The Happy Tears of One, the Anguished Tears of Thousands

Excerpt

Ethiopia today elevates the happy tears of an autocratic ruler above the anguished tears of thousands. As Oromia bleeds from years of massacres, displacement, and proxy wars, state media buries the truth — while in grotesque contrast, the ruler’s tears of joy receive wall-to-wall coverage. History warns us: ignored anguish always erupts into tragedy. The world must act now, before Oromia’s tears ignite into an irreversible fire.

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A Time Warp of Inverted Humanity

Ethiopia today feels trapped in a time warp, a surreal inversion of civilization. Human anguish is ignored, masked out by the pretenses of a jubilant regime. A digital army, Orwellian in tone, floods the public sphere with the illusion that two plus two is five. We are told the leader’s tears are the nation’s tears, that spectacle is truth, and that monuments matter more than people. But Oromia bleeds in silence.

In the southeast, Oromos are being killed and displaced by Somali regional militias under tacit agreements between the prime minister and regional presidents. In East Wallaga, Amhara paramilitaries — widely known as Abiy Ahmed’s Fano — slaughter Oromo villagers with impunity. Entire communities are uprooted and burned, yet the Oromia administration remains mute, complicit as part of this weaponization. State and private media block coverage as though nothing has happened. Silence itself has become complicity; silence has become approval.

From Oromo Protest to Oromo Betrayal

It was the Oromo Protest that shook the foundations of the brutal EPRDF regime and opened the way for Abiy Ahmed’s rise in 2018, after Hailemariam Desalegn’s resignation. Oromos paid with blood, imprisonment, and exile to end decades of repression. That movement was hailed as a triumph for justice, a victory for dignity.

The sick irony today is unbearable: the very man carried to power on the shoulders of Oromo sacrifice has turned into the most ruthless persecutor of Oromia in living memory. Villages torched. Mass executions. Regional neighbors armed to kill, dispossess, and displace.

Seven years of bleeding under a prime minister who should have been Oromia’s shield but instead became its tormentor. No predecessor has inflicted such sustained suffering. This is betrayal on a civilizational scale — an inversion of history itself.

The Sick Logic of Proxy Wars

Why this orchestrated cruelty? Because the regime cannot crush the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) outright. Instead, it wages a war of exhaustion: empowering Abiy Ahmed sponsored Amhara Fano militias in the north and Somali regional forces in the east, both historically expansionist neighbors always vying for what Oromia has. The aim is clear — make Oromos pay a price so unbearable that they turn against their own freedom fighters, so weary that they abandon their dream of self-determination.

What kind of regime does such a thing? Claiming to be from Oromo yet sees the freedom of the Oromo as a threat to their political survival? And uses neighboring forces to crush its own.

This is not governance. It is psychological warfare by way of human sacrifice. It is a state-sanctioned campaign where death squads, displacement, proxy civil war, and despair become the instruments of political control.

So, to those still supporting this regime, where is your room for doubt that this so-called “Oromo government” is acting in the interest of the Oromo people? Forget even the rightful demands and aspirations of the Oromo nation — the basic question is this: can Oromos survive without having their very lives and livelihoods snatched away while the rulers supposed to protect them sit and watch on their screen.

Look at the complete silence of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and regional president Shimelis Abdissa, even in the face of the recent shocking move by the Somali region parliament to claim the major Oromia city of Moyya-ley and its adjoining districts as part of Somali region. That was followed by Somali militia flooding in on pickups and motorcycles for clearing Oromos off their native lands by killing, maiming, and terrorizing them until today. Silence is not neutrality — silence is approval.

Abiy Ahmed could halt this mayhem in an instant. Shimelis Abdissa could challenge the paramilitaries flooding in from the southeast and north today. But they choose not to. Why? Because this is their will, their strategy: to grind down the Oromo people to a breaking point.

Oromo death means nothing to them, even if it escalates into the millions. What matters is their grip on power — power at any cost, even if it means ruling over a graveyard. The massacres in Dharraa of north Oromia, in the Oromia Special Zone of Walloo, and in the west of Oromia in Wallaga are all carried out by Abiy Ahmed’s Fano paramilitaries — backed directly, sponsored indirectly, and tolerated in silence by the federal administration under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, with the full collaboration of Shimelis Abdissa.

The same is true in the southeast, where Somali regional renegade forces are unleashed to terrorize Oromo communities in Dire Dhawa, Hararghee, Borana, and Baalee. This is the strategy: squeeze Oromia to a breaking point through proxy wars waged by neighboring regional forces. This is not politics. This is not governance.

This is a crime against humanity — a deliberate campaign of destruction like few witnessed in modern history.

History will one day judge them harshly — of that there is no doubt. But history is no comfort to the mothers laying their children in shallow graves today, to the elderly weeping over the ashes of their homes, to the neighbors digging mass graves in soil still warm with gunfire. Oromia is bleeding, and its leaders choose not to see.

The Happy Tears vs. the Anguished Tears

And then, today.

Not the anguished tears of hundreds of thousands of Oromos, but the happy tears of one man, broadcast wall to wall. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wept on the eve of the inauguration of the GERD — a project he did not initiate but inherited by mere chance, an accidental prime minister following the resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn, who himself had succeeded Meles Zenawi after his death in 2012.

A project born under Meles Zenawi, stewarded under Hailemariam Desalegn — yet claimed today as Abiy Ahmed’s crowning moment. His contribution has been negligible at best, disruptive at worst. Yet the cameras lingered, the media chorused, and the narrative was set: behold the leader’s tears. Meanwhile, Oromia’s anguished tears continue unseen even as events are taking place in parallel. Seven years under Abiy Ahmed have meant mass executions, burning villages, displacement, and roaming death squads.

While Oromia is drenched in anguished tears, the regime elevates the happy tears of one man as if they are a sacred national triumph. Ethiopia has achieved a perverse a collapse of logic: the grief of thousands erased by the spectacle of one leader’s emotion.

Ethiopia indeed holds a special place in history, but not for the reasons the jubilant screens proclaimed today. It will be remembered as a place where civilization was inverted, where one man’s happy tears became more sacred than the anguished tears of his people.

All the political and civic leaders are responsible. The parliamentarians are responsible. The media are responsible. Every arm of public service — police, military, bureaucracy — shares responsibility. To call this negligence is far too mild. This is complicity in a a moral eclipse where the joy of the few eclipses the anguish of the many.

We said this before and we say it again with greater urgency:

• Shame on the federal parliament and lawmakers who abandoned their duty to hold the executive to account.

• Shame on the regional parliament of Chaffeey Oromia for its gross dereliction of duty, betraying the very law it was sworn to uphold.

• Shame on the state-controlled media — ETV, Fana, OBN, PRIME, and others — for manufacturing an Orwellian reality, silencing anguish, and elevating the spectacle of power over the cries of the people.
• Shame on the Faarseebulaas, the regime’s willing digital army, waging propaganda warfare to bury the truth of human atrocities.

The Gathering Storm of Anguished Tears

What options remain for the Oromo people when those in power are the very ones enabling their slaughter and displacement — all while hiding the evidence from the world’s conscience?

What time bomb is being planted beneath Ethiopia when today’s anguished tears are ignored, denied, and silenced? Human history is clear: truth often echoes louder after tragedy. From Armenia to Rwanda, societies ignored anguish until it erupted into catastrophe. Once the fire is lit, it cannot be contained; the combustible explosives are already being laid in Oromia.

Who, then, can judge the Oromo people — the largest nation in the failed state— if they one day take justice into their own hands? When intoxicated politicians trade territories for power, when chaos is weaponized as governance, who will condemn Oromos for reclaiming what is theirs?

Final Call to Conscience

We end with a plea: World Community of Conscience, please give due attention to what is happening in Oromia. The Oromia administration and parliament exist in name only; they have abdicated their role. The anguished tears of Oromia must be diffused today — not tomorrow, today. Delay is complicity. Silence is permission. And history will not forgive those who chose spectacle over humanity while a nation bled.

Considering the impending danger, and based on what recent history teaches us — Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur — the warning signs are too clear to ignore.

This is not a conflict to be observed from a safe distance. It is a fire already kindling at the heart of the Horn of Africa, and once it spreads, no walls will contain it.

We raise our voice now, before it is too late, and direct our pleas to the institutions and actors who hold moral responsibility:

• To the United Nations — do not wait for the body counts to shame you into action. Your charter demands prevention, not postmortem reports.
• To the African Union — silence in the African capital of Finfinnee (aka Addis Ababa) while carnage engulfs Oromia is betrayal of the very African values you claim to uphold.
• To the European Union — you speak of human rights as your cornerstone; prove it by refusing to legitimize a regime sustained by anguish.
• To all Freedom-loving Nations and Democracies — your credibility is measured by whether you defend the oppressed, not whether you flatter the powerful.
• To all Human Rights institutions — your reports must become megaphones, your advocacy relentless, until the anguished tears of Oromia are acknowledged.
• To the Oromo Diaspora — you are the voice to the voiceless, the witnesses for those silenced; your responsibility is heavy but history will honor your courage.
• To the IMF — your funds today bankroll a civil war while chaining Ethiopians to poverty. Stop underwriting bloodshed in the name of “bailout” and “development.”

Oromia’s anguished tears are not a metaphor — they are the cries of mothers over lifeless children, the sobs of families digging shallow graves, the silence of homes turned to ashes. The world cannot say it did not know. The world cannot say it was not warned.

It is not for lack of alarm bells.  Shabo Media, Oromo Media Network (OMN), Hegeree News Network (HNN), and Kush Media Network (KMN), through their relentless social media presence, have kept the spotlight on the atrocities in Oromia. Through websites and digital platforms, OROMIA TODAY with its editorials, op-eds, analyses, and articles — and more recently OMN TODAY with its news items, news analyses, op-eds, and features— have likewise worked to expose the hidden truth and the unbearable suffering of the Oromo people.

Yet these cries of truth are systematically drowned out. The Federal and regional state media — ETV, Fana TV, OBN, PRIME Media, Prime Logue and others — are busy manufacturing an Orwellian alternative reality, where horror is buried, silence is imposed, and the anguish of a nation is erased.

Nowhere is this corruption of morality more grotesquely symbolized than in the contrast between the happy tears of one man and the anguished tears of an entire people.

History will not remember the dam’s happy tears, but the anguished tears it tried to erase.

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Let Us Not Lose Sight of the Event

And yet, let us recognize this significant occasion of GERD’s inauguration. We congratulate the Ethiopian people in general, and especially those citizens and diaspora members who contributed their hard-earned income to finance this monumental project. The GERD stands as a collective achievement. May the electricity it generates bring light to homes where light switches remain unknown even in the 21st century, and may it uplift the lives of ordinary Ethiopians.

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Final Note to Our Readers:
Below you will find 11 selected references related to this article. These background materials provide valuable context and supporting detail. We chose not to expand on them here for the sake of brevity, but we encourage you to explore them to supplement the arguments and evidence presented in this piece.

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Selected References

1. OT Editorial, The Sinister Dirty Game of the PP Regime with Moyale, 5 August 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
2. OT Editorial, A Time Bomb Buried in Oromia and Somali Regions, 27 August 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
3. OT Editorial, 10 Compelling Reasons Shimelis Abdissa Is Not Effectively Governing Oromia, 30 July  2025, OROMIA TODAY.
4. OT Editorial, Shabo Media’s Masterclass Via Interview: Borana Elders’ Wisdom Where Leaders Stay Silent, 2 September 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
5. Staff Editor, When Silence from Leaders Equates to Complicity: The Inaction of PM Abiy and President Shimelis on Fano’s Heinous Crimes in Oromia, 21 November 2024, OROMIA TODAY.
6. Olii Boran, Not Poor But Dispossessed, 1 December 2024, OROMIA TODAY.
7. OT Editorial, Parliamentary Silence and Collective Cowardice: Shame on Ethiopia’s Parliament and Caffee Oromia for Enabling Atrocity, 2 July 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
8. OT Editorial, Parliament’s Deafening Silence—Again: An Update, 3 July 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
9. OT Editorial, An Open Letter to the Caffee Oromia: Fulfill Your Sacred Mandate, 15 May 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
10. Olii Boran and Ed Chapman, Digital Serfdom in Ethiopia: Faarseebulaa, Propaganda, and the Politics of Praise, 22 May 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
11. Tullu Waqjira, Caalaa Dabalee, et al., Let the River Flow: How the GERD Dams Colonial Hegemony, Not the Nile, 5 July 2025, OROMIA TODAY.