Two Oromo Farmers in Salale Brutally Murdered;

Two Oromo Farmers in Salale Brutally Murdered; Their Bodies Dragged and Put on Pubic Display for Resisting Oppression Against Tigrean Habesha Rulers [Viewer Discretion Advised: Graphic Photo

Ob. Jawar Mohammed (Facebook): “Some might doubt such a barbaric action actually happened in the present day. But it did. This picture was taken on December 9, 2014, in Oromia, Salale province, Darra district, Goro Maskala town. The government soldiers killed Katama Wubatu and his comrade whole rebelled due to harassment, dragged their body through the town and displayed it like this as way of terrorizing the public.

“Goota Oromoo maqaa shiftaa itti dhoobuun ajjeesanii ummata sodaachisuuf addababayitti fannisuun waan haarayaa miti. Oromoon falmataa malee shiftaa hin qabu. Shiftaan kan hojii jibba waan namni biraa hojjate saamu. Ilmaan Oromoo maqaan shiftaa itti dhoobamu warra roorroo mataa isaanii, firaafi saba isanitirraa gahu nuffuun ofirraa faccisuuf fincilani. Akkuma gootota Oromoo suuraa kanarratti mul’atan, Katamaa Wubeetuufi jaala isa, godhan kana kaleessa, Hagarii Tulluu, Hamidoo Ibroo, Habiibifi kanneen biroos erga diina kuffisanii kufanii booda reeffa isaanii lafarra harkisaanii fannisan. Haalli sun garuu Oromoota waan san daaw’atan garaa gubee gootota kumaatam dhalche malee sodaachisee diinaaf hin oggolchiifne. Ilmaan Oromoo karaa itti fakkaateefi danda’an maraan diinarratti duuluun haqas, barbaachisaadhas. Katamaafi jaalli isaatis seenaan isaanii tarree gootota bilisummaai kabajaa saba isaanitif kufanii cinatti galmaaya. Mee Oromoota bifa kanaan shiftaa jedhamanii diinaan ajjeefaman warra beektan maqaafi seenaa isaanii gabaabaa armaan gaditti barreessaa. Walitti kuufamee gaafa tokko galmee sirnaa ta’uu danda’a.

“HUB: gochi fokkisaan diinaa kun Katamaa fa’arratti kan raaw’atame ji’a dabre, Muddee 9, 2014.”

Two Oromo Farmers in Salale Brutally Murdered; Their Bodies Dragged and Put on Pubic Display for Resisting Oppression Against Tigrean Habesha Rulers

Media being decimated by TPLF

Human Rights Watch

(Nairobi) – The Ethiopian government’s systematic repression of independent media has created a bleak landscape for free expression ahead of the May 2015 general elections, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. In the past year, six privately owned publications closed after government harassment; at least 22 journalists, bloggers, and publishers were criminally charged, and more than 30 journalists fled the country in fear of being arrested under repressive laws.

The 76-page report, “‘Journalism is Not a Crime’: Violations of Media Freedom in Ethiopia ,” details how the Ethiopian government has curtailed independent reporting since 2010. Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 70 current and exiled journalists between May 2013 and December 2014, and found patterns of government abuses against journalists that resulted in 19 being imprisoned for exercising their right to free expression, and that have forced at least 60 others into exile since 2010.

“Ethiopia’s government has systematically assaulted the country’s independent voices, treating the media as a threat rather than a valued source of information and analysis,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director. “Ethiopia’s media should be playing a crucial role in the May elections, but instead many journalists fear that their next article could get them thrown in jail.”

Most of Ethiopia’s print, television, and radio outlets are state-controlled, and the few private print media often self-censor their coverage of politically sensitive issues for fear of being shut down.

The six independent print publications that closed in 2014 did so after a lengthy campaign of intimidation that included documentaries on state-run television that alleged the publications were linked to terrorist groups. The intimidation also included harassment and threats against staff, pressure on printers and distributors, regulatory delays, and eventually criminal charges against the editors. Dozens of staff members went into exile. Three of the owners were convicted under the criminal code and sentenced in absentia to more than three years in prison. The evidence the prosecution presented against them consisted of articles that criticized government policies.

While the plight of a few high-profile Ethiopian journalists has become widely known, dozens more in Addis Ababa and in rural regions have suffered systematic abuses at the hands of security officials.

The threats against journalists often take a similar course. Journalists who publish a critical article might receive threatening telephone calls, text messages, and visits from security officials and ruling party cadres. Some said they received hundreds of these threats. If this does not silence them or intimidate them into self-censorship, then the threats intensify and arrests often follow. The courts have shown little or no independence in criminal cases against journalists who have been convicted after unfair trials and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, often on terrorism-related charges.

“Muzzling independent voices through trumped-up criminal charges and harassment is making Ethiopia one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists,” Lefkow said. “The government should immediately release those wrongly imprisoned and reform laws to protect media freedom.”

Most radio and television stations in Ethiopia are government-affiliated, rarely stray from the government position, and tend to promote government policies and tout development successes. Control of radio is crucial politically given that more than 80 percent of Ethiopia’s population lives in rural areas, where the radio is still the main medium for news and information. The few private radio stations that cover political events are subjected to editing and approval requirements by local government officials. Broadcasters who deviate from approved content have been harassed, detained, and in many cases forced into exile.

Bakalchoo Barii:- The Ethiopian Empire Formation and Its Consequences on the Oromo and Beyond

By Bakalchoo Barii*

With the help of the then three colonial powers, Minilik, the Abyssinian king, managed to break and conquer the Oromo country and beyond in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Following this war of conquest, the invading Abyssinian colonial army, not only committed genocide on the entire Oromo, Walayita, Sidama and other people, but also committed cultural, historical, social, economical genocides in these new frontiers by imposing the Abyssinian culture, language, way of life, administrations and religion. These crimes were committed by presenting anything Abyssinian as superior to the languages, cultures, systems of governance of the new colonies, as Europeans did practice when they conquered vast territories in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Thanks to their heroes and heroines, the Oromo and the Southern peoples, began the journey of re-claiming what has been theirs and are re-writing their own history.

Like other empires in history, the Ethiopian Empire shall collapse by the subject-peoples, on which it was built on, and that process of decolonization and the wheel of freedom is marching forward with full gear so that those subject-nations can claim their due place among the free nations of the world.

The late P.T.W. Baxter spent much of his time studying mainly the Boran and the Arsi Oromos. Paul Baxter documented and wrote many research books and articles on the Oromo way of life, their Gadaa system of governance and their experiences under the Ethiopian empire after the Minilik colonial army managed to conquer much of the Oromo land and the Southern land by default and with the help of the then European Colonial powers, the French, the British and the Italians.

In his research article titled “Ethiopia’s Unacknowledged Problem: The Oromo” (July 1978), he wrote the following:

“Each of the Oromo people has a distinctive history but all have shared comparable experiences. Perhaps I may select a few observed by myself in Arssi to illustrate some common types of Oromo experience.

“They [the Arssi and the Oromo country beyond] were finally subjugated by Shoan gunpower in 1887 after six different annual campaigns which R.H Kofi Darkwa, the Ghanaian historian of Minilik’s reign, summarizes as ‘perhaps the most sustained and the most bloody war which Menilek undertook’.”

The above description of the sustained and bloody campaign of Minilik resulted in the cutting of limps of men of all ages, breasts of women of the Arssi Oromos, which many Oromo anthropologists, historians and the elderly equate to the genocide committed against the Armenians by the Ottman Turkish Empire during the First World War, in which over a million Armenians were killed.

Paul Baxter and John Hinnant, who both studied the Arssi, the Boran and the Guji Oromos in the 1960s, summarized the experiences of those Oromos under conquest as the following: “The Arssi described their conquest by Abyssinians as the commencement of an era of miseries, since which life has not run as God intended it but out of true.” “The Boran likewise divided their history into two eras, before and after, the first of which was good and the second bad” to describe what colonization has brought upon them.

Similarly, John Hinnant described the experiences of the Guji Oromos as tending “to blame all social problems on their incorporation into the Ethiopian empire.”

The above feelings and humiliation expressed and felt by the Boran, the Arssi and the Guji Oromos are the same as the feelings and humiliation felt by the Oromos of the Wollo, the Rayya, the Karayu, the Ittu, the Leqa, the Mecha, and the Tulama.

One would always ask how successive Abyssinians regimes managed to rule over the Southern nations, including the Oromos (currently known as the subjects or colonies), who constitute more than two-third of the entire population of the Ethiopian Empire for so long?

The precise answer to the above question was given by Paul Baxter in his article “Ethiopia’s Unacknowledged Problem: The Oromo,” in which he says “The absolute political domination and cultural dominance of the Amhara [now the Tigreans], has resulted in the public presentation of Ethiopia as a state with a much more unitary culture than, in fact, it has. Even scholars has come to accept Ethiopia at the evaluation of its own sophisticated and charming elites.”

Five Oromo refugees die on the Sudanese-Libyan border

Report by Boruu Barraaqaa | January 18, 2015

According to a close source, five Oromo refugees have reportedly died and other wounded after they just crossed the border into Libya. The report did not identify the exact date and time of the accident, but CONFIRMED that it happened over the last week.

More than half a dozen Oromo refugees were carried on the BACK of an old Toyota pickup owned by human traffickers when the accident happened. The car was heading from Khartoum to Tripoli, crossing the dangerous Sahara Desert with the haphazard fast speed.

Dunguje Itana (taken from her Facebook PROFILE)

The reason that caused the accident was also said to be driving with the highest speed in attempt to escape from the border POLICE.

The source identified Dunguje Itana, a sister of Feven Itana, the famous Afan Oromo spiritual (Christian) singer, was one of the victims. Dunguje, who was a businesswoman and had her own house in Finfinne had gotten her house demolished by government forces UNDER the pretext of ‘illegally built house,’ said the report.

She was left with no compensation for her demolished house; moreover, she had previously experienced prolonged persecutions by government militias in Finfinne over allegations of being an OLF SUPPORTER, the report added.

According to one of her CLOSE friends, it was this political reason that forced her to flee to Khartoum, however, the city has never been a safe place for thousands of Oromo refugees like Dunguje from across Oromia.

It is estimated that, in 2014 alone, more than 5000 Oromo refugees left Sudan for Egypt and Libya, LOOKING FOR safe places and better lives. Among them, more

Can Oromia’s Independence be A Threat to Others?

By Doorii Abbaa Fugug | JANUARY 3, 2015

It is undeniable fact that the Oromo had their own LAND and governance for may-many centuries. They called this land Biyya Oromoo or Lafa Oromoo and their administration as Bulchinsa Gadaa (Gada Government).  Whereas some Oromos who lived in low lands were pastoralists, the highlanders were farming for many centuries. The crops they adapted, rock carvings, artifacts and many other archaeological evidences CONFIRM these facts today. In fact, there were more lands occupied by the Oromo in earlier days than today. Generally, the Oromo settled between Part of Gojam, Gonder and Tigray in the North, Afar and Somali in the East, Sudan in the west and northern Kenya in south. With all the push and pull factors, the central homeland of the Oromo has been the present heart land of Oromia.

During these times, they lived with other peoples as neighbours including the Abyssinians themselves. Although we don’t have many evidences regarding the cordial relations with Abyssinians, we have ample substantiations that the Oromo had wonderful neighbourhood relations with other Horn of African PEOPLE, especially, with Konso, Sidama, Kambata, Belashangul, Somali, Afar, etc. With Somali, the Oromoo Share more than 40% of linguistic and cultural CONNECTIONS and they are probably the closest cousins. Of course, conflicts and communications were the order of the days so that fighting over the grassland and water wells were considered minor skirmish and amicably solved immediately.

Furthermore, a highly developed diplomatic affairs between these people were also develop during those days. The Aba Qoro in Western Oromia and the Abba Gari of eastern Oromia were the ambassadors for the Oromo people with their neighbours in point. During the Richard Burton’s visit of Harar city in mid nineteenth century, both the Amir (ruler/king) and his soldiers of Harar City were the Oromo. He also tells us how the Oromo and Somali were SHARING water wells and rivers. The story at Laga Fafam, where the Oromo punished their own clan (Akkichu) only because they failed to respect the treaty between Somali and Oromo over the Fafam river is one of testimonial incident for a peaceful coexistence and the functions of the rule of law among the Oromo and their neighbours. The Oromo had never let their people, Mostly Butta Groups, to use excessive power against their peers during the initiation ceremonies. As the Butta war is famous with Oromo youths to occupy NEW no-man’s lands for settlement.

On the OTHER hand, the Naga Oromo (Oromo Peace), the Guddifacha (adoption) and Mogafachaa (naturalization) do indicate how the Oromo always made peace with neighbours and treat human being with dignity and respect. The absence of capital punishment among the Oromo and the development of Guma (different from blood money as it deals not only with reconciliation and compensation but it goes further to heal the wound of affected parties) system which brings peace between the two disputing parties by performing a complex yet easily understandable STEP by step system of reconciliation.

As is known, some of the indications of peace and stabilities are prosperity and development of particular nation. Thus there are boundless evidences that the Oromo were prosperous and stable society during those days. All the explorers and foreign TRAVELERS admired the Oromo harvests in central Oromo during the Teklehaymanots ( Menilek’s father) expansion and after. The Oromo were healthy and wealthy society with huge physique (tall and well built). More than anything else they have developed a highly sophisticated and refined democratic system- the Gada. They developed one of the indigenous calendar- Ayana and astronomy-Raga Waaqa Laffaa. They were the only African PEOPLEwho differentiated and effectively used heera and addaa (Law and culture) accordingly before the colonial era in 19th century.

Of course, they were ferociously fighting their enemy when attacked and vigilantly defended their territorial integrity. James Bruce wrote volumes of books on the Oromo lives and social structures including waaqeffanna religious practices. The strong discipline they had among themselves both in war and peace times. The meticulous ways of keeping peace and order, as well as how they cordially regain a broken peace, whether it was among themselves or with their neighbours.  The Oromo had never used a closed door policy against the foreigners like the Abyssinian counterparts used to do; as they always believed in open dialogue with friends and foes. The oral story of peaceful reconciliation with Afar ( the most hostile neighbours in the East) at Malka Warar is still narrated as the miraculous happening with knowledge and wisdom of the hayyuus on both sides. It is still referred and glorified by the Oromo People in Kamise and Dawwe area as one of the legal references to bring a lasting peace between the these two nations.

Sadly, however, all those peaceful coexistence and age old mutual interrelation and interdependence among those neighbours were completely devastated by the Abyssinian colonizers. They did not only destroy the bases of those centuries old system of peaceful coexistence but they wedged a culture of hatred, cynicisms and malevolent which eventually ate away the fabrics of trust and confidence between these once loving people. Whereas those who peacefully surrendered were effectively made to shoulder Abyssinian colonial yoke, those who resisted such as the Oromo, Somali and Affar, Sidama were categorized under the “barbaric”, “savage”, “uncivilized” and “unruly people” and continued to be the subject of ethnic cleansings. Sadly, while being killed by the Abyssinian on one hand, they also began to fight each other. The infighting mostly started with intention of clearing the gantus or collaborators from the communities. Then first the relatives of the collaborators joined the fighting in support of Gantuuswhich gradually elevated to the fighting between the collaborator’s clan and the rest. Not only neighbours betrayed and fought each other but the same people started to kill one another. Unfortunately, that trend continued up-to-date.