Critical voice of the Oromos: Oromos Rally For Justice At UN Headquarter

WSN,
Dictators and poor governance are the primary cause of famine and 
catastrophic environmental destruction  in Oromia and Ethiopia.  The 
endigenous people like Oromos are not given the right to improve their 
environment. There is a  missing link of development and the endogenous 
people. The government diverts international development and emergency aid 
and loans to the war. The government taxes people, even in this time, under 
the famine conditions. The endogenous people have to finance and pay the 
debt for the gun and the tank  the government has bought to kill them.
The following is the critical voice of the Oromos at UN and relatede other 
News.
Regards,

Thomas




News and Analysis  April 19 , 2000


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Demonstrators in New York Condemn TPLF's Environmental Terrorism



"Ethiopian Government Sponsors Arson"


(OIN, 19 April) --  An estimated 400 Oromos from all over the United States 
and Canada demonstrated in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New 
York on Monday, April 17 to highlight the destruction of Oromia’s forests 
and atrocities that are being committed against the Oromo people by the 
current Ethiopian regime controlled by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front 
(TPLF.)

The Washington D.C. Oromo community chartered busses and sent over 150 
people.   About 40 members of the Oromo Community of Minneapolis flew to 
New 
York to take part in the event.  An estimated 100 people from Pennsylvania 
and New Jersey also joined their compatriots.  Oromo community 
organizations 
in California, Michigan, Dallas, Boston, Atlanta, and Toronto, Canada each 
sent several representatives as well.

Irrespective of uncooperative weather -- pouring rain and blistering cold 
wind -- Oromos braved by actively participating in chanting slogans, 
carrying placards, making moving speeches, and handing out the several 
pamphlets prepared for this occasion for the New York crowd.

This demonstration was rather unique in the sense that the whole idea of 
bringing the plight of the Oromo to the World body was formulated, 
organized 
and managed by Oromo scholars and professionals.  Oromo professionals 
worked 
very closely with Oromo community associations from all over North America 
and with Oromo political organizations such as the Oromo Liberation Front.

The Organizers submitted a comprehensive report to the United Nations 
General Secretary, H.E. Mr. Kofi Annan titled, The war of Oppression 
against 
the Oromo People and the Destruction of Oromo National Resources by the 
Regime of Meles Zenawi.  The major themes of the report are the destruction 
of Oromo resources; famine and discriminatory policies in regional 
development; human rights abuses; and the banning of the Oromo alphabet, 
Qubee.

On the catastrophic environmental destruction in Oromia and other parts of 
southern Ethiopia the report states that fires systematically set by 
government agents have been devouring virgin forests, coffee plantations, 
homes, and rare animals and plants in several regions of Oromia such as 
Bale, Borana, Wallagga, and Illu Ababora.  That these fires destroyed not 
only rare indigenous animals, such as the Red Fox, Mountain Nyala, and 
Bushbuck, and rare plant species, but also precious other resources on 
which 
the inhabitants depend for their existence.  More than 100,000 hectares of 
virgin forest were burned down.

According to this report, the Government of Meles Zenawi not only 
downplayed 
and ignored the fires but also either discouraged or prevented Oromo 
students, environmentalists and civic societies from mobilizing to put out 
the fires.  Case in point, government security forces killed several 
students and wounded many in Ambo and Dambi Dolo districts of central and 
western Oromia, when they tried to demonstrate and draw public attention to 
help put out the fires.

Regarding the worsening famine situation in Oromia and discriminatory 
policies in regional development in Ethiopia; the Oromo community report 
thanks Mr. Annan for the recent initiatives he has taken to help avert the 
crisis.  The Oromo community blames the regime for giving its utmost 
priority to waging war with Eritrea and other oppressed nationalities such 
as the Oromo, Ogaden Somalis, and Sidama and its lavish celebrations of 
TPLF's 25th anniversary in the past months.

The TPLF is also blamed for pursuing discriminatory policies in its 
regional 
development in Ethiopia.  For example, Tigray with a population of less 
than 
3 million compared with Oromia's thirty million, has been receiving annual 
budget twice that of Oromia over the past 9 years.  The proportion of 
government budget to Oromia, the region that contributes more than 65% 
percent of government revenues, is much smaller than that for Tigray 
region, 
the region with insignificant contribution to the government budget.  In 
addition, the TPLF diverts billions of dollars raised from the 
international 
community through loans and aid grants for the whole country, to the 
development of the Tigray State.  The report underscores that such 
discriminatory and unequal treatments have frustrated the Oromo people who 
have been losing not only their resources, but also their lives, by the 
misguided policies of these minority rulers from the north.

The other major theme of the report is the very serious and ever increasing 
human rights violations directed against the Oromo people and the 
devastating effects of the Ethio-Eritrean War on the welfare of the Oromo 
and other oppressed people in Ethiopia that are victimized by the senseless 
war. According to this report, the TPLF totally controls the political, 
military, and economic resources of Oromia, and the TPLF soldiers are the 
Law unto themselves.  The Oromo people are subjected to arbitrary arrests, 
prolonged detention without trial and due process of law, and frequently 
subjected to extrajudicial execution. Although the 1999 US Country Reports 
on Human Rights said that there are "more than 7,500" political prisoners 
in 
detention in Oromia, the community believes that the true figure may be ten 
times higher.

The report pointed that Oromos are denied the right to organize freely and 
express their political opinion on their own land, for today, it is a 
serious crime in Ethiopia to support independent Oromo organizations such 
as 
the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and others.  The report finds it even more 
ironical that the TPLF leaders do not trust their own puppet creation, the 
Oromo People's Democratic Organization (OPDO) in whose name they have 
eliminated all independent Oromo organizations.  Thousands of its members 
have been expelled, while hundreds of its cadres are detained.  Just last 
month, all members of Oromia's supreme court were unceremoniously expelled.

The community finds that there is massive evidence which demonstrates 
beyond 
any doubt that the TPLF regime is intensifying the persecution of the 
Oromo, 
including those who managed to escape persecution in Ethiopia, and killed 
by 
the agents of the Ethiopian regime in the neighboring states of Djibouti, 
Kenya, Somalia, and more recently in South Africa.

The Oromo community report to the General Secretary of the UN points that 
the Oromo have been suffering from the current war with Eritrea not only 
for 
the forced contributions in cash and other goods from their meager 
resources 
desperately needed to buy food for their own survival at this critical time 
of famine, but for they are also forced to send their children in 
disproportionately high numbers to fight the senseless war.  Oromo youths 
have been callously sacrificed in tens of thousands as cannon fodders and 
mine sweepers, for the purpose of creating Greater Tigray.

The last major issue of the report relates to the denial of the right of 
the 
Oromo to use an alphabet that advances the development of their own 
language 
for reading and writing based on scientific studies.  For the last four 
decades, Oromo intellectuals and political organizations have been using 
Qubee, adopted from the Latin alphabet, and is based on scientific studies 
which show it contributes more suitably than any other including the 
Ethiopian Sabean based alphabet to the development of the Oromo language.  
In 1991, a special Oromo convention endorsed and adopted Qubee and legally 
recognized it as alphabet for writing in the Oromo language.  Within a few 
years it revolutionized the production of literature in the Oromo language. 
 
More books, newspapers, and magazines were produced in the Oromo language 
from 1991 to 1997 than from the 1880s to 1991.  Sadly, however, all Oromo 
newspapers and magazines have since 1997 been closed down.  In March 2000, 
the Ethiopian government banned the use of Qubee in Oromia.  This is a 
tremendous setback for the development of literature and official business 
applications in the Oromo language, consistent with the stand of past 
Abysinnian rulers, and is thus a great loss for all the Oromo people.  By 
banning the use of Qubee in Oromia, the TPLF leaders have destroyed the 
prospect for educational development for more than thirty million people 
and 
they are thus playing with the lives of Oromo children.  Banning Qubee is a 
prelude to the unacceptable banning of the Oromo children's learning in 
their own language in Oromia.

The report concludes by listing about 19 specific demands and 
recommendations and by calling on the UN to listen to the woes of the Oromo 
people and to take action on their behalf before it is too late.

To bring the very serious abuse of power by the minority TPLF on the 
majority Oromo was an important first step for Oromo community in North 
America.  The demonstration exposed the TPLF regime of engaging in 
systematic destruction of Oromo intellectuals, business and cultural 
leaders, and above all, Oromo nationalist elements and supporters of 
independent Oromo organizations.  Whether the international community will 
listen and act is a different matter.  If history can be of any guide, the 
prospects do not look very good indeed.  When serious problems like what 
the 
TPLF is engaged in Oromia are not are not attended to however, the world 
witnesses a very ugly picture as was witnessed Rwanda's recent history.  
The 
Oromo community have done their work, and it is now up to the international 
community to do their part, and save tens of thousands of Oromo lives that 
are now at the mercy of a merciless group.


Oromia Online

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Oromos Rally For Justice At UN Headquarters

By Kelit Alazar - Visafric - April 17, 2000

New York City : In spite of drenching cold rain and blistering wind, over 
400 determined members of the Oromo community in North America marched in 
font of  the UN headquarters chanting slogans and carrying placards. The 
marchers called on Ethiopia’s current minority government (TPLF) to stop 
the 
war of national oppression against the Oromo people and the wanton 
destruction of Oromo natural resources.

Waving placards that read : “The Ethiopian government sponsors arson, UN 
stop this TPLF Insanity, Free Oromo Journalists in Ethiopia, Oromos from 
New 
York Tri-State, Washington D.C. and as far as Minneapolis and Toronto came 
to join in the demonstration.

Dr. Bahiru Gametchu, a member of the coordinating committee said an appeal 
by the Oromo Communities in north America was submitted to the Untied 
Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan addressing the humanitarian violations 
directed against the Oromo people in Ethiopia and the devastating effects 
of 
the Ethio-Ertitrean War on the welfare of the Oromo and other oppressed 
people in Ethiopia who are victimized by the senseless war.

The marchers claim that the forest fire which has devastated millions of 
acres in southern Ethiopia was deliberately set ablaze by the minority TPLF 
government to deny sanctuary to Oromo guerillas. Chanting loud, they 
appealed to UN to help stop the Ethiopian government from shooting Oromo 
Students and arresting innocent farmers as escape goat.

The Oromo people have a distinct culture and language of their own, and 
with 
about 28 million people they constitute about half of the population of 
Ethiopia.



Copyright Visafric productions
....................................................................

Guns before grain as Ethiopia starves
By Philip Sherwell and Paul Harris in Gode





  (Daily Telegraph, 16 April)



  ETHIOPIA, which has accused the West of failing to supply sufficient aid 
for its drought victims, has quadrupled military spending in the past two 
years to fund its war with Eritrea.
The vicious border conflict, which has claimed more than 50,000 lives in a 
squabble over sparsely populated scrubland, is fuelling the crisis 
threatening nomadic groups hundreds of miles away in south-eastern Ethiopia.

Although Western nations, including Britain, are now dispatching food 
assistance to the Horn of Africa after the rains failed in the Ogaden 
region 
for a third successive year, deep splits have emerged between nations that 
give aid over how to handle the crisis.

Indeed, Addis Ababa's efforts to blame the West for ignoring a looming 
disaster have prompted an angry response from Clare Short, the 
International 
Development Secretary, who, speaking to The Telegraph, criticised Ethiopia 
for squandering money on the "futile" war with Eritrea.

Miss Short said: "The conflict is a complete tragedy for a country that 
desperately needs peace and development and had appeared to be on the right 
track before this pointless war. So when Ethiopia started blaming the 
international community, I was amazed. The claim of a massive new famine 
this year is an exaggeration.

"Sadly, starvation and drought are a reality of life here. There will never 
be enough food on the land, so what's needed is a development programme 
that 
will give people access to other forms of income." She also dismissed 
criticisms that Britain was reducing its help to Ethiopia just as 
starvation 
spreads.

London has increased its disaster relief funding to the country by £7 
million, but has frozen plans to raise spending on development projects 
there by £25 million. Ethiopia has also lost valuable finance from the 
International Monetary Fund after its war expenditure broke previous 
spending commitments.

Miss Short said: "If the international community pays for Ethiopia's social 
services and development projects during a war, that just frees them to 
spend more on defence. Effectively, we would be helping them to increase 
defence expenditure. We're not willing to do that."

In Britain, leading charities have yet to declare a disaster appeal, while 
some aid agencies have criticised the European Union - the biggest food 
donor - for its slow response. Ethiopia's foreign minister, Seyoum Mesfin, 
hit the headlines when he accused the world of waiting to see "skeletons on 
screens" before it reacted.

However, this is not a repeat of the 1985 catastrophe when famine struck 
the 
region. Mr Mesfin's government is amassing crippling debts as it spends 
nearly £5 million a week on the war. As part of a regional arms race, 
Ethiopia's military spending doubled in 1989-99 and more than doubled again 
during the past nine months, according to regional analysts.

At the same time, its spending on social programmes and badly needed 
infrastructure has slumped by up to 50 per cent. The war has blocked access 
to the biggest and best developed ports in the region - Assab and Massawa 
on 
Eritrea's Red Sea coast. To the frustration of United Nations and EU 
officials, Ethiopia has stubbornly rejected Eritrean offers to allow 
through 
emergency supplies, despite the war.

Aid must now be channelled through Djibouti and Berbera which, despite 
recent port improvement works, are struggling to handle the influx of 
grain. 
Food distribution has been further hampered as civilian lorries have been 
commandeered by the authorities for the war.

One aid agency even reported that medical supplies destined for Ethiopia's 
ill-equipped hospitals had been diverted for military use. Controversy also 
surrounds the often-quoted figure of eight million people at risk from the 
drought. The tally is the product of a new measuring system introduced by 
Addis Ababa to cover all those who are "food insecure" - a broader measure 
than before.

While criticising the war, some leading charities, including Save The 
Children and Oxfam, insist that the conflict is not to blame for the 
current 
crisis and have questioned slow international reaction. Bob Geldof, who 
spawned the 1985 Live Aid appeal for Ethiopia, has led claims that 
countries 
have used the current war as an excuse not to deliver aid.

But serious doubts exist over the effectiveness of Geldof's fund-raising 
effort 15 years ago as finance was channelled through the former Marxist 
dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose brutal resettlement programmes helped 
cause the famine. It is not just Britain that is pointing the finger of 
blame at the new conflict.

An exasperated official with the UN's World Food Programme said last week: 
"How can you finance a war, yet you cannot feed your own people? It is 
simply a question of what should be a proper use of resources." During a 
tour of the region, Catherine Bertini, the UN special envoy, combined a 
plea 
for rapid delivery of international food aid with a warning that Ethiopia's 
refusal to use the ports of its Eritrean enemy could undermine a huge 
relief 
effort.

Ethiopia counters that the Eritrean offer is a gimmick. It blames its 
neighbour for starting the war, and insists that it has the right to defend 
its territory - even if some of its population are starving. Such rhetoric 
is of little comfort to the desperate nomads of the Ogaden in south-eastern 
Ethiopia.

However, they are not simply victims of the failure of the rains and the 
conflict in the north. As ethnic Somali Muslim nomads in an impoverished 
semi-desert region with a history of insurgency, they have always been a 
low 
priority for the country's Christian rulers.

Gode has the air of an occupied town. Relations between locals and soldiers 
are extremely poor and security borders on the paranoid. The main military 
base is housed in an old palace once used by Emperor Haile Selassie and now 
guarded by machinegun-toting troops from highland ethnic groups including 
Tigrayans and Amharas.

Although life inside the base is far from luxurious, it is comfortable by 
the standards of the Ogaden. In stark contrast, barely a mile away is the 
dilapidated local hospital which cannot even provide needles for its drips. 
Here, sickly skeletal tuberculosis patients lie on the floor or on benches, 
with little hope of medicine. The mud huts of local people surround the 
building.

While the rains have failed in drought-affected areas, other parts of the 
country have enjoyed three years of good harvests as a result of favourable 
weather and improved agricultural techniques. But Dr Mwita Rukandema, a 
senior economist with the UN, said the country's rapidly expanding 
population - presently 66 million and growing at more than a million a year 
- and food exports had prevented adequate surpluses being set aside for 
future crises.

Ethiopia is expected to produce 10 million tons of cereal crops this year, 
yet despite the prospect of a domestic famine, some of its produce is still 
sold abroad. The UN agrees with government estimates that a million tons 
will need to arrive as food aid this year to avert mass starvation. The EU 
and United States have so far pledged more than 800,000 tons.


Additional reporting: Oliver Poole

13 April 2000: Ethiopian hospital struggles with flood of famine victims
12 April 2000: Rebels and bandits hamper aid efforts
11 April 2000: Farmer who took on the Ethiopian dust, and lost
10 April 2000: Drought leaves 20 million in the grip of famine nightmare
6 April 2000: 466 killed in a month by Ethiopian famine
5 April 2000: Threat of famine returns to Ethiopia






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