By: Qeerrransoo Biyyaa
According to the civic society organizations who organized these rights demonstrations, the objective was "to bring the human rights abuses of [by] the Ethiopian government against [the] Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia to the attention of the U.S. public and decision-makers." A joint statement by five Oromo civil society organizations--Oromo Studies Association, Oromia Support Group, The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa, The Oromo Community Organization Washington DC, and the Oromo Youth Self-Help Association-- further highlights the official core demands and issues raised by the demonstrators in London and Washington. In addition to demanding the release of all Oromo political prisoners in Oromia and Ethiopia, the statement cites the "wrong" foreign policies followed by the British and American governments toward the ultra autocratic regime in Ethiopia:
Ethiopia receives $3 billion in aid each year. Donors claim it is on the road to democracy but this is wrong. Scores of Thousands of political prisoners are being tortured in Ethiopian prisons. Millions get food aid while millions of hectares of arable government [sic] [Oromo] land are rented cheap to foreign investors. Ethiopia has one of the biggest and best-equipped armies in Africa, but over one third of its budget is given in aid. We call on the US Government to promote real democratic change [???] in Ethiopia...
The joint press release pinpoints to major aid misappropriations by the donors and the Horn's biggest client or "dependent colonial state," Ethiopia. Foreign aid is complicit in massive human rights violation in Oromia and Ethiopia in that the regime has used it to: forcefully and illegally evict millions of farmers of Oromia and the south from ancestral lands they have used for subsistence farming; build-up and sustain the largest repressive partisan military on the African continent (a mono-ethnic group army in a multinational empire) and vicious Janjaweed-like paramilitary groups such Liyu Police ; rhetorically use the language of "development", "terrorism", and "democracy", to mask the repressive super-architecture the ruling party, EPRDF/TPLF, has built over two decades with foreign aid money.
The transatlantic protests, which were well organized and well-implemented both in England and the U.S., can be said to have achieved their goals. The thoughtfulness of the messages on the placards such as "Justice and Liberty for Oromo People!!, We Are All Bekele Garbaa!, Oromia Shall Be Free, and USA Stop Supporting Dictatorial [terrorist] Regime in Ethiopia" show just how much hard work and talent the organizing youth and adults put in in the weeks leading up to the protest. Overcoming all odds, including distance and inclement winter weather conditions, the messages of the plight of the Oromo people were indeed taken to these governments regardless of what they will do with them.
The human rights rallies send some strong thematic messages to:
1) the Oromo to continue engaging collectively (in unity) like they just did in London and Washington DC;
2) the United States and the United Kingdom to stop "supporting Ethiopia's dictatorial regime with tax-payers' dollars and pounds" ;
3) to Olbana Lelissa and Bekele Gerba and to close to 50,000 Oromo political prisoners that the Oromo people are out to free them in every way and to free the entire Oromo nation from long-standing colonial occupation.
4) the Ethiopia's regime that Oromos are fighting back for their rights and no one can stop them.
Outstanding Message of Practical Unity
The most appealing part of this protests is the kind of outstanding unity that the Oromo Diaspora showed in years by agreeing upon core common national issues at stake and coming together. This is despite slowly healing and disappearing differences and factionalism of the past. One would be impressed with the renewed sentimental conviction and reassertion by the crowds that the Oromo/Oromia is one nation under God.
The next stage of the rally would be to to follow-up with the U.S. and the British governments to see what they are doing with the demands.
Foreign Media Turn Blind Eye
The Oromo are hungry for the attention of international media commensurate with massive rights violations against them in the Ethiopian empire.
It is unfortunate that American and British mainstream media, except the VOA, have ignored to cover these events for whatever reasons. Obviously, it is up to us to struggle and free ourselves although a press coverage in the Washington Post, the BBC or the New York Times would be nice, but difficult to get due to the supposed alignment of these media with their own nations' primary interests. If we believe that America and the U.K. governments are financially supporting one of the worst brutal minority dictatorships in Africa, namely the TPLF/EPRDF Ethiopia regime, there is no reason to expect that the media of these countries will listen to our side even when we stand in their face and shout human rights. Media take their cues from the policies of their governments and corporations for "manufacturing consent," to use Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's articulation of how the powers that be use media to dope humanity.
Perhaps, we are also to blame for not relentlessly working on creating rapport and contacting the international press in times of great needs. It would be productive to think about how to win the international media over so that they would dedicate a coverage commensurate with the Darfur-scale violence visited upon the Oromo people by the narrowly-based regime in Finfinne.
It is inviting to launch oneself into conspiracy theory when answering legitimate, perennial questions such as:
Why are Oromo stories globally uninteresting despite a Darfur-scale state violence against them?
How do we explain a global system that accepts perpetrators of injustice, but rejects real victims of systematic violence?
Above all else, Oromo must keep up with this tradition of independently telling one's own stories of human rights. The best solution to entrenched problems are often found by looking within for resources and insights.
American Chronicles
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