MP Dr. Demekssa: Free Oromia Inevitable, Western Support cannot Save Doomed Tyranny of Ethiopia
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
May 23, 2010
Dr. Demekssa was forced to leave his country and fight from abroad for freedom, liberation, national independence and secession of Oromia. Dr. Demekssa´s revelations should become a matter of utmost concern for international bodies, governments, statesmen and politicians, diplomats and intellectuals, journalists and Human Rights activists worldwide.
The forthcoming electoral fraud in Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia) is a Shame for the Mankind in its entirety. Reaction must be taken in order to hold responsible and accountable the perpetrators of the electoral fraud, who are also charged with the most odious Crime against the Mankind: the diffusion of the racist theory of Ethiopianism, the falsehood of an Ethiopian nation within which they intentionally attempt to exterminate once forever more than 15 different African nations with great past and noble traditions.
Interview with Dr. Getachew Jigi Demekssa – Part 6
OFDM Executive Committee Member
Head of the Political and Organizational Dept.
MP for Ethiopian Federal Parliament
Chairman of Oromo Parliamentarians Council
25. What are the major issues in today´s Oromia? Economy? Human Rights? Environment? Development?
The Oromian economy is currently fully controlled by Males Zenawi and his adviser Nuwy Gbra Ab and their subservient puppets, the Minster of Finance Ahmed Sufian and the Minister of Industry and Trade Girma Biru. These are all TPLF gang members and have absolutely no idea about the socioeconomic realities that prevail in Occupied Oromia.
The Oromia land-grabbing is today the most preoccupying matter for all the Oromos because sizeable lots of fertile land are being sold for 100 years to Indian, Saudis, Sudanese, Europeans and other businessmen. Oromia´s surface totals more than 350000 km2, but the precipitated rhythm of these illegal and absolutely invalid transactions consists in an unprecedented phenomenon in Eastern Africa. I will give you now some examples.
Bangalore-based Karuturi Global Ltd., which is currently leasing more than 300,000 hectares (765,000 acres) of local land, sold out an area larger than the entire Luxembourg (ca. 2600 km2) for only 15 birr (US $ 1.18) per hectare per year.
Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, has "bought" and currently "owns" a land lot of 20,000 m2 near the town Bishoftu (Debre Zeit) in Occupied Oromia.
Last year, Ismael Omar Guelleh, the president of Djibouti, "bought" a land lot of 10000 m2 in Bishoftu in order to have a house built there, and more recently he "bought" another 30000 m2 in Bale for agricultural purposes – all in Occupied Oromia.
Furthermore, his woman, Khadra Mohammed, the first lady of Djibouti, "bought" a land lot of 20 hectares in Sebeta (Oromia) in order to set up a flower farm.
The National Bank of Egypt announced that during this year they will buy a land lot of 20000 hectares to invest in agriculture.
It is noteworthy that no less than 240 Saudi companies have applied and got the governmental license for investment in agriculture. Some of these companies have started investing and operating; in their totality, the Saudi investment companies are expected to invest US $2.5 billion in these projects for which a sizeable part of Oromian land has been unlawfully sold to them.
A German company has been working for some time in bio-fuel project that involved an area of ca. 13000 hectares.
Another German entrepreneur has been recently allocated an area of ca. 150000 ha for livestock project.
Notorious for his support to the racist TPLF dictator Meles Zenawi, the Ethio-Saudi entrepreneur Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali Al Amoudi Al Amoudi acquired many vast pieces of land in various parts of Occupied Oromia, notably in the periphery of Finfinnee, in the zones Arsi, Gurji (more than half the area) and Bale, and in the West Wellega district of Mansibu.
Last year, in the first months, the TPLF Mafia lords sold unofficially to personal friends and acquaintances areas totalling 607760 hectares – all in Occupied Oromia.
According to recommendations made by specialists and experts, the disproportionate sales of Oromian land at incredibly low fake prices, which occur without involving preconditions and special agreements, can end up in irreparable disasters.
Land deals must be assessed in the light of the often complex overall package they are part of, including commitments on investment, infrastructure development and employment – the "land grab" emphasized by some media is only part of the equation;
Land leases, rather than purchases, are predominant in Africa, and host country governments tend to play a key role in allocating them;
Land fees and other monetary transfers are generally small (for instance, three dollars to $ 12 per hectare per year in Mali and Ethiopia), not least due to the difficulty of setting land prices in absence of well-established formal land markets;
Host country benefits are mainly seen in the form of investor commitments on investment levels, employment creation and infrastructure development –
though the structure of current land deals suggests that these commitments may be difficult to enforce.
More analytically: http://www.inwent.org/ez/articles/155062/index.en.shtml
(an in-depth analysis by Lorenzo Cotula and Sonja Vermeulen)
For all of us, the Oromo Nation who are the undisputed proprietary of all these land lots, as well as of the territory of Occupied Oromia, the aforementioned – and similar, past or future – transactions of the undemocratic, totalitarian TPLF government are illegal and absolutely void. The unlawful foreign and Abyssinian owners will certainly lose their monies in this shameful affair, because the transactions will be cancelled. They cannot deal with a tyrant and illegal tenant of our land.
26. How happy are you with the stance of the Europeans, statesmen, politicians, academia, and intellectuals toward the grave violations of Human Rights in Abyssinia?
Western countries have created fake colonial borders which caused a real political volcano in many African countries across the continent. Until we finally change these colonial borders, the political volcano will continue erupting every now and then, producing genocides, massacres, atrocities and all sorts of calamities.
It is essential to note that the problems between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda and Burundi have not in fact been created by these two nations, but they are the direct result of the colonization, and the unlawful, immoral and shameful relationship established between the former colonizers and their proxies, today´s fake leaders who are forced to rule tyrannically and within unacceptable and impossible borders that by themselves generate troubles because they represent nothing. Due to the colonialism and its side effects, the Oromo Nation does not have a most deserved position among the UN General Assembly members, but has disappeared, divided among Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.
For Western politicians and diplomats, guys like Meles Zenawi, who are ready always to disregard and undermine the interests of diverse subjugated nations and disrespect the interests of the entire African continent, are useful and functional; that´s why they praise them so much. The Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change is an example; the shameful, catastrophic and utterly Anti-African positions supported by the Tigray Mafia lord Meles Zenawi fully exposed his corrupted personality.
Even in the 21st century, the Western countries failed to demonstrate a genuine interest in the democratization of African countries that they condemned to undeserved tyrannies in the first place. I have shaped the idea that they must imagine that Democracy, Freedom, National Independence and Progress are ideals and concepts good only for themselves, not the rest. When it comes to Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania, the Western governments are interested only generating conflicts, wars and destruction. That is paranoid and inhuman.
27. What could they do in your opinion?
Ethiopia is indeed a land of silence and human rights violations, as I said in a Complaint Statement that I submitted to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Africa Department. The world community has forgotten all our appeals, and today the Oromos are among the voiceless nations at the margin of the international society. I can use the description I made for the HRW to specify what the Western countries could do:
"Meles Zenawi has killed tens of thousands of innocent Oromos and other nations in Ethiopia. Meles is much more brutal than Omar Al Bashir of Sudan, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Milosevic of Yugoslavia, and Idi Amin Dada of Uganda. The difference is he wants to play a different card at different time to show as if he is Western-friendly. He is the most silent killer ever. While we expect him in the Hague, the support European power´s definitely discourage the struggle for justice and democratic reformation in Africa and else where.
Innocent Oromo individuals are being killed in cold blood and denied the honor to get normal burial, some of the dead are left in the forest for hyenas and wild beasts to feast on them. This is what happened in Ciro town in Western Hararge two years ago, the Gara Suufi massacre.
Oromo students who staged for peace protests against the injustice being committed against their people were beaten severely, denied their graduation certificate, dismissed from school and shot dead in the school compound - for no crime committed until today.
There are more than 40000 Oromo political prisoners in Ethiopia, most of them were tortured, shot dead or disabled forever in the same prisons. Oromo intellectuals, business men, farmers and civil servants are detained, tortured and humiliated in a way which can be related to systematic eradication of this big nation.
The most shocking tragedy of this regime is that elected parliamentarians and members of other political parties were subjected to executions and other acts of inhumane treatment. For instance, Mr. Adane was an elected member of the Ethiopian parliament representing the Oromo Peoples Congress Party (OPC). A week after the election of May 2005 a police shot and killed Mr. Adane in Arsi Negele town.
Oromo refugees in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Kenya are under unprecedented suffering after fleeing their land, deported in contrary to international convention, and persecuted for the last 18 years of TPLF regime. In Somalia (Bossaso), 65 Oromos were brutally murdered and more than 100 others were injured in this incident. Among international news outlets, Reuters reported that at least 20 were killed and over 100 were injured. Some other sources have also reported that about 250 homes have been burned. Back in November 06, 2007, 10 Oromo refugees were reported to have been executed in their apartment in Nairobi, Kenya, and killed others are punished by death sentence.
As a way to stay on power, the TPLF regime is putting different ethnic groups against each other almost continuously everywhere in Ethiopia, a land known by tolerance and coexistence for centuries is getting the vice-versa reality. As example, I can mention the Benishangul Gumuz civil war against civil Oromo natives which caused thousands of victims".
These are few examples of the Human Rights violations being committed against the Oromo Nation and ignored by world community. The Western countries can do everything that it takes to put an end to this situation.
Oromo Parliamentarians: 13 MP´s have been forced to exile, but the world community, including the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), keep silent. The Western countries can stop their silence and act according to the ideals that they have long declared as theirs.
I therefore ask again the World Community to make high pressure on Meles Zenawi and force him to stop these evildoings. I call the World Community to respond to all these tragedies, according their solemnly declared humanitarian and democratic principles.
In parallel, I also call the Oromo Diaspora and all Oromo freedom fighters to underscore that starting by Monday a new face of our struggle for National Liberation must begin and all the Oromo leaders must come to the front of this national struggle. All the Oromos who belong to fronts, movements and parties must be mobilized at all levels for this struggle. Every division must stop now and forever. We need to deploy the best coordinated effort at all levels, political and diplomatic, military and socioeconomic; the struggle for the National Liberation of Oromia must become our only concern, and the action must prevail over theoretical talking. Oromia shall be free!