Addis Ababa, Ethiopia -
Aslan Hasan, a student belonging to the Oromo ethnic group in Ethiopia,
was called either a guilt-ridden terrorist who committed suicide or an
innocent victim of brutal state repression, depending on who you listen
to.
His death came following a bout of violence in May, when Oromo
students in several towns protested against a government plan for the
capital Addis Ababa to expand into Oromia Regional State,
Ethiopia's largest and most populous federal region with around one-third of the nation's over 90 million people.
Security services said Hasan
hanged himself in his cell after being arrested for a grenade attack
that occurred at Haramaya University in the east of the country. Online
Oromo activists such as Jawar Mohammed say Aslan, 24, had his throat
slit by police on June 1 while in custody after being snatched four days
before. A witness said it appeared his neck had been cut and his eyes
gouged out.
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| Oromia Regional State is Ethiopia's largest and most populous federal region |
Ethiopia's government is frequently accused of
trampling on constitutionally protected ethnic rights
as it prioritises security, political stability, and public
infrastructure investments to drive growth. While technocrats have
devised a rational scheme to manage a bulging city, the red-hot
political issue of Oromo rights was barely considered, according to an
Addis Ababa University academic who wishes to remain anonymous. "They
think something is good, they go for it," he said about the ruling
coalition's top-down methods. "It's a done deal, it's not consultative
at all."
Jawar and other Oromos - including normally acquiescent Oromo members
of the ruling political group - say the "integrated master plan" is an
annexation of their territory that will weaken the ethnicity politically
and also lead to the eviction of Oromo farmers from their land on the
periphery of Addis Ababa. Oromos claim the capital city, which they call
Finfinne, as their own, and in 2004 protested against the government's
attempt to change their capital to Adama.
Deadly protests
The most serious unrest in May took place in the western town of Ambo
and involved a student protest-turned-riot, with buildings damaged,
cars torched, and civilians shot dead by security forces. At Haramaya, a
grenade was chucked at students watching a televised football match.
Officials blamed Oromo separatists; activists pointed a finger at agent
provocateurs from the regime. In the southeast of Oromia,
grainy video purports to show security forces firing on students around Madawalabu University at Robe. An independent assessment estimated as many as 50 people died.
The lack of clarity epitomises the propaganda battle raging inside
Ethiopia - and online - amid fear of retribution and a paucity of
reliable information. Few if any independent journalists or bloggers
operate in the hotspots, and Ambo, for example, was placed on lockdown
by security services when violence broke out. Two Peace Corps volunteers
who blogged about the unrest - saying police killed two of their
unarmed neighbours away from the protests - fled the country soon after.
While debate continues about exactly what happened, the protests
indicate a growing and potentially important trend: a resurgence of
Oromo nationalism that's increasingly driven by online activists.
During the demonstrations, US-based Jawar, a graduate student at
Columbia University, acted as a central hub to distribute information
from Ethiopia via
Facebook and
Twitter:
posting photos of dead students and sharing news of protests under way.
Cooperation between disaffected Oromo students and savvy mobilisers in
the diaspora presents a fresh and substantial challenge to a government
that still has work to do in resolving the centuries old issue of unmet
Oromo demands for fair treatment and representation.
"The recent Oromo protests and the new online activism is
significant, mostly because it represents a fresh, much younger
generation of Oromo nationalists, and signals that Oromo nationalism is
durable politically," said Michael Woldemariam, an Assistant Professor
of International Relations at Boston University.
Since moving into Ethiopia's highlands in the 1600s, the Oromos have
been discriminated against by the ruling Tigray and Amhara classes, who
often saw them as "uncivilised", according to historian John Markakis.
The Oromos were largely excluded from national political power until
1991, when the
Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which was allied with other rebels, helped overthrow a military junta.
But the OLF soon left the transitional government after falling out
with the dominant Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). The OLF has
been in rebellion ever since and was classified as a terrorist group by
lawmakers in 2011.
For the past two decades, the
Oromo People's Democratic Organisation
(OPDO) has represented Ethiopia's Oromo in the country's ruling
Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition. But
the Oromo opposition claim the OPDO has been subservient to the
country's Tigrayan political elite, and too weak to promote the
community's interests.
'Fractious political debates'
Jawar's political profile soared a year ago when he said on Al Jazeera's current affairs show The Stream
that he considered himself an "Oromo first" before he considered himself an Ethiopian.
This put him at odds with many in the opposition, who think the current
federal system that promotes ethnic rights undermines national progress
and unity. Advocates of a unitary state promote a proud history of
Ethiopia's ancient highland civilisation and resistance to European
colonialism led by Amharas.
Ethiopia's 1994 constitution promotes ethnic rights by organising the
country into federal states partly on the basis of "language and
identity"; recognising all Ethiopian languages equally; respecting
ethnic identities and non-harmful cultures; ensuring representation of
ethnic minorities in both chambers of legislature; and, controversially,
by providing mechanisms for all groups to try and become federal states
and for states to secede from the federation.
In recent decades, Oromos have been weakened by fractious political
debates about the nature of the self-determination pushed for by the
OLF. Jawar said a new breed of educated, technocratic Oromo activists is
revitalising the cause by moving beyond this factionalism. They have
set up the
Oromo Media Network
and held "Oromo First" speaking events in the US. Jawar said they have
begun to bring OPDO and OLF members closer together, and plan to work
with the rest of the domestic Oromo opposition, who will be trying to
break the EPRDF's stranglehold on parliament in elections next year.
The old days of single language, single community dominance, will not come back.
- Jawar, US-based Oromo activist
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Recent government arrests of opposition politicians and bloggers
suggest that will be difficult, said Woldemariam. "The existence of
armed Oromo opposition makes the task of the non-violent opposition who
participate in the electoral process a lot more difficult," he said.
At the end of last year, the activists cut their teeth by taking on
and beating multinational giant Heineken by pushing drinkers to
#BoycottBedele - a local beer owned by the Dutch brewer that planned to
sponsor concerts by Ethiopian pop star
Teddy Afro.
The reason was that the singer allegedly praised as a "holy war" the
late 19th-century military expansions by Emperor Menelik II, an Amhara,
that resulted in the incorporation of the Oromo and other southern
groups into what became the modern Ethiopian state.
The Oromo movement now faces two comparable political challenges,
according to Jawar: convincing the Amhara that "the old days of single
language, single community dominance, will not come back", and targeting
the Tigrayan elite's control over the country's government, security
services, and economy.
"We have to make sure they cannot have free rein on our resources and
there's a number of tactics in place to make sure that succeeds," Jawar
added.
Jawar preaches peaceful civil resistance, yet admits this may not be
sustainable. He said he told top security officials that law-abiding
protests would be confined to campuses and that they only spread and
became unruly after police attacked the demonstrators.
"It might be a challenge for the Oromo who believe in non-violence to
maintain control over the population, given the kind of killing the
government undertook," Jawar said. "Armed struggle might become the
permanent form of response." source
