda Walabuu – the cradle of Oromo civilization – also the birthplace of modern Oromo armed resistance.
The Oromo rebels, even if poorly trained, registered early momentous victories against Haile Selassie's imperial army, the largest in all of sub-Saharan Africa at the time, forcing the regime to redouble its offensive. According to Lugo, one of the organizers of next week’s commemorative event, several subsequent battles took place in Oborso, Madda Walabuu, Welmal, Dayyuu, Cirrii, Hangeetu, Dalloo Bunaa, Bulluq, Harana, Malka Amana, Saweena, Gindhir, Bidiree, Biddime, Shaawwee, Meexxii, Barbaree, Rayitu, and etc.
In one of the landmark battles at Malka Anna near Ganale River in 1963, the Oromo combatants took down two military helicopters using a vintage non-automatic rifle called Dhombir. Hence, the period from 1963 to 1970 is locally known as “Towra/Sowra Dhombir” – the Dhombir war – after the gun used by Oromo fighters. The battle of Dhombir at Malka Anna was critical in that the Oromo rebels were able to capture and take a lot of weapons from the enemy – boosting their defensive capabilities. The band of rebel fighters proved their mantle. Forced to the wall, they fought like lions and to the death to defend their children, wives, and cattle.
Waqo Gutu, the legendary leader of Oromo armed resistance, was born in 1924 near Madda Walabuu, at the village of Odaa. A member of traditional sacred Oromo spiritualists, Qallu, he grew up witnessing the dispossession of Oromo farmers, the heavy taxation paid to the state, and the humiliation of Oromo people as second-class citizens in their own homeland. By custom, a Qallu was not supposed to raise arms. His doing so spoke of the depth of grievance and desperation.One key aspect of this movement absent from the mainstream Oromo literature is the movement’s broad support base among the Borana, Guji, Sidama, and Somali pastoralists. At the height of this movement, the Oromo fighters controlled or made vast swaths of land in Bale and Sidamo provinces virtually ungovernable.
By the end of that extraordinary decade, unable to squash this generational revolt, Haile Selassie sought to personally negotiate an armistice to end the Bale Oromo uprising. In 1969, Somalia cut off military aid for the rebels making it difficult to sustain the campaigns. A year later, the emperor travelled to Bale to sign a truce with the rebels where he also appointed two Oromo generals Wolde Selassie Baraka and Jagama Kello as provincial governor and military commander to pacify Oromo nationalist sentiments.
The Bale Oromo uprising along with other disparate upheavals elsewhere in the country, no less the student protests of 1960s, served as “the prelude to the 1974 revolution which swept away altogether monarchical absolutism and feudalism,” according to Tareke. The Dergue regime, which inherited the emperor’s rule by promising social economic and political changes, largely maintained the the imperial ways and structures of the Ethiopian state. While the rest of Africa saw a radical political reformation in 1970s, with almost all countries gaining independence from their European colonial masters, the marginalized colonial subjects in Ethiopia saw little change.
Oromo revolutionaries would only have a window dressing, including the appointment of few governors who spoke Afan Oromo and the rural land proclamation of 1975 which sought to redistribute the land formerly held by feudal officialdom to the peasants. Absent satisfactory political changes, Waqo and his comrades reignited the torch of their struggle against autocratic state, structural and otherwise.
Five decades later, the Oromo movement have achieved several irreversible gains: the adoption of Afan Oromo as a working language in Oromia; a state of Oromia with clearly marked borders; the Oromo today doesn’t have to pay hefty prices for court interpreters; the Oromo culture and art is being revitalised anew.
In spite of these achievements, the Oromo remain the most persecuted political group in Ethiopia. For the victories already won and unwon battles that require a steadfast commitment of today’s youth – the ever resourceful and indomitable Qubee generation – the Bale Oromo movement shines as a bright example of Oromo resistance against political oppression, cultural subjugation, and economic exploitation.
“Waqo passed away while fighting the good fight,” said Oromo scholar, Dr. Gamachu Magarsa speaking at General Waqo’s funeral in 2006. “Let alone while he was alive, Waqo brings people (of different stripes) together even in his death; may a generation that would inherit his legacy be one that brings people together.”
In spite of these achievements, the Oromo remain the most persecuted political group in Ethiopia. For the victories already won and unwon battles that require a steadfast commitment of today’s youth – the ever resourceful and indomitable Qubee generation – the Bale Oromo movement shines as a bright example of Oromo resistance against political oppression, cultural subjugation, and economic exploitation.
“Waqo passed away while fighting the good fight,” said Oromo scholar, Dr. Gamachu Magarsa speaking at General Waqo’s funeral in 2006. “Let alone while he was alive, Waqo brings people (of different stripes) together even in his death; may a generation that would inherit his legacy be one that brings people together.”
For more information about the event see:https://www.facebook.com/goldenjubileewaqogutu
=>opride
A Historic Letter from Ob. Mamo Mazamir of the Macha-Tulama Association to the Oromo Struggle for Freedom Led by Gen. Waqo Gutu
The following is an excerpt from a letter, written on September 10, 1965, by Ob. Mamo Mazamir of the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association to the leaders of the Oromo Struggle for Freedom in Bale (1963-70). The commemoration of the semi-centennial anniversary of the Oromo Struggle for Freedom led by Gen. Waqo Gutu will be held in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the St. Thomas University on Saturday, October 20, 2013.
“The history of mankind shows that a people who rise in the struggle for freedom and independence, in defiance of death, is always victorious … The life and death struggle of the oppressed masses in the Ethiopian Empire against the hegemony of the Amhara … is a sacred liberation struggle of millions of oppressed and humiliated people … That struggle will surely intensity in the course of time, as the oppressed people’s organizational means and consciousness become deeply rooted. As you learnt in our discussions, the Macha and Tulama democratic movements, which was created to raise the consciousness of the Oromo people, is the present concrete situation working day and night to put in hand coordination activities that are within our reach. In fact, the militant members are working now on the means of organizing a nationwide people’s movement, which is based on realizing the aspirations of the Oromo people as a whole. Please keep up your heroic armed struggle, defending every inch of the Oromo Nation to the last drop of your blood. the decisive war of resistance you are conducting in Bale will … be victorious. We shall continue doing everything we can to keep in touch with you.”
- Source: “Oromo Nationalism and the Ethiopian Discourse” (1998)
=>gadaa
Ethiopia arrests suspected bomb plotters
October 16, 2013 (ADDIS ABABA) – Ethiopia has arrested three suspects in connection with Sunday’s bomb blast in which two people were killed.
A police source told Sudan Tribune that the bomb went off while the two were making it to carry out a terror attack against soccer fans gathered to watch a world cup qualifier football match.
“The victims were Somali nationals who entered the country illegally” the police said on Tuesday.
The incident happened in Bole district near the country’s international Airport.
It is not clear if the incident and the arrested suspects are linked with Al-Qaida allied militant group, Al Shabaab.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the bomb blast.
After Al- shabbab carried out an attack on Kenya last month, Ethiopian opposition groups cautioned that Ethiopia could come under similar attack by the group unless it pulls its troops out of Somalia.
Earlier this month, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Deslaegn said that Ethiopia won’t pull out of Somalia until peace and security is secured in the country.
Last month a Spokesperson for the ministry of Foreign affairs, Dina Mufti told Sudan Tribune that Al shabaab does not pose any imminent threat to the country.
“Our defense force and intelligence is excellent enough to defend their country and there is no reason the public should be worried” he said.
Al shabaab has been threatening to attack Ethiopia.
Ethiopia withdrew its troops from Somalia in 2009 but redeployed in 2011 and has since then been fighting al Shabaab alongside African Union forces.
(ST)
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