Oromo students are hunted for just being born and identified as Oromo persons

By Abera Oluma
The back warded Ethiopians colonized the Oromo land Oromia during the Europe Scrambling for Africa in 1880s.

Since then the Oromo people have been victims of open and systematic genocide polices of successive Abyssinian coloniser settlers. Historical records have been indicating that the Oromo people have been living in environments characterized by unabated killings, repression, and oppressions orchestrated by successive tyrant and dictatorial Ethiopian regimes for more than a century.
The successive Abyssinians military and political powers supremacies are basically rooted in technical, material, and financial aids of foreign countries in particular UK and others in 1880s.

Since then the successive tyrants and regimes emerged in Ethiopia all they have shared common characteristics: i.e. they all intended and committed them self to concentrate to eliminate the Oromo language, culture, tradition, religion, history and in general the Oromo people identity by all possible means. They all exploit the resources of Oromo people and their land Oromia.


They all try to avoid the Oromo people from civilization by all means they can. They are doing all possible imposes on the Oromo’s not to get education and not to have awareness. Especially the present TPLF government is working hard than the past empire governments to avoid Oromo students from school.

Accordingly Accordingly the TPLF regime dismissed more than 350 Oromo students from Addis Ababa University and jailed them with out any crime they committed in year 2004.

Frome Gonder collage more than 40 Oromo students dismissed and the others detains in year 2006. One Mekele University Oromo student killed and in the same year also more than 40 Oromo students deprived their certificate after they graduated.

September 6, 2006 more than 42 Oromo students have been dismissed from the Haramaya University.

Ddeliberately and officially the TPLF government allocated his cadres like those Mr Sintayehu Kassaye in Mekele University and ordered and authorized to write what ever they like and insult the none semantic people in the empire; especially the Oromo people. A history instructor at Mekelle University Mr. Sintayehu Kassaye Wrote a textbook for History 102 class of freshman students. The textbook, which apparently received a generous support from the University administration to be published in 2005, is a mockery of the missions of education and academia for one important reason: driven by extreme tribal fanaticism and hateful politics with which we are very familiar from the gloomy past of the country, the author resorted to outright insult of a people - unbecoming of member of an academic institute.

The history instructor has deliberately and shamefully taught deceit about the same people demonstrating his abhorrence towards Oromo students, the Oromo and other people of the region, and also the Moslem religion. As a result, the book and the lectures of Mr. Kassaye have caused distress and widespread anger among Oromo students of Mekele University and elsewhere.

It is indeed deeply troubling that even university level instructors continue to spread religious intolerance, tribal animosity, and racial supremacy so openly and blatantly, even at a risk of reinforcing the looming danger of war and ethnic conflict that have kept the country so immensely impoverished.

To quoting some of Kassaye’s writings below:
Considered uncivilized and inferior, even compared to the plateau’s Muslims …Inevitably, the pagan Galla heroes… (’’Galla’’ is insulting name that the Ethiopian gave to the Oromo people) …when they began their great migration to the plateau seemed even more inferior in the eyes of semetized Christian elites than the Somalis and Danakils.(page 145 par 2 line 1-5).

of the kings mistaken sequence of priorities and distorted perception of the Galla migration and the contempt in which he and Ethiopian society in general held these ‘uncouth and wild’ pastoralists (Page 153, par 1, lines 3-7).

… Writing his monograph about 1593 the monk Bahrey already found it difficult to comprehend how the numerically and culturally inferior Galla were able to overcome the numerous Ethiopians (Page 166-167, par 4, line 4).…, lacking a sense of mission and generally uninterested in proselyting togetherwith the ruling class, rejected the “uncouth galla” and despised them (Page 169,par 2, line 11).These are just a few of the quotes from the book which page after page delivers insults and derogatory diatribe to the Oromo and other people and religion of the region.

At this time Mekele university is being the place ware the Oromo students are killed detained and tortured. The university has become the killing ground of Oromo students. Oromo students travel thousands of kilometers away from south, west, east and central Oromia to go to Mekele University. It is a government university that takes students assigned by the Ministry of Education of Ethiopia. The University takes students from other nationalities in the country. But only Oromo students are discriminated and murdered. This is a hot spot where government’s policy of discrimination against Oromos is strongly implemented.

Oromo students are hunted for just being born and identified as Oromo persons. Student Shibiru Demissie was murdered in cold blood after electric power on campus was cut off on a doorstep to his dormitory on November 4, 2006. Shibiru Demissie was a third year history student. The killing of Oromo students has become a norm in Tigray’s Mekele University. Another student, Sime Terefe was murdered earlier at the same place for being an Oromo. His corpse were taken outside Mekele town and dumped into a river. It was found after a few days of search.

Oromo students are hunted for just being born and identified as Oromo persons. According to my information student Shibiru Demissie was murdered in cold blood after electric power on campus was cut off on a doorstep to his dormitory on November 4, 2006. Shibiru Demissie was a third year history student. The killing of Oromo students has become a norm in Tigray’s Mekele University. Another student, Sime Terefe was murdered earlier at the same place for being an Oromo. His corpse were taken outside Mekele town and dumped into a river. It was found after a few days of search.

The attacks that Oromo students face at Mekele University and different campuses are only the government’s extension of the policy of discrimination and persecution followed against the Oromo people. All this happened because of the regime rulings objective is intended to eliminate the Oromo students from school. Its final intention is to eliminate Oromo intellectuals.

Therefore, the Oromo people Should have to hold hand to hand to each other frome every corner to resist and to fight this apartheid TPLF regime and to keep up to appeal to the democratic governments and the international communities to support the struggle of the Oromo people particularly coordinated by the genuine Oromo Liberation Front in order to realise people’s aspirations for justice, peace, freedom and democracy.

Oromia will be free!

Abera Oluma