The OLF Condemns the Acts of Ethnic Cleansing Perpetrated against the Oromo People by the TPLF-led Regime in Finfinnee (Addis Ababa)

oromoliberationfront.info | April 17, 2014

We are gravely concerned that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front-led (TPLF) regime has, once again, intensified its policy of cleansing the Oromo people from Finfinnee, the capital city of Oromia, and the surrounding districts.

The regime first created the so-called Oromia Special Zone in 2008 and since pursued a relentless systematic removal of the indigenous Oromo people from their ancestral land in the name of “land for investors”, with the sole purpose of forcefully usurping and controlling Oromo land and resource.

The Oromo towns including Akaki, Bonsa, Burayu, Chaffe, Chancho, Dukam, Galan, Holata, Mojo, Mulo, Sabata, Sandafa, Sululta, and Walamara, which the regime has brought under the administration of the “Special Zone”, are scattered along the four main gates to and from the capital in the range of 25Km to 50Km from the capital city.

The regime has launched its most recent atrocity under the guise of “Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Integrated Development Plan Project” and annexed the aforementioned towns from Oromia. The regimes’ long-term sinister strategic plan is to surgically remove Finfinnee and the surrounding from Oromia and annex it to the neighboring Amhara state and deprive Oromia of its vital economic and political capital when Oromia eventually becomes an independent country.

Having compulsorily and illegally evicted the Oromo people from areas surrounding their capital city, and now removing a huge landmass and vital strategic towns away from Oromia, the regime has—as it did in 2004 when it imprisoned, killed and exiled over 350 Oromo students for opposing the eviction of Oromo institutions from their capital city—provoked the Oromo youth to rise up and protest. Now it will use this as pretext to dismiss Oromo students from universities, imprison them, and send them into exile en masse.

EU Holds Discussion on Ethiopian Human Rights Crisis in Ogaden and Kality Prison

By Ahmed Abdi

EU House of Parliament opened a hearing on the worsening Humanitarian and Human Rights crisis in the Ogaden region by the Ethiopian government

April 8, 2014 (Tesfa News) —  EUROPEAN Parliament opened hearing about the Ogaden Human Rights violations and the Ethiopian prisons in Addis Ababa. The hearing, which was invited to participate in the Ogaden whistle-blower, Abdullahi Hussein, and Swedish Journalist, Martin Schibbye, was held on April 2nd by the group the progressive Alliance of Socialist and Democrats in European Parliament and Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

“Ethiopia is one of the largest humanitarian and development aid receiver yet these donations are used incorrectly and corruptly. Western governmental Organizations and Western Embassies to Addis Ababa ignored the stolen donations and humanitarian aid that are being used as a political tool by the Ethiopian regime, which is contrary to EU rules on the funding”, said Anna Gomes, MEP Head of international Unit party Socialist democrat.

Ahmed Abdi Marita Ulvskog, MEP, in her part first thanked Abdullahi Hussein and Swedish Journalist, Martin Schibbye speaking about the steps needed to be taken in order to stop the human rights abuses that is being committed against Ethiopian and Ogaden civilians, she said that the EU could use sanctions or words against Ethiopia or follow up documents and information like the one provided by Abdullahi Hussein to show the reality in the ground.

Abdullahi Hussein, who is the former regional Presidential adviser and head of the media in Ogaden presented a shocking footage that changed the EU’s view towards Ethiopia. Abdullahi Hussein, who gained the title of “brave man” and nominated for the prize of Sweden’s civil courage of the year 2014, “Antigone Award”, after he had put himself at risk for smuggling out over 100 hours of footage from the Ogaden Province requested the EU to put their words into action as the killings, gang-raping and extrajudicial arresting still continues.

Speaking with Ogaden diaspora owned TV service of Ilays Tv, Martin Schibbye stated that in conjunction with Abdullahi Hussein their purpose to reset was to tell the World what they had seen which is to fulfill a promise that he made to many people from Ogaden region, but also their co-prisoners in Kality Prison of Addis Ababa.

Members of European Parliament, CPJ’s Jean Paul Marthoz and Human Rights’s Leslie Lefkow have also explained the human rights situation in Ethiopia in details to the EU Parliament. Anna Lindy, Chair of the hearing, presented the human rights situation in Ogaden and Ethiopia at the opening time of the session.

Source: Tesfa News

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fQCpbTpESRk

ETHIOPIA’S BORDERLESS CYBERESPIONAGE

by Felix Horne

Chinese- and European-made spyware is enabling Addis Ababa to silence dissent

April 8, 2014 (Al Jazeera) — I met Abdi (not his real name), a 32-year-old primary school teacher from Ethiopia’s Oromia region, last July while in Nairobi. Abdi had been arrested a year earlier in his hometown for organizing a protest against local government corruption. He was already under the eye of Ethiopian security officials because he refused to provide information on the activities of his students to local authorities.

Over the course of two weeks in detention, Abdi was repeatedly beaten and accused of belonging to the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which originated in nationalist movements fighting for increased autonomy in the 1960s. The Ethiopian government considers the OLF a terrorist organization and uses the threat of an armed struggle to justify repression of ordinary Oromos, who constitute Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group.

The harassment continued after Abdi was released. Eventually, like thousands of other Ethiopians, he felt compelled to flee to Kenya, leaving behind his wife and two children. After some time in Kenya he called home and spoke to his wife, who told him that security officials had been harassing her since he left. That was the last time he spoke to her.

Abdi later learned from neighbors that security officials came to their house hours after his call, demanding to know who was calling her from Kenya and accusing her of being in contact with rebel operatives there. He no longer calls Ethiopia and does not know the whereabouts of his family.

Abdi’s story is not unique. In the last two decades, tens of thousands of Ethiopians have fled their country because of government repression or limited economic opportunities. Most of these migrants, especially those living in neighboring African countries, fear that if they communicate with their families back home, their calls will be traced and their relatives will face repercussions. As new research by Human Rights Watch shows, their fears are well founded. The fear that permeates the lives of many inside Ethiopia has been successfully exported to other countries.

Ethiopian expats, including those living in the United States, have become targets of Addis Ababa’s global espionage.

The state-run Ethio Telecom is the sole provider of phone and Internet services in Ethiopia. The Chinese telecom equipment and systems company ZTE is helping Ethiopia modernize its telecommunications infrastructure. The Ethiopian government uses a Chinese-developed telecom system to monitor and control the communications of its citizens and to silence dissenters both in Ethiopia and abroad. Security officials have unlimited access to the phone records of everyone in the country who owns a phone. During abusive interrogations, security officials often play back recorded phone calls to people in their custody. Those calling or receiving calls from foreign numbers are particularly at risk of reprisals by a government keen to punish those it considers a threat.

But Ethiopia goes even further to monitor dissenting voices outside its borders. The government has acquired and is using commercially available European-made spyware — namely the U.K.- and Germany-based Gamma International’s FinFisher and the Italy-based Hacking Team’s Remote Control System — to monitor dissenters in other countries, effectively extending its surveillance capabilities far beyond its borders. These tools provide security and intelligence agencies with full access to files and activity on an infected target’s computer. They can log keystrokes and passwords and switch on a device’s webcam and microphone, turning a computer anywhere in the world into a listening device. Ethiopian expats, including those living in the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway and Switzerland, have become targets of this global espionage.

In late 2012, security officials detained the wife of Yohannes Alemu, a Norwegian citizen and member of a banned opposition group, as she was visiting family in Addis Ababa. They questioned her about her husband’s political connections. Then the security officials demanded information from Yohannes via phone and email about his opposition party colleagues. He refused; after 20 days his wife was finally released and returned to Norway.

But the incident did not end there.

One of the emails he received contained an attachment infected with FinFisher spyware. Once he had downloaded this spyware, the Ethiopian security agencies had unfettered access to all the information on his computer.

While people around the world are right to be shocked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance by the U.S. government, they should also be concerned that repressive governments such as Ethiopia’s are purchasing and using advanced technologies to target independent voices beyond their borders. The export and use of these European-made commercial products remains virtually unregulated. This is particularly worrying given that evidence exists that similar technologies may be in the hands of authoritarian regimes throughout the world.

These technologies enable repressive governments to monitor dissenting voices in other countries — even in countries where privacy rights are stronger and legal protections are in place to limit state-sponsored surveillance.

The United States, European Union and other donors that together provide an estimated $4 billion in annual aid to Ethiopia should take concerted steps to stop this abuse. They should support global efforts to regulate the export and use of such technologies to governments with poor human rights records. African governments should also speak out and make it clear to Ethiopia that it is an infringement on basic rights to use these technologies to spy on citizens outside of Ethiopia’s borders — people who are all too often seeking protection from repression back home.

Felix Horne is an Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch and co-author of a new report, “‘They Know Everything We Do’: Telecom and Internet Surveillance in Ethiopia.”

Source: Aljazeera

Saving Oromia from the TPLF Gluttons

By HGoche | April 6, 2014

There are many Oromo Scholars, past and present who advocated the urgency of coordinating our multi-faceted struggle for liberation of Oromia before the TPLF gluttons consume Oromia’s resources. By resources, I mean Oromia’s natural and human resources.

TPLF is doing what is humanly possible to win the next election to continue pillaging what is left of Oromia and selling what they cannot gluttonize to anyone who can pay them the highest bid to fatten their overseas bank account, because deep-down TPLF leaders know very well their days in Oromia and the South will end one day. That day depends on how, we, the Oromos will over-come our petty differences and mobilize as one people. The TPLF gluttons also know that they can continue their destruction of Oromia as long they can disfranchise the Oromo Liberation movements Organization’s, as they did for the last twenty odd years, and it is up to each and every one of us to arrest their evil agendas and save our nation, Oromia.

Had the TPLFities cared about the democratization of the empire, they should not have aborted the 1991 genuine attempt made to democratize the empire by the Oromos, the Sidamas, and the Walaitas, the Somalis, the Afar and many others.

IF the TPLF gluttons and gangs may expect us not to see and hear, or we will forgive them the glaring environmental and human genocide they are committing against the Oromos and the Southern Nations since 1991, we tell and remind them they are dead wrong. The TPLF gang has been committing extra-judicial killings, torturing, displacing Oromo farmers from their ancestral land at will and selling their land to the highest bidder , expelling Oromo students from Universities and Colleges for only being Oromo, and throwing over 40,000 innocent Oromos in its torture chambers cannot expect us to forget or forgive these grave human and environmental violations. While terrorising Oromos and the Southern Nations in their own back-yard, the TPLF juntas attempt to label us terrorist for demanding our All Almighty given rights is like vomiting on us and insulting our intelligence. Remember, these shameless and immoral bunches are vomiting their venom on our face by invading our own hamlet, villages and towns.

Why and How TPLF aborted the 1991 genuine attempt to change the empire for good?

Being given the green light by the West and by the reckless OLF representatives at the London Conference of 1991, and the huge military support of the Eritreans, the uncivilized and savage TPLF army moved into the heart of Oromia with Oromo Prisoners of Wars POWs), whom they later named OPDOs. After conquering Finfine and realizing there was no meaningful force that can challenge them apart from the OLF, the TPLF leaders started conspiring on how to wipe-out the OLF so that they can gluttonise Oromia’s resources unchallenged. With the help of POW’s and the enemy within, TPLFities achieved their first stage of conspiracy of wiping out OLF by encamping OLF soldiers. Once they achieved their goal of encamping the armed OLF soldiers with much pressure from EPLF and the so-called OLF representatives, they started terrorizing the Oromo mass and detaining them in harsh prison camps, where many innocent Oromos perished due to exposure to tropical diseases such as malaria and the in-humane treatments at the hands of savage TPLF and Eritrean soldiers. There is no actual figure on how many innocent Oromos had perished in TPLF’s torture camps, but according to some estimates, the figure is in the hundreds of thousands.

WHY Abyssinian Political Culture is NOT compatible with Democracy and the Rule of Law

1) It is not hard to understand why Abyssinians political culture is not compatible with democracy and the rule of law, we do not need to go far to but refer to the history written by Abyssinians church historians. According to these historians King Tewodros assumed the Abyssinian throne by killing and committing genocide on all his rival kings. King Yohannes of Tigre did the same thing to claim Kings of Kings title. Here we should note that both Tewodros and Yohannes committed genocide on Oromos who did not want accept the Orthodox Christianity at the time. King Minilk waged a bitter war on his opponents before he declared himself as King of Kings of Abyssinia. The cutting of Women’s breast and the men’s hands at the battle of Calanqo and Anole during the imperial expansion of Abyssinia to Oromia and the South by Minilk and its foot-soldiers clearly demonstrate how savage, backward and evil Abyssinian political culture and mind-set was.

King of Kings Haile Selassie came to power by disposing Lij Eyasy and his mother, who were in-line to assume power after the death of Minilk II. After the defeat of the Italian Colonial army by local fighters with the help of Western powers (Britain, the USA), Haile Selassie, who returned to his throne by the help of the Western powers jailed and killed all local heroes he thought could be a threat to his power.

Haile Selassie not only destroyed those who fought Italian colonization while he fled to exile, he incorporated the Italian Somaliland, currently known as the Ogaden and Eritrea. After the UN, the USA and the UK agreed to support the cession to Ethiopian Empire of the Italian Somaliland and Eritrea in 1952. In the case of Eritrea, the UN in its September, 1952 passed a resolution called for Eritrea and Ethiopia to be linked through a loose federal structure under the sovereignty of the Emperor against the will of the Eritrean people’s wish for independence. Eritrea was to have its own administrative and judicial structure, its own flag, and control over its domestic affairs, including police, local administration, and taxation, while the Ethiopian Empire was to have a control over foreign affairs, defence, finance and transportation. As a result of a long history of rule under the Italian and British colonizers, and the introduction of modern democracy into Eritrea by the British before their departure in 1952, gave Eritreans a desire for political freedoms which is alien to Ethiopian political tradition. Due to the incompatibility and the absence of democratic political culture in Abyssinia, Shortly after ratifying and accepting Eritrean federal status, Haile selassie started violating the UN approved agreement, and finally pressured Eritrean Assembly to abolish the federation and join the Ethiopian Empire. The violation of the UN agreed Federation of Eritrea to Ethiopia, and its subsequent abolishment by Haile Selassie gave birth to different Eritrean Liberation Organizations. Both Haile Selassie and the Military Junta after him, never understood or own the intellectual, cultural capacity to comprehend the Eritrean People’s demand for freedom and independence. They even have not attempted it to restore the federal structure, under which Eritrea was linked to the Ethiopian Empire by UN. We all know the consequences of the Eritrean war of independence, where Abyssinians forcefully conscripted thousands of young Oromos from schools and market places to fight and die in the hills and valleys of Eritrea. Only History will tell how many innocent Oromos fought and died in Eritrea for an evil empire Ethiopia.

Abyssinian Political Prostitution and the Ethiopian Empire State

Despite all the evidences showing Abyssinians psychological make-up is not compatible with democracy and the rule of law, there are some Oromos who advocate salvaging the dying empire in the name of democratization of the empire. Nowhere in human history, where an empire is democratized but, instead, empires were dismantled by sheer force and her subjects freed. In the case of Ethiopian Empire, many gallant and brilliant Oromos such as Tadese Biru, Mamo Mezemer, Senay Leke, Haile Fida were sent to the gallows for only demanding let Ethiopian Empire represent the whole of nations and nationalities within her border. Abyssinians top-down and authoritarian system of governance, where words and decrees uttered by the Prime Minster, King, President ( whatever title past and present Abyssinian rulers had) , was equated with words given by the all Almighty God, and violating or breaking them was like breaking the words of the all Almighty God. Those who tried to break these authoritarian systems were sent to the gallows.

All Abyssinian rulers, past and present are clever in embracing any dominant political ideology of the day to maintain the status quo of the empire’s grip on their subjects nations such as the Oromos, the Sidamas, the Walitas, the Somalis, the Afars and others, so that they can kill, harass, humiliate, exploit these subjects nations at will. After the brief occupation of the empire during the Second World War by the Italians, the subjects’ people of the South were allowed to use their language and culture, but this freedom was short lived. Immediately after King Haile Selassie was restored onto power, he banned the limited freedom these subjects’ nations have enjoyed under the Italian occupation. Despite Abyssinian way of governance is alien to any world political system, they are very canny to embrace and pay lip-service to any given world political system of the day to hide the injustices and colonization they commit on the colonized nations of the Oromo, the Somali, the Sidama, the Walaita, etc.

For example, King Haile Selassie embraced parliamentary democracy to gain political and diplomatic support from the West, despite his reign was backward authoritarian Feudal system. By embracing fake parliamentary democracy, Haile Selassie not only managed to hold his grip on the South, but, also given Eritrea and Italian Somaliland by the West.

The military Junta of Mengistu jumped on the band-wagon of International Socialism and maimed millions and fought un-just wars in Eritrea and the South in the name of defending the mother land. The current TPLF gang, once rested power from the Amhara ruling class, abandoned its Communist ideology and embraced the name democracy, and continued the Abyssinian tradition of killing, torturing, and gluttonise the resources of the South at its will.

There was no democratic culture in the history of the Abyssinians, and there shall never be any in the future, and attempting or even thinking the democratization of the Ethiopian Empire with Abyssinians is like expecting a dove from the eggs of the snake.

IN PICTURES: The Unveiling of the Aannolee Oromo Martyrs’ Memorial Monument in Hetosa, Oromiyaa | Gadaa.com Oduu – News

Sunday, April 6, 2014

IN PICTURES: The Unveiling of the Aannolee Oromo Martyrs’ Memorial Monument in Hetosa, Oromiyaa

Posted: Ebla/April 6, 2014 · 

The Aannolee Oromo Martyrs’ Memorial Monument was unveiled in Hetosa, Arsi, Oromiyaa, on April 6, 2014 – also inaugurated was the Aannolee Cultural/Historical Museum. The Monument commemorates the Oromo martyrs whose limbs and breasts were cut off atrociously by the invading Abyssinian/Shoan Amhara army of Menelik II in 1886. Known as the harmaf harka muraa Aannolee, the Menelik’s Abyssinian/Shoan Amhara army mutilated an unknown number of Oromo men’s right hands and Oromo women’s breasts for resisting Abyssinia’s conquest of the Oromo land.

According to the recently published book by Prof. Abbas H. Gnamo, “Conquest and Resistance in the Ethiopian Empire, 1880-1974 – The Case of the Arsi Oromo,” the Aannolee Oromo Martyrdom has “become the symbol of Oromo resistance.”

Prof. Gnamo continues:

“Of all the brutalities committed by the Shoan army and its leaders against the Oromo, the worst was the Anole mutilation known as harmaf harka muraa Anole (the mutilation of hands and breasts at Anole) – a tragedy on which Ethiopian sources are silent …

… Anole is located about 25km north of Asella, an area where most battles took place and where the Arsi inflicted heavy losses on the Shoan army. Anole seemed to have been chosen to avenge Shoan losses and to teach a lesson to the Arsi who still resisted after their shattering defeat at Azule on September 6, 1886. Arsi strong men and women were assembled under the pretext of concluding peace. All the men and women present, whose exact number was unknown perhaps more than thousand people, were mutilated; their right hands and right breasts were cut off. As a further form of humiliation, fear and terror, the mutilated breasts and hands were tied around the necks of the victims who were then sent back home.”

- Source: Conquest and Resistance in the Ethiopian Empire, 1880-1974 – The Case of the Arsi Oromo

Ethiopia`s New Strategy towards Somalia a Moral Story of Divide to Rule Policy

Somali Defense Minister after signing the dubious treaty with Ethiopia

The Somali Defense Minister had signed a treaty with the Ethiopian government that indicates the Ethiopian Security agents can freely operate inside Somalia and can kill or abduct any person that is suspected of being an ONLF-Sympathizer.

By Ahmed Abdi,

SOMALIA was one of the best powerful nations of the African continent ever since it gained its full-Independence from European Colonialists and right after its independence, many African countries gained their independence with the help of Somalia.

During the Cold War Somalia and Ethiopia went a war over Ogaden territory and Somali National Army defeated the largest Army of Africa at the time, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces or (ENDF) that forced the former Ethiopian Derge Regime of Mengistu HaileMerriam to seek assistance from the Soviet Union and Cuban troops including South Yemen, but unfortunately when the warlords toppled the former Somalia dictator, Mohammed Siad Barre regime, they did not come up in an advance a plan with them to form a government and control the entire country and that led a naked foreign interference from Somalia’s big, bad neighbor of Ethiopia, which has been meddling in Somalia’s domestic affairs over the last two decades to create chaos. And Somali people that was known for pride and victory loving had been failed by their politicians who are bowing down in front of their former arch-enemy of Abyssinia’s face.

Ethiopia which is more divided than ever is controlling Somalia politics directly and indirectly at will. Somali Federal government sent its former minister of Information, Posts and Telecommunication, Abdullahi Elmoge Hersi, to participate in Ethiopia’s Nations-Nationalities and People day. That time, as the international protocols dictate, his presence as a foreign dignitary has to be mentioned by the Ethiopian media, but he gained neither attention nor respect from Ethiopian government that behaved as if he was a delegation from one of the Ethiopian Kilil. The same were the Somaliland and Puntland delegation. The best presentation of them was made by the well known Somali cartoonist Mr. Amin Amir who depicted them as new members of the so-called Ethiopian National Kilils.

The scenario is the same of what happened for the Somali Defense Minister Gen. Mohammed Sheikh Hassan that hails from Mirifle tribe who were openly expressing their opposition towards the Jubbe Administration. The Defense Minister had signed a treaty with the Ethiopian government that indicates the Ethiopian Security agents can freely operate inside Somalia and can kill or abduct any person that is suspected of being an ONLF Sympathizer.

Nobody could say now at what capacity did he signed that treaty, which made people of Somalis so upset, as is indicated by the many Somali Websites. Moreover the minister signed the treaty with the absence of the Somalia flag while Ethiopian flags were every corner of the Somali defense minister. This is a deliberate political gesture of the Ethiopians. If this action is connected with what happened to the Somali Minister of Information and the other P/S/Land delegations, the picture Ethiopia wants to show the outside World is clear – There is no Somali Sovereign State in East Africa. That is the true message of Ethiopia. But the Somalis did not understand. What kind of diplomacy do you call this?

Since ONLF is limited beyond its borders, what is behind this decision is understandably clear. Both Ethiopia and Somali Federal government want to play the card of ONLF in order to fight against Ahmed Madobes administration and the Ogadeni tribes in Jubaland.

Death and Beatings of hundreds of Civilians Reported from Sidama Capital, Hawassa. Kukkissa, Sidama Reporter from

Wednesday, 2 April 2014

Sidama Capital, Hawassa,

April 2, 2014

An unconfirmed report discloses that one of the Sidama Students’ who have taken part in today’s Hawassa’s peaceful students’ demonstration has been shot dead by the regime’s security forces around late morning; his name to be yet understood. In the midst chaotic situation, the body of the dead student reportedly has been taken away by the security forces who have shot killed him -to undisclosed location. The reporter also says that hundreds of Sidama students were beaten and sustained various degrees of fractures. One of the teachers also was beaten by the police/special forces and sustained serious injury for no apparent reason.  

Police, security forces and especially trained forces whom all are being only assigned by the region’s regional fake president said to have been the culprit of this particular crime against the rights of students of Sidama nation in addition to others over 200 police and hundreds of security personnel being deployed for this reason.

It has also been understood that police has used teargases in conjunction with severe beatings and shootings. Moreover, in addition to the aforementioned Sidama student who has been shot dead, unknown numbers of Sidama students’ haven been seriously injured and taken to various hospitals and health centres throughout Hawassa and beyond. The situation said to be extremely tense and fluid.

It’s impossible to obtain the actual numbers of Sidama students who have been imprisoned although it was reported that they were in their hundreds. The reporters say that the following students have been arrested for demanding their rights and these numbers are a tip of an ice berg. These few arrestees include:-

1.    Marqos (Markos) From Tabor High School.

2.    Tikus Tesfay, From Alamuura High School

3.    Dejene Desta, From Alamuura High School

4.    Nahom Yaeqob (Yaikob) From Alamuura High School

5.    Solomon …..? Alamuura High School

6.    Simeon…….?  Alamuura High School and several hundreds of others were arrested. The beating and harassment is ongoing as we received this harrowing news.

Kukkissa, Sidama reporter from Sidama Capital Hawassa,

April 2, 2014