Silent Forces behind the Addis Ababa Master Plan and the Downside of Article 49 (5) of the FDRE Constitution

By Iddoosaa Ejjetaa

Why Article 49 (5) of the FDRE Constitution was suspended for the last 20 years?

TPLF is not the only force who is pushing the Master Plan. The neo-neftenyas, neo-liberals (pretenders of individual right, borderless, diversity blinded), those who have been against multinational federalism or ethnic based federalism are silent forces behind the Addis Ababa Master Plan, which is basically a land grabbing policy disguised as integrated development plan. Although the TPLF is at forefront who is spinning the gear, this should not turn our eyes blind and ears deaf to the mischievous behavior of the neo-neftenyas or pro-Menilk Addis Ababa or pro-unitary state groups. They are one of the silent forces behind the Addis Ababa expansion and the suspension or delay of Article 49 (5) of the FDRE Constitution (1995), which provided special benefits for the State of Oromiyaa. Recently, some power-seeking diaspora based individuals as usual crying for political alliance with the old masters who had sworn to crash whenever possible the Oromo aspiration for self-determination, Oromo identity and the State of Oromiyaa. We should also say NO to such undesirable moves, but yes to the Peoples’ Alliance.

Finfinneen lafaa fi laffee Oromoo ti. Oromiyaan lafaa fi laffee Oromoo ti. Lafaa fi laffee malee hindhabataani, jedha Oromoon.

Silent forces are visible through their work. For example, the architect of the plans was based on the lessons learned from France, Lyon city. France is a unitary state who speak just French language, which means homogenous in its culture and language. But Ethiopia has a federal system of government, at least in principle. If so why? My short answer would be a dream for Menlik of Addis Ababa and unitary state of Ethiopia where Amharic the only working language.
The other evidence is the suspension of Article 49 (5) of the FDRE Constitution, which provided special benefits to the State of Oromiyaa, as follows:

“The special interest of the State of Oromia Thin Addis Ababa, regarding the provision of social services or the utilization of natural resources and other similar matters, as well as joint administrative matters arising from the location of Addis Ababa within the State of Oromia, shall be respected. Particulars shall be determined by law”

If you look at the content of Article 49 (5), the provision of social services, utilization of natural resources and administrative matters. Let’s look in turn. Social services include the benefits and facilities such as education, health care, job training, housing, community development, policy research, language services, etc. to create effective and strong communities and promote harmony, equity and equal opportunities for all residences.

One of the key elements in social services is the language service for AA city as multilingual and multiethnic groups live in Finfinnee. Without effective and targeted language services, there will be no way to achieve the goal social services listed above such as education, training, equal opportunity for all citizens. The role of government is to facilitate and protect the right of citizens or communities on equal bases. Resources would be generated form the communities who have commitments to develop their cultural heritage, identity and languages. However, silent forces who are pro-Amharic only probably the most allergic to the use of Afaan Oromoo in Finfinnee than TPLF. There is no other economic or political reasons to exclude the native language, Afaan Oromoo, the majority primary language. This a disservice to the Constitution and universal human right law. If there is any reason on can find, it is arrogance or ignorantly chauvinism. It is mind boggling to see that the fate of indigenous population is determined by late settlers, which is unacceptable to normally thinking mind.

Land is the key resource for economic development. There are at least two forces who has strong barging position over the land in Finfinnee. They are the silent forces and the voiced or visible forces, TPLF and its stooge’s officials. These forces has been clouded to maximize their economic benefits. They have three common features: operating state machinery, economic self-interest and settlement status. As operator of state machinery, the silent forces had controlled the education and employment opportunities in the past regimes and use their technical skill and experience such as administration, planning, financing, policy research, etc. to influence the decisions made by the visible force, the federal officials. Undermining the right of Oromo ownership over Finfinnee and the role regional government of Oromiyaa the result of such practices by silent forces who are engaged in promoting Amharic only language policy and the Addis Ababa Administrative status toward full autonomy. The economic collusion between the two is much stronger. They designed the land grabbing policy collaboratively with the assistance foreign agencies who also in collaboration with them for other strategic interests they may have with the country. However, the driving force behind land grab is an obsession for wealth and power. They use government machineries to benefit themselves, stooges and collaborators by evicting Oromo farmers and their families from their home and ancestral land.

As to the joint administration of Finfinnee, the Constitution in Article 49 (5) has logical problems and does not make logical sense to me. The Article supposed to provide the right to the State of Oromiyaa to administer Finfinnee directly like any district in Oromiyaa than collecting special benefits from self-governing entity outside the scope of Oromiyaa State Government. In my view, therefore, the Oromoo people question should be revised in a way that to show the legitimate right of Oromo people over Finfinnee: the Oromo question should be restated as the right to administer Finfinnee like any part of Oromiyaa State. To put shortly, the Oromoo question is about the right to administer Finfinnee but NOT to collect special benefits from Finfinnee.

Although the Habasha dictators being advised, financed, and trained by Western powers and dispatched to kill, terrorize and prison a peace loving people, the Oromo national struggle for self-determination shall continue. In the end, slowly but surely the Gadaa Republic of Oromia shall be restored and free.

Dubiin Finfinnee dubii lafaa fi lafee ti.
Finfinneen lafaa fi lafee Oromoo ti.
Oromiyaan lafaa fi lafee Oromoo ti.
Jabaadhaa Ilmaan Oromoo/ Ilmaan Abbaa Gadaa, lafaa fi lafee maalee hindhabataanii.

=>ayyaantuu

Protests in Ethiopia leave at least five dead, possibly many more

By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia's government said on Monday at least five people had been killed in protests against its plan to incorporate areas of farmland near the capital into a new zone to attract business, while an opposition figure said 30 had died.

Protesters, many of them students, have repeatedly clashed with security forces in several towns in the Oromiya region around Addis Ababa during the past three weeks over the government move that farmers say will be used to grab land.

Ethiopia has won international praise for transforming the economy, but rights groups say critics are stifled. There are no opposition figures in parliament and protests are rarely reported. Officials insist free expression is guaranteed.

Government spokesman Getachew Reda told Reuters that regional officials had so far named five dead but that this could rise as "armed gangs are terrorising civilians, killing government officials, unarmed security officers and farmers".

"If there are problems - and I do not believe they exist - they can only be addressed through consultations with the public," Getachew said.

Merara Gudina, chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress, said: "The list we have shows more than 30 people have been killed by police and soldiers trying to stop the protests."

He told Reuters by telephone that most of those killed were students who had joined the protests, while a few were farmers.

Residents in the region also gave higher figures than the one cited by the government.

Ruling party politicians in Oromiya have accused opposition groups of stoking clashes between protesters and police.

Aman, a student at Ambo University, west of the capital, said police cordoned off his college and rounded up dozens of students. Aman, who did not give his full name for fear of reprisals, said some students had been beaten.

Officials say the administrative changes would create a new zone to draw investment and build infrastructure, part of a government industrialisation drive. The state has been building new roads, railways and hydroelectric dams across the nation.

Farmers and those opposed to the plan worry about land grabs. In the past, Ethiopia has been criticised for seizing property without consent for its industrialisation drive or without properly compensating those living on the land.

According to Ethiopian law, all land belongs to the state and those purchasing the land are only considered leaseholders.

(Editing by Edmund Blair and Alison Williams)

=>yahoonews

Several Killed in Ethiopia Oromia Protests

FILE - A general view shows part of the capital Addis Ababa at night, Ethiopia.

Dan Joseph, Salem Solomon

Clashes between police and protesters in Ethiopia's Oromia region have left several people dead, according to officials and regional opposition leaders.

Oromia has seen three weeks of protests over a government plan to integrate parts of the region with the capital, Addis Ababa. Critics say the plan will undermine local rule and cause local farmers to lose their land.

Witnesses say police have used force to contain or shut down protests, including one that took place Thursday in the town of Bako.  

"Today in Bako city when the students came out to protest, people joined them and they started firing live rounds and hit some students," a witness told VOA's Horn of Africa Service. There was no word on whether anyone was killed.

Bloomberg news quotes a prominent opposition leader, Bekele Nega, as saying police have killed 10 students taking part in the ongoing protests.  

Ethiopia's communications minister, Getachew Reda, put the number of dead at four, and said security forces have been exercising restraint in the face of violence.

Widening protests

Oromia is one of Ethiopia's nine ethnically-based states and holds the largest population at more than 27 million.

The protests started on November 20 in the Western Oromo region cities of Ambo, Ginchi and Western Welega, and they have since spread.

The tactics used to clamp down on these protests are reminiscent of the 2014 protests in the Oromia towns of Ambo, Nekemte and Jimma, according to Human Rights Watch, where security forces fired live rounds and beat people who were protesting peacefully.

Speaking to journalists in Ethiopia a few days ago, the police commissioner of the Oromia region, Ibrahim Hajj, blamed misinformation and propaganda for fueling hostilities among some in the Oromo community.

“Today the people are ensuring the rights and are beneficiaries in all sectors including, social, economic sectors. But there are some who are trying to make it seem as if the rights of the people have been violated and they take advantage of this situation behind the scenes,” he said.

Felix Horne, an Ethiopia and Eritrea researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the spread of the protests started slowly and gained momentum within schools and other educational institutions.

“Initially it was students in primary schools, secondary schools, some university students and now we are seeing farmers, workers beginning to take part in these protests in different ways — staging protests peaceful means, sit-ins to mourn the death of those who’ve lost their lives. So the protests definitely seem to be gaining momentum,” he said.

Horne said that while the government's development for Addis sparked the protests, they are about much larger issues.

“Ostensibly these protests are about the Addis Ababa Master Plan but clearly the Oromos have been marginalized by successive governments and so it’s kind of an accumulation of different frustrations,” he said. “Throughout Oromia, arbitrary detention is common, mistreatment in detention is common and then Oromos just don’t have a voice in issues that impact them day-to-day.”

=>voanews

Students protesting development plan met with violence in Ethiopia

by Mohammed Ademo

Tensions rise as students in Oromia accuse government of land grab

Activists claim security forces have killed at least seven students in more than two weeks across Ethiopia’s Oromia state, where students have been protesting a government plan to expand the area of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia.

Oromia police have confirmed three fatalities in what it termed provocations by “anti-peace elements.”

Images of severely injured students have been posted on social media, and hundreds of other protesters have reportedly been rounded up in a crackdown on those demonstrating against several state-led development projects.

Oromo students, the opposition and diaspora activists liken the proposed Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Plan, or the Master Plan, to a land grab. They fear that it will displace Oromo farmers and undermine Oromia’s interests by expanding Addis Ababa’s boundaries.

Addis Ababa is in the state of Oromia and serves as the regional and federal capital. In theory, the Ethiopian constitution protects Oromia’s “special interest” in Addis Ababa in the provision of social services and use of natural resources and on joint administrative matters.

While the city, home to 4 million people, has experienced massive growth over the last decade, Oromo activists have long decried the lack of social facilities for its Afaan Oromo speakers, including schools, hospitals and cultural institutions.

The protests broke out in November Ginci, a town about 50 miles west of Addis Ababa. Students from universities, high schools and even some primary schools continue to stage sit-ins and demonstrations around the country.

Oromia, the largest of Ethiopia’s nine ethnically based states, is home to close to half the country’s population of 100 million. The Oromo people have long had a contentious relationship with the national government.

“Many Oromos have felt marginalized and discriminated against by successive Ethiopian governments and have often felt unable to voice their concerns over government policies,” Felix Horne, the Horn of Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch, wrote in a Dec. 5 blog post.

He called for an immediate halt to the excessive use of force by security personnel, an independent and impartial investigation into the killings and the prosecution of security forces involved in the violent crackdown.

‘Long-simmering grievance’

Protesters say the central government is trying to evict Oromo farmers from their land under the auspices of urban development, with little or no compensation, essentially turning them into street beggars and daily laborers.

The government says its plan is mutually beneficial, will enhance cooperation and will make the area globally competitive by remedying its disorganized spatial growth.

Addis Ababa serves as landlocked Ethiopia’s primary gateway to the outside world. Last year the New York–based consultancy A.T. Kearney named Addis Ababa “the third-most-likely city to advance its global positioning,” adding, “the Ethiopian capital is also among the cities closing in fastest on the world leaders.”

Modest economic growth and the lack of opportunities in rural areas have fueled massive rural-to-urban migration. The Master Plan is part of an effort to mitigate the city’s resulting rapid expansion. But critics contend that the proposal focuses mostly on attracting investors and will ensure the continued erasure of Oromos’ historical and cultural values from the city.

The Oromo students’ protests are not new. They been demonstrating against the central state for most of the last two decades.

In April and May 2014, Ethiopian security forces fired live ammunition at unarmed protesters, killing dozens of students and wounding many others. Hundreds of students were arrested and charged under Ethiopia’ssweeping anti-terrorism law, and many remain incarcerated.

A federal court last week convicted five students for participating in those protests. In the early 2000s, Ethiopia saw similar protests and violence over a government plan to move Oromia’s capital from Addis Ababa. The decision was reversed in 2005 amid a public outcry.

There has been limited media coverage of the ongoing protests. There are strong restrictions on the free press in Ethiopia, one of the most censored countries in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Government critics and the independent press face increased scrutiny.

Analysts warn that continued violent responses to peaceful protesters could bode ill for Ethiopia’s future.

“The Oromo have long been humiliated with their still marginal status in Ethiopia’s power arrangement,” said Hassen Hussein, an Ethiopian-born university professor in Minnesota. “These almost annual student protests give voice to these long-simmering grievance and perhaps a harbinger of what is to come. The authorities cannot forever count on an aggrieved nation remaining docile.”

Oromo activists and community leaders in North America, Western Europe and Australia are planning solidarity rallies for next week, when more violence is anticipated.

Bonnie Holcomb, an author and anthropologist based in Washington, D.C., said the current situation mirrors the violence of 2014. “The international media were silent when Ethiopian police opened fire into crowds, killing 68, permanently disabling hundreds and arresting thousands. Now the next stage of the Master Plan is being implemented,” she said.

“Ethiopian police have moved in to suppress this united demonstration of protest.  Government sharpshooters are firing into crowds and killing students again,” she said. 

=>aljazeera

Why Are Students in Ethiopia Protesting Against a Capital City Expansion Plan?

Students mourning at Haromaya University. Photo shared widely on social media.

Over the past two weeks, students in Ethiopia’s largest regional state, Oromia, have been protesting against a government plan to expand the area of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia. Reports suggest security forces used violence including live ammunition to disperse crowds of peaceful demonstrators in the compounds of universities in Oromia.

According to Human Rights Watch, at least three students were killed and hundreds were injured across the region as security forces used excessive force to disperse student protesters. Other reports put the number of students killed up to ten. Although protesters are primarily university students, in some instances, high school and primary school children were also reportedly involved in intense confrontations with government forces.

At least nine students were killed by government forces in May 2014 while protesting over the same issue.

The persecution of Oromo people

The students argue that the controversial plan, known as “the Master Plan”, to expand Addis Ababa into Oromia state would result in mass evictions of farmers mostly belonging to the Oromo ethnic group.

It wouldn't be the first time the government has uprooted members of an ethnic group. Thousands of ethnic Amharas in western Ethiopia were expelled from the country's Benishangul Gumuz region in 2013 in what critics called “ethnic cleansing”.

The students have other demands such as making Oromo a federal language. Oromo, the language of the Oromo people, is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia and the fourth largest African language. However, it is not the working language of the federal government.

According to Ethiopian Constitution, Oromia is one of the nine ethnically based and politically autonomous regional states in Ethiopia. Oromo people make up the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia. However, the group has been systematically marginalized and persecutedfor the last 24 years. By some estimates, there were as many as 20,000 Oromo political prisoners in Ethiopia as of March 2014.

A 2014 Amnesty International report on repression in the Oromia region noted:

Between 2011 and 2014, at least 5000 Oromos have been arrested based on their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government. These include thousands of peaceful protestors and hundreds of opposition political party members. The government anticipates a high level of opposition in Oromia, and signs of dissent are sought out and regularly, sometimes pre-emptively, suppressed. In numerous cases, actual or suspected dissenters have been detained without charge or trial, killed by security services during protests, arrests and in detention.

The ruling elite of Ethiopia are mostly from the Tigray region, which is located in the northern part of the country.

Social media fills in the gaps

Even as the Ethiopian drought and impending food crisis makes a rare appearance in local—and some international—headlines, little attention is being paid to the student protests in Ethiopian media. But despite Ethiopia’s highly controlled online environment and the government’s firm grip on communications infrastructure, social media users are reporting on the issue, particularly on Facebook, with additional coverage coming from diaspora-based media.

Photo widely circulated on social media, taken from the Facebook page of Jawar Mohammed.

One Facebook user, for example, hoped for the world to hear stories of the student protesters’ inspiring actions:

The silence has truly been deafening. We need to see and hear the inspiring actions undertaken by huge numbers of ‪#‎Oromo‬ in ‪#‎Ethiopia‬. Tell their story, enable the world to be swept up in their story.Considering the complete absence of freedom to criticize the government or report opposition stories from within the country, people around the world reading about it can help greatly by doing everything possible to amplify this story.

Another Facebook user, Aga Teshome,took note of the political power of Oromo youth:

…‪#‎OromoProtests‬ a call for all oppressed people in ‪#‎Ethiopia‬ to support the ongoing protest against ‪#‎landgrabing‬

….the Oromo youth are a powerful political entity capable of shaking mountains. This powerful political entity is hell bent on exposing the [ruling party] EPRDF government’s atrocious human rights record and all round discriminatory practices.

While Desu Tefera said:

We call upon the media to investigate the conditions that these students died trying to expose and resist, to draw attention to these concerns. Oromia needs a new kind of reporting by the international media, which gives voice to the voiceless Oromo people, who for a very long time have been killed, mistreated, abused, neglected and repressed in Ethiopia. Going forward with the current plan, which ends up displacing tens of thousands of poor farmers, destroying their livelihood and depriving their identity, is a tragedy. It deserves attention. These students put their lives on the line to draw attention to the farmers’ plight.‪#‎OromoProtests‬

Although social media reports are pivotal in letting the world know about the protests, they miss a huge chunk of nuance that would help observers understand how this dispute is unfolding. Notably, the fact that the student protests combine delicate ethnic politics, urban land grabbing and Ethiopia’s diaspora community’s involvement in home country politics.

Given Ethiopia’s highly controlIed environment, one might wonder how the students managed to get organized to express their grievance in the mid of highly controlled environment. Despite the firm grip on communication infrastructure there are constant update on Facebook and Twitter about the protest.

Dubious development practices

The story is unpleasantly familiar, as students are protesting for the second time in less than two years.

In April and May 2014, the protests began in response to the government’s plan to implement the “Integrated Masterplan for Addis Ababa”. As Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, is an enclave within Oromia regional state, students primarily from Oromia state accused the Ethiopian government of attempting to take over land owned by local farmers in the name of integrating adjacent Oromia towns into the sprawling city of Addis. The students further alleged that if implemented, the Masterplan would result in Addis Ababa further encroaching into the territory of Oromia. 

The government rejected the accusation, claiming that the Masterplan was intended only to facilitate the development of infrastructure such as transportation, utilities, and recreation centers.

When the protests began the students’ main demand was the complete halting of the Masterplan. In May 2014, the government did momentarily halt the plan in order to abate the protests after at least nine were killed and hundreds of ethnic Oromo students were imprisoned. But when the government decided to resume plans to implement the Masterplan in November this year resentment boiled over again, resulting in the currently two-week-old student protest leaving at least ten people dead and many injured.

Since the highly contested 2005 national election, forceful evictions and urban land grabbing have become frequent in Addis Ababa. The capital city’s rapid growth has resulted in increasing pressure to convert rural land for industrial, housing, infrastructure, or other urban use.

Diaspora-based advocates say the unrest in Oromia is just a part of the general unhappiness that prevails in the country. They accuse the government of working for the benefit of a few people at the expense of others. They even suggest that the Ethiopian government covertly encouraged informal settlement on the outskirts of Addis Ababa so that they could later find a way to intervene under the guise of rebuilding the slums and lease the land to real estate developers.

Ermias Legesse, a high profile government defector, traces the cause of the Oromo student protest to events that took place 15 years ago. In his book, “Addis Ababa: The Abandoned City”, Ermias notes that since 2000 the Addis Ababa city municipality, with the support of the federal government, enacted five different pieces of legislation to “legalize” the informal settlements, and then sold the “legalized” lands to private property developers.

Most informal settlers on the outskirts of Addis Ababa manage to establish themselves for a period of time until they are displaced by government. “Sometimes the informal settlers are given only a few days’ notices before bulldozers arrive on the scene to tear down their shabby houses and lay foundations for new investors,” Ermias said in an interview with a diaspora-based television channel.

Written byEndalk

=>globalvoices

Oromia/Ethiopia: Region-Wide, Heavy-Handed Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters

December 5, 2015 Human Rights, Oromia

HRLHA Urgent Action

December 05, 2015

For Immediate Release

The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa expresses its grave concern at the continuation of gross human rights violations in Oromia Regional State, violations that have regularly occurred since 1991 when the TPLF/EPRDF came into power.

The most recent heinous crime was committed- and is still being committed- against defenseless school children protesting against the approval of “the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan” by the Oromia Regional State Parliament a month ago. The peaceful protest involved many elementary school, high school, university students and civilians. Among them were students in Western Oromia zones, Najo, Nekemt, Mandi high schools and in other towns, in Central Oromia in Ginchi, Ambo, Addis Ababa high schools and the surrounding towns, Eastern and Southern Oromia zones, in Haromaya , and Bule Hora Universities and  many more  schools and universities. In violation of the rights of the citizen to peaceful demonstration enshrined in the Ethiopian Constitution[1] Chapter two, article 30 (1) states “Everyone has the right to assemble and to demonstrate together with others peaceably and unarmed, and to petition. Appropriate regulations may be made in the interest of public convenience relating to the location of open-air meetings and ‘the route of movement of demonstrators or, for the protection of democratic rights, public morality and peace during such a meeting or demonstration” students in all of these places were severely beaten, imprisoned or even killed.

The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa emphasizes that the ongoing violence and crimes committed in Oromia Regional State for over two and a half decades by the TPLF perpetrators against the Oromo Nation amount to war crimes, and crimes against humanity- a clear failure of the Oromo People Democratic Organization (OPDO) authorities, an organization claiming to represent the Oromo Nation.  The members of this bogus political organization have proved to be not the Oromo peoples’ true representatives, but rather stand-ins for their real masters who have compromised the interests of the Oromo Nation. The Oromia Regional State authorities/OPDO did not resist the TPLF regime when Oromo children, farmers, intellectuals, members of political organizations were killed, abducted, imprisoned, tortured and evicted from their livelihoods by TPLF security agents in the past two and half decades. Instead, they helped the TPLF regime to control the political and economic resources of the Oromia Regional State. TPLF high officials and ordinary level cadres in Oromia Regional State engaged in enriching themselves and their family members by selling Oromo land, looting and embezzling public wealth and properties in the occupied areas of the Oromo Nation, and committing many other forms of corruption.

Committing atrocities and crimes against humanity are failures to comply with obligations under international law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including the principles of proportionality and discrimination. With many civilians suffering from the crimes and serious violations of human rights, and by not taking any measures to ensure the accountability of those responsible for these crimes and violations, it has become clear that after all these years the so called Oromia Parliament (Caffee Oromiyaa) has betrayed the Oromo people by not protecting them. The OPDO members and the Oromia Parliament (Caffee Oromiyaa) members should not continue in silence while Oromo children are brutalized by Aga’azy squads deployed by the TPLF for ethnic cleansing.  The Oromia Parliament (Caffee Oromiyaa) and OPDO have a moral obligation to dissolve their institutions and stand beside their people to resist the TPLF regime’s aggression.

The HRLHA believes that the gross human rights violations committed by the TPLF government in cooperation with OPDO in the past two and half decades against Oromo Nation have been pre-planned every time they have happened. TPLF regime security agents imprisoned, killed, tortured, kidnapped, disappeared, and evicted from their ancestral lands thousands of Oromo nationals, simply because of their ethnic backgrounds and to acquire their resources. The TPLF  inhuman actions against Oromo civilians are clearly genocidal, a crime against humanity and an ethnic cleansing, which breach domestic and international laws, and all international treaties the government of Ethiopia signed and ratified.

The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) expresses its deep concern over the safety and well-being of these Oromo nationals who have been arrested without any court warrant and are being held in different police stations, military camps, “Maekelawi” compound, the main federal police investigation center, in Central Addis Ababa and in different unknown places.

Therefore, HRLHA calls upon governments of the West, all local, regional and international human rights agencies to join hands and demand an immediate halt to these extra-judicial actions, terrorizing civilians and the immediate unconditional release of the detainees.

The HRLHA also calls on all human- rights defender non-governmental, civic organizations, its members, supporters and sympathizers to stand beside the HRLHA and provide moral, professional and financial help to bring the dictatorial TPLF government and officials to international justice.

The HRLHA is a non-political organization that attempts to challenge abuses of human rights of the people of various nations and nationalities in the Horn of Africa. It works to defend fundamental human rights, including freedoms of thought, expression, movement and association. It also works to raise the awareness of individuals about their own basic human rights and those of others. It encourages respect for laws and due process. It promotes the growth and development of free and vigorous civil societies.

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[1] Ethiopians Constitution of 1995; http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/research/Proclamation%20no.1-1995.pdf

=>ayyaantuu

Why Famine Grips Millions in Ethiopia Again: Some Untold Policy Stories

By Habtamu Dugo and Joanne Eisen

As the government and aid organizations, including the UN and the USAID have claimed, are weather conditions the only culprit on which to blame the present famine?

Fifteen million people in Ethiopia are hungry. Again.  Even with all the uninterrupted in-flow of emergency food assistance, major famines recur every decade and an almost constant food insufficiency exists.

For Ethiopia’s government, a 25-year-old narrative shifts seismically almost overnight from a country that has purportedly registered a two-digit economic growth to the older and much more poignant narrative of a nation-state that is unable to feed millions of its people. This is a reality that government officials initially responded to with denial and with castigation of the news media such as the BBC.

Ethiopian government officials find it shocking to get used to a twist in the narrative from a country once held up as beacon of development for the rest of Africa to a country once more reluctantly spreading its palms for alms in front of the global community.

Now every partner of Ethiopia’s government who joined in the chorus of double-digit economic growth equally finds themselves in an awkward situation of having to suddenly alter the narrative in order to speak of an Ethiopia that’s in desperate need for massive help.

The global press and aid organizations don’t tell you that certain parts of the country are disproportionately affected while other communities with the same weather conditions don’t suffer famine at all.  In regional states such as Oromia and Ogaden, where famine is pervasive, the areas where human suffering is most visual, are closed off to foreign journalists and human rights researchers.

Human-made Famine

In order for poor weather conditions to result in mass starvation and death, government must fail to institute helpful policies and/or the government must institute damaging policies.

2015 in Ethiopia. Rich and poor, where few enjoy.

Four decades ago Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze said that “land alienation”—what we presently call land grabbing policy—has led to severe economic problems.  Sen and Dreze also emphasized that “all famines in the modern world are preventable.” Although many Ethiopian government officials have been locked in a position of denial, Wolfgang Fengler, a senior economist at the World Bank, stated that the root causes of the present famine are punitive government policies. Drought can be seen to ratchet up the need for a better and faster government response, but it does not itself cause famine.

One of these damaging policies is the removal of food from suffering communities. In a study that focuses on land grabbing activities in Ethiopia’s south, co-authors Jaatee, Dugo and Eisen tell us that 7 million hectares of land of indigenous peoples were stolen and transferred to foreign and ruling-party-affiliated investors. The transfer of land from indigenous  peoples did not only create over a million internally displaced persons, but it also created a situation where the food produced locally by giant foreign agribusinesses is removed and transported overseas to places as far as Saudi Arabia and India leaving local populations destitute. Mass starvation would not have happened if the government of Ethiopia had not sold off land to foreign ‘investors’ for dirt cheap in Oromia and South.

In a rush to blame the famine on drought, Ethiopia’s government ignored its land-grab policy as one of the root causes of the present famine. This is mysteriously lost on aid organizations and many international journalists as well. This famine is more than a return to the 1984 famine. By 2016, according to the UN’s projection, the number of people expected to suffer from famine will be more than 15 million. If not averted, that number will be significantly greater than the number of people affected by the 1984 famine.

Though it is now too late for denial, there is much downplaying of the magnitude of the current famine by the Ethiopian government, which is echoed by many gullible foreign journalists who report how well prepared that the regime is to bring the famine under control.  It is not in the best interest of the minority ruling party to stamp out famine in Oromia and Ogaden where the government perceives the Oromo and the Ogaden populations fighting for more autonomy as ‘enemies of the state’. Famine is just another man-made way of ‘draining the sea’ in order for the regime to continues authoritarian rule, human rights abuses and resource extractions from these regions.

The trend of land grabbing is common across the African continent. Damien Carrington, the head of environment at the Guardian, references a study and writes “land taken over by foreign investors could feed 550m people.”  In Ethiopia, the 7 million hectares of land transferred to investors is more than the size of Belgium. The transfer of this huge amount of land, along with the food crops produced on it, to foreign countries should alone cause the current epic famine. Yet the current famine did not appear on the scene because of one corrupt policy—it’s been created by decades of misguided and punitive policies made by Ethiopia’s ruling parties.

Regional Disparity in the Spread of Famine and Double Standards in Policy

It is important to look at the differences in the location and scale of famine within Ethiopia in the context of more than four decades of conflict between Ethiopia’s regimes and a dozen rebellions in the marginalized southern states such as Oromia and Ogaden where famine is prevalent. The regime has repeatedly blocked or diverted emergency food aid in the eastern part of the country putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of famine.

Ethiopia has been engaged in counter-insurgency campaigns in the Ogaden and Oromia regions to contain national resistance movements from the rebel groups such as the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front, which are fighting for the autonomy of these regions. As the byproduct of the uprisings, peoples in these regions have always been seen by government as ‘enemies of the state.’ As a result, these regions have been cut off from life-saving foreign aid, and the aid that was meant for them by donor countries and NGOs was transferred to northern regions of Tigray and Amhara—most favored by Ethiopia’s autocratic rulers.

If we accept claim that drought  is causing famine, why does it not also cause famine in Tigray and Amhara regions, which are far more arid than some parts of the Oromia and the Ogaden/Somali regions? Yet, ironically the northern regions are not as severely affected.

The reason why the north is spared is provided by Chiron Borofa, a knowledgeable elder we interviewed for this article. Borofa, 72, told us, “Tigire and Amhara farmers are prepared in many ways to cope with the current drought and famine. The government transfers food aid that comes in the name of all Ethiopia and piles it all up in warehouses in Tigray. Northern regions can’t starve because the Ethiopian government gives first priority to aid distribution in these regions. The government provides irrigation services and technical assistance for digging wells to famers in northern states while the same services are denied to famers in Oromia and Ogaden.”

We see that another policy issue that determines who eats or who starves is a double standard in access to infrastructure based on ethnicity. A recent story in the Guardian by William Davisonalludes to how the Oromo people in western Hararge, Oromia, are suffering from preventable famine and livestock are dying off because the state failed to invest in wells-digging and irrigation projects. Dams could easily be erected to contain water and to channel water for irrigated-farming if the government cared. But the government did not invest in development infrastructure in Oromia and the Ogaden. In contrast, the government built costly infrastructure in the north. For instance, the construction of the Tekeze Dam in Tigray alone cost $360 million.

Can Aid Get to the Needy on Time?

Yet another factor in the local variations in the intensity of suffering is the fact that aid is not distributed fairly to those in need.

Human Rights Watch documents that to qualify to receive food aid, people in Oromia, Ogaden and South are coerced into joining the ruling party. If they refused to join the party, they would be denied aid or aid would be delayed putting them at risk of starvation.

Many children and the elderly are dying daily and the crisis is only expected to worsen because of the action of the government to neglect some areas for ethno-political reasons. A source, who spoke to the Voice of America who wanted remain anonymous for his safety, said that at least three children are dying from famine every day just in his vicinity. Famine witnesses, including this source, are afraid of speaking to journalists and the media even when they know that hunger is killing them. When journalists make phone calls to Ethiopia’s government offices in order to ask for a response to these claims of deaths, the journalists frequently find that officials hang up without speaking. The widespread secrecy shows that the government has got something to hide—something it helped create.  Government officials are unwilling to be held accountable at international, national and regional levels.

Most unbiased scholars believe that famine is man-made, and thus human action can prevent or exacerbate it. BBC’s Amelia Butterly questioned that we have been talking about famine for three decades, but nothing has changed. She acknowledges that there is a politically-motivated policy that created these famines coupled with an intense denial of the existence of hunger.

Ex rebels who have become current rulers of Ethiopia have a long history of siphoning off food aid meant for local peasants in order to buy weapons to strengthen their own unwelcome grip on power as famine gripped the populace.  Back in the 1980s, Tigirean People Liberation Front officials misappropriated famine aid and spent $95 million from Western Charities on weapons purchases, according to a BBC report.  Since TPLF ascended to state power after militarily defeating Mengistu Hailemariam’s Communist Derg regime in the early 1990s, they carried the culture of siphoning aid money into Menelik’s Palace. People familiar with Ethiopia know that aid has been flowing into Ethiopia by the billions, but the effect of it has not been seen as famine keeps recurring, regardless.

Now countries and charities are pledging millions of dollars to help the needy, but all of them have been forced to go through official Ethiopian government channels to deliver aid. Using Ethiopian government agencies as channels of international aid distribution is certain to be unsuccessful and will result in the deaths of millions because the government perceives Oromia and Ogaden regions as ‘enemies of the state’ and will not distribute the aid.

Decades of entrenched ethnic-based repressions in Oromia, Ogaden and the South can also be a strong indicator that donor countries and humanitarian organizations helping Ethiopia now will still need to figure out ways of directly reaching those suffering famine. If they fail, preventable famine will consume the lives of millions as the Ethiopian government continues to downplay and to blame the famine on drought. The regime will, as it had previously, divert the foreign funding to shore up its private and public coffers to pay for the lifestyles of its party members and leaders.

Following major past famines in Ethiopia, regimes collapsed. We predict that the current Ethiopian government is likely to collapse when the famine reaches its height in the next two to three years.

=>ayyaantuu