Friday, September 23, 2016
Thursday, September 22, 2016
EthioTube መድረክ : Social Media Activism in Ethiopia - Jawar Mohammed on #OromoProtests | September 18, 2016
EthioTube መድረክ : Social Media Activism in Ethiopia - Jawar Mohammed on #OromoProtests | September 18, 2016: EthioTube መድረክ : Social Media Activism in Ethiopia - Jawar Mohammed on #OromoProtests | September 18, 2016
#OromoProtests
When the blood of the innocence you bath in forces you to speak the truth! Unknowingly you will tell the world who you are killing are not disappearing quietly...so you need help in muffling their voices once more!!!
Here is the Truth #TPLF, we will speak, we will remember, we will document, we will continue to fight you, we will win & and finally You will all pay!!!
FYI: eliminating people for who they are and what they believe in is an ultimate hate crime filled with bigotry!
In the meantime, we will continue to amplify our voices in unison to all corners of the world!!! Ethiopia is inside the world, the world is not inside Ethiopia sorry your bloody hands can reach out side of that and muffle us all, even though you would like that very much!!!
You are not the victim!!!
Victims are currently lined up 6 feet under ground & there voices are no more! They rest are in dark rooms all over Ethiopia wishing to join death because you are taking the light out of their eyes.
YOU ARE NOT THE VICTIM!
Victims are currently lined up 6 feet under ground & there voices are no more! They rest are in dark rooms all over Ethiopia wishing to join death because you are taking the light out of their eyes.
YOU ARE NOT THE VICTIM!
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
#OromoProtests
romo Olympian draws big crowd at his Minneapolis appearance
Marathon silver medalist seen as a hero for his running as well as his political statement.
The line outside the Minneapolis Convention Center auditorium Sunday afternoon was nearly a block long, with elders in suits and many women and children in traditional red, yellow and green Oromo dress. It took nearly two hours for the crowd of more than 1,000 to enter. Then Oromo Olympian Feyisa Lilesa made his grand entrance. The silver medalist marathon runner from Ethiopia high-fived an elder in the front row and graciously greeted the crowd.
Lilesa, 26, became a hero to his people and brought global attention to the plight of the Oromo in Ethiopia when he crossed his arms to form the letter X above his head as he crossed the finish line at the Rio Games.
He did the same as he entered the auditorium Sunday and the crowd erupted in cheers.
The Oromo Community of Minnesota said more than 100 Oromo people were killed in Ethiopia in August alone while peacefully protesting the government’s persecution of the ethnic group.
Lilesa, who faces jail if he returns home, has been granted a special skills visa to the United States so he can train and compete. His wife, 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter remain in Ethiopia.
#OromoProtests
Public Statement by the Coordinating Committee of Oromo Liberation and Independent Organizations
Public Statement by the Coordinating Committee of Oromo Liberation and Independent Organizations
The Coordinating Committee of the four Oromo liberation organizations announce the successful conclusion of its meeting from 15-17 September 2016 held in Farmington, Minnesota. In its deliberations, the Committee noted with satisfaction successes in executing joint projects and identifying and adopting innovative ways to further quicken the pace in carrying out the objectives set out in the agreement concluded earlier in May 2016. The Committee also resolved to build on the positive experiences this far and to draw lessons from issues encountered in the pursuit of common national objectives. We have further resolved to transform our cooperation into a united struggle.
The Coordinating Committee of the four Oromo liberation organizations announce the successful conclusion of its meeting from 15-17 September 2016 held in Farmington, Minnesota. In its deliberations, the Committee noted with satisfaction successes in executing joint projects and identifying and adopting innovative ways to further quicken the pace in carrying out the objectives set out in the agreement concluded earlier in May 2016. The Committee also resolved to build on the positive experiences this far and to draw lessons from issues encountered in the pursuit of common national objectives. We have further resolved to transform our cooperation into a united struggle.
The Coordinating Committee thoroughly reviewed the overwhelming democratic revolution rumbling in Oromia, which has now spread to different parts of Ethiopia. It noted with concern but also with utmost pride and pledged to honor the heavy sacrifices paid in challenging and shaking root and branch the disgraced TPLF tyranny. The Committee extolled with utmost respect the peaceful nature of the revolution and the exemplary role Oromia played in the struggle for human dignity, liberty, the rule of law, and self-determination throughout Ethiopia.
The meeting indignantly condemned and holds accountable the TPLF-led regime for the hundreds of unarmed protesters killed and maimed and thousands that are languishing in prisons in Oromia, Amhara, Konso and many other regions. We call on all forces that value democracy, the rule of law and basic liberty to rally behind the Oromia and now Ethiopia-wide resistance for freedom, democracy and to bring to a close an era of terrible tyranny.
The meeting indignantly condemned and holds accountable the TPLF-led regime for the hundreds of unarmed protesters killed and maimed and thousands that are languishing in prisons in Oromia, Amhara, Konso and many other regions. We call on all forces that value democracy, the rule of law and basic liberty to rally behind the Oromia and now Ethiopia-wide resistance for freedom, democracy and to bring to a close an era of terrible tyranny.
The Committee reiterates its member organizations’ commitment to unreservedly respect the peaceful nature of the on-going revolution. To that end, the Committee calls on all forces engaged in armed resistance against the TPLF regime to underpin the peaceful nature of the revolution by considering voluntary cessation of hostilities except acting in self-defense. Also, we wholeheartedly support popular action establishing administrative committees to keep the peace wherever vestiges of TPLF rule are rendered ineffective. However, the Committee fully upholds the right of every people to oppose violent tyranny by all legitimate means, including by means of armed resistance in pursuit of basic human rights and liberty.
In our statement on 1 May, 2016 we called on other peoples in Ethiopia that protests in Oromia for freedom and democracy was universal and that all oppressed peoples stood to benefit from sacrifices being paid. At the time Oromia seemed on its own, as elsewhere palpable fear of brutal reprisals appeared to hold sway. We note with shared pride that fear itself has since died and that many other peoples have joined the peaceful struggle for basic human dignity and freedom, which incredibly enhanced the might and majesty of the revolution. With increased coordination, there is no doubt that the revolution will soon forge ahead and prevail over sectarian lawlessness that the TPLF regime represents. Wecall on all democratic forces to join us – the allied Oromo forces – so as to minimize sacrifices and we jointly put in place a peaceful democratic transition.
To the international community, particularly the USA, EU and UK, who pump substantial funding to the criminal TPLF regime under false pretenses of “fighting terror”, we say this: the TPLF regime is not only using such resources for perpetrating state terrorism against people it claims to rule whose only crime is asking for legal rights recognized even by the TPLF tailor-made constitution, but the regime is indeed spreading terrorism by clandestinely diverting scarce resources meant for development to terrorist outfits, lest defeat of such outfits would lead to drying-up of funds with which it is sustaining its misrule.
The tragedy of TPLF lawlessness is exacerbated as the regime that arrogantly claimed 100% win in the 2014 election when it competed only against itself was publicly praised as being democratic by the US president Obama in 2015. That was disgracefully ill-advised, to say the least. We call upon the international community to reexamine their position, and refrain from funding TPLF crime against Oromo and other peoples in Ethiopia. Instead, we call on them to press the TPLF to begin forthwith a process of peaceful transition by freeing political prisoners and opening-up dialogue with genuine representatives of the peoples, all political opposition and other stakeholders.
We take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the International Human Rights Organizations – Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others – for exposing the gross human rights violation perpetrated against the Oromo people by the tyrannical TPLF regime and bring it to the attention of the International Community. We again call on them to continue their admirable job of monitoring and documenting the human rights violation in Oromia and Ethiopia.
To the TPLF regime, we reiterate our previous call that it is in your own interests to seek a peaceful way out of the political quagmire you dug yourselves into, and that allied Oromo organizations represented by the Coordinating Committee and many other democratic forces in Ethiopia are ready for constructive dialogue to work towards a peaceful alternative, opportunities that you squandered time and again. Should you reject the olive branch and persist in your deranged course shedding innocent blood, you will only hasten your inevitable demise and the dawn of your accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The struggle for democracy and freedom shall prevail over tyranny!
Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)
Front for Independence of Oromia (FIO)
Oromo Liberation Front “United” (OLF “U”)
Oromo Democratic Front (ODF)
Front for Independence of Oromia (FIO)
Oromo Liberation Front “United” (OLF “U”)
Oromo Democratic Front (ODF)
September 17, 2016
Farmington, Minnesota
Farmington, Minnesota
Ethiopian Demonstration in Berlin , Germany 9/9/2016 ..chancellor Angela Merkel watching the demonstration
Ethiopian Demonstration in Berlin , Germany 9/9/2016 ..chancellor Angela Merkel watching the demonstration: Ethiopian Demonstration in Berlin , Germany 9/9/2016 ..chancellor Angela Merkel watching the demonstration
Winner of Mississauga CanKen 5K race protests in support of Ethiopia’s Oromo people
Winner of Mississauga CanKen 5K race protests in support of Ethiopia’s Oromo people: Ethiopia's Hajin Tola won the inaugural CanKen 5K road race in Mississauga, Ont. on Sunday and protested in support of the Oromo people.
Monday, September 19, 2016
#OromoProtests
Ethiopia’s ruling party calls its malady by many names, but what exactly is ailing EPRDF?
At the conclusion of weeks of marathon meetings, many regional political watchers expected Ethiopia’s ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), to come up with a clear way out of swelling protests engulfing two of the country’s largest regional states, Oromia and Amhara, home to two-thirds of the East African state’s population of nearly 100 million, and bloody crackdowns by the security forces. Having, for over a year, blamed the crisis on a coterie of internal opposition or shadowy outlawed resistance operating from abroad, it finally came to an inevitable and yet familiar diagnosis, which can be summed up as: “We have come to meet the enemy, and the enemy is us.”
What in the ruling party is ailing the country? It calls its malady by many names: Rent-seeking, corruption, and abuse of power, to cite just a few. Its remedy? A renewal of the ruling party. It paraded on national TV one octogenarian leader after another vowing to cleanse the party off these scourges.
Never mind that this is not a new diagnosis. Its previous leader, the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi whose ghosts continue to hold sway over the country, had intoned, shortly before his death in 2012, that rampant corruption represented an existential threat to his legacy. Never mind that the current Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn whose originality in vision is a poorly rehearsed copying of his predecessor, repeated the same in 2014 during an address to the rubber-stamp parliament where the ruling party enjoys a 100 percent majority. Never mind that the party has been claiming that it was undergoing renewal and fighting corruption. And never mind if people are protesting wanting to see the same ruling party renewed.
Which raises the question: Did the EPRDF really meet its real enemy? Are the remedies proposed sufficient to contain Ethiopia’s growing crisis and prolong the ruling party’s quarter-century stranglehold on state power? These are questions worth asking.
That such a malady, call it corruption or abuse of power, poses a mortal threat to a party in power in a one-party state for so long does not come as a surprise. Since the soul-searching is prompted by growing popular protests, what is rather surprising is that EPRDF came to this prognosis without bothering to ask the protesters themselves why they keep protesting braving live bullets and massive arrests.
In theory, the ruling party is a coalition of four parties—the Tigrean Liberation Front (TPLF), the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), the Oromo People’s Democratic organization (OPDO), and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM)—each supposedly representing the ethnic group and regional state of their names. In reality, however, like Orwell’s Animal Farm story, TPLF is more equal than all the others. In fact, TPLF manufactured these parties as a smokescreen to hide its outsize influence. Unlike a father-child relationship, the child in the EPRDF never fully grows up, always needing the domineering parent to handpick its top leaders.
This dominance is maintained in two ways: the carrot and the stick. The carrot: As a price for their loyalty to Tigrean dominance, the leaders and top cadres of the subservient parties are made to share from the spoils and accumulate personal wealth…meaning they are made to be corrupt and abuse their power for self-enrichment. The more corrupt a PDO member, the more loyal to the existing order. Moreover, the big shots in the PDOs owed their meteoric rise in the power hierarchy, not to their smarts or qualifications, but to their usefulness to the TPLF, an honor which the latter could bestow or withdraw at whim. Those staying out of the loot-fest are kept under close surveillance and rot in their positions while those playing by the rules rise in the ranks. The lion’s share of the loot of course goes to the Tigrean kleptocracy, whose mastery of the craft puts the Italian mafia to shame.
In return, leaders or top cadres of the subservient parties are expected to keep the discontent of the people they are made to represent at bay with hollow promises. If the people managed to stir breaking all its chains, including the one-to-five security structure modeled after former East Germany’s Staasi, as is the case during the past ten months, off goes the top leaders or cadres of the subservient parties escorted by TPLF’s Rapid Reaction units who dabble as bodyguards to calm the situation—making all promises under the sun. From these encounters with the lived lives of the populace, especially in periods of heightened tensions and raw nerves like the current one, some among the PDO officialdom come to sympathize with the people as to internalize some of their grievances. Human that they are, however irreversibly they have sold their souls to the devil, they could not forever hide from the truth. When they came back to their handlers at the center, they are confronted with the stark choice of whether to paint the same rosy pictures that their Tigrean masters like to hear or risk their demise by speaking truth to power. If however one were carried away by the emotions as to cause raucous about the lopsided division of the spoils between the parties or their powerlessness in tackling the people’s grievances, even in secret, the consequences are harsh and fast. First, they will be accused of being members or supporters of outlawed groups. If they fail to be persuaded by this, then follows the threat of being paraded before the judiciary, which has distinguished itself for its vindictiveness, not to mention the abysmally outrageous miscarriage of justice. Second, presented with irrefutable evidence of corruption, meticulously documented, preserved and compiled by the Tigrean-dominated federal police and intelligence services snooping on everyone, thanks to Chinese know-how and western technology donated as reward for their partnership in the war on terror, EPRDF’s kangaroo courts actually look like serious judicial organs handling guilty verdicts.
If the evidences or witnesses are somehow found wanting, no problem: Internal security operatives can simply place calls to the head judges, who owe their appointment to their fidelity not to the law which they swore to uphold but to those who actually wield power in the country, the Tigrean oligarchy, and all will be settled in no time. If all the theatrics of the chamber falter, there is always the expansive clauses of the anti-terror law from which no one ever accused with walked away not being found guilty.
Third, if communities rise up against increasing repression as people in Oromia and Amhara are actually doing currently, the army, whose top brass is predominantly Tigrean, is trigger-ready.
TPLF’s catch-22 runs as follows: Close all access to quick wealth, condoning off all the feeder roads, TPLF loses the loyalty of the top leaders and cadres of the PDOs. Lose the PDOs, and TPLF loses control of the regional states. Loose the regional states, and it has to rely on the army and security forces, which brings them back to square one, the status quo. Allow regional states to be represented by individuals drawing their mandate and legitimacy from the people concerned, and Tigrean domination goes out the window.
TPLF could as easily get rid of all the fat cats among the PDOs and replace them with brand new ones—as it has done so many times in its reign. The result is however the same: They simply trade a full hyena with one who is mighty hungry, as the locals would say. Even if they succeeded with cleansing the “deplorables” in the PDOs, which is next to impossible, little can they do with the fattest cats of them all, the High Dons which happen to be in the TPLF itself, bringing the patronage system a full circle.
To keep absolute power to his person and thwart any challenge to his position, Mr. Zenawi, Ethiopia’s late strongman, ensured that there arose no serious contenders, even from the TPLF, let alone from the PDOs. Consequently, TPLF as well as the PDOs are teeming with warring factions. That is why the current Prime Minister, who was installed as a compromise candidate lacking the charisma and real personal and institutional power of his mentor to challenge any of the factional interests, is found at one time threatening to weed out corruption and at another time issuing stern security action against protesters.
What this means is that, EPRDF’s and Hailemariam’s so-called war against corruption is nothing but empty bluster. The war on corruption is analogous to putting bandage on a gushing wound so as to buy some precious time until the protests ran out of steam and EPRDF reasserted its control over society. Unfortunately for EPRDF, Ethiopia’s growing crisis is impervious to a war of words. Neither will war against the people in the name of combating a legion of enemies, real or perceived and internal or external, any longer do. The choices of Ethiopia’s ruling party are growing increasingly limited: Either reform or deform. It cannot tackle corruption because corruption is the price of minority dominance and the price of buying the loyalty of the top leaders and cadres of the PDOs. Without a complete overhaul and a change in paradigm, EPRDF cannot prevent the roof from collapsing on itself.
Do not get me wrong: Many of the protesters don’t mind seeing a reformed EPRDF and an end to the corruption spree. And for all they care, EPRD can march to its grave. As they are not shedding their blood and tears to reform an unreformable ruling party rotten to the core but rather to see a reformed political system that makes the twin evils of corruption and repression, by EPRDF or its replacements, things of the past.
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