Ethiopia Rushes to Implement a Genocide Master Plan Against the Oromo

By Qeerransoo Biyyaa | April 20, 2014

The Issue

Under the excuses of “joint development” for cities of Oromia and Finfinne[1], the Tigirean minority regime of Ethiopia has secretly created a master plan it calls “Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia’s Special Zone Common Development Master Plan.”[2]   Using buzzwords of “ urban development”, “investment” and “industrialization” as  “benevolent” justifications, the Tigire People’s Liberation Front is in a feverish campaign mode to implement the next large-scale genocide it wishes to invisibly commit on the Oromo people. The plan to depopulate cities and rural areas inhabited by Oromo farmers and urban residents in and around Finfinne (Addis Ababa) is under way.

The plan is explicit about the regime’s intentions to incorporate over 6 Oromia’s cities and 8 rural Aanaalee (Counties) in the vicinity of Finfinnee into Fininne against the will of the Oromo people.  Sululta, Bishoftu, Sabata Dukem, Holeta and Ambo are among the cities planned to be gobbled up by Addis Ababa. Regime authorities  estimated that Finfinne, which currently sits on 54,000 hectares of Oromo land obtained through 19^th and 20^th century crimes of genocide, now wants to gain 1.1 million hectares of land from Oromia by the same criminal method—genocide.[3]

The plan comes in two forms based on the kind of thrust TPLF wants to make into grabbing  Oromia’s rural and urban lands: (a) the plan that allows to make inroads into Oromia in all directions by 140 kilometers from the centre of Addis is set to expire in 25 years; (b) the plan that will be used to make inroads into Oromia by 30-40 kilometers in all directions from the centre of Addis is planned to last 10 years.[4]

The Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) members, which forms one of the four arms of the TPLF-run Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, is being cowed into affixing   the entire Oromia region’s name as the “co-creator” of the master plan when in fact the plan was co-created with knowledge of a few high-ranking opportunist members of OPDO who served on the master plan’s board members, inclduing “…Kuma Demeksa, mayor of Addis Abeba; Abdulaziz Mohamed, deputy president of Oromia Regional State and Umer Hussein, head of the Oromia Special Zones…”   This means corrupt and non-Oromo ODO officials were complict in the plan and the majority of OPDO cadres (foot soldiers) were presented with the plan as as a surprise for implementation upon which they showed signs of resistance or so they pretended.  TPLF members in the Addis Ababa city government unveiled the secret plan  in April 2014, 3 years after they first started to work on it (in 2011.)

Except top level vetran OPDO collaborators, the people of Oromia have unaynmously objected to this draconian plan.  Some are facing imprisonment, including in toruture chambers such as Maekelawi, for allegedly resisting [or as GOE calls, it "standing in fornt of the plan"]. TPLF security forces also arrested and tortured Jimma University students of Oromo origin who have protested the master plan to annex Oromia’s cities and the spectre of genocide hanging over Oromia all over again.

It is obvious that the master plan’s goals are to enrich Tigirean elites and their collaborators at the expense of slowly exterminating Oromos from the area.  Some Oromo lawyers, politicians and academics like citing TPLF/EPRDF’s  constitution of 1994 (specially article 39 on self-determination) and article 49 (5) to say that the implementation of the master plan proves once again that TPLF officials are above the constitution and the law, and that Oromia region lacks any form of autonomy to rule itself and develop its own cities. Yes, but it really doesn’t matter citing provisions in this sham document because everyone knows that the TPLF elites have always been above the law (and that they are the law). They have been committing the ultimate crimes of genocide against the Oromo people using OPDO as a glove for the last 24 years, pretending that they would not leave fingerprints behind at the crime scenes. Ironically, on its 24^th anniversary, OPDO condemned the 19^th century genocide perpetrated against the Oromo by Menelik II, but it wimply accepted its 21^stcentury version under TPLF.

Enhanced Master Plan to Continue Committing the Crime of Genocide

The master plan described above is nothing short of adding another layer of committing genocide under misleading and false labels of  connecting Oromia’s cities to  fictitious development “benefits” from Finfinne.  How can Abyssinian elites benefit Oromia by dispossessing Oromia of over 1.1 million hectares of land under the pressures of military occupation?   What is clear is that “development” has become a new terminology for genocide in Oromia.