Meanings of Systematic Assaults on Oromo Students in Ethiopia's Universities

January 11, 2013 | American Chronicle

Qeerransoo Biyyaa

Turning Learning Grounds into Hunting Grounds


For the last one week, Oromo online and social media have been abuzz with the news, reactions, press releases, tweets and status updates of EPRDF/TPLF regime's large-scale "federal police" raid on unarmed Oromo university students at the Science College of Addis Ababa University. Obviously, the students represent the most brilliant minds of our society in the empire. 

The policy of turning universities that are supposed to be learning grounds into hunting grounds for Oromo students is part of the age-old systematic campaign of depriving the Oromo nation of its brightest intelligentsia as a way of fulfilling what the TPLF regime states as "finding a final solution to narrow nationalism/nationalists" in its party publication known as Abiyotawi Demkorasi (Revolutionary Democracy) and Hizbawi Adera (People's Custodian). 

The crackdown constitutes an intentional action that isolates and subjects Oromo students to physical and emotional trauma as well as well as to the abrupt ending of their academic career by armed state security forces.

 Beyond Isolated Incidents 

Qeerroo, Oromia's visionary youth movement that is known for its signature symbol of clenching barbed wire with bare fists and raising hands in a show of unity, broke the news that over 113 students-- a large number for university students predominately from one nationality-- were raided and detained without arrest warrants in their dormitories. According to Qeerroo and the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa's (HRLHA) Urgent Action, of the 113 students arrested and immediately subjected to torture, Gammachuu Abdii has already died from heavy beating. HRLHA reported that several Oromo students "have received from minor to major life-threatening injuries."

It is important to note that killing, maiming, disrupting the education of,denigrating and demoralizing Oromo school children following racial slurs is not an isolated incident; it is a recurring phenomenon that dates back to 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. But in the 2000s, the pattern has taken on a massive form in terms of the number of Oromo students attacked. This attack, as past ones, has been provoked by the Tigirean security agents on the Science Faculty campus. Consistent with the OLF statement "It is the Oromo that is insulted, the victim, who is arrested and beaten as well," authors of the ethno-racial slurs were spared violence by mere belonging in the ethnicity of the most powerful minority elites of the day. 

Their tormentors/colonizers fear the sheer potential of these students in becoming the voice of the Oromo after graduating. For the TPLF regime these phenomenon is a strategy of eliminating actual and potential dissent from the brains that can think gazillion times farther into sophisticated abstractions, ideas and practices. Losing hundreds of young Oromo scientists, researchers and engineers overnight from fields of study, which Americans call "the STEM fields", is a huge loss for our nation. 

The profile of the students range from 1st year to 4th year, majoring in Engineering (s), Math, Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Physics, Computer Science, Health Science etc. These youth did not just suddenly arrive at these moments of their achievements. Oromo students had to study for at least 17 years of their lives before they enter college, overcoming the odds of harsh and impoverished life in rural and urban Oromia, where access to good schools and amenities is still very few and far between. By disrupting the lives and the education of these teenagers, the regime is just doing what ethno-racist apartheid systems do--maintain dominance over others via brute force.

Root Causes

Don't be surprised that I have not discussed what led to this in the first place. I think you know it if you grew up being an Oromo or if your brain is wired the Oromo way. The root causes of the sufferings of our people is not the daily denigrating posters Abyssinian students post on the walls of campuses, in toilets and shower rooms, or utter from their hateful mouths to instigate violence. The root cause is the fall of Oromia into the hands of uncivilized aliens who are proud of savage verbal and physical violence against our civilians. The regime's security intervention in support of Tigirean students against Oromo reveals where the ethno-racism and apartheid-ness lies. 


Colonizers are selling away the lands of our ancestors to foreign landgrabbers, and taking away the degrees of our students, shutting all means of survival available to the Oromo people. Oromo can't farm because their land is sold off to wealthy foreigners and habeshas; Oromo can't learn because they are dismissed and jailed en masse. Those who graduate can't find jobs because the economy is controlled by others. 

 What Can We Do?

Amplifying the dwindled voices of Oromo students in particular and the Oromo people in general is essential at this time when the Oromo own no single independent media in the Ethiopian empire. Editorials, press releases can lend useful moral support for local struggles in Oromia and show that we cannot be silenced, but in and of themselves words won't become the solution to Oromia's long-standing problems. Actions can! Yet, we have to keep speaking up against injustice. 

Advanced preparedness/preemptive collective actions are ways toward true freedom that will allow us to raise our youth to become what they have dreamed to when they were innocent kids--scientists, medical doctors, pilots, engineers, social scientists, lawyers, artists and teachers. Until then, the wishes our children make, the dreams they dream, and the hopes they espouse will be controlled by those with real power who want to extinguish them. 

In short, assaults on Oromo students in Ethiopia's higher education institutions are a significant part of targeting the Oromo people for continuous genocidal destruction. "God helps those who help themselves," said Benjamin Franklin. Let's help ourselves so God can help us. In fact, our own Oromo leaders J/Gammachiis Ayyaanaa eloquently said 

"Biyyi jagina [Goota] lubbuu isaa isaaf kennu hinqabine yeroo hundaa garba," [A nation that does not have heroes who can offer up their lives to defend it, will always remain in slavery."]