Oromia Today

Independent Voice of Oromia

OSA President's letter to the PM of Ethiopia Dr Abiy Ahmed

8. November 2019 Administrator (0)
November 3, 2019
Dr. Abiy Ahmed
Prime Minister
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Office of the Prime Minster

Dear Prime Minster Abiy,


The OSA has been constructing and synthesizing knowledge on matters related to Oromia and the Horn of Africa. There is ample historical evidence that King Menelik II- the founder of the Ethiopian state and his army known as Neftegna policies were driven by a racist mindset and was responsible for hand and breast mutilation, the slave trade, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. The Haile Sellasie regime followed the footsteps of Menelik and was responsible for ethnic cleansing, evictions, dispossession of lands, and forceful assimilations. Glorifying those kings is adopting their motives and allowing the revival of racist views. When you publicly glorify Menelik and Haile Selassie, you are committing a grave mistake-because you are validating their racist views. Racism/chauvinism is a chronic problem in Ethiopia, and it is settled in the minds of the group who hold that view. The holders of such backward views do not see any wrong in their biased attitudes. Racist views are widely reproduced in formal and informal schools. The consequences of validating racist views are enormous, and some of them are listed in the following paragraph. [More]

The Case for a National Council of Oromia

6. October 2019 Administrator History (0)
First published August 9, 2018 | by Assefa Tefera Dibaba

In the past, on another platform (at OSA Conference, July 2016, Washington DC), I put forward three scenarios for the escalating Oromo civil resistance to bring about a systemic change, and not just a reform:

a) If it obtains a degree of support from the federal armed forces, or at least win their benevolent neutrality,

b) If the political alliances which supported the status quo governance will gradually wane, and

c) If a national consensus and urgent pronouncement of unconditional unity and convention will be reached among the divided Oromo political organizations and, as a result, IF the national liberation struggle will take a new momentum under a strong leadership and headed toward a clear direction.

It is this last scenario (c) after two years that still resonates most and necessitates an immediate action for the Oromo people to call upon the divided Oromo political parties and to give a party (or parties) a legitimacy based on commitment to the people’s rightful concern or that it suffers a legitimacy deficitif it will not put the people’s demand first (though it is not an easy task to determine “Who are the People?”). [More]

Aspirations and Realities in Africa: Ethiopia’s Quiet Revolution

5. September 2019 Administrator (0)
Aspirations and Realities in Africa: Ethiopia’s Quiet Revolution

Source: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/aspirations-and-realities-in-africa-ethiopias-quiet-revolution/

By Jon Temin and Yoseph Badwaz

ABSTRACT

While enormous challenges persist, the ongoing political opening in Ethiopia offers an opportunity for the expansion of democracy and respect for human rights in a geopolitically important state, and is already having significant implications for peace and security in the Horn of Africa. Managing massive expectations, maintaining stability, and instituting a political order in which the country’s divergent political groups and ethnic communities are meaningfully represented and at peace with each other are key tests that will determine the trajectory of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s bold political experiment. With robust citizen engagement and prudent international support, there is reason to believe that the challenges are surmountable. [More]

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]