Leenjiso Horo
April 15, 2018
The 19th-century Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky famously
wrote: “History doesn’t teach anything, but greatly punishes one
for not learning its lessons.” This quotation reminds us, our
failure to learn lessons of our tragic history of a century ago,
the tragic history that made Oromo people the victim of
Abyssinia, ending in the conquest of Oromiyaa and putting the
nation in disgrace and humiliation in which we found ourselves
today. This article highlights lessons of the past and the
present tragic history of genocide to be learned and indicates a
way forward.
Genocide has been perpetrated against the Oromo people since the
invasion, conquest, occupation, and colonization of Oromiyaa to-
date. Despite this, only a few nationals are using the
authentic meaning of the term genocide. Some use it loosely, and
others totally shun away to use it altogether. The purpose of
this article is to bring to its readers the authentic meaning of
genocide and so to show that by any standard definition, the
Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) policies and practices
against the Oromo people fit the definition of genocide. History
has shown time and again that genocide has been used to reduce
the majority to a minority.
According to Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term
genocide: “Genocide has two phases: one, the destruction of the
national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the
imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.” Hence,
the accepted legal definition of genocide is the intent to
destroy a targeted group in whole or in part. It is a state
policy. Genocide is not only a mass massacre, or destruction of
a nation; it is the eradication of the people. Simply put, the
term genocide is used to describe a deliberate and systematic
wholesale physical extermination of an entire people or nation.
Hence, genocide is legally defined by the UN as “any of the
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following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”:
Killing members of the group;
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group;
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole
or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another
group.
Here what has to be understood from the definitions is that the
victims of genocide are deliberately targeted by reason of their
membership of one of the four groups named above.
In the vocabulary of genocide, there are four parties:
1. The Perpetrators;
2. The victims;
3. The complicity in genocide;
4. The bystanders to genocide
Here, Perpetrators are the entities that initiate, plan,
prepare, facilitate and enforce, execute, or carry out acts of
genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war
crimes. The victims are those groups that are targeted by the
perpetrators.
The complicity in genocide is those who are accomplice, aiders,
abettors, and enablers in genocide. History has shown time and
again that the most sinister enemy in the national liberation
struggle is the enemy within. It is invisible threat hiding
inside the community of people or nation or hides inside an
organization. It helps the external enemy. The external enemy
comes to occupy, kill, destroy, damage, and steal land and
resources of the country.
Bystanders are those who knowingly allow harm to occur and so
they are as guilty as the perpetrators. As genocide, war
crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing are being
committed against the Oromo people, doing nothing in fighting
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the perpetrator and instead remain a silent bystander. To choose
to be a bystander is tantamount to be an accomplice. As the
renowned Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel stated: “What hurts the
victim most are not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the
silence of the bystander.” Quite simply, it goes without saying
that if the citizens of a nation continue to conduct business as
usual while genocide, the crime against humanity and ethnic
cleansing are being committed against their people, that
citizens share complicity in the crimes. Here, what must be
clear is that without complicit and bystanders, genocide cannot
be undertaken. If undertaken it will fail. Question is as to
what it means to be a bystander. A bystander is one who
knowingly allows genocide to occur. That is, a person who
chooses to close his/her mind, hears nothing, and says nothing
and does nothing but silently engage in business with the
perpetrator of genocide for gain. Such person is a guilt of
willful complicit in the evil committed. For instance, as the
TPLF and its proxy-the OPDO, evict the Oromo people from their
lands, farmlands, and homes a person who goes to Oromiyaa from
overseas and grab lands or property for free, or buy it, own it
or sell it is guilty of complicity in crimes of genocide against
the Oromo people. It is no secret that since the last twenty-six
years, these pirates of profit flooding Oromiyaa from across the
globe to take Oromo lands and properties from TPLF and its proxy
OPDO in such actions as the TPLF commits genocide against their
people. The reason is simple, such action qualifies this person
as a perpetrator in action that facilitates genocide in two
ways. On one hand, he/she helps perpetrator to finance or
subsidize its war campaign of genocide and on the other, he/she
encourages the enemy to evict more people.
Other vocabularies are intent, dehumanization, and action. That
is, genocidal intent to commit genocide. Intent alone cannot be
defined as genocide but it has to be followed with
dehumanization and then with action-genocidal action. Without
intent, killings cannot be categorized as genocide. That is
only intentional or planned the massive destruction of human
lives should be called genocide.
Now, here is a question, Can there be genocide without the
intent to Commit Genocide? The answer to this question is no.
There should be an intent. For instance, acts of destruction of
a group would not be classified as Genocide unless the intent to
destroy the group existed. Hence, the destruction of a group
without intent would not fall under the legal definition of
genocide. Without intent killings of civilians is categorized
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crime against humanity. Crime against humanity is the
destruction of civilians while genocide is the destruction of a
group. For the destruction of a group to be a genocide, the
intent must exist and action has to be taken. This means
genocidal intent has to be accompanied with genocidal action.
So one needs to prove the perpetrators’ genocidal intent exist.
The next question is as to how to prove the perpetrators intent
to commit genocide. It is easy to find out. The evidence of
perpetrators’ intent to commit crimes of genocide can be found
from spoken words of perpetrators as well as from perpetrators
publications.
The TPLF is a perpetrator of genocide. Its intent to commit
genocide against the Oromo people can be found from the
statement made by the Meles Zenawi and from the publication of
the TPLF-Hizbaawi Adera. The first is PM Meles Zenawi’s spoken
words: “The majority can be made a minority” in reference to Oromo
people. This is the official formal policy of the Tigrayan led state
policy of exterminating of the Oromo population in order to grab their
land and economic resources. This is a stated purpose to exterminate
the Oromo, by whatever means necessary and available, in order to
reduce it to a minority. The second is the publication of the
declaration of intent in the TPLF’s official party journal,
HIZBAAWI ADERA, December 1996. It reads as follow:
“In order to have the lasting solution to our problem, we have
to break narrow nationalists in Oromia. We have to defeat narrow
nationalism to the bitter end to smash it in a very decisive
manner. We have to fight the higher intellectual and bourgeoisie
classes in a very extensive and resolute manner. The standard
bearers of narrow nationalism are educated elite and the
bourgeoisie. We must be in a position to eradicate all narrow
nationalists.”
Here, it is clear that this is the plan for the selective
destruction of the members of Oromo socio-economic elites-
political leaders, military officers, businesspeople, religious
leaders, cultural and intellectual figures and the youths. In
the nutshell, this is TPLF’s Oromo extermination blueprint. It
is one of the many institutionalized policies primarily
instrumented against the entire Oromo population. The above
citations are pieces of evidence of the Tigrayan regime’s
special genocidal intent of complete or partial destruction of
the Oromo people. Now, having shown evidence of the existence
of TPLF’s genocidal intent against the Oromo people, it is time
to look at its genocidal action. As it is stated above, intent
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alone is not enough, a perpetrator has to have a mean to take
action. In order to move beyond intent into action that is into
the destruction of a group. The perpetrator has to have an
organization, unity, and centralized leadership and ammunition.
Moving Beyond intent into action
Genocide is only committed once the perpetrator moves beyond
intent into action. That is intent has to be translated into
action. It is then and only then genocide is said to have been
committed. Genocide is as old as history. And so history has
seen its share of genocides, wars, death, failures, successes,
heroes and heroines. “The word is new,” Professor Leo Kuper of
UCLA wrote, “the crime is ancient.” He traces the latter as far
back as to “The Athenian destruction of Melon in 416 BC” and
“Roman’s obliteration of Carthage, men, women, and children in
146 BC.” Hence, the first genocide in history was told to be
the Athenian destruction of Melos and Roman obliteration of
Carthage in 146 BC and etc. As its intent, Rome declared that
“Carthage must be destroyed” and then followed with action and
so destroyed it. However, genocide has been widely committed
with the conquest and colonization from the 15th century to
present day. Throughout history, both European and non-European
empires and imperial nation-states committed genocide against
occupied people. Examples of non-Europeans that committed
genocide are Mongol Empire, Ottoman Empire/Turkey, Khmer Rouge,
Hutu, and etc.
Throughout history, genocide has been committed both by a
majority and minority national groups. It has become a means to
reduce a majority national group into a minority when committed
by a minority or to totally annihilate a minority when committed
by a majority. Examples of majority nations reduced to
minorities are far too numerous to detail here and a relative
handful will, therefore, have to suffice to make the point. To
begin with, genocide was fully practiced by the minority
European settler colonizers in South America, Central America,
Caribbean Islands, North America, New Zealand and Australia
against the respective majority native populations. Professor
Ward Churchill of University of Colorado has put it in this
terms: “The reduction of North American Indian population from
more than 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900.” And in
hemispheric terms, he wrote: “During the four centuries spanning
the time between 1492, when Christopher Columbus first set foot
on the ‘New World’ of Caribbean beach . . . a hemispheric
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population estimated to have been as great as 125 million was
reduced by something over 90 percent.” This means if one
calculates, the remaining would be under 10 million out of 125
million. Again the population of Espanola (today’s Haiti and the
Dominican Republic) was reduced from 8 million in 1493 to 100,
000 by the year 1500. It was through genocide the European
minority settler colonizers reduced the majority native people
to a minority and settlers became a majority in South America,
Central America, USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
The second wave of contemporary genocides came out of First
World War and continuing to the present. It began with the
majorities committing genocide against the minorities. For
instance, there were majority nations that committed genocide
against their minorities. Among them were Ottoman Empire
committed genocide against the Armenian in 1915 exterminating
1.5 million out of total population of 2 million Armenians.
During WWII, Nazi Germany committed genocide against its
minority Jewish population exterminating 6 million. In 1994,
Hutus committed genocide against the minority Tutsi killing over
800,000 to 1 million in one hundred days and etc. Genocide is
still continuing unabatedly throughout the world.
The TPLF has adopted this European minority settler colonizers’
model in its extermination campaign to reduce the Oromo
population to a minority. Since 1991 to date, it has been
applying this model in the physical annihilation of the Oromo
people. With the recent re-instituting of Command Post, the
pace, scale, and intensity of committing genocide by the TPLF
have far bypassed than any time before. As noted in the above
paragraph, the perpetrator has to have an organization, unity,
and centralized leadership and ammunition in order to carry out
committing genocide. For instance, the TPLF being from a
minority does not have numbers/large population but it has an
organization, united, and centralized leadership and guns. This
means it has the instrument of genocide: the military, Security,
the police force, militia, organized and trained mercenaries,
and etc. These are where its strength lies.
The next step before taking action, the perpetrator has to
dehumanize, devalue, and demonize the image of the targeted
group categorizing it as a subhuman creature in order to
rationalize, justify, and legitimize its acts of destruction of
the group. For instance, Ottoman Turkey called Armenians
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“infidels,” and “mercantile race”; Nazi Germany considered Jews
“subhuman,” and compared them to “rats,” “lice,” and “maggots”;
the Hutus referred the Tutsi as “cockroaches,” and “snakes”; the
European settler colonizers referred to the American Native
Indians as “vermin,” “nets,” and “wolves in the human form”.
The late PM Meles Zenawi, the leader and the ideological
architect of the TPLF was quoted by Ermias Legesse, the former
Communication Minister of Ethiopia, to have referred to the
Oromo as “flies” as a justification for murder. He was reported
to have said in Amharic in reference to Oromo national in the
Army in this terms: “Innanyii yezimbi sibisiboochi nechew,
kawotedar wusxi abaarirachew.” Roughly translated “These are
the collection of flies dismiss them from the army.” With this
order, Ermias Legesse told ESAT TV that “Abbaa Duulaa Gammadaa
the then Minister of Defense disarmed and dismissed 50,000 Oromo
nationals from the Ethiopian National Defense Force.” This was
followed by next step the disarming of the civilian population.
The disarming of the Oromo population was followed by the
arrests of the elites, the educated, professionals, the
journalists, students, the poets, musical artists, the jurists,
the lawyers, the bankers, the pharmacists and etc. This action
was designed to deprive the Oromo people of leadership. Again,
this was followed in 2009 with legislation categorizing the
Oromo people and the OLF as a “terrorists”. All in all, the
fascist TPLF has tagged the whole Oromo population as “flies,”
“terrorists,” and “narrow” as a justification for genocide.
Following these, Oromo massacre, persecution and expulsion from
homes and land and land grab began. And the whole Oromiyaa has
turned into killing and mutilating fields of Oromo for the TPLF
genocidal regime. Foreign and local media and NGOs were denied
access to Oromiyaa rural areas. And yet, paradoxically, it is
the willingness of the OPDO to condone or even officially
sponsor, the genocidist TPLF in carrying out committing all
these crimes of genocide against the Oromo people and Oromiyaa.
Being a neck-chained political stooge of the TPLF, OPDO has
never taken the ownership of Oromiyaa and instead it has become
a foot soldier for TPLF, its creator.
TPLF is guilty of at least three conditions of acts of genocide:
First, “killing members of the group.” This is self-explanatory. It
is the immediate physical killing; mass murder, executions and
etc. One can see the dead body, corpses, skulls, skeletons,
bones, mass graves; and disappearances. The massacre in
Mooyyale, Hamarreessa, Sawweenaa, Bishoftu, Awaday, Ambo,
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Ginchi, Naqamte, Gimbii, Asasa, Shashamanne, and all in all
across Oromiyaa are immediate physical killing.
Second, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of
the group.” The TPLF has been causing serious bodily or mental
harm to the Oromo people. These include among other things such
as acts of bodily or mental torture; cruel and inhumane
treatment, inhumane living condition; persecution; rape and
sexual violence. Serious discriminatory practices including
deliberate exclusion from economic resources and social and
political life. These are the bodily and mental harms the Oromo
prisoners have been facing in the TPLF’s concentration camps and
its widespread secret detentions across Oromiyaa.
Third, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or
in part.” Under this condition, one needs to differentiate the
destruction as to “in whole or in part.” According to TPLF’s
Oromo extermination, blueprint/manifesto declared in HIZBAAWI
ADERA (December 1996) its first target for the physical
destruction of the Oromo people is “in part”. Here its first
targeted members of the Oromo people for extermination “in part”
are the educated elites, the bourgeoisie and middle classes and
the youths. This is a method of destruction that does not
immediately kill the members of the targeted population but
ultimately seeks their physical destruction. This is a method
of deliberately taking away the basic necessities of life. The
basic necessities of life include among other things-land. The
land is life and blood of a society. It is the necessity for
sustaining life. The expulsion of people from their lands,
homes, and farmlands exposes them to heat, cold, and starvation,
thrust, dehydration and etc. Such actions are tantamount to
intentional infliction of conditions of life that results not in
immediate death but in the slow death of the targeted group
members. Not only these, failing to provide adequate medical
care; food, water, shelter, sanitation are conditions of life.
For instance, 1.2 million Oromo people who were evicted from
Somalia region state are exposed to such condition of life
calculated to bring about their physical destruction, in whole
or in part. Again, the poisoning of drinking water of wells,
rivers and lakes; destruction of the environment; cruel and
inhumane treatment, inhumane living conditions would also are
conditions of life that lead to a slow death of a targeted
population. All in all, these are the conditions of life the
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TPLF has been inflicting on the Oromo people calculated to bring
about their physical destruction in whole or in part.
As noted above, Raphael Lemkin was a person who pioneered the
word genocide. In addition to this, he also classified the
types of genocide into three based on the perpetrators intent.
The three types of genocide are:
1. War of extermination in antiquity and middle ages-a total
or nearly total destruction of victim groups and nations
2. The destruction of culture without an attempt to destroy
its bearers-emerged in the modern era
3. A combination of the ancient and modern forms of genocide
in which some groups are selected for immediate
annihilation while the others are selected for
assimilation. This means selective mass murder of elites or
part of the population.
All in all, this generation and the successive future generation
of Oromo should remember for all times is that the conquest of
Oromiyaa completed through the genocide of the Oromo people. In
the last quarter of 19th century, in the war of conquest of
Oromiyaa, Emperor Menelik II of Abyssinia reduced the Oromo
population by half. In this war of conquest, the emperor had
used both European made modern military weapons along with
smallpox-infected blankets as a chemical weapon against Oromo.
Particularly, smallpox was used as biological warfare in Arsii
region of Oromiyaa. The outbreak of smallpox epidemic decimated
and totally devastated Arsii. This was the reason for the
defeat of Arsii at Azule. In the conquest, Menelik’s army
killed women, infants, children, and elders and burned homes and
villages. After the conquest, he committed crimes against
humanity, and war crimes against the conquered people by
mutilating right breasts of women and right hands of men at
Anole. Hence, Menelik conducted the first type of genocidal war
of total extermination or nearly total extermination of Oromo
people. Ironically, today the Abyssinians deny the genocidal
extermination committed by Emperor Menelik against the Oromo
people and the reduction of the Oromo population by half, the
cutoff right breasts of women and right hands of men at Anole.
Instead, Menelik II has become a towering figure of history for
the successive Abyssinian generations for which they have been
glorifying and idolizing him ever since as courageous and hero
and erected the monument for him in the center of Finfinnee on
the grave of Oromo that he annihilated. His actions are neither
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actions of courage nor heroism. For the Oromo people, Menelik
remains as a villain and genocidist, the symbol of death and
destruction. And the crime he committed has been engraved deep
in the Oromo collective memory and will always be remembered by
this generation and the future successive generations.
Following Menelik, the next genocide was committed in the 20th
century by Emperor Haile Selassie of the Ethiopian empire. It
is important to recognize that the crime of genocide is not only
limited to mass killing. His regime committed a different type
of genocide. It was crimes of structural genocide. This means,
his regime systematically and deliberately committed genocide on
the Oromo people’s political and social institutions, history,
identity, culture, language, national feelings, religion, and
the economic existence-loss of land and resources and replaced
all by Abyssinian settler colonialism’s socio-political and
economic structures.
Today, in the 21st century, the TPLF has been committing genocide
of the third type. It has been following its plan of Oromo
extermination blueprint as it stated in HIZBAAWI ADERA. That
is, selecting the section of the Oromo population- nationalists,
youths, scholars, elites, and the businessmen and women for the
total and immediate physical annihilation as a people and as a
member of the nation. To implement this, the TPLF fascist
regime has already begun accelerating the pace, speed, scale,
and intensity of genocidal war of total annihilation of the
Oromo people. Since 1991, it has been incarcerating, torturing,
maiming, killing, terrorizing, and destroying our people with
new methods of cruelty, and savagery unparalleled in the history
of Ethiopian empire. It has intensified the killings of men,
women and children and mothers with infants across Oromiyaa.
This is the TPLF’s centrally planned and systematically
organized genocide against the Oromo people.
The sad thing is, the global community remains indifferent to
this horrific genocidal destruction of human life, and that the
UN, EU, and AU turn deaf ears, chosen to evade the issue, and
look away. The truth is throughout, UN, EU, and AU have never
intervened while state commits genocide. The reason is that all
have the political and ideological commitment to the protection
of the sovereignty of the states, and from this follows, non-
intervention in internal affairs of member states. To this
effect, here the UN charter states:”All Members shall refrain in
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their international relations from the threat or use of force
against the territorial integrity or political independence of
any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes
of the United Nations.” Furthermore, the African Union (AU)
Charter also states: “Respect for the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of each State and for its inalienable
right to independent existence.” From these Charters, one can
learn that first and foremost UN, AU, and EU are organizations
of states, not of nations. Their Charters states that each
state has sovereignty. Here sovereignty refers to the ultimate
power of a state to make and enforce the law within its
territory without any external control or interference. And the
UN, EU, and AU defend this sovereignty right. Because of this
sovereign right, they are to sit by and watch as a member state
commits genocide against the people under its own rule. The sad
thing is, the sovereignty right has become a license to kill; it
gives a right for fascist states to commit genocide. Hence,
both international and regional organizations favor the state
over the nations. For this, the global community remains silent
and indifferent as the TPLF commits the genocidal massacre
against the Oromo people and other peoples in Ethiopia. The fact
is the twenty-seven year of UN, AU, EU, and African states
silence encouraged the TPLF to continue committing genocide
against the peoples in Ethiopia. Hence, it is unrealistic and
unreasonable for the Oromo people and nationalists to expect any
help from the world community in this fight against the Tigrayan
regime of genocidal murderer TPLF. If we allow the TPLF to
continue its killing of the Oromo at the present pace, speed,
and intensity, the Oromo people are at an imminent extermination
danger to be reduced to a minority. It is incumbent upon all of
us to immediately unite as one and use our human and material
capital in fighting to dismantle this mortal enemy of our
people. History will condemn us and will never absolve us if we
fail to unite today to defend our people and country. It will be
a moral and political failure not to unite to fight the enemy.
As it is shown in preceding paragraphs, there is no doubt that
by any standard of definition, the TPLF’s killing of the Oromo
fits the definition of genocide. Genocide is a willful and
deliberate act designed to exterminate a group or part of a
group. It is a crime against a collectivity, taking the form of
massive slaughter, and carrying out with explicit intent to
destroy the selected target group completely or partially.
Simply put, genocide is a denial of the right of existence of a
target group. Oromo are the targeted people. The TPLF has
targeted the Oromo nation for its physical extermination. As it
is shown in the above paragraphs, genocide has been used
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throughout history as a mechanism to reduce the majority to a
minority. Specifically, it was widely used by the European
settler colonizers in South America, North America, New Zealand,
and Australia against the majority native populations. The TPLF
has adopted this European method as a model for the
indiscriminate and systematic extermination of the Oromo people
to reduce them to a minority and to takeover Oromiyaa, its
economy, and resources. And it has been applying this model
against the Oromo people since 1991 to date. It targeted Oromo
people for their collective identity. That is, for being Oromo.
So now, what is to be done?
Now, the question is as to what is to be done to protect and
defend our people and country from physical extermination. I
believe what is to be done is simple. It is to be organized,
united, armed and fight with all available means at our deposal.
This is the only option we have as a people. We can do this
today. It is time to act quickly and decisively. It is
important not to put off what we can do today until tomorrow. In
unity, we rise but in a division, we fall. History has shown
time and again, the rise and fall of nations. The rise or fall
of any nation has a direct correlation to the condition of the
minds, hearts, and souls and body politics of the nation’s
people. A people that have unity in their minds, hearts, and
souls unite and those who do not divide. That is, in division
nation falls; in unity, nation rises. For this, unity must be
in the minds, hearts, and souls of members of Oromo political
organizations. This unity must be based on principle and
objective of the struggle to be achieved. This objective is the
right of Oromo nation to self-determination. The truth is the
Oromo struggle is to realize political self-determination. It is
exactly for this notion of self-determination, hundreds of
thousands of Oromo had fought and still fighting at the costs of
their lives. So, for over a century to-date millions had fought
and sacrificed their precious lives for this right to self-
determination.
Needless to say, today the Oromo mass resistance has driven the
enemy-the genocidal murderer TPLF regime into a deep and
permanent political crisis from which it cannot recover itself.
Now, to defeat and permanently remove it so as to bring the
struggle to its final conclusion, the struggle demands strong
organization, centralized leadership, and powerful fighting
armed force. This requires, the Oromo political organizations
to end their factionalism and fragmentations. It is time for
unity. At this junction of our struggle, we have only one
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choice to fight. This is the only viable option. In this
fight, nonviolence cannot win a victory over a mortal enemy
whose interests are inherently and irreconcilably antagonistic
to freedom, democracy, justice, liberty, liberation, and dignity
of the peoples. To tell the people not to use force against the
fascist TPLF regime that has been committing genocide is
tantamount to give it the opportunity to buy time to regroup and
so to extend the misery over the Oromo people. Force has to be
the major arsenal of struggle. In other words, the main pillar
of struggle against the fascist TPLF war of genocide is the
necessity to resort to force. In a state founded on a violent
force, our political aim cannot be the nonviolent form of
struggle. We must draw the right battle lines- force/armed
struggle, mass political struggle, diplomatic campaign, and
economic actions. It is time for us all to act in unity against
the TPLF fascist regime that has brought so much suffering and
death to millions committing genocide and continuing drowning
millions in blood. Here, we have no choice but to fight back by
all available means within our power in defense of our people
and our country against the mortal enemy of our people, the TPLF
and for the inherent and inalienable right to self-
determination, justice, freedom, liberty, democracy, and
dignity.
Oromiyaa shall be free!