Ethiopia’s OLF denies plot, denounces defamation campaign

September 8, 2006 — The Oromo liberation struggle is gaining momentum from day to day demonstrating greater maturity, scope, capability and sophistication. The phenomenal growth and advance of this struggle is making the minority regime in Ethiopia even more desperate. TPLF is frightened by the closing of ranks
among Oromo nationals. As a result, it is resorting, as usual, to a smear
campaign to falsely defame the image of the OLF. It is in the nature of
desperate and tyrant regimes like the one in Ethiopia to blame all their
troubles on their opponents. As observed time and again, fabricated stories have been used by the regime to falsely incriminate those whose only crime, if any, is political dissention and yearning for freedom.

Ever since coming to power, the TPLF/EPRDF regime has been busy attempting to spoil the good name of the OLF by manufacturing baseless and horrific
stories to vilify the organization in the eyes of the people and most
importantly the international community. It massacred innocent people in
Baddanno; torched the house of people in Hararghe with their residents
inside; and committed despicable crimes in Jimma, Ilu Abbabor and Arsi in an attempt to alienate the organization from the people, albeit to no avail. It mowed down peaceful Sidama protesters in Awassa with live bullets. After committing genocide on the Anyuak people of Gambella, it shamelessly attempted to blame it on OLF. After deliberately throwing explosives on schools and blowing up hotels, it had turned around and blamed the whole affair on the opposition. That is the true story behind the mysteriousblasts in Addis and other towns. Last year, it mowed down peaceful demonstrators in broad day light and blamed it on CUD. What all these smear campaigns by the minority TPLF/EPRDF regime failed to achieve is hide the glaring truth from the people in Ethiopia and the international community, that the culprit has been the TPLF/EPRDF regime. The people can easily read through the thinly disguised lies.

Despite this fact, the TPLF/EPRDF regime is not abandoning this old and
failed tactics. Accordingly, on September 7, 2006, its state-controlled TV
scurrilously and without any grain of truth alleged that the security forces
had apprehended nine individuals on a mission to take action against
high-ranking OPDO officials. This is again an attempt to divert attention
from a deepening crisis within the ruling party and the crumbling system.

After Brigadier General Kemal Galchu, Colonel Abebe Geresu, other senior
army officers and hundreds of soldiers defected from the regime and joined
up with OLF, the TPLF/EPRDF are gripped by extreme anxiety and riddled with
suspicions. Since they could not find a way out of the mess they themselves
created, they had to concoct groundless stories. The objective of
TPLF/EPRDF in spreading this cheap propaganda is to use it as a pretext to
eliminate those amongst its own military and security forces deserting it en
masse and joining the popular struggle. As an Oromo saying goes, a person
being washed away by cresting river tries in vain to cling to life by
hanging on to the fluff. OLF categorically denies having any hand in this
drama contrived by the regime and will not succumb to such cowardly action.

The Oromo liberation struggle led by the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) is
gaining momentum from day to day. As a result the TPLF/EPRDF regime is
getting increasingly paralyzed from the resulting fear and unleashing a
reign of terror against the Oromo and all other people in Ethiopia rather
than dealing with the root cause of the problem: political repression.
Detaining individuals without cause, killing them at will, expelling them
from their jobs under different excuses, confiscating their property and
defamation would intensify the struggle rather than dampening it. That is
why the people would have no ears with which to hear and no hear to believe
another futile exercise in fabrication.

At this critical time the minority TPLF/EPRDF regime is being choked by many
pressing internal and external problems. Inside its own ranks, there
prevails a state of internal paralysis manifested by fear and an
unimaginable mistrust among its ranks. The entire edifice of the regime is
decaying and is on the verge of caving in from inside and out. The people
are intensifying their just struggle for freedom and democracy. TPLF/EPRDF
may continue with its habit of creating all kinds of machinations, but this
is not going to forestall its eventual demise, which is getting closer by
the day. As the tyrannical rule of the TPLF/EPRDF is coming to an inevitable
end, the days of liberation and freedom of the Oromo and all people in
Ethiopia is drawing ever closer.

Victory to the Oromo people!!

Oromo Liberation Front
September 8, 2006