Ethiopia: Millennium celebration, a reminder of Oromia devastation

September 3, 2007 — The arrogant dictatorial regime of Ethiopia has been busy drumming up
a lavish celebration to be held on 12th September 2007 in the name of
“Ethiopian Millennium”. Ethiopia is the only country to celebrate
the millennium 8 years after the rest of the world, claiming to be a
“unique country with its own calendar”. This is notwithstanding the
fact that all other countries of the world that follow the Gregorian
calendar or otherwise celebrated the new millennium in unison 8 years ago,
an event which united the entire world except Ethiopia.

Like its predecessors, the current Ethiopian regime is also keeping
the dying Empire and the people imprisoned in it in complete isolation
from the rest of the world. The regime orchestrates this so called
millennium celebration to divert attention from its appalling human rights
abuses and take advantage of the occasion to commit further acts of
violence and terror on innocent civilians in the name of safeguarding
security. It is also reminiscent of Hailesilasse’s jubilee celebration
during 1974 and Mengistu’s 10th year anniversary of victory in 1984,
both being at the height of critical times of famine in the Empire.

This “Ethiopian Millennium” in particular has a painful symbolic
meaning for the Oromo
as well as other people colonized by Abyssinia. The Abyssinian
calendar has brought nothing for the Oromo but isolation from progress the
world has made since Oromia had lost her sovereignty.

There has been no meaningful positive change in the way people live
in Oromia since the creation of the Ethiopian Empire at the end of the
19th century. For instance, it is to be recalled that Minillik and his
bandits settled on Oromo land and reduced the Oromo people to servitude.
Then, Haile Selasse continued the same policy and redistributed the
rest of Oromo land among his family members and cliques. The military
Derg regime also reversed the 1974 revolutionary gains of the Oromo people
and passed a decree that made land the property of the Ethiopian state
in 1984 and reduced the Oromo people to the status of landlessness
once again.

What is more, now Meles Zenawi’s regime is busy uprooting the Oromo
people from their ancestral land and selling it off to his cronies and
the so called investors with a devastating effect on the welfare of
the Oromo people. In doing so, the current Ethiopian regime has
effectively cleansed the Oromo people from the entire central Oromia region
under the pretext that “the land is required for investors”. The irony
is that most of these so called investors, which in reality are
looters, are the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) officials and
members or their agents who have already fattened their coffers by looting
the Oromo properties. In short, the actions that are taking place in
central Oromia are the combinations of economic exploitation and ethnic
cleansing in the 21st century by a brutal regime supported by the
world’s richest countries.

Notwithstanding this, the land policy in Abyssinia, where the Tigre
and Amhara people live, also remains unchanged and different from the
rest. There, as always, land ownership remains to be a matter of
citizenship right. Land ownership in the north has never changed since the time
of Menillik. Families inherit land to their children and land is
referred to as the family land whereas the colonizers refer to the land in
Oromia and other nations in the south as property of the colonial
settlers or the state.

Politically, the Oromo and the southern people are marginalized and
isolated from the rest of the world by the Abyssinian colonizers. Those
who raise their voices against these injustices face brutal punishment
by the successive Abyssinian regimes. Today, tens of thousands of
Oromo, ranging from the age of ten to ninety, are thrown into the Ethiopian
prisons under the pretext of supporters of the OLF. These prisoners
include human rights activists, leaders and members of
civic-organisations, political activists and civil rights advocates. Most of them have
been tortured both physically and mentally in the prisons. Others are
killed or have been made to disappear by the government forces that are not
held responsible for their brutalities.

Different human rights organisations have repeatedly reiterated their
concerns about gross human rights abuses, particularly on extra
judicial killings, tortures, and other inhuman treatments of the Oromo people
in the hands of the government forces in different parts of Oromia.
But neither the Ethiopian state nor the international community has paid
due attention to the plights of the Oromo people.

On the contrary, some Western governments who claim to be champions
of human rights and democracy have sponsored the Ethiopian government to
expand its state terrorism and human rights violations beyond the
Ethiopian borders. As a result its forces are indiscriminately killing
Somali civilians and Oromo refugees that fled Ethiopia to escape
persecutions by the Ethiopian state.

Emboldened by the US which has considered the Ethiopian regime as one
of its major allies in the fight against terrorism in the Horn of
Africa, Mr. Meles Zenawi’s regime is committing untold atrocities against
the peoples in Ethiopia in general and the Oromo people in particular,
to assert its dictatorial power.

The current preparation to celebrate the so called “Ethiopian
Millennium” in the midst of such human sufferings and tragedies, in the
country engulfed by poverty, disease, and famine, has nothing to do with
the majority of the peoples in the Empire in general and the Oromo
people in particular. These people have already become the major targets
for the TPLF led government’s human rights abuses.

There is no wonder, however, if some groups who benefited from over a
century long economic plunders of Oromia and the South under different
Abyssinian governments would joyfully take part in this celebration
believing that this is their victorious history over the rest of the
people.

But we would like to remind them that, first, this celebration is not
in reality about “Ethiopian Millennium,” but it is a celebration
to strengthen the grip of the TPLF to political power. Second, one has
to know that the financial cost these celebrations would bring will
severely affect the livelihood of all the peoples in the Empire,
particularly the farmers. It does not come from the coffers of the TPLF
officials or their cronies.

Again, it would not be surprising if some Western governments endorse
this celebration which diverts the highly scarce resources of the
country and foreign donations from basic needs of the population to finance
this pompous celebration. But we would like to remind them that when
they send their diplomats to Finfinne to raise a toast to Mr. Meles
Zenawi’s political and military successes the toast they drink is mixed
with the bloods of thousands of Oromo and other peoples in Ethiopia who
were killed by the regime for advocating respect for human rights,
freedom, democracy, equality and justice for all. Their diplomats should
also know that the beautiful chairs they are going to sit on are standing
on the fleshes and bones of the human rights activists, innocent
school teenagers, political activists who had advocated the inherent
democratic rights of their peoples, leaders of civic organisation whom Mr.
Meles Zenawi have considered as threats to his monopoly of political
power and eliminated as a result.

Therefore, the so called Ethiopian Millennium is a sham date in the
midst of human sufferings, that has no value to the Oromo except a
painful reminder of a century old economic exploitations and political
suppressions that has already extended 8 years into the new millennium.

Finally, we would like to call upon the Oromo people and others
concrened to ignore the “Ethiopian Millennium” celebration imposed on
them, but instead promote their own authentic Oromo Gada Calendar, which
is deeply rooted in Oromo culture and way of life and in need of
revival from the century old neglect by the colonizers.

Oromia shall be free!

Oromo Liberation Front