Oromoprotest in Jimma

Diredewa become a war zone

An American citizen was killed in Ethiopia on Tuesday after the vehicle she was traveling in was struck by rocks thrown by unknown assailants, the State Department confirmed today.

“On October 4, in the late afternoon, a passenger van was hit by rocks thrown by unknown individuals on the outskirts of the city of Addis Ababa. One of the passengers, a U.S. citizen, was struck by a rock and subsequently died from her injury,” the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia said in a consular message issued to Americans in the region.

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State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to identify the individual due to privacy considerations. “We offer our sincerest condolences to her family and loved ones on their loss,” Toner said, adding that the U.S. is “providing all possible consular assistance.” The State Department has referred all questions about the investigation to local authorities and declined to provide any further information.

Addis Ababa has seen experienced a great deal of political and religious unrest recently. On Sunday, a protest broken up by the police resulted in a stampede that left more than 50 people dead, according to local reports.

Demonstrators and government opposition members have been protesting against the Ethiopian government’s plan to integrate infrastructure development and expand the municipal boundary of the capital, Addis Ababa, into surrounding towns in Oromia. Some feared the urban expansion would cause Oromo farmers to lose their traditional lands.

Largely peaceful protests have been met by federal security forces that have allegedly used excessive and lethal force to quell the demonstrations. More than 400 people are estimated to have been killed, thousands injured and tens of thousands arrested since November 2015, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch based on over 125 interviews with witnesses, victims and government officials.

EYEWITNESS / This is Africa, and nobody cares how many protesters the dictatorial government kills. Not the UN, not the State Department, not Black Lives Matter, and not CNN

BY MICHA ODENHEIMER October 5, 2016, 1:57 pm

BAHIR DAR, Ethiopia: What does it feel like at ground zero of a popular uprising? For the past two decades, Ethiopia has been considered one of Africa’s success stories. Its rate of economic growth has been the measure of all things, even as a once-promising democracy has hardened into authoritarian party rule.

In recent days, Ethiopia has seen a stampede kill scores of protesters whose deaths are blamed on security forces, spurring further clashes. On Monday, Israel issued an advisory to its citizens traveling to Ethiopia, the second of its kind in several weeks. The earlier warning came shortly after I returned from Ethiopia, where I found myself in the eye of the storm in the Amhara region in the country’s center. Towns there have been in open revolt against the federal government, which has sent in thousands of troops in an effort to regain control.
These eruptions — the latest in Oromia, southeast of Addis Ababa, and the unrest I encountered in Amharia in August — are fueling the east African nation’s worst conflagration since 1991, when rebels from the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) took control in Addis Ababa, ending the rule of communist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.

During my visit in August, I found myself an incidental witness to the alchemy of transformation, the moment when political protests morph into violent insurrection. What happens in Ethiopia will reverberate across Africa — and with its deep cultural, political and economic ties to Israel, these worrying developments will resonate here as well.

The first sign that something was amiss was that the WiFi in my hotel in Addis Ababa wasn’t working. The demure young woman behind the counter gave me a meaningful look when I asked her whether there was somewhere else in the area I could find an internet connection. “Nowhere,” she said, with a bitter edge in her voice. I knew that the government strictly controlled internet access, sometimes turning it off when a protest was planned so as to neutralize the organizing power of Facebook and WhatsApp. “Is it the government?” I asked. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, and lowered her voice. “They managed to stop the Oromo,” she said, referring to the most populous Ethiopian ethnicity, centered to the south and east of Addis Ababa where demonstrations had been quelled. “But the Amhara? Maybe not.”

I was due to fly the next day, together with a friend, Yehoshua Engelman, to Bahir Dar, one of Ethiopia’s most beautiful cities and the capital of the Amhara region. I had first traveled to Ethiopia in the summer of 1990 when 25,000 Ethiopian Jews were waiting to move to Israel. It was love at first sight for me, and I had returned many times since then. For Yehoshua, who, like me, is an Israeli and a rabbi, it was the first time.

‘We want the old Ethiopia back again, before the government divided and conquered us’
We’d come to Bahir Dar for sightseeing. But when we arrived, a crowd had already begun to gather, internet blackout or not. It all seemed spontaneous: A small group of young men could be seen walking nonchalantly towards the town’s central square from the south, a few more wandered in from the west; human droplets coalescing into a stream. By the time we caught up with the crowd, there were hundreds, and then thousands, and finally tens of thousands, walking towards a bridge on the northern outskirts of the town. Alongside the bridge was a large army camp, and rumor had it that trapped on the other side were activists from Gondar, an Amhara stronghold where five protestors had been killed several weeks before. The plan was for the Bahir Darians to meet the Gondar delegation and bring them back safely across the bridge.

A young man with a tuft of hair growing from his chin appointed himself our guide. His name was Mesfin, and he had graduated with a BA in Natural Resource Management from Bahir Dar University, but had been unable to find a job for more than a year “This protest is about three things,” he said, choosing his words with precision. “Identity, democracy and unfair distribution of resources. If you are not a member of the ruling party,” he lamented, “or at least part of their ethnic group —the Tigrayans — you can’t get any of the good jobs. That’s the identity part. And democracy? There is no democracy! The entire parliament is from one party! The army is controlled by the party! So are the big businesses. And now the government is taking land that was traditionally Amhara and making it part of Tigray.”

The pop, pop of gunfire could be heard from far away, muffled by the distance. As a river of us walked towards the bridge, a mighty stream was moving quickly in the opposite direction. “No good,” said a middle-aged man wearing a battered fedora who was walking fast, away from the bridge. He paused for moment. One finger pointing outwards, he hit his right hand cross-wise against his left wrist in a mime of a rifle aiming and shooting. We kept walking. The sound of gunfire subsided.

A quarter of an hour later, we saw a mass of people in the distance. Smoke rose from a building we could just make out on the right. And then, without warning, there were more gunshots, no longer remote, and hundreds of people stampeded past us, away from the shooting. We didn’t know it then, but dozens of demonstrators had been mortally wounded in that second flurry of gunfire.

Soldiers in combat fatigues rushed past us and disappeared, as demonstrators scattered and hid in the farmland on the side of the road. With the soldiers gone, the crowd reassembled, walking now towards town, chanting and singing ecstatically. A group of young men held a large rectangular flag above the crowd — three stripes, green, yellow, and red. “You see the flag,” Mesfin said. “It’s the old flag of Ethiopia, without the star in the middle, and the diagonal lines.” He explained that the ruling Tigrayan led coalition — the EPRDF — had altered the flag. “It’s supposed to symbolize Ethiopia’s ethnic diversity, but for us it represents Ethiopia disintegrating into chaos.”

The EPRDF had federalized the country by creating ethnic states. Ostensibly, this was in order to give more autonomy to the different tribes and languages that form Ethiopia’s rich ethnic mosaic. Unlike the Amhara, who had imposed their culture, language and rule on Ethiopia’s tribes, the Tigrayans would recognize and affirm the myriad ethnic identities within the country. But the EPRDF had installed their loyalists in the local government of each state. The widespread perception was that the government favored Tigrayans in terms of jobs, development projects, and business opportunities. Federalization, combined with lack of democracy, had inflamed ethnic tensions. “The flag means we want the old Ethiopia back again,” Mesfin added, “before the government divided and conquered us.”

The crowd thickened and swirled — an eddy in the human river — in front of a government building guarded by soldiers. “Laiba, laiba,” — thieves, thieves — the crowd taunted the soldiers. Teenagers in the crowd began to throw stones at a billboard with a message from the government, tearing craters in the board, and suddenly there was shooting, and the smell of teargas in the air. The crowd dispersed, and we ran too, into a maze of dirt-paved alleyways and finally into another large street. A cloud of smoke rose from a tear-gas grenade; we tried to avoid it, but our eyes burned and our lungs felt scorched. It’s Mesfin’s first experience with tear gas. “Will this do permanent damage to my lungs?” he asks, his voice quivering with apprehension.

We are not surprised when one of the women says to us: ‘Do you know Hadera? My cousin is in Hadera’
People were huddling behind locked doors and shuttered windows, but we found a café whose door is a crack open; when we approach, the owner pulled us in. Seven or eight men and women were sitting around the large room, trapped by the soldiers and the shooting.

“How many demonstrators were killed?” we asked. For the rest of our time in Bahir Dar, this is the question everyone asks each other; nobody really knows the answer. Everyone ventures a number — 28, or 40, or 60 — but qualifies what they say with “This is what I heard,” or “A friend saw 20 bodies in just one hospital.”

“Where are you from?” we are queried. We are Israeli”, we answered. And the classic response in the Ethiopian highlands: “Israel, oh, we love Israel. You are our zemat, our family.” Bahir Dar is close to some of the villages from which thousands of Falash Mura, Ethiopian Jews converted to Christianity by missionaries 100 years ago, emigrated to Israel. Thousands more are still in Gondar, hoping their turn for aliyah will come. That’s why we are not surprised when one of the women says to us: “Do you know Hadera? My cousin is in Hadera.”

A man of about forty, wearing dress pants and a pink shirt, completes the inevitable pattern of Ethiopian conversation with an Israeli: “You are Christian, right?”

“No, we are Yahudi, Jews.”

“But you believe in Jesus Christ?” comes next, said in a hopeful tone.

Yehoshua, the kinder of us two, says “We believe he was a very great sage and prophet.” I don’t like his answer. This is no time for sugar-coating. “Our prophets tell us that when the messiah comes, there will be no more war. No more this.” I gesture outside, to the empty streets where the soldiers are hunting for the young men throwing stones and burning tires as roadblocks. “You don’t believe he is the Son of God?”

“The Bible says we are all the children of God,” I answer. The man nods, he likes the sentiment, but still looks at us with pity, which I interpret to mean, “Poor fools, without Jesus how can they know salvation?”

And yet, in Ethiopia to be an Israeli is to partake in mythic history. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians see themselves as descendants of Solomon and Sheba, and believe that their church possesses the Ark of the Covenant. For the Amhara, Israel connects back to the Ethiopia of Haile Selassie and the other Solomonic Kings, the Greater Ethiopia they long for. Sometimes their memory fails them. “There has been no democracy here for the past 25 years!” a young man of about 23 tells me, as if before that there was democracy. “Are you joking? I ask him? Do you know what it was like under Mengistu Haile Mariam?” I say, referring to the last Amharic President (for Life) whose reign of terror makes the EPRDF look gentle in comparison. The young man stares at me, blank-faced. Mengistu is ancient history, already forgiven and sentimentalized.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Yehoshua says as they beat the boy over the head
Yehoshua and I venture back onto the streets. A team of soldiers is patrolling. Young men are throwing stones. The soldiers run after them; the boys disappear into the alleyways. I want to film the soldiers, but I am scared; our whiteness protects us as long as we stay out of the soldiers’ way, but “aiming” the camera, “shooting” film in order to show the world — these are military metaphors for a reason. Filming is a hostile act. It’s impossible to get a clear, steady shot with my Samsung J5 without exposing myself to the possibility of a soldier’s gaze. It’s impossible to know how the soldiers will react. Their fingers already at the triggers, they could shoot reflexively, without thinking — a mistake they might regret, but I would already be dead. I hide behind a tree, but a soldier sees me, and gesticulates wildly — he’s coming to grab the camera. A split second before he reaches me, a boy bursts out of an alleyway, with a soldier in hot pursuit; my soldier joins the chase, my camera is saved. The boy is caught: they are beating him on his head with a wooden baton, he tries to break away, but he lurches and stumbles as if drunk, the soldiers catch him and beat him again.

Yehoshua, tall and bearded, has been calmer than me throughout. I am unsure whether this is because he is more spiritually advanced or more foolhardy. Yehoshua walks over to the soldiers and chides them in his upper class British accent: “Why are you doing this?” he says as they beat the boy over the head. “You must stop doing this.” They continue as if he was not there. “Yehoshua,” I say. “Let’s get out of here!”

We walk past a church; it’s packed with mourners who are wailing and dancing in the ecstatic manner of Ethiopian funereal customs; a father holds up photographs of his son, slain that day in the demonstrations. A woman tugs at my shirtsleeve: “This will not end,” she tells me. “They have gone too far.” A man chimes in: “Please, tell the world what is happening. We are being slaughtered.”

This is Africa, and nobody cares how many protesters the dictatorial government kills. Not the UN, not the State Department, not Black Lives Matter, and not CNN
I can’t help but think about my homeland. In Israeli politics, I’m center-left. I’m against the occupation, but I don’t believe the situation is Israel’s fault, at least not exclusively. And Israeli soldiers have never fired wholesale into crowds of demonstrators, killing dozens at a time, as Ethiopian troops have. But seeing the soldiers patrolling the shuttered, burning streets, an alien presence hunting stone-throwing boys, their body language as tense as a cocked rifle, I can’t help but think of our own soldiers and the Palestinians. History matters, but it also doesn’t; I know that the Amhara were as bad as or worse than the Tigrayans are now when they controlled Ethiopia. I know the Palestinians have rejected peace on numerous occasions, that the withdrawal from Gaza empowered Hamas. But I also understand: soldiers in neighborhoods where people oppose their presence is a recipe for disaster; the power of the present eclipses historical truth.

And I also think: this is Africa, and nobody cares how many protesters the dictatorial government kills. Not the UN, not the State Department, not Black Lives Matter, and not CNN. At least 50 people were killed in Bahir Dar during the day of protest I describe. Amnesty International estimates that, so far this year 700 people have died in such protests across Ethiopia. Yet until Olympic marathon runner Feyisa Lilesa, an Oromo, crossed the finish line with arms raised in a gesture of protest against his government, the violence in Ethiopia stayed below the radar of nearly all news organizations with the notable exception of Al Jazeera.

“If the general strike continues another day or two, there will be a big explosion,” a dreadlocked young man tells me in the evening. He had gone to the demonstrations with a friend; the friend had been shot to death. “There are a lot of people in this town who are day laborers. They only have money for food if they worked that day. If the protests continue, they’ll start to be desperately hungry; most of them would rather die in a protest than be consumed by hunger. The majority of Ethiopians have not enjoyed the fruits of the country’s economic growth, and anger at the EPRDF government is fueled by the undeniable linkage between economic opportunity and loyalty to the regime. The blend of capitalism and autocratic favoritism is a rich stew nourishing poverty and fury.

It appears that the woman at the funeral was at least partly right: the regime went too –far. The shootings have produced a critical mass of anger and desperation. Since that day in Bahir Dar, in cities and towns across the Amhara region, the population has chased the local administration out of town and installed their own mayors and councils. The homes of officials associated with the government have been set on fire. Flower farms run by foreigners from Holland, Israel, Belgium, Italy and India have been overrun by mobs, their greenhouses ransacked. Thousands of soldiers have been deployed to the Amhara region, but it’s unclear which side the local police will take. The Amhara and the Oromo, where hundreds have also been killed in demonstrations, comprise 60 percent of Ethiopia’s population; the Tigrayans are only six percent. Film of the latest demonstrations, broadcast by opposition groups, show men with rifles shooting into the air — this is a sea-change from Bahir Dar, where the demonstrators were unarmed. Now, six weeks or so later, with dozens more dead and reports of soldiers killed and captured, protestors and the regime seem to be at an eerie stalemate, with the next outbreak of violence sure to come soon. Meanwhile, in Israel last week hundreds of Ethiopian-Israelis demonstrated in front of the US embassy in Tel Aviv, asking for US intervention against the Ethiopian regime’s killing of protestors in the Amhara and Oromo region. Similar demonstrations in front of Ethiopian embassies took place in Washington and Ottowa.

There was an ecstatic element in the protests I witnessed in Bahir Dar, and an ecstasy as well in the anguish of mourning, and a feeling of purpose that at a certain moment becomes contagious. Only two weeks before we arrived in Bahir Dar, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had returned from a triumphant visit to four African countries, including Ethiopia, where he had been lionized with the pomp usually reserved for leaders of superpowers. Israeli businessmen are bullish on Africa: Netanyahu spoke of investments in agriculture as well as cooperation on security. Ethiopia has been a partner in containing the spread of Islamic militants in East Africa, But “security” means training and sometimes arming police and soldiers whose primary function is keeping autocratic regimes in power.

In May 1991 I was in Addis Ababa after the Tigrayan rebels had surrounded the city but before they had entered. The soldiers of the Mengistu regime had raided the army storehouses and were selling everything from rifles to army boots on the street. I had just finished my basic training as an immigrant with the Israeli army, and saw some ex-soldiers selling army boots that looked strikingly similar to the boots we were issued in the IDF. For two dollars, I had a new pair of boots. Only much later did I turn the boots around and see the Hebrew insignia stamped in rubber on the sole: “Israel Defense Forces” — evidence of at least the most basic level of military aid that Israel had provided the reviled Mengistu regime.

If Israel wishes to have boots on the ground in Africa, the protests in Ethiopia should give pause. Security cooperation with dictatorial regimes must be considered carefully, even from a real-politic, if not an ethical, perspective. Without democratization, without policies that put the poorest people first, Africa will continue to slowly, inexorably, explode.

I am deeply saddened by the death and/or injuries of hundreds of Ireecha festival spectators at Lake Bishoftu, Oromiya on October 2, 2016.  So, to the friends and families of the Hora martyrs, I offer my condolences on the passing of their loved one (ones).

At ragged cliffs of Lake Bishoftu, I wondered why the TPLF’s/the EPRDF’s police and security forces attempted to disperse a crowd of several hundred thousand by firing tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.

I believe that the victims’ family should consider to receive justice by bringing criminal charges against the police, the security  and the TPLF’s/the EPRDF’s government because they are responsible and accountable for the death and/or injuries of their loved one (ones).

To explain, the police, the security and the TPLF’s government should have identified high risk points at the festival and established buffered zones to prevent potential danger such as stampede.  But they failed to take precaution to avert risks. Worst of all, they terrified the crowd and they caused a stampede and/or jumping off cliffs into ravines or the lake that killed and/or injured so many spectators.

I think the panic that caused the crowd disaster was provoked. And it was masterminded by the TPLF’s elite such as Seyoum Mesfin and Abay Tsehaye. To me, their act was a manifestation of the beasts grand visions’ and prophecies’ which indicates genocide and Armageddon in Ethiopia on their September 11, 2016 YouTube video.

Why a feeling for unity needs to be awakened?

Unfortunately, due a lack of a united movement against the TPLF’s supremacy, I have been mostly an attentive bystander of Ethiopians’ state of affairs since the TPLF took power by force more than twenty-five years ago. I started voicing my concerns and opinions about our people and our country more frequently after the TPLF killed the truth-tellers, the peaceful protestors, in Ambo. And I became a vocal critic of the TPLF’s government following its elite – Mesfin and Tsehaye’s – lecture about the looming genocide and Armageddon against Ethiopians.

I think Mesfin and Tsehaye would keep mercilessly unleashing their genocide and Armageddon against Ethiopians unless there would be a solidarity movement among Ethiopians against them, the TPLF. For this reason, awakening a feeling for unity is paramount at this critical moment of our people and our country’s history in order to make the TPLF stop the genocide and Armageddon its elite are unleashing on Ethiopians.

I dedicated this article to the martyrs of the Ireecha festival as a gesture of support for the Oromo people, the OLF and the fragmented oppositions and activists against the fascist TPLF’s regime.

The writer LJDemissie can be reached at LJDemissie@yahoo.com

Hawassa University Student’s Protest- Oct. 5, 2016

Egypt denies involvement in Ethiopia’s conflict

by Salem Solomon /VOA

Ethiopia is observing an official mourning period for more than 50 people killed during a crackdown and stampede at an ethnic cultural festival in the Oromia region Sunday.

At the same time, the country is seeing a continuation, possibly an escalation, of the anti-government protests that sparked the violence.

Hundetu Biratu took part in a protest that turned deadly Monday in Dembidolo, a town in southwestern Ethiopia. She told VOA that her brother was shot and killed during the demonstration.

“We were taking my brother to the hospital. A bullet pierced his neck and exited through his ears. They fired tear gas and I fell. When I got up they shot me on my thighs and I fell,” she said.

Mulatu Gemechu, assistant deputy chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress, said other protests took place Monday and Tuesday across eastern and western Oromia. He said clashes broke out in Sendefa, a town in central Ethiopia, as mourners returned from a funeral for a mother and a child who died in Sunday’s pandemonium.

The Oromia Police Commission deputy commissioner, Sori Dinqa, told reporters that protesters in the region are destroying property, burning cars and targeting government offices.

Demonstrators protest gesture during Irreecha, the thanksgiving festival of the Oromo people, in Bishoftu town, Oromia region, Ethiopia. More than 50 people were killed in the violence.

“There are continued and sporadic efforts to block streets, disturb the peace and burn administrative buildings. Our police are continuing to prevent that. We want the people to condemn the uprising and discourage people from taking part in these acts,” he said.

But few people appear to be heeding his call.

A witness in Alem Gena, a town in central Ethiopia, said a funeral service for victims turned into an anti-government demonstration. He said no one was killed but anger in his area is running high.

“We want our own government and those in the current government don’t represent us. They are incompetent to administer us and we want them to leave power,” said the man, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons.

Questions about the stampede

Official tallies put the death toll from Monday’s violence at 52, while Desalegn Bayisa, general manager of the Bishoftu Hospital, told reporters 55 people had been killed. Opposition members and activists, however, place the number of people who died in the hundreds.

Bayisa said the hospital also treated more than 100 injured people.

Advocacy groups such as Freedom House blamed some of the deaths on security forces firing tear gas and live ammunition at festival attendees.

Questions about safety precautions are also being asked of the organizers of the festival, which drew hundreds of thousands of people to a location that includes a lake and deep ditches.

FILE — People assist an injured protester during Irrechaa, the thanksgiving festival of the Oromo people in Bishoftu town of Oromia region, Ethiopia.

“It’s amazing really. There seemed to be no preparation or planning about how to manage the flows of people,” said William Davison, a reporter for Bloomberg News who attended the event and said there were no barriers between the people and the ditches.

“To make those mistakes given the high likelihood of a protest and a government response just seems sort of criminally negligent to me,” Davison added.

Stifling dissent and criticism

Free speech advocates say the government was attempting to silence critical voices even before the festival.

Seyoum Teshome, a prominent Oromo blogger and lecturer at Ambo University, was arrested on October 1 in Wolisso, 110 kilometers from the capital of Addis Ababa. His house was searched and the police confiscated his computer according to local reports.

“My attempts to reach him via his phone ended unsuccessfully. May he stay safe,” wrote Befekadu Hailu, another blogger, on his Facebook page.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a group advocating for the safety of journalists, condemned the arrest and called on the government to release Teshome without delay or conditions.

It is “deeply disturbing as it comes against a backdrop of government moves to stifle protests and criticism,” CPJ’s deputy director Robert Mahoney said.

“We want to see any pending charges or charges they might try to pursue dropped,” Kerry Paterson, the senior advocacy officer for CPJ’s Africa program told VOA. “The chilling effect that occurs as a result of arresting people doesn’t just hurt the individual journalist who gets arrested. It hurts all Ethiopia.”

What’s next?

Analysts see no end in sight to the ethnic tensions roiling Ethiopia.

Jeffrey Smith, executive director of Vanguard Africa Movement, a group that advocates for good governance, said protesters do not feel the promise of Ethiopian federalism, in which all regions are supposed to have a degree of self-governance, has been realized.

“I don’t see it ending anytime soon,” he said of the widespread anger. “I think a lot of this resentment and a lot of this discord that we are seeing is because the highly intrusive, highly repressive central government has not allowed those basic democratic avenues to be opened up. They have not allowed the Oromo people in particular to exercise and to demonstrate their basic rights that are enshrined in the country’s own constitution.”

Adane Tilahun, the chairman of the opposition All Ethiopian Unity Party, said that to begin the healing process from this week’s events, the government needs to recognize the killings were unjustified, apologize, and offer compensation to the families of the victims.

Tilahun also called on international actors and human rights groups to put pressure on the Ethiopian government in order to establish an independent investigation into the deaths.

VOA reporters Tujube Hora and Solomon Kifle contributed to this report.

• Salem Solomon

  Salem Solomon is a journalist and web producer at Voice of America’s Africa Division, where she reports in English,Amharic and Tigrigna. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poynter.org, Reuters and The Tampa Bay Times. Salem researches trends in analytics and digital journalism, and her data-driven work has been featured in VOA’s special projectscollection.

ESAT Radio 06 Thu Oct 2016

JERUSALEM, Oct 6 (Reuters) –

* Israel Chemicals (ICL) said on Thursday its board had decided to terminate its potash project in Ethiopia.

* ICL, one of the largest suppliers of crop nutrient potash to China, India and Europe, cited the Ethiopian government’s “failure to provide the necessary infrastructures and regulatory framework” for the project.

* It also follows the Ethiopian tax authority’s “rejection of Allana Afar’s appeal regarding the unjustified and illegal tax assessment, which Allana Afar has declined to pay”.

* Allana Afar is a unit of ICL.

* The Ethiopian project was meant to be an alternative source of potash in case ICL failed to get its Israeli Dead Sea licence renewed after 2030 as well as an uncertain business and regulatory environment in Israel.

* ICL said the net book value of the investment in the project as of June 30 was $170 million. It will recognise in its financial reports an impairment of the investment amount as well as a provision for expected closing costs. (Reporting by Steven Scheer)

Dr. Berhanu Nega message about current issue in Ethiopia October 06, 2016

The UC Davis postdoctoral researcher who was killed in Ethiopia on Tuesday was described by as a “bright light” who was a hard worker with an appetite for travel, according to a woman identifying herself on Facebook as the victim’s sister.

UC Davis officials said Wednesday that Sharon Gray, 30, died while riding in a vehicle that was stoned by protesters in the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Gray, who worked in the university’s plant biology department, was in the East African nation to attend a meeting related to her research, according to the university.

“My sister was the most exceptional human being anyone of us has ever known. She touched every life she encountered in a positive and beautiful way,” wrote Ruth Gray Wilke in a Facebook post. She added that Gray enjoyed camping and traveling.

“My sister took in as much of this world as she could,” she wrote in the Facebook post.

The U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia issued a statement saying a passenger van was hit by rocks late Tuesday afternoon and that “one of the passengers, a U.S. citizen, was struck by a rock and subsequently died from her injury,” several overseas media outlets reported.

Andy Fell, a university spokesman, confirmed that Gray was the American woman who was reported killed when stones were hurled at her vehicle on the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Tuesday.

Crowds have attacked other vehicles since a stampede at a weekend protest killed at least 55 people, according to news reports. The protests have centered on land and political rights in Ethiopia.

The U.S. Department of State issued a travel alert for the country on Aug. 19, citing anti-government protests that have resulted in clashes between demonstrators and government authorities.

Another member of the plant biology department who was traveling with Gray was not injured and is headed home, university officials said.

Siobhan Brady, an associate professor of plant biology at UC Davis and head of the Brady Lab, where Gray worked as a postdoctoral fellow, said by email Wednesday night that she was in transit from Addis Ababa to San Francisco. She was unavailable for comment.

University officials said Gray was attending a meeting in Ethiopia to discuss the next steps in a project she was involved in with the Netherlands Institute of Ecology and other charitable organizations.

She had been at UC Davis since 2013, Fell said. He said Gray’s husband is also a university employee.

“Even in tragedy, we hope that we all can find some comfort in the wonderful work Sharon was engaged in that will better the lives of so many around the world,” Ken Burtis, the university’s acting provost, said in a statement posted on the UC Davis Graduate Studies’ Facebook page.

The university’s plant biology department posted a memorial page on its website with dozens of photographs of Gray at www.plb.ucdavis.edu/sharongray.

Friends and colleagues expressed grief through social media.

View image on Twitter

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Andrew Leakey @leakey77

I’m so sad we have lost Sharon, a dear friend & colleague. She enriched the lives of all around her. Love to Cody, her family & friends

9:50 AM – 6 Oct 2016

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• 8383 likes

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Chris Black @infotroph

Mourning today for my friend and colleague @sharon_b_gray, shown here the way I’ll remember her: Getting the work good and done.

9:19 AM – 6 Oct 2016 · Park Forest Village, PA, United States

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• 2020 likes

Gray received her doctorate in plant biology in 2013 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which she also attended as an undergraduate. Her research focused on studying the effects of a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on crops such as soybeans and tomatoes.

The U.S. State Department is assisting in returning Gray’s body to her family.

It Is Time To Talk About Transitional Government – SBS Amharic

Tedla Woldeyohannes, Ph.D.*

In response to my most recent article, “Can the Ethiopian Government Save Itself and Ethiopia Too”?[1], a number of readers emailed me to ask me for my views on the future of Ethiopia, how a peaceful transition can be achieved, the role of opposition parties in a transitional government, etc. While thinking about these questions yesterday (October 5, 2016)  I posted on my Facebook wall the following thought that is future-oriented with a lesson from the past regarding the problem of leadership in Ethiopia.  “A memo to the next leaders of Ethiopia: In the event the regime collapses sooner or later, those of you who are preparing yourselves to take leadership roles, you must take an active note of what people are telling the regime in power: No group of people can rule the people with a complete disregard to the will and dignity of the people. If the next leaders of Ethiopia are not *already* learning enduring lessons from the catastrophic mistakes of the current regime in the deathbed, your fate will also be the fate of the regime in power now and those that preceded it. My concern is not only as to how this regime will go away, but also who will replace it and how different the future of Ethiopia will be from its past. When it comes to the governments of Ethiopia, our futures [in the past] and our past have been one and the same—we only had terrible governments. The world is watching along with the people of Ethiopia as to how significantly different [=better] the next leader of Ethiopia will be.”

Hours later, the same day (October 5, 2016), I read a statement from the leadership of the Oromo Protest regarding Oromo Leadership Convention to be held in Atlanta, Georgia, November 11-13, 2016. The main objective of this article is to ask some questions that call for clarity from the Oromo leaders who composed the document that calls for an Oromo leadership convention. Much of what I raise below is based on what has actually been said in the document that is a call for a convention, and the rest will be drawing out some implications from what is said.

A Plea for Clarity

I will quote the document[2] which is the call for an Oromo leadership convention to situate my clarification-seeking questions with an intention that the desired clarity will add to national conversation and debate about the immediate future of Ethiopia as a nation. To begin from the very beginning, the document reads, “The #OromoProtests of 2015-16 constitute a milestone in the recent history of the Oromo nation.  More importantly, they are a continuation of a century of resistance the Oromo have mounted against a succession of ruling elites in Ethiopia who have denied Oromo nationhood, dismissed Oromo nationalism as an elite conspiracy and denigrated the Oromo people’s capacity for self-government.” Question #1: What does it mean to say “Oromo nationhood” was denied for centuries? Does it mean that there was a distinctly independent Oromo nation at some point in the past that has been denied that independent nationhood?  Where was that independent Oromo nation in a contemporary geo-political map?  What does the term “Oromo self-governance” mean in relation to the rest of Ethiopia that constitutes one nation, at least as presently understood?

In Paragraph 2 the document states, “They [the Oromo Protests] have earned respect within and without for the young generation of Oromo and reaffirmed the longstanding observation that Oromo is a great African nation.” Question # 2: This preceding statement assumes that there was/is an African nation named “Oromo.” Is that is the case, in what sense is the Oromo a nation? Wat is a “nation” according to this document? What is the relation of “Oromo” as an African nation to “Ethiopia” as an African nation? Are these two nations two sovereign African nations?  What is the relation between “Oromo” as an African nation to “Oromia” as one of the regions in Ethiopia? Also, Ethiopia is obviously an African nation, but is it true that Oromo is an African nation in the same sense? Or is the meaning of the “Oromo is an African nation” only aspirational in the sense that Oromo will be an independent African nation like the rest of independent, sovereign African nations. All these questions cry out for clear answers.

A paragraph or so later, the document reads, “The foundation of Oromo nationhood has been reestablished and the struggle for national liberation has advanced onto a higher plane.” Question # 3: A clarification of the claim that “the struggle for national liberation has advanced onto a higher plane” would be helpful particularly in reference to the term “national liberation.” Is there any similarity between the objectives of the Oromo Liberation Front and the “national liberation” that appears in the document which is going to be discussed at the convention? What is the relationship and the difference, if there is a difference, between the old-style OLF “liberation” and the new proposal?

Later on,  the document states, “This document will articulate the principles that have held the Oromo nation together in the face of colonial tyranny and a century of concerted effort to divide the Oromo along lines of region, religion and lineage.” Question # 4: This statement seems to suggest that the Oromo nation was colonized for a century and that there was an Oromo nation which predates its falling under colonialism. It would be helpful to clarify what form of “colonialism” is suggested here and how long the Oromo nation had existed as a distinct nation before colonialism divided “the Oromo along lines of region, religion and lineage.” Since the language here suggests that Oromo as a nation had been colonized for a century, it would be helpful to be clear which country or nation has colonized the Oromo nation and what form of relationship the Oromo nation will have to its former colonial empire, to use a term that belongs to the colonial period, if the former colonial power exists as a nation.

Why an Oromo National Charter?

I hope that the above set of questions will receive sufficient attention at the Oromo leadership convention.   Now let us take moments to seek a plausible rationale for a need for an Oromo national Charter at this moment in Ethiopian history. Those who have been paying close attention to what appeared to be an emergence and a growing  solidarity between  the Amharas and the Oromos in the most recent protests against the common enemy, i.e., the  tyrannical Ethiopian  regime,  would want to ask, why do the Oromos need  their own national Charter now? To answer this question I quote a whole paragraph from the document that seems to answer this question; that is, there is  need for an Oromo national Charter  to,

[Affirm] gadaa values as a guide for a common future, the second document will restate the core demands expressed in the Oromo protest movement. In effect, it will operationalize the consensus of the Declaration in light of the current demands of the#OromoProtests. These demands include restoration of the practice of popular sovereignty, equality of individual and group rights, freedom of participation in work, industry and development, equal and unencumbered access to resources, equality before the law, freedom from oppressive rule by arbitrary decree, entitlement to personal security, protection of cultural rights and symbols, and adequate access to land, housing, education and standard of living.

This seems be fair and fine, but consider the opening paragraph of the document which provides the background why Oromo leadership convention is needed:

The #OromoProtests of 2015-16 constitute a milestone in the recent history of the Oromo nation.  More importantly, they are a continuation of a century of resistance the Oromo have mounted against a succession of ruling elites in Ethiopia who have denied Oromo nationhood, dismissed Oromo nationalism as an elite conspiracy and denigrated the Oromo people’s capacity for self-government. The #OromoProtests have proved that the Oromo are a nation unified in a common national purpose and able to pursue political goals through sophisticated civil action against a heavily armed military.

It seems to me that the opening paragraph offers a perspective on the need for the Oromo national Charter. That is, the Oromo national Charter is needed because it will codify and perfect the recent Oromo Protest since the recent Oromo Protest is a continuation of a century of resistance the Oromo have mounted against a succession of ruling elites in Ethiopian. On this reading, what appears to be an innocent reading of the Charter as quoted above takes on a much deeper meaning. The much deeper meaning seems to have been captured in the document I have been quoting to raise questions above that frames the issue of Oromo Protest as a culmination of resistance to colonialism by the Oromo nation as a distinct African nation. This leads one to wonder if the Oromo leadership Convention is gathering to formulate a Charter for Oromo as an independent African nation. One can now hopefully see the importance of clarity and my plea for clarity as to what the Oromo leadership Convention is aiming to accomplish. If the Convention aims at formulating a Charter for a distinct African nation, i.e., an Oromo nation, then one can’t help wondering how that Charter would relate to the future of Ethiopia in the event the regime in power collapses or goes away from power.

One corollary of the preceding concern for clarity can be expressed as follows: The Oromo leadership convention is forward-looking and as such its objective is to formulate a Charter for the Oromo people so that when other ethnic groups in Ethiopia come to a table to discuss a peaceful transition to the new Ethiopia, the Oromos will have their Charter ready. That sounds right. But here is a concern one might raise with the implication of this for the rest of the country. Suppose that about 80 ethnic groups come to a table with their distinct Charters to discuss and determine the future of Ethiopia on the basis of their respective Charters along with the Oromo national Charter. How can this be done? What could possibly go wrong with such a scenario? The following problem comes to mind: One of the central premises of the Oromo Protest has been the fact that the Oromos, even though the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, have been marginalized both economically and politically. Granted. Now at the envisaged table where 80 ethnic groups are gathered to determine the future of Ethiopia,  there is no reason to doubt that the same premise of the Oromo Protest, i.e., the Oromos are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia will come up to negotiate a deal. So what to do? Note that given the premise in question it looks like the Oromos are raising a fair issue. But note the following consequence: Now the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia will have to get to determine the fate of the other, including, minority ethnic groups’ destiny in Ethiopia. How will that work? That question must be answered clearly in the Oromo leadership Convention. It has to be noted that the fate of Ethiopia, given the scenario under consideration, will change the power structure from the minority ethnic group, the TPLF, to the largest ethnic group, the Oromos. The TPLF has apparently tried to distribute power forming a coalition, i.e., EPRDF. If the Oromos replace the TPLF, what would be the equivalent of the “EPRDF” for the future Ethiopia if the largest ethnic group replaces the minority ethnic group? One important fact to bear in mind in this connection is this: It is not only the  minority ethnic groups whose fate will be determined by the decision of the largest ethnic group, the Oromos, but the whole fate of Ethiopia as a nation now will likewise be determined by the scenario under consideration.

One potential solution to address the issues raised above is to form a coalition of non-Oromo Ethiopians as a platform to produce their own shared Charter to bargain and determine the future of Ethiopia. In this scenario, the premise that the Oromos are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia will not hold since the coalition of non-Oromo Ethiopians will certainly be the largest coalition without the common bond of ethnicity. Interestingly, this coalition of non-Oromo Ethiopians, if real, will dissolve and hence transcend the current regime’s ethnic-based arrangement of political structure. There is no logical ground that will prevent such a coalition of non-Oromo Ethiopians to come together to contend for the future of Ethiopia together with the Oromos. Perhaps, the scenario I am suggesting can solve the problem of a peaceful transition since it does not stand against the interests of the Oromos because they will be fairly treated as the second largest group compared to the coalition of non-Oromos in Ethiopia. It would be helpful to know what the Oromo leadership convention would think of such a scenario for the future of Ethiopia.  It is also interesting to know what non-Oromo Ethiopians would think of this proposal to work with the Oromos to forge a new Ethiopia in which all members of any group will be treated equal, fairly, and with dignity.

*The writer, Tedla Woldeyohannes, holds a PhD in Philosophy from St. Louis University. He has taught Philosophy at Western Michigan University and at St. Louis University. He can be reached at twoldeyo@slu.edu

[1] Among other places available here: http://www.ethiomedia.com/index.html

[2] The document can be found here: https://www.siitube.com/articles/convening-an-oromo-leadership-convention_3155.html

By Prof. Alemayehu G. Mariam
 
Author’s Note: On October 2, 2016,  troops loyal to the Tigrean Peoples’ Liberation Front (T-TPLF) opened fire indiscriminately on crowds attending one of the most important cultural and spiritual events in Ethiopia, the Irreecha (Thanksgiving) Festival  in the town of Bishoftu, some 45 miles southeast of the capital Addis Ababa. An estimated 500 plus people were killed and twice that number severely injured during the event.
 
The following analysis challenges the official T-TPLF version of events leading up to and triggering the so-called stampede at the Irreecha Festival.
 
The discussion below also presents a preliminary forensic analysis which contradicts the cynically concocted official story line that at the end of the day, the victims have no one to blame but themselves for the deaths and injuries they sustained. If they had stayed home, none of it would have occurred.
 
The analysis further lays the groundwork for a crimes against humanity investigation into the actions and omissions of all persons involved in Irreecha Festival Massacres.

The analysis below is longer than my usual long tracts, but I believe the information and evidence discussed herein are of significant public importance and service.

Over the past several days, the T-TPLF disinformation machine has been in high gear trying to convince the world (since no one in Ethiopia will pay any attention to the pathological lies of the T-TPLF)  that the October 2, 2016 Bishoftou Irrecha (Thanksgiving Day) Massacre is the result of a “stampede” that occurred when the crowd attending the Festival was somehow suddenly struck by inexplicable mass hysteria. The official T-TPLF explanation stripped off all the lies and subterfuges is simply that crowd-madness induced a “stampede” at the Festival. Their troops did not fire a single shot at the event. They did not engage in the use of deadly or excessive force of any kind.

The puppet T-TPLF prime minister (PPM) (more accurately crime minister) Hailemariam Desalegn   gave a statement shortly after news of what happened at the Irreecha Festival was broadcast internationally. The PPM, for all intents and purposes, argued that the victims engaged in the stampede voluntarily (without any external cause such as gunfire by T-TPLF troops or other threats or actions)  and therefore the deaths should be regarded as mass suicide by stampede. According to the PPM, the victims solely bear full responsibility for their own deaths and no one else.

It is noteworthy that in all the years of Irreecha Festivals with hundreds of thousands of people in attendance, there has not been a single documented death from violence or other causes. What extraordinary event occurred at the 2016 Irreecha Festival to cause the deaths of over 500 persons?! The PPM did not address this question.

As I argue below, the Irreecha Festival  “stampede” was not the type of ordinary stampede which occurs from unexpected crowd dynamics. It has all the finger-, foot- and hoof-prints of  a “buffalo jump” (an ancient Native American practice discussed below)  planned and executed by the T-TPLF leadership.

My information reveals that after a panicked and hurried meeting of the T-TPLF state-within-the state over the Irreecha Massacre, a plan was devised to bombard the foreign news media and direct T-TPLF state-owned media to propagate several lines of disinformation regarding the Irreecha Festival Massacre: 1) The deaths were the result of a “stampede”. 2) The “stampede” was triggered by “evil forces”. 3) T-TPLF forces did not fire a single shot nor killed any person at the Festival. 4) T-TPLF “security forces” used “only tear gas, rubber bullets and batons”. 5) T-TPLF “security forces” should be commended for their conduct and heroic efforts.

Sure enough, the BBC, the New York Times, Bloomberg News, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, the Italian news agency ANSA, ArabNews  and dozens of other international media outlets bought the T-TPLF disinformation hook, line and sinker. The international media was parroting the T-TPLF line about the 52 people who died in a “stampede”, and not a single word about the T-TPLF Irreecha Massacre on October 2, 2016.

The New York Times headlined its October 3, 2016  story, “Day After 55 Dead in Stampede, Ethiopia Unrest Continues”.

In a 532-word story, the New York Times used the word “stampede” 8 times. Out of 16 paragraphs in the story, including 4 paragraphs with single sentences, the dominant theme of 8 paragraphs was “stampede”. Not a single word about a massacre!

This is the type of T-TPLF disinformation I was calling attention to over the past month.

The T-TPLF disinformation campaign is in full swing to discredit the current massive and nationwide uprising and now to absolve T-TPLF leaders from legal, political and moral responsibility for their role in the Irreecha Festival Massacres. .

I call on all Ethiopians, particularly those in the Diaspora, to challenge every major Western media that knowingly or unknowingly propagates T-TPLF disinformation on the ongoing massacres in Ethiopia, particularly the Irreecha Festival Massacre.

Spin doctoring a massacre as a stampede

Sitting in front of a whitewashed background in what appeared to be ad-libbed  remarks, (I did not say PPM Hailemariam whitewashed the Irreecha Massacre), PPM Hailemariam Desalegn tried his best to spin the Irreecha Massacre into a blame the victims game.

In his remarks, the PPM

Shed crocodile tears for the “52” (not the several hundred) T-TPLF massacre victims ;

condescendingly patronized and paternalized the Oromo people for their day of celebration and the international importance of Irreecha;

implicitly berated the victims for not standing up and taking it like a man or a woman. If the victims would have simply stood in one place and took a beating from T-TPLF police batons, toughed it out and sucked up the tear gas thrown at them with a stiff upper chin and absorbed all of the rubber bullets coming their way, they might have been alive today;

laid the blame for the deaths and injuries literally at the very (running) feet of the massacre victims. The PPM’s attitude was that if the victims did not behave like stampeding cattle fleeing a cackle of hyenas, they would all be alive today. (But as a grieving mother told reporters, she literally said she felt like she was fleeing a cackle of T-TPLF hyenas!)

blamed the victims for allowing “evil elements” (not “terrorists”?) to take over the Irreecha Festival and wreak havoc;

demanded the victims’ families and friends and all Ethiopians line up with the T-TPLF and face off the “evil elements” who created the disorder; and

to add insult to injury, he suggested victims’ survivors should thank and kiss the hands (more accurately the trigger fingers) of the T-TPLF security officers who tear-gassed them, beat the crap out of them and shot them to death.

Here is how the PPM shed crocodile tears for the Bishoftou Irreecha Festival Massacre victims:

As is well known, today, the people of Oromiya and their supporters observe the annual celebration of Irreecha  where they offer thanksgiving to their Creator. This is a day that is given great honor by the Oromo people  to thank God, wish for peace, and stability and wish for good things. For this celebration, hundreds of thousands of Oromos and their supporters set out during the night to go to the place of the celebration. As usual, the Oromo people set out during the night to go to Bishoftu area (45 km south of the capital) to Hora.

Oromo leaders have been preparing to lead this celebration for weeks. What makes this celebration different is that this celebration is not only for our country, but also one for which there had been a lot of preparation to make it an international celebration by getting UNESCO to recognize it.

As Oromo leaders were preparing  to lead the celebration, evil forces had pre-positioned themselves (to do evil deeds) and exerted great effort to undermine the celebration and make it chaotic and disorderly. As a result of the disorder that was created, a stampede broke out and because the area has cliffs some 52 citizens have lost their lives. About the same number of people have suffered injuries. This is a sad and tragic situation.

In my name and in the name of EFDRE (T-TPLF regime), I have been deeply saddened. I extend my condolences to the (victim’s) friends and families and the whole Ethiopian people. This a situation that should have never manifested itself. The (fact that) evil forces have subverted this honored Oromo celebration and tradition into chaos and disorder is sad. Therefore, I call upon the Oromo people and the Ethiopian people to stand with the government (T-TPLF) and condemn and bitterly oppose such evil acts.

The government (T-PLF) will bring to justice such evil doers  and hold them accountable. In this effort, the whole people must stand with the government (T-TPLF). In this situation where only evil doers were involved, our security forces made great effort to ensure security; no gunfire was heard and the government took great care [to prevent harm] of the situation. I want to thank the security forces who protected the people in the name of the EFDRE (T-TPLF), those security officers who spent great effort.

The government (T-TPLF) will strongly continue with the new changes it has started, its development (plans), democracy building and peaceful journey. Our journey of change just began; it has not ended. Therefore, I take this opportunity to call upon the whole Oromo people and the people of our country to join us in the current change mobilization we have started. The government (T-TPLF) without slipping back will continue the new changes for development and peace, seek proper means and strongly pursue [these goals], I assure you. Thank you.

What happened on October 2, 2016 in Bishoftu?: The evidence so far

As PPM Hailemariam thanked the T-TPLF soldiers who fired into the Irreecha Festival crowd, he said “no gun fire was heard and the government took great care of the situation [to prevent use of deadly force]” and that “52 people lost their lives.” The PPM’s office has provided no updates on fatalities and injuries since his initial public statement. As far as the PPM is concerned, only 52 people have died at the Festival.

The PPM’s statement is contradicted by numerous eyewitness testimonies including accredited reporters who were present at the event and observed the crowd and the T-TPLF soldiers.

On October 3, 2016, Freedom House issued a statement on the Irreecha Massacres:

The deaths in Bishoftu occurred because security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition at a crowd of over a million people celebrating a religious occasion. The government of Ethiopia should allow a truly independent body to investigate the tragedy at Bishoftu as well as security forces’ well-documented record of using excessive force against peaceful gatherings. (Emphasis added.)

In a VOA- Amharic Service program interview on October 3, 2016, several accredited reporters who were present at the Irreecha Festival confirmed that heavily armed T-TPLF soldiers (not the unarmed local police forming a cordon in front of the crowd) who had taken tactical positions behind the VIP grandstand hidden from direct view of the crowd, suddenly opened live fire on the unarmed and peacefully protesting crowd after the official program could not proceed due to crowd demands.

Andualem Sisay, a reporter for the Kenya National Media Group, told VOA that for a prolonged period of time the gathered crowd was peacefully singing traditional songs and engaged in festivities without incident. He said the official program for the elders  could not start as planned and the crowd became agitated and began chanting anti-T-TPLF slogans. The crowd continued to shout out, “Enough of woyane!” and similar statements. Andualem reported hearing the sound of gunfire after the crowd openly, vocally  and overwhelmingly showed its opposition to the T-TPLF by chanting critical slogans.

Other eyewitnesses who were present at the Festival explained that the crowd became agitated because of concerns that the T-TPLF was going to use the grandstand to parade its lackeys and hired hands to speak to the crowd and  hijack the Irreecha religious event for its own political advantage. There is evidence to suggest that prior to the Irreecha event the T-TPLF was repeatedly warned by certain community leaders not to politicize the  celebrations for political purposes, a warning ignored by T-TPLF leaders. Some informants reported that the crowd did not want to hear any type of political speech in light of recent T-TPLF massacres over which the community was grieving. But it was clear the T-TPLF had planned to hijack the event. They had imported truckloads of hired hands and cadres from different areas to beef up their cheering section in the crowd.

Yohannes Amberber, another reporter who was present at the encampment of the T-TPLF soldiers told VOA that he was instructed by T-TPLF soldiers leave the grandstand area immediately as it became clear that the official program could not proceed and the crowd was becoming more vocal in its opposition to the T-TPLF. Yohannes indicated that a group of T-TPLF soldiers opened fire on the crowd without provocation.

Preliminary forensic analysis of a number of different cell phone and home video recordings of the event posted online supports the reporters’ and eyewitness’ accounts.

One relatively high-quality video clip shows Irreecha celebrations beginning peacefully and with an overwhelming sense ofjoy and anticipation.  Men, women, elders and children were in the street having a great time. Men on colorfully decorated horses are seen riding to the celebration venue singing and chanting. A marching band spiced up the parade. Elders on foot followed in festive mood. Children in traditional attire lined up the streets. Groups of young men and women sang and did traditional dance. Women in traditional dress are seen singing and dancing. Celebrants of all ages are seen walking carrying traditional clumps of grass.

Other video clips showed a large crowd of young people standing in an open area waiting to listen to speeches from the grandstand. Elders (Abagedas), community leaders and other officials are seen sitting in festive mood in the grandstand. The video also shows the crowd getting increasingly animated, raising arms and shouting behind the police cordon. Few individuals crossed the police lines carrying banners or to communicate with those sitting in the grandstand. A couple of young men emerged from the crowd line and got on the VIP stage carrying a banner promoting Oromo culture and identity.

One video clip showed a military helicopter suddenly appearing just above the treetops in what appears to be an effort to buzz the crowd. The overflight seemed to inflame the crowd which started to point at the  helicopter displaying angry gestures. The video also showed the military helicopter returning at least once more and buzzing the crowd in what appears to be a show of force. The crowd instantly goes into a frenzy raising arms and crossing wrists (the symbolic sign of protest against T-TPLF rule in Ethiopia) swaying left to right.

Another video clip shows a few elders addressing  the crowd  on the grandstand.  A few young people  are seen crossing the police cordon and approaching the grandstand asking to use the microphone. One man gets the microphone. A half dozen or so young men cross the line and join him below the grandstand raising their hands crossed at the wrist. A young man with the microphone begins addressing the crowd from the grandstand. A few seconds later, another young man grabs the microphone and chantsto the crowd, “Down, down woyane!” (T-TPLF) several times. The crowd  is ecstatic and shouts back, “Down, down woyane!”

In yet another video clip, local policemen are seen standing in police cordon keeping the crowd to remain in position. But behind the grandstand, there appeared to be elements of at least one battalion of fully armed T-TPLF soldiers in combat camouflage carrying AK 47s and side arms and wearing ammunition vests and strapped at the waist  with what appear to be portable munitions with removable trigger pins. The video also shows what appears to be a Soviet-era 7.62 general-purpose PKMN machine gun with an ammo belt wrapped around it.

Mulatu Gemechu, Vice Chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), told Voice of America (VOA) Amharic Service that his organization has verified 678 persons killed in the T-TPLF Bishoftu Massacre. He also said there were 423 persons in critical condition and 870 persons who suffered wounds and injuries of varying severity. He added more bodies are being fished out of the water in the festival area.

Legesse Tadesse, an OFC member and Bishoftou resident, also told VOA that he had personally counted 146 corpses in a local hospital. He also suggested that the government (T-TPLF) was trying to hide dead bodies to reduce the number of killed.

In the face of these facts, PPM Hailemariam tried to absolve his T-TPLF troops of any responsibility for the indiscriminate shootings  and put the blame entirely on the victims and others he called “evil doers”.

If there were an independent investigation, there is no question that PPM Hailemariam and his T-TPLF would be found singularly and criminally responsible for their crowd management plan and implementation of that plan.

The Bishoftu Irreecha Festival Massacre is ONLY the latest T-TPLF massacre

Massacres and heavy-handed treatment of unarmed and peaceful protesters has been the stock in trade of the T-TPLF since its bush days in the 1970s.  Time and again, T-TPLF forces have systematically and massively used deadly and excessive force to crush opponents and silence dissenting voices.

As my long time readers know, I got involved in human rights advocacy after the 2005 Meles Massacres.

On May 16, 2005, one day after the general election, the late thugmaster of the T-TPLF Meles Zenawi declared a state of emergency, outlawed all public gatherings and placed under his direct personal command and control all police, security and military forces, and even replaced the capital’s city police with “federal” police and special forces. Meles Zenawi’s own Inquiry Commission documented nearly a thousand people killed or severely wounded by gunfire in that massacre.

Watch the Meles Massacres video (in Amharic) HERE.

For a partial list of the names of the Meles Massacres, see my November 2015  commentary“Remembering the Meles Massacres of 2005 in Ethiopia Ten Years After”.

In its June 2016 reportentitled “’Such a Brutal Crackdown’: Killings and Arrests in Response to Ethiopia’s Oromo Protest”, Human Rights Watch stated, “security forces in Ethiopia have used excessive and lethal force against largely peaceful protests that have swept through Oromia, the country’s largest region, since November 2015. Over 400 people are estimated to have been killed, thousands injured, tens of thousands arrested, and hundreds, likely more, have been victims of enforced disappearances.” (Emphasis added.)

In early May 2014, the T-TPLF massacred at least 47 university and high school students in the town of  Ambo 80 miles west of the capital Addis Ababa. (The information I have received indicated nearly three times the T-TPLF reported fatalities and hundreds more injured and imprisoned.) The T-TPLF dismissed the Ambo Student Massacre and tried to sweep it under the rug claiming that a “few anti-peace forces incited and coordinated the violence”.  (See my May 2014 commentary, “Crimes Against University Students and Humanity”.

In December 2003, the T-TPLF massacred hundreds of Anuak people in Gambella in Western Ethiopia.

A report by the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program on the Anuak Masscre concluded, “From December 2004 to at least January 2006, the ENDF (Ethiopian National Defense Forces) attacked and abused Anuak civilians in Gambella region – wantonly killing, raping, beating, torturing, and harassing civilians.”

Genocide Watch sent a fact-finding team in Gambella and secured  authentic documents “proving that the Gambella massacres were planned at the highest levels of the Ethiopian government, and even given the code name “Operation Sunny Mountain,” the title of Genocide Watch’s resulting 1994 report.” (See also my May 2011commentary/interview, “ The Anuak’s Forgotten Genocide.”)

In 2007, the T-TPLF massacred hundreds of people in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch in its June 2008 report entitled “Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali Region”, documented, “Ethiopian troops have forcibly displaced entire rural communities, ordering villagers to leave their homes within a few days or witness their houses being burnt down and their possessions destroyed and risk death. Over the past year, Human Rights Watch has documented the execution of more than 150 individuals.”

In the past several weeks, scores of people have been massacred by T-TPLF troops in Gonder, Wolkait, Bahr Dar and other locations in Northern Ethiopia.

PPM Hailemariam says all the “52” victims died in a “stampede”, not a single one from a gunshot: But what is a “stampede”?

According to PPM Hailemariam, all “52” victims died in a “stampede” at the Irreecha Festival.  Not a single shot was fired into the crowd and the “security” forces should be thanked for “helping to protect” the Irreecha celebrants.

Girma Biru, the T-TPLF ambassador to the U.S. said T-TPLF soldiers acted properly because  protesters interrupted the religious festival and “started to snatch away the microphone from the elders and started to destabilize the people around them.” The T-TPLF ambassador added, “I don’t think the government has overreacted, rather, the government was very tolerant,” According to the T-TPLF ambassador, the entire blame should be laid on the protesters who “destabilized” the crowd triggering a “stampede”. T-TPLF soldiers had absolutely nothing to do with anything that happened at the Irreecha Festival event.

But what exactly is a “stampede”?

A stampede is a phenomenon that can occur in a crowd of humans or herd of animals. A stampede is an uncontrolled and impulsive running  triggered by a realization or perception of imminent threat, danger or inexplicable extraordinary occurrence. Stampede behavior is often observed among zebra, elephants and  wildebeests. Thunderclaps, lightning strike, unnatural loud noises or the appearance of predators could trigger a stampede among animals.

In human crowds, gunfire, sudden disasters, random violent attacks and even concerted police action against a crowd could result in a stampede.  There have been numerous instances of deadly stampedes in sports games, at political rallies and religious events worldwide. There have been stampedes even at department stores in America on Black Friday, the beginning of the traditional holiday shopping season.

Deaths in stampedes usually occur not from trampling but from “compressive asphyxiation”. Victims are pushed (squeezed) tightly against each other while standing up, unable to move forward, backward or even breathe. The force of a moving crowd increases enormously as people in the back surge forward blindly and in panic creating more pressure and clogging exits.

In large public events or situations where large numbers of people assemble, the first thing event organizers and  government officials think about and plan for is crowd safety management and stampede prevention.  Often simple techniques of traffic control, barrier set up, establishment of multiple exits, etc. serve to prevent and mitigate stampedes and allow safe crowd dispersal.

I have had opportunity to study T-TPLF crowd control (what they call “riot control”) practices over the past several years.

My conclusions on T-TPLF crowd control techniques are: 1)  T-TPLF leaders believe public gatherings that they did not organize or approve are riots or riots in the making. 2)  T-TPLF leaders believe all protests and demonstrations, including peaceful and unarmed ones, pose an existential threat to the T-TPLF and must be dealt with deadly force. 3) T-TPLF leaders  believe that the best way to control a crowd is through the use of massive deadly force to strike fear in the hearts of protesters and demonstrators.

My theory of the Bishoftou Irreecha Festival “stampede”: How the T-TPLF trapped and herded the Irreecha Festival crowd into a “buffalo jump” 

I do not believe the Bishoftou Irreecha Festival  “stampede” was random or in any way unexpected.

I believe what T-TPLF PPM describes as a “stampede” is the equivalent of  the ancient practice of “buffalo jump” organized by certain Native American groups in North America.

In the past, certain Native American tribes would carefully plan and organize to lure herds of buffalo or reindeer to the precipice of a cliff. They would set up the right situation for the cliff  “jump” by slowly driving the herd along a narrow route in the direction of a cliff and carefully herding them into a narrow pathway while closing all exits so that the  buffalo have no option to return back. At that point, they would make frightening noises and create distractions  to alarm and cause panic in the buffalo herd triggering a stampede which results in the buffalo herd jumping  over the cliff to their deaths.

I see a lot of parallels between the “buffalo jump” of history and what the T-TPLF did at the Irreecha Festival to the crowd. I believe the “stampede” in the Irreecha Festival was pre-planned by T-TPLF leaders; and in the alternative, resulted from inexcusable acts of gross criminal negligence by T-TPLF leaders.

Here is my theory of the case for intentional and planned criminal acts and/or gross criminal negligence in the Irreecha Festival Massacres

PPM Hailemariam’s claim is that the stampede was triggered when some “evil doers” hijacked the Festival and transformed it into chaos and disorder resulting in a stampede. He said, “As Oromo leaders were preparing with to lead the celebration, evil forces had taken preplanned positions and exerted great effort to undermine the celebration and make it chaotic and disorderly. As a result of the disorder that was created, a stampede broke out and because the area has cliffs some 52 citizens have lost their lives.”

By the way, this is not the first time the PPM and his T-TPLF have claimed that large numbers of people have died from “stampedes”.

In September 2016, the BBC reported that “A[n] [Ethiopian] government statement says 21 died of suffocation after a stampede [at Qilinto prison] while two others were killed as they tried to escape.”

Qilinto prison has a population of 3,000 persons who are held for three years or more as they await trial. Oromos constitute the largest percentage of the Qilinto prison population.

Is “stampede” the newest T-TPLF massacre strategy in Oromiya and elsehwre?

How many more massacres by stampedes should we expect?

The PPM’s statement belies the manifest facts in the eyewitnesses testimonies and video recordings.

The 2016 T-TPLF Irreecha Festival Massacre cannot be understood as an isolated incident. Indeed, it is not possible to understand and fully appreciate the Ireecha Festival “stampede” (massacre) without examining the long and outrageous record of T-TPLF mishandling of prior “riot” situations and peaceful protests and demonstrations.

I have had opportunity to study numerous T-TPLF’s massacres and “riot” control actions since 2005.

The incontrovertible fact is that the T-TPLF has always responded to protests and demonstrations and unruly crowd behavior using deadly or excessive force.

In the aftermath of the Meles Massacres in 2005, the generic T-TPLF explanation was that they did not have riot and crowd control equipment  and their soldiers and security personnel did not have proper training in crowd control and use of deadly or excessive force.  Meles in fact claimed that there reason so many people died in the post-election “disturbances” (as he called it) was because his police and security forces did not have modern crowd control techniques and equipment.

In 2008, Meles Zenawi commissioned a secret study by retired British Colonel Michael Dewars.

Col. Dewars was instructed to “complete an initial assessment” and “make recommendations designed to create a modern security force that will function effectively by using strategies designed to pre-empt civil unrest which threatens the security of the State of Ethiopia and its People,… and on the equipping and training of such a Security force.”

I discussed the Dewars study extensively in my October 2008 commentary, “Quiet Riot in Ethiopia”.

One of the significant findings of the Dewars’ report was that in 2008 the “Riot Control Police” had “perfectly acceptable set of personal equipment” which includes “helmet, including neck protection, and visor, boots, protective leggings, baton, and shield” and that “the basic equipment they now have is perfectly adequate and should remain so for some years.” But he expressed concern that the Riot Police have very little to do with their time and that “most of their time is spent waiting for riots to happen.”

I was particularly disturbed by Col. Dewars’ approach to “riot control” based on outmoded “police vs. rioters” mentality. I felt that his approach in the Ethiopian context could encourage the Riot Police to resort to military means of riot suppression and beating or shooting “rioters” as an act of first resort, rather than using modern psychological methods of crowd control and management techniques. Of course, Col. Dewars’ was making recommendations based on his field experience in riot control and his several tours of duty in Northern Ireland and sectarian violence in the 1970s.

In my commentary, I made a prediction:

If the regime is indeed interested in preventing the recurrence of the “mistakes” of 2005, one would reasonably expect them to look for experts in more modern approaches to dealing with popular protests. As demonstrated in 2005, the Riot Police in Ethiopia are second to none in treating riots as “urban combat.”

The T-TPLF soldiers dealt with the Irreecha Festival as an “urban combat” situation and treated the civilian population as enemy combatants, NOT as crowd control and management situation for festive going citizens. Though the PPM says some “evil doers” triggered the stampede, there is no question, based on his prior reactions to popular protests and demonstrations, that he and his T-TPLF regarded all of the Irreecha Festival attendees as enemy combatants engaged in low- intensity warfare, insurrection and rebellion.

The T-TPLF has always believed that the use of massive and overwhelming force to crush their opponents, be they political parties, social groups, ethnic groups, protesters, demonstrators or even individuals, is the optimum suppression strategy. Their fundamental philosophy in the use of force and violence, a lesson they learned from their bush days, is to defeat their opponents not only by using massive violence and deadly force but also by showing the rest of the population how brutal, beastly and ruthless they can be in visiting death and destruction at the snap of the finger. They have always regarded and treated unarmed demonstrators and protesters not as disaffected citizens but as enemy combatants who must be crushed with deadly force. Their core strategy in dealing with opposition groups or crowds is shock and awe to inspire absolute fear in the hearts and minds of the people. They aim to use overwhelming military power and engage in spectacular display of force to paralyze their opponents’ perception of the T-TPLF and destroy the people’s will to resist and fight back.

In light of the foregoing two points, I believe the T-TPLF intentionally or in gross criminal negligence set up the Irreecha Festival “stampede” as a modern equivalent of the historic Native American “buffalo jump”.

The preliminaryevidence shows:

During the entire period until the “stampede” occurred, the crowd was in a festive mood. The mood of the crowd changed into anger and defiance when the T-TPLF military helicopter buzzed the crowd twice. The crowd is seen in an uproar at the sight of the chopper, with nearly everyone shaking their fists at it. The available video clips show the crowd instantly transforming from festive mood to fear, concern and outrage at the sight of the helicopter. It is reasonable to assume that the crowd felt they could be under helicopter assault given the particular flight pattern of the helicopter directly overhead, which mimicked the circling pattern of a helicopter gunship preparing to strike.

A helicopter swooping low, making passes and buzzing the crowd at just above tree top levels could easily create a sense of agitation, turmoil and commotion in any excited crowd.  Anyone who has watched nature films made in Africa knows the special capacity of helicopters buzzing over a herd of elephants, zebras, wildebeest and other animals invariably creating stampedes. There have been numerous instances in which police helicopters buzzing a crowd and police on horseback have resulted in stampedes in various parts of the world.

The T-TPLF may have ordered the helicopter buzzes for dramatic effect and as a show of force, but it is manifest in the videos that the crowd was clearly menaced by the appearance of the helicopter.  The crowd saw imminent attack, not a military demonstration of force.

PPT Hailemariam admitted in his statement that the T-TPLF soldiers used only tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. He did not admit they used rubber bullets.  His minions have admitted that rubber bullets were indeed used.

According to some eyewitness descriptions, at least some of the “tear gas” canisters that were hurled by T-TPLF soldiers at the crowd performed more like stun grenades. Several eyewitness descriptions of the objects thrown to disperse the crowd suggest some of them might have been stun grenades, a type of explosive used to temporarily disorient the targets stuns people with its sound and flash. The stun grenade description of eyewitnesses is consistent with the crowd behavior observed at least in particular segments of video recordings. A forensic examination of one photograph of a purported unexploded canister from the Irreecha scene suggests the high likelihood that T-TPLF soldiers used stun grenades, not only tear gas canisters.

There is video and photographic evidence that T-TPLF soldiers at the scene were heavily armed and had in their possession what appears to be a Soviet-era 7.62 general-purpose PKMN machine gun with live ammo belt wrapped around it along with an armored personnel carrier with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted and manned by a T-TPLF soldier whose face is completely wrapped in red fabric with fingers on the trigger and muzzle pointing at the crowd. Nothing could be more threatening to a crowd.

A preliminary analysis of audio tracks extracted from video clips depicting the crowd in helter-skelter as shots are being fired suggests the acoustic signature of  an AK 47 being fired rather than the sound created  by non-lethal guns firing rubber projectiles.

A forensic investigative effort was made to extract audio of impulsive sounds (e.g. gunfire or other explosion) from one video clip from the Irreecha event to determine whether the impulsive sounds originated from an identifiable firearm, other devices that mimic firearms or non-lethal guns firing rubber projectiles. It is forensically possible to distinguish and correctly classify impulsive sounds that are made by gunfire or other devices under certain circumstances. Our efforts were not successful   because the ambient noise and acoustic surroundings created by the crowd noise absorbed, reflected and diffracted the acoustic signal of the impulsive sound (e.g. gunfire noise) recorded in the video. It proved extremely difficult to digitally isolate only the impulsive sounds (shock wave signature) from a possible firearm or other impulsive sound creating devices from the acoustic surroundings created by the crowd.

However, using less hi-tech methods, we reached a conclusion by the preponderance of the evidence that the impulsive sound (explosive noise) identified at 11 points in the above-referenced video were highly consistent with AK-47 acoustic signatures and inconsistent with impulsive sounds  generated by non-lethal guns firing rubber projectiles.

The available video clips also show that initially the crowd broke into pandemonium (became noisy, disorderly and confused) and transformed into a stampede immediately after hearing the sound of gunshots; and we concluded that some or most members of the crowd recognized and associated those sounds  with the impulsive sounds of live AK 47 rounds. It is unlikely that the crowd broke into a stampede simply because it heard impulsive sounds that are completely strange to it. Many in the crowd knew the sound of a firing AK-47, a weapon commonly available in the countryside.

The T-TPLF knew or should have known of the virtual certainty of a stampede at the Irreecha Festival for several reasons: 1) The T-TPLF leaders know beyond a shadow of doubt that opposition to their rule in Oromiya, as in other part of the country, is deep, intense, fierce and profound. 2) The T-TPLF expected a high likelihood of  disruption in the crowd as their intelligence services have indicated. It also does not take a rocket scientist to assume that out of a crowd of 2 million plus, a few individuals could engage in unruly behavior which could trigger adverse crowd reaction under certain circumstances. 3) The T-TPLF knew or should have known that any provocation of the crowd by their soldiers could result in massive counter-reaction. In fact, they were warned on numerous occasions to prevent such an occurrence.

The T-TPLF knew the potentially dangerous terrain in the festival area, including the presence of cliffs and deep waters. The T-TPLF has overseen Ireecha Festivals in prior years and have intimate knowledge of the topography and terrain of the Festival area. They knew the locations of potential dangers and could have taken preventive measures to mitigate injuries and deaths by keeping people away from those areas including the cliff the PPM talked about. It is also noteworthy that in September 2012, the T-TPLF attacked the Ireecha festival and arrested an estimated 150-200 persons. In  2013, they arrested a similar number. No documented deaths had occurred at an Irreecha festival previously.

Eyewitness accounts from multiple and unrelated sources indicated that there were no designated pathways regulating crowd traffic; that the crowd had few exit options and the closest available was to move away from the T-TPLF soldiers into a narrow pathway in the direction of the cliff the PPM talked about. Why didn’t the T-TPLF soldiers back down as the crowd  headed  in the direction of the narrow, no-exit path to the cliff area and let the people escape?

Given the fact that the Irreecha Festival occurs in a dedicated location and a specific time, the PPM and his T-TPLF had ample opportunity to meticulously lay out an adaptive plan for crowd control and prevent not only stampedes but also other disturbances in the crowd. It is also important to note that in previous years, the PPM and the T-TPLF have conducted crowd control and actually arrested hundreds of people without shooting into the crowd. Given the current political tensions, it is unclear why heightened planning was not in place.

When the people broke into a stampede, they were in fear running for their lives anticipating heavily armed troops ready to shoot them from the air and ground. They could not run backwards because they would be running right smack into the faces of the trigger happy T-TPLF soldiers. The T-TPLF soldiers pursued them just like the “buffalo hunters” pursued the buffaloes over the cliff to their death. The T-TPLF soldiers fired at the desperate crowd, closed all exits and drove them straight over the cliff to their deaths.

Despite these clear facts, the T-TPLF wants the world to believe that his regime was completely clueless about a potential stampede and could not be reasonably expected to know about the risks of a stampede.

The T-TPLF through intentional and/or negligent actions and omissions failed to make adequate plans; and by failing to plan, they in fact planned to fail. They created the perfect storm, or more accurately the “perfect stampede.”

Preliminary questions for PPM Hailemariam and T-TPLF leaders who authorized the use of live fire on the Irreecha crowd

As is always the case, PPM Hailemariam and the T-TPLF will throw the soldiers and field commanders who did their bidding under the bus.

They will claim (though the PPM has said no shots were fired by T-TPLF forces), as they have on numerous prior occasions, that it is the commanders on the scene who gave the orders against policy to absolve themselves of legal responsibility and political accountability.

In August 2016, T-TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda commenting on T-TPLF police violence said that it “was not systemic” and that use of deadly force “are cases of off-grid police officers who sometimes take the law into their own hands.” He promised, “security forces who have committed abuses or bear any responsibility for the killing of innocent protesters will be punished.”

The T-TPLF has had a list of 237 police officers directly involved in the Meles Massacres in 2005. What has it done to bring those criminals to justice. Nothing! (See my October 2008 commentary “Quiet Riot in Ethiopia!”)

In their recent explanations of  the “disturbances” (uprisings) in the country, the PPM and his T-TPLF argued that the people were reacting to local leaders who are incompetent, indifferent and insensitive to the peoples’ questions. In their silly mantra, their policies are sound and good, the problem is in the implementation.

PPM Hailemariam and his T-TPLF leadership have the option of answering the following questions now or later. But they will answer them. That is for sure!

Why was it necessary to send to the Irreecha event T-TPLF soldiers  who were armed as though they were preparing for war than crowd control? The T-TPLF soldiers carried assault rifles, at least one PKMN machine guns and operated an armored personnel carrier with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted, manned and trained on the crowd? Did the PPM and his bosses expect to wage war on the crowd? Was there a single person at the Irreecha event carrying a firearm threatening event attendees or T-TPLF soldiers?

There are numerous video recordings, eyewitness testimonies from Festival goers statements from professional and accredited reporters that T-TPLF soldiers used live rounds on the crowd indiscriminately. Should this body of evidence be disregarded for in favor of a self-serving statement made by the PPM that not a single shot was fired by T-TPLF troops? What was the use of deadly force policy or order given to the T-TPLF soldiers at the Irrecha event? Was opening fire indiscriminately on the unarmed crowd authorized by the policy under any circumstances?

The crowd was managed by the local police force members who were unarmed and communicated peacefully with the crowd for several hours without incident. Why did T-TPLF soldiers override the local police and decide to use deadly force against the crowd? Were T-TPLF soldiers given special orders or instructions to override the local police and use deadly force?

When PPM Hailemariam and his T-TPLF authorized helicopter flights over the crowd, did they assess the potential adverse consequences of such buzzing on the crowd below? If they did not, why not?

PPM Hailemariam and his T-TPLF were aware that over 2 million people would attend the Irrecha Festival. What crowd management plan(s) did they have in place to ensure crowd safety and prevention of stampede given the well known  topography and landscape of the area where the crowd was assembled? Did they even consider the possibility of  a pandemonium or stampede in a crowd estimated to exceed 2 million people?

What were the plans for crowd dispersal in the event of necessity and the use of deadly force for crowd dispersal purposes?

What specific plans were in place to disperse the Irreecha Festival crowd in case of an emergency or crowd misbehavior?

The video recordings and eyewitness testimony show that the T-TPLF soldiers did not issue dispersal orders before they opened fire. The T-TPLF troops did not use the PA system at the grandstand or deploy portable megaphones to urge the crowd to disperse?  Why didn’t T-TPLF commanders make efforts to direct the crowd to disperse before opening fire?

Did PPM Hailemariam and his T-TPLF consider that the massive deployment of tear gas (and quite likely stun grenades) and rubber bullets could trigger a stampede because of the psychological effect of these devices to confuse, disorient, daze and bewilder the crowd?

The video recordings and diverse eyewitness testimony shows the crowd in general and even the so-called “protesters” were peaceful, unarmed and engaged in no action that could reasonably be interpreted by T-TPLF soldiers as threatening. Not a single incident of violence or altercation is seen. Why did the T-TPLF indiscriminately fire on the crowd?

The T-TPLF line is that the T-TPLF soldiers tried to disperse the crowd because the scheduled program could not proceed as planned because of “disruptions”.  Was this eventuality anticipated by the PPM and his T-TPLF?  If anticipated, what was the crowd management plan?

The video recordings and diverse eyewitness testimonies show that the T-TPLF soldiers fired on the crowd at the narrowest point in the area where it is clear a stampede could occur. At that point, like the historical “buffalo jump”, the crowd had no option to back out but only proceed forward. Why did the T-TPLF soldiers open fire and launch tear gas canisters at the most vulnerable point where the crowd was assembled?

PPM Hailemariam said, “As a result of the disorder that was created, a stampede broke out and because the area has cliffs.” Knowing that the area had potentially hazardous cliffs, what plans and orders were given to the T-TPLF soldiers to control the crowd in the event of an emergency? If the PPM knew the area had cliffs, it means legally he had a duty to make sure to eliminate foreseeable and avoidable dangers. He had a duty to make sure the hazard presented by the cliff is mitigated by erecting  proper barriers or implementing other measures of crowd traffic control. Failure to mitigate a foreseeable danger which could result in enormous costs in life is tantamount to gross criminal negligence.

If there were a full investigation and beyond, I expect PPM’s is likely defense is likely to that his regime is not responsible and argue that there was lack of effective communications between policy makers and those in the field; there was inadequate internal deliberation among field officers; and  3) there was a lack of real-time information and the poor  information sharing between filed commanders and regime policy makers. But in the end, they will throw the soldiers and commanders under the bus to escape legal, political and moral responsibility.

The case for crimes against humanity resulting from gross criminal negligence committed in wanton disregard for human life could be sustained if the alleged act(s) or omission(s) were committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of extensive crimes and whether the act(s) or omission(s) resulted death, severe pain or injury or severe suffering, among other things.

The T-TPLF’s Culture of Impunity

The Irreecha Massacres of 2016 will not be the last to occur.

It is guaranteed that the T-TPLF will commit more and more heinous massacres in the days weeks and months to come.

The reason for the endless recurrence of T-TPLF massacres is a pervasive culture of impunity and arrogance by T-TPLF leaders.

After the T-TPLF committed massacres and genocide in Gambella, the Ogaden, post-2005 elections, in Ambo, Gonder, Bahr Dar and so many places, nothing happened.

In September 2016, dozens of prisoners were reported killed in a “stampede” in a fire at the Quilinto prison where several thousand prisoners are currently held.  The Qilinto fire is the third such prison fire in the past couple of years.

No T-TPLF leader or official has ever been held accountable for the use of deadly force on civilians.

The PPM and his T-TPLF regime have repeatedly dismissed, minimized, diminished and ignored demands for investigations and prosecutions of all persons involved in committing crimes against humanity.

In August 2016,  Zeid Raad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, demanded an independent investigation into the use of excessive force across the Oromia and Amhara regions. He underscored the need for accountability. The T-TPLF has thumbed its nose on the U.N. request claiming the U.N. should mind its own business . T-TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda and only the “government of Ethiopia was responsible for the safety of its own people.” Refused previous independent investigations

The mantra of the PPM and the T-TPLF has been all opposition activity in Ethiopia is the handiwork of Eritrea, Egypt, Diaspora groups, NGOs and international human rights organizations.

The T-TPLF says only have the duty to protect the Ethiopian people. The fact is that the only protection the Ethiopian people need is protection only from the T-TPLF.

In the Irreecha Festival Massacres, the buck stops with PPM Hailemariam and his T-TPLF regime, not field commanders and troops.

PPM Hailemariam made a deal with the Devil and made his bed. Now he must lie in it with his brethren.

I want to express my deepest condolences to all of my brothers and sisters who suffered so much through the loss of their loved ones at the hands of the T-TPLF. I pray all the victims rest in peace.

But I want everyone to know that Irreecha Day for all Ethiopains is just rising over the horizon. The day when all Oromos, Amharas, Tigres, Gurages, Afaris, Anuaks, Ogadenis… Christians, Muslims… and so many others will hold hands and make offers of Thanskgiving to the Almighty is rising over the horizon!

The day when we will gather and shout to the Heaven that “We are free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last from T-TPLF rule!” is at hand.

Post Script: “A Government of Hyenas”

I urge my readers who understand Amharic to listen to a 6 minute analysis of a mother who participated in the the Irreecha Festival and witnessed T-TPLF cruelty and brutality (begin at minute 13:00-18:47).  In my view, there is no one who can match the depth of her analysis of T-TPLF cruelty, barbarism, inhumanity, savagery. She said, “I don’t call this (T-TPLF) a government. It revolts me to call this a government.  I consider this (the government) to be a hyena. But even a hyena counts the hours (to do his thing). After 12 [6 p.m.] in the evening [in the dark], the (hyena) knows it is his time. After 12 [6 a.m.] in the morning, he knows it is the time for humans. All use the time in their own way. This kind of administration, when they even call it a ‘government’, it revolts me very much to say with my tongue this is a government…”

When all fails to organize the People, conditions will.  Marcus Garvey

DOWN, DOWN, WOYANE!

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one”. Thomas Paine

Last week someone asked me what would I say are the three immediate problems facing Ethiopia today, and how would I want them to be addressed. The following is my candid response. But first some thought about Ethiopia today. Most of you will have seen the sickening video footage of people running away from bullets and jumping into deadly ditches at the Ireecha festivities in Bishoftu, Oromya. Blame for all of this rests squarely on the Hailemariam administration, which is no longer prepared to tolerate even the truncated display of peaceful protest. It has deliberately (or not) created the conditions for a civil war to erupt. Everywhere in Oromiya today, there is mass social and political discontent directed against the ruling party. The fight against the regime now will be difficult to contain, and the resulting crisis, for better or for worse, will affect many aspects of our lives including the unity of the country.

It’s time for Oromos, Afars, Amharas, Tigrays, Somalis, Welaytas and the rest of us, to reach consensus on the type of society we want to live in. Indeed, if we fancy modernizing our country by reforming its institutions and replace the detrimental with the constructive we need to start this debate immediately. Well-informed people know that nations do break up like empires. Sometimes the process is inevitable, sometimes precipitated by folly. EPRDF should not commit an act of folly by attempting to direct the state on its own term i.e. by force. That would not be in anybody’s interest. Instead it should conduct considerable discussion and consultation with opposition leaders and genuine community leaders to hold the country together by strengthening the democratic influence and rights of the people. There is no other alternative.

Now, here are my eight [not three] comments [with no particular order of priority] to avoid the unwanted dismemberment of Ethiopia and move the country forward. None of these arguments are new. They have been discussed in great detail in the past twenty years.

1. Understanding of the problem: The current problem of Ethiopia, argue EPRDF politicians, is lack of good governance; and the solution, they say, is a mix of new appointments to top positions, some recruited from within the party, others coming from outside. Even on this deceptively simple issue, agreement has apparently not come easy.

But wait…What about the other serious problem.

From where we stand, the most serious problem is not personnel, rather the unwillingness of EPRDF leaders to accept that citizens are truly tired of a ‘democracy’ dominated by TPLF as the leader of the EPRDF. Now that memories of the horrors of the Derg period are fading, people demand more political rights and participation. Change in personnel isn’t going to cut it. At best, it may give us people who think things are under control…ministers who believe the present system works…and that it will deliver transformation….but real change? Nope.

The problem is that people have lost confidence in the system: a system that divide rather than unite, a system that dominate rather than liberate. Too bad the folks at EPRDF can’t see this. The question to answer is what kind of nation are we building? Are we in favor of one nation, albeit with distinct identities (like Switzerland) or rather separate multiple independent nations dominated by TPLF? This issue may seem for many settled and done and printed in black and white in the constitution, but the question of how to balance the promotion of national cultures with the creation of multinational statehood was never fully resolved in Ethiopia, or anywhere in the world for that matter.

The increasing rebellion, injuries and casualties that we all witnessed and continue to witness are the clearest early indicators of this failure. The time to reflect and engage citizens based on consultation and co-operation about holding the state of Ethiopia together is now. Fortunately despite the crisis there is still TODAY enough support within the broader public to wish to retain and nurture the unity of the state of Ethiopia. I underline TODAY, because history tells us that on such a fundamental issue opinion can change decisively over night.

2. Commit to revising the constitution: The Constitution of “We, the nations, nationalities and the Peoples of Ethiopia…” (which is historically and ideologically rooted in TPLF cultures) is full of ambiguities, so outmoded, so dangerously ethno-nationalist that it has already created and solidified to a varying degree, distinct states, some more homogeneous (Tigray, Somali Region, Afar) than others, together with local elites that increasingly give allegiance to their ethnic state rather than the state of ‘Ethiopia’.

Perhaps it’s time for a new political order to redefine a new Ethiopia. An Ethiopia that is negotiated among all parties of the federal state (bottom up), not on terms laid out by TPLF, but rather on terms agreed by all administratively recognized ethnic groups with equal representation regardless of size or population. It’s important for TPLF (assuming it’s committed to a multi state united Ethiopia) to immediately pledge to the revision of the constitution and facilitate the process to calling a constitutional convention. On this matter, as they say: Time is of the essence.

3. Order the military and security forces back to their barracks: Today state repression should be unthinkable. Attempting to solve what is a political problem with force and violence will not bring a long term solution. By the way, even if the EPRDF come to re-establish a new administration say, in Oromiya and Amhara, will it really be obeyed: each village will be a nest of resistance, each former associate an enemy.

4. Rule of Law: A good nation must abide by the Rule of Law. We need a Justice Ministry that understands the importance of rule of law and will be committed to it. There is too much injustice and disappointment in this country. Memoirs will show this Government to be the most corrupt in the history of Ethiopia. That’s why we must demand an honest and courageous Attorney General – one who would rather resign than do something anti-constitutional or sell out our nation. The first thing that needs to be done is release all political prisoners, establish an independent panel to investigate “thoroughly” the allegations of corruption in government and ‘private sector’. All those matters that demand audit and investigation should be audited and investigated. Corruption is the “first cousin” to prejudice. It limits high performance in management and fiscal excellence.

5. Discourage ethnic based separatist parties: How can one reconcile the fact that TPLF, which is a political movement as well as an ideology of values, concepts and ideas that advocates independence for Tigray region, can at the same time root for national unity. The same can be said of the ‘puppet’ parties organized along the same logic. Clarity is in order on this issue. The fact is Ethiopia has been good for Tigray – for its economy, its openness, its culture, its visibility and its national clout; and if TPLF has not gone the ‘independence’ way it is not out of any misty-eyed Ethiopian patriotism, but because it knows that its bread is buttered in Addis Ababa.

6. Announce new elections and reform: The recent incidents in Oromiya and Amhara regions have left Ethiopia a more divided society than ever before. The government should take responsibility for its failure to preempt the slow burning bad governance issues causing growing discontent and anger, and leading the country to a possible violent breakup. All this because of lack of space for dissent. Indeed the total absence of any opposition in parliament made proper democratic functioning impossible in the country. New legislation could not be properly tested. Committees could not fully examine their issues. Political energy got channeled away from where it could do most good. Most critically, this situation undermined public confidence in government institutions and thereby discouraged public willingness to engage fully and constructively in democratic processes. So political dialogue is definitely very important. Democracies need dialogue to resolve issues, and Ethiopia is no exception. The EPRDF should announce an independent commission to study and recommend reforms that will make the government more representative, with some form of proportional voting system that is fair and competitive.

7. Free the Media: Ethiopia’s constitution affords its citizens freedom of speech and press, but the opacity of media regulations allows authorities to crack down on news stories by claiming that they expose state secrets and endanger the country. The definition of state secrets in Ethiopia remains vague, fostering censorship (including self censorship) of any information that authorities deem harmful to their political or economic interests. The media has to be free so that government officials can be easily exposed if they abuse or misuse the power they have. Corrective action should be immediate.

8. Issue a new ID card without ethnic identification: Here is another example reinforcing division amongst people supposedly of one nation. An immediate Must Change policy is in order.

How can this ‘movie’ possibly have a happy ending? Let me just say this, each of us has a choice. We can actively participate in the great initiative to keep our country united in the interest of all the people in Ethiopia; or do nothing, and see us loose our country. As Gandhi noted: ‘The future depends on what we do in the present.’ Now, more than ever, we must uphold that responsibility. What will you do?

Press briefing note on Ethiopia 
Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Rupert Colville
Location:  Geneva
Date: 7 October 2016
Subject:    Ethiopia
 
 Ethiopia
There has been increasing unrest in several towns in the Oromia region, south east of Addis Ababa, since last Sunday when many people died after falling into ditches or into the Arsede lake while apparently fleeing security forces following a protest at a religious festival in the town of Bishoftu. The protests have apparently been fuelled in part by a lack of trust in the authorities’ account of events as well as wildly differing information about the death toll and the conduct of security forces. We call on the protestors to exercise restraint and to renounce the use of violence. Security forces must conduct themselves in line with international human rights laws and standards.

There is clearly a need for an independent investigation into what exactly transpired last Sunday, and to ensure accountability for this and several other incidents since last November involving protests that have ended violently.

Instead of cutting off access to mobile data services in parts of the country, including in Addis Ababa, we urge the Government to take concrete measures to address the increasing tensions, in particular by allowing independent observers to access the Oromia and Amhara regions to speak to all sides and assess the facts. In August this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights requested access to the regions to enable the Office to provide assistance in line with Ethiopia’s human rights obligations. We again appeal to the Government to grant us access.

We are also concerned that two bloggers, Seyoum Teshoume and Natnael Feleke, the latter from the blogging collective Zone 9, were arrested this week. Feleke and a friend of his were reportedly arrested for loudly discussing the responsibility of the Government for the deaths at last Sunday’s Irrecha festival in Oromia. There have also been worrying reports of mass arrests in the Oromia and Amhara regions. We urge the Government to release those detained for exercising their rights to free expression and opinion. Silencing criticism will only deepen tensions.

For more information and media requests, please contact Rupert Colville (+41 22 917 9767 / rcolville@ohchr.org), Ravina Shamdasani (+41 22 917 9169 / rshamdasani@ohchr.org ) or Cécile Pouilly (+41 22 917 9310 / cpouilly@ohchr.org)

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Hurricane Matthew’s trail of destruction in Haiti stunned those emerging from the aftermath on Friday, with the number of dead soaring to 842, tens of thousands homeless and outbreaks of cholera already claiming more lives.

Information trickled in from remote areas that were cut off by the storm, and it became clear that at least 175 people died in villages clustered among the hills and on the coast of Haiti’s fertile western tip.

Rural clinics overflowed with patients whose wounds including broken bones had not been treated since the storm hit on Tuesday. Food was scarce, and at least seven people died of cholera, likely because of flood water mixing with sewage.

The storm razed homes to their foundations. The corrugated metal roofs of those still standing were ripped off, the contents visible from above as if peering into doll’s houses.

At least three towns reported dozens of fatalities, including the hilly farming village of Chantal, whose mayor said 86 people perished, mostly when trees crushed houses. He said 20 more people were missing.

“A tree fell on the house and flattened it, the entire house fell on us. I couldn’t get out,” said driver Jean-Pierre Jean-Donald, 27, who had been married for a year.

“People came to lift the rubble, and then we saw my wife who had died in the same spot,” Jean-Donald said, his young daughter by his side, crying “Mommy.”

Dozens more were missing, many of them in the Grand’Anse region on the northern side of the peninsula.

“We flew over parts of the Grand’Anse region. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Frenel Kedner, a government official in the town of Jeremie in southwest Haiti. “The people urgently need food, water, medicine.”

In the town of Anse-d’Hainault, seven people died of cholera, a disease that did not exist in Haiti until U.N. peace keepers introduced it after a 2010 earthquake that killed some 200,000 people.

Another 17 cholera cases were reported in Chardonnieres on the south coast.

“Due to massive flooding and its impact on water and sanitation infrastructure, cholera cases are expected to surge after Hurricane Matthew and through the normal rainy season until the start of 2017,” the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said in a statement.

With fatalities mounting, various government agencies and committees differed on total deaths. A Reuters count of deaths reported by civil protection and local officials put the toll at 842.

Haiti’s central civil protection agency, which takes longer to collate numbers because it needs to visually confirm victims itself, said 271 people died as Matthew smashed through the western peninsula on Tuesday with 145 mph (233 kph) winds and torrential rain.

Some 61,500 people were in shelters, the agency said.

FLEEING FOR LIFE

Matthew pushed the sea into fragile coastal villages, some of which are only now being contacted.

Coastal town Les Anglais lost “several dozen” people, the central government representative in the region, Louis-Paul Raphael, told Reuters.

Les Anglais was the first place in Haiti that Matthew reached, as a powerful Category 4 storm before it moved north, lost strength and lashed central Florida on Friday.

With cellphone networks down and roads flooded by sea and river water, aid has been slow to reach towns and villages. Instead, locals have been helping each other.

“My house wasn’t destroyed, so I am receiving people, like it’s a temporary shelter,” said Bellony Amazan in the town of Cavaillon, where around a dozen people died. Amazan said she had no food to give people.

Outside Chantal, stall holders at a makeshift market were selling vegetables and soft drinks, brought in from Port-Au-Prince as roads were cleared to the capital.

“All our houses have been destroyed. This is our existence,” said one stall holder, who declined to give her name.

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)

By Elias Meseret | AP

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia’s government said Friday that 11 factories and dozens of vehicles had been damaged in attacks by what it called “anti-peace forces,” while the U.N. human rights office requested access to areas where anti-government protests have raged.

This East African country has seen months of demonstrations demanding wider freedoms. An American woman was killed this week in a rock attack by protesters, and more than 50 people were killed in a stampede when police tried to disperse a protest during a massive religious event.

Some businesses have been targeted because of suspected government links, putting even more pressure on the government as it tries to promote itself as one of Africa’s top-performing economies.

The state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate said the attacks on factories in Sebeta town on the outskirts of the capital, Addis Ababa, affected more than 40,000 workers. It said textile, plastic and bottled-water companies have been targeted.

A resident of Adama in the restive Oromia region said he has heard gunshots on the city’s outskirts. There was no transportation in and out of town, and many shops were closed.

“It feels like a war zone!” Yosef Girma said.

A spokesman for the U.N. human rights office on Friday again urged Ethiopia’s government to allow independent observers to access the regions of Oromia and Amhara where most of the protests have occurred. He also called on protesters to renounce the use of violence.

The spokesman, Rupert Colville, also spoke out against the government cutting off internet access in parts of the country, and he urged the release of people detained for expressing their opinions.

“Silencing criticism will only deepen tensions,” Colville said.

The Associated Press.

ESAT News (October 7, 2016)

The leader of Patriotic Ginbot 7 said that a transitional document is being formulated in discussion with other opposition groups and stakeholders in a bid to create a common understanding among all stakeholders after the fall of the TPLF regime.

(BBN) — TPLF is working very hard to divert attention from country wide anti-TPLF protests, in the Gedeo Zone (Southern Region of Ethiopia) Dilla town police and TPLF organized mobs are attacking Muslims and none Gedeo ethnic Ethiopians. The mobs backed by local police forces are burning Mosques and none ethnic Gedeo Ethiopians properties. Police also killed at least five people and wounded several when they trying to protect properties.