“A Path To Freedom - Kenyans in Solidarity with the Oromo Struggle for Liberation”
11/11/2022
Nairobi, Kenya
Firstly, we thank you all for joining this solidarity effort. No movement is possible without the people’s willingness to show up, so we do not take lightly that you have chosen to use your voices by being here today. We are here today in the spirit of pan-Africanism and regional solidarity to stand for justice and freedom. None of us can be free until all of us, the people of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, are free.
Today, we are gathered here to address the ongoing crisis in Ethiopia. This press conference has been organized by the Regional Solidarity Committee, a committee made up of Mathare Social Justice Centre, Oromo Youth Association (Nairobi), Haki Africa, Revolutionary Socialist League, and Walaboomuu. We want to acknowledge the political environment here in Kenya, under which Oromo people have chosen to show up for today’s action. The Ethiopian state has made a practice of extending its reach into Kenya to target those who have sought political asylum. We can name the case of Tesfahun Chemeda, abducted here in Kenya and returned to Ethiopia in 2010, where he eventually died of torture in prison. Dhabesa Guyo, an Oromo cultural practitioner and knowledge keeper who was abducted in Kenya 2015, his whereabouts are still unknown today. The attacks of October 2nd, 2016, where Oromos who gathered to observe the traditional thanksgiving festival, Irreechaa, were met with police violence that saw members of the community arbitrarily detained, and some abducted, their whereabouts still unknown today. The military operations of the Ethiopian National Defence Force have crossed the Kenyan border to target civilians in northern Kenyan towns that the Ethiopian state believes are sympathetic to the cause of the Oromo, this violence has involved the bombing of homes, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings. These cases are just to name a few. These conditions themselves highlight the grave nature of the political crisis Ethiopia is facing today and has been facing since its establishment as a state.
The human cost of the ongoing war in both Oromia and Tigray regions, and generally, in most parts of Ethiopia is alarming. According to Amnesty International’s figures cited at the press conference held here in Nairobi on the 26th of October, 2022, the use of rape as a weapon of war against Tegaru women by Eritrean troops and Amhara Militia commenced just days after the beginning of the war in November 2020 and has since continued unabated. The civilian casualty is cited by activists to be close to and possibly upward of half a million in Tigray alone, and this is not taking into account the impact of the systemic starvation that the region is facing. Although we welcome the ceasefire agreements reached in South Africa as an important step to support humanitarian efforts in the Tigray region, it should be known that lasting peace can not be achieved without justice for the crimes against humanity committed against civilians over the last two years.
The war in Oromia, which in effect, is a continuation of the siege that started with Emperor Menelik in the late 18th century, was declared just months after Abiy Ahmed, the current Prime Minister of Ethiopia took control of the government. Although the effects of this war have not spared any part of Oromia, it must be acknowledged that the effects of the killings, arbitrary arrests, and systemic displacement of people through the burning down of homes and the presence of military command posts have been extremely dire in the West and South of Oromia. Across Oromia, local sources put the number of political prisoners in the tens of thousands, with extrajudicial killings occurring daily and the largest internally displaced population in the country being in Oromia. The narrative is that the war in Oromia is not as intense, and is an issue of social change and justice rather than one of conventional warfare, and yet, the government conducted 6 drone strikes since October 20th alone, killing hundreds of civilians, with 150 accounted for in the western Shewa towns of Meta Wolqite and Cobi. Following the significant advances that the Oromo Liberation Army made in Western Wallaga this week, Abiy’s forces launched four drone strikes in the town of Mendi, not targetting military targets, but marketplaces and bus stops, killing over 30 and wounding many more. This puts the total death count in two weeks, at over 300. We have copies of a list of names of 129 people that were killed on the 3rd of November here, all media present can take a copy.
We have no interest in playing oppression Olympics in framing both the conflict in the Oromia and Tigray, every single life lost in this war is a devastating loss, but we need to speak honestly about the fact that the conflict in Oromia has been severely sidelined from most analysis and response by the international community. This is because we currently have a geo-political order that is interested in maintaining the status quo over being in solidarity with processes of real justice.
The elephant in the room is that Ethiopia as a state may not survive this war if the root cause of the crisis, which is that questions of political and self-determination that have gone unaddressed by successive administrations, continue to be ignored. We understand that saying something like this might feel like an affront to the ideals of territorial integrity but a state can only lean on such a principle if it has been established through democratic consensus and we affirm today, that Ethiopia, since time immemorial, has been built without any public consensus through the free and fair election of its leaders.
The other elephant in the room is the involvement of Eritrean forces in Ethiopia and the presence of Fanno militia, and Amhara regional forces' in Oromia and Tigray. It is important that we speak about this plainly no matter how uncomfortable it might make people because the secrecy and deception that has been used to forward this violent agenda of expansion has cost lives across ethnic communities. The Oromo people's fight against the regime does not mean that we endorse or celebrate violence against any people group, including the Amhara people, whether in the Amhara region or elsewhere. We acknowledge that the lives of working-class and poor Amhara people have been used, by the state, as political football to build narratives that justify war and to silence movements for self-determination. We denounce this inhumanity. Simultaneously, we denounce the expansionist ideology that is fueling armed activity in Fanno and the Amhara regional forces. In the case of Oromia, we echo calls for independent investigations to be held to establish facts around the accusations of targeted ethnic attacks against the Amara minority in the region. We also emphasize that the Oromo Liberation Army has been leading the call for these investigations, whilst the Ethiopian government has remained silent. All people have the right to call Oromia home, but there must be an acknowledgment of the power dynamics and oppression that settler colonialism has created and a willingness to build, together, a society that is fair and just. We envision an Oromia where every person can live with dignity, every person can feed their family, every system and institution is built by the people for the people, and every individual can fulfill their potential and contribute to the health and wellbeing of their community and nation.
In light of the recently concluded peace talks and in light of the nature of the war in Ethiopia overall, we make the following assertions:
In both Oromia and Tigray, we recognize the Ethiopian government forces and its collaborators, including Eritrean forces, Fano militia, and the Amhara Special Fores to be the aggressor party, and thus, we can not ethically call on the people of Oromia to lay down arms until the aggressors have made it unequivocally clear that they will cease to pursue the control of territory, and political and military administration in Oromia. The logic that we pose to all here, is, which party if they stop fighting, will continue to die?
To establish a pathway for the de-escalation of state violence, including the immediate cessation of drone strikes in Oromia, we assert that pathways for negotiations with the OLA must be opened up immediately.
The level of human rights violations that have occurred in this war amount to war crimes. All cases of human rights violations must be independently investigated.
We acknowledge that Point 1. of Article 39 of the Ethiopian constitution states that “Every Nation, Nationality, and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.” The five points under point 4 of point 1 outline due legislative and legal process to activate article 39, but it must be stated that because of the systemic and intentional political violence that excludes any genuine political representation of the Oromo in federal and regional government, it is impossible to imagine that the state, as it stands, has any capacity to facilitate the application of the constitution in regards to much of article 39.
The only long-term solution that can usher in true peace and stability in Ethiopia and the wider region is a solution that addresses the fact that at the heart of this war, are questions of political and self-determination.
As Kenyans, we are here today because we can not be free when our neighbors are not free. The Pan-Africanism spirit is not just about the collaboration of heads of state of African countries, it is about the meeting of grassroots African communities, it’s learning about each other's diverse ways of life and respective struggles for justice and building relationships that will carry us all forward.
Ethiopia exists in the imagination of most of Africa as a country that has never been colonized, but we know today that the root cause of the violence in Ethiopia is connected to the same processes of colonization and violent capitalist extraction that we and everyone else on this continent have faced.
We stand with the people as they fight to determine their futures. We stand in solidarity with the Oromo struggle for liberation and call for an end to the siege in Oromia. We call for justice for the people of Tigray. We call on all people in Ethiopia and its diaspora to realize that the maintenance and continuation of the state, of any state, can not come before the protection of human life. If the idea of Ethiopia as a state is not built on historical or present-day consensus, then perhaps it is time that the people reckon with this, and work together to build something entirely new.
We want to take this moment to honor all those who have died at the hands of state violence and all our comrades that have given their lives for the cause of liberating Oromia from the Ethiopian Empire. We also honor all comrades from our neighboring nations in Ethiopia, who have given their lives to liberate themselves from the same oppression, and all comrades globally who have fallen in the fight against state violence. The struggle continues, until we are all free, across this continent and beyond it.
Thank you all for being here.
