Page 184 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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create an independent state, they are against democracy and civic nationalism. He ar-
gues that since Oromo nationalism is ethnonationalism it racializes cultural tradi-
tions and moral values and is used to differentiate Oromos from others. Since his
assumptions fail to address how cultural repression is associated with economic ex-
ploitation and human rights violations, Sorenson sees that the Oromo struggle is
needed to create a racial boundary between Oromos and different Ethiopian eth-
nonational groups. These kinds of arguments are promoted to exonerate Tigrayan
ethnocracy that is engaged in exploitation and oppresion of Oromos. By blaming the
victim, Sorenson considers the Oromo national movement led by the Oromo Lib-
eration Front (OLF) as a racialized movement and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation
Front (TPLF) and its surrogate organization, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary
Democratic Front (EPRDF) as a democratic and civic movement.The relationship
between the OLF and the TPLF/EPRDF will be explored in the context of the
Oromo national movement.
128. See for example, Alessandro Triulzi, “Social Protest and Rebellion in Some Gabbar
Songs from Qellam, Wallaga,” in Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of
Ethiopian Studies, ed. J.Tubiana, 1980; Mohammed Hassen “The Oromo Nation under
Amhara Colonial Administration,” School of Oriental and African Studies, 1981;
Zewde Gabre-Slassie, Yohannes IV of Ethiopia:A Political Biography (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1975);A. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, pp. 151–152.
129. A. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia; Abbas Haji, “Arsi Oromo Political and Military Resis-
tance Against the Shoan Colonial Conquest,” The Journal of Oromo Studies, vol. 2, nos.
1 and 2 (Winter 1995 and Summer 1995), pp. 1–21.
130. Abbas Haji, ibid., p. 11.
131. J. S.Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965).
132. A. Jalata,“Sociocultural Origins of the Oromo National Movement in Ethiopia,” Jour-
nal of Political and Military Sociology, vol. 21 (Winter 1993), p. 272.
133. See A. Jalata, Oromia and Ethiopia, pp. 152;A.Triulzi, op. cit. p. 177–181.
134. See Gebru Tareke, Rural Protest in Ethiopia, 1941–1970: A Study of Three Rebellions,
Ph.D. dissertation, Syracus University, 1977, pp. 167–149; James McCann,“The Politi-
cal Economy of Rural Rebellion in Ethiopia: Northern Resistance to Imperial Ex-
pansion, 1928–1935,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 18, no. 4
(1985), pp. 601–623.
135. Paul Baxter, “The Problem of the Oromo,” Nationalism and Self-Determination in the
Horn of Africa, ed. I. M. Lewis (London: Ithaca, 1983), p. 139.
136. See G1-pro–1dn,Western Galla, British Archival Document, 1936; Patrick Gilkes, The
Dying Lion: Feudalism and Modernization in Ethiopia (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975),
p. 211.
137. Cited in H. Marcus, Ethiopia, Great Britain and the United States, 1941–1974:The Politics
of Empire (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), p. 23.
138. For example, Ethiopians say that “Galla na sagara iya daree yigamal”;“ye Galla chewa
ye gomen choma yelem.” (Literally, the first one means that as you recognize the bad
smell of the toilet with time, you recognize the dirtiness and evilness of the Galla when
you know them closely; the second one means as you cannot find fat in cabbage, you
cannot find a civilized Galla).
139. According to Bulcha,“The life of assimilated Oromos was often peripheral. In spite of
their total submission to ‘pressures for their cultural suicide’ and to the dominance of
the Amhara over non-Amhara peoples in aspects of life’, they were seldom treated as
equals by the Amhara. The Amharization of the Oromo and other groups was
attempted ‘without integrating them as equals or allowing them to share power in any
meaningful way.’As the ‘Amhara mask’ they wore was often too transparent, assimilated
Oromos rarely reached decision-making positions within the Ethiopian bureaucracy.