For Immediate Release

August 5, 2016

The Grand Oromia Rally is a national act of protest by the Oromo and non-Oromo citizens of Ethiopia to gather in unison to express deep-seated mass grievances, country-wide anguish and suffering, widespread violation of rights that is perpetrated by the TPLF regime over the past several decades.

In the past 9 months alone, the Oromo people saw one of the bloodiest military response from the regime that murdered over 600 lives, shot and injured over 5000 persons, incarcerated tens of thousands and caused forced disappearances of thousands. The regime has also rendered hundreds of thousands landless, jobless, homeless, and placeless. It has demolished houses of thousands who have been rendered homeless and left out in the punitively cruel cold weather of the rainy season. All this is mainly, although not merely, because of the people’s decision to protest the government’s Master Plan that illegally and unconstitutionally annexed their ancestral lands in and around the Capital Finfinnee/Addis Ababa.

This Grand Rally is going to be staged in all the major cities and district towns of Oromia. This rally is a peaceful rally expressing the people’s general yearning for a just peace.

During this planned Grand Oromia Rally, we expect the Oromo people to remain connected using the Internet, mobile technologies and social media platforms. We strongly urge the government to refrain from blocking communications channels, using tactics of fomenting conflicts, provoking and meting out violence and mass arrest in order for it to disrupt and restrict lawful assembly and peaceful protest. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Oromo and non-Oromo citizens are ready to gather across more than 200 districts, over 20 zonal cities and in the Capital, Finfinnee (also called Addis Ababa), to join in this peaceful protest as a part of the grassroots Oromo movement.

On August 6, as we march, we acknowledge millions who are also marching in solidarity with us. So, we march in the company of all people who, like the Oromos, were wronged by the regime’s ruthless dictatorial, at times, even terroristic practices. The Grand Rally comes at a time when the regime lost all kinds of reason by placing elite political benefit over public service, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, and most importantly privileging members of one ethnic group over those of others. Let it be known to all, near and far, local, national, and international, that we are peacefully assembled here, as it is our God-given right. Also, we feel obliged to highlight these facts as worth noting by all:

• Oromo and friends of Oromo people are united in their anger and outrage against the sickening brutality of its military on peaceful innocent civilian population. We also like to underscore the obvious mal-governance by the TPLF regime–rampant corruption, mass arrest, mass killings, dehumanization, torture, and rape by the regime’s military that also colluded with its business and political elite since 1991.

• The Oromo people categorically and unequivocally express their rejection of the regime; and that it has indisputably lost its legitimacy, the legitimacy it hardly had at any rate, among the Oromo people.
• All foreign visitors and expatriates working and living in our country will be given an extra-care by the protesters. Hence, there is no need to fear. We are inherently bound by our Gadaa democracy to ensure the safety and security of our guests. To the extent the people can, they pledge their full protection to all residents.

• On August 6, 2016, starting 8:00 AM in the morning (ganama keessaa sa’a lama akka lakkofsa Oromotti), the march will take place in all districts and zonal cities and towns across Oromia. We reiterate in the strongest of words that it is a totally peaceful march. Consequently, there will be no weapons in the rallies. Roads shall not be blocked. Government offices and officials will not be bothered.

• Given the tendency of the regime’s military and security force to use live ammunition to shoot at the protesters from a point blank range and cruel treatment of protestors in response to the situation, the grand rally will continue to show the utmost ethical standards in terms of ensuring orderliness, peace, and non-violence. There will be no reason to fear any attack against any property.

• Demonstrators shall march steadily and in a completely orderly procession. There will be no rushing, running, or a resultant commotion. We call upon all peace loving people to pay attention and to bear witness as we, today, march for justice, peace, voice, dignity, equality, and liberty for all.

Sincerely,

Organizers of the Grand Oromia Rally

E-mail: oromomarch@gmail.com

Freedom, Justice, Liberty, Dignity, and Democracy for ALL!

For Immediate Release

August 5, 2016

The Grand Oromia Rally is a national act of protest by the Oromo and non-Oromo citizens of Ethiopia to gather in unison to express deep-seated mass grievances, country-wide anguish and suffering, widespread violation of rights that is perpetrated by the TPLF regime over the past several decades.

Source: THE GRAND OROMIA RALLY FOR FREEDOM, JUSTICE, VOICE, AND PEACE!!!

(#GrandMarch4Oromia, 6 August 2016) Today, Oromia marches. To demand justice. To lament the suffering of its people. To mourn its dead. To voice its horror, anger, and rage in the face of an act of State terror.

This is a march for peace, justice, and voice.

This is a march for life. This is a march calling for immediate cease to the indiscriminate killing of our people, young and old, male and female, worker and farmer, everywhere.
This is a march for freedom of the mass of Oromo bodies that have congested in Ethiopia’s jails. This is a march against torture of our citizens. This is a march calling for the dismantling all torture chambers and all repressive institutions. This is a march for government atrocities on people. This is a march of love–to denounce hatred, institutionalized and disseminated by the regime in power. This is a march against all forms of prejudice: ethnic, religious, and cultural. This is a march for civility and moderation within and beyond our borders.

This is a march for equality of all peoples. This is a march for socio-economic justice. This is a march for immediate freeze of all acts, discourses, and acts of land grab. This is a march against the bureaucratic machine producing unnecessary suffering through eviction, demolition of houses, and dispossession of farms. This is a march for restoration of the evicted into their rightful places. This is a march for a consultatively determined, fair, and just compensation. This is a march against displacement, current and historic. This is a march against the dispossession of the poor to favour the rich. This is a march against the oppression of the powerless and the vulnerable to favour the powerful. This is a march to resist the dumping of urban waste on defenceless poor farmers. This is a march for a clean and pure natural environment. This is a march for social justice.

This is a march for voice, for the people’s truth. This is a march to be heard. This is a march for rights. This is a march for our natural rights to life, liberty, equality-in-dignity, and security of the person. This is a march for our freedoms, freedoms to speak, believe, express ourselves, write, associate, assemble, and vote. This is a march for true, equal citizenship.

This is a march for self-rule of Oromos and all other peoples of Ethiopia. This is for an immediate stop to indirect rule through mercenaries, co-opted, corrupt, and unrepresentative EPRDF cadres. This is a march for a genuine federalism. This is a march for equal recognition of the identities of all peoples in Ethiopia, a march for the respect of languages, histories, cultures, traditions, names, and all its accompaniments. This is a march to call for recognition of Afaan Oromo as a working language of Ethiopia, co-equally with other languages, including Amharic. This is a march for our rightful title over the Oromo land including the cities of Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. This is a march for affirmation of our dignity on our own land, the land that is the embodiment of life, sustenance, and sovereignty for us.

Above all, this is a march for a just peace. This is a march that says NO to state-driven war against peoples. This is a march for rest in the land of our ancestors. This is a march for the state artilleries to be deflected from our peoples.

We say NO to all forms of violence, atrocities, insecurity, and any manufactured miseries. We say NO to killings, and we disavow death!

We march for life, its sustenance, reproduction, and flourish in a just, peaceful, and prosperous social order.

Nothing more nothing less.

For PDF format:Pamphlet_OromoProtests

(Advocacy4Oromia, 1 August 2016) One of the founders and a senior member of OLF leadership, Obbo Tarfa Dibaba, passed away on 29th July 2016 at the age of 76.

Tarfa Dibaba (1940-2016)

According to our sources, Ob Tarfa Dibaba was one of the early educated few that helped in advancing Oromo national struggle that led to the present awakening.

Many agree that Ob Tarfa had never stopped encouraging his comrades not to waver from their set objective until he took his last breath.

Ob Tarfa was remembered for his highly principled professional contribution ranged from the battlefields of Oromia to the refugee camps in Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt and Djibouti, and to the diplomatic corridors of the capital cities of the most powerful nations, fighting for independence of Oromia.

He was also committed to support Oromo nation as human rights advocate, a charitable campaigner for rights of Oromo refugees as a founder and lifelong head of the Oromo Relief Association (ORA).

Ob Tarfa Dibaba has not only saved thousands of life but also consoled and comforted hundreds of victims of torture and unimaginable cruelty in the hands of the enemies of the Oromo nation.

Ob Tarfa Dibaba has survived by his beloved wife Arfase Gamada, their three children Yared, Benjamin and Talile, and grandchildren Gilcha, Hirtz-Dibaba, Jootee, Hawani and Yadani.

Our hearts and prayers go to them.

Fadumo Dayib is the first woman to run for president of Somalia. And she has some pretty high expectations of what she would like to achieve if she’s elected president of a country that’s faced over two decades of instability.

Source: Somalia’s First Female Presidential Candidate Vows to Negotiate With Al Shabaab

Ethiopian security forces have killed more than 400 protesters and others, and arrested tens of thousands more during widespread protests in the Oromia region since November 2015. The Ethiopian government should urgently support a credible, independent investigation into the killings, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses.The 61-page report. “‘Such a Brutal Crackdown’: Killings and Arrests in Response to Ethiopia’s Oromo Protests,” details the Ethiopian government’s use of excessive and unnecessary lethal force and mass arrests, mistreatment in detention, and restrictions on access to information to quash the protest movement. Human Rights Watch interviews in Ethiopia and abroad with more than 125 protesters, bystanders, and victims of abuse documented serious violations of the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly by security forces against protesters and others from the beginning of the protests in November 2015 through May 2016.

Source: Protest Crackdown Killed Hundreds

The subject can be discussed, but from a Marxist independence movement, the government is wary of the influence of the western world. The result is that the economy is weak and the country is poor. However, the government takes care of the needy, no one dies from hunger in Eritrea. The state organizes free distribution of basic commodities. School and university are free and as well as access to the health system.

Source: French journalist warns UN COI’s false accusations against Eritrea could lead to an invasion

A 27-year-old mother of one from the nearby capital, Addis Ababa, Yimam has spent the past six years toiling for Ayka-Addis, a Turkish-owned textile and garment factory and the largest firm in Ethiopia’s emerging apparel industry. Six days a week, for 1,500 birr ($68) a month after taxes, she rises early for her eight-hour shift, dons her spotted blue and white Ayka uniform, and spends her day churning out cotton for t-shirts, pajamas and bed sheets bound for Europe. As a relatively senior employee, she’s better paid than many of Ayka’s 6,000 Ethiopian staff. With her 10th-grade education, she admits it would be hard to find better. Yet Yimam and her husband still struggle. “There aren’t many companies that pay more than Ayka,” she says over the whirl of more than 200 knitting machines. “But it’s still barely enough.

Source: Made in Africa: Will Ethiopia’s Push for Industrialization Pay Off?

BY  *Baaroo Keno Deressa (Dr)

The Oromo people are survived the lethal colonialist rule of previous one (they change the Oromo name from Tolesa and Gemechu to Getnet and Gebremeskel and they change the name of our town namely Finfinnee to Addis Abeba, Bishoftu to Dabrezeit and Adama to Nazret).

The current colonialist TPLF elite plays in multiple cards and faces (mixing up the definition of Oromo people goal self-determination, statehood, sovereignty, and democracy, and creating dysfunctional organization like OPDO to distract the real goal of the struggle). But We Oromo people have to be proud to be an Oromo by challenging all those obstacles and keeping our determination intact for freedom with limited resources and absence of external assistance.

Source: Politics of Devolution from Fibrosis to Cirrhosis