As amnesty international reported last month, between 2011 and 2014, at least 5000 Oromos have been arrested based on their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government. These include thousands of peaceful protestors and hundreds of opposition political party members. The government anticipates a high level of opposition in Oromia, and signs of dissent are sought out and regularly, sometimes pre-emptively, suppressed. In numerous cases, actual or suspected dissenters have been detained without charge or trial, killed by security services during protests, arrests and in detention.
As it has widely been reported by International Medias including the BBC and CNN, many Oromo students were massacred in the last few days by the regime’s security force in an attempt to crackdown peaceful demonstrations against its ethno-centric rule. According to the officially released reports more than 50 students were cold-bloodedly murdered alone in Ambo town and dozens of university and high school students in many other cities and towns such as Hara Mayaa, Robe, Naqamtee, Dire Dawa, Adamaa, Gedo, Dembi Dollo, Mada Walaabu, Amboo, etc. The mass killing includes, even, parents who attempted to collect the dead bodies of their children. This is not to mention hundreds of Oromos that were wounded by bullets and brutally beaten to death in different regions of Oromia. As the protest is spreading like a fire across the country, the regime is getting more disparate and aggressive in herding thousands of Oromos in to prisons and concentration camps where, they would further suffer, self evidently, all sorts of physical abuses including rape and torture as this has been the norm under the TPLF/EPRDF regime.
The Oromo students peaceful demonstration was in protest against this evil and noxious intention of the regime, exclusively perpetrated against the Oromo people. Their protest was based on the claim that the regime’s decision was in violation of the federal constitution of the country that nominally guarantee the autonomy of each federal state. Ironic as it may appear, it is, therefore, against its own constitution and legislation that the regime responded with violence and terror against the peaceful protest of the students. This is another testimony for the resolute determination of the minority Tigrean elite to maintain a protracted ethnic hegemony over the rest Ethiopian population, in general, and the Oromo people in particular.
ROBA PAWELOS
