Oromia Today

Independent Voice of Oromia

Plugging the Leaky Bucket: A Technologist’s View of Ethio Telecom’s Proposed Privatization

10. August 2019 Administrator community (0)
Published by Demessie Girma on 2019-07-09

Innovations as Catalysts for Growth
Technological innovation is one of the fundamental instruments of growth to help developing countries lift themselves out of poverty. In the context of economic developments over recent decades, technological innovations draw exemplary inspirations from the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) due to the fact that these countries have demonstrated the power of technological innovations that led to prosperity with rapid industrialization (spanning from clothing, plastics to electronics). [More]

Ethiopia’s leader warns plotters following coup attempt

2. July 2019 Administrator (0)
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/ethiopias-leader-warns-plotters-following-coup-attempt/2019/07/01/c2e1241a-9c18-11e9-83e3-45fded8e8d2e_story.html?utm_term=.fdcf50e44a61

By Elias Meseret | AP
July 1 at 12:01 PM
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia’s prime minister has issued a strong warning to anyone who would plot to topple his government, following a coup attempt in the country’s northwestern Amhara region.

Addressing lawmakers on Monday, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said the attack in Amhara as an attempted coup.

“It was an act to steal power,” said Abiy. “The government is now taking measures to protect the constitutional order and arrest those behind the crime. ... Power in Ethiopia will only be by those elected. This should be underlined.”

Abiy also said, “If there’s anyone who threatens Ethiopia’s sovereignty, we will fight them with a Kalashnikov, not with a pen. Ethiopia’s sovereignty is not up for discussion . we will give our lives for it,” he said. [More]

Warnings over 'Africa's Yugoslavia' as Ethiopia coup attempt heightens risk of violent Balkan-style split

30. June 2019 Administrator History (0)
By Adrian Blomfield, AFRICA CORRESPONDENT
30 JUNE 2019 • 7:00AM
SOURCE: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/30/warnings-africas-yugoslavia-ethiopia-coup-attempt-heightens/

The meeting was meant to have been top-secret. The men gathered inside the room were the most powerful in northern Ethiopia’s Amhara region.

The agenda before them was incendiary: the removal of Asamnew Tsige, the regional security chief whose shadowy ambitions had chilled the Ethiopia establishment.

But somehow Mr Asamnew had got wind of what was afoot.

Unknown to the participants, a convoy of his loyalists, armed and dressed in unfamiliar camouflage, was advancing towards them along the palm-lined avenues of Bahir Dar, Amhara’s capital.

Moments after they entered Amhara’s regional headquarters, the meeting room would be splattered in blood and gore. The region’s president and his chief aide lay dead.

Survivors emerging from under tables ripped curtains off their hooks in a vain attempt to staunch the wounds of Amhara’s dying attorney-general. Events were only just getting underway.

Elsewhere in Bahir Dar, Asamnew loyalists reportedly attempted to storm the city’s police headquarters and state media building.

Hours later came more killings, the most startling of them all, as Ethiopia’s powerful army chief, Seare Mekonnen, and a visiting retired general were shot dead while they ate their dinner in the country’s capital Addis Ababa, 300 miles to the south. [More]

Lutheran Saints #4: Onesimos Nesib and Aster Ganno

16. June 2019 Administrator History (0)
June 12, 2019

By Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Source: https://www.sarahhinlickywilson.com/blog/2019/6/12/lutheran-saints-4-onesimos-nesib-and-aster-ganno?fbclid=IwAR3_N5X6tuT2YqO4Tmo_u4zsQt_7UH5ahGV5IyvWHNLbJcds76MCq-Hqsow

If you attend a Lutheran church you may have noticed occasionally the unfamiliar name “Onesimos Nesib” among the commemorations of saints. Here’s his story—one that can’t be told without that of his friend and coworker, Aster Ganno. Go to an Ethiopian church in the U.S. today and you’re pretty well guaranteed to find Sunday School rooms dedicated to both of them, and maybe one to Gudina Tumsaas well.

Proposed date of commemoration: June 21. [More]

Raise hue and cry: Oromo of Walloo are asking their relatives to raise hue and cry and hurry up for their rescue

15. June 2019 Administrator community (0)
By Ibsaa Guutama
14 June 2019
The Amaaraa are pushing them to the corner and have started attacking them taking cover under federation. They are being heard saying, this is not your country, what are you doing among us get lost. Historically and legally it is not only this one but Oromo have more left to claim. Repeating stories created for propaganda purpose over and over does not entitle one to grab what belongs to others. [More]

You Can’t Defeat Nationalism, So Stop Trying

6. June 2019 Administrator community (0)
There are deep reasons that imagined communities will always be a powerful reality in international politics.

BY STEPHEN M. WALT
| JUNE 4, 2019, 10:12 AM

Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/04/you-cant-defeat-nationalism-so-stop-trying/

Way back in 2011, I wrote a column for Foreign Policy on “the most powerful force in the world.” The powerful force I had in mind wasn’t nuclear deterrence, the Internet, God, Lady Gaga, or even the bond market; it was nationalism. The idea that humans form distinct tribes based on a common language, culture, ethnicity, and self-awareness, and that such groups ought to be able to govern themselves, has shaped the history of the past 500 years in ways that many people still do not fully appreciate. [More]

Evidence: Menelik’s Genocide against Oromo and other nations

29. April 2019 Administrator History (0)
By Falmataa Oromo First Published on Oromia Times 4 Jan 2014

Source: https://oromiatimes.org/2014/01/04/evidence-meneliks-genocide-against-oromo-and-other-nations/

Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn (1990: 24) wrote that ‘No fewer than 80 percent of the Herero and 50 percent of the Nama had… fallen victim to colonial rule’. They indicated that the Herero and Nama were exterminated for opposing German colonial rule. They added that ‘the staggering human cost of German colonial rule in South-West Africa’ was accompanied by plunder. The sources suggest that more than 90 percent of the Maji or Dizi, about 80 percent of the Gimira, between third thirds and three quarter of the Kaficho and about half of the Oromo population had lost their lives as the consequence of the conquest and colonisation The small kingdom of Walaita also lost a large proportion of its inhabitants. An Abyssinian expedition in 1894 slaughtered about 119,000 men, women and children (Prouty, 1986:115) in less than two weeks. [More]

OROMO NATIONALISM, AND THE CONTINUOUS MULTI­FACETED ATTACK ON THE OROMO CULTURAL, CIVIC AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS

25. April 2019 Administrator History (0)
By Professor Mohammed Hassen April 25, 2019
Georgia State University

The attack on Oromo political, cultural institutions and national identity began with the conquest and incorporation of the Oromo into the Ethiopian empire created by Emperor Menelik II (1889-1913). Following their conquest, the Oromo institutions of self-government were destroyed, their leadership liquidated or co-opted, their territory divided, their social cohesion disrupted, their cultural institutions destroyed, their property plundered, their traditional religion interfered with, their population decimated through a combination of factors including brutal warfare and natural calamities which accompanied that warfare.4 [More]

Oromo never desired others land passing over their own country

11. April 2019 Administrator History (0)
By Ibsaa Guutama   10 April 2019
OLF is the first-born Oromo political organization. It was founded to free Oromiyaa from Ethiopian colonialism and establish independent Democratic Republic Oromiyaa. Since then, as Oromo struggle advanced with strength much change has taken place in the empire. Today except for colonial mentality colonial relations are no more what they were at the beginning. But Ethiopian government with its symbols and insignia's that reminds more than hundred years of subjugation is still in power. The jarring cacophony of the past is still practiced by those that have nostalgia for Nafxanyaa days. [More]

Ethiopia's transition to democracy has hit a rough patch. It needs support from abroad

9. April 2019 Administrator community (0)
Source: LATIMES.COM
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-horne-ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-democracy-20190408-story.html

By FELIX HORNE APRIL 8, 2019

But the progress has created new challenges. Ethiopia’s rapid transition away from authoritarianism unleashed waves of dissatisfaction and frustration that had been crushed by the ruling party for decades. If Abiy (Ethiopians are generally referred to by their first names) can’t maintain law and order and come up with a plan to address the causes of that anger without repressive measures, his country’s considerable gains will be threatened. [More]

No Change Unless Old Ethiopia Mentality is Changed

9. April 2019 Administrator History (0)
8 April 2019
By Ibsaa Guutama
History of Itophiyaa of the past 150 years we are frequently lectured by Ethiopianist politicians and clerics do not include Oromo; if assumed to including it is misconstrued. Colonizer and colonized have different histories, though taking place at the same time. One is of defeat, shame, enslavement and suffering; the other is of victories, pride, slave driving and happiness. Telling both situations will make it true history and help us to alleviate one and correct the other rather than falsely telling sharing the glories of togetherness in building Ethiopia over and over. The Oromo say, “Fooling the wise is seeking hatred”. [More]

OROMO CONSENSUS: UNITY MAKES STRENGTH

9. April 2019 Administrator History (0)
8 April 2019
By Leenjiso Horo*
However, the Oromo people never gave up the struggle to put their house in order. Since colonization, they struggled in various parts of Oromiyaa. Among the many to be recalled are: the establishment of Western Oromiyaa Federation and its application for recognition to the League of Nations through the British, the Raya-Azabo resistance, the Macca-Tuulama Self-Help Association, and the Baale resistance movement- these were among the many resistance movements. These resistances gave birth to the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the pan-Oromo political organization, in 1973. This was the first rise of the Oromo people from their fall of the late 19th century. The Oromo people rallied around the OLF and made their clear determination to rid Oromiyaa of Ethiopian colonialism, and to build a proud, dignified, free, independent, and sovereign Oromo nation and state. This is the Oromo consensus. With this, the Oromo struggle marched forward. [More]

Oromo elites are shunning initial Kaayyoo of the nation as articulated by OLF without replacing it with any viable alternative

23. March 2019 Administrator History (0)
By Ibsaa Guutama

23 March 2019

Oromo elites are shunning initial Kaayyoo of the nation as articulated by OLF without replacing it with any viable alternative. This raises a question if they are accepting that Oromo were and will be self-reliant independent nation? So far it is only struggle under that kaayyoo, that could enable them to reach the level from where they could hit their goal. Without reaching that level it will be difficult for nation and country to get attention and respect for one’s rights and interest. It is because of that initial kaayyoo that the enemy is campaigning against OLF even without doing anything and continuously keep on cursing any Oromo alleging for being OLF. [More]

Barara is not Addis Ababa

24. November 2018 Administrator History (0)
By Guluma Gemeda PhD
University of Michigan-Flint
25.11.2018
Recently, unpublished, 49-page document entitled: ‘Addis Ababa is Barara, and Barara is Addis Ababa’ has circulated on the internet. The name of the author(s) is not indicated but an organization called Amhara Professionals Union (Amba) claims to have sponsored it. The purpose of this document, as indicated in its introduction, is to counter a draft law prepared by the Ethiopian Council of Ministers’ regarding the special interests of the Oromia regional state in Addis Ababa (Finfinne). Although these rights are guaranteed in the 1995 Ethiopian constitution, the paper rejects them because Addis Ababa/Finfinnee is historically not an Oromo land. It argues that Addis Ababa was founded not even by Emperor Menilek II in 1887, but it was built as Barara by King Dawit (r. 1380-1412) in the fourteenth century.[1] However, this town was destroyed during the wars of Ahmad (Gragn) ibn Ibrahim in the 1530s. [More]

A Response to Dr Zelalem Atlee’s attack on the Oromo

16. November 2018 Administrator culture (0)
A Response to Dr Zelalem Atlee’s attack on the Oromo:

(http://abbaymedia.info/oromo-fundamentalism-the-septic-abortion-of-ethnic-politics-zelalem-attlee-md-mhcm-drph/)

By Imiru Itana

16/11/2018

I wrote this article in response to Dr. Zelalem Atlee's statement posted on AbayMedia on 28 September 2018 as linked above. It is appalling to read the jargon written by a person who is a Medical and Philosophy doctorate holder as posted on AbayMedia but who has exposed himself as no better than an empty vessel. It is such types of pseudo-Ethiopianists who claim to have achieved the highest educational status in the society but never recognize the prevailing fundamental problems of the peoples of Ethiopia. Dr. Zelalem and his likes want to carry forward the chronic problems that were created by their forefathers as if they are good heritage. [More]

Article 39: Oromo Nationalism, Abyssinian Exceptionalism & Expectations Raised by Dr. Abiy Ahmed’s Premiership (Part II continued)

26. July 2018 Administrator community (0)
Article 39: Oromo Nationalism, Abyssinian Exceptionalism & Expectations Raised by Dr. Abiy Ahmed’s Premiership (Part II continued)

Mekuria Bulcha, PhD, Professor

25 July 2018

It is important to note here that the Oromo have never opposed the Abyssinian elites’ interest in preserving their own heritage. What they have always sought has been the acknowledgment that their political history is different from the Abyssinians’ autocratic heritage. They want the end of the Abyssinian elites’ interference in Oromo affairs and the preservation of the Oromo language, culture, and heritage. Article 39(2) states that “Every Nation, Nationality, and People in Ethiopia has the right to speak, write, and develop its own language; it also guarantees the right to express, develop, and promote its own culture and preserve its history.” Those who want to annul Article 39 want to deny the Oromo and other peoples these rights altogether and revert to the pre-1974 imperial system. That is tantamount to the declaration of a war. [More]