Asafa Jalata, PhD
The Oromo nation shares history, culture, identity, collective grievances, and political aspirations. As one of the largest nations in the Ethiopian Empire, Africa, and the world, that have rich economic and human resources, it is paradoxical that the Oromo nation does not have a sovereign state to protect itself from internal and external enemies. Today, out of 193 countries, only twenty-two have more populations than the Oromo nation, estimated at over 50 million. New countries are still emerging in the world, and since 1990, thirty-six new countries have been born,[2] and ten more countries may emerge soon.[3]
The Oromo people were outside of the capitalist world system until the last decades of the nineteenth century, when they were colonized by the alliance of European imperialism, Abyssinian colonialism, and an Oromo collaborative class, which sided with the enemies of the Oromo people for their individual and group interests. Before colonization, the Oromo people had an egalitarian political and economic system based on the gadaa/siiqqee system and their sovereign and democratic state. Oromo nationalists need to inform the Oromo people and the world community about the necessity of the rebirth of the sovereign, democratic Oromia state. Before the sixteenth century, when capitalism developed in Western Europe and expanded to different continents, there were about sixteen known ancient civilizations or cultures[4] and a few countries worldwide. Starting from the sixteenth century, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, France, and Holland mainly developed their nation-states with the development of capitalism and began to expand their colonial territories.
The Oromo people were sovereign and democratic until the mid-nineteenth century (Baissa, 2004). They were enslaved and colonized for almost one and a half centuries and reduced to the colonial subjects of Habashas or Ethiopians starting in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The Abyssinian/Ethiopian colonial state and its agents have controlled almost all Oromo resources, including human resources, through violence, genocide, cultural destruction, and the control of the Oromo minds by imposing Ethiopianism[5] through auto-oppression and self-rejection.
Historical Biyya Oromoo (the Oromo Country)
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, when they intensified their territorial recovery through thebutta wars, many Oromo branches were under one gadaa government. The gadaa system empowered the Oromo people politically and militarily to recover their lost territories and accommodate their increased population and stock. The Oromo fought twelve butta wars between 1522 and 1618, recovering and reestablishing the Oromo country called Oromia today. According to The Oromos (the first Oromo political manifesto), “the sixteenth century’s so-called [Oromo] invasion was neither an invasion nor a migration. Instead, it was a national movement of the Oromo people incited by the southern Oromos and supported by the northern Oromos under the domination of the Abyssinians with the specific goal of liberating themselves and their territories from colonial domination.”
Until the alliance of the Abyssinian warlords and European imperialists resulted in colonization during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Oromo were sovereign, democratic, and free people. AsVirginia Luling notes, “From the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the [Oromo] were dominant on their territories; no people of other cultures were in a position to exercise compulsion over them.” Until the mid-seventeenth century, all Oromo branches lived under one gadaa[6]government and later built a confederation by establishing the Gadaa Republic of Oromia. After the mid-seventeenth century, with their increased population and territories, different Oromo groups started to have autonomous gadaa governments. However, various Oromo branches and their autonomous local governments formed alliances, federations, and confederations to maintain political and cultural solidarity and defend their security and interests from their common enemies.
The gadaa system had the principles of checks and balances (such as periodic transference of power every eight years and division of power among the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches), balanced opposition (among five gadaa grades[7]), and power sharing between higher and lower administrative organs to prevent power from falling into the hands of despots. The gadaa system accepted Oromos as the ultimate source of authority, and nobody was above the rule of law. All gadaaofficials were selected by established criteria[8] from the qondala grade and received rigorous training in gadaa philosophy and governance for eight years to enter the luba grade (administrative grade); the main criteria for selection to office included bravery, knowledge, honesty, demonstrated ability, etc. Gadaa, as an integrative social and political system, organized male Oromos according to hirya (age sets) and luba (generation sets) for social, political, and economic purposes. The gadaa and siiqqee[9]institutions influenced the Oromo value system in pre-colonial Oromo society. During this period, Oromo women had the siiqqee institution, a parallel institution to the gadaa system that “functioned hand in hand with Gadaa [sic] system as one of its built-in mechanisms of checks and balances.”
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the sovereign Oromo people were also administered by the gadaa government and independent mooti states (kingdoms) in Wallo, Gibe states, Leqa-Naqamte, and Leqa-Qellem. These autocratic and hereditary chiefs emerged by overthrowing democratically elected leaders due to external influence and the internal weakness of the gadaa system after its decentralization. Under gadaa, the Oromo established the rule of law and promoted social equality, justice, and democracy. Specifically, the design of gadaa as a social and political institution worked to prevent exploitation and political domination.
Consequently, under the gadaa/siiqqee system, Oromo society enjoyed peace, stability, and political sovereignty. The Oromo had a glorious history and practiced democratic governance, which the colonial government outlawed and suppressed. As The Oromos: Voice against Tyranny notes, the Oromo settled in the Horn of Africa and the Oromo country before “the so-called Sabeans crossed the Red Sea and started settling on the East African Coast.” The hostile relationship between Oromos and Amharas began eight hundred years ago, and most Oromos successfully defended themselves from their enemies for centuries. Sociologist Mekuria Bulcha notes that “the Gaalaan and the Amhara were fighting in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The Gaalaan, who the Tulama Oromo consider as angafa (the senior gosa or the firstborn), is numerically the largest Oromo gosa [clan] cluster.” He considers the northern Shawan plateau the ancient country of the Oromo nation and refutes the claims that the Oromo came to Oromia from another place.
Furthermore, Mekuria characterizes the Shawan plateau as the “cradle of Oromo civilization and springboard for Amhara expansion” to the Oromo country. But other sources consider Odaa Mormor (the Blue Nile)[10] , where the first gadaa assembly occurred in the fifth century A.D., before other gadaa centers. How did the status gradually change? How did/does the Habasha colonization of Oromo society, which was free and independent, affect the community?
Habasha Colonial Terrorism, Repression, and Unfreedoms
The alliance of European imperialism, Ethiopian colonialism, and an Ethiopianized Oromo collaborative class ended the existence of the sovereign Oromia. Abyssinian warlords established strong relationships with European institutions and governments in the nineteenth century. Orthodox Christianity created a bridge between European imperialism and Ethiopian colonialism as a religion and state ideology. It also helped Amhara warlords create an Amharaized/Ethiopianized Oromo collaborative class, which played an essential role in the colonization of Oromia.
However, the alliance with European powers was the primary factor in strengthening the Abyssinians militarily to colonize Oromia. For instance, around 1840, the British and French governments supplied Sahle Selassie, Menelik’s grandfather, with firearms “so that he could spread the seeds of civilization [i.e., Christianity] among the [Oromos].” European missionaries, explorers, and merchants convinced their respective governments to support the Abyssinians/Ethiopians against the Oromo and others that they considered “pagan” and “savage.”[11] Between 1855 and 1868, under the leadership of Tewodros, the Amhara fighters started campaigns to colonize and convert the Wallo and Yejju Oromos to Orthodox Christianity or expel or exterminate them. Before this period, Wallo, Yejju, Azabo, and Raya Oromos had accepted Islam “as a bulwark against being swamped by Abyssinian nationalism.”
The Habasha rulers have feared Islam and the Oromo since the sixteenth century, “and the thought of the two in combination has been their recurring nightmare.” Tewodros mobilized the Amhara fighters against the Oromos by reintroducing the fear of the Oromo and Islam and defeated the Yejju Oromo dynasty of Ras Ali II in 1853; then, he concentrated on the de-Oromoization of Wallo by imposing terrorism, mutilation, and killing starting in 1855. He also exterminated the Tulama Oromos livingbetween Dabra Berhan and Angolala. Despite his barbaric campaigns and the attempt to deport the Wallo Oromo en masse to western Abyssinia, Tewodros failed to control them effectively. However, in his letter to Queen Victoria of England, Tewodros boastfully stated: “My fathers, the emperors, having forgotten the creator, He handed over their kingdom to the [Oromos] and Turks. But God created me, lifted me out of the dust, and restored this empire to my rule. He endowed me with power and enabled me to stand in the place of my fathers. By this power, I drove away the [Oromos]. As for the Turks, I have told them to leave the land of my ancestors.”
When the British ignored his letter, Tewodros mistreated and imprisoned British diplomats. Great Britain sent an expeditionary force to release the hostages, and Yohannes of Tigray provided logistic assistance. Surrounded in 1968 by the British expeditionary force and near defeat, Tewodros released other prisoners and expressed his hatred for the Oromos by massacring 1,000 Oromo captives. Then he committed suicide, and his dream of unifying Abyssinia proper and colonizing the Oromo people failed. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Yohannes IV of Tigray and the Amhara king, Menelik II, allied with rival European powers to centralize their political power and expand their territories by participating in “the scramble for Africa.” When the rivals—Britain, France, Russia, and Italy—sought alliances with the Abyssinian warlords to obtain jumping-off places in the Horn of Africa, Yohannes and Menelik, with the assistance of these imperialist powers, started to lay the foundations of the Abyssinian/Ethiopian central state administration.[12]
Yohannes obtained rewards from military technology and army expertise for helping the British eliminate Tewodros, which opened a new opportunity. He became the emperor of Abyssinia in 1872. He reigned as emperor until 1889 and came into conflict with the Mahdist state of Sudan and the Italians, who had occupied the Red Sea basin. Due to the geographic location of his political center, Yohannes was put under severe external political pressure: The Italians were expanding their territory from the Red Sea coast to Tigray and allying and consolidating Menelik in Shawa. At the same time, the Mahdists were penetrating Abyssinia through Gondar. There was a counterpart to the political space created for Yohannes by the British expedition that removed Tewodros from power—the Mahdists killed Yohannes in 1889 and developed an equal political opportunity for Menelik, who transferred the center of power from Tigray to Shawa.
By allying with the European imperialists, Menelik successfully strengthened his Shawan administration. The French, Italians, and British continuously supplied Menelik with various weaponry, ammunition, and the technical expertise necessary for the current administration. “The French armed his troops with firearms and [helped in organizing] his campaigns . . . The [Oromo] was thus conquered by the Habasha [Ethiopians].”[13] With Oromo economic and human resources, Menelik “rewarded his generals, paid his soldiers, and bought, first from the French and then from the Italians, huge supplies of arms and ammunition wherewith to equip his ever-growing armies.”These resources were initially obtained through raiding, property confiscation, enslavement, control of trade routes and marketplaces, and tribute collection and exported to European markets. “To obtain the necessary finances,” Harold Marcus says, “Menelik and his advisors decided to organize a caravan to carry various . . . products to the coast for transshipment to Europe.”
In a letter to European powers, Menelik expressed his intention to participate in the scramble for Africa: “I have no intention of being an indifferent spectator if far distant Powers make their appearance with the idea of dividing Africa.” Using European military advisers and firearms, the invading Ethiopian army defeated the Oromo people between 1868 and 1900 and then organized an occupying force that ruled Oromia and its people.[14] Explaining how Menelik began to establish his administration in Oromia. According to Marcus, Menelik organized expedition forces “during times of famine when numerous refugees went along to settle in newly conquered lands with the soldiers who stayed behind to garrison the fortified villages (katamas) erected as control points.” Menelik also used Oromo mercenaries and collaborators to colonize Oromia. Through his Ethiopianized Oromo general, Gobana Daacee, Menelik made some Oromo leaders, such as the Jimma and Wallaga kings, submit to Ethiopian rule. Mohammed Hassen asserts that he “was born into a Christian Oromo family, where the policy of forced Amharization weighed heavily, permeating the whole atmosphere, affecting the family, their psychological attitudes and their whole manner of life.”
Although Gobana was bilingual (speaking Afaan Oromo and Amharic), he preferred to speak in Amharic (Hassen, 1981: 6). In addition to Amharization, Gobana had developed a strong interest in his military career in Menelik’s army. As soon as Gobana began to provide his military service for Menelik, he was appointed as a bagaz, chief palace guard; he was later promoted to commander of the armed forces. The process of Amharization and political ambition turned Gobana against his people, and now any Oromo who has collaborated with the Ethiopian state is called Gobana— a traitor. Gobana helped Menelik build the Ethiopian Empire, but then lost his authority. As Mohammed Hassen asserts, “After his removal from the administration of the Oromo . . . his influence in the imperial government diminished as fortuitously as it had risen, while that of the Amhara . . . grew steadily as the completion of the colonization became the hub of the government.” The Ethiopian colonial expansion resulted in mass killings, destruction, and expropriation of property, plundering, and enslavement. In these colonial campaigns, some French, Russians, and others participated. Between 1882 and 1886, the bloodiest colonial wars were conducted against the Arssi Oromo because they resisted Ethiopian colonialism under their gadaa government. Menelik colonized them in 1886 after running six savage campaigns. In addition to mass killings, the hands of thousands of Arsi Oromo men were cut off, and the breasts of thousands of Oromo women were mutilated by order of Menelik at Annole in 1886. The massacre and enslavement of the Oromo continued through various colonial means. The Ethiopian army reduced the Oromo population from about ten million to some five million between 1868 and 1900.
The Ethiopian colonial government developed five significant institutions in Oromia: the katamas(garrison cities), slavery, the balabat system (the collaborative class), the nafxanya-gabbar system, and the colonial landholding system. The nafxanyas (gun-carrying settlers) organized the garrison cities as their main geopolitical centers for practicing political domination, wealth and capital accumulation, and religious and cultural dissemination in Oromo and other colonized societies. Enslaved individuals served as domestic workers or were exported to other countries through the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. When patriotic Oromo leaders who resisted Abyssinian colonialism were killed, the Oromo intermediaries (balabats) were given one-fourth of Oromo lands and received Ethiopian titles, such as balambaras and grazmach. The nafxanya-gabbar system was another institution that entitled the colonialists and their intermediaries to exact labor and agricultural products from the Oromo and others. The settlers—soldiers, clergy members, and administrators (all known as nafxanyas)—exploited gabbars (semi-slaves) who were coerced to provide them food, free labor, tribute, and tax revenues both in cash and in kind.
The Habashas’ colonialists continuously settled their countrymen and women in Oromia. As James McCann writes, “A key component of this process has been the movement of people out of . . . Abyssinia’s empire into the south [mainly Oromia], first as soldiers/settlers and then as landlords, administrators, and political entrepreneurs.” The colonial state claimed absolute rights over three-fourths of Oromo lands and provided portions for its officials instead of a salary. The Habasha notables and ecclesiastical, civil, and military officers were rewarded with grants of maderia and rist-gult.[15] The Amhara farmers and foreign mercenaries who participated in the colonization of Oromia as soldiers, settlers, messengers, priests, spies, and correctional officers were also granted land as a reward for their services. The amount of land (whether given temporarily or permanently) depended on rank or position. An ordinary soldier received from one to three gashas (a gasha is approximately forty hectares), a captain of fifty soldiers was granted up to five gashas, and a leader of three hundred soldiers received up to twenty gashas of land. The state also commodified and sold some lands to individuals.
Following Menelik’s footsteps, Haile Selassie expanded settler colonialism by establishing and consolidating Habasha’s political and religious institutions and garrison cities, creating and consolidating an intermediary class, and developing colonial education, the colonial landholding system, and the media. Under these conditions, most Oromo farmers, pastoralists, and others became landless and impoverished and were forced to produce food and other commodities for their colonizers and the Ethiopian colonial state. In the 1960s, these collective grievances resulted in various resistance movements in Oromia and other territories. The successive governments of Mengistu Haile Mariam, Meles Zenawi/Haile Mariam Desalegn, and Abiy Ahmed have continued state terrorism, repression, gross human rights violations, and economic exploitation, as we shall see below.
The Habasha State and Ethiopianized Oromos: Two Roadblocks to Oromia Sovereignty
Since their colonization, the Oromo have faced state terrorism and repression from successive Ethiopian governments. The Ethiopian authoritarian-terrorist state is characterized by militarization and repression, tight control of foreign aid and domestic financial resources, and direct ownership and control of all aspects of the state, including the security and military institutions, judiciary, and other public bodies, and financial institutions. Through its educational institutions, the Ethiopian political system has produced a small number of Ethiopianized Oromo collaborative leaders who would function as intermediaries between the Ethiopian colonial ruling class and the Oromo people. The design intentionally limited the number of educated Oromos by denying education to the overwhelming majority of Oromos. Furthermore, the Ethiopian government has disconnected most of the few educated Oromos from their cultural and historical roots through various political, educational, and cultural mechanisms, such as assimilation, political marriage, religion, and divide-and-conquer policies, and continuously forced them to show loyalty to the colonial state.
The political and military leaders of the successive Ethiopian governments have been gangsters and robbers; they have used state power to expropriate lands and other resources in the name of privatization—all with the support and blessing of the World Bank and the IMF. Successive Ethiopian governments have targeted the Oromo because of their economic resources and refusal to submit to the orders of colonial authorities and their Oromo collaborators. The military regime that emerged in 1974 under the leadership of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam replaced the Haile Selassie government and continued the dictatorship and Ethiopian colonial policies. When Oromo activists and the people started to resist the military regime, it intensified its state terrorism and political repression. The Military government (Derg) and its supporters committed massive human rights violations in the name of the so-called Revolution. The Derg continued mass imprisonments and killings. In 1980, the Oromo Relief Association mentioned that “the Oromo constitute the majority of the more than two million prisoners that glut Ethiopia’s jails today.”
In the 1980s, hundreds of Oromo nationalists were murdered or imprisoned. The regime also terrorized other elements of Oromo society. According to Gunnar Hasselblatt, the military government
Repeatedly held mass shootings among the Oromo population, hoping to break the free, independent Oromo spirit. A hundred, sometimes two hundred men were shot on this raised dry field … and were buried with bulldozers. Over the years, this procedure has been repeated several times. Other techniques were used when the method did not work, and the Oromo population could not be forced into submission. The victims were made to lie down with their heads on a stone, and their skulls were smashed with another stone. The … government … tried everything to consolidate its reign of terror and exploitation of Oromia…. When the Oromo movement could not be quenched by shooting or the smashing of skulls, [the government] came up with a new idea. Men’s testicles were smashed between a hammer and an anvil. Three men tortured and maimed in this way are still living.
Ethiopian state terrorism manifested itself in different forms: Its obvious manifestation was violence in the form of unjustified war, assassination, murder, castration, burying alive, throwing off cliffs, hanging, torture, rape, confiscation of properties by the police and the army, forcing people to submission by intimidation, beating, and disarming citizens. It is impossible to precisely know at this time how many Oromos have been murdered because successive governments hide this information.
Since 1992, security forces of the Tigrayan-led government have imprisoned thousands of Oromo on charges of plotting armed insurrections on behalf of the OLF. Such accusations had been regularly used as a pretext to detain individuals who publicly questioned colonial government policies. Various human rights organizations reported the testimonies of former prisoners to depict the criminality of the Tigrayan-led regime: Former prisoners testified that their arms and legs were tied tightly together on their backs, and their naked bodies were whipped. Large containers or bottles filled with water were fixed to their testicles, or if they were women, bottles or poles were pushed into their vaginas. Some prisoners were locked up in empty steel barrels and tormented with heat in the tropical sun during the day and cold at night. Some prisoners were forced into pits so that fire could be made on top of them. The Ethiopian colonial system has also taken away the sovereignty of the Oromo people and exposed them to massive and absolute poverty by denying them their fundamental human rights and needs that Ron Shiffman calls subsistence, protection, affection, and understanding.
Most Oromos in urban and rural areas have low subsistence levels because they do not have adequate income, enough food, and livable homes. The Oromos have been denied their inalienable right to self-determination and democracy. They have been denied the right to build their social, economic, cultural, and organizational infrastructures. Without political freedom, democracy, and a responsible government, a community cannot improve its quality of life. People like the Oromo who do not have personal and public safety in their homes and communities and are denied the freedom of self-expression, association, and organization do not have a good quality of life. In the twenty-first century, when the world is changing fast because of the intensification of globalization, social revolutions, and revolutions in technology, information, communication, and transportation, the Oromo people are in the darkness of ignorance and poverty.
Successive Ethiopian governments have banned independent Oromo organizations, including the OLF, and declared war on these organizations and the Oromo people. In addition, these governments have outlawed Oromo journalists and other writers and closed Oromo newspapers. They have also banned Oromo musical groups and all professional associations and continued to eliminate or imprison politically conscious and self-respecting Oromos; thousands of Oromos have been in official and secret prisons simply because of their nationality and resistance to injustice. The bureaucrats and collaborators have believed that Oromo intellectuals, businessmen and women, conscious Oromo farmers, students, and community and religious leaders are their enemies and should be eliminated through terrorism and genocide. The government officials, cadres, and soldiers have frequently raped Oromo girls and women to demoralize them and their communities and show how the rulers and their collaborators have wielded limitless power.
Amnesty International, in its paper entitled “Because I am Oromo,” notes, “Between 2011 and 2014, at least 5,000 Oromo [were] arrested because of their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government, based on their manifestation of dissenting opinions, the exercise of freedom of expression or their imputed political opinion.” In 2014, the government massacred over seventy-eight university students in Ambo for peacefully protesting the so-called master plan.[16] Large-scale arrests, massive shootings, rapes, tortures, extra-judicial executions, and deaths due to suffering or lack of medical treatments have been everyday events in Oromia. The Tigrayan-led government and its agent, the Oromo People Democratic Organization, accused students of organizing demonstrations and arrested and tortured them; they detained and tortured singers for cultivating Oromo nationalism and not praising the government. People had been arrested and tortured for not providing false testimonies against other people, or being accused of supporting the OLF and the OLA[17]
The opposition to land grabbing, gross human rights violations, cultural destruction, political and economic marginalization, poverty, and rampant unemployment mobilized the entire Oromo society against the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government and engaged in the Qeerroo/Qarree-led peaceful protest movement between 2014 and 2018. The Qeerroo/Qarree were predominantly students from elementary school to university, organizing collective actions through media networks, such as radios, televisions, and personal relations and networks. Through daily slogans or chants, the Qeerroo/Qarreehad clearly articulated that the OLF should replace the Tigrayan-led government and recognized the front as the origin of Oromo nationalism. The government’s reactions to the Qeerroo/Qarree protests had been violent and suppressive. The Tigrayan-led government had been able to use martial law to kill or detain thousands of Oromos, holding them in prisons and concentration camps.[18] This government also implemented security structures called tokkoo-Shane (one-to-five), garee, and gott;[19] their responsibilities included spying, identifying, exposing, imprisoning, torturing, and killing Oromos who were not interested in serving the government.
Thousands of Oromos were maimed or blinded due to torture, beatings, or the suppression of protests.[20] For example, during the Oromia-wide day of peaceful protest on July 6, 2016, the regime’s army, known as Agazi, massacred nearly 100 Oromos.[21] According to Amnesty International, government forces killed 400 Oromo before July 6, 2016.[22] The Tigrayan-led government engaged in beating, torturing, castrating, decapitating, raping, and murdering Oromo students, farmers, educators, and merchants to stop the Oromo struggle.[23] In early October 2016, when millions of Oromo gathered at Hora Arsadi, southeast of Finfinnee, for the Irreechaa celebration, the Oromo national holiday, the government’s army killed more than 700 Oromo and injured or imprisoned thousands.[24] The state of emergency aimed to curb the growing anti-government protest movement for six months and extended it by three months. This action was the last attempt by the government to stop the Oromo protests and stay in power. Therefore, the Tigrayan-led government used all situations to gain control over information and the rally;[25] it utilized heavy forces and denied the freedoms of organization and association.
For several years, the Oromia region had been under a crackdown enforced by special police groups and the army known as Agazi.[26] After the protest movement started, according to rights organizations, more than 2000 Oromo were killed in eleven months.[27] Several thousand more had been imprisoned, tortured, blinded, and raped. The Tigarian-led government stated that 11,000 people were detained, and the regime had blocked the Internet and collected phones from thousands of Oromos to hide its crimes from the international community.[28] The protest movement brought about some changes in Oromo society. Young Oromo protesters were equipped with the ideology of national Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism), which has uprooted the divisions that the enemies of the Oromos created among different Oromo branches. Oromo collaborators and opportunists who had been evicting Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands by joining the Tigrayan elites were temporarily shocked and started to feel national shame. The Oromo protest movement demonstrated that it could destroy Oromo intermediaries or mercenaries who worked for the enemy at the cost of the Oromo nation. The Oromo protesters had practically shown that they were struggling to establish a democratic system that would exercise the principles of national self-determination and egalitarian multinational democracy, which align with their democratic tradition.
The cost the Oromo had paid in lives and suffering is very high. According to different reports, between 2014 and 2018, more than 5000 Oromo, including school children, pregnant women, and older people, were massacred, and tens of thousands of Oromo were imprisoned, kicked, beaten, tortured, and decapitated. As one of the Oromo national struggle phases, the Oromo youth movement emerged as a formidable political force and shook the foundation of Ethiopia’s Tigrayan-led racist and terrorist minority government. The brain of this government was the Tigrayan People‘s Liberation Front (TPLF), which organized and led the Ethiopian People‘s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) for almost twenty-seven years. As a result of the popular struggle of the Qeerroo/Qarreemovement, the ruling party, the EPRDF, was reorganized in April 2018, and Abiy Ahmed, who was trained in the Ethiopian army and politics under the leadership of the TPLF, emerged as Prime Minister by replacing Haile Mariam Desalegn. The Oromo youth peaceful protest movement forced the TPLF/EPRDF to replace Prime Minister Haile Mariam Desalegn with Abiy Ahmed in the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO).
Abiy “stepped into power [because of] the historical success of the Qeerroo movement… This unprecedented grassroots movement enabled the birth of Team Lemma, a reformist group within the ruling party of Oromia, which in turn forced the EPRDF, the long-ruling authoritarian party, to undertake an intraparty ‘talk tehadiso,’ or deep reform, in response to the youth’s relentless demands.”[29] As a colonel who worked in the security system, Abiy was a trusted man for the TPLF/EPRDF. Furthermore, the TPLF-led government assumed he was an Oromo, and appointing him as the prime minister would cool down the Oromo protest movement. The Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government changed its leadership by selecting and mandating Abiy to introduce needed reforms and facilitate the transition to democracy.[30] The choice of Abiy for the premiership position showed the lack of Oromo national organizational capacity, which could have mobilized Oromo’s human and material resources under national leadership to confront and defeat the internal and external enemies of the Oromo nation. The Qerroo/Qarree movement lacked the required national organization capacity to remove the TPLF/EPRDF, the terrorist and genocidal government, and form its own.
The absence of robust Oromo organizations helped Abiy use the OPDO and the protest movement to gain political power and hijack the revolution.[31] To undermine its potential enemies or competitors, the Abiy government invited all diaspora political organizations, including those of the Oromo, to return to Oromia and Ethiopia and participate in the so-called process of democratic transition. However, this government has been anti-democratic, terrorist, and genocidal like the TPLF/EPRDF regime it replaced. It only changed its name from the TPLF/EPRDF to the Prosperity Party (PP) without changing its essence and characteristics. In other words, the P.P. is TPLF minus the EPRDF. Therefore, most leaders and members of the P.P. were members of the EPRDF and have been in power since 1991. As a result, the EPRDF/PP is called the neo-nafxanya government by Oromo nationalists and others.
Almost all Habasha organizations have allied with the neo-nafxanya government of Abiy because it articulated that it would restore the so-called glorious Ethiopia and popularized its former leaders, namely Menelik, Haile Selassie, and Mengistu Haile Mariam.[32] Abiy’s political intention is to achieve absolute power by rebuilding the Ethiopian Empire in the image of Amhara history, culture, and language and by attacking Oromo nationalism and Oromo nationalists and organizations, such as the OLF, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), and the Oromo Federalist government (OFC).[33] The Abiy government invited the OLF leadership and its army to return to Oromia from Eritrea and peacefully struggle for Oromo rights. The way the OLF was received on September 15, 2018, in Finfinnee was beyond the government’s imagination and the enemies of the Oromo. On September 15, 2018, Al Jazeera said:
Hundreds of thousands of people have gathered in the capital of Ethiopia to welcome leaders of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the latest members of a formerly banned rebel group, to return home following a string of political reforms in the country. On Saturday, the jubilant crowd waving OLF flags gathered at Addis Ababa’s Meskel Square [by organizing a large concert] to welcome the group’s leader, Dawud Ibssa, and others. In contrast, similar events were held in Ethiopia’s Oromia region.[34]
The same source also said 1,500 OLF fighters returned to Oromia from Eritrea.[35] One thing that was not clear to many people was that there were numerous OLF leaders and soldiers in Oromia, while some leaders and members were returning from Eritrea. After some OLF fighters who returned to Oromia were abused and mistreated by the government, those OLF fighters already in Oromia started to suspect the peace deal that the OLF leadership had made with the Abiy government and decided to continue the armed struggle. Gradually, the OLA split from the OLF leadership. The Abiy governmentdeployed its security networks and the Ethiopian National Defense Force to Wallaga and Guji to root out the OLA and its leadership on December 19, 2018.[36] Gradually, Kumsa Diriba became the OLF-OLA High Command, popularly known as Jaal Marroo. Jaal Marroo and Jaal Gamachu Aboye, his deputy, articulated their dissatisfaction with the policies and actions of the Abiy Ahmed government and declared that the government was the continuation of the previous colonial government.
“On December 19, 2018, the Ethiopian National Defense Force started a mass deployment of its forces across Oromia state (mainly the Wallaga zones and the Guji … Eyewitnesses stated that the military was digging encampments in the middle of cities and hauling in sandbags for fortification“‘[37] At the same time, Jaal Marroo released a video circulating on social media, explaining the similarities between Ethiopia’s transitional period in 1991 and the transitional period of 2018.[38] During the 1991 transition, thousands of Oromo fighters were encamped and destroyed by the TPLF/OPDO soldiers after the OLF leadership was expelled from the transitional government. Jaal Marroo’s assessment was correct, and Abiy openly expressed that he and the OPDO should rule Oromia for several decades as the TPLF ruled Tigray. Milkessa M. Gemechu, who was a member of the OPDO/ODP, says: “When opposition leaders were arrested en masse, I recalled that during an Oromo Democratic Party [ODP] central committee meeting that I attended in late 2018, Abiy said his government should learn from the TPLF, observing that it ruled Tigray for over 27 years without any opposition, especially from within the region.”[39]
For half a year, “Abiy publicly committed to follow the mandate given [to him] to bring the country through a transition to democracy under his watch. He has failed to honor that commitment. Abiy was not a part of the youth movement, yet he came to power on the shoulders and sacrifices of the Oromo youth. He had already lost his popular base even one year into his premiership. To a large extent, he was openly regarded as a traitor in Oromia.”[40] Once he came to power, Abiy started to divide and conquer the Qeerroo/Qaree movement by attracting the opportunist elements, providing them jobs, land, and money, and attacking, repressing, and killing the nationalist ones. Within six months, Abiy controlled the critical branches of the federal state machinery, such as the national intelligence and security agency, defense forces, the police, and other institutions.[41] He started controlling the Oromia Regional State, the largest state, by dividing and conquering the OPDO.[42]
In April 2019, Abiy deposed Lemma from the Oromia presidency, replaced him with his yes man, Shimelis Abdisa, and removed Oromo political leaders whom he suspected had the spirit of Oromo nationalism and supported him, Lemma Megersa.[43] At the same time, he intensified the attack he started in December 2018 on the OLA in western and southern Oromia. Suspecting the connection between the Qeerroo/Qarree and the OLA, Abiy also intensified the attack on the Oromo youth in June 2019. Milkessa M. Gemechu, who attended a meeting with Abiy, testifies: “During a high-level central committee meeting of the Oromo Democratic Party, at which I was present, Abiy argued that the Qeerroo posed the ‘number one potential threat to his power.’ Many of us were shocked by this sharp reversal. He demonized the youth as an ‘ungovernable pestilence that must be dealt with as soon as possible.’ He said that ‘these unarmed Qeerroo are more dangerous than the Oromo Liberation Army.”[44] While criticizing, attacking, imprisoning, and killing Oromo nationalists, Abiy formed his neo-nafxanya party by using the ideology of “medemer” or “synergy” and called it the Prosperity Party.
Starting in December 2018, Abiy began establishing command posts in different parts of Oromia to impose state terrorism, crush the Oromo national movement, reestablish the archaic ideology of Ethiopianism, and practice of settler colonialism with the help of the neo-nafxanya (colonial settlers) class. Currently, for Oromo nationalists, only three independent political forces are engaging in the Oromo national movement: the OLF, OLA, and the OFC. Oromo nationalists assert that the OLF and OLA have achieved the ideological victory of Oromo nationalism. The OLA intensifies the guerrilla struggle in Oromia to liberate the Oromo people and their country, Oromia. Farsighted political activists, serious nationalists, and organic intellectuals have realized that without building strong national civic institutions and organizations, protests or revolts alone cannot empower the Oromo nation. Developing new political strategies and building solid national civic institutions and political organizations are urgent steps that should be taken immediately.
The Oromo youth protest movement created conducive conditions for restoring the Oromo democratic tradition and building solid national civic institutions and political organizations required to establish a sovereign Oromia democratic state, which may join a confederal multinational democratic state. The OLF and OLA faced multiple enemies during this historical period. The neo-nafxanaya government and its allies, such as the Amhara Regional Government, including the Amhara Special Force, the terrorist group called Fano, the Somali military forces, the Eritrean soldiers, and other regional forces, such as Somali and Sidama, are mobilized against the Oromo in Wallo, Wallaga, Tulama, and Guji areas. These forces are the primary enemies of the Oromo nation. All these forces are terrorizing and massacring the Oromo people to prevent them from supporting the OLA. These actions will increase the commitment and determination of the OLA and the Oromo people to intensify their liberation struggle. Abiy also has intensified ideological warfare on national Oromummaa (Oromo history, culture, identity, and nationalism) by glorifying Amhara nationalism disguised as Ethiopianism to advance the Amharization nation-building project. He belittled and attacked independent political and cultural institutions to accomplish this political objective. In addition to imprisoning Oromo nationalist leaders, his military and security forces killed fourteen gadaa leaders of the Karrayu Oromo, including Abbaa Gadaa, on December 1, 2021, and falsely blamed the OLA.
Abiy and his agents have used the strategy of imposing state terrorism to impose fear on the Oromo public to change their political behavior and support his administration. This government has given a free hand to federal and Oromia regional military and security forces to kill Oromo youth and other civilians suspected of supporting the OLA. As a result, these forces massacred thousands of Oromos in different areas of Oromia. They have executed individuals in public squares, on roads, and in jungles. The government agents have denied relatives the corpses of their loved ones to be eaten by hyenas. Overall, the Abiy government has committed crimes against humanity, such as burning the houses and grain storage of Oromos to the ground in rural areas, executions, rapes, arbitrary arrests, detentions, and tortures.[45]
The Abiy government has frequently instituted a state of emergency and curtailed freedom of expression, media, and association or organization by shutting down internet and phone connections.[46] It has almost outlawed the OLF and house arrested Dawud Ibssa, the chairman of the OLF, and imprisoned other top leaders, such as Abdi Raggaasaa and Mikael Booran, executive committee members; Kennesa Ayana and Gamachiis Tolosa, Aman Batre, Oromsis Elemo and Kaayyoo Fuufaa, central committee members; Battee Urgessa, Senior Public Relation Officer, Lammi Benga, Head of Youth League, Dr. Gadaa Oljiraa, Chief of Administration; Yazoo Kababaa, Senior Staff; Gadaa Gabisa, Senior Staff of Organizational Affairs, Yeroosan, Senior Staff in Political Department; and Dachaasaa Wirtu, Head of Youth League. Furthermore, as Lami Gemechu, a temporary OLF public relations officer, stated on March 14, 2022, between 10,000 and 13,000 OLF leaders and members are suffering in various Ethiopian prisons; this figure does not include those who are imprisoned in hidden, informal camps.[47] These prisoners are not provided adequate food, and they do not have enough access to medical services.[48] For instance, Battee Urgessa and others have had hepatitis and have been denied treatment for some time.
The Abiy government has criminalized these leaders because they refused to join the neo-nafxanyagovernment. It has also outlawed their leadership in the OLF. These leaders did not commit any crimes, and government high courts have found no crimes against them. Also, the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) leaders, including Bekele Gerba, Jawar Mohammed, Dejene Tafa, and Hamza Borana, were imprisoned and recently released. The crimes of these leaders are their membership in OFC, which has refused to join the neo-nafxanya government, too. The Abiy government has prevented the OLF and the OFC from participating in the election in Oromia and Ethiopia in 2021. His party claimed to win most parliamentary seats in Oromia and Ethiopia. The neo-Nafxanya government has stopped the process of peaceful struggle, and the only option that has remained is the OLA option, which is the protracted armed struggle. Those Oromo nationalists who have asserted that the Ethiopian Empire cannot be democratized because of the nafxanya system and Habasha political culture, which promotes zero-sum politics by killing and dominating, are political realists and prophetic thinkers. The ideology of the nafxanya system is Ethiopianism, which contradicts Oromummaa (Oromo history, culture, and nationalism).
Ethiopianism vs. Oromummaa
The ideology of Ethiopianism explains and justifies the formation of the Ethiopian Empire and denies the colonization of the Oromo and others. To understand the source of this ideology, it is necessary to comprehend the name Ethiopia, which originated from the Greek word Aethiopes. Classical Greek explorers and writers named the territories inhabited by Black peoples that they called the ” people of burned peoples in Asia and Africa.[49] Although the historical meaning of Ethiopia applies to all Black peoples, its contemporary purpose applies to Habashas or Abyssinians (mainly Amharas and Tigrayans). They have successively dominated Abyssinian/Ethiopian state power. Recognizing the political and ideological significance of the name Ethiopia and especially its Christian Biblical connections, Abyssinian leaders have claimed an Ethiopian identity and asserted that their ancient territories included all regions that classical geographers and historians described as Ethiopia.
The official adoption of the name Ethiopia for the Abyssinian Empire occurred in 1931 when Haile Selassie officially changed the name Abyssinia to Ethiopia in his constitution. Ethiopianism is a political and ideological construct that Amhara and Tigrayan state elites have used to justify and rationalize Ethiopian settler colonialism, the gabbar–nafxanya system (semi-slavery), the racialized state power, and an ethnic-racial hierarchy. The Ethiopian state is the continuation of the Abyssinian racialized state, which committed cultural genocide on indigenous peoples, such as the Qemant, Gafat, Agao, and later the Oromo. Contemporary Ethiopia emerged as an empire by claiming the name of ancient Ethiopia and justifying terrorism, enslavement, colonization, and the continued subjugation of Oromos and others through the discourse of race and religion . The West praised Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) as a country that had never been colonized. The idea that Ethiopia was not colonized laid the cornerstone for the ideology of Ethiopianism in “Greater Ethiopia.” Thus, Ethiopia was seen as “A civilized nation of immense intelligence, the only one that is civilized without wearing trousers and shoes.”
Ethiopianism, or Greater Ethiopia’s ideology, claims that Ethiopia was not colonized like other parts of Africa because Habasha’s bravery and patriotism made this empire unique in Africa. The Ethiopian historical discourse claims that Ethiopian boundaries are sacred since they were established 3,000 years ago. Furthermore, it is asserted that Abyssinian “society represented an advanced level of social and economic organization” that enabled it to defend itself from European colonialism by eliminating slavery and protecting “all the peoples of greater Ethiopia from falling prey to European imperialism” and that Ethiopia played a crucial civilizing mission by colonizing and dominating the Oromos and other nations who were considered backward, pagan, destructive, and inferior. These racist mythologies assisted Ethiopia in enjoying more recognition in Europe and North America, and “there was extended public discussion of Ethiopia’s place in the world community and a great elaboration of the Ethiopian mythology initiated by European writers for a European public.”
As a racist ideology, Ethiopianism claims that Habashas are different from other Africans and that superiority to them lies at the core of the European justification for empowering them to colonize and rule the Oromos and other nations. The Ethiopian Empire was created with the alliance of European imperialist powers. Habasha warlords have maintained themselves through a coalition with successive imperial superpowers, namely, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China, that have protected successive Ethiopian state elites and their governments. Amhara colonial settlers and their collaborators in Oromia and other regions have justified their colonial domination with a racist discourse. With the establishment of their colonial authority in the colonized states, Habasha settlers “assumed that their innate superiority over the residents accounted for this accomplishment.” These essential components of racist discourses have remained intact. “Socialist” and then “democratic” lessons have been introduced by successive Habasha state elites and accepted by their global supporters without changing Ethiopian society’s colonizing and racist structures.
Because of its racist policies, the Ethiopian state has different policies within Abyssinia proper, the homeland of Amhara-Tigray, and the colonized regions such as Oromia. The Ethiopian state has acted in an authoritarian manner toward Amhara and Tigray ethnonational groups from which it emerged and in a terrorist fashion toward racialized peoples, such as Oromos, Afars, Sidamas, Ogaden-Somalis, and others, whom it suppresses and exploits. The Ethiopian state is owned mainly by the nafxanya class, which includes Habasha elites, Ethiopianized Oromos, and other collaborators who control all aspects of state power and use state terrorism to maintain their power and privilege (Jalata, 2005). This state has been Abyssianized or racialized and Christianized to exclude non-Habashas peoples from decision-making power. The Ethiopian state has effectively used Ethiopianism to hide the crimes against humanity. Today, Oromo elites who defend the Ethiopian Empire are either politically misguided or opportunists who sacrifice the Oromo national interest for their personal and group interests. These elites call themselves Ethiopians, the identity that true and revolutionary Oromo nationalists reject.
If those colonized peoples around the world did not abandon their indigenous identities to accept the uniqueness of their colonizers, why do some Oromo elites call themselves Ethiopians? The Ethiopianized Oromos knowingly or unknowingly perpetuate Ethiopian colonialism and the domination and dehumanization of Oromo society. Whether they claim to advance Ethiopianism,socialism, or democracy, they have contributed to maintaining the racialized Ethiopian state during and after the failed revolutions of 1974, 1991, and 2018. The only way to liberate Oromo society is by building and strengthening the Oromo national movement based on the ideology of national Oromummaa (Oromo-centric history, worldview, culture, nationalism, and egalitarian democracy). The Habasha state elites and their collaborators have used Ethiopianism to claim the unity of the colonizer and the colonized population groups while committing crimes against humanity. Rejecting the ideology of Ethiopianism, the Oromo nationalists have developed national Oromummaa to oppose and dismantle the Ethiopian racial/ethnonational hierarchy and settler colonialism and its institutions.
National Oromummaa, as an Oromo nationalist ideology and worldview, builds on the best elements of Oromo culture and traditions and advances an indigenous Oromo democracy known as the gadaa/siiqqee system. It sees the Oromo culture as the center of Oromo life and bases its vision on Oromo egalitarian democracy, an institution that existed before American democracy. Before their colonization, the Oromo had the gadaa system of government. Currently, the Oromo national movement led by the OLF, and the OLA is struggling to retrieve popular Oromo democracy through the principle of national self-determination. The aspiration to restore this form of popular democracy is like developing Afrocentric awareness in the African and African diaspora communities. Molefi Kete Asante states, “A critical Afrocentric awareness develops when the person changes to a conscious level of involvement in the struggle for their mind liberation. Only when this happens can we say that the person is aware of the collective consciousness. An imperative of will, powerful, continuous, alive, and vital, moves to eradicate every trace of powerlessness.”
Those Ethiopianized Oromos who endorse and glorify Ethiopianism are undermining the Oromo-centric awareness to enjoy the power and material benefits at the cost of the Oromo and other colonized peoples. National Oromummaa, as an intellectual and ideological vision, places the Oromo man and woman at the center of analysis and, at the same time, goes beyond Oromo society and aspires to develop global Oromummaa by contributing to the solidarity of all oppressed peoples by promoting the struggle for national self-liberation and egalitarian democracy. It is a complex and dynamic national and global project. As a national project and the ideology of the Oromo national movement, national Oromummaa enables Oromos to retrieve their cultural-centric political strategies and tactics that can mobilize the nation for collective action, empowering the people for liberation.
As a global project, the Oromummaa national movement requires that all persons be included in the Oromo national movement, operating democratically. This global Oromummaa enables the Oromo people to form alliances with all political forces and social activities that accept the principles of national self-determination and egalitarian democracy in promoting global humanity free of forms of oppression and exploitation. In other words, global Oromummaa is based on the principles of mutual solidarity, social justice, and popular democracy. National Oromummaa, as an element of culture, nationalism, and vision, has the power to serve as a manifestation of the collective identity of the Oromo national movement. The foundation of national Oromummaa must be built on overarching principles embedded within Oromo democratic traditions and culture and, simultaneously, have universal relevance for all oppressed peoples. The main foundations of national Oromummaa are individual and collective freedom, justice, popular democracy, and human liberation, all of which are built on the concept of safuu (moral and ethical order) and are enshrined in gadaa/siiqqee principles. Although national Oromummaa emerges from the Oromo cultural and historical foundations, it goes beyond culture and history in providing a liberating narrative for the future of the Oromo nation and the end of other oppressed peoples, particularly those who suffered under the Ethiopian Empire.
As a critical ideology and worldview, national Oromummaa challenged the idea of glorifying kings or strongmen or chiefs who collaborated with European slavers and colonizers and destroyed African peoples by participating in the slave trade and the project of colonization. Successive Ethiopian government elites have built their power on the foundation of an ethnic-racial hierarchy rationalized and justified by racism. They have maintained their legitimacy and survival through external connections and domestic political violence. Because they have failed to remove the political obstacles that have facilitated external dependency and state violence, they cannot build a multinational democracy, peace, stability, and development. Because the Ethiopian state has been supported by mighty global powers and the imperial interstate system, there have been connections between racism, state violence, and global tyranny in Ethiopia. National Oromummaa promotes sovereignty in opposition to dependency, sustainable development, and self-sufficiency, national self-determination, and egalitarian democracy.
Oromia Sovereignty, the U.N., and International Law
Oromia deserves national self-determination, which is an internationally accepted political principle. The U.N. recognizes “the desire of every people [or every nation] to determine its destiny, free from dictatorship or control by others.” However, every nation must earn it through different mechanisms, mainly through various forms of struggle. It must create its organizational and military capabilities to defeat a dictatorial/colonial government that denies the right to self-determination and democracy. The U.N. only theoretically recognizes these rights but is not committed to implementing them because most of its members are dictatorial, colonial, and imperial states. The principle of national self-determination is based on the four pillars of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights: (1) the right to life, liberty, and security, (2) civil liberty and property rights, (3) political and social rights, and (4) economic, social, and cultural rights.
If a people or a nation is denied national self-determination, its universal human rights cannot be protected. If implemented or practiced, the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights expands human freedoms. Based on the spirit of human rights, Amartya Sen suggests five types of instrumental freedoms: 1) political freedom, 2) economic freedom, 3) social opportunities, 4) transparency guarantees, and 5) protective security. The political and civil rights include (1) the right to determine who should govern and on what principles, (2) the right to scrutinize and criticize authorities, (3) the right to political expression and an uncensored press, and (4) the freedom to choose between different political parties, etc. Economic freedoms and rights entail (1) freely participating in markets and generating wealth and public resources, (2) the availability and access to finance, (3) utilizing economic resources for consumption, production, or exchange, and (4) basic economic security and entitlement.
Social opportunities involve (1) social arrangements such as education and health care; (2) the services that influence the individual’s substantive freedom to live healthy, better, and longer; and (3) the increasingly more effective participation in socio-economic and political activities. Similarly, transparency guarantees consist of (1) the freedom to be open and deal with one another; (2) the right to disclose corruption and financial irresponsibility and prevent underhand dealings; and (3) increasing accountability of institutions, governments, corporations, and building institutions of unemployment benefits and income supplements, famine relief or emergency, public employment, etc. The denial of national self-determination denies the colonized nation, such as the Oromo, all these rights and the development of human freedoms and capabilities.
Martha Nussbaum explains the principle of the capability approach, which enables all individuals in society to develop their abilities. She lists ten capabilities to promote human rights and capabilities: (1) Life – preventing dying prematurely; (2) Bodily health and integrity – having good health; being adequately nourished; having necessities; (3) Bodily integrity – having personal safety and security; enjoying life without any restriction; (4) Senses, imagination, and thought – imagining, thinking, reasoning, and expressing ideas without any restrictions; these capabilities must be developed through an adequate education, scientific reasoning; (5) Emotions – having rights to develop attachment to persons and things; caring and loving those who cares and loves you; (6) Practical reason – engaging in critical reflection about one’s own life; 7) Affiliation – showing empathy and concern for others; having capability for friendship and justice; having the right to be respected not to be humiliated; not to be discriminated by others; (8) Other Species – living with and protecting animals, plants, and nature; (9) Play – being able to laugh, to play, and to enjoy recreational activities; and (10) Control over one’s environment: (a)Political – having the right to associate, organize and make political choices; having the rights of political participation, free speech; (b) material – having the right to own property; having the right to have jobs and livable wages. The Ethiopian colonial state has denied the Oromo people all political, economic, cultural, and social rights that the U.N., Amartya Sen, and Martha Nussbaum describe above. Therefore, the Oromo people’s national self-determination is in their hands.
Discussion and Conclusion
The Oromo national movement has engaged in a liberation struggle to recreate an Oromia sovereign democratic state and Oromo freedom by demolishing the combined forces of the colonialists and the Ethiopianized Oromo collaborative class. The brutality and criminality of the Ethiopian colonial state, the deplorable living conditions of Oromo society, international law, and the violations of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples justify the rebirth of the sovereign and democratic Oromia state. Even though the Oromo have abundant economic resources, they live under the darkness of ignorance, abject poverty, and political slavery, and are exposed to state terrorism and massive human rights violations. They are denied the freedom of expression, the media, organization, and the freedom of self-development. They are forced to provide their economic and labor resources to the Ethiopian colonizers and their supporters while living under deplorable conditions in the twenty-first century.
Oromo nationalists are convinced that the only way for the Oromo to get out of these deplorable political, economic, cultural, and social conditions is by intensifying the political and armed struggle led by the OLF and OLA. In the capitalist world system, might is right. The neo-nafxanayagovernment, the imperial interstate system, the African Union, the U.N., and Western and other states cannot stop the Oromo if they rise in unison to eliminate all political forces that deny them their universal human rights and human capabilities. Most colonized nations worldwide have achieved their freedom and sovereignty by engaging in protracted political and armed struggles, which are self-defense rights. The Oromo people are lucky to have the OLA, which is paying heavy sacrifices to show the way to Oromo sovereignty and Oromo freedom.
The OLF and OLA need to build national organizational capacity by integrating political and military activities and laying the groundwork for the rebirth of the sovereign and democratic Oromia state. Furthermore, all Oromos should pay the necessary prices of knowledge, logistics, human power, and money to support the OLF and the OLA. The Oromo youth should also join the OLF and OLA rather than become the colonial government’s mercenary and kill their citizens or die while running away from Oromia to foreign countries or being massacred by the Abiy government. The Oromo deserve popular sovereignty, statehood, egalitarian democracy, and membership in the U.N. to restore their human freedoms and build their capabilities to achieve security, peace, and sustainable development. The human rights of the colonized Oromo people will be protected if they defend themselves by any means necessary from their executioners by organizing and struggling to form their sovereign government and other essential institutions.
Endnotes
[1] This piece was published in my book entitled, The Quest for Democracy, Self-Determination, and Just Peace, (London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2025).
[2]See https://www.thoughtco.com/new-countries-of-the-world-1433444, accessed on 07/04/2022.
[3] These entities are Catalonia, Flemish Republic, Veneto, Scotland, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, New Russia, West Papua, and Somaliland. See https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-next-10-countries-the-world-s-most-likely-new-nations.html, accessed on 07/04/2022.
[4] There were 16 know oldest or ancient civilizations or cultures around the world: The Incan civilization (1438 A.D-1532 A.D.), the Azetic civilization (1325 A.D.-1521 A.D.), the Roman civilization (753 B.C.-476 A.D), the Persian civilization (550 B.C.-331 B.C.), the Ancient Greek civilization (2700 B.C.-479 B.C.), the Chinese civilization (1600 B.C.-1046 B.C.), the Mayan civilization (2600 B.C.-900 A.D.), the ancient Egyptian civilization (3150 B.C.-30 B.C), the Norte Chico civilization (in Peru) (3000 B.C.-1800 B.C), the Danubian culture (Lower Danub Valley and the Balkan Hills) 5500 B.C.-3500 B.C.), the Mesopotamian civilization (6500 B.C.-539 B.C.), the Indus civilization, around the Indus River, (2600 B.C.-1900 B.C.), the Jiahu culture(in China), 7000 B.C-5700 B.C. ), Ayn Ghazal (in Jordan), 7200 B.C.-5000 B.C.), the Çatalhöyük Settlement (in Turkey), 7500 B.C.-5700 B.C.), and the Indigenous Australians, 50,000 B.C.-today. Jana Louise Smit, “Ancient Civilizations Timeline: 16 Oldest Known Cultures From Around The World”, History Cooperative, December 15, 2019, https://historycooperative.org/ancient-civilizations/. Accessed June 16, 2022
[5] Ethiopianism is an Habasha/Abyssinian/Ethiopian ideology that justifies Ethiopian colonialism, racism, and the perpetual subordination of the Oromo and other colonized peoples to the nafxanya class and its state that dominates the bureaucracy, the army, culture, and and the Ethiopian colonial political economy.
[6] The concept Gada has three related meanings: it is the grade during which a class of people is in power by having politico-ritual leadership; it is period of eight years during which elected officials take power from the previous ones; and it is the institution of Oromo society.
[7]For example, these five grades are called itimako, daballe, folle, doroma/qondala, and luba in central Oromia.
[8]We need to further investigate more in depth how the selection process was conducted to have a better understanding.
[9]Siiqqee was a woman institution, which functioned parallel to the Gada system to protect the rights of Oromo women in pre-colonial Oromia.
[10] Abaya or Mormor was the original center of Abbaa Gadaa, the president of the Oromo parliament, caffee, and the center of Abbaa Muuda, the leader of the Oromo indigenous religion known as Waaqeefannaa until it moved to Odaa Nabee (near Finfinnee) in the fifth century A.D (Oromia Culture and Tourism Bureau, 2006: 74).
[11] Using weapons that these government provided, Sahle Selassie’s forces made 84 raids in one year against the Tulama Oromo; in one raid, his forces massacred about 4,500 persons, looted some 43,000 animals, and enslaved more than 1,000 Oromos, but whenever the Ethiopians established their settlements among the Tulama Oromo, the Oromo collectively chased the settlers away or killed them.
[12] The two warlords had earlier established a base for cooperation. Yohannes and Menelik started their alliance by helping the British to destroy their stronger rival, Tewodros. Tewodros of Amhara, who tried to centralize Ethiopia politically, was unsuccessful because of the lack of “both resources and experience needed to handle the European powers properly.” Yohannes and Menelik learned much from his failure. Although Menelik agreed, the British expedition had to eliminate Tewodros, it was Yohannes who played an important role in cooperating with this force because of the proximity of his geopolitical center, Tigray. Although Britain could have colonized Ethiopia, it instead left the region after the destruction of Tewodros’ power base and his suicide.
[13] The Early Lytton, 1975: 205.
[14] Menelik first colonized the Oromo regions bordering on Manz (Shawa). The Wallo Oromo kingdoms were conquered between 1868 and 1876. At roughly the same time, Menelik’s army colonized the Liban Oromo. The Gulale, Yaha, Wachbacha, Bamici, and Mettaa Oromos came under Ethiopian control in 1978.
[15] The land of the colonized Oromo that was given temporarily to the settlers in lieu of salary was called maderia. When the land was converted into the property of the holder and became salable and inheritable, it was called rist-gult.
[16]file://Oromo Protests and Ethiopian Repression Overview Oromo Oromia Gadaa.com-FinfinneTribune.html, accessed on 04/11/2016.
[17] Ibid.
[18] www.hrw.org/report/2016/06/16/such-brutal-crackdown/killings-and-arrests-response-ethiopias-Oromo-protestsholding them in prisons and concentration camps, accessed on 06/09/2017.
[19] www.hrw.org/reports/2005/ethiopia0505/2.html, accessed on 06/09/2017.
[20] www.hrw.org/reports/2016/06/16/such-brutal-crackdwon/killings-and-arrests-response-ethiopias-oromo-protests, accessed on 06/09/2017.
[21] www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37015055, accessed on 06/09/2017.
[22] www.newsweek.com/ethiopia-hundreds-killed-excessive-force-oromo-protests-says-hrw-470800, accessed on 6/10/2017.
[23] http://amharic.voanews.com/a/what-is-the-current-situation-in-oromia-region/3331322.html, accessed on 05/17/2016.
[24] www.opride.com/2016/10/02 irreecha-massacre-several-dozens-feared-dead-bishoftu/, accessed on 06/09/2017.
[25] www.yahoo.com/news/ethiopia-declares-state-emergency-101402878.html, accessed on 06/09/2017.
[26] www.ayyaantuu.net/ethiopia-oromia-regional-state-under-siege/, accessed on 06/10/2017.
[27] www.hrw.org/reports/2005/ethiopia0505/, accessed 06/10/2017.
[28] http://ecadforum.com/2016/10/06/internet.blocked-in-ethiopia/, accessed on 06/10/2017.
[29] Milkessa M. Gemetchu, “How Abiy Ahmed Betrayed Oromia and Endangered Ethiopia,” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/25/abiy-ahmed-ethiopia-qeerroo-oromia-betrayed/, accessed on March 4, 2022.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Mudihin Siraj, The Hijacked Revolution, Hamile 2011 Ethiopian Calendar, https://mylibrarianship.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/e18ba8e189b0e18ca0e18888e18d88_e189b5e18c8de1888d_the_hijacked_revolution1.pdf, accessed on March 15, 2022.
[32] Max Bearak,‘A place of ghosts:’ Ethiopia opens controversial palace to a divided public, October 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/a-place-of-ghosts-ethiopia-opens-controversial-palace-to-a-divided-public/2019/10/11/4ddd2d9c-ead5-11e9-a329-7378fbfa1b63_story.html, accessed on March 4, 2022.
[33] Milkessa M. Gemechu, “How Abiy Ahmed Betrayed Oromia and Endangered Ethiopia,” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/25/abiy-ahmed-ethiopia-qeerroo-oromia-betrayed/, accessed on March 4, 2022.
[34] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/9/15/thousands-of-ethiopians-hail-return-of-once-banned-oromo-group, accessed on March 3, 2022.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Whispers North: Bold and Frank, XCLUSIVE: Who is Kumsa Diriba alias Jaal Marroo? – OLA Commander,” November 13, 2021, https://www.whispersnorth.com/2021/11/13/exclusive-who-is-kumsa-diriba-alias-jaal-marroo-ola-commander/, accessed on March 8, 2022.
[37] Ibid.
[38] “EXCLUSIVE: Who is Kumsa Diriba alias Jaal Marroo? – OLA Commander,” Whispers North: Bold and Fronk, https://www.whispersnorth.com/2021/11/13/exclusive-who-is-kumsa-diriba-alias-jaal-marroo-ola-commander/, accessed on March 3, 2022.
[39] Milkessa M. Gemechu, ibid.
[40] “EXCLUSIVE: Who is Kumsa Diriba alias Jaal Maro? ibid.
[41] Milkessa M. Gemechu, ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid.
[45] “Ethiopia: Rape, extrajudicial executions, homes set alight in security operations in Amhara and Oromia<,” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/05/ethiopia-rape-extrajudicial-executions-homes-set-alight-in-secur, accessed on June 23, 2022.
[46] Human Rights Watch, “Ethiopia: Events of 2020,” https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021, accessed on March 11, 2022.
[47] Lami Gemechu, “ስለ ኦሮሚያው የስቃይ ማዕከል” ገላን ሶሎሊያ ያልተሰሙ ሚስጥሮች//ልዩ ዝግጅት ከኦነግ ጊዜያዊ የህዝብ ግንኙነትሀላፊ አቶ ለሚ ገመቹ ጋር,” Ubuntu Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a345gNqW-7s, accessed on March 15, 2022.
[48] Ibid.
[49] According to A. Wallis Budge (1928: 120-121), “The descriptions of Ethiopia given by Homer, Herodotus, Diodorus, Starbo and Pliny make it quite clear that they indicated by this name the vast tracts of country [regions] in Asia and Africa that were inhabited by dark-skinned and black faced peoples.”
