The Ambo Massacre: TPLF Military Kills 30 Oromo Students, Residents in 1 Day

May 03, 2014 | Oromo Press | By Qeerransoo Biyyaa

Endale Desalegn, 9th grade. 1 of 30 Victims of the Ambo Massacre.Picture by @abiy_atom

During a mass demonstration in which over 27,000 people participated from Ambo and its surrounding areas against the Addis Ababa Master Plan, TPLF's Agazi elite military division killed 30 unarmed students and members of the general public, including distraught families arriving at the scene to collect the dead bodies of their sons and daughters.



At the Ambo Massacre, Oromos were targeted on the the basis of their ethnicity by Tigrigna-speaking security forces who don't speak the victims' language, Afan Oromo. 

Students from Ambo University and 11 high schools from the area were peacefully protesting the master plan designed to commit a systematic ethnic-cleansing against an estimated 8-10 million Oromo people from several Oromia's cities and rural districts over 10 years.  

So far, many of the victims of the brutality have not been identified by name, age and gender, but most of them are high school and university students. Endale Desalegn (pictured above), a 9th grade student; and Tasfayee Gashe, also a 9th grade student from Liban Macha High School in Ambo, were among the confirmed 30 students and residents gunned down by heavily armed Ethiopia's TPLF soldiers. An eyewitness in the Afan Oromo audio above describes a horrific scene of how families carrying corpses were made to abandon corpses and flee under heavy fire.   

To save themselves from further atrocities and to prevent the convoys from crossing over to Wallaga and carrying out similar atrocities, Qeerro reported that residents of Ambo and its surrounding fell big trees and blocked main roads going west at 16 different places. 

The Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front government soldiers doing the killings were seen heavily armed not with AK-47, but with high-tech foreign weapons never seen in the area before. While they were taking Oromo lives by many dozens,  the soldiers were seen wearing bulletproof vests to spare their own lives even when they knew people were unarmed.

The protest against the ethnic-cleansing master plan, the Addis Ababa Master Plan, is spreading from universities, to high schools, elementary schools and to rural areas involving a diverse cross section of the Oromo public. 

Despite the non-violent and unarmed nature of the protest all over Oromia, the Ethiopian government has responded to Oromo questions with heavy violence, which has been its tradition for the last 24 years of TPLF tyranny.

In a related news, the TPLF soldiers fired on students of Madda Walabu University and residents of Robe town in Bale, southern Oromia. Widespread violent crackdown and arrests were reported at Adama University, Dire Dawa University and many high schools in the area. 

Frustrated by the tragic news of massacre coming out of Oromia, Oromos in the diaspora tried to tip international media such as CNN, Fox News, Al Jazeera, BBC and CBS to cover the events, but the media have so far turned deaf ears to the plight of the Oromo people just like many of the countries they are based in have done. 

Many on social media expressed disappointment that such a major breaking/developing news is denied international attention. Even one killing by a government who is not a US ally is sure to make it to mainstream American media, but in the case of the Oromo, the gruesome killings of tens of people on the basis of ethnicity are swept under the rug because Ethiopia is considered a US ally in the Horn. 

Advocates for  Human Dignity, a human rights non-profit based in the United States, issued a press release and condemned the widespread crackdown against peaceful protesters in Oromia, saying: 

It is with deep concern that Advocates for Human Dignity learned of the appalling and atrocious acts of human rights violations by the Ethiopian go-vernment against peaceful public protesters and innocent university and high school students in Oromia region. In different districts of the region including Ambo, Bale, Adama, Dire Dawa, Gimbi and Dembi Dollo, where students and the public went out on the street to claim their constitutional right, the government responded with bullets and beatings and dozens are reported dead.... AHD expresses its concern that the government of Ethiopia continue to diminish its own citizens by extra-judicial killings and dispossession of indigenous people from their heritages. We strongly condemn the widespread and systematic violations of human rights - See more at: 

The Oromo protests across Oromia state is a developing story and the number of people killed, injured, arrested and disappeared will emerge gradually. The most concerning issue is the fact that the violence against Oromo are not receiving attention commensurate with the amount of violence suffered everyday under Ethiopia's regime.