Massive rally in Canada against Ethiopian govt’s response to Oromo Protesters

Posted: Amajjii/January 31, 2016 · Finfinne Tribune | Gadaa.com | Comments

Oromo and other Canadians held a massive rally on January 29, 2016, in the capital, Ottawa, to bring to the attention of the Canadian government the human rights violations of the Ethiopian government against peacefully protesting Oromos in the Federal State of Oromia in Ethiopia.

Since mid November 2015, the Ethiopian government has killed, maimed and arrested hundreds and thousands of Oromo students, farmers and civil servants – including children – for peacefully protesting against the Tigrean-dominated Federal government’s plan to take away millions of hectares of land of Oromo farmers and give them to the regime’s favored individuals posing as “investors.” The government had been able to disguise its plan of dispossession of the Oromo as “development” for several years; however, the Master Plan that the government released for Addis Ababa and the Surrounding towns in Oromia in April 2014 finally uncovered the true intentions of the massive land-grabbing campaigns of the Federal government. All over Oromia, Oromo farmers are evicted and thrown out like garbage while Tigrean “investors” are given the land for “development.” In Oromia, “development” (or the Afan Oromo word for it – misooma) has become synonymous with dispossession, evictions and disempowerment of the Oromo farmer in particular, and the Oromo public in general. Today, as a result of the Tigrean-dominated Federal government’s “development” plan, millions of Oromos have become homeless, internally-displaced persons and refugees, and have been reduced to day-laborers on their own country. It is this ethnically-biased development plan of the Tigrean-dominated Ethiopian government that Oromo students, farmers and civil servants have been protesting against since mid November 2015. For these peaceful protests, the Ethiopian government’s response has been bullets, bullets, bullets and handcuffs: more than 160 Oromo persons were killed, more than 2,000 Oromo persons were wounded and more than 35,000 Oromo persons have been imprisoned over the last two months alone. The Federal government has dispatched its Agazi paramilitary force as well as the regular armed units of the country’s Defense Forces to the State of Oromia to crush its own citizens, who are peacefully protesting against the ethnically-biased development plan.

The following are video reports of the rally in Ottawa, Canada, by Lagatafo Studio and TVOMT.