In June 2020, Rahima Ganna, a resilient mother of three, was among the crowd voicing their pain. Her beloved Oromo musician, Hachalu Hundessa, was gunned down in Addis Ababa. Ganna and the other protestors were peacefully gathered, but the police arrested them anyway. While in jail, they tortured Ganna and kept her from her three children, who were left home alone. Eventually, Ganna received the news while still in jail: the Oromia Special Forces murdered her oldest daughter. She was only 15 years old. The police did not even allow Ganna to attend her funeral. Eventually, her remaining children—all under the age of 13—were imprisoned along with their mother, in a direct violation of international law.
As the conflict in Tigray and its devastating humanitarian consequences capture the world’s attention, another crisis in Ethiopia struggles to receive similar media coverage. Twenty political prisoners have not eaten in 30 days. Many are now unable to walk or speak and are losing consciousness. The prisoners are on hunger strike to protest their wrongful detention and ill-treatment, after being held since last June on “terrorism” charges.
Under the current Ethiopian administration, terrorism can mean simply operating a news station or leading a peaceful protest.
How did this begin?
The Oromo people are the single largest ethnic group in East Africa, and they are native to both Ethiopia and Kenya. The Oromo comprise more than 40% of Ethiopia’s population, with an even larger number living abroad. However, despite the population’s majority in numbers, the Oromo remain a political, social and economical minority in Ethiopia. Since the days of the Abyssinian Empire, the Ethiopian government has committed widespread atrocities against the Oromo people. Later, the 20th century Emperor Haile Selassie banned Oromo language and religion, forced Oromo women to marry Amhara soldiers, and engineered a government-wide campaign of cultural genocide against the Oromo.
Fast forward to the post-Mengistu era of the 1990s, and the Oromos’ situation did not improve, despite Ethiopia’s supposed democratic makeover. The Oromo population was almost completely excluded from Ethiopia’s newly formed representative government. The Oromo People Democratic Organization (OPDO) was created by Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a leading party that formulated the coalition parties that ruled Ethiopia from 1991-2018. TPLF created OPDO to replace Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which was popular among the Oromo. However, even though a party coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), governed Ethiopia— political power was exclusively held by the TPLF, which committed severe human rights violations against Oromos and other minorities.
Abiy Ahmed came to power with the promise to end the marginalization of Oromos and others. In short, he was selected to lead the Ethiopian transition into democracy after four years of mass protests by Oromo youth (qerro) and pressure by the international community. It should be noted that the movement that brought Abiy to power had cost at least 5000 Oromos lives. While Abiy’s early days appeared or resembled reform, six short months later he declared a state of emergency in the western part of Oromia that significantly restricted freedoms and human rights. A 50-page Amnesty International report from this period in 2019, documents atrocities committed by government security forces including killings and mass arrests of Oromos.
Placed in this context, it is easy to understand the grief and anger that Ganna and others must have felt at the rally that day.
In June 2020, beloved Oromo musician Hachalu Hundessa was assassinated in Addis Ababa. Hundessa, a former political prisoner and Oromo cultural icon, put into lyrics the oppression his people have long suffered. In the past three years alone, Ethiopian security forces have led a reign of terror against the Oromo population, killing children and forcing activists to undergo “political rehabilitation training,” as reported by Amnesty International. Hundessa’s death represented not only a cultural loss, but a political one too. After suffering in forced silence for generations, the Oromo community regarded Hundessa as a symbol of the resistance. Many believe that the Ethiopian government assassinated the artist, though there is no official evidence.
In the aftermath of Hundessa’s death, Ganna and countless others suffered wrongful arrest and detention. Hundreds of people died in riots, murdered by either government forces or rioting mobs. The Ethiopian Human Rights Committee (ERC) formally investigated the crisis and stated that security forces used disproportionate and lethal violence against protestors. In their report, the ERC called the violence a “crime against humanity.”
In addition to this tragedy, the Ethiopian government has closed Oromo media outlets and arrested journalists, charging them with inciting terrorism. It has imprisoned Oromo political leaders and flouted international standards for due process, according to Human Rights Watch.
Jawar Mohammed is one of those imprisoned leaders. An outspoken political analyst with degrees from Stanford and Columbia University, Jawar spent years in exile in the United States, raising awareness of the human rights abuses suffered by the Oromo in both Ethiopia and abroad. His brainchild the Qeerroo youth movement played a central role in ousting Ethiopia’s former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in 2018. During a 2019 interview with Al Jazeera, Jawar vowed to participate in his country’s 2020 national elections, which he saw as crucial to safeguard the democratic freedoms introduced by Abiy.
But he is now inside the walls of Kaliti Correctional Facility, reportedly near death.
Jawar has been detained since last summer, along with Colonel Gemechu Ayana and Oromo Federal Congress member Bekele Gerba—much loved Oromo political leaders. Last June, the activists led mass rallies across the country to condemn Hundessa’s murder. In response, state security forces arrested and detained them on trumped-up terrorism charges.
Outraged by the arrests, #OromoYellowMovement supporters across the world have staged mass protests. In Addis Ababa on January 27th, 2021, the government arrested at least 80 peaceful protestors rallying outside the Federal High Court, Lideta Division of the Anti-Terrorism and Constitutional Court. Though these supporters have since been released, their arrest is just a small piece of the ongoing human rights crisis in Ethiopia.
The arrest of the #OromoYellowMovement activists prompted Jawar, Bekele, and nineteen other political prisoners to begin their hunger strike on January 27. The strikers’ mission is to “protest the government’s suppression and violation of rights of people and their party; to ask for a stop to the harassment and ill-treatment of Colonel Gemechu Ayana and to demand [that the government stop] the mistreatment and imprisonment of the visitors and relatives who attend their hearings and visit them in prison.”
Jawar’s mother visited him in prison last week. In his weakened state, he did not recognize her. Not long after, Mohammed Deksisso, an Oromo youth, seized the microphone at his university graduation ceremony on February 13 and shouted “Free Jawar Mohammed!” He is now held in an undisclosed location, where his family says security forces have beaten him.
How many more Oromo sons and mothers will be torn apart? It is time for the international community to demand an answer.
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