Record set straight on Ethiopia’s Oromo people

PRESS TV
Ethiopia is one of the most historic nations on the face of this earth, but writers are creating a stream of confusion about the breakdown of Ethiopians, particularly the Oromo people, and many are losing site of the truth, experts say.
Professor Feqadu Lamessa, a former Adama University professor and writer, says Qatar-based al Jazeera has published several articles concerning the Oromo people of Ethiopia. Praising the coverage, Lamessa believes it forces Ethiopian authorities to address human rights abuse in the country and to let them know that the world is watching.
“Oromos and other Ethiopians have been struggling for equal rights and democracy for decades. While it is important to report about Oromo people’s background and historical perspectives, it is however vital that we report accurate information. Instead of benefiting us, reporting inaccurate or biased information can actually harm our struggle for democracy. Instead of creating national consensus and peace, it can instigate bitterness and anger.”

Lamessa says there are some general inaccuracies that are reported frequently. For example, it is generally believed that between 1868 and 1900, half of all Oromo were killed, approximately five million people. The professor says this is not true, and that in fact it was a case of ill-equipped soldiers from the south fighting better-equipped forces from the north with a larger European influence. Lamessa says it was not genocide.

He also says Oromo people have never been a predominantly Muslim, yet it is frequently reported today that they in fact are, “The latest official 2007 census showed that around 48% of Oromos practice Christianity (Both Orthodox & Protestant) while around 47% of Oromos practice Islam.”
Lamessa says it is widely believed that Abyssinians labeled Oromos with the derogatory word ‘Galla,’ and that for many decades, the falsity has been used by Oromo separatists to build emotional resentment among Oromos against Semitic Abyssinians, which include Amharas, Tigrayans and Gurages. “The fact is the derogatory word ‘Galla’ was first used by Arab and Muslim Somalis to describe Oromos as ‘gal’ meaning ‘outsiders’ and ‘Pagans.’”
Lamessa says the label was used by Muslims during Oromo migration because Oromo people had their own religion which the Muslims believed was paganism. Over time, the derogatory word was gradually adopted and used by other Ethiopians.”
There are other points that Lamessa has addressed, including the popular claim made by secessionist Oromo politicians that Oromo people were colonized by another ethnic group.

“This claim is popular among the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) organization and consequently among some Diaspora Oromo nationalists living in America and Europe. While a different version or a re-arrangement of the wording might still be true…in general, the Oromo nation as a whole was never colonized by another Ethiopian ethnic group.”

Straight Talk African viewer and guest Tedla Asfaw, says the opposition is gaining ground, and that the rallying cry is change. Asfaw says numbers are being “produced” about Ethiopian ethnicity and religion and the fact checkers are asleep at the wheel.
“I heard Dr. Megersa on Oromo TV in Minnesota telling us the ‘victims’ of red and white terrors in Ethiopia — eighty percent of them were ‘Oromos’. Eighty percent of Ethiopian Muslims are ‘Oromos’ according to the ‘book’ of Jawar Mohamed. Where did they get those numbers? Journalists pick such figures and confuse the public. Both Megersa and Jawar are biased actors, their claim is not supported by local/Ethiopian as well as foreign historians.”
Asfaw says Professor Fekadu Lemessa has done his part to counter the numbers. When it comes to red and white terror victims, there are studies and websites who compiled the names of the victims of the red terror. It is time to rebuke the claim of Dr. Megersa.
Writer Kiflu Hussein, originally from Ethiopia, also backs Lemessa. He says the renewed interest in clarifying truth about his native country is crucial.

“I am glad that another Ethiopian started to expose the falsehoods being propagated by gun touting and machete wielding narrow-minded ethnic liberators out of whom some succeeded to divide Ethiopia into two and occupy palaces in Addis Ababa and Asmara. Are we Ethiopians going to let that happen for the second time and see our country be further divided up and weakened by tribal power mongers? I don’t think so, not when more and more courageous voices like Feqadu Lamessa start speaking up and get involved actively.”

“We are living in a fast information age where numbers are used rightly and wrongly,” Tedla Asfaw said. “Numbers are used by anti Ethiopia elements for ‘propaganda’ to divide Ethiopians by ethnicity and religion, create tension according to the designers. They could care less for the people they claim they are speaking on their behalf because they are living sound and safe in the West with their own families and cannot be impacted by their action.”
He reminds readers that in a civilized world there is always a census every ten or so years to study communities where numbers are used to address legitimate issues. In poor country like Ethiopia where ethnicity is the force to rule by division, journalists have to check their facts.
Asfaw added, “Professor Fekadu Lemessa’s ‘Oromo 101′ helps foreigners as well as locals/Ethiopians interested to educate and empower the people of Ethiopia, including Oromos.

Analysts: New Leadership Slow to Bring Change to Ethiopia

Marthe van der Wolf

  ADDIS ABABA — It has been almost one year since Hailemariam Desalegn came to power in Ethiopia, following the death of his predecessor Meles Zenawi. Despite recent demonstrations and a cabinet shuffle, little seems to have changed in the East African country.

After weeks of speculation, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's death was announced last year, on the morning of August 21st. The passing of the longtime ruler made way for his deputy Hailemariam Desalegn, to lead the second most populous nation on the African continent.

Ethiopia witnessed several anti-government demonstrations in recent months, a rare sight. And the new prime minister also replaced most of the cabinet.

But a spokesperson for the prime minister, Getachew Redda, said these developments are not part of any fundamental change within the government.

“What Hailemariam is doing at this point is implementing the policies that have been adopted by the ruling party," Redda explained. "If there were people who were expecting any kind of change in terms of directions and fundamental policies then they will definitely be disappointed because there was neither the intention nor the tendency to bring about any change whatsoever in this regard."

Collective leadership

Hailemariam, an engineer by training, was the minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister until last August. With the appointment of Hailemariam, a collective leadership was put in place. Although government officials said that a collective leadership was always part of the ruling party's policy.

Solomon Dersso, a political analyst for the Institute for Security Studies, said that political power is no longer centered in the position of the prime minister. But he doubts whether it will change Ethiopia’s political scene.

“The only thing that it would change is how decision making is negotiated within the ruling party between the different power centers," Dersso said. "So you have regional governments becoming quite important, you have the members of the coalition, and of course the security apparatus. So on various aspects of the management of the affairs of the country obviously these different centers of power negotiations need to be undertaken."

Girma Seifu, the only opposition member of parliament in Ethiopia for UDJ (Unity for Democracy and Justice), one of the parties that organized demonstrations in recent weeks, said that Prime Minister Hailemariam behaves differently in parliament from his predecessor.  “In the previous, the prime minister is everything. So he is the law of the country," Seifu noted. "So at that time the parliament was irrelevant.”

Human Rights

Despite those differences in character, Seifu feels the Ethiopian government has not changed its position on allowing more freedom for people who hold different opinions.

“They must do something visible to change the human rights situation in this country. They must take this thing seriously and they have to take action to improve these things. Only economic development issues, infrastructure issues will not substitute human rights issue," Seifu said.

Ethiopia has been ruled by a coalition of four parties, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, since 1991 with Meles Zenawi as its leader until his death. Current Prime Minister Hailemariam is expected to run for office during the 2015 elections. He hasn’t been very visible in his first year, but spokesperson Getachew said that this will change during his second year in office.  “What you can expect from his leadership is a much closer engagement with the public, much more progressive attitude towards the development of the democratic process," he remarked. "And a much more economic growth.”

Ethiopian statistics claim the country has had double-digit growth for the last few years, although the World Bank and IMF estimate the growth is around eight percent. The country is halfway through implementing its ambitious five-year Growth and Transformation Plan that is aimed at turning Ethiopia into a middle-income country by 2025.

Hana’s 12-year-old brother Emanuel testifies: Ethiopian Kid Punished to Death

 Child testifies about beatings, neglect from adoptive parents

MOUNT VERNON, Wash — The Sedro-Woolley parents accused abusing their adopted daughter to death listened to damaging court testimony on Monday from their adopted son.

Less than three years after arriving in Sedro-Woolley from Ethiopia, Hana Williams was dead. Her adoptive parents, Carri and Larry Williams, were charged with abusing the teen to death.
On Monday, Hana’s 12-year-old brother Emanuel took the stand to recount the horrors he said he and his sister had to live with.
Through an interpreter, Emanuel described being repeatedly beaten and punished with a water hose.
“They would beat me very hard,” he said.
Hana died in May 2012, and prosecutors say Larry and Carri Williams starved, beat and neglected the girl. The day she died, they allegedly banished her to the back yard on a rainy, 40-degree day.

Hana

Prosecutors say Hana didn’t have enough clothing and lost consciousness in the mud. Carri Williams told a 911 operator she thought Hana killed herself.
“She’s been throwing herself all around and then she collapsed,” she said.
The parents are now accused of homicide-by-abuse.
“It was the same for my sister,” Emanuel said. “The father would use a beating stick to beat us.”
Emanuel said the beatings got worse over time, telling the jurors his parents often punished the kids outside with a water hose.
“If we wet bed, peed the bed, they would use a water hose all over us, spray our bodies,” he said.
He said he wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom without an escort, and said no part of his body was immune to the beatings.

The Ethiopian Civil Rights Movement: Promising Developments

by Alemu Tafesse

The Ethiopian Muslims’ movement, an activism that took too many an observer by surprise when it started, is getting even more promising day by day. It has kept amazing some for its unmatched persistence, size, and visibility. It has startled others for forcefully injecting into the otherwise dormant Ethiopian politics an aura of democratic culture and oppositional dynamism despite authoritarian brutality. As I once argued, it has also become perhaps the only massive and persistent location of democracy in current Ethiopia. Needless to say, it has, finally, inaugurated in the country a new era of non-violent anti-dictatorial struggle. Simply put, the civil rights movement has already left an indelible mark in Ethiopia’s present and future politics.
The most recent developments have been conspicuously remarkable, and are demonstrating the starker successes this movement is registering, and also its constructive transformations. The first and most obvious development is that it has generally gotten sturdier over time (despite some fluctuations now and then). However much the government wished it to fade away with the passage of time, the movement has gone increasing in size and the protesters have gone betraying stronger dedication to the cause. Starting from the few weeks leading up to the Holy Month of Ramadan, and right into the third week of the month, the Merkato and Piassa streets of Addis Ababa have aired perhaps the loudest ever public outcry and accommodated the largest ever gatherings.
The government indeed realized/anticipated the amount of opposition building against it, and has taken measures to deflect it.  This time around, it has refined, magnified, and expanded on the murder of a Sheikh in Dessie. The incident has been given phenomenal attention to the extent that the ruling party issued an official statement on it, brought out people condemning it, and endlessly propagandized about it on the state media.  The immediate extraction of multiple cards from the murder alone requires close attention in order to understand the government’s reactions to the growing opposition. But we can even go further to seriously doubt the government’s claim that the Sheikh was killed by “networked terrorists”. It is by now a matter of consensus among the huge Muslim crowd protesting every Friday as well as many other Ethiopians of diverse backgrounds that the murder was a work of the government itself that aimed at stepping up the crackdown on Muslim activists and limiting the expected contagious effects of the movement by mobilizing the “Sufis” against a so-called “wahhabi” threat.  Given a number of factors that deal with the circumstances of the killing and the track record of the ruling party, this is an argument not at all difficult to wholeheartedly accept as valid. But the important point here is the one that deals with the way, and the end to which, the killing was put to use by the government, which we have already seen.
Whether such a strategy succeeds remains to be seen as both the anti-government and government projects are now strongly underway, but it is getting clear that the Muslims movement is now been taken to a whole new level with the introduction of yet advanced forms of protest.
Two are worth-mentioning. The first is graffiti. In a dozen of places in Addis and the regions, walls have been found covered with writings that depict some of the demands of the protesters.  Through these writings, the demands of the Muslim activists are carried on to days other than Friday; are given an alternative visual form of expression; and  are singled out individually and magnified—all  for ensuring deep public re-consideration.
The other—and more– significant development is the internationally held shows of protest and solidarity with the cause. Ethiopian Muslims in the diaspora have been quite active in showing their solidarity with the struggle inside the country. But on the last days of July, the remarkable coordination among activists in different countries over various continents has given the movement a more solid, more organized and truly global face. It has, more than other things, proved to the world the potent organizational capacity of and the strong unity of purpose that resides in, this civil rights movement. It demonstrated not only the great potential of the movement in effectively challenging the EPRDF dictatorship but also the consistent rise in the maturity of the Ethiopian Muslim activism. The protest in Addis Ababa was especially extraordinary. It was simply so huge, so loud and so visible that even the state media was forced not to ignore it, but give it a “meaning” in accordance with its “terror” rhetoric. July 26 is yet another unforgettable day in the history of indefatigable and free expression of anti-EPRDF public fury.
The last, but the politically most important, development is the contribution of this struggle to the revivalism of a serious oppositional politics in the country. This point, I believe, is so significant that the ultimate measurement of the success of this movement is the degree to which it helps bring about serious and sustainable political dynamism that has the potential to eventually create a democratic political environment at the state level. The movement has already played a prominent role in this regard, which I want to touch upon in the following lines.
Two opposition political parties have successfully organized public rallies in different regions of Ethiopia. These rallies have been recorded as the first of their kind since the 2005 elections. While there could be multiple reasons that were behind the decisions on the part of the parties to take such a bold step, the fact that the Muslim movement was of phenomenal significance is absolutely undeniable. The movement might have contributed to the revitalization of the will of the opposition parties to call for protests in three major ways: first, it might have sparked in the minds of party