Brutality is a sign of disappointment and failure

In the whole area of Oromia the ongoing killings, arrests, detentions and harassments of innocent civilian Oromos in mass is indicating and more exposing the brutal barbaric act of the Ethiopian regime. Harassments of Oromo university and high school students have been taking place in all parts of Oromia. TPLF is doing similar brutal acts to peasants businessmen and governmental and NGO employers too. The Oromo peasants couldn’t peacefully work on their land; and produce to feed their families and provide their products to the city people. This has contributed to certain extent to the prevailing famine and food insecurity in the country.

The harassment continues to the NGOs and government employees of Oromo Ethnic origin. Oromos who have got a differing political stand and outlook are automatically categorised as antagonistic to the ruling party and subsequently harassed. Any Oromos who do not support the bogus organisation ’’OPDO’’ could be attacked by the TPLF. The real Oromo couldn’t lead a free and secure life in their own homeland.

This serious inhuman and barbaric brutal acts of the regime led by the Tigrian led minority is now at a maximum point. This terrorist acts of the Tigrean ruling regime shows the approach of an end of their brutal regime.

TPLF revoked the licence of the oldest Oromo welfare organisation: the Mecha and Tulama Development Organisation, which is officially registered and working according to the constitution of the land. They also hunted down and detained the entire leadership of the organisation. They looted their office and closed it. Such shameful and disappointing act of the regime will only hasten its downfall.

The peace full demonstration against the brutal regime that started in the whole Oromia is now being more and more intensified and strengthened. Their demand is for the immediate release of the people in prison. They are demanding to be lead by people chosen by the free will of Oromos themselves and the right to self determination. They are expressing their refusal to be governed by TPLF which is essentially a representative of the Tigreans, by no means of Oromos. And they are condemning the brutal act of the Ethiopian regime.

By ignoring the peoples’ peaceful demands, TPLF is violating its own constitutional law and international human rights law. It is continuing to harass, imprison and kill those people who question their rule including farmers, religious leaders and high school students.

It is not new that the Tigrean led minority government has been waging war on the Oromo people. The current brutal acts taking place against peace-fully demonstrating Oromo students and peace full innocent civilians is part of war the Tigreans waged on Oromo people. As reports from several human right organisations like Amnesty International, The US State Department, Human Right Watch, Oromia Supporting Grope and Others constantly reporting the extra judicial killings, Disappearances, and harassments under the current regime since it came to the power in 1991. Any Oromo who demand for his/her basic rights is immediately branded as a sympathiser of Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and persecuted. More than 400 Addis Ababa University students were detained and harassed in 2004. More than 350 of them were expelled from school. All this happened because they opposed the order given by their satellite organisation by the name of OPDO to move the capital city of Oromia from Finfinne/ Addis Ababa to Adama. Two of those detained university students namely; Alemayehu Gerba a handicapped person and student Gaddisa Hirpata 4th year civil engineering student in 2004 were killed by the regime in prison in the first quarter of 2006. Hundreds of those students were forced to leave their country and joined tenth of thousands of Oromo refugees suffering in refugee camps in Kenya. TPLF is still hunting them down in Kenyan refugee camps where they have been seeking asylum sending its mercenaries to those camps. The mercenaries are doing such terror act on innocent Oromo refugees forced to flee their home land. This is terrorism. It is the sign of disappointment and sign of their failure.

The current uprising of Oromo people all over Oromia is the result of the brutality of the regime highlighted above. It is a response to the TPLF and self defence action.

It is rarely in the history of human kind that people surrender and give up their fight against repression irrespective of the severest consequences. People can not bear slavery for ever and live with it. Harassment, murder and imprisonment of subjugated people will never allow the coloniser to live in peace. Instead, it strengthens the resolve of the people to fight against repression and hastens the down fall of the oppressors.

Oluma.A 1969 05 07.