Ethiopia‘s Oromo community is celebrating its annual spring season festival of Irreecha.
But for the first time in 150 years, the celebration is being held in the capital, a city many Oromo leaders argue is part of their territory.
The move has raised concerns of reigniting ethnic tensions.
Al Jazeera’s Robyn Kriel reports from Addis Ababa.
The last few years of Irreecha celebrations, held outside Addis Ababa, have been marred by protests following a stampede at the festival in 2016 where the government says 50 people were killed.
Oromia has celebrated the grand Irreecha festival with more than ten million people attending, making it one of the biggest outdoor cultural events in Africa.
The celebration of the Oromo people, which is UNESCO registered Gadaa system of the Oromo, is an event of peace, love and unity.
As CGTN’S GIRUM CHALA reports, this years Irreechaa festival is unique.
The Oromo women are protesting in front of the American embassy starting at 8 am today June 9, 2019. The letter below is being submitted to the American embassy.
WE ARE TIRED OF RAPE! The Voice of the Oromo Women
When Dr. Abiy Ahmed became the prime minister of Ethiopia, we rejoiced thinking that the EPRDF dictatorship of 27 years was ending, and equal opportunity and dignity was about to usher upon us. his multi-faceted rhetoric about freedom and community development resonated with our wishes until he ordered the EPRDF army to kill our people. Apparently, Abiy’s appointment was the political tactic designed to save the EPRDF rule from collapsing.
In 1948, after the Holocaust took place, leaders from nations around the world came together to establish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document affirms that every person regardless of religion, race, gender or nationality, possesses the right to life, liberty, security, equal protection of the law, freedom of thought, speech, and religion. Though not always honored, the declaration provides moral norms for how people should be treated in international law and national constitutions.
These rights entitle us, the Oromo women, to dignity and obligate the EPRDF prime minister, Dr. Abiy Ahmed to owe us respect. He cannot talk about human rights without taking responsibility for the lives his soldiers take on a daily basis. And he cannot talk about responsibilities without being part of the Oromo girls and women who are being raped and killed all over Oromia every day.
Since Dr. Abiy Ahmed announced that jailing and killing people can’t bring lasting peace and urged all opposition groups to disarm, the Oromo Liberation Front disarmed and returned to Finfinnee. Eventually, the Oromo youth who lost hope started protesting against Dr. Abiy’s hypocrisy all over Oromia. This led the prime minister to take deceitful and horrific military actions against the youth who lost hope and took refugee in west, central and southern Oromia forests. Since then, the military has been raping little girls and women, burn people alive and kill peaceful residents, not to mention the burning of hundreds of motorcycles owned by business people in small towns of Oromia.
The military raids, ordered by Dr. Abiy Ahmed, often involved the use of some sort of chemicals and widespread human rights violations. Of course, these tragedies remained unreported. Yet, knowing full well that these atrocities have become a regular day to day practice of his military, Dr. Abiy Ahmed continues to boast about the equal rights and the peace the country is enjoying.
The media outlets controlled by the EPRDF often reported sounding as if these illogical, contradictory and evasive actions are great achievements.
But we the Oromo women, who gave birth to the sons who are shot to death by the military grief every day and suffer from the gang rapes performed upon us. While this is going on, Dr. Abiy has the audacity to appoint many women to a high governmental position to show the world that we are represented and to make us feel that our sphere of usefulness is being enlarged.
Amid this miscellany of lies, deceptions, political dramas, and mischiefs, our suffrage is buried under the height and the depth of the EPRDF utter devotion to political dominance.
The human right violations conducted by the EPRDF army, the killing, torturing, raping, imprisoning, burning people in their own house in southern, western and now in central Oromia are part of EPRDF’s long term plan of staying in power. That’s why Dr. Abiy Ahmed refused to negotiate with the Oromo youth whom he labeled as a lawless group that needs to be destroyed at any cost.
To scare and force the population to submit to its dictatorial rule, the EPRDF army mutilated the bodies of the raped women, have cut their throat, slaughtered peaceful people, have burned down houses and properties, looted animals, raped children and have burned the dead bodies in masses. The civilians in the affected areas have continued to flee their homes and properties. This is the stark and glaring tenor of Dr. Abiy’s cruelty that demands the attention of the world.
Hence, please listen to the voices of the raped and killed Oromo girls and women. Each of their cries are competing for a listening ear.
The Oromo Women for freedom!
“The Oromo nationalists must stop dreaming that Team Lemma who hijacked the Oromo protests and came to power could bring something fundamental in Oromo politics.
Team Lemma has now replaced with Team Abiy who on the very first day of his speech as a Prime Minister of Ethiopia reopened the wound of Oromo and added salt to it. Team Abiy composes of individuals who deny the crimes committed against Oromo at Anolle and turns deaf ear to the Oromo demands and even working to destroy achievements made so far including the continuation of Oromia as one state of the FDRE.
As an Italian political scientist Gaetano Mosca said, “If tolerance is taken to the point where it tolerates the destruction of those same principles that made tolerance possible in the first place, it becomes intolerable”.
Dr. Abiy’s Government project to take Ethiopia back to pre-1991, even to pre 1974, by undermining or changing the current constitution and the federal arrangement already reached intolerable stage in one year.”
Assefa Abebe Lemu
Director, Office of Acquisition & Assistance (OAA) The Role of Elites in Ethiopian Politics
Read the article from: https://advocacy4oromia.org/articles-2/the-role-of-elites-in-ethiopian-politics/
(OSGA Statement ,15th April 2019) It is sorrowful and distressing for the Oromia Support Group Australia (OSGA) to hear the deliberate action of poisoning the Oromo ex-freedom fighters in the Xolay military camp, Oromia Region, on Sunday, the 14th April 2019.
Based on information obtained from the OSGA informants, and at the time of this statement is produced, more than hundred and twenty, (120), people are in a critical condition without proper and insufficient medical care, and fighting for their lives.
The well planned and targeted action of poisoning these innocent fellow citizens is not only a tragic for the families, colleagues and the entire Oromo nation and peace supporters, but it also contributes to reverse the peace initiatives yet claimed in the country. It is utterly reprehensible an act of murder.
To that end, the Oromia Support Group Australia urges the Ethiopian Government to take essential steps to disclose the outcome of the investigation publicly and ensure that operations dealing with members of the ex-Oromo Freedom Fighters comply with the international human rights and humanitarian law.
For more information:Poisoning Innocent is a Crime – OSGA Issue April 2019
A boarding pass is seen at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Three Austrian physicians. The co-founder of an international aid organization. A career ambassador. The wife and children of a Slovak legislator. A Nigerian-born Canadian college professor, author and satirist. They were all among the 157 people from 35 countries who died Sunday morning when an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 jetliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, Kenya. Here are some of their stories.
READ MORE: Jetliner crashes in Ethiopia, killing 157 from 35 countries
Kenya: 32 victims
Hussein Swaleh, the former secretary general of the Football Kenya Federation, was named as being among the dead by Sofapaka Football Club.
He was due to return home on the flight after working as the match commissioner in an African Champions League game in Egypt on Friday.
Cedric Asiavugwa, a law student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., was on his way to Nairobi after the death of his fiancee’s mother, the university said in a statement.
Asiavugwa, who was in his third year at the law school, was born and raised in Mombasa, Kenya. Before he came to Georgetown, he worked with groups helping refugees in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the university said.
At Georgetown, Asiavugwa studied international business and economic law.
The university said Asiavugwa’s family and friends “remembered him as a kind, compassionate and gentle soul, known for his beautifully warm and infectious smile.”
Canada: 18 victims
Pius Adesanmi, a Nigerian professor with Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, was on his way to a meeting of the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council in Nairobi, John O. Oba, Nigeria’s representative to the panel, told The Associated Press.
The author of “Naija No Dey Carry Last,” a collection of satirical essays, Adesanmi had degrees from Ilorin and Ibadan universities in Nigeria, and the University of British Columbia. He was director of Carleton’s Institute of African Studies, according to the university’s website. He was also a former assistant professor of comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University.
“Pius was a towering figure in African and post-colonial scholarship and his sudden loss is a tragedy,” said Benoit-Antoine Bacon, Carleton’s president and vice chancellor.
Adesanmi was the winner of the inaugural Penguin Prize for African non-fiction writing in 2010.
Mitchell Dick, a Carleton student who is finishing up a communications honors degree, said he took a first- and second-year African literature course with Adesanmi.
Adesanmi was “extremely nice and approachable,” and stood out for his passion for the subject matter, Dick said.
Mohamed Hassan Ali confirmed that he had lost his sister and niece.
Ali said his sister, Amina Ibrahim Odowaa, and her five-year-old daughter, Safiya, were on board the jet that went down six minutes after it took off from the Addis Ababa airport on the way to Nairobi, Kenya.
“(She was) a very nice person, very outgoing, very friendly. Had a lot of friends,” he said of his sister, who lived in Edmonton and was travelling to Kenya to visit with relatives.
Amina Ibrahim Odowaa and her daughter Sofia Faisal Abdulkadir
The 33-year-old Edmonton woman and her five year-old daughter were travelling to Kenya to visit with relatives.
A family friend said Odowaa has lived in Edmonton since 2006.
Derick Lwugi, an accountant with the City of Calgary, was also among the victims, his wife, Gladys Kivia, said. He leaves behind three children, aged 17, 19 and 20, Kivia said.
The couple had been in Calgary for 12 years, and Lwugi had been headed to Kenya to visit both of their parents.
Ethiopia: 9 victims
The aid group Save the Children said an Ethiopian colleague died in the crash.
Tamirat Mulu Demessie had been a child protection in emergencies technical adviser and “worked tirelessly to ensure that vulnerable children are safe during humanitarian crises,” the group said in a statement.
China: 8 victims
A statement from the Chinese Embassy in Addis Ababa said the Chinese victims included five men and three women, including one person from the semi-autonomous region of Hong Kong.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said two United Nations workers were among the eight Chinese killed. Four were working for a Chinese company and two had travelled to Ethiopia for “private matters.”
Italy: 8 victims
Paolo Dieci, one of the founders of the International Committee for the Development of Peoples, was among the dead, the group said on its website.
“The world of international cooperation has lost one of its most brilliant advocates and Italian civil society has lost a precious point of reference,” wrote the group, which partners with UNICEF in northern Africa.
UNICEF Italia sent a tweet of condolences over Dieci’s death, noting that CISP, the group’s Italian acronym, was a partner in Kenya, Libya and Algeria.
Sebastiano Tusa, the Sicilian regional assessor to the Italian Culture Ministry, was en route to Nairobi when the plane crashed, according to Sicilian regional President Nello Musemeci. In a statement reported by the ANSA news agency, Musemeci said he received confirmation from the foreign ministry, which confirmed the news to The Associated Press.
In a tweet, Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said it was a day of pain for everyone. He said: “We are united with the relatives of the victims and offer them our heartfelt thoughts.”
Tusa was also a noted underwater archaeologist.
The World Food Program confirmed that two of the Italian victims worked for the Rome-based U.N. agency.
A WFP spokeswoman identified the victims as Virginia Chimenti and Maria Pilar Buzzetti.
Three other Italians worked for the Bergamo-based humanitarian agency, Africa Tremila: Carlo Spini, his wife, Gabriella Viggiani and the treasurer, Matteo Ravasio.
United States: 8 victims
France: 7 victims
A group representing members of the African diaspora in Europe is mourning the loss of its co-chairperson and “foremost brother,” Karim Saafi.
A French Tunisian, Saafi, 38, was on an official mission representing the African Diaspora Youth Forum in Europe, the group announced on its Facebook page.
“Karim’s smile, his charming and generous personality, eternal positivity, and his noble contribution to Youth employment, diaspora engagement and Africa’s socio-economic development will never be forgotten,” the post read. “Brother Karim, we’ll keep you in our prayers.”
Saafi left behind a fiancee.
Sarah Auffret, a French-British national living in Tromsoe, northern Norway, was on the plane, the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators said. Auffret, a staffer, was on the way to Nairobi to talk about a Cleans Seas project in connection with the U.N. Environment Assembly this week, the company said in a statement.
U.K.: 7 victims
Joanna Toole, a 36-year-old from Exmouth, Devon, was heading to Nairobi to attend the United Nations Environment Assembly when she was killed.
Father Adrian described her as a “very soft and loving” woman whose “work was not a job — it was her vocation”.
“Everybody was very proud of her and the work she did. We’re still in a state of shock. Joanna was genuinely one of those people who you never heard a bad word about,” he told the DevonLive website.
He also said she used to keep homing pigeons and pet rats and travelled to the remote Faroe Islands to prevent whaling.
Manuel Barange, the director of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations fisheries and aquaculture department, tweeted saying he was “profoundly sad and lost for words” over the death of the “wonderful human being”.
Joseph Waithaka, a 55-year-old who lived in Hull for a decade before moving back to his native Kenya, also died in the crash, his son told the Hull Daily Mail.
Ben Kuria, who lives in London, said his father had worked for the Probation Service, adding: “He helped so many people in Hull who had found themselves on the wrong side of the law.”
Waithaka had dual Kenyan and British citizenship, the BBC reported.
Egypt: 6 victims
Germany: 5 victims
The United Nations migration agency said that one of its staffers, German citizen Anne-Katrin Feigl, was on the plane en route to a training course in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and the plane’s destination.
India: 4 victims
Slovakia: 4 victims
A lawmaker of Slovak Parliament said his wife, daughter and son were killed in the crash. Anton Hrnko, a legislator for the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party, said he was “in deep grief” over the deaths of his wife, Blanka, son, Martin, and daughter, Michala. Their ages were not immediately available.
Martin Hrnko was working for the Bubo travel agency. The agency said he was traveling for his vacation in Kenya.
President Andrej Kiska offered his condolences to Hrnko.
Sweden: 4 victims
Hospitality company Tamarind Group announced “with immense shock and grief” that its chief executive Jonathan Seex was among the fatalities.
The Stockholm-based Civil Rights Defenders, an international human rights group, said employee Josefin Ekermann, 30, was on board the plane. Ekermann, who worked to support human rights defenders, was on her way to meet Kenyan partner organizations. The group’s executive director, Anders L. Pettersson, says “Josefin was a highly appreciated and respected colleague.”
Austria: 3 victims
Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Peter Guschelbauer confirmed that three Austrian doctors in their early 30s were on board the flight. The men were on their way to Zanzibar, he said, but he could not confirm the purpose of their trip.
Russia: 3 victims
The Russian Embassy in Ethiopia said that airline authorities had identified its deceased nationals as Yekaterina Polyakova, Alexander Polyakov and Sergei Vyalikov.
News reports identify the first two as husband and wife. State news agency RIA-Novosibirsk cites a consular official in Nairobi as saying all three were tourists.
Israel: 2 victims
Morocco: 2 victims
Poland: 2 victims
Spain: 2 victims
Belgium: 1 victim
Djibouti: 1 victim
Indonesia: 1 victim
Ireland: 1 victim
Irishman Michael Ryan was among the seven dead from the United Nations’ World Food Program, a humanitarian organization distributing billions of rations every year to those in need.
The Rome-based aid worker and engineer known as Mick was formerly from Lahinch in County Clare in Ireland’s west and was believed to be married with two children.
His projects have included creating safe ground for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and assessing the damage to rural roads in Nepal that were blocked by landslides.
His mother, Christine Ryan, told broadcaster RTE that “he had a marvelous vision and he just got there and did it and had great enthusiasm…He never wanted a nine to five job. He put everything into his work.”
Irish premier Leo Varadkar said: “Michael was doing life-changing work in Africa with the World Food Programme.”
Mozambique: 1 victim
Nepal: 1 victim
Nigeria: 1 victim
The Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it received the news of retired Ambassador Abiodun Oluremi Bashu’s death “with great shock and prayed that the Almighty God grant his family and the nation, the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.”
Bashu was born in Ibadan in 1951 and joined the Nigerian Foreign Service in 1976. He had served in different capacities both at Headquarters and Foreign Missions such as Vienna, Austria, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire and Tehran, Iran. He also served as secretary to the Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
At the time of his death, Bashu was on contract with the United Nations Economic Commission of Africa.
Norway: 1 victim
The Red Cross of Norway confirmed that Karoline Aadland, a finance officer, was among those on the flight.
Aadland, 28, was originally from Bergen, Norway. The Red Cross said she was traveling to Nairobi for a meeting.
Aadland’s Linkedin page says she had done humanitarian and environmental work. The page says her work and studies had taken her to France, Kenya, South Africa and Malawi.
“People who know me describe me as a resourceful, dedicated and kindhearted person,” she wrote on Linkedin.
The Red Cross says in a news release that it “offers support to the closest family, and to employees who want it,” the organization said in a news release.
Rwanda: 1 victim
Saudi Arabia: 1 victim
Serbia: 1 victim
Serbia’s foreign ministry confirmed that one of its nationals was aboard the plane. The ministry gave no further details, but local media identified the man as 54-year-old Djordje Vdovic.
The Vecernje Novosti daily reported that he worked at the World Food Program.
Somalia: 1 victim
Sudan: 1 victim
Togo: 1 victim
Uganda: 1 victim
Yemen: 1 victim
U.N. passport: 1 victim
Humberto Nagera (2002) presents an interesting description of the psychology of treason. He argues that the subject of treason has received very scanty treatment in the psychoanalytic literature, perhaps for one simple reason: that there is in each one of us, at the very least, a “minor traitor”, a fact that we cannot but contemplate with some horror, fear and shame.
It was this argument ― that there is in each one of us, at the very least, a “minor traitor” ― that attracted my attention to the article. I could find a number of examples in my country of origin-Ethiopia, particularly among those who hold political office.
If you wondered about it like me, I suggest that you take your time and read Nagera’s (2002) extended article. Below I present a brief summary of his extensive discussion of the subject: what makes the psychology of traitors (individuals who commit a treacherous act or whose behavior constitute a significant departure from expected behavior in a given situation; causing significant distress, damage, etc., to one or more individuals, and their society and nations):
1. They are those who retain vivid memories of the seamier side of childhood, family and school life. They have little difficulty in recognizing some of the predisposing causes of Quisling… the simple case of the younger son who ‘gives away’ an older brother…; the child with a grievance against his parents (typically the father) and idealizes the head of the house next door…
2. Those with “a fissure-like defect in their superego (including the conscience and formation of ideals); who suffer from the invasion of emotional relationships by the excessive need for possession and power growing out of unusually strong and unresolved infantile jealousy; distortion of the sense of identity sometimes with secondary disturbances in reality testing.
3. Individuals with certain specific constellations of conflicts, or if you will, specific (and quite complex) forms of psychopathology with very idiosyncratic developmental characteristics, dynamics, defense activities and personality traits.
4. Individuals with significant narcissistic problem (those who have difficulties seen regarding their self-esteem regulation, self-regard and feeling of self-worth and problems with their identities.
5. (READ THIS CAREFULLY): Typical, and specific for a traitor, is an enormous unsatisfied wish for the father’s love, attention and admiration, that for various reasons and frequently through no fault of their own, they do not seem able to obtain. Thus, traitors have a tormenting and ambivalent attitude toward the father “who does not think much of them”, or “has not paid them enough attention” or simply and truly did not care for them. When they reach their adulthood, traitors think poorly of the father or see him as weak or worthless, a man of little accomplishment or value. (Oromiffaatiin qabxiin kuni –nama abbaa isaaf kabaja hin qabne jechaadha).
Yaa sabakoo, ani ogeessa fayyaa mitti. Garuu waan barreefame dubbisee waa hedduun irra baradha. Isiniis dubbistanii, namootni tokko tokko maaliif akka GANTUU ta’an ni hubbattu jedheen abdadha. Kunimmoo namootni keenyi maaliif akka nu ganan nu barsiisa. Saba offi ganuun dhukuba dhukuba caaludha.
Horaa Bulaa!
Advocacy for Oromia 