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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• Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
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• U.S. Department of State
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  Tel: (202) 647-6473

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

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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

These African 'countries' don’t officially exist - including one that you've probably never heard of

By SAMANTHA SPOONER

Post-colonial African liberation movements you might not have heard too much about, and why owners like Angola, Zambia and Namibia won't 'let go'.

An Oromia protest. Many African countries have regions pushing for independence, and which will likely not come to pass. (Photo/oromia movies/Flickr)

ANGOLA marked its 40th birthday this month and while the south African country blew off the candles, there’s one situation it would be happy the world didn’t pay much attention to.

The “Republic” of Cabinda has even set up its own de facto government, but Angola has no doubt about who the area falls under, having steadfastly held that it is sovereign territory administered from Luanda.

The geography, and history, however stokes the debate: not only is the area completely separated from Angola by a narrow strip of territory belonging to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it was also only a protectorate of the Portuguese (called Portuguese Congo) and was only formally integrated into Portuguese Angola in the 1950s. In 1963, the Organisation for African Unity - now the African Union - recognised the distinction between Angola and Cabinda by ranking Cabinda as the 39th state. Internationally though, the area is recognised as part of Angola.

Following independence from the Portuguese, the self-determination movements in Cabinda carried on in the activities of FLEC (Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda), this time against their African colonisers. The Cabinda people have not given up, even though the region has now become the country’s most militarised area as a way of control. FLEC continues to carry out a low-level insurgency in the area, with sporadic attacks on army patrols and oil workers - one high profile attack included a bus carrying the Togolese football team in 2010. 

So why won’t Angola let go? Though Cabinda represents just a tiny part of Angola’s overall territory - it’s about the same size as The Gambia - it holds vital economic importance to the country producing most of Angola’s oil wealth - up to 70%—and therefore the revenue on which the government survives. 

Cabinda is not alone. Across Africa there are areas which have famously called for secession such as Western Sahara, Somaliland and Puntland - functioning with their own governments and in some cases getting increased international recognition, but there are still others which fly low below the radar…where their “African masters” like to keep them: 

Barotseland

The people and royal household of Barotseland, in western Zambia, have been agitating for the region’s independence. They accuse the Zambian government of ignoring a 1964 treaty which established Barotseland’s position within Zambia as an autonomous region, in place of the earlier agreement between Barotseland and the British Government. 

Barotseland, the kingdom of the Lozi people ruled by the Litunga (king or paramount chief), was a protectorate under British colonial rule and became part of Zambia at the country’s independence in 1964. In 2012, a group of traditional Lozi leaders, calling itself the Barotseland National Council, declared that Barotseland was now free to pursue its own peaceful “self-determination and destiny.” 

Zambia was quick to quash these declarations and in December 2014 the administrator general of the Barotseland transitional government, Afumba Mombotwa, and three other secessionists were arrested for treason. If they are found guilty they will be hanged. Their trial, which began in August 2015 is still underway though petitions have been handed to the UN demanding the release of the political prisoners. 

So why won’t Zambia let go of the Kingdom? Barotseland is in the upper Zambezi valley which means it has very fertile land. The floodplain is also something of a tourist attraction but the main reason could be because the region has oil potential, in addition to other minerals. In 2011 the government awarded the first petroleum exploration licence to a Zambian company, Barotse Petroleum Company, to explore oil and gas in the province. 

Free Republic of Rehoboth

Chances are that you’ve not heard of this one. 

The Rehoboth Basters, descendants of Cape Colony Dutch settlers and African women, number about 35,000-55,000 people and live in an area of 14.216 sq.km south of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. They claim they settled in the late 1860s and developed their own legislation, years before the Germans installed their colonial rule over Namibia in 1885, giving them a right to independence. 

With Namibia’s independence in 1990 they lost their status, which they have been demanding back. The United People`s Movement (UPM) was established in 2009 to unite the Baster People and provide them with a political voice, pushing for autonomy of their political affairs. 

However, in the case of the Basters, it’s not that the government doesn’t want to let the area go - they are simply not seen as being of consequence because of their small numbers. Their traditional authority is not being recognised anymore and the Namibian government has registered Rehoboth as commercial land.

Ogoniland

Under the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), founded in 1990, the people of Ogoni are attempting to disengage from Nigeria having declared independence in 2012. They also presented a Bill of Rights to the Government of Nigeria calling for political control of Ogoni affairs by Ogoni people. It states that the Ogoni people seek, “political autonomy to participate in the affairs of the Republic as a distinct and separate unit (by whatever name called), provided that this autonomy guarantees political control of Ogoni affairs by Ogoni people”.

MOSOP claims that the Ogoni people’s independence was first violated by British colonialism and then “handed over to some other Nigerian ethnic groups in October 1960.” The problem is in 1957 Shell Oil Company struck oil in Ogoniland, which set in motion a process transformed both Ogoni society and Nigeria as a whole. Today, oil accounts for over 90% of Nigeria’s export earnings and some 80% of government revenue, controlling the entire Nigerian economy.

The independence movement is driven by the community feeling inadequately compensated for the take-over of their land by the oil companies and the environmental damages they suffered.

Nigeria has also seen activism around Biafra, for which hundreds of people marched this week, as marginalisation grievances swirl over an area that caused a major civil war in the 1960s.

Oromia

In Ethiopia the Oromo people -  the country’s largest community with 30 million members, constituting 34.49% of Ethiopia’s population - lay claim to the country of the Oromo, called Biyya-Oromo or Oromia. Oromia is described as one of the free nations in the Horn of Africa until its colonisation and occupation by Abyssinia at the end of the nineteenth century. Their self-determination movement is being pushed by the Oromo Liberation Front, or OLF, an organisation established in 1973. 

Their attempts for secession however are being fought by a central government that cannot afford to lose this bread basket, with human rights groups saying there have been excesses. Oromia is the region where coffee first originated, today it accounts for more than 65 % of the country’s total coffee growing land and coffee is the country’s largest export. 

Casamance

The Senegalese region has also since the 1980s waged low-level resistance over what it says is marginalisation. Successive peace deals have been signed, and the central government has pushed economic plans to stamp out the disquiet, which has been quiet for the last few years.

=>mail&guardian

KDF deployed at border after Ethiopian forces kill Kenya police

By ALLI ABDI and LIBAN GOLICHA

MARSABIT: The Kenya Defence Force (KDF) has moved its armoured vehicles and tanks from the Odha Military Camp in Moyale to Sololo following an invasion by Ethiopian forces who killed three police officers.

The development last evening follows a fierce gun battle earlier in the day between Kenya police and Ethiopian forces at Anona and parts of Sololo Township in Kenyan territory.  Marsabit County Police Commander Bernard Kogo said three Kenyan security officers were killed but declined to reveal the casualty on the Ethiopian side.  "We lost three officers at the border (Sololo) and I do not know what happened on their (Ethiopian) side,"  said Mr Kogo.

 On Thursday, a senior provincial administrator  identified a senior chief   who was gunned down by allegedly rebels from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). Ethiopia is fighting the rag-tag OLF rebels in Ethiopia and parts of Marsabit County that it claims hosts their rivals. 

OLF is opposed to Ethiopia's ruling regime and claims it has marginalised the majority of Oromia-speaking people who include the Borana, also found in Kenya. 

At dawn Friday, Ethiopian forces in full military attire invaded villages in Sololo District where locals led by area MP Roba Duba said at least 24 Kenyans were abducted.

 "Eleven people were rounded up and taken away by Ethiopian soldiers. Before that they beat up everyone in their sight with gun butts, kicks and blows,’’ said Adan Jirma, a resident of Sololo South.

At around midday Friday, Ethiopians soldiers made a second invasion in the two centres while backed by armoured vehicles.  This prompted administration and regular police, backed by Kenya police reservists, to engage the foreign army in a shootout.

As the gun battle between the two sides raged up to about 4pm Friday, KDF’s army multi-unit detachment from Odha in Moyale, about 100km away, rolled its armoured cars and tanks that were deployed at the border, stretching a distance of about 15km. 

Sololo OCPD Benjamin Mwanzia said the military had been deployed to guard against further incursion but declined to give details. 

 National Hospital Insurance Fund Chairman Mohamud Ali called on the Kenya Government to protest what he called frequent invasion by Ethiopian forces into Kenyan territory. "We are a sovereign state and this (invasion) is bad because Ethiopia is considered a friendly neighbour. It is high time our government sends a strong signal to them," said Ali. Mid this year, Ethiopian forces invaded Kenyan territory on three occasions — at Illeret, Sololo and Moyale.


=>standardmedia

Kenya put to task over missing Oromo leader Dabassa Guyo Saffaro

by STELLA CHERONO

The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights is seeking information from the Kenyan government over the disappearance of Oromo leader Dabassa Guyo Saffaro who was under UNHCR protection.

BANJUL – Africa’s top human rights body on Monday put Kenya to task over the disappearance of Oromo community leader Dabassa Guyo Saffaro.

Mr Saffaro, according to ACHPR Commissioner Maya Sahli Fadel, has been missing since September 27, with his family claiming the government may know where he is.

She said the Ethiopian refugee, who moved to Kenya in the early 1970s fleeing political persecution, lived in Mlolongo, Machakos County with some members of his family.

“It is alleged that the government had on several occasions accused him of being a leader of an Oromo community that practiced terror,” she said.

Mr Saffaro lived under the protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and was in the process of renewing his expired Kenyan identity card and travel documents when he disappeared. His family has been asking the UN refugee agency to help trace him.

The government representatives at the forum are on Tuesday, expected to respond to the questions directed to them by the commissioners who seemed to delve mainly on extrajudicial killing, access to information, freedom of the press, the rights of prisoners and the rights of persons living with disabilities.

=>gadaa