Parliamentary Silence and Collective Cowardice: Shame on Ethiopia’s Parliament and Caffee Oromia for Enabling Atrocity

Excerpt

Taye Danda’a’s explosive revelations of war crimes, extrajudicial killings, and systemic abuse demanded urgent response. Yet the most deafening response was parliamentary silence. Neither Caffee Oromia nor the Federal Parliament uttered a word. In a functioning democracy, such disclosures would trigger resignations, inquiries, and justice. But in Ethiopia today, complicity wears a suit and collects a salary. This silence is not just shameful—it’s collaboration.

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The Man Who Refused to Be Silent

Obbo Taye Danda’a Aredo stood at the gates of privilege and turned back. He could have chosen the path of many before him: a chauffeured life in an SUV V8, a rent-free villa in Bole, and a bottomless banquet of illicit wealth. All he had to do was fall in line. Smile when told. Numb his conscience. Play his role as another cog in Ethiopia’s corrupt machinery of power.

But he didn’t.

While others in office traded integrity for SUVs and villas, he walked away—resigning from his role as State Minister for Peace with a damning rebuke of the Prime Minister’s anti-peace agenda. In truth, what he did shouldn’t have been extraordinary. He simply chose to do what every public servant is meant to do: serve his people.

But as it turned out, his act of conscience wasn’t just moral—it was dangerous. For speaking the truth, he was imprisoned in December 2023. Then released after a year. Then re-arrested again just a month ago. But not before recording secret interviews—time bombs of truth set to explode upon his arrest or death.

And explode they did.

The Explosive Revelations That Should Have Changed Everything

Taye’s disclosures weren’t political gossip. They were a catalogue of war crimes and crimes against humanity:

• The Tigray war—an entirely manufactured catastrophe orchestrated by political elites, costing over a million lives for political gain and trillions of Birr is damages.
• Direct summary execution orders against Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) fighters and sympathizers while in captivity—not as battlefield decisions, but as standing policy from the highest offices.
• Entire families jailed or abducted to terrorize others from joining or supporting the OLA —guilt by bloodline turned into strategy.
• Homes incinerated with people inside—acts of state-sponsored terror designed to “deter” by example, echoing medieval cruelty.
• The assassinations of Karrayyuu Abbaa Gadaa elders and prominent Oromo activists—deliberate, premeditated, and greenlit from the top to silence spiritual and cultural resistance.
• Thousands of justice cases deliberately buried—none more emblematic than Hacaaluu Hundeessaa’s assassination, whose fifth anniversary passed just days ago without truth, trial, or closure.
• The routine use of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances as policy tools, with no legal or parliamentary oversight.
• The criminalization of entire communities—treated as enemy territory by their own “government”, particularly in western and southern Oromia.
• A total collapse of judicial independence—where courts are puppets, and prosecutors are tools of political vengeance.

These were not isolated excesses. They were state policies—systematic, sanctioned, and dripping with criminal intent. These were not just words buried in bureaucratic memos or obscured by plausible deniability.

They were oral directives—delivered face-to-face, across meeting tables, by men with names, faces, ranks, and full awareness of their consequences. These were not miscommunications or rogue decisions.

They were premeditated crimes, issued with chilling clarity and received without resistance.

And here’s the most damning truth: these individuals—the architects of incinerated homes, tortured families, and mass killings—are still in office. Still signing documents. Still commanding forces. Still making policy.

Still untouched by justice.

In any functioning democracy, this would have sparked a reckoning. Emergency hearings. Public outcry. Resignations. Investigations. But instead, we got the one response that betrays democracy’s core:

Parliamentary silence.

Silence as Betrayal: The Cowardice of Caffee and Federal Chambers

We gave you weeks.
Weeks to speak.
Weeks to act.
Weeks to even pretend to care. But from Caffee Oromia and the Federal Parliament—nothing.

Silence. Total, haunting silence.

Not a statement. Not a question. Not a whisper.
Parliamentary silence reigned. And silence in the face of atrocity is not caution—it is complicity.

You were not just missing in action—you were morally absent in Ethiopia’s darkest hour. Your silence was louder than Taye’s truths. And that silence spoke volumes.

Questions You Can’t Outrun

So now we ask what you won’t dare answer:

• How do you reconcile your parliamentary silence with the deaths of a million in a fabricated war?

• How do you sit idle as your executive ordered assassinations of Abbaa Gadaas and Oromo icons?

• How do you allow top criminals to remain in power, untouched and unshamed?

• How do you collect public salaries while refusing to represent the public interest?

• How do you abandon Taye Danda’a, knowing he stood for truth and fell for it?

• What is your excuse? What is your shame made of, that it hides even from truth this raw?

Final Blow:

This isn’t just a failure of “governance”. It is a collapse of moral character.

You may have convinced yourself that silence is safety. But silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality. It is collaboration. It is betrayal.

And if Obbo Taye Danda’a’s fate was meant as a warning to others, his voice has now echoed farther than the jailers ever imagined. It has exposed not only the regime’s evil—but your moral emptiness.

Parliamentary silence has become Ethiopia’s true national anthem—played to the rhythm of suffering and betrayal.

But silence will not save you.
Truth has been spoken.
And the people are listening.

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References

1. The Fearless Obbo Taye Danda’a Arado Intervews, 15 June 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
2. Part 1 Interview, Turtii Addaa Taayyee Danda’aa Waliin: Kutaa 1ffaa, 10 Jun 2025, Horn Conversation Channel, YouTube.
3. Part 2 Interview, Turtii Addaa Taayyee Danda’aa Waliin: Kutaa 2ffaa, 11 Jun 2025, Horn Conversation Channel, YouTube.
4. Part 3 Interview, Turtii Addaa Taayyee Danda’aa Waliin: Kutaa 3ffaa, 12 Jun 2025, Horn Conversation Channel, YouTube.
5. Part 4 Interview, Turtii Addaa Taayyee Danda’aa Waliin: Kutaa 4ffaa fi isa Xumuraa, 13 Jun 2025, Horn Conversation Channel, YouTube.
6. OT Editorial, Clapping for Lies in Ethiopian Politics: A Reckoning for Ethiopia’s Belly-Politicians, 17 May 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
7. OT Editorial, An Open Letter to the Caffee Oromia: Fulfill Your Sacred Mandate, 15 May 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
8. Obbo Taye Danda’a’s BBC Afan Oromo Interview – English Translation Transcript, 10 December 2023, OROMIA TODAY.
9. Part 1 of 2 BBC Afan Oromo Interview, 7 December 2023, BBC Afan Oromo.
10. Part 2 of 2 BBC Afan Oromo Interview, 8 December 2023, BBC Afan Oromo.

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