Page 153 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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Oromo language became an official language in Oromia. By participating in the tran-
sitional regime between 1991 and 1992, the OLF increased the awareness of
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Unfortunately, these achieve-
Oromoness culturally, politically, and ideologically.
ments alarmed the Tigrayan-led minority regime and turned it against the Oromo
people and their struggle.
Despite the fact that the Amhara-led regime was replaced by a Tigrayan-led regime,
the character of the Ethiopian state remained almost the same except for some cos-
metic changes. As the Ethiopian military regime attempted to camouflage its true
identity with “socialist” and “revolutionary” discourses, the Tigrayan-dominated
regime camouflaged itself with “democratic” and “revolutionary” discourses while es-
tablishing itself as a Tigrayan ethnocratic state and calling it a “federal democratic
Ethiopia.” Explaining how these successive regimes have been the same in character,
Bonnie Holcomb asserts that “the ponderous state machinery of the ostensibly ‘so-
cialist’ Derg has been revived virtually intact to serve the purpose of the ostensibly ‘de-
mocratic’ EPRDF government. This development raises questions concerning the
nature of the social formation in which two supposedly different governments have
operated. On the one hand, it reveals that the Soviet-backed Derg did not function as
a socialist system, but rather administered an outpost of a form of state capitalism em-
anating from the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the speed and apparent ease with
which an U.S.-sponsored administration has stepped in utilizing the same repressive
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apparatus with no significant alteration belies its ‘democratic’ nature.” The Tigrayan
regime created a fake federation by denying the Oromo people their own leadership
and self-determination and imposing OPDO where independent groups might have
participated.
The TPLF/EPRDF has systematically attempted to exterminate the independent
Oromo movement.Thousands of Oromo intellectuals,professionals,teachers,journalists,
farmers, merchants, fighters, musicians, and others still languish in prisons and concen-
tration camps without due process. Successive Ethiopian governments have been deter-
mined to destroy an independent Oromo leadership in order to control and exploit
Oromo resources, and to keep Oromos as second-class citizens by keeping them in the
system of political slavery.The Oromo land is owned and controlled by the Tigrayan eth-
nocratic state that leases or sells it with impunity to Habasha elites and multinational cor-
porations. 47 Gobena Huluka expounds that the Tigrayan-dominated regime “adopted
what it proclaims a ‘free market economy’ in order to privatize the common property
of the Ethiopian people nationalized during the preceding regime.The privatization ac-
tually personalized the common goods for exclusive use of mainly ethnic Tigrean aris-
tocrats since the government controls the state power apparatus and the economic
sector. In addition, the TPLF government put all resources of the Ethiopian Empire up
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for sale to the highest bidder in the name of a ‘free market economy.’” In order to lib-
erate themselves, the Oromo must dismantle these arrangements.
The majority of the Oromo people are outraged by their continued dehumaniza-
tion.They are also angry and dissatisfied that the Oromo liberation organizations have
not yet developed the capability to effectively change the Oromo position.An effec-
tive Oromo national organization must have the capacity to mobilize Oromos in all
their different organizations, associations, civic and religious institutions, and formal
and informal social networks on macro- and micro levels in order to ensure the cre-
ation of an Oromo national power strong enough to form a revolutionary democra-
tic state.This revolutionary step must be an initial stage for the Oromo to participate