many of us lost our parents and relatives and were cared for by the Oromo Relief Association (ORA) for our survival and wellbeing. With the support of the international community and Oromos abroad, some 1,700 of us have been taken care of in exile in the Blue Nile Province of the Sudan. … The ORA gave us the chance to survive” (from a letter by “Raagaa”, one of the ORA children 1993). “The life of those of us who did not experience the sweet love of parents, but had known only an organization [ORA] was devastated when the organization collapsed; we were left alone without relations. There are many who shared my misfortune; regrettably the whereabouts of many of them remains a mystery” (from an interview by the author with another former ORA child, Leensaa, March 2014).

The Name of the Abominable Crime is Politicide

The Mass Massacre & Imprisonment of ORA Orphans – Wallaga 1992-93

By Mekuria Bulcha | June 21, 2014

“…. many of us lost our parents and relatives and were cared for by the Oromo Relief Association (ORA) for our survival and wellbeing. With the support of the international community and Oromos abroad, some 1,700 of us have been taken care of in exile in the Blue Nile Province of the Sudan. … The ORA gave us the chance to survive” (from a letter by “Raagaa”, one of the ORA children 1993).

“The life of those of us who did not experience the sweet love of parents, but had known only an organization [ORA] was devastated when the organization collapsed; we were left alone without relations. There are many who shared my misfortune; regrettably the whereabouts of many of them remains a mystery” (from an interview by the author with another former ORA child, Leensaa, March 2014).

“We appeal to you to do all you can to shed light upon the fate of the more than 1,600 children from ORA camp in Kobor. Where are Sagantaa Useen, Tolina Waaqjiraa and Duulaa Tafarra and all others?” (from a letter sent by the teachers and pupils of Heinrich-Goebel-Realschule to Dr. Klaus Kinkel, German Minister of Foreign Affairs, November 2, 1992)

Introduction

The three quotations presented above are from documents used in writing this article and reflect, in one way or another, the fate of about 1,700 Oromo children who were looked after by the Oromo Relief Association (ORA) in the refugee camps of Yabus, Damazin and Bikoree in the late 1980s. The first quote is from a letter written by one of the ORA children to the ORA office in Germany after he escaped from the Dhidheessa concentration camp in 1993. “Ragaa” is a fictive name as the letter writer lives in Ethiopia. The second quote is from an interview with Leensa Getaachoo who was one of the ORA orphans. First incarcerated at the age of ten in 1994, she had been in seven Ethiopian prisons before she fled from Ethiopia in 2000. A brief account of her more than a decade-long odyssey across three continents and her sojourn in six countries in search of a safe haven is included in the last section of this article. The last quotation is from a letter written by students and teachers of a school in Germany appealing to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them find out the whereabouts of the ORA orphans. Their school supported the ORA project materially and the pupils were pen friends with the ORA children.

The main purpose of this article is to shed light on what happened to the ORA children in western Oromia during the summer months of 1992. Associating them with the Oromo Liberation (OLF), the Tigrayan Liberation Front (TPLF) imprisoned hundreds of them in 1992 and 1993 along with thousands of Oromo civilians and OLF fighters in the Dhidheessa concentration camp. Although I knew that many of the ORA children were imprisoned, I only got a hint of the full magnitude of the crime committed against themlast year when I came across a report written in 1996 by the UK based Oromia Support Group (OSG Press Release No. 13, 1996). The OSG wrote about the flight of the ORA children and their guardians chased by the TPLF forces. The report noted that“After three weeks on the run, with rain, mud, hunger and sleeping rough in the bush, the remaining 600 or so children were attacked in the Gunfi area.…. Local informants claim that the fleeing children were hunted like kurupé, a small antelope which leaps to see its way while fleeing through tall vegetation.” (Emphasis mine) This reminded me of what I read about the now extinct indigenous inhabitants of the island of Tasmania. They were hunted and killed by white settlers just like wild game and were exterminated. It is embarrassing that we have failed to record the story of the ORA children properly during the last twenty-two years. However, I believe that it is our obligation to record their story now and bring it to the attention of particularly the Oromo people. As the first two quotations above indicate, most of the children were parentless; the majority had no families to remember them. It is our duty to remember them by recording their story.

An inquiry into the intention of the crime is another aim of the article. The crime was carried out systematically and over a long period of time. The question is: why? Why did the TPLF forces chase children and adolescents for over three months and capture or kill them, when they knew that they were unarmed youth and that the adults accompanying them were not fighters but their guardians? Based on information gathered through interviews and the description of the manner in which the TPLF security forces have treated them inside and outside the concentration camps, the article will argue that politicide,[1] was perpetrated against the ORA orphans. The TPLF was in an open war with the OLF when the children were massacred in the summer months of 1992.  Consequently, it wouldn’t be farfetched to argue, as I will do in this article, that the atrocities committed by the TPLF against the ORA children and their guardians constitute a war crime.

Thirdly, the article will show that the persecution of the ORA children was a springboard for the TPLF policy of liquidating those individuals and groups its makers see as bearers of the seeds of Oromo nationalism, and that this has culminated in the current widespread war against Oromo students. I will describe, albeit briefly, the case of other Oromo children and youth who have been accused of “supporting” the OLF or branded as “terrorists” and treated with incredible cruelty.The many crackdowns on Oromo students during the past fifteen years, including the ongoing war against secondary school and university students throughout Oromia, which I will discuss in another forthcoming article, are guided by the same odious policy which led to the massacre and imprisonment of the ORA orphans. Based on my readings of its cruel treatment of the educated Oromo youth, my assessment of the main objective of the TPLF regime’s policy has been to deprive the Oromo nation of its current and future leaders. In short, what has been going on in Oromia since 1992 is clearly politicide. Oppressive Latin American dictatorships, which were led by military generals such Augusto Pinochet in Chile from 1973 to 1999, and Jorge Rafael Videla, Leopoldo Galtieri and others in Argentina between 1975 and 1983. Although not widely known and acknowledged, the politicide carried out against Oromo intellectuals, businessmen and students—who are often labelled by the TPLF regime as “OLF supporters” or “terrorists”—surpasses in its ferocity that of the Latin American dictators against the so-called communists. Its treatment of its Oromo victims is in many ways “dirtier” than the “Dirty Wars” which the Argentinian military dictators carried out against left wing politicians and others between 1975 and 1983. Politicide takes on genocidal characteristics when carried out against members of an ethnic, linguistic or “racial” community. The policy of the Tigrayan ruling elites against the Oromo displays these characteristics.

Sources of information

The article is based on information collected from both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources comprise

1. correspondence which I had with a former teacher and head of the ORA children’s project who was also with the children during their flight from the TPLF in western Oromia,
2. written and telephone interviews with two former ORA children who live in an African country and one who lives in England,
3. telephone interviews conducted with Oromos who were imprisoned by the Ethiopian regime in the 1990s. These Oromos, who are now scattered across different countries in Africa, North America and Europe and who know what happened to the children during the second half of 1992 or later.

I have consulted reports and documents from the archives of ORA as a secondary source of information.  These include a short letter written in Afaan Oromoo by one of the ORA children who were deported to the Dhidheessa concentration camp in June 1992. He escaped from the concentration camp in 1993 and found his way to Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) from where he wrote the letter to the ORA office in Germany. The letter was translated into English by Tarfa Dibaba. The other secondary source of information, an OSG (Oromia Support Group) report, was based on interviews with the surviving children, teachers, guardians and local Oromo population of western Oromia in 1996. The third document used here is a short article based on an interview given in 1994 by a former prisoner of the Dhidheessa concentration camp. The interview was in Afaan Oromoo and was translated to English by Yoseph Taera & Kathrin Schmitt and published as “An EPRDF Prison Camp from Inside” (see Oromo Commentary, Vol. VI (1), 1994). The informant was a detainee at the Dhidheessa concentration camp. Other documents obtained from the ORA archives in Germany include most of the photos used in the article, and a copy of the letter written by the teachers and pupils of Heinrich-Gobel-Realschule of the city of Springe in Germany to the German Minister for Foreign Affairs in November 1992 mentioned above. The article has three short parts including this one. The second part will discuss imprisonment and death in the Dhidheessa concentration camp. The third part consists of short life stories of some of the children, both dead and alive.

The Oromo Relief Association: Its Origins and Objectives

The Oromo Relief Association (ORA) had its origin in a clandestine committee created during the dark days of the so-called Red Terror which was unleashed by the Dergue (the Ethiopian Military Regime) and devoured thousands of the educated youth in Ethiopia in 1977-78. The objective of the committee was to assist families whose breadwinners were jailed, had “disappeared” or had been killed. The committee was known as “Funding-raising Committee”, and functioned mainly in Finfinnee (Addis Ababa). Oromo government employees and businessmen made contributions to assist the work of the clandestine committee. [2]

When it was formally established abroad in 1979, one of the objectives of ORA was to assist in bringing up the children of those Oromos who had died or were imprisoned because of their role in the national struggle for freedom. ORA provided humanitarian assistance to needy people in the OLF-held areas and offered medical and social service for Oromo refugees in the neighboring countries of the Horn of Africa. The Sudan was one of the countries in which the association was established and was recognized by its government.

ORA’s humanitarian activities in the Sudan

I visited the ORA offices in both Khartoum and Damazin in the Sudan for the first time in November 1981. From December 1982 to February 1983 I was again in the Sudan and could see the progress which the association was making in providing crucially needed services to Oromo refugee communities settled in the Blue Nile Province of the Sudan. In all the places I visited in the Sudan, the largest concentration of Oromo refugees was in Yabus, a district located south of Kurmuk town near the Ethiopian border.

Picture 1: The head of ORA, Fakadu Waaqjiraa in the ORA office in Khartoum, Sudan; Photo: Mekuria Bulcha, November 1981

Being one of the remotest districts in the Sudan, Yabus lacked not only a clinic and a school, but also all means of communication including roads. In February 1983, I presented a report entitled “Some Notes on the Conditions of Oromo, Berta and other Refugees in the Kurmuk District of the Blue Nile Province, Republic of Sudan” (Bulcha, 1983) to the UNHCR and NGOs in Khartoum, to raise awareness about the problems which were facing Oromo refugees in the remote districts of Sudan’s Blue Nile Province, particularly the health problems and high death rate among children. I also pointed out that the only organization which was assisting the refugees in the province was the ORA, and that it had almost no resources at its disposal to support even its staff. The UNHCR and NGOs responded positively to my short report. The UNHCR sent a staff member to Damazin and followed up the problem. Among NGOs was Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, who participated in providing medical service to Oromo refugees and the ORA children whose stories are given in this article. Researchers from Europe and the US were also in the region and to conduct further studies of the problem facing Oromo refugees.[3] The reportwas also presented during workshops organized by ORA support committees in some European countries.

Picture: 2. On the Road from Yabus to Darsumma near the Ethiopian boarder in 1983; Yabus was inaccessible by vehicle during the rainy season and barely accessible even during the dry season. The Toyota Land Cruiser was a donation from the ORA Support Committee in Holland and was fitted with spare parts for the rough terrain. The person standing farthest from the camera is the late ‘Goota Bobbaas’ Bunee (d.1991) veteran of both the Maccaa Tuulama Association and the OLF.
Photo: Mekuria Bulcha, February 1983.

Picture: 3. a group of Oromo refugees in Yabus in 1983. Stranded in the middle of nowhere in inaccessible border areas, hundreds of Oromo refugees were suffering from hunger and diseases when I visited Yabus in 1983. Malaria and diarrheal diseases were taking their toll particularly among the children. Photo: Mekuria Bulcha, February 1983

Through hard work and assistance from Oromo Support Committees in Europe and the US, the ORA was able assist Oromo refugees in the Horn of Africa, particularly in the Sudan. Through its children’s program, the association provided education to young refugees, and took care of parentless children in shelters it had built in the Sudan (see Tarfa Dibaaba’s book: It is a Long Way: A Reflection on the History of the Oromo Relief Association (2011).

Picture 4a: Tarfa Dibaba former head of ORA office in Germany and coordinator of ORA activities abroad at a school event in Oldenburg, Germany, talking about ORA and its activities;

Picture 4b: Relief shipments with clothing, school material, toys, sports equipment and musical instruments for the ORA children in the Sudan arriving at the ORA office in Delmenhost, Germany

Picture 5: A child getting treatment with glucose under the shade of a tree in Yabus. Her name is Berhane; she fled to the Sudan with her parents and their neighbors who were displaced from Kusaayee, a village west of the town of Gidaami by the resettlement program of the Dergue. Berhane was only about 6 years old but in the picture she looks like an adult because of severe malnutrition. The ORA medical staff saved the lives of many children and adults in the remote refugee settlement of Yabus (Photo: Arfaasee Gammada, 1985)

Picture 6: Members of ORA-Germany Arfaasee Gammada and Gerda Klein, both of them trained nurses, in Yabus in 1985

The social backgrounds of the ORA children

As described in the first two quotations at the beginning of this article many of the children, who were supported and educated by ORA in its children centers in Yabus, Damazin and Bikoree in the Sudan, were parentless. They lost their parents and relatives during the Dergue period. Most of them were small when they came to the ORA camps. For example, the record shows that of the 244 children who fled Yabus to Damazin, 24 percent were between six and ten years old, 67 percent were between 11 and 15, and 9 percent from 15 to 17 years old (source:ORAdocuments, Berlin, Germany).

Pictures 7a & 7b: Some of the ORA children in Yabus and in Damazin in the late 1980s (Photo: Tarfa Dibaba). 

Picture 8a & 8b:  Some of the smallest ORA children in Yabus in 1988: In the forefront are the ‘inseparable sisters’ Sadiyyaa and Nuuriyya Tolasaa (see also 8b above, Photo: Tarfa Dibaba). Many of these children were viciously killed, imprisoned and tortured by TPLF’s forces in the 1990s.

The 1989 flight from Yabus

Quoting Amanda Heslop and Rachel Pounds of the London-based agency “Health Unlimited,” who were working as volunteers in Yabus as a teacher and a nurse respectively when it was attacked by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the New African (April, 1990) wrote “In mid-December 1989, Oromo children started arriving in an Oromo refugee camp in Damazin, Central Sudan in a severe state of malnutrition and shock. The New African added “They were orphaned children who, among 6,000 Oromo refugees, had fled from the South Sudanese town of Yabus”. According to another source (Dhaabaa, November 21, 2013) some of the children were moved to Damazin and the rest were sent to Bikoree when Yabus was attacked by the SPLA. The SPLA was fighting the Sudanese army and was backed by units of the Ethiopian army when it attacked Yabus.

Picture 9: The 244 children who fled from Yabus to Damazin in December 1989 were quartered in tents on their arrival. The tents and other ORA properties including trucks and large amounts of food in store were confiscated by the Sudanese government in 1992 supporting the Tigrayan regime in Finfinnee (Addis Ababa). The tents were donated by the German Ministry for Development Aid. Photo Tarfa Dibaba

The children who were in the ORA children’s camps in the Sudan in the mid-1980s returned home in 1992. According to the ORA, the first batch of its1033 children returned to Oromia from Bikoree in early 1992. They were joined in May 1992 by 691 children from Damazin.  In addition to the 1,724 returnees from the Sudan, there were over 300 children in two camps—one in Caanqaa and the other Mummee Dhoqsaa in OLF controlled areas (source: Dhaaba as above). 

Following the demise of the Dergue regime, “Those from Bikore, aged 12-18, were moved to Asosa in 1991. Because of the poor security situation there, they were moved to a site near Mendi (Wallaga) for one year. Nearby clashes between the OLF and the TPLF forced them to be moved around April/May 1992 to Kobor, 10-20 km in the direction of Asosa from Begi” town. Soon after, “the 5-15 year olds” from Damazin also arrived in Kobor (OSG Press Release, No. 13, 1996).

“We were all full of joy to be back in our country”

Research on international migration shows that, irrespective of age, sex and profession, a spiritual and physical return to the lands of their ancestors is uppermost in the minds of most of those who find themselves outside of their homeland against their wishes. Indeed, the ORA children must have been very happy to return to their homeland. The parents of many of them had sacrificed their lives fighting for its freedom. In a letter he wrote to ORA-Germany, Raagaa, who escaped from the Dhidheessa concentration camp explained,

When the situation seemed favorable to move back to our country, arrangements were made to take us back to our home areas of western Wallaga. … First, we were taken to Mendi and from there to Begi. We did not see anything of the fighting between the TPLF and the OLF. We did not know anything about the problem. We did not see any armed units on the way. We enjoyed a short-lived peaceful time. We continued our regular lessons under shady trees and in small village schools and spent most of the time outside enjoying the cool climate of our country. We were all full of joy to be back in our country (emphasis mine).

Raagaa belongs to the batch of children who returned from Bikoree in early 1992. The joy he described above did not last long. Those who returned from Damazin in May 1992 did not get a chance to experience even the short-lived peaceful life that the returnees from Bikoree experienced. Their dream of a happy life in a free homeland was shattered by terror perpetrated by enemy forces who occupied their homeland. The children were deprived not only the right to live and grow in freedom and happiness in their ancestral homeland, but many of them were also deprived of the right to life itself.

A walk into a death trap

The return of the ORA children from Damazin to Oromia coincided with the encampment of the OLF forces which was mediated by representatives of the US and Eritrean governments and signed by the OLF and the TPLF, preparing the ground for elections planned to take place in June 1992. But that did not happen. As we all know, following the withdrawal of the OLF from the local elections scheduled for the third week of June, its camps were attacked by the TPLF soldiers, who were not encamped like those of the OLF.

Regrettably, it was not the peace and happiness for which the children were longing, but violence, horror and death that was waiting for them at home in the shape of a new enemy that had occupied it. Ironically, from the relative security in refugee camps in the Sudan, they walked into a death trap laid out by the TPLF-led regime in their homeland. The shelters for the children at Gabaa Jimaata (for those from Bikoree) and at Ganda Qondaala (for those from Damazin)—both near Kobor—were attacked as if they too were OLF camps. So were the smaller shelters at Mummee Dhoqsaa and Caanqaa. The fact that the shelters were both homes and schools for children was known to the public. This was not hidden from the TPLF troops. They would have been informed, not only by their intelligence agents, but were in the area for weeks before they started their murderous attack on the children. In other words, the assaults on the shelters were carried out with the intent of harming the children. At that time of the attack, 1,724 children who returned from the Sudan and 22 who joined them at home (altogether 1,746 children) lived with their 37 caretakers and 35 teachers in the two ORA children centers mentioned above. In addition, the two smaller centers at Caanqaa and Mummee Dhoqsaa run by the OLF, housed and supported about 300 internally displaced, poor or parentless children. All in all the assault targeted over 2000 children. According to Dhaabaa (November 21, 2013), at that time the children were receiving training in different skills in addition to the education given in public schools.

Describing what had happened to the children he had bravely tried to protect from the TPLF killers during their three-month long bewildering flight, Dhaaba (November 21, 2013) wrote,

“Ijoolleen mirga namummaa, kabaja ijoollummaa isaani illee utuu hinsafeeffatamin addamsuun, irratti dhukaasuun, madaa’uu fi ajjeefamun akkasumas hidhaatti guuramuun carraa isaanii tahe”

Translated into English the statement reads,

“The children were denied human rights; they were hunted, shot at, wounded and killed. Those who were captured were dragged into prison in violation of ethics that ought to be respected. That became their fate.”

Picture 10: A classroom in a school ran by ORA for refugee children in Damazin

As reflected in the eager faces of these pupils, children in refugee camps often have an amazing thirst for education. They see in it a better future. Regrettably, the life of these knowledge thirsty ORA children was cut short by the TPLF regime. They lacked protection, parental, organizational and legal. Photo: Tarfa Dibaba, 1988

 

Picture 11: Obbo Shifarraa was one of the assistant teachers and caretaker of ORA children in the ORA school in Damazin 

ORA and the OLF ran schools which taught classes up to grade six. This was also the case in areas under OLF control inside Oromia. It was here that together with the literacy classes that were given to Oromo refugees in different places in the Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia and elsewhere that the qubee based educational system adopted by all school Oromia in 1992 was laid down.

 

Picture 12: Shows a classroom in Bikoree in 1990. It is difficult to say how many of these lovely kids were killed during the June-July 1992 TPLF onslaught or died in Dhidheessa concentration camp later. (Photo: Tarfa Dibaba)

Through Forests and Marshlands and Over Mountains with Killers on their Heels

Dhaba reported that they, the teachers and caretakers (hereafter the guardians), fled with the children into the Charphaa forest. From there, they sent some of the children away to Gidaami and some of them to Begi to look for relatives or hide among the local population. The TPLF forces arrived after sometime and opened fire on the group. In the shooting that followed some of the children were killed or injured. The children and their guardians fled from Carphaa to the Gaara Arbaa mountain range. Helped with information about the whereabouts of the TPLF forces provided by the sympathetic local population, they had been hitherto ahead of their hunters. However, soon aftertwo days after their arrival in Gaara Arbaa area, they detected that the TPLF fighters were building a ring around the forest wherein they were hiding. The children were forced to rush down the hillsides towardthe Dabus River. As the month of June is part of the season when the rainfalls are the heaviest, the valley had turned into a marshland and was covered with impenetrable tall elephant grass. Fleeing on foot through thewild and impenetrable vegetation was taxing. Blood-thirsty insects swarmed in the tall grass making travel through them immensely difficult and unbearable even to the most experienced adults: they had to fight off biting insects and struggle to walk through the grass at the same time. The children and their guardians found the Dabus was in full flood and unfordable on foot. Fortunately there were canoes owned by the locals. However, they carried only 2 or 3 individuals at a time. Therefore, it took many hours filled with fear and anxiety to take the children to the other side.  After ten days, the children and their caretakers came to Mummee Dhoqsaa on the banks of the Dillaa River, a tributary of the Dabus after ten days (Dhaabaa, December 9, 2013).

The Dillaa was also in flood and, as the children were trying to cross under similar stress and circumstances (as when they crossed the Dabus), the TPLF, whose soldiers were still on their heels opened fire on them in the Gunfi area. According the OSG report mentioned above, an unknown number of children were killed or wounded and some were captured by the soldiers. The rest were separated and scattered in different directions. Dhaabaa reported (December 9, 2013) that a clinic in Gunfi (where children who were suffering from malaria and other diseases were getting medication) was surrounded by the TPLF soldiers who opened fire on them. Although caretakers were assigned and had accompanied each group (Dhaabaa, see above) it is difficult to say how many of the children were able to escape the TPLF troops as they continued to chase and capture or kill them for many weeks.

Picture 13: Some of the ORA teenagers in Bikoree, Sudan, having a good time together in 1990. This and the other pictures taken in exile show that that the children were well cared for by ORA. Photo: Tarfa Dibaba

As mentioned above, there is no doubt that the TPLF forces knew that those who were fleeing from them were children, as well as their caretakers and teachers, and not Oromo soldiers or fighters. Although they might have been “carrying out” orders from above, they behaved monstrously as though the children they were chasing and killing were not human beings like themselves. It seems that they captured, persecuted or killed the children as a matter of duty.

Killed by TPLF bullets or taken by floods while fleeing from them

Nobody knows how many of the ORAchildren were killed or captured and imprisoned by the TPLF.  Different incidents are mentioned by the sources in which the children incurred casualties at the initial stage of their flight. According Abdalla Suleeman, a former OLF fighter, in one attack at a place called Yaa’a Masaraa near Kobor in Begi district over 30 children were killed when the TPLF forces bombed a building in which the fleeing children took shelter. He also mentions that many children had also drowned when the pursuing forces opened fire on them on the banks of the Dabus River (personal communication, March 2013). One of the eyewitness-accounts of the TPLF assault was given by a 13-year old girl, “Milkii” (fictive name as she is married and lives in Oromia now). Milkii was among the group of children who were sent in the direction of Mendi in the north. Although wounded when her group was attacked on the banks of the Dabus River, she was lucky to escape together with her 11-year brother and many of her companions. Regrettably, it was not all the children in her group who had that luck. She said that between 35 and 40 children in her cohort were killed on the riverbank or drowned while trying to cross to the other side seeking safety.

Since we do not have any other eyewitness of the incident described above, we have to accept Milkii’s account with caution. This, not because I believe she is telling lies, but because of the situation under which she had made the observation. However, it is important to note that other sources also indicate that a number of the ORA children had drowned while crossing the Dabus River or its tributaries.The OSG, for example, mentions that about 20 children had drowned while Dhaabaa mentions only one child who died in such an accident. Since the children were dispersed and fled in different directions, nobody seems to know how many of them had drowned or were killed during the flight. It is also difficult to verify whether the sources are referring to the same or to different incidents. In general, given the information we have, it is impossible to account for the fate of the majority of the 1,724 children who returned home, nor of the 300 who were in the Caanqaa and Mummee Dhoqsaa shelters when the TPLF attacked them in June 1992. However, regarding the number of children killed by the TPLFforces,the OSG (Press Release no. 13, August 1996: 17) wrote that “Between 170 and 200 bodies of children were found.” The OSG indicated that the figures were based on “Interviews with surviving children, teachers and carers, and interviews with residents in Wollega province over the last twelve months”. In short, although wecannot confirm the death statistics given above, there is no doubt that many of the ORA children were killed during their three-month long vicious pursuit and assault by the TPLF forces. Among those who were gunned down by the TPLF forces were the three boys—Tolina Waaqjiraa, Duula Tafarraa and Sagantaa Useen—mentioned in the letter cited at the beginning of the article (Dhaabaa, December 9, 2013). As mentioned above, over 300 children were captured and imprisoned in the Dhidheessa concentration camp. As will be revealed in the next part of this article, many died there from hunger, diseases and torture.

Crime against guardians and sympathetic local Oromo population

Noteworthy aspects of the flight of the ORA children were the courage that their guardians—their teachers and caretakers—had shown in protecting them as well as the support given them by the inhabitants of the districts they traversed. The price which both the guardians and many sympathetic peasants have paid to protect and support the children was high. Some were killed during the flight. It seems many were also caught and imprisoned. Among the children’s guardians who were killed were Abbaa Jambaree and Adabaa Imaanaa. The killing of the physically handicapped Adabaa Imaanaa was carried out with barbaric brutality. Dhabaa wrote (November 21, 2013) that

Adabaa Imaanaa was a guardian of the ORA children starting in Bikoree until the time of the TPLF assault. As he couldn’t walk, I got help from the people who gave us a mule to be used by him during flight from the assaulters. We were followed by the enemy from place to place and arrived in Mummee Dhoksaa on the banks of the Dillaa Gogolaa. After sometime we were surrounded by the enemy. They opened gunfire on us. One of the children’s caretakers, Abba Jambaree was killed. We managed to cross the river by canoes. Since his mule was frightened by the gunfire, panicked and galloped away, we sent away Adaba Imaanaa to limp to his village hiding from the enemy. When I went to his village later and I heard from his neighbors that he had reached his village with difficulty. But the TPLF agents had traced him, surrounded his house, took him out and killed him in late 1992.

However, in spite of the risks involved, the Oromo inhabitants of the districts through which the children passed, sheltered, fed, and directed them to the safest routes, informing them about the whereabouts of the TPLF forces. They had also volunteered to receive and hide those children whom the ORA staff were forced to place in their guardianship. The generosity shown to the fleeing children and their guardians by the inhabitants of the many villages through which theypassed, did not go unpunished by the TPLF. According Dhaabaa (November 21, 2013), the first person to be accused of helping the ORA children was a priest the village of Gabaa Jimaata mentioned above. His name was Abbabaa. He was dragged out of his house by the TPLF soldiers and shot in cold blood. A farmer called GaaddisaaDaaphoo was killed for feeding the children and their guardians in Harrojjii, a village in which they stayed during their flight.

It is difficult to imagine the hate that makes people commit such atrocities. Why did they kill, for example, a physically handicapped old man? Is it because he was an Oromo? What did the Oromo do to them? How can one hate a people amongst whom one lives in such a manner? Some probable answers to these questions will be discussed in the forthcoming part of this article.

[1] Politicide” means “a crime committed with intention on political grounds.” More fully, it is a deliberate killing or physical destruction of a group who form (or whose members share a distinctive characteristic of) a political movement.
[2] I was a contributor for a short time before I left the Ethiopia in September 1977.
[3] See for example, Virginia Lulling, “Oromo Refugees in a Sudanese Town”, Journal of Northeast African Studies, 8(2&3), 1996;

---

Mekuria Bulcha, PhD and Professor of Sociology, is an author of widely read books and articles. His most recent book, Contours of the Emergent and Ancient Oromo Nation, is published by CASAS (Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society), Cape Town, South Africa, in 2011. He was also the founder and publisher of The Oromo Commentary (1990-1999).

Ethiopia: Gross Violations of Human Rights and an intractable conflict

Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA)

26^th Session of United Nations Human Rights Council

Geneva, Palais des Nations,

Presented By :Garoma B. Wakessa : Executive Director of HRLHA

June 19, 2014

Introduction:  It is common in democratic countries around the world for people to express their grievances/ dissatisfactions and complaints against their governments by peaceful demonstrations and assemblies.  When such nonviolent civil rallies take place, it should always be the state’s responsibility to respect and guard their citizens’ freedom to peacefully assemble and demonstrate. These responsibilities should apply even during times of political protests, when a state’s own power is questioned, challenged, or perhaps undermined by assemblies of citizens practicing in nonviolent resistance. If a government responds to peaceful protests improperly, a peaceful protest might lead to a violent protest- that could then become an intractable conflict. Government agents, most of all the police, must respect the local and international standards of democratic rights of the citizens during peaceful assemblies or demonstrations.

The Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1995), articles 29 and 30, grants democratic rights to Ethiopian citizens without distinction[1].  Under these articles, the right of thought, opinion and expression, the right of assembly, demonstration and petition are the legitimate rights of Ethiopians through which they can express their opinions and dissatisfactions with the performances and activities of their government. The UN Human Rights council 19^th Session (A/HRC/19/L.17),  on March  19, 2012 and 25^{th      Session}   (A/HRC/25/L.20,)  on  March 24,  2014   Resolutions #2 calls upon  governments to uphold their responsibilities to promote and protect human rights in the context of peaceful protests  “ States have the responsibility, including in the context of peaceful protests, to promote and protect human rights and to prevent human rights violations, including extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearances, and torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and calls upon States to avoid the abuse of criminal and civil proceedings or threats of such acts at all times;”

The Ethiopian government continues to toss critical journalists in jail for “treason” and “terrorism.” Schibbye served only 14 months of his 11-year sentence. He and his photographer Johan Persson were pardoned and freed in September 2012. But Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega, on whose behalf Schibbye accepted the Golden Pen of Freedom, has been in prison since his arrest in 2011 and may have to serve his full 18-year sentence.

Swedish journalist Martin Schibbye’s personal story of life in Addis Ababa’s notorious Kaliti prison

June 18, 2014, TURIN, Italy (Philstar) – In the darkened auditorium in this Italian city, some forum participants could be seen dabbing at their eyes while others could be heard blowing their nose.

It wasn’t anything in the air in the 90-year-old former Fiat automobile plant that is now the Lingotto Conference Center that made the delegates misty-eyed the other day. What touched the audience was the speech by a Swedish journalist who spent time in an Ethiopian prison for “terrorism.”

I have attended several of the annual gatherings of the World Editors Forum, where a Golden Pen of Freedom is traditionally awarded to a journalist who embodies the continuing struggle for press freedom around the world.

The typical participants in this forum are senior journalists who tend to be hardened and even jaded to suffering. Monday’s event was the first time that I saw anyone moved to tears by a colleague’s story.

“The first screams were always the worst,” Swedish journalist Martin Schibbye began his personal story of life in Addis Ababa’s notorious Kaliti prison. He would never be free of those screams, he said.

He described regular beatings, of inmates being hanged upside down. In the detention cells they were packed “like slaves” and had to sleep on their side. “Once a month an inmate leaves with his feet first,” he narrated.

More than the torture and disease, Schibbye recalled, the hardest part was “the fear of speaking.”

“It’s not the guard towers with machine guns that keep the prison population calm. It is the geography of fear. People who speak politics are taken away. They disappear,” Schibbye recounted. “It went under my skin… I would wake up wondering if I had said something against the government in my sleep.”

The Ethiopian government continues to toss critical journalists in jail for “treason” and “terrorism.” Schibbye served only 14 months of his 11-year sentence. He and his photographer Johan Persson were pardoned and freed in September 2012. But Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega, on whose behalf Schibbye accepted the Golden Pen of Freedom, has been in prison since his arrest in 2011 and may have to serve his full 18-year sentence.

Nega was initially joined in prison by his wife, who in her 17 months of incarceration gave birth to their son. She at least has been freed and is currently seeking asylum in the United States.

“They will never break him,” Schibbye said after reading a letter written by the Ethiopian to an older son.

Even if they have robbed Nega of almost all his freedoms including “the freedom to drink or eat, and even to shit,” what they can’t take away from him is the freedom to be what he wants to be, Schibbye said: “Eskinder is a journalist. And every day that he wakes up in the Kaliti prison is just another day at the office.”

“It’s not us that are fighting for his freedom,” Schibbye said as he concluded his speech, “but rather he who is fighting for ours. Ayzoh Eskinder! Ayzoh!” (The Ethiopian word means “be strong, chin up.”)

Most Filipinos have forgotten the systematic torture of political dissidents during the Marcos dictatorship and may not care what happens in Ethiopia, seen as a hopelessly failed state.

Unfortunately for us, however, instead of being detained and tortured, Filipino journalists are simply killed.

Journalism in the Philippines, as in other countries, also faces new threats that have emerged as technology allows states, private groups and crime gangs to monitor digital communication, and as governments invoke national security to clamp down on press freedom.

* * *

Journalists are facing traditional threats in delivering the news in places where civil liberties are currently being curtailed, such as Thailand and Ukraine. But because of the war on terrorism and because states are increasingly equipped to increase surveillance of individuals, press freedom is under threat even in its traditional bastions: the United States, the UK and other Western European nations.

At one of the sessions here, Associated Press president and CEO Gary Pruitt narrated how the American wire agency cooperated with their government in May 2012 and deferred publication of a foiled al-Qaeda bomb plot in Yemen because, AP was told, certain individuals could be compromised and lives could be placed at risk.

Later it was learned that the US government had secretly seized AP phone records including text messages to find out who leaked the story.

Aghast over what Pruitt described as one of the worst intrusions in its 168-year history, AP asked the US Justice Department to safeguard the records and strengthen their rules governing such cases. The US government agreed and promised that no journalist would be prosecuted for doing his job.

It was good to know no one would be sent to jail “for committing journalism,” Pruitt said, but the incident “created a very real chilling effect” on AP’s sources.

The British press, for its part, has not yet recovered from the phone hacking scandal, which has paved the way for UK officials to impose rules that tend to curtail press freedom.

“We have gone from hero to zero,” said Guy Black, executive director of the UK’s Telegraph Media Group. “Where once we could draw on our history of free speech, now we are held as a shining example that we are shackling the press.”

Why are trends in the US and UK worrisome? As Claudio Paolillo of Uruguay noted, Latin American journalists used to look up to the American and British media as models of press freedom. “Not anymore,” he said.

Worse, Paolillo said, the moves of the US and British governments to curtail press freedom in the name of national security were inspiring despots. The attitude, he said, is, “If the US can do it, I can do it too.”

* * *

I know prominent Filipinos who think the Philippine press could use tighter regulation, but government intrusions on journalists’ work can quickly get out of hand.

Borrowing a line from Winston Churchill, Pruitt reminded the audience, “The media is the worst check on government except for all the others. It’s all we’ve got.”

What can journalists do in the face of increasing government surveillance even in Western democracies? Panel moderator Kai Strittmatter of Germany urged the audience: “Let’s not start getting used to this. Let’s not find some of these things normal.”

“All our freedoms stem from (press freedom),” Black said. “We have to fight.”

Eskinder Nega is doing just that, in the worst conditions. He is showing, Schibbye said, “that they can jail journalists but they can never succeed in jailing journalism.”

Source: Philstar

Every year, many Ethiopians, escaping one of the poorest countries in the world, pay brokers to transport them across the Gulf of Aden, through Yemen, into Saudi Arabia. The attraction is construction or domestic work, paying just enough to support a family back home. Last week, a boat carrying sixty migrants destined for Yemeni shores sank with no survivors

The fate of migrant workers in Yemeni ‘torture camps’

June 16, 2014 (Middle East Monitor) — A new report from Human Rights Watch revisits the torture camps of Yemen, where the only way out for the tens of thousands of migrant workers interned each year is a ransom payment from back home – and until it arrives, torture, beatings and inhumane conditions.

Nearly all of the fifty to a hundred thousand illegal migrants that arrive each year into Yemen, en route to Saudi Arabia, pass through these camps.

Every year, many Ethiopians, escaping one of the poorest countries in the world, pay brokers to transport them across the Gulf of Aden, through Yemen, into Saudi Arabia. The attraction is construction or domestic work, paying just enough to support a family back home. Last week, a boat carrying sixty migrants destined for Yemeni shores sank with no survivors.

Once on dry land, they are placed in trucks or cars and driven towards Saudi Arabia. At the border town, nearly all find themselves unexpectedly interned – in the back yard of a warehouse building, if they’re lucky with a tarpaulin stretched over the top but often exposed to scorching temperatures. Others find themselves in purpose made camps, packed in with dozens of others. The brokers had lied to them – promising they will be smuggled all the way to Saudi Arabia but instead selling them into “torture camps.”

First, any money is taken from the captured migrants. Most will be beaten up with fists, kicks and sticks, often by Ethiopian guards working for Yemeni gang-masters – before being told they should phone home. If the family of the migrant don’t wire a ransom to the kidnappers, the migrant will be tortured. If they refuse to phone, they will be tortured. If the family can’t afford the ransom (around $600, in a country where net monthly salaries are around $400), the captive will be tortured until they find a way to pay.

One man described watching a man’s eyes being gouged out with a water bottle. Another said that traffickers hung him by wire wrapped around his thumbs, and tied a string with a full water bottle around his penis. With a technique apparently borrowed from the Ethiopian security services, male migrants have string tied around their penis – and are then forced to drink bottle after bottle of water. The pain is unimaginable. Others reported being burnt with melted hot plastic. Witnesses said the traffickers raped the female migrants.

This horrific system is run with near impunity. Much of the material in the report comes directly from the traffickers themselves, who are bold enough to openly divulge their operational techniques. Hostages are frequently seen being loaded into trucks parked in busy streets, often in daylight. The locations of the torture camps are barely secrets. Most of the camps (there are around thirty in Haradh, and probably more elsewhere in Yemen) are operated by local families, often on land that they own (with paperwork to prove it).

Occasionally, a migrant will die – not deliberately, just over-enthusiastic sadism inflicted by their captors. Dead bodies are dumped out on the street outside the camps, undisguised.

Escapes happen every so often. On occasion the camp guards turn a blind eye – there is such a steady flow of migrants that rounding them up is too much effort: there will be a new batch in the morning. At any one time, up to twenty five thousand migrants can be in the border town of Haradh at any one time. Nearly all end up in torture camps.

Sometimes the smugglers return after the ransoms have been paid, and do help migrants to cross the border into Saudi. But more likely, they return to the beaches, to pick up yet more Ethiopians to sell to the torture camps.

The phenomenon is not new – the inter-linked system of smugglers, traffickers and camps has been in place since around 2003. Human rights groups have done a good job calling attention to it, the BBC and others have provided excellent coverage. But this new report from Human Rights Watch reveals for the first time why the traffickers can operate so blatantly – the complicity of police, army, coastguard and government officials.

There were government raids in 2013, ordered from Sana’a, in which the Border Guard say around fifty camps were raided and several thousand migrants were released. The numbers may be an exaggeration – local reports suggest that only a couple of thousand were freed, and certainly a maximum of twenty traffickers were ever charged. There is yet to be a single successful prosecution.

Though involvement of government employees with human traffickers is widespread – the Interior Minstry couldn’t point to a single case of disciplinary or legal action taken against corrupt officials.

At the lowest level – manning one of the three checkpoints at the border town of Haradh is simply lucrative.

The average monthly salary in Yemen hovers just above $200. Smugglers who don’t forewarn of their arrival, and want to pass through without arrest, can expect to pay $130 per car, while those who notify the checkpoint in advance pay just $30. Smugglers pack the cars full to maximise their returns.

Depending on what route the smugglers take after Haradh, there are then either six or nine further checkpoints to go through, before entering into Saudi territory. Each of these typically comes with a further bribe of about $50.

Turning a blind eye for financial gain is common, indeed the system couldn’t exist without it – but many officials also enter into the trade themselves, selling foreign migrants they detain back to the torture camps.

Owners of the camps are believed to pass on protection money to the more senior commanders in the area – police, border guards or military. Many will receive a phone call the night before any raid – quickly dismantling the camp and freeing their hostages.

Saudi officials are also involved. On that side of the border, the evidence suggests complicity goes no higher than customs officials wanting to make a quick buck, though there are some reports of Saudis selling detained migrants back to the torture camps, or traffickers.

Security and immigration concerns have seen Riyadh order the construction of a solid fence stretching the entire border. An American firm is reportedly involved with the design – which includes watchtowers, state of the art sensors and CCTV cameras. In many ways, Yemen is to Saudi Arabia as Mexico is to the United States, a troubling, unstable neighbour. Human and drug trafficking are huge problems in Yemen, while the Houthi insurgency in the north also presents a threat.

Ironically, those Saudi officials who are honest enough to not take bribes are far more dangerous. It’s not clear whether the shoot-to-kill policy is official – but walking the border you can often see the bodies of smugglers or failed migrants, riddled with bullet holes.

There are several unanswered questions. The first is how news of the camps hasn’t filtered back to Ethiopians and Somalis in their home countries., or if it has – hasn’t deterred people from running the gauntlet.

Awareness campaigns are being run by the Ethiopian government and the Danish Refugee Council, but often the circumstances in which people decide to migrate are sudden, unplanned or simply necessary for survival. There may not be others nearby who have experience of being smuggled. The deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants from Saudi Arabia back to Ethiopia may increase awareness.

The fate of women migrants is also unclear. There are certainly more men than women on the boats arriving into Yemen, perhaps three for every one man. But the torture camps (which most migrants get caught in), contain a far smaller proportion of females than the boats did.

It is not quite clear where these women end up. Females may have a higher value to the traffickers, as they can be sold as sex slaves. It is suspected that many end up being trafficked into Saudi Arabian brothels, and are never seen again.

The final unanswered question is how far up the chain of government the corruption and complicity runs. The coastguard’s efforts to chase down smugglers boats were hampered last year when, allegedly, a new official from Sana’a was appointed. He was suspiciously unenthusiastic about running expeditions to capture smugglers.

There are rumours, perhaps urban myths, that the former President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, made his fortune in the trade. He spent his early career working at a military checkpoint where trafficking was commonplace.

Some say those in the current transitional government, in Sana’a, may also be complicit. When raids do occur, it is usually the military central command rather than the Ministry of Interior who conduct them. There are genuine concerns amongst some officials in Sana’a, who want to get the torture camps closed. But not telling the Ministry of Interior the raids are going ahead suggests that civil servants in that department may be tipping off the local police in Haradh.

Human Rights Watch have made a range of recommendations – mainly focused on improving accountability for those caught, reducing corruption and trying to increase the number of raids.

Sana’a announced recently that no more raids could be carried out, because there were not large enough facilities to feed, water and house the thousands freed that would be freed from the camps.

Human Rights Watch are lobbying international donors to pay for lorries, tents and marquees which can be stowed away, then rolled out the moment a raid happens. The construction of this temporary mass residence would be so fast, torture camps might not realise a raid is on the way.

If after that, Sana’a still refuse to deal with the problem – it may become clear how high the complicity really goes.

Source: Middle East Monitor

In mid-May, Amnesty International issued a public statement calling out the use of deadly force by Ethiopian security forces against a series of nonviolent protests in Oromia that began in late April. The protesters are objecting to the part of a new development plan that envisions the expansion of the national capital region into parts of Oromia. The central government claims this change will help bring city services to remote areas, but many Oromos fear it will only lead to land grabs and evictions.

Flare-Up in Ethiopia’s Oromia Region

June 13, 2014 (Early Warning Project) – Our statistical risk assessments continue to identify Ethiopia as one of the world’s countries at greatest risk of state-led mass killing, and recent reports of violent repression in Ethiopia’s Oromia region suggest one pathway by which that dismal but still unlikely outcome could happen.

In mid-May, Amnesty International issued a public statement calling out the use of deadly force by Ethiopian security forces against a series of nonviolent protests in Oromia that began in late April. The protesters are objecting to the part of a new development plan that envisions the expansion of the national capital region into parts of Oromia. The central government claims this change will help bring city services to remote areas, but many Oromos fear it will only lead to land grabs and evictions. According to Amnesty,

Numerous reports from witnesses, local residents and other sources indicate that the security forces have responded with excessive force against peaceful protesters. Forces comprised of the federal police and military special forces known as ‘Agazi’, have fired live ammunition at unarmed protesters in a number of locations including in Wallega and Madawalabu universities and Ambo and Guder towns, resulting in deaths in each location.

Amnesty also reported that scores of protesters have been beaten during and after protests in numerous towns in the region, and that hundreds and possibly thousands of members of the main Oromo opposition party, the Oromo Federalist Congress, have been taken to unofficial detention sites and kept there indefinitely without due process. In an official communique, the Ethiopian government acknowledged deaths in some of the towns where Amnesty reported killings but claimed it was not responsible and blamed them instead on rogue “anti-peace” forces.

This crisis is really just the latest manifestation of a deep and long-running conflict. As one Ethiopia-focused researcher sympathetic to the Oromo protesters described in a recent post on the Warscapes blog,

The brutal crackdown on the Oromo people is not new. The Ethiopian state itself has been predicated upon the expropriation of Oromo lands and held together through violent assimilationist policies, the destruction of the identity of conquered and resistant people, and economic and political exploitation of groups who are not represented in government. With each changing regime state power has been retained in the hands of minority rulers and the Oromos, who are the largest group living on the richest land, have remained the main targets of Ethiopian state repression, terrorism and discrimination. Over the last two decades alone multiple human rights organizations have released reports documenting the extent of extrajudicial killings, mass imprisonment, and torture on a massive scale, mutilations and disappearances.

Of course, most flare-ups of protest and repression like this one pass without producing episodes of mass killing in which more than 1,000 noncombatant civilians are killed. A similar eruption occurred in Oromia 10 years ago in response to another unilateral decision by the central government, that time to relocate the regional capital. Only a small number of protesters—mostly students then, too—were killed, but hundreds were detained for long periods and suspended or expelled from university. And, in a cynical sense, the repression worked; the regional capital was moved, and the wave of public protest eventually ebbed.

So far, our pool of forecasters hasn’t budged in response to these events. Since we opened a question on our opinion pool about the risk of a state-led mass killing in Ethiopia before 2015, the small number of forecasters who have weighed in on this one have pegged the risk under 10 percent, among the lowest for the (higher-risk) cases about which we ask this question, and that has barely moved in the past few months. What’s unclear is whether that’s because they expect things to follow a course similar to 2004, or because they simply aren’t aware of the recent developments.

Source: Early Warning Project

“ምኞቴ ይህን ሽልማት እኔ እንድቀበለው አልነበረም” በማለት ንግግሩን የጀመረው ማርቲን፣ “ዛሬ ጠዋት ስነሳ ምናለ፦“ ተፈታሁኮ፤ ሽልማቱን እኔ ራሴ ልቀበል እመጣለሁ” የሚል ስልክ ከአዲስ አበባ በስልክ ብሰማ ብዬ ተመኝሁ” ብሎአል።

ጋዜጠኛ እስክንድር ነጋ ተሸለመ

ሰኔ ፪(ሁለት)ቀን ፳፻፮ ዓ/ም ኢሳት ዜና :-የ2014 “የጎልደን ፔን ኦፍ ፍሪደም” ሽልማት አሸናፊ የሆነው እስክንድርነጋ ዛሬ ሽልማቱን ተቀበለ።

በጣሊያን ቶሪኖ በተካሄደው የሽልማት ስነ-ስር ዓት  ላይ  እስክንድርን ወክሎ ሽልማቱን የተቀበለው በቃሊቲእስርላይየነበረው ስዊድናዊ ጋዜጠኛ ማርቲን ሽብዬ ነው።

“ምኞቴ ይህን ሽልማት እኔ እንድቀበለው አልነበረም” በማለት ንግግሩን የጀመረው ማርቲን፣ “ዛሬ ጠዋት ስነሳ  ምናለ፦“ ተፈታሁኮ፤ ሽልማቱን እኔ ራሴ ልቀበል እመጣለሁ” የሚል ስልክ ከአዲስ አበባ በስልክ ብሰማ ብዬ ተመኝሁ” ብሎአል።

“ይህ ግን አልሆነም፤ ከሰ ዓታት በፊት እስክንድር ነጋ  በዱላቸው የታሰሩባትን ክፍል ግድግዳ እየመቱ  በማይክራፎን “ቆጠራ!ቆጠራ!” እያሉ በሚጮኹ የወህኒ ጠባቂዎች ድምጽ ነው ከመኝታው የተነሳው” ያለው ማርቲን፣ የሙያ ባልደረባውን  ወክሎ ሽልማቱን ሊቀበል  በስፍራው መገኘቱን ግልጾአል።

“ምንም እንኩዋን  ከሲያ እስር ቤት ነጻ እንደሆንኩ ባስብም፤ ከትስታዎቹና ከእስር ቤቱ ድምጾች ፈጽሞ ነጻ ልሆን አልችልም”ሲልም ማርቲን ተናግሮአል።

ማርቲን በሲሁ ንግግሩ እስክንድር በእስር ቤት እየደረሰበት ያለውን ስቃይ  እና የቃሊቲ እስር ቤትን አስከፊና አስቀያሚ ገጽታዎች  በበቂ ሁኔታ ለታዳሚዎቹ አሳይቶአል።

እስክንድር ህግን ጥሰሀል ተብሎ ለእስር የተዳረገው መንግስትን በመተቸቱ እንደሆነ ያወሳው ማርቲን፤ “ይህ የሚያም ቀልድ ነው”ብሎ አል።

“ይህ የጎልደን ፔን ሽልማት፤ ከ1000 ቀናት በላይ በእስር ላሳለፈው ለእስክንድር ነጋ ብቻ ሳይሆን እስክንድርን  ለእስር ለዳረገው ለጋዜጠኝነት ሙያ ጭምር የተሰጠ ክብር እንደሆነ ይሰማኛል” ሲልም ለሽልማቱ ያለውን አክብሮት ገልጾአል።

እስክንድር በአካል ከደረሰበት ቅጣት በላይ ከቤተሰቡ እና ከሚወደው ብቸኛ ልጁ በመለያዬት የደረሰባት የመንፈስ ቅጣት የከፋ እንደሆነም ማርቲን አመልክቱዋል።

እስክንድር የተማረ እና በሌላ ሙያ ሊሰማራ እየቻለ በጨቁዋኞች እጅ እየተሰቃየ የሚገኘው ለእውነት ባለው የጸና አቁዋም እና ለሀገሩ ባለው ፍቅር ምክንያት እንደሆነም ገልጾአል።