United Oromo People Liberation Front
October 8, 2016
We are shocked by the carnage of this past Sunday, October 2, that took place at
this year’s Irreecha, Oromo Thanksgiving, celebration at Bishoftu. Unprovoked and
without warning, the criminal enterprise of the TPLF massacred upward of 600 people
and injured many others by indiscriminately firing tear-gas and live ammunitions into a
peaceful crowd celebrating the perennial festival. To add an insult to injury, the TPLF
regime has arrested even those who were fortunate enough to survive the mayhem.
First and foremost, we extend our heart -felt condolences to the families and
relatives of the victims. We also express that our prayers and thoughts are always with
the Oromo people and other people in the region tormented by the TPLF. Those who
perished celebrating Irrecha and defending our nation deserve a special place in our
heart and in the annals of Oromo history.
Then, we condemn the TPLF in the strongest terms for its cowardly and barbaric act
on peaceful celebrants of our sacred Oromo culture Irreecha. We consider this latest
wanton act of the TPLF not an attack only on our people but also on our culture, our
faith, and our identity as a nation. Simply put, the attack is the epitome of the genocidal
policy that the TPLF cabal groups have actively followed for a quarter of a century to
efface the Oromo people and their culture from the face of the earth. For twenty- five
years, the TPLF has subjected the Oromo people, as well as other ethnic groups in the
region, to unimaginable human suffering and destruction. As the most populous ethnic
group in the region and as the inhabitant of the most fertile land with abundance of
natural resources, the Oromo people has borne the brunt of a quarter-century barbaric
repression by the TPLF whose main objective is to establish a Tigre supremacy over
the Oromo people and other people in the region.
Hence, the horrific tragedy we have witnessed this week at Thanksgiving gathering is
an affirmation of our assessment of life under the TPLF dictatorship and also an
affirmation of the extent of moral decadence and brutality exhibited by a rejected and
dying TPLF regime. Fortunately, history is on our side: no amount of brutality and
crackdown on oppressed people can save a rejected empire and authoritarian regime
from crumbling.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated, ‘’injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere.” This statement is self –evident that injustice in Oromia region is also a
threat to justice in Amhara region, in Sidama region, in Gambela region, in Somali
region and so forth. Therefore, we call on all other people in the region to join us in a
fight against our common enemy TPLF to usher stability, peace, and democracy.
We also call on governments and organizations around the globe, especially the US,
UK, Canada, the UN, and the EU, to strongly condemn the human right practices of the
TPLF and to immediately terminate providing assistance to the repressive regime, and
also exercise their influences in setting up an independent investigative body to look
into the human rights abuses committed by the TPLF.
Finally, we call on all Oromo political Organizations and civic organization to set their
differences aside and stand in solidarity with our heroic youth and masses to hasten the
downfall of the decaying regime of the TPLF.
Victory to Oromo people and all oppressed people of Ethiopia!
