Author Archives: advocacy4oromia
Martha Kuwee Kumsa: The Unsung heroine and Iron Lady!
LIZ MONTEIRO
( A4O, 10 March 2014) Martha Kuwee Kumsa is standing in front of her social work students at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. Out of the corner of one eye, the Ethiopian-born woman catches sight of a man in uniform lingering in the hall. She continues her lecture, but her heart beats faster and her breathing becomes heavier. Then she gets a clear view of the man — and it’s a university security officer, not a soldier come to drag her away. She relaxes.
“It’s amazing how the brain works and the body responds,” the soft-spoken Kumsa says of the triggers she has learned to cope with over the years.
Martha Kuwee Kumsa of Kitchener is at home in Canada, but still has strong feelings about her native Ethiopia. For years she had long dreadlocks, but two months ago she cut them off in a symbolic gesture.
Terror, struggle, pain and grief have all been part of a long journey in which she lost her husband, her home and sense of security.
Two months ago, in an act symbolic of those losses, she lifted her dreadlocks and cut them off.
Kumsa, 51, who now lives in Kitchener, had let her hair grow since moving to Canada and starting work on her PhD. This spring, however, she decided a woman her age shouldn’t have hair down to her buttocks.
Kumsa knows now, however, that there was more to the haircut than that. In Ethiopia, women who cut their hair are often in mourning.
Martha Kumsa was born in Dembi Dollo, a small town 800 kilometres southwest of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, near the border of Sudan.
The youngest daughter of a Presbyterian minister, she was named Martha after the Christian nurse who delivered her. The name she holds close to her heart is her middle name, Kuwee, the name of a heroine in Oromo history. But Kumsa wasn’t allowed to go by Kuwee in Ethiopia, where the Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in the country, are still struggling for equality.
When Kumsa finished high school, she moved to Addis Ababa to attend university. She hoped to become an engineer, but in early 1974, shortly after her arrival in the capital, Ethiopia erupted in revolution. The aging emperor, Haile Selassie, was replaced by a Marxist government and Kumsa and other students took to the streets to support his removal from power.
One day, helicopters circled above the crowds.
“We climbed trees running for cover, thinking that they were going to bomb us,” Kumsa remembers. But instead it was pamphlets that rained down, a sign the new military government wanted the protesting students on its side. “It was one of the most exciting moments for me,” Kumsa said. “Even today, I look for something to come down when I see a helicopter.”
Like many of the revolutionaries, Kumsa thought denouncing the emperor meant denouncing the West, that embracing socialism meant land for the poor. The new regime did nationalize private and church-owned property, but then landlords rebelled. In response, the government closed the universities and students were put to work on the land.
Around this time, Kumsa trained as a journalist with the Lutheran World Federation in Addis Ababa. She also married Leenco Lata, a chemical engineer. They had their first child in 1975 and they named her Huriya after an Arabic word for liberation and freedom.
“We felt we were reclaiming our history,” Kumsa says. “The future seemed vibrant. It was the best time of our lives.”
But the bliss would not last. In 1977, the dictatorship of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam unleashed what became known as the Red Terror. Anyone suspected of counter-revolutionary acts was deemed an enemy. Tens of thousands of Ethiopians were held, tortured and executed.
Kumsa, who by then was pregnant with her third child, remembers passing bodies in the streets.
Her husband became a leader of the Oromo Liberation Movement and active in the resistance. Four times in six months, he was kidnapped during the night.The couple’s two-year-old son, Robale, would grab Kumsa’s legs and scream as his father was carted away.
“To this day, my son can’t sleep without a light on,” Kumsa says.
Martha Kuwee Kumsa and her three children posed for this photo in 1989. The children are (from left): Robale, Huriya and Goli. All three came to Canada with her in 1991.
Three times, Lata was brought home after being tortured. The fourth time, he didn’t come back.
“I was turning bodies in the street to find him,” Kumsa says. “There was no body I didn’t turn over. I went all over the place looking for him.”
When her baby was finally born, she named her Goli, the Oromo word for terror.
Kumsa searched for Lata for a year. Family members and friends shunned her, afraid they’d be hauled off to jail or death if they spoke to her.
“I felt so alienated and alone in the world.”
She continued her job at an Oromo newspaper, where she wrote a column that encouraged Oromo women to take back their cultural traditions.
One day in 1980, Kumsa said goodbye as usual to her son and two daughters and went to work. The children were then ages three, two and one. She would not hold them again for seven years.
When Kumsa arrived at work that day, four men in plainclothes met her at the elevator. She recognized them as the same security force members who had recently arrested a colleague and never brought him back.
“My heart started racing,” Kumsa says.
The men blocked her way and told her they wanted to ask a few questions. One man showed her a badge.
“I froze in terror. I didn’t know anyone who had come back. I thought this was the end of me.”
The men threw Kumsa into a car and blindfolded her before speeding away. When the blindfold was finally ripped off, she was inside a security forces building and being dragged down a grey corridor and into a crowded room.
She was shocked to see people on the floor, bleeding from their mouths. Their faces were disfigured and pus oozed from wounds. The stench was overpowering.
“I was thrown into a living hell,” Kumsa says.
Soon after, in what became the torture room, she was asked if she was involved in the resistance. She denied it.
Blindfolded and with her hands tied, Kumsa was ordered to sit on the floor and wrap her arms around her knees. She was gagged with a blood-soaked sock.
Then, with a rope around her body, she was lifted and flipped over so that her bare heels faced the ceiling.
Her captors struck her soles with a whip made of a hippopotamus tail. She screamed, but with the gag the sound was more like a whimper. Then a solution was sprayed on her feet.
“The burning, God Almighty,” she says. “You want to jump through the roof. They want to make you feel the beating again.”
During all the punching, slapping and burning, her tormentors kept asking whether she was part of a political movement. They were trying to break her body and spirit, and eventually they did.
It happened the day she was made to watch the torture of a minister, a man who was a friend.
“I broke down . . . It was like hearing a person yelp like a dog every time the whip touched him.”
Kumsa, then 24, says she was taken to the torture room 10 times in the first year after her arrest. She was then moved to the prison that would be her home for almost nine years.
It was her home during the famine of the mid-1980s when one million Ethiopians died. She wasn’t told about the famine, but knew something was wrong because of changes in the food being smuggled into the jail by prisoners’ families and friends. Pasta was soaked in water and ground up to make bread.
Kumsa was never charged, never tried, never officially told why she lost her freedom. But she considered herself one of the lucky ones, spared death because she was a journalist.
Many of her fellow prisoners vanished, taken away after their names were heard over a loudspeaker.
“There was no pattern or control of anything you did there,” Kumsa says. “You couldn’t predict the next five minutes.”
She taught herself French in prison and then taught it to others. With books, she learned Tigrigna, the official language of the prison. She also taught biology, geography and math to prisoners and to the sons and daughters of prison administrators.
“The best minds were in prison,” she says. “It was the best school in the country.”
Meanwhile, her own children were shuffled among family members. When Kumsa found out they were in Addis Ababa, she concocted a plan to see them.
“I pretended I was sick. I told them I had a toothache and I screamed and cried.”
With help from Amnesty International and other human rights groups, and from imprisoned relatives of the former emperor, Kumsa was allowed to leave prison for treatment. Guards were then bribed so her children could get into the hospital where the tooth was pulled.
“The two older kids ran to me,” Kumsa said. “They hugged and cried and I screamed. But the youngest one, she stood there. I ran to her and she pushed me away.”
Despite her harrowing life as a prisoner, Kumsa says she felt her greatest pain when Goli, the youngest daughter, spat in her face. Goli had only been a year old when her mother was arrested and felt abandoned.
“If this is my mother, I don’t want a mother,” the girl said.
The reunion lasted only 15 minutes, but soon after the prison began allowing monthly visits to prisoners. Kumsa’s children would wait all day to see their mother, sometimes without ever reaching the front of the line.
“I would see them from afar, but then they would be chased away when time was up.”
After several years in the prison, Kumsa began to understand how hard Amnesty and PEN, a group that helps writers around the world, were working to free her. She would receive postcards that read: “We know about you. You are not alone.”
The postcards brought her joy.
“Somebody knows about me,” she remembers thinking. “I’m not totally forgotten. How wonderful and uplifting it was to know someone knew of me.”
The late Canadian novelist Timothy Findley was a frequent writer, always sending the same message: “Hope against despair” and Kumsa still calls him her “Canadian father.”
One Saturday morning, Kumsa was washing her hair, preparing for a Sunday visit with her children, when she heard her name over the loudspeaker. It was Sept. 10, 1989. She wrapped her hair in a towel and ran.
“When you hear your name, you have to jump and run. If it’s death, you run to death. And if it’s release, it’s freedom you are running to.”
At the front door of the prison, a bus was waiting. Other prisoners started jumping with excitement, but Kumsa was wary.
“What if it was execution?” she wondered.
She and other political prisoners were driven in the direction of the security forces headquarters, the place where Kumsa had been tortured. For a brief moment, Kumsa thought freedom might be at hand, since being set free meant processing paperwork at headquarters.
When the bus drove by the building, a silence fell over the prisoners.
“You could see the physical terror. People were looking at each other. It was not release.”
Kumsa jumped to her feet, yelling at her friends: “We will die like human beings. We will spit in their face.”
The bus came to a stop in front of red stone building surrounded by a tall, iron fence topped with spikes. As the gate opened, Kumsa saw journalists with notepads and cameras.
“Are they going to document our execution?” she wondered.
Then she saw a general and watched his lips move as she tried to absorb the words she had waited so long to hear.
“You are free from this moment on,” the general said.
The prisoners stood like statues, so the general repeated his words.
Then, as if being jolted from a deep sleep, the crowd rose. Men clapped and the woman ululated in unison.
“It’s a moment I will never forget,” Kumsa says.
Close to 90 political prisoners and 400 other convicts were released that day. Mixed with Kumsa’s happiness was anger over bring robbed of 10 years, with no explanation, no apology and no help returning to normal life.
“Where do I go now? I didn’t know whether I was happy or sad.”
Kumsa went to the home of a missionary, where she learned that even the most mundane tasks were no longer easy.
“I hadn’t opened a door in 10 years. I didn’t have the confidence in me to do it. It was such a huge effort to reach out and grab the door and open it.”
She was reunited with her children, but there was no word from her husband, who she believed was still alive. And she had no job or money to support a family.
Ethiopia’s government, meanwhile, was in disarray and the political climate remained dangerous. Kumsa was approached by radical militants who wanted her to attend training camps.
“I knew that I was dead if I refused, and I will die if I accept,” she said. “If I have to die, I will run for dear life.”
So seven months after her release, Kumsa and her children, helped by PEN and Amnesty, made their escape.
They were driven 700 kilometres south toward Kenya and dropped off in woods near the border. For two weeks, the family walked through dense bush, dodging soldiers until they reached safety across the border.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? Why did I take my kids?”‘
She and the children were in Kenya five months before they were accepted by Canada in September 1991.
Meanwhile, the Ethiopia government of Mengistu had crumbled. Several opposition forces had united as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and it had taken over the country in May 1991.
Lata was part of a team negotiating the transition to the new government. He called Kumsa from London in July that year to let her know he was alive. Kumsa hadn’t seen him in 13 years.
“I was angry and happy. I didn’t want to talk to him, but I couldn’t resist.”
While she was in prison, she learned, Lata had been working for the liberation of the Oromo people, living at different times in Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti.
Two days before Kumsa and the children were to leave for Canada, he visited them in Kenya. He had never even see his youngest daughter, now a teenager.
Kumsa went to the airport alone to meet him, waiting for two hours until she saw him in the distance, with a cigarette in his hand. She wanted to scold him for abandoning her.
“I wanted to be angry, but it wouldn’t come. I ran like crazy to him. It felt like 13 years had been 13 seconds. It was as if we hadn’t been separated. It was a magical click.”
Kumsa wished she could return to Ethiopia with Lata to be part of the new leadership in her country. But she and the children came to Canada.
“When they needed me the most, I left my country,” she says. “I felt I was really needed there, but I chose my children.”
One year later, the Ethiopian coalition was falling apart. The Oromo Liberation Front withdrew from the government, disappointed with the delay in bringing democracy to the country.
Lata moved to London in 1993, then three years later joined his family in Canada.
In Canada, Kumsa reclaimed Kuwee, her Oromo name. For the first year, the family was sponsored by PEN, Amnesty and a Toronto church, but it was not an easy time.
“I wanted to be a mother to my kids, she said. “I had been denied this experience.”
But the children were still angry about their childhood without parents and took it out on their mother.
With the help of a student loan and two part-time jobs, Kumsa enrolled at York University during her second year in Canada. She got a bachelor’s degree in social work in 1996, the same year that she received a human rights award from the New York-based group, Human Rights Watch. A master’s degree from the University of Toronto came a year later.
In 2002, Kumsa was hired for a teaching post at Wilfrid Laurier University, but continued to work on her PhD at the University of Toronto and received that in 2004.
In Waterloo, Lata worked as a freelance writer, producing two books on the political climate of Ethiopia.
But he began to see Canada as a kind of prison. With only a temporary resident permit, he wasn’t allowed to attend school or get a job.
Nor could he become a Canadian citizen, Kumsa says, because as a member of the Oromo Liberation Front he had fought to overthrow the Ethiopian government.
“It’s a real shame,” says Isobel Harry, executive director of PEN Canada, who has heard Lata speak at conferences and describes him as a scholar.
“It’s a real hardship for Martha and her family.”
Federal government officials won’t comment on Lata’s case.
Kumsa knew that sooner of later her husband would leave Canada. And last August, he moved to Norway, a country he finds more sympathetic to the struggles within Ethiopia. From there he continues to work on the plight of the Oromo people.
Kumsa believes that her destiny, too, is wrapped up in Ethiopia. She would love to join her husband, the man she calls her jewel, to fight for recognition of the Oromo people.
There have been times since she cut her hair when she has wondered if she is ready to run again.
“My spirit is up. My wings are up, but I don’t know where I will be landing.”
She may even live in Ethiopia someday. But she said she won’t feel safe there until the Oromo people are fully recognized.
For now, however, Kumsa is content not to run.
Her three children are university-educated and she now enjoys a close relationship with Goli, who will begin practising law this summer.
Together, they are working on a research project about Oromo youth and how they identify themselves in Canadian society.
Kumsa is also studying Oromo spirituality and ancient birthing rituals. She will present a paper next month at a conference in Nigeria. Most of her research centres on the immigrant’s sense of belonging and identity.
“I’ve been running after things and from things,” Kumsa says.
“I need to slow down. I want this to be my home.”
Still, the walls of her university office are bare and few photographs adorn her home.
“I never feel settled,” she says.
“I feel like I’m living with one foot out of the door.”
A Guru on Oromo Studies dies
(A4O, 3 March 2014) Dr. Paul Baxter, a leading and longtime researcher on the Oromo nation, died at the age of 89. Dr. Baxter was a distinguished British anthropologist who devoted his entire life studying the Oromo.
According to Oromo Study Association, Dr Paul Baxter was one of the authoritative authors on the subject and contributed immensely to the development of Oromo studies at the time when the scholarship on the Oromo people was extremely discouraged in Ethiopia.
Born on January 30, 1925 in England, Paul Trevor William Baxter, popularly known as Paul Baxter or P.T.W. Baxter, earned his BA degree from Cambridge University. Influenced by famous scholars such as Bronisław Kasper Malinowski, Charles Gabriel Seligman, and Evans Pritchard, Paul Baxter had a solid affection for social anthropology. He went to the famous Oxford University to study social anthropology.
It was at the zenith of the Amharization project of Emperor Haile Selassie that he developed a strong interest to study the social organization of the Oromo people. In fact, in 1952, he started to study the Oromo Gada system, against all odds from authorities of the Ethiopian empire, and subsequently produced some of the finest scholarly pieces that laid the foundation for Oromo scholarship.
His first article titled “The Social Organization of the Oromo of Northern Kenya”, published in 1954 became a foundation for more of his researches to come and a reference for the students of Oromo studies. Besides, the research disqualified many of the myths and pseudo stories that assume the Oromos were a people without civilization, culture, and history.
Dr. Paul Baxter did not stop there. He continued with his studies and spent several decades studying different aspects of the Oromo society. It was through his extended research among the Oromos that he managed to deconstruct some of the myths that portrayed the Oromo people as a “warlike” or “barbarian” nation in the rather fictious stories written by the 16th century Abyssinian spy monk, Aba Bahrey and all the subsequent debteras.
The title of essays in his honor, in 1994, “A River of Blessings” speaks to his perception and reality of the Oromo as a peace-loving nation. In his article, “Ethiopia’s Unacknowledged Problem: The Oromo”, he highlighted some of the Oromophobic and barbaric manners of the Ethiopian Empire, and he suggested that peace with the Oromo nation was the only lasting panacea to the Ethiopian political sickening.
In his long academic and research career, he studied the Oromo from northern Kenya to Wallo and Arsi-all the way to Guji and so on. He edited a number of books on Oromo studies and published many other articles and book chapters in the field of social anthropology.
Dr. Paul Baxter is survived by his wife, Pat Baxter, his son, Adam Baxter, and his three grandsons and their children. May his soul rest in peace!!
US slams Ethiopia’s human rights abuse
(A4O, 1 March 2014) The United States in a scathing report on Thursday accused Ethiopia of curtailing freedom of expression and association, using politically motivated trials, harassment and intimidation of activists and journalists.
Ethiopia holds estimated 70,000-80,000 persons, including some 2,500 women and nearly 600 children incarcerated with their mothers, in severely overcrowded six federal and 120 regional prisons, the U.S. said in its voluminous 2013 Human Rights Report released by Secretary of State John Kerry. “There also were many unofficial detention centers throughout the country, including in Dedessa, Bir Sheleko, Tolay, Hormat, Blate, Tatek, Jijiga, Holeta, and Senkele,” the report said.
While it said pretrial detention in local police stations were marred with poor hygiene and police abuse, the report also highlighted impunity for security forces who often commit politically-motivated killings against dissidents and opposition party members as “a serious problem.” The Ethiopian government rarely, if ever, took actions “to prosecute or otherwise punish officials who committed abuses other than corruption,” the report added.
The report named some of the well-known political prisoners and journalists including Eskinder Nega, Bekele Gerba, Olbana Lelisa, Reeyot Alemu and Woubeshet Taye.“Federal Supreme Court upheld the 2012 convictions under the criminal code of Bekele Gerba and Olbana Lelisa, two well-known political opposition figures from theOromo ethnic group, for conspiracy to overthrow the government and conspiracy to incite unrest,” the report noted.
“The Supreme Court subsequently determined the Federal High Court did not consider mitigating circumstances and reduced Bekele’s sentence from eight years to three years and seven months. The Supreme Court also reduced Olbana’s sentenced from 13 to 11 years. Courts convicted 69 members of Oromo political opposition parties, charged separately in 2011 under the criminal code with “attacking the political or territorial integrity of the state.”
Gerba, who has fully served out his reduced time, was widely expected to be released last month. However, according to family sources, prison officials gave conflicting reasons for his continued imprisonment, including that his time at the Maekelawi prison doesn’t count or his file was misplaced. Meanwhile, both Gerba and Lelisa are reportedly ill with restricted and limited medical care.
For more details see the file from the PDF format 220323 or follow the link below
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2013&dlid=220113#wrapper
Terminally ill
Lelisa is a longtime Oromo rights activist with Oromo Peoples Congress (OPC), who rose through the ranks of the organization from a sole member to top leadership. He competed in the last three elections representing the Caliya district in West Shewa. He was elected to the Oromia regional parliament in 2005. He was subsequently arrested on concocted charges of plotting to overthrow government by working with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), recruiting youth for armed rebellion and for inciting the frequent youth revolt in Ambo and West Shewa.
Lelisa, who has so far served three years of the 11 years sentence, reports being mistreated while in prison. He has repeatedly been beaten by unidentified men at Kaliti prison with orders from security services. He has sustained serious wounds from the beatings by government agents who pose as prisoners, according to OPride sources. Lelisa, who is terminally ill and said to be on a long-term medication for undisclosed condition, had repeatedly appealed to the higher court about his mistreatment but received no response to date.
Singling out the Oromo
While the State Department’s report is short on details, there are several evidences that show the Ethiopian government continues to single out Oromo dissidents. Last year, the OLF released a partial list (independently verified by a reputable OPride source) of 528 individuals sentenced to death and life imprisonment on purely political grounds.
The list includes names of individuals, their gender, and ethnic backgrounds. Underscoring the disproportionate repression of the Oromo, of the 528 individuals who were sentenced to death or life imprisonment by the Ethiopian courts, 459 are Oromo nationals followed by 52 Amhara nationals. “This list clearly indicates that the minority regime in Ethiopia is using its kangaroo courts for destroying Oromo and Amhara nationals who are viewed as potential threat to the regimes hold on to power,” one informant, who asked not to be named, toldOPride.
As documented by various international human rights organizations, today, it is a serious crime, under the Tigrean dominated Ethiopian government to support any independent Oromoorganization. Thousands of Oromos have been imprisoned, tortured and killed extra-judicially for no apparent reason other than expressing Oromo national feeling and for their support of Oromo organizations such as the OLF.
The selective and systematic targeting of Oromo in Ethiopia by the current began in 1992 when the OLF which jointly ruled Ethiopia from 1991-1992 with the Tigrayan Liberation Front (TPLF) was banned and its members and supporters jailed for years and hundreds executed without due process of law. Although Oromia, the Oromo regional state in Ethiopia, is autonomous in name, the Oromo do not have any meaningful voice in the affairs of their own state, which is totally controlled by the TPLF.
The later represents no more than seven percent of the population of Ethiopia, while the Oromo, who constitute the single largest national group in Ethiopia and the third largest national group in the whole of Africa. The Oromo are denied the basic democratic rights to organize freely and legally and express their political opinions. There is no single independent newspaper or media outlet catering to the Oromo populace in their native tongue.
The TPLF fears the Oromo numerical strength deliberately characterizes all independent Oromo organizations, which it does not control as the “terror wing” of the OLF. The goal for such characterization is to persecute peaceful supporters of the OLF behind the façade of fighting against a “ terrorist organization.” Under the anti-terror law of the current Ethiopian regime, anyone who is suspected of peacefully supporting the OLF, could be sentenced to life imprisonment or executed. The above mentioned 459 Oromo nationals who were sentenced to death or life imprisonment are all suspected OLF supporters.
Destroying the lives of 528 innocent human beings on political ground is a crime against humanity, which must be condemned by all civilized nations. The tearless cry of the U.S. AnnuaL Human Rights report notwithstanding, at this moment no calling is more urgent and more noble and no responsibility greater for those who believe in human rights than raising their voice for pressuring the government of Ethiopia to free the 528 innocent individuals who were sentenced to death and life imprisonment on purely political grounds.
In the last year alone, two Oromo activists have died in prison under mysterious circumnances. Last year, OPride reported about the death in prison of former UNHCR recognized refugee, engineer Tesfahun Chemeda. Last month, a former parliamentary candidate from Chalenqo in Western Hararghe, Ahmed Nejash died in prison. According to an OPC source, Nejash successfully run and challenegd Sufian Ahmed, Ethiopia’s Minister of Finance and Development, during the 2010 elections. He was subsequently arrested in 2011 alleged of being an OLF activist. Although his death recieved scant media coverage even within the Oromo community, a close relative of the late Jarra Abba Gadaa, Nejash is one of the veterans of Oromo people’s struggle. “He was sentenced to seven years, which was also upheld by the higher court,” the OPC told OPride source said. “He was in Zuway with Bekele and Olbana and he was healthy the last time I saw him in 2013.”
source: http://www.opride.com/oromsis/news/horn-of-africa/3735-us-slams-ethiopia-s-human-rights-abuse
Names and Identity: The case of Oromo names cultural genocide
By Hawi Chala | September 8, 2013
Our names distinguish us from billions of people in this world. To many of us names, the most fundamental part of a human being, gives us a sense of identity and belonging to a given society. Because names are part of every culture of a given society, they often put a strong connection between the individual who receive the name and the society that give the name. By giving a name the society acknowledges the personal existence in that society and simultaneously the society confirms its own responsibility towards that person. In other words, names are preliminary prove whether a person belongs to a given society. If we take these names Megersa, and Abreha, we can identify that the former belongs to Oromo identity and the latter belongs to Tigrean identity. Therefore, We are able to identify their identity just only by looking their names because we know that these names only belong to that community.
By carrying that particular name, the individual share the history of his society and become part of the nation. Since that particular name differentiate that child from others, the society will foster and socialize the child with needs and feelings different from those of others. That is why many of us own different feeling and needs depends on where we came from and the ethnic group we have been socialized with. Because of that name his /her needs and feeling will exist different from others. For instance, an Oromo child born and grown up in Norway will remain an Oromo, and have different feeling and needs from his/her Norwegian friends.
Having an Oromo name by itself will make her/him able to feel a sense of attachment to his/her Oromo heritage and culture.
There are different ways of naming a child in Oromo culture. When families give names to their children, they have usually, if not always, put a reason behind that, such as for example religion, specific situation the family find itself, places, hopes they have for the child and etc.
Religion plays a significant role in names.
A religious family usually names their child from their religious perspective. A Christian family may either give a baptismal name or after people in the bible; while a Muslim family give a name after people in Quran or from Quran perspective. The same applies in other religion too. By doing so, each family need to assert that the child belongs to their respective religion. These names given after people in Bible or Quran helps the person to have the attachment to the faith and to feel that they are part of the faith.
In Oromo culture when a woman get married, she is given a new name in addition to her previous name to indicate that the woman now onwards belongs to her husband family. Women from the western culture are not required to change their name but they instead change their family name to their husband family name. The logic behind the new name in both cultures is to indicate that the woman will belong to her husband kinship family and the new name indicates her new identity.
Influence of ‘famous individual & literature on name choice
In this modern world media and literature play important role in choosing names. The more medias cover about models, artists, influential people, the more we became familiar with their names and the more we became inspired by them and their names..
Names like Tilahun (after the singer Tilahun Gessese, Mengistu after X-president Mengistu H/Mariam, Aster (after singer Aster Awoke), Tewodros (after king Tewodros).etc , have been commonly used among many Ethiopian.
Historically since Oromo people have been denied any government key positions, and since the Oromo literature have been weakened purposely by government, since our talented artists were unable to shine out due to oppression and limited opportunities given, it has been a big challenge for Oromo names to get promotion opportunity through Ethiopian medias and literature. Due to this, their popularity of Oromo names couldn’t shine out rather remained mired in rural setting of Oromia.
Our names make the core of our identity.
The link between personal identity and a given name is at the heart of this article wants to discuss thoroughly.
As we have discussed above, many scientific studies confirmed also that there is a strong link between a given name, identity and personality.
The link between a name and identity happens in our daily life starting from when we introduce our selves to a new friend, to various daily events. If I tell you that my name is Roberto, you can easily distinguish me that I might be an Italian, or if your name is called “Hawi” I can easily guess that you are an Oromo. If your friends hold the name Abrehet, we can guess that she is Tigrean and if the other friend also has the name Wi Hu Zhao we might guess that he/she is a Chinese. More than their metaphorical usage. these names help us to distinguish the person identity, where he is from and the society she/he belongs to.
When people have odd names, names that don’t explain his/her identity, it would make hard for others to easily distinguish who is he/she and to whom she/he belongs. In other word through his/her given name, the name is unable to explain his/her identity.
During the colonial period, many of African indigenous names were changed to the colonizer interest names to indirectly change their mind to loose their identity. If you travel to Nigeria today you hardly find indigenous names among the new generation instead people are favoring British names.
During the slave trade times when Africans left the continent, they left also their names, culture and all of their identity, where they were in return given new slavery names with new identity. They lost their identity and their roots. This is a proof why these days the Caribbean and many black Americans have lost the feeling of African identity. In resistant to this identity crisis many black American civil right activist marched various movement condemning their cultural genocide. One of the prominent activist was Malcolm who refused the name given by white imperialists and changed his name to Malcolm X , which became later one of the cause for his assassination. . He chose the new surname “ X” to signify his lost tribal name and identity.
The same cultural genocide has happened in Ethiopia against Oromo people names. In Oromo people culture, names represent an important part of life and have been a pillar of our identity. Since Oromos population largely surpasses other ethnic group in number, there has been groundless fear among successive Ethiopian leaders to be overwhelmed by this majority groups. In response to this, one of the strategies used by these successive repressive regimes has been to make the Oromo people systematically loose their identity through developing a feeling of proud Ethiopianism while feeling embarrassed with Oromuma identity. To ensure the domination of Abyssinians culture over the Oromo people and to strength their assimilation policy, these successive governments have banned the Oromo language, culture and names. Speaker of Afan Oromo language and holders of Oromo names were privately and publicly ridiculed and embarrassed.
Following the victory of Minilik on the war with Oromo, between 1868 and 1900, where more than 5 million Oromos were killed, hundred and thousand of Habesha settlers were dispatched in to fortified settlements across Oromia. These Habesha settlers didn’t only take away the vast land of Oromia, but also changed Oromo place name to Amharic names and banned Oromo cultural practice. Classic example of this names genocide is the name of the following Oromoia cities: Addis Ababa (Finfinne ), Nazret (Adama), Debrezeit (Bishoftu), Zeway (Batu), Asebe Teferi (Chiro), Hageremariam (Bole-Bora ) ….etc were the victim of the eradication policy of Oromo names.
During various resettlement program in the country history, many Oromos , who has lost their own land by the government to give to multinational cooperation, were also resettled in different parts of the country including Gojjam and Gonder. Even today if you travel around Gojjam and Gonder you will surprisingly hear a lot of indigenous Oromo names. This was one of government strategy to silently kill the booming of Oromo culture through the assimilation policy at the back of the settlement program. These Amharized oromos have Oromo roots but baptized under Amhara culture. Holding surnames may keep the attachment with Oromo people, but that alone wouldn’t make them proud of Oromumma since they have lost the feeling and the culture of Oromo people.
Now we came across two paradoxes. In one hand we have said that there are few indigenous Oromo names in Gojjam and other parts of the Amhara region while in other hand we know that there are millions of Amharic names among Oromo people.
Let me stop you here and give you two minutes break while thinking your friends or families who is holding Amhara names.
Roughly 2 out of 3 Oromos have an Amharic names.
Then my big question is :
Why Oromo families name their children by Amharic names instead of Oromo names? Or why the name Adane is preferred than Feyisa among Oromo families?
Well, It undeniable fact that from our grand –grand fathers to the present Qube generation, having an Oromo names make us embarrassed and feel less valued. It was not a hidden history that many Oromo families changed their names in to Amharic names when they moved to towns in order to escape from discrimination and easily integrate in to the dominant Habesha culture.
Until recently it has been regarded that holding Oromo names was perceived as foolish, ruralist, impulsive, not moody, “geja” and many more abusive words. They made us feel that an Oromo names is less valued over Habesha names. Take for instance these names, Tolesa, Kiros, Gezahegn, Megertu, Hiwot ? Which name is better off the other ? Names are names. Every name is beautiful to the society it belongs. But the successive Ethiopian brutal governments make us feel down with our names, made us feel embarrassed with our beautiful Oromo names, made us feel that our names is backward, regressive & unmodernised, made us feel that our Oromo names has negative implication rather than its identity justification. They ridiculed and insulted us for we are holding Oromo names.
Many Oromo children change their name when they start school because they inherited that embarrassing feeling with holding Oromo name at school. The Habeshas used to insult and made jokes on our Oromo names. This inhuman mistreatment made our Oromo families feel ashamed with their names and their children names. These insults and discrimination made by Habeshas forced many Oromo familes to give Amharic names to their children.
They changed in to the Amharic names not because they changed their oromuma identity but only because they need to protect the psychology of their children not to feel embarrassed and ashamed with Oromo names.
Until recently many Oromo job-seekers are forced to change their Oromo names and hide their Oromuma to increase chances of being hired by employers.
This cultural genocide against Oromo names by successive Ethiopian government was supposed to bury our Oromo identity. I am not going to naysay the very fact that we have been affected by identity crisis. But at the same time we could survive the name genocide and regained our Oromo identity. Thanks to those who have fought and sacrificed their life, we are now able to feel proud with our survived identity and names. But the scarce of our name genocide will never be forgotten.
Names build a nation
The connection between names and identity does not only affect people. Names and naming also constitute an important part of the work of the building of a nation. This becomes quite evident if we take a look at the history of Norway and Eritrea during the period following the independence of Norway from Denmark in 1814 and Eritrea from Ethiopia 20 years ago. After the end of 400 years of Denmark rule, the Norwegian people gained a new feeling of freedom and independence which provoked a strong wave of National Romanticism, and this, among many other things, also called forth a strong agitation to bring back the Old Norwegians names and put them to use instead of imported, foreign colonial names. This revival of the so-called national names has later become known as the Nordic Name Renaissance. The same history has recently happened in Eritrea. As a consequence of National Romanticism, Eritrean government has implicitly prohibited Ethiopian music, language and names in Eritrea so as to boom Eritrean own culture, than imported names and cultures.
The same logic should work for Oromo cultural revival. By giving Oromo names to our children, we should play important part of building greater Oromia. We should provoke a strong wave of OROMIA ROMANTICISM and RENAISSANCE. In fact many Oromo youngsters, especially the Qubee generation has showed their resistance to the system by changing their Amharized name in to the beautiful Oromo names. To continuously pass our identity from generation to generation and attach the feeling of Oromo identity, we should name our children with our beautiful Oromo name. We have cultural responsibility to stop this cultural genocide of our identity names by making our self and our children feel proud of Oromumma by naming with indigenous Oromo names. Through naming of Oromo names, each of us has a responsibility to build a nation that feels proud of its identity, a nation that struggle for its freedom and a nation that proudly say I am a Oromo first and no more Amharic names!
References:
Adler, Peter (2002) : Beyond cultural identity : Reflections on multiculturalism , Pepperdin University, school of Law, USA.
Benedicta, Windt, (2012) : Names and personal identity in Literary context, Oslo studies in language. Vol 4, No 2 (2012), Oslo , Norway.
Taylor, Paul et al (2012): When Labels don’t fit: Hispanics and their views of identity. Pew Research center´s Hispanic Trends project, USA.
Hawi chala : can be reached by this email : hhunduma@yahoo.com
Facebook: hawi.chala.5@facebook.com
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Related:
1. Born to Serve and Die Serving , by Hawi Chala
Bekele Nadhi, a pioneer Oromo leader and activist, dies at 80
By Mohammed Ademo
(OPride) – Bekele Nadhi, a prominent lawyer and fierce Oromo rights activist, who was among the pioneer founders of the Macha Tulama Association (MTA) passed away at his home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Tuesday from heart complications. He was 80.
Over the last 50 years, since the founding of the MTA until his death, Bekele served in various leadership capacities, including as a president, vice president, honorary president and most recently legal advisor, according to statements from the organization.
The MTA was formed in 1964 as a grassroots-based pan-Oromo organization to promote socio-economic development across Oromia, the Oromo country, and to emancipate the Oromo from cultural marginalization, political oppression, and economic exploitation. The Oromo are Ethiopia’s single largest ethno-national group.
A watershed event in Oromo history, the creation of the MTA allowed Oromo activists to mobilize their resources and unite disparate resistance movements against feudal oppression. Its founders played a monumental role in the Oromo reawakening, not least through the publication of a fervently revolutionary literature. The organization attracted Oromo luminaries, including martyrs Mamo Mazamir and Baro Tumsa as well as former Oromo Liberation Front leaders such as Lencho Lata, Ibsa Gutama and Taha Abdi.
But it was during the organization’s turbulent episodes that Bekele’s able leadership and dedication was felt the most. The MTA was repeatedly banned under three successive Ethiopian regimes. Time and again, Bekele played the role of a savior, courageously steering the organization out of the stormy seas. He was the steady hand that manned the ship in its greatest hour of need.
In 1967, when the then Haile Selassie regime arrested its core leadership and banned the MTA at the peak of the organization’s ascendancy, the defiant Bekele clandestinely organized activists to ensure continuity. He was later elected vice president when the organization’s founding father and longest serving president Colonel Alemu Qixessaa was released from prison. In early 2000s, upon the Colonel’s passing, Bekele led the organization as its interim president for a period of one year.
He subsequently stepped down and passed on the torch to Dr. Gemechu Megersa. Shortly there after, the organization was embroiled in a rare spate of internal disputes, once again requiring Bekele’s seasoned intervention, ending with an early election.
In 2004, Ethiopia’s ruling party, the EPRDF, once again arrested Dr. Gemechu’s successor, Diribi Demissie along with other senior leadership for alleged ‘political’ activities. The banning of the organization followed suit, the last nail in the coffin of independent Oromo civic and open activism. The octogenarian Bekele would not relent, even at an advanced age. He offered his place of business for board meeting and relentlessly campaigned for the release of its leaders and the reopening of the organization.
Born and raised in Addis Ababa, the cosmopolitan Bekele was also remarkable in many other respects. Decade after decade, how he led his life and carried himself around served as a relentless reminder of Addis Ababa’s Oromo identity – an inspiration for the Oromo and a thorn in the throat of his detractors. This has endeared him to friends and even those who disagreed with his political views. In addition to his more than a half-century of activism and leadership, Bekele often facilitated a return of the body of Oromo expats who passed away abroad, including the late Sisay Ibsa.
Bekele was a father of four children, including two surviving daughters. According to Oromo elder Lube Birru, Bekele treasured Oromo culture so much so that each time he left the city he would join wedding parties uninvited to learn about traditional Oromo wedding ceremonies.
Obbo Lubee recalled one historic case from Bekele’s long legal career. It was during Haile Selassie ’srule. Bekele represented a group of 80 farmers who were evicted from their farmland in from the Arsi province. When the local court ruled against the farmers, Bekele managed to present the case beforethe emperor at the Zufan Chilot – an appeal “court” where the monarch himself gave the ruling.
Anticipating an unfavorable judgment, Bekele apparently advised his clients on how to react to the ruling. “Oh, Waaqa!We will not ask this court to review our case again…we gave you this case,” the farmers cried upon hearing the king’s verdict. “Oh! Waaqa, May you be the ultimate righteous judge!”
As the farmers exited the court, petrified, Haile Selassie asked Bekele to bring them back and reversed his decision. And they were allowed to keep their land.
Bekele was fiercely independent, patient and truly loyal, according to emailed obituary from the MTA. “He lived a principled life dedicated to the service of others,” the statement said. “His legacy and heroism will continue to reverberate and inspire for generations to come.”
A memorial service will be held at the Saris Abo Church in central Addis Ababa on Feb. 13, 2014, according to the organizers.
A U.S.-based nonprofit, the Macha-Tulama Cooperative and Development Association, is commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the founding of MTA on August 1, 2014 in Washington, DC.
OSGA Invited to the UN to report on human rights abuses
HCH is working in conjunction with the Oromia Support Group of Australia (OSGA), one of our long standing community partners, to raise urgently required funds toward a unique opportunity to present serious allegations of human rights abuses in Ethiopia, at the highest level; the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Human rights organisations have long been reporting human rights abuses committed by the Ethiopian government, which include rape, torture, arbitrary detention and kidnapping. OSGA is an Australian based organisation that was established in 2008 to report on and raise awareness of these violations.
They have recently been offered a significant opportunity to send a delegate to the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council’s UPR in April, 2014. There they will present a first-hand account of human rights abuses committed by the Ethiopian government.
This opportunity, to report first-hand accounts of torture, arbitrary imprisonment and rape to senior UN officials, will enable them to forward these concerns to the Ethiopian government during the official UPR process. This process will require the Ethiopian government to answer the accusations.
OSGA is raising urgently needed funds to send a representative from the Ethiopian community in Australia. The estimated total cost is approximately $5,000. If you can help, OSGA can provide a receipt, and will also report on the acquisition of any funds. Any contribution would greatly assist this effort.
If you can contribute, please contact info@osgaustralia
Source:http://crisishub.org.au/osga-invited-un-report-human-rights-abuses
Ethiopia Spymaster infiltrates Kenya police
By Kasembeli Albert , The Sunday Express
(February 10, 2014, Nairobi, Kenya )— Anxiety has gripped the corridors of power and the National Police Services after it emerged that Ethiopian National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) has infiltrated the service and established a unit within, which pays allegiance to NISS and executes orders from Addis Ababa.
Security pundits consider this an act of treason on the part of Kenya police officers involved.
Despite notification from the Kenya spymaster – National Security Intelligence Services (NSIS), sources intimated to The Sunday Express that nothing had been done to avert the lurking threat to the national security by such infiltration by a foreign agency.
“This guys are operating with impunity as though they are no longer officers of the National police Service,” said a senior police officer at Vigilance House.
When contacted the Inspector General, David Kimaiyo denied knowledge of such a unit operating under his arm bit. “Am not aware of that. In fact am hearing it from you,” said Kimaiyo.
Though officials at the Ethiopian Embassy in Nairobi declined to comment on the matter only referring as to Addis Abba, our sources within the embassy divulged that 50 polices officers are on the pay roll of the Ethiopia Government.
The officers under the command of senior police officer based in Nairobi received a total monthly payment of 900,000 Ethiopia Birr (KSh4.5 million) monthly minus the allowances and money meant to facilitate specific operations. The officers are said to live a lavish life and are accessible to top of the range cars.
Even as Ethiopia appears to be using the old spying system. Questions are emerging as to why the government has never taken stern measures against officers involved including charging them with treason because it is clear espionage.
Security analyst Simiyu Werunga attributes this to poor pay and deplorable working conditions, leaving the officers more vulnerable to corruption and bribery. “The government should take a stern action against the suspects for having taken part in criminal activities against their country even after taking an oath,” he said.
It is worth noting that NISS is a very powerful and dreaded organ of Ethiopia’s totalitarian government. It is to protect national security by providing quality intelligence and reliable security services. Under the plans presented, it is accountable to the Prime Minister. The agency has a wide permit to lead intelligence and security work both inside and outside Ethiopia.
“The unit specifically compiles intelligence reports as to specifics missions as requests made by Addis,” said a source privy to operations of the unit. The unit too specifically monitors the operations of Ethiopian dissidents and refugees living in Kenya.
The unit is also said to be responsible for kidnappings of Ethiopian refuges and dissidents and their subsequent repatriation to Addis Ababa where they face death, brutality and long prison sentences. The unit has specific detail to trail their eyes on Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and the Oganden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
Last week, two police officers appeared in court charged with alleged abduction of two ONLF leaders in Nairobi. On January 26, two top officials of ONLF were abducted from outside a popular restaurant in Upper Hill, Nairobi. The two who were identified as Mr Sulub Ahmed and Ali Hussein were members of the ONLF negotiation team that was in Nairobi for a proposed third round of talks.
It is claimed security agencies from Ethiopia and Kenya were involved in the kidnapping. They were abducted by men who were in three waiting cars. One of the cars, a black Toyota Prado was seized and detained at the Turbi police station on Monday but the two were missing amid speculation they had been taken across to Ethiopia. The ONLF officials were invited by the Kenyan government for peace negotiations.
The two officers charged, a Chief Inspector Painito Bera Ng’ang’ai and Constable James Ngaparini are attached to Nairobi Area CID. He added the officers had been identified by witnesses as having participated in the abduction of Mr Sulub Ahmed and Ali Hussein who were members of the ONLF negotiation team that was in Nairobi for a proposed third round of talks.
Last week, the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) wrote to President Uhuru Kenyatta expressing its deep concern regarding the safety of four Oromo refugees from Ethiopia who were arbitrarily arrested by Kenyan anti-terrorist squad from Isili area in Nairobi on different dates of operations and taken to unknown destinations.
According documents in our possession, Mr. Tumsa Roba Katiso, (UNHCR attestation File#: NETH033036/1) was arrested by people claiming to by a team of Kenyan police, who arrived at the scene in two vehicles, on February 1, 2014 at around 10:00 AM from 2nd Avenue Eastleigh Nairobi on his way home from shopping. The other three refugees, Mr. Chala Abdalla, Mr. Namme Abdalla, and the third person whose name is not known yet were picked up from their home which is located in the same vicinity.
They are alleged to have been picked by the special police squad on the payroll of Addis Ababa. The whereabouts of those Ethiopian-Oromo refugees is unknown until the time of going to press.
The HRLHA is highly suspicious that those Ethiopian-Oromo refugees might have been deported to Ethiopia. And, in case those Ethiopian-Oromo refugees have been deported, the Ethiopian Government has a well-documented record of gross and flagrant violations of human rights, including the torturing of its own citizens who were involuntarily returned to the country.
The government of Ethiopia routinely imprisons such persons and sentences them to up to life in prison, and often impose death penalty. There have been credible reports of physical and psychological abuses committed against individuals in Ethiopian official prisons and other unofficial or secret detention centres.
Under Article 33 (1) of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (189 U.N.T.S. 150), to which Kenya is a party, “[n]o contracting state shall expel or forcibly return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his . . . political opinion.”
This obligation, which is also a principle of customary international law, applies to both asylum seekers and refugees, as affirmed by UNHCR’s Executive Committee and the United Nations General Assembly. By deporting the four refugees and others, the Kenyan Government will be breaching its obligations under international treaties as well as customary law.
Though some government officials denied it is official government policy, the Kenyan Government is well known for handing over refugees to the Ethiopian Government by violating the above mentioned international obligations. Engineer Tesfahun Chemeda, who died on August 24, 2013 in Ethiopia’s grand jail of Kaliti due1 to torture that was inflicted on him in that jail, was handed over to the Ethiopian government security agents in 2007 by the Kenyan police.
Tesfahun Chemeda was arrested by the Kenyan police, along with his close friend called Mesfin Abebe, in 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya, where both were living as refugees since 2005; and later deported to Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government detained them in an underground jail in a military camp for over one year, during which time they were subjected to severe torture and other types of inhuman treatments until when they were taken to court and changed with terrorism offences in December 2008. They were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment in March 2010.
“The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) is highly concerned about the safety and security of the above listed refugees who were recently arrested by the Kenyan anti-terrorist forces; and for those who are still living in Kenya,” said a communiqué petitioning President Kenyatta to intervene.
It urges the government of Kenya to respect the international treaties and obligations, and unconditionally release the arrested refugees, and refrain from handing over to the government of Ethiopia where they would definitely face torture and maximum punishments. It also urges all human rights agencies (local, regional and international) to join the HRLHA and condemn these illegal and inhuman acts of the Kenyan Government against defenseless refugees.
HRLHA requests western countries as well as international organizations to interfere in this matter so that the safety and security of the arrested refugees and those refugees currently staying in Kenya could be ensured.
In the recent past, the rendition of Oromo refugees has been in the news. Kenyan authorities have been accused of illegal rendition of Oromo refugees to Ethiopia under the pretext of cracking down on the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) militias. While in Ethiopia, the individuals are allegedly arraigned before special courts where they are handed heavy jail sentences ranging from death to life in prison.
The fundamental objective of the Oromo liberation movement is to exercise the Oromo peoples’ right to national self-determination and end centuries of oppression and exploitation. The OLF believes the Oromo people are still being denied their fundamental rights by Ethiopian colonialism. According to Terfa Dibaba, head of the Oromo Relief Association (ORA) based in Germany, 21 Oromo refugees have been adducted in Nairobi and Moyale and illegally shipped to Addis Ababa where they have been locked in custody.
Some of the people abducted in Nairobi and Moyale and clandestinely whisked to Ethiopia and languishing in jail include: Jatani Kuuno, Liban Wario and Milki Doyo. These, ORA alleges, were abducted in a friend’s house in Moyale by Kenyans enlisted by the Ethiopia authorities and ferried in two Kenya government’s Land Rovers to Ethiopia.
Others are Dabaso Kutu, Libani Jatani and Deban Wario. They are currently on trial in Ethiopia. Impeccable source have confided that a Kenyan, Abrhim Dambi, the head of the head of Ethiopian Spy network detailed to track down political dissidents has now fled to Addis Ababa where he is hosted by the government after he was exposed.
TPLF hardliners oppose return of former OLF members; ODF has submitted a letter at Ethiopian Embassy in DC.
(A4O, 11 February 2014) The recurrent attempts by the United States (ION 1211) and Norway for some former opponents to be allowed to return to the country have been torpedoed by the more conservative parts of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), two parties that are members of the ruling coalition Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
The idea was to persuade Addis Ababa to accept the return of a dissident group of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF, armed opposition) headed by Lencho Letta and including Dima Negewo, ahead of the general election in 2015.
Despite these misgivings, Lencho Letta is still negotiating the terms of such a return, seeking to have some members of his group given positions in the administration.
But hardliners in the Ethiopian regime will have no truck with this, as they see him as “a traitor” and especially fear that his return could weaken the OPDO.
However, a wing of the TPLF, grouped aroundDebretsion Gebremichael, current Deputy Prime Minister, seems willing to play the game so as to give a better picture of the Ethiopian government vis-à-vis Western countries.
On the other hand, the moderate Oromo opponent Merera Gudina (read here) who will take up residence in the United States for a few months this year may be able to convince other Diaspora groups to negotiate their return, as OLF dissidents are now doing.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian Prime Minster Haile Mareyam Desalegn says ODF has submitted a letter for negotiation at press conference. According to PM Hailemariam, ODF [Lencho Lata]has submitted a letter at the Ethiopian embassy in Washington for negotiation to enter domestic politics and contest next election.
However, the negotiation is not started yet, according to the news source.
Addis Ababa’s master plan under revision, again
(A4O, 11 February 2014) The development of a new master plan for Addis Ababa which also integrates the Oromia special zone is in the final stages.
An international conference, which aims to add some inputs to the new international-level master plan, is scheduled to be held at the end of the current budget year.
The Addis Ababa and Surrounding Oromia Integrated Development Plan Project Office has drafted the new Addis Ababa master plan that will incorporate the outskirts of the Oromia Regional state with the development of the metropolis.
The new draft master plan aims to modernize the city in collaboration with the Oromia Special zone and has been presented to civic society on Tuesday, June 4, to obtain additional feedback from the public.
Officials of the project office told Capital that similar panel discussions will be held with different stakeholders to gather fresh ideas to include in the new master plan. “The final event will be the international conference that will take place in the town of Adama (Nazareth) for three days, from 26 to 28 June.
At the event, federal government officials, all regional administrations, officials from other African countries, African Union officials, prominent European master plan institutions and other relevant stakeholder will be able to comment, evaluate critique the draft plan,” Fetuma Lemessa, Deputy Manager of Addis Ababa and The Surrounding Oromia Integrated Development Plan Project Office, told Capital.
“The draft master plan will be finalised by the end of July 2013 after it includes the new inputs that shall be drawn from the international conference,” he added.
According to the plan, in the coming budget year the project office will undertake the accomplishment of the implementation strategy, the second phase of the project that will help realise the new master plan, which is expected to take the whole of the coming budget year.
Fetuma said that the actual implementation of the master plan will take place after one year.
Twelve studies involving different sectors were used to draft the master plan and took one year. According to the plan, towns on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, those under the Oromia Regional administration, will be included during the implementation of the master plan.
The development of highways and roads, parking lots for buildings, the establishment of several market areas throughout the metropolis, the various development of land, a detailed classification of mass and private transportation, the classification of metropolitan areas and the development of an international standard airport, are some of the studies included in the new plan.
The master plan for the city and the Oromia Special zone covers 1.1 million hectares of land and incorporates 5.7 million people currently, and is a plan for the coming 25 years.
For further information https://www.dropbox.com/sh/351vsabzpixbol1/5y6lqogioK
Advocacy for Oromia 