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HUMAN RIGHT RALLY IN NÜRNBERG – THE OROMO-ETHIOPIA CASE BY MR. DEMEKE BORU
12thAugust2015
Peaceful protest held in Brussels, Belgium opposing TPLF/ Ethiopia’s land grabs and genocide going on against Oromo people. (Picture above are from Oromo social net works, 11 August 2015).
Oromians in USA held peaceful demonstrations in front of the White House and States Department in protest of mass arrests and genocidal killings going on in Oromia/ Ethiopia by fascist TPLF Ethiopia. 19 June 2015. Lammiiwwan Oromoo biyya Ameerikaa jiraatan Waxabbajjii 19 bara 2015 Waashingteenitti wal gahuun gidira fi ajjeechaa Wayyaaneen saba Oromo irraan gahaa jirtu balaaleffachuun mootummaan Ameerikaa akka dhiibbaa godhu gaafatan.
A Call to Demonstrate Against the TPLF Tyrannical Regime in Ethiopia!
Wednesday, 27 May 2015
Dear All Oromos and friends of the Oromo in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area and living in other states of USAThe Oromo Community Organization (OCO) of the Washington Metropolitan Area, the Oromo Youth Self-help Association (OYSA), the International Oromo Women’s Organization (IOWO) and the Coordinating Committee formed to establish the Oromo Community Association in North America (OCO_NA) have jointly planned to hold a protest rally in front of the White House and US State Department on June 19, 2015 starting 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM against the Oromo massacre by the TPLF led minority regime in Ethiopia.The purpose of this protest rally is to strongly protest against the ongoing widespread human rights violations and extrajudicial killings of Oromos in general and Oromo students in universities in particular by the TPLF minority regime in Ethiopia. In May 2014 the government security forces killed 70 students demonstrating against the TPLF led minority regime in Ethiopia land grab policy, thousands wounded and arrested. Oromo youth are targeted in general. There are about 45,000 political prisoners as reported by different ex-political prisoners.
The current Ethiopia Government is the regime that dehumanizes the Oromo public; violates the basic human rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly. The Regime is holding thousands of Oromo political prisoners in its notorious Maikelawi and many other Government detention centers without due legal process and displaces millions of Oromo farmers from their land in the name of master plan development to grab land. The arrests and tortures of Oromos have continued. Many of those who survived the torture have remained incarcerated. For example, at the end of 2014 two Oromo farmers in Salale Zone, North Shoa were brutally murdered and their bodies dragged and put on public display for resisting oppression against /TPLF regime. Very recently, in 2014, Mr. Abbay Tsehaye, one of the top officials of TPLF, adviser of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and head of the Addis Ababa Master plan designers declared war of terror and genocide against the Oromo people for resisting the expansion of Addis Ababa Administration into Oromia State and the ongoing Oromo land grab by the TPLF led minority regime. Oromo citizens couldn’t live peacefully to work, to learn and determine their destinies. Ethiopia is an open prison for the Oromo nationals. Thousands are fleeing their country due to lack of security, peace, freedom and guarantee for life. Young Oromos who fled their country due to Ethiopian government brutality have fallen victims to the beheadings by ISIS in Libya. Many others have perished in the Mediterranean Sea when smugglers’ boats capsized. Oromos are also victims of recent xenophobic killings in South Africa and displacement of refugees by civil war in Yemen. We are protesting to expose this wanton state aggression against the citizens. We make the protest rally to request the U.S administration and the democratic loving Americans to exert utmost pressure on the Ethiopian dictatorial regime so that it stop the arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, tortures and killings of innocent Oromos and university students for simply exercising their God-given basic human rights; freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of peaceful demonstration. We request because the regime is the ally of the United States. In particular, the rally will demand a halt to the killing of Oromo students who are peacefully protesting against the so-called Integrated Development Master Plan whose sole purpose is to illegally expand the capital city, Addis Ababa/Finfinnee towards Oromia State, thereby systematically evicting Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands as well as dispossessing them of their properties, identity, culture, language, freedom, way of life…etc. We also oppose and denounce the false & predetermined election and its shameful results which was orchestrated to legitimize and elongate the authoritarian tenure of TPLF at the expense of the voices of millions of Oromo and other peoples in Ethiopia. The irresponsible TPLF minority gangs once again proved their dictatorial grip to power by declaring EPRDF’s sweeping the election. All Oromos, democratic nations and friends of Oromo should stand against the heinous acts being perpetrated towards Oromo students by the minority led Ethiopian government as well as against the so-called Addis Ababa-Oromia state integrated master plan and also condemns in the strongest terms, the killings and violent atrocities committed against Ethiopian immigrants in Libya, South Africa and Yemen. We also demand that the authorities ordering and executing this massacre against Oromos and other peoples be held accountable for their crimes at an international court.
OCO, OYSA, IOWO and OCA-NA Coordinating Committee are calling upon all Oromos and friends of Oromo in USA and diaspora to demonstrate against this killer and cunning minority led regime in Ethiopia on the same day June 19, 2015. CO, OYSA, IOWO and OCA-NA Coordinating Committee a Joint Board of Directors Sorce: Ayyaantuu News
OROMO in Melbourne Say No to killings in Oromia, Ethiopia, South Africa, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other part of the world
May 1, 2015
HIRIIRA HAWAASA OROMOO VICTORIA MAGAALAA MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA (CAAMSA 1, 2015)
Report by Kiyyaa Gonfaa On Saturday, February 14, 2015, members of the Oromo Community in Norway protested in front of Trondheim Torg against the repressive and dictatorial Ethiopian regime. The demonstration was organized by the Oromo youth in Trondheim. The aim of the protest was to condemn the human rights violations against the Oromo people – as a result of which, many Oromos have been arrested, tortured and killed, and thousands have disappeared. The trend of repression is increasing alarmingly and a huge number of Oromos have been jailed, tortured and exposed to inhuman conditions under fabricated charges. The TPLF/EPRDF leadership has a standing policy of protracted attacks against the Oromo people – irrespective of age, sex, profession and occupation. To criminalize Oromo, being only Oromo is enough in Ethiopia. The recent Amnesty International report says, at least 5,000 ethnic Oromos have been arrested between 2011 and 2014 based on their actual or suspected peaceful opposition to the government. These include peaceful protesters, students, members of opposition political parties and people expressing their Oromo cultural heritage. After the Amnesty International report, the human rights violations against Oromos have continued. Just two month, on December 9, 2014, in Oromia, Salale province – Darra district – Goro Maskala town, the government soldiers killed Katama Wubatu and his comrade in front of the public. The Ethiopian ruling elites are most likely will continue their wild acts of killing, torturing and forcing millions Oromos to flee their homes. We are calling on the international community to stand against the brutality of the Ethiopian regime – particularly Norway, U.S.A., the UK and EU governments – to stop their relationships with the Ethiopian dictatorial regime and to stop sending their taxpayers’ money to TPLF. There are reports by international organizations that the aid has been used against the people to whom the money has originally been sent for. Finally, the organizers of this demonstration delivered a letter to the Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende at Clarion Hotel Trondheim. The slogans raised and chanted during the demonstration were:- – JUSTICE for massacred Oromo students; – STOP killing and imprisoning innocent Oromos; – FREE all Oromo political prisoners; – STOP selling Oromo land to foreign and local investors; – Ethiopian government, STOP evicting Oromo farmers from their land; – TPLF is brutalizing people in Ethiopia for 24 years; – Killing Oromos will never stop the Oromo struggle; – TPLF, you can kill thousands, but you can not kill 40-million Oromos …
Boobbaan Mootummaa Wayyaanee Salphinaan Xumuramte!Toronto, Canada, 8th February 2015
Another round of #OromoProtests against fascist TPLF Ethiopian regime’s delegation led by Abduleziz staying in Melbourne at 81-95 Henry St. Albans, February 7, 2015.
Liberation is a journey. However, for the weak minded, it is a journey toward an unreachable destination. For the brave community like Australian Oromo Community however, it is neither a short distance running nor it is unreachable destination. Nonetheless, for the shortsighted opportunists, liberation is the process of economic transactions. It is the process through which they make a living by selling their own people and information. Here is the protest of Australian Oromo Community in Victoria against those men and women who used the Oromo cause and came to Australia and now running around in Australia’s malls and hotels where this, the Tigre Trojan horse, named Abduleziz eats and sleeps at 81-95 Henry st. St. Albans on February 7, 2015. Thanks to the sacrificed heroes, we have glimpsed our future, we know the way and we have the truth on our side. #OromoProtests Hawaasti Oromoo Magaalaa Melbourne keessa jiraatan walgahii jila mootummaa Itoophiyaa morman. Hiriira mormii yeroo lammataaf Guraandhala 7, bara 2015 taasisan irratti akka ibsanitti, kanneen mootummaa Itoophiyaa deeggaran dhiittaa mirga namoomaa biyyattii keessatti gaggeeffamaa jiru waliin qooddatan. Walgahii Melbourne, naannoo St Albaansi (81-95 Henry st. St. Albans on February 7, 2015) keessatti godhame kana mormuuf hawaasti Oromoo, Ogaadeenii fi Itoophiyaa gamtaan bahanii dhaadannoo fi ejjannoo isaanii ibsataniiru. Ajjeechaan Itoophiyaa keessatti raawwataa jiru haa dhaababtu! Daaímman mana barumsaatti ajjeesuun gochaa shororkeessummaadha! Mootummaa abbaa Irree deeggaruun gocha isaa garagaaruu dha fi kkf sagalee tokkoon dhageessisaa turan. Jilli Ittaanaa prizidanti Caffee Oromiyaa, Abdulaaziz Mohaammadiin durfamu kun toraba darbes hoteela Kirawon Pilaazaa keessatti walgahii gochuuf yaalii mormiidhaan haqameera. http://oromedia.net/2015/02/08/hawaasti-oromoo-melbourne-jila-itoophiyaa-balaaleffatan/
#OromoProtests against TPLF agents in Melbourne, 7th February 2015
#OromoProtests against OPDO/ TPLF agents meetings in Melbourne and said no place for murderers in Australia. 31 January 2015. Due to the protesters the meeting was cancelled by Australian security forces.
#OromoProtests against OPDO/ TPLF agents meetings in Melbourne and said no place for murderers in Australia. 31 January 2015. Due to the protesters the meeting was cancelled by Australian security forces.
#OromoProtests in Frankfurt, Germany in front of the Ethiopian embassy where meeting by Woyane (government) officials led by Dhaabaa Dabalee was underway. 31 January 2015.
#OromoProtests in Frankfurt, Germany in front of the Ethiopian embassy where meeting by Woyane (government) officials led by Dhaabaa Dabalee was underway. 31 January 2015.
URGENT: Statement released by Western Australian Oromo Community
The Western Australian Oromo Community says any individual or/and group of individuals who may take part in meeting with the Ethiopian government do not represent the Oromo Community in Western Australia. This is in reference to telephone conversation and written request made by Ethiopian Embassy in Canberra, Australia to meet with Oromo diaspora by high level of delegate from Oromia Regional State led by Vice President. Thank you for your invitation. As Oromo Community in Western Australia, we held a series of meeting and discussion about your request and made the following official statement to your request. We would like to inform you that we are not only unable to participate in any formal or informal discussion or dialog with the current Ethiopian Government body or it’s representative, but also we strongly and firmly oppose such gathering in its any form. We the Oromo community in Western Australia demands that the current Ethiopian regime immediate cessation of hostility against Oromo people. We demand that Government stops its lip service campaign in the election year; release all political prisoners without any precondition, respect the basic human right of freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and expression. We also demand that the Government stop displacing Oromo people from its ancestral lands. We speak loud and clear that the Government cease the power immediately and allow opposition political parties to operate in the country freely. We also demand that the Government respect its article 39 constitution and allow the nation and nationalities in the empire of self-determination including cessation or union at will. Then only we believe that the door of dialog and discussion with this Government be open. According to the press release “the current Ethiopia Government is the regime that dehumanized the Oromo public: marginalized the Oromo people politically, economically, and socially.”Here is the press release from Oromo Community of Western Australia. Official Statemen_OCWA The email letter sent to the Oromo community from Ethiopian Embassy Canberra indicated that “high level delegation of the Oromia Regional State led by the Vice President will visit Perth after January 23, 2015 (the specific date will be notified later) to meet with Oromo Diaspora in your city and the surroundings.” The purposes of the meeting are:
To brief on the objective situation (political, economy and social development) of the region,
To brief on the Diaspora Housing Development Program and
To brief on the upcoming Oromia International Diaspora Day
The venue will be in one of the big hotels in Perth, the cost of which will be covered by us. Therefore, as Chairman of your association, we seek your assistance to inform the leadership and members to attend the forthcoming meeting in Perth. The Diaspora Minister Counselor will call you on Saturday, 17 January 2015, for detailed discussion. Here is a letter sent from Ethiopian Embassy Canberra: Ambassador’s Letter
Read more at: http://maddawalaabuupress.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/urgent-statement-released-by-western.html
Oromo in Steinkjer, Norway, Demonstrate Against Oppression
Oromo in Steinkjer demonstrate against the government in their home country.
January 16, 2015, Steinkjer, Norway (Trønder-Avisa – Google Translation) — Thursday could hear slogans chanted throughout the square in Steinkjer. The reason was that a group of Ethiopians demonstrated against what they perceive as a dictatorial regime in their homeland. Being persecuted: – We belong to the Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, with around 40 percent of the population. The Government of Ethiopia is dominated by minority tribe that makes around 6 percent of the Ethiopian Population. Oromo being pursued by this government – including putting journalists and politicians from our group of people in jail, telling Alisee Fira Aynagee, who organized the demonstration. – You are far away from Ethiopia now. What do you hope to achieve? – We hope that some of the residents in Steinkjer come to hear our message, and we hope to arouse the Norwegian government, which supports the regime in Ethiopia, says Aynagee. Amnesty calls for action A report by Amnesty International tells of persecution, imprisonment, torture and killing of Oromo people in Ethiopia. Among other reports of youths being captured in military camps, where they get glowing coal on empty stomach, because they support the Oromo People’s Liberation Movement, Oromo Liberation Front. Teachers are being tortured when they refuse to teach in government friendly propaganda, and it is expected that Oromo politicians will be gagged towards the election in Ethiopia later this year. “At least 5,000 of the Oromo people have been imprisoned in Ethiopia between 2011 and 2014 because of peaceful opposition against the government,” writes Amnesty. The organization believes regional and international human rights organizations must react against the Ethiopian government to put an end to the persecution, which is described as “often shocking brutal.” Want secession Oromo people want Oromia shall be independent again. Land area was independent until 1890, when it was conquered and incorporated into Ethiopia. Since 1978, the Oromo celebrated their National Day to commemorate those who sacrificed their lives to liberate the people from what they see as Ethiopian colonialism. Oromia is a land area of 600,000 km2, ie about ten times as large as Norway, and about 35 million people considered Oromo. Source: Trønder-Avisa
For more see: http://ayyaantuu.com/horn-of-africa-news/oromo-in-steinkjer-norway-demonstrate-against-oppression/
Oromo Demonstration In Bergen, Norway Dec 20,2014 #BecauseIAmOromo #OromoProtest
Oromians in Germany (Berlin) Rally Against Tigrean Rulers’ Repression in Oromia. 3rd December 2014. #BecauseIAmOromo
Mudde 3 Bara 2014 yeroo ergamaan wayyaanee, Hayilamaram Dassaleny, gurgurtaa boonditi fi kadhaa gargaarsa mallaqa hidha haaromsa laga abbayaatif gara jaarman magaalaa Barlinitti imale ture ilmaan Oromoo Jaarman jiraatani kanneen Berliinitti dhiho jiranus ta’e kanneen fagoolle osoo fageenyi jara hin daangessin Iddoo adda adda irraa fageenya dheeraa km 6oo tahu deemuun gara magaalaa gudditti jaarmanitti imaludhaan hiriira nagaa bahani oolaniiru kaayyoon hiriira kanaas maqaa boonditin ummata oromoo saamuu fi goyyomsuun haa dhaabbatu, barattoota fi beektota oromoo hidhuunifi ajjeessuun harka murunifi harma muruun akka irra hin deebi’amne akekkachiisaniiru. Mootumman woyyaane dhibbaa fi cunqursaa ummata oromoo irraan gaha jiru irra akka of qusatuu fi Oromiyaan yero dhiho kessatti akka bilisoomu qabdu dhadanno jedhuun sagalee isaani dhageesifachaa turan. Kana males muslimtoonni kutaa biyyatti addaa addaa keessa funaanamani badii tokko male mana adabaa biyyatti keessatti hidhamanii jiranu bilisaan akka gadi lakkifamanuuf ifatti gaffi dhiyyessaniiru.
Waamicha hiriira mormii magaalaa Berliinii kan guyyaa 03/12/2014
Kabajamoo fi jaallatamo hawwaasoota/jiraatoota Oromoo biyya Berliin, Jarmanii, Awuroopaa fi firoota oromoo hundaaf,
Duran dursee nagaan oromummaa bakka jirttan maratti isiin haa qaqabu. Itti aansuun yeroof akka „Mumicha Ministeera Itoophiyaa“ jedhamee beekamuu fi ergamtuu Wayyaanee kan tahe Hailemariam Dessaalanyi gaafa 02-03/12/2014 magaalaa Berliin akka dhufuu/argamu fi akka Piresidaantii biyya Jermanii kan tahe Jochim Gauck duukaa akka marii qabaan odeefanoo mirkana’e qabna. Nuti hawaasnni Oromoo magaalaa Berliin kan biyya Oromiyaatti taha jiru (Sarbaminsa Mirga namumaa,Ajjechaa,Hidhaa siyaasaa, gidiraa, dhabamsiisa fi saamicha) fi kessumaa kan yeroo dhiyoo dura karaa AI „Amnesty International“ yakka umaata oromoo iratti otoo wal-iraa hincitiin tahaa jiru otoo hin irranfatiin mormii keenya wal-cina dhabachuudhaan sagalee guddan akka dhageesisnnuf akka irratti argamtaan isin afferra.Dirqamni lammummaas nurra jira. Guyyaa:03.12.2014 Sa’aa: 09:00 – 13:00 Edoo: Balbala Piresidaantii Jarmanii ful-dura Spreeweg 1, 10557 Berlin KHG-HOB
Rally in Norway Against Tigrean Rulers’ Repression in Oromia Against Oromo
Oromos in Lillehammer, Norway, Rally Against Tigrean Rulers’ Repression in Oromia Against Oromo (November 29, 2014) – Rally Against Repression #BecauseIAmOromo
London’s Rally Against Repression in Oromia by Tigrean Military
26 November 2014 ·
Oromos in UK marched in front of Westminster, Parliament Square, on November 26, 2014, to call attention to the repression against the Oromo people by the Tigrean military occupying Oromia. In October 2014, a detailed report, entitled “‘BECAUSE I AM OROMO’ – SWEEPING REPRESSION IN THE OROMIA REGION OF ETHIOPIA,” was published by the London-based Amnesty International. Thousands of Oromos were killed, and others imprisoned and/or exiled over the last 23 years since the occupation of Oromia by the Tigrean military government of Ethiopia. Protesters have asked the UK government to severe its financial support to the Tigrean military government of Ethiopia; the Tigrean military government uses the money from the West to finance its repression in Oromia (#BecauseIAmOromo).
Oromo-American Citizens Council (OACC) on Amnesty’s “Because I Am Oromo”
The following is a press release from the Oromo-American Citizens Council (OACC) on the Amnesty International’s Report: “Because I Am Oromo” —————- Oromo-American Citizens Council (OACC) is a Minnesota based, non-profit organization set up, among others, to expose human rights violations against the Oromo people and influence the policy of the U.S. towards Ethiopia. Minnesota is a state with the highest population of Oromos outside Africa. OACC collaborated with the Advocates for Human Rights in the 96-page report issued in 2009 under the title, “Human Rights in Ethiopia: Through the Eyes of The Oromo Diaspora.” That Report documented the experiences Oromos in Diaspora faced when they lived in Ethiopia. In May 2005, the Human Rights Watch also issued a report entitled, “Suppressing Dissent: Human rights Abuses and Political Repression in Ethiopia’s Oromia Region.” This report, for the first time, exposed the mechanisms used the Ethiopian government to control rural communities in Oromia through the Gott and Garee Systems. Furthermore, the periodic U.S. State Department’s own annual reports have documented rampant human rights violations against the Oromos over the years. Amnesty International’s report, ETHIOPIA: BECAUSE I AM OROMO: SWEEPING REPRESSION IN THE OROMIA REGION OF ETHIOPIA, is the most researched and the most comprehensive report ever conducted about human rights violation against the Oromos. The vivid descriptions of tortures conducted against Oromos, the long imprisonment without trial, the murders by security forces, the harsh actions taken against peaceful protests are all well documented with irrefutable evidences. The report further disclosed that any act of Oromo nationalism that is not controlled by the government, such as the Oromo language and the culture development movement, results in detentions and tortures. For that, we want to take this opportunity and congratulate and thank Amnesty International. While appreciating the efforts and achievements in documenting human rights violations against Oromos under the circumstances, we also want to reiterate that this is only the tip of the iceberg; the reality is much worse than what is documented in this report. Furthermore, we want to warn all stakeholders that this is not a time to rest on our laurels. Especially, as the 2015 election is approaching, the human rights violations will get worse. We, therefore, call up on: (a) All Oromo and Ethiopian civic organizations to come forward and work on the recommendations of the report mostly in mobilizing the communities and in putting pressure on the government. We need to get united and make our voices heard opposing such violations together as this is an issue that unites all of us. (b) All other international human rights organizations, based on this report, to put pressure on donor countries to make the respect of human rights a precondition to further assist the Ethiopian government. Nagessa Dube, Executive Director Oromo-American Citizens Council (OACC)
(November 16, 2014, Brisbane,Sydney, Australia – G20): Members Oromo Community in Australia held peaceful rally protesting against mass killings, torture and arrests of Oromo people by TPLF Ethiopia. The peaceful rally was held during G20 meetings in Brisbane. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-30064549 The Oromo community protests against Ethiopia’s genocidal killings, mass arrest and evictions which are happening in state of Oromia. The protesters call for rule of laws, freedom, human rights protections and expressed that the Ethiopian regime has been killing the Oromo nationals just because of that they are Oromo. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR25/006/2014/en/539616af-0dc6-43dd-8a4f-34e77ffb461c/afr250062014en.pdf They call for all G20 nations to stop funding the genocidal Ethiopian regime.
#BecauseIAmOromo. #OromoProtests. #FreeOromoStudents. 16th November 2014
Oromians living around Lillehammer, Norway are calling for peaceful demonstration on 29 November 2014 at 12 :00. This peaceful rally is to protest against human right violation and crime committed by TPLF Ethiopia in Oromia against Oromo people. #BecauseIAmOromo (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR25/006/2014/en)
London (Nov. 26, 2014): A Peaceful Rally Against Repression in Oromia – #BecauseIAmOromo
A Peaceful Demonstration to All Oromos and Friends of Oromo! #BecauseIAmOromo The OCUK has organised a big demonstration to protest against the never ending human rights violations in Oromia and to support the Amnesty International on its 2014 Report “Because I am Oromo” – which was the response of Oromos who had been the victims of the Ethiopian prisons to the interview questions by the Amnesty International on why they were persecuted by the Ethiopian government. Please come along and join the demonstration, and be the voice for the voiceless Oromo in Ethiopia: “I am arrested, tortured, looted, my property confiscated, and dehumanised ‘Because I am Oromo.’” Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2014 Time: 12:00 noon – 4:30 PM Address: Westminster, Parliament Square, SW1P 3BD – Closest station: Westminster (Jubilee, District and Circle Lines) OCUK Management Committee
“Because I am Oromo” Rally in Phoenix, Arizona (Nov. 13, 2014) – #BecauseIAmOromo
Because I am Oromo Discussion, Oromo Community in Minnesota, USA, Nov 8 2104
Oromo community in Hammer and arround Hamer Norway had a demonstration against the ongoing mass killing of Oromo students in Oromia by the TPLF/EPRDF regime of Ethiopia. #BecauseIAmOromo. #OromoProtests. #FreeOromoStudents. 3rd November 2014
Building Momentum in Geneva with the Oromo Diaspora
November 6, 2014 (The Advocates Post) — This fall was a busy time for advocacy at the United Nations on human rights in Ethiopia. It was also a great time to see The Advocates for Human Rights’ new toolkit, Paving Pathways for Justice and Accountability: Human Rights Tools for Diaspora Communities, in action. Universal Periodic Review Concludes with Some Fireworks In a one-hour session on September 19, the UN Human Rights Council adopted the outcome of its second Universal Periodic Review of Ethiopia. You can watch the video of the session here. I’ve blogged about the UPR of Ethiopiabefore, and the adoption of the outcome is the last step in the process. The adoption of the outcome is also the only opportunity civil society organizations have to speak during the UPR process. The Advocates for Human Rights is based in Minnesota, not Geneva, so we don’t generally get a chance to address the Human Rights Council during the UPR process. But I often watch the live webcasts, and this time I got up early to livetweet. Several non-governmental organizations took the floor and raised concerns about the human rights situation on the ground in Ethiopia. Civicus World Alliance for Citizenship Participation, for example, expressed concern about Ethiopia’s refusal to accept recommendations to remove draconian restrictions on free expression. Renate Bloem (left), speaking for Civicus, added:
While relying on international funding to supplement 50-60 percent of its national budget, the government has simultaneously criminalized most foreign funding for human rights groups in the country. These restrictions have precipitated the near complete cessation of independent human rights monitoring in the country. It is therefore deeply alarming that Ethiopia has explicitly refused to implement recommendations put forward by nearly 15 governments during its UPR examination to create an enabling environment for civil society.
The Ethiopian Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Minelik Alemu Getahun (top), lashed out at the NGOs that commented, particularly Civicus:
I regret the language used by some of the NGO representatives and particularly the call for action some of them made against Ethiopia in the Council for alleged isolated acts. Some of the language used in the allegations, particularly the remarks by CIVICUS on our budget is outrageous and incorrect. I can assure the Council that Ethiopia relies on its peoples and their resources, which is not unusual supplemented by international support.
The Human Rights Council then adopted the outcome of the second UPR of Ethiopia. The recommendations Ethiopia accepted are contained in the Report of the Working Group and an addendum, available here. Some of the more promising recommendations that Ethiopia accepted in September are:
Implement fully its 1995 Constitution, including the freedoms of association, expression and assembly for independent political parties, ethnic and religious groups and non-government organisations (Australia).
Take concrete steps to ensure the 2015 national elections are more representative and participative than those in 2010, especially around freedom of assembly and encouraging debate among political parties (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).
Consider implementing the pertinent recommendations from the Independent Expert on Minorities, with a view to guaranteeing equal treatment of all ethnic groups in the country (Cape Verde).
Monitor the implementation of the anti-terrorism law in order to identify any act of repression which affects freedom of association and expression and possible cases of arbitrary detention. In addition, develop activities necessary to eliminate any excesses by the authorities in its application (Mexico).
Now it’s up to people on the ground in Ethiopia, as well as people outside of Ethiopia like the Oromo diaspora, to lobby the Ethiopian Government to implement the recommendations it accepted and to monitor whether the government is keeping its word. The next UPR cycle for Ethiopia will begin in about 4 years, when NGOs will have a chance to submit new stakeholder reports demonstrating whether Ethiopia has implemented the recommendations it accepted, pointing out any developments on the ground since the last review, and advocating for new recommendations that will improve human rights in Ethiopia. Learn more about how you can get involved in the UPR process of Ethiopia (or any other country) on pages 200-210 of Paving Pathways. Opportunities Ahead for Voices to be HeardThere’s much more to be done in the effort to build respect for human rights in Ethiopia. In addition to the next steps mentioned above, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights will be reviewing Ethiopia’s human rights record in its December 2014 session. In September, the Advocates and the International Oromo Youth Associationsubmitted a lengthy alternative report to the African Commission, responding to the Ethiopian Government’s report. The African Commission will conduct an examination of the Ethiopian Government and then will issue Concluding Observations and Recommendations. You can read the African Commission’s Concluding Observations from its first review of Ethiopia, in 2010, here. To learn more about advocacy with the African Commission, read pages 268-280of Paving Pathways. On Wednesday, November 19, Amane Badhasso and I will have a talk with the Amnesty International chapter of the University of Minnesota Law School. The students are eager to learn more about human rights in Ethiopia, and they want to participate in a collective activity to show their support. There’s been a lot of attention lately to a report Amnesty just released on human rights violations against the Oromo people. Organizations like The Advocates for Human Rights and Amnesty will be ineffective if they work on their own. The Oromo diaspora, as well as other diaspora communities from Ethiopia, have a critical role to play in leading the way to promoting human rights, justice, and accountability in Ethiopia. The Advocates for Human Rights hopes thatPaving Pathways will lay the groundwork for many more fruitful collaborations. Are you a member of a diaspora community? Do you know people who are living in the diaspora? What steps can the diasporans you know take to improve human rights and accountability in their countries of origin or ancestry? How could Paving Pathways and The Advocates for Human Rights assist them? By Amy Bergquist, staff attorney for the International Justice Program of The Advocates for Human Rights.More posts about the crisis in Ethiopia:
See also more @ http://theadvocatespost.org/2014/11/07/advocating-for-the-rights-of-children-in-ethiopia/ MADDA ODUU SBO/VOL irraa Sadaasa 02,2014 Ilmaan Oromoo Iskaandineviyaatti argaman guyyaa kaleessaa jechuun Sadaasa 01, 2014 Osloo, Norwayitti walitti dhufuudhaan Sadaasa 9 guyyaa yaadannoo FDG waggaa 9ffaa haala bareedina qabuun kabajatanii/yaadatanii oolaniiru.
Qophii yaadannoo guyyaa FDG Sadaasa 9, waggaa 9ffaa kana irratti ilmaan Oromoo bakka adda addaa jiraatan qooda kan irraa fudhatan oggaa ta’u, keessumaa dargaggootni Oromoo Osloo Norwayitti argaman baay’inaan qooda irraa fudhachuun qophiilee adda addaa kan guyyaa kana ilaallatan dhiheessaniiru. Ilmaan Oromoo sabboontota biyyaa FDG keessatti wareegaman, akkasumas gootota Oromoo QBO keessatti aarsaa ta’aniif dungoon qabsiifamee yaadannoon sammuu godhameefii jira. Sirna kabajaa guyyaa yaadannoo FDG Sadaasa 9 kan waggaa 9ffaa Osloo Norwayitti geggeeffame kana irratti kutaaleen hawaasaa hundi kan irratti argame si’a ta’u, akkaataa itti FDGn caalaatti jabaachuu fi babal’achuu danda’u, jabinaa fi hanqinoota jiran irratti, akkasumas akkamittiin QBO kan ammaarra jabeessuun fuula duratti tarkaanfachuun karaa danda’amu irratti marii bal’aan geggeeffamuun, yaadotni ijaaroo fi murteessoo ta’an dhihaachuu isaanii oduun SBO dhaqqabe ifa godhee jira. Waltajjii yaadannoo Guyyaa FDG Sadaasa 9, Sadaasa 01,2014 Osloo, Norwayitti geggeeffame kana irratti walalooleenii fi qophiileen adda addaa kan sochii FDG fi gootota Oromoo falmaa kana keessatti kufanii fi gootummaa isaanii faarsan akkasumas Oromoo jajjabeessanii fi onnachiisan kan dhihaatan si’a ta’u, caalbaasiin adda addaas dhihaatanii galiin irraa argame QBO fi sochii FDG jabeessuuf akka oolfame beekuun danda’ameera. Qophii kana ilaalchisuun yaada namootni adda addaa saganticha irratti hirmaatan SBOf laatan ammoo SBO guyyaa har’aa jechuun SBO Sadaasa 02,2014 irraa dhaggeeffachuu dandeessan.
Oromo Rally at the U.N. to Seek Justice/Freedom for Those Slain/Imprisoned by Ethiopian Regime
Lammiiwwan Oromoo kutaalee United States adda addaa irra har’a kan New Yorkitti argamu waajjira Tokkummaa Mootummootaa fuulletti hiriira nagaa geggeessan. Onokoloolessa 17 Bara 2014. #OromoProtests, 17th October 2014 http://www.voaafaanoromoo.com/content/article/2487489.html
#OromoProtests @ New York City, October 17, 2014 at the United Nations. Oromo communities in Upstate new York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Ohio, Atlanta and other places are organizing to come as a group.
Oslo Peaceful Protesters Demand Freedom for Oromo Political Prisoners and Denounce Land-Grabbing in Oromia.
16th October 2014 #OromoProtests
IOYA and The Advocates for Human Rights Representatives at the United Nations Office discussing issues concerning rights of a child in Ethiopia, the recent#Oromoprotests in Oromia and #FreeOromoStudents. Photo Cred: Amy Bergquist On September 26, IOYA leaders co-presented a report on the rights of children in Ethiopia along with the Minnesota-based Advocates for Human Rights at the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, Switzerland. During the weeklong engagement, IOYA representatives participated in several meetings discussing human rights issues related to Oromo, spoke at a side event looking at diaspora engagement on human rights (with Ethiopia as a case study) and met with the U.N. Committee in a 2.5 hour, closed-door session. http://www.opride.com/oromsis/news/3775-ioya-shines-spotlight-on-child-right-abuses-in-ethiopiaFuulbaana 15 Bara 2014 Hiriiri Nagaa Mootummaa Wayyaanee irratti Magaalaa Torontooti Geggeeffame.Sept. 15,2014 Demonstration in Toronto by Oromo community to protest the Tyranny of TPLF Ethiopia . #OromoProtests.Fuulbaana 15 Bara 2014 Hiriiri Nagaa Mootummaa Wayyaanee irratti Magaalaa Torontooti Geggeeffame. (suuraa kana olii ilaalaa).Sept. 15,2014 Demonstration in Toronto by Oromo community to protest the Tyranny of TPLF Ethiopia. #OromoProtests. (see above in pictures)
Melbournians Hold a Concert for Oromo Human Rights
(Advocacy for Oromia, 12 August 2014) — The Human Rights Concert for Oromia was held in Ascot Vale, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, on August 9, 2014. Bonsen Dhabasa, 10 years old boy who was six months old when his father was arrested; five years old when his mother was imprisoned presented his memoir of persecution account on this Human Rights for Oromia concert in Melbourne. This is our Human Rights Concert. The people coming together as one and uniting against a common enemy! Corrupt power. We are the voice of the people! This is dedicated to those suffering under suppression and Human Rights Abuses. The people on the ground who are treated like collateral damage by those who have vested interests and no concern for human values or human rights! Melbourne’s diverse communities came out to support the Oromo people’s struggle for human rights, and oppose the ongoing human rights violations against Oromo students and civilians by the Ethiopian TPLF regime. The people coming together as one and uniting against a common enemy! Corrupt power. The big message of the day was, “We are the voice of the people!” This is dedicated to those suffering under suppression and Human Rights Abuses. The people on the ground who are treated like collateral damage by those who have vested interests and no concern for human values or human rights! Currently, thousands of Oromo students and civilians are languishing in Ethiopian government’s prisons in connection with #OromoProtests, a movement which opposes the Ethiopian TPLF regime’s Master Plan to expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa (Finfinne), and subsequently to dispossess Oromo farmers surrounding Finfinne of their lands, and evict them from their ancestral lands. http://ayyaantuu.com/human-rights/melbournians-hold-a-concert-for-oromo-human-rights/ The Human Rights for Oromia concert held in Melborne, 9th August 2014, #OromoProtests
EthioTube Interview with Oromo Recording Artist Nigusuu Taamiraat on #OromoProtests
#OromoProtests: Oromo Peaceful Protest Rally in Washington, DC- August 01, 2014.
#OromoProtests at Ethio-US Business Summit in
Houston, Texas
July 30, 2014 http://ayyaantuu.com/horn-of-africa-news/oromoprotests-at-ethio-us-business-summit-in-houston-texas/Appeal Letter to President Barack Obama Following the DC#OromoProtests Solidarity 3-Day Hunger Strike The joint appeal letter of the Oromo Community Organization(OCO) of Washington-DC, OYSA/WWDO and IOWO to President Obama on the Hunger Strike conducted from July 23 – 25, 2014. ——————— President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 RE: Staging Solidarity Hunger Strike to Protest Massacre, Torture, Detention of the Oromo People by the Ethiopian Government Dear Mr. President, On May 9, 2014, the Oromo Community Organization of Washington D.C. Area (OCO), the Oromo Youth Self-help Association (OYSA) and the International Oromo Women’s Organization (IOWO) held a large demonstration in front of the White House and State Department to express our deep concern and outrage about the massacre of Oromo students in April and May, just for peacefully demonstrating against government land grab; some as young as nine years, from Ambo and other towns of Oromia Regional State by the TPLF Aga’azi force and army of the Ethiopian government. Similar demonstrations were held in many state capitals of the United States, Europe, Australia, Middle East, and Africa to condemn the callous crime of the Ethiopian Government. Candlelight vigils were also held in front of the White House on May 22, 2014, and in many states of the U.S. and other countries, at different times, where Oromo communities reside. According to partial reports received, 61 students were shot dead, 903 students are detained and still being tortured. The massacre of Oromo students by the Ethiopian regime is parallel to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre of 69 black people by the Apartheid regime of South Africa for demonstrating against the Pass Law. The blood of the black South Africans led to the abolition of Apartheid and creation of Democratic South Africa with the support of democratic nations of the world. We hope the blood of the innocent Oromo students will not be ignored and left in vain but motivate the leaders of the democratic nations of the West to help bring justice, liberty, peace and democracy in Ethiopia in general and Oromia State in particular. Today, it is estimated that there are more than 50,000 Oromo political prisoners in Oromia in various concentration camps and prisons. Although it is difficult to know exactly how many Oromos have been killed or massacred by the regime, mass graves have been discovered in many places, including Hamaressa in eastern Oromia. The annual reports of the U.S. Department of State and other credible sources regarding human rights abuses in Ethiopia indicate that the Department is familiar with the massive human rights violations that have been committed by the Ethiopian government on the Oromo and other peoples in the country. During our demonstration in May, we submitted appeal letter to the State Department to use their leverage to make a difference in the social, political, and economic crisis perpetrated by the Ethiopian regime against the Oromo people and others in Ethiopia. In response to our appeals, the State Department units handling Ethiopian affairs have jointly granted us audience to discuss the problem of human rights abuse, detentions without warrant, extrajudicial killings, torture, land grab and eviction without appropriate compensation, lack of freedom of expression, right of assembly, justice and democracy. Though they have the information, we have given them additional extensive dimensions of the problem. The State Department has also replied to our appeal letter expressing their concerns about human right abuses in Ethiopia. Similarly, United States Senators, Honorable Al Franken and Honorable Amy Klobuchar representing Minnesota State; and Honorable Patty Murray and Honorable Maria Cantwell representing Washington State have written letters to Secretary Kerry expressing their deep concerns of Ethiopian government violence against its citizens. They asked the Honorable Secretary to use his influence for the respect of rule of law and human rights in Ethiopia. They stressed the Ethiopian Government’s equal treatment of all ethnic groups and implementation of democratic system must be central to their relationship with the United States. A member of the Parliament of Australia also has tabled the Oromo plight in Ethiopia for debate and asked his government for action to curb the Ethiopian government violence against peaceful citizens. – Read More (Ayyaantuu.com) http://gadaa.net/FinfinneTribune/2014/07/appeal-letter-to-president-barack-obama-following-the-dc-oromoprotests-solidarity-3-day-hunger-strike/ #OromoProtests #FreeOromoStudents, 28 July 2014.
International-Oromo Youth-Association has been invited by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to attend its Pre-sessional Working Group meeting on September 26 in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss the situation of child rights in Ethiopia. Earlier this last month, IOYA submitted a report on rights of a child in Ethiopia (Co Author) with The Advocates for Human Rights , Amy Bergquistt . FreeOromoStudents #OromoProtests. #FreeOromoStudents. 18th July 2014.
Dhiibbaa mirga namaa Itophiyaa keessattiiyyuu kan saba Oromoo irratti raawwatamu ilaalchisee mootummooti biyya adda addaa balaaleffachaa turuun ni beekam. Hidhaan, reebichiifi ajjeechaan barattoota Oromoo irra baatii Eebilaa 2014 dhaabbilee barnootaa Oromiyaa keessatti raawwatames kan dhaloota saba kanaa bira darbee qaama heddu rifachiseef yakka sukkanneessaa kana akka mormanu taasiseedha. Ajjeechaa barattootaa kana mormuun Caamsaa 9, 2014 Oromooti jiraattota biyya France ta’aniifi kanneen yakka mootummaa abbaa irree Itophiyaa kana balaaleffatanu hiriira mormii magaala gudditti Paris waajjira ministra dhimma alaa akkasumas Embasii Itophiyaa duratti bahun yakka shororkkeessaa kana balaaleffachuun ni yadatama. Hawaasni Oromoo biyya France kan balaaleffate yakka mootummaa Itophiyaa qofa utuu hin ta’in deggersa mootumman France mootummaa abbaa irree sanaaf laatu keessattiiyyuu hirmmaannaa qophii «master plaanii Finfinnee» jedhamu irratti fudhatanu ilaalchisee ture. Mormiin hawaasa kanaas barreeffamaan waajjira Prezidantii France irraa eegalee qaamota dhimmi isa ilaala jedhamee yaadame hundaaf akka gale oduu si’as tamsa’e irratti ibsamuun ni yaadatama. Waajjirri Prezidantii France deebii iyyata hawaasaa kanaaf laate irratti ajjeechaa naannoo Oromityaa keessattiiyyuu Universitoota Jimmaa, Amboofi Adaamatti raawwatame siriitti hubachuu isaa ibsee mootummoota lamman gidduu hariiroon jiruu cimaa ta’uyyuu hundeen isaa kan kabajaa mirga dhala namaa irratti hundaahe akka ta’e dubbata. Fakkeenyaafis gumii mirga dhala namaaa irratti France mootummaa Itophiyaatif kabaja mirga namaa ilaalchisee hubachiisa laachuu isii; kunis kabaja bilisummaafi mirga dhala namaa guutuutti kabajuu akka ta’e ibsa. France qindaahina gamtaa Awrooppaa jalatti socho’uun hidhaa balaaleffatoota mootummaa akkasumas gaazexessitootaa irratti baatii Caamsaa darbe raawwatame balaaleffachuun kun dhiibbaa mirga yaada ofii ibsuufi wolabummaa sab-qunnamtii kan hubu ta’uu isaa addeesseera. Itti ida’uunis Embaasiin France kan Finfinneetti argamu miilttowwan isaa kan Awrooppaafi Amerikaa woliin ta’uun dhaddacha himatamtoota kanaa irratti argamuun dhugaa jiru adda baafachuuf yaaliin godhame diddaa mootummaa Itophiyaatiin gufachuu isaa saaxileera. Hata’u male jedha deebiin wajjiraPrezidaantii kun hariiroon Franciifi Itophiyaa gidduu jiraatu uumamatti kan kaayyoo kabaja mirga dhala namaa, wolabummaa seeraafi guddina diinagdee irratti hundaheedha jechuun dhuma irratti mootummaan France iyyata hawaasa Oromoo kana hubannaa itti laatee akka hodofu ibseera. Kara biraatiin Masterplaanii Finfinnee kan woldiddaafi gaaga’ama uume irratti hirmaannaa fudhateera kan jedhamu bulchiinsi magaala Lyon (France) deebii barreeffamaan woldaa hawaasa Oromoo France kanaaf erge irratti komii dhimma kana irratti dhihaate xiinxalaa jiraachuu isaa ibseera. Hawaasni Oromoo biyya France ammas hanga mirgi ummata keenyaa guutummaatti kabajamutti fageenyi lafaa utuu isa hin daangessin falmii isaa akka itti fufu hubachiisa. —————— ———- ENGLISH TRANSLATION* —————– The Chief of Staff of the President of the Republic ESSA LENJISSO ASSOCIATION OF OROMO COMMUNITY 125 BOULEVARD de DE CHARONNE 75011 PARIS The president has received the letter you sent him concerning the situation of human rights and the Oromo people in Ethiopia. Responsive to your request, MR François HOLAND assigned me to take care of your case. The France has learned the deadly incidents that occurred last April in Universities of the Oromia region, particularly that of Jimma, Adamaa, Ambo cities, in the context of a protest against new territorial reform. France maintains very good relations with Ethiopia, at this very case, feels entitled to monitor the situation of human rights in the country. At the Council of human rights for example France attracts the attention of Ethiopia authorities on the importance of respect for the freedoms and human rights for all countries aspiring to become emerging. France is taking action in the European context following the arrest of nine journalists and bloggers and several members of the oppositions in the beginning of last May; the European Union has condemned the attacks on the respect of freedom of expression and media. Our Embassy in Addis Ababa has tried unsuccessfully, with our European partners and Americans, to attend the opening of their trial to testify to the interest that France has to this situation. Furthermore, the French cooperation with Ethiopia naturally meets the objectives of promoting human rights, social justice and sustainable economic development. Ensuring that these issues are carefully followed, please accept the assurance of my highest consideration. Isabelle SIMA * N.B. unofficial translation ———————————-
OYA Press Release on the #FreeOromoStudents Campaign
he following is a press release from the International Oromo Youth Association (IOYA). June 29, 2014 Beginning on April 25, 2014, students protesting peacefully have been gunned down by federal security forces in the town of Ambo in Oromia region of Ethiopia. Since then, protests have spread across all universities in the Oromia region resulting in the massacre of hundreds. Thousands have been expelled and dozens held at undisclosed locations. Mass kidnapping, disappearance and shooting of innocent students has been reported in numerous towns since the protests began. The expelled students face economic hardships and rampant assault and harassment from Ethiopian security forces. The imprisoned face torture and ill treatments. In order to raise global awareness about the protests and the imminent threat facing students who have been expelled from school and those imprisoned, the International Oromo Youth Association (IOYA) is launching a social media campaign. IOYA has prepared a short informative documentary that provides a summary of the protests to date. IOYA is also calling for the immediate release of thousands of Oromo students currently being held in detention and are likely to face torture for peacefully protesting against the Integrated Development Master Plan. The Ethiopian government’s continuous use of brutal force, arbitrary detentions, and torture to severely restrict freedom of expression and rights of citizens should be condemned. The campaign will call on various international human/governmental organizations to urge the Ethiopian government to release the students arrested and to refrain from expelling and abducting innocent students.
#OromoProtests- Oromo rally @Dallas downtown @ in front of federal building in solidarity with Oromo students and civilians protest in Oromia. 26th June 2014
#OromoProtests (26th June 2014)- Oromo Women rally at State Capitol, Minnesota, USA, in solidarity with Oromo students Protests in Oromia.
Photos: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (L) and Sen. Al Franken (R) of Minnesota Two more U.S. Senators, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, to express concerns about the Ethiopian government’s human rights violations, particularly the Ethiopian government’s recent acts of violence against Oromo peaceful demonstrators in Oromia. In the letter, the U.S. Senators urged the U.S. State Department to make the “respect for the rule of law and human rights in Ethiopian government’s treatment of all ethnic groups” central to the U.S.-Ethiopia relationship. It’s to be noted that U.S. Senators from the State of Washington, Sen. Maria Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray, also wrote a letter earlier in June – expressing their concern about the Ethiopian government’s acts of violence against Oromo peaceful demonstrators. See @http://qeerroo.org/2014/06/24/oromoprotests-u-s-senators-say-ethiopian-govts-respect-of-all-ethnic-groups-human-rights-must-be-central-to-the-u-s-ethiopia-relationship/
#OromoProtests- In Pretoria, South Africa, 24th June 2014 in solidarity with Oromo students and civilian in Oromia.
Oromian and Ogadenian communities rallied in front of the presidential palace. South Africa’s President, Jacob Zuma’s secretary appeared in person and accepted their appeal letter.
#OromoProtests- letter from US State department.
UN Special Procedures Urged to Visit Ethiopia to Investigate Crackdown on Oromo Protests
Oromians in Europe staged a solidarity rally in Brussels, Belgium, at the European Parliament on 20th June 2014, to bring awareness about the human rights violations of the TPLF Ethiopian regime on the Oromo people – including the killing of more than 100 Oromo students and civilians, mass imprisonments of thousands of Oromo students as well as expulsions from universities of Oromo students for nonviolently protesting TPLF’s ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan,’ a plan that is designed to annex land from the State of Oromia and evict millions of Oromo farmers around Addis Ababa – both under the pretext of “urban development.’ Here’s the coverage of the rally by the DW/German radio (Amharic).
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See more @http://gadaa.net/FinfinneTribune/2014/06/the-oromoprotests-solidarity-rally-in-brussels-at-european-parliament/Sen. Maria Cantwell (L) and Sen. Patty Murray (R)#OromoProtests– USA, Senators from the State of Washington, Sen. Maria Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray, raised concerns about the Ethiopian government’s crackdown on the nonviolent student-led #OromoProtests movement, which fights to stop the implementation of the Addis Ababa Master Plan, a plan to expand the administrative boundaries of Addis Ababa by annexing land from the State of Oromia, and by evicting millions of Oromo farmers from the Oromian districts adjacent to Addis Ababa – both under the pretext of “urban development. The above is their letter of 19th June 2014 to US Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=UU57ZgbBOo7YM6H58MtOIGbQ&v=szt2eSZVohQ Speech on #OromoProtests by Hon. Anthony Byrne, Member of the Australian Parliament. Federal Member for Holt, Australia, on #OromoProtests, 18th June 2014
(June 16, 2014 (Reuters) — An Ethiopian child migrant and member of the Oromo community of Ethiopia living in Malta takes part in a protest against the Ethiopian regime outside the office of Malta’s Prime Minister in Valletta June 16, 2014. The protestors called on Malta and the European Union to stop support for the Ethiopian regime and its plan to displace Oromo farmers. Late last year, the Ethiopian army evicted Oromo farmers from their ancestral land on the pretext of needing the land for an industrial zone, according to the protestors. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi
#OromoProtests- Members of Oromo Community in Malta held a protest in Valletta on 16 june 2014 calling on Malta and the EU to stop support to Ethiopian regime and its plan to displace Oromo farmers. They called for freedom and justice in their country. Late last year, the Ethiopian army evicted Oromo farmers from their ancestral land on the pretext of needing the land for an industrial zone. The practice has continued in other areas of Ethiopia. Dispossessed of their land, these Oromo men and women will be forced to work as day-labourers on their own land. See @ http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140616/local/ethiopian-migrants-hold-protest.523625#.U58iFu-MdQ9.facebook
#OromoProtests June 13, 2014 @ ExCeL London, UK. Oromia and Ogaden community jointly in action.
The Ogaden and Oromo women held a large protest at the Global Summit to end Sexual violence and demanded the recognition of the plights of the Ogaden women and Oromo women. The protesters complained the Rape and sexual violence used as a weapon against Ogaden and Oromo women at the hands of the Ethiopian military.
The Oromo and Ogaden Women appealed to the British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Angelina Julie the especial envoy of the UN High commissioner for Refugees to support the Ogaden women and Oromo women survivors of rape and other abuses who are currently in the Dadaab refugees camp with out any rights. The protesters also asked the International Community to pressure Ethiopian government and make accountable of the Ethiopian officials and military personnel who committed the sexual violence as a weapon of war and terror to intimidate locals. See more @http://oromiatimes.org/2014/06/16/pictures-of-ogaden-women-and-oromo-women-protest-at-the-global-summit-to-end-rape-and-sexual-violence/
On May 31st, 2014, the Portland Oromo Community Association held a candlelight vigil for the 80 Oromo victims who were slain by the Ethiopian government for protesting against the government’s plan to annex land from the State of Oromiyaa using the “Addis Ababa Master Plan.
#Oromoprotests– 11th June 2014 @ Diamond League 2014 in Oslo Norway, Oromo community and Oromo youth together in solidarity with support the on going Oromo students protests in Oromia.
“We translate, we write, we do whatever we can from the other side of the world in the hopes that we will inform and inspire enough people to bring an end to the unjust imprisonment of dissenting young voices.” Read @http://amyvansteenwyk.tumblr.com/post/88273995454/gone
#OromoProtests- Important: Jen &Josh who Witnessed brutal Ethiopian regime crackdown on peaceful Oromo Students Protests will be at the Community Fundraising this coming Sunday. They will be sharing their stories and updates while they were over in Oromia. Come and show your support.
#OromoProtests-Oromo protesters in the United Kingdom rallied in front of the BBC building in London on Friday, June 6, 2014, to bring to BBC’s attention the ongoing mass killings of Oromo students and civilians by the TPLF Ethiopian regime – the stories BBC has largely failed to cover entirely.On the ocassion the protesters Marched through Central London, at BBC, Whitehall, Downing Street and the UK Parliament.
The protesters demanded fair and impartial media coverage from the BBC and they were carrying slogans to put pressure on the UK government to consider its Foreign Policy with the Ethiopian government which the protesters labled as dictatorial.
Their slogans and voices show their support to Oromo Students Protest against the expansion of Addis Ababa Master Plan in Ethiopia and they strongly denounced the crimes against humanity commited by the current Ethiopian government security forces which they hold fully accountable for the mass murder and torture they said are still hapening. The TPLF Ethiopian regime continues to attempt to violently crush the nonviolent Oromo students-led #OromoProtests, which is fighting to stop the implementation of the Addis Ababa Master Plan — a plan to expand the Addis Ababa City Administration into the Federally and Constitutionally instituted Oromia State, and a plan to subsequently evict millions of Oromo farmers under the disguise of “urban development.”http://gadaa.com/oduu/26465/2014/06/06/in-pictures-oromoprotests-solidarity-rally-in-front-of-bbc-in-london-for-more-coverage-of-oromoprotests/http://www.demotix.com/news/4942550/oromo-protest-bbc-against-killing-students-ethiopia#media-4942464
#OromoProtets- Senator Al Franken of Minnesota writes to US Secretary of State John Kerry raising concern about the ongoing repression against the Oromo people in Ethiopia. Another accomplishment of our community in Minnesota. 4th June 2014.
#OromoProtests- Solidarity Hunger-Strike in front of the Federal Building in downtown Seattle, Washington, continued in Seattle, from 3rd June 2014 to 5th June 2014.
#OromoProtests- The above pictures are Oromians in Portland, USA, held a candlelight vigil in honor of their fallen Oromo students who were victims of the recent brutal killings by TPLF security forces. Many of the fallen students did not receive proper funerals from their families. The cruel TPLF Government has ordered some of the victims’ dead bodies to be disposed in bushes, in attempt to cover-up their crime. Hence, human corpses were left for wild animals to feast on. It’s also heartbreaking that the mothers or fathers of the Oromo students cannot mourn for their loved ones; instead they are forced to condemn their dead children as “terrorists,” “anti-development agents,” “anti-peace agents,” and “anti-government agents,” etc. The despicable act of the TPLF government is beyond the human imagination. see more @http://gadaa.com/oduu/26293/2014/06/03/in-pictures-portlands-oromoprotests-candlelight-vigil/
#OromoProtests– Australia’s Oromo people rally in Canberra, @ Canberra’s Parliament house in a bid to expose the Ethiopian government’s recent human rights violations dubbed “Oromo Protests”, 2nd June 2014
#OromoProtests- Candlelight Vigil in Atlanta , Ga, 31st May 2014
#OromoPRotests- Waaqeffannaa Association Condemns Human Rights Violations in Oromia (Melbourne, Victoria, 27 May 2014) – The Waaqeffannaa Association in Victoria Australia (WAVA), a non-profit religious organization incorporated under the Associations Incorporation Reform Act 2012 in Victoria, condemns the killing, torturing, and arresting of students in Oromia. As religious organisation, we affirm that life is sacred.
The situation in Oromia has been very disconcerting. The vast ongoing human rights violation by the government has urged the Waaqeffannaa Association in Victoria Australia (WAVA) to speak and condemn the ongoing onslaught on peaceful Oromo protestors. The level of instability in Oromia has never been more apparent than ever before. Oromo students have been peacefully protesting against a land policy where the government intends to implement. Largely, the protests took place in universities and various schools in towns such as Robe, Bule Hora, Haromaya, Dire Dhawa, Ambo, Jimma, Naqamte and so on. According to BBC, in Ambo, 125km (80 miles) west of Finfinne, eye witnesses reported at least 47 students were killed by security forces during the days preceding May 2, 2014. Instead of addressing the issue peacefully the government security forces used live ammunition at unarmed protestors killing and leaving several hundred causalities in various universities, colleges and schools of Oromia. However, the killing of defenceless civilians by live ammunition for no other reason than exercising of their Waaqaa given right is inhuman, unconstitutional and unacceptable at any international standard. Killing of civilians just for participating in a peaceful rally is a violation of human rights and a crime against humanity. According to human rights watch the Ethiopian government is, “showing increasing intolerance of any criticism of the government and further restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and association.” Hundreds of students and perhaps in the thousands now have been so far imprisoned and expelled in relations with the protests. The regime has been systematically implementing an ethnic cleansing and marginalisation policy in Oromia. The land policy is a façade to extend its systematic implementation of confiscating land from poor Oromo villagers around cities, especially around Finfinne. The regime also systematically incites violence between ethnic groups to create mistrust and hate among them. This agenda disguised as policy is eroding the communal relationship and harmony that has existed for centuries. The Oromo students, as any other group of students, have the right to peacefully protest and be herd, Oromos have the right to live where they wish, and Journalists and bloggers have the right to free speech without any form of repression and intimidation. As a religious organisation based in democratic country, we support and believe in these basic human rights ideals. Preserving and promoting Waaqeffannaa’s religion is only possible when the rights of the people are respected. Thus, WAVA decries the cruel act of violence that ended the life of more than 200 Oromo students and condemns the government for its heinous crimes. Waaqaa knows best! Waaqeffannaa Association in Victoria Australia Website: www.waaqeffannaa.org Email: waaqeffannaavic@gmail.com
#Oromoprotest- Maree Hawaasa Oromo Toronto Haala Si’ana Oromiyaa keessati deemaa jiruu, May 25, 2014
The following is an appeal letter from the Oromo Community in Ireland to the Prime Minister of Ireland. ——————- Oromo Community In Ireland 69 Woodford Drive, Clondalkin, Dublin 22 www.oromocommunityireland.com The Honourable Prime Minister Mr Enda Kenny Department of the Taoiseach, Government Buildings, Upper Merrion Street, Dublin 2 Dear Prime Minister, We, members of the Oromo Community in Ireland, are outraged with the Ethiopian government ongoing reckless attacks on Oromo students who are peacefully demonstrating against irresponsible expansion of Addis Ababa for the sole purpose of land grabbing. Oromo students at various universities and high schools across Oromia, Ethiopia, have been staging non-violent demonstrations against the ‘Master Plan’ that is set to expand Addis Ababa into the surrounding Oromia region. The students were concerned by the fact that the so called Master plan will inevitably displace millions of Oromo farmers and destroy many communities and their livelihood. The plan has been facing opposition by many Oromo communities across the globe because it breaches the constitutional rights of the people of Oromia. Currently, there are rallies being held all over the world. Information about the current situation of the country can be obtained from community-based media out lets, such as www.ayyaantuu.com, www.bilisummaa.com, http://www.gadaa.comm and www.opride.com. The Oromo people have been victims of long years of continues land grabbing policies of the Ethiopian government where millions lost their land to riches from China, India and Arabs without proper compensation. Our people back home are already suffering from economic and social impact of the poor policies of the government. We also feel such impact directly or indirectly has the high duty of speaking for those voiceless victims. The Oromo people, its political organisation, civic organisation and journalists have been the prime targets of the Ethiopian government in the cover name of fighting against terrorism. The Oromo people, though the single largest ethnic group in the country, has been deliberately and systematically marginalised and made powerless so that they can be easily targeted whenever they demand their rights. The recent crackdown is not the first time that our young children are massacred, torched, jailed and disappeared. Many university students and lecturers, many high school students and teachers, and many businesspersons have disappeared or have been in jail for many years without justice. Many of them are dying from inhuman treatment, torture, attacks, and humiliations and from deliberate deprival of medical treatments. The Oromo people have been continually seeking their rights being respected, but the Ethiopian government’s response is cruel even for young children and students. This time the victims were the students who just gathered to air their concern of the Addis Ababa expansion plan. They were not violent, and they were not armed, yet they were violently and brutally crashed with the notorious assassin squad well trained and equipped for such purpose. For the last two weeks a merciless killer crew has been dispatched to university campuses in Ambo, Adama, Walaga, Robe, Jima, Haramaya, Dire Dawa, Metu, Finfinne (Addis Ababa), and Mada Walabu to quell the rightfully and peacefully rallying Oromo students. We have a credible source that indicating more than 70 innocent Oromo individuals, university, and high students, including a 12 years old boy, were the victim of such brutality perpetuated by the Ethiopia killing machinery. These inhuman groups in power in Ethiopia even do not care rubbing salt into Oromos’ wounds. We are receiving information that in order to get the bodies of the victims their family must sign a document that reads their child was dead because of his or her own fault. Since there is no any international media allowed in the country it is not possible for such planned attacks against children be reported to the outside world. The international community has been ignoring the cry of our people for long, but now it is at the stage they no more ignore it. There were many reports on the misuse of development aids and supports being used for military build ups for cracking down civilian. These were reported by human right groups, civic societies and international NGO have been given deaf hear. This time the situation is now exceptionally dire. We fear that it could escalate and contribute to the already fragile security of that region. The Oromo are saying enough is enough. It is going be late for the international community to deal with the fragile political, human and security issues in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian empire has been depriving Oromo of the natural human rights, but it is impossible to control them anymore. It is a matter of time before the set time bomb is out of control of the Ethiopian rules. The tolerance of the people should not be taken for arrogance. Your Excellency, There are more than enough incidents and records confirming the Ethiopian authorities violation of international human rights law and has committed crime against humanity. The Ethiopian ruling elites are most likely will continue their wild act of killing, torturing and forcing millions to flee their homes to end up in refugee camps in neighbouring countries; unless your government in coordination with other similar bodies exert ultimate push on the Ethiopian to stop committing such crimes. We understand that the Irish government and the Ethiopian government have good relations. This does not morally sound for a democratic government to have association with such a brutal and dictator regime since such relations give the aristocrats a wrong gesture. Such relation can be taken wrongly and encourage them continue killing people and never stop their government sponsored terror against civilians. We also know that Ireland has been generous in providing aids to Ethiopia. Though we are very much grateful of the support to our poor people, there are reports by international organisations that the aid has been used against the people to who you were sent for Your Excellency, We appeal to your government and the Irish people to stand against the brutality of the Ethiopian government. We believe the Irish people understand from its history how it feels to be suppressed, deprived of rights and humanity, and thus better understand the agonies of the Oromo people. We feel strongly that your leadership and Ireland is in a good position to use its European Union and global reputation as a defender of human rights to initiate dialogue and coordinate actions against the suppressive Ethiopian government. We appeal your government to stand up for our people and send a warning message to the dictatorial regime in Ethiopia to stop the killing of innocent children. We call on your office to listen to the cries of Oromo people and restore justice and peace to their villages. The fact that the Oromo people are peaceful, tolerant and patient should not be taken for wrong. We appeal that those people who murdered our children and those who lead and ordered the crime be investigated and charged for the crimes they committed. We ask your esteemed office and government to tell the Ethiopian authorities to halt the implementation of the so called controversial master plan until all the stockholders discuss on its pros and cons and support its implementations. Sincerely, Adam Tola Chairman, Association for Oromo Community in Ireland www.oromocommunityireland.com oromocommunityireland@yahoo.com CC: – Labour Party, 17 Ely Place, Dublin 2 – Fianna Fáil, 65-66 Lower Mount St, Dublin 2 – Sinn Féin, 44 Parnell Square W, Dublin 1 – Amnesty International Ireland Sean MacBride House 48 Fleet Street, Dublin 2 – United Nation, 27 Fitzwilliam Street Upper, Dublin 2 – Irish Human Rights Commission, 4th Floor, Jervis House Jervis Street, Dublin 1
#OromoProtests FDG Solidarity/Justice: Appeal Letter to the Prime Minister of Ireland from the…
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Letter to the Canadian Prime Minister Regarding Massacres of Oromo Students
Posted: Caamsaa/May 18, 2014 · Gadaa.com
The following appeal letter is from the Oromo Community in British Columbia to the Prime Minister of Canada. ————————– To: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, The Prime Minister of Canada Office of the Prime Minister 80 Wellington Street Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2 From: Oromo Community in British Columbia Re: Killings of Oromo University Students in Ethiopia Over the past few weeks, the entire world has witnessed one of the most heinous crimes perpetrated on innocent Oromo students by the Ethiopian government security forces for merely exercising their democratic rights of peaceful demonstration. Since April 28, 2014, Oromo students in universities, colleges and secondary schools, involving over 12 institutions across the Oromia region of Ethiopia, have been peacefully demonstrating against the regime’s recently unveiled “Addis Ababa City Integrated Master Plan.” Within one week, more than 50 University students have been confirmed to be murdered by government security forces in their campuses in Ambo, Haromaya, Madawalabu and Naqamte Universities. Recent estimate put the number of student massacred at 76, injured 300, and over 2000 rounded up and incarcerated in unknown locations. International media sources, such as the BBC, CNN, Fox News, Al-Jazeera and Human Rights Watch, have been reporting on these killings. Under this new Addis Ababa City Master Plan, more than 15 farming Oromo communities will be engulfed under the city’s jurisdiction and their farmlands will be re-zoned as “urban” lands and will be expropriated for city expansion. Implementation of this land grab policy unfolded under total secrecy with no public consultations or transparency whatsoever. The lives of 76 innocent Oromo University students have been gunned down for peacefully protesting against such an unfair and criminal project. The Oromo Community in British Columbia is deeply saddened by the massacre of our school children by the Ethiopian regime. It is unfortunate that the Canadian government continuously provides significant economic support to this murderous regime in Ethiopia. In light of this fresh massacre and abysmal human rights track record of the regime, our community would like to appeal to your good office to: – Condemn the mindless killings of innocent Oromo students and farmers; – Exert pressure on the regime to immediately stop its murderous campaign against Oromo students and farmers; – Demand an independent investigations into the killings to bring the culprits to justice; – Review Canada’s economic support to the regime that is bent on massacring innocent kids in their schools and Universities. We trust that you will consider our appeal and take appropriate actions to stop the killings of defenseless students and land expropriation from poor framers under the disguise of Addis Ababa City Integrated Master Plan. Sincerely; Oromo Community of British Columbia, Vancouver CC: The Honourable John Baird Minister of Foreign Affirs The Honourable Thomas J. Mulcair Official Opposition Leader The Honourable Justin Trudeau The Liberal Party Leader
More than 50 protesters took to the streets of Grand Island, to march against the killings of students in Ethiopia.The Associated Press reports at least 11 students were killed in violent clashes with Ethiopian police recently.Ethnic Oromo people have marched in cities across the world, including Grand Island.Oromo is the largest state in Ethiopia, and there is a movement there to declare independence.The march in Grand Island went from the Federal Building to City Hall, and attracted the attention of police. There was some confusion about the march, and Police Chief Steve Lamken advised city staff the marchers had the right to protest, as long as they didn’t block traffic or block the doors at City Hall.Leaders in the local Oromo community in Grand Island said they wanted to draw attention to the plight of their people. Similar protests around the world have used social media to mobilize, especially Twitter, where they have been branded as the #OromoProtests.http://www.nebraska.tv/story/25537421/ethiopians-march-in-grand-island-to-protest-students-killed-in-africa#.U3ZqnG1XsKF.facebook#OromoProtsets- March in Grand Island to Protest Peaceful OromoStudents Killed by TPLF/Agazi of Ethiopia, in Africa (State of Oromia)
#OromoProtests- (OMN, Atlanta, Georgia, 15 May 2014) – We the Oromo Community of Atlanta, Georgia gather at the CNN Headquarters to demand the Ethiopian government immediately halt all the senseless killings of innocent University students throughout Ethiopia. We ask CNN and its affiliates as trusted and reliable sources of media to launch a diligent and timely investigation on the current crisis in Ethiopia and draw attention to the indiscriminate killings of innocent students. Furthermore, we demand the Obama Administration unequivocally condemn the actions of the Ethiopian Government and urgently take action to end the massacre! Students are being murdered for peacefully protesting against the Addis Ababa Master Plan which would expand the capital city and annex land from farmers in the surrounding area. This planed annexation is in violation of United Nations and African Union Charters on Human Rights. According to reports from trusted sources, since April 25, 2014 as many as 100 civilians have been murdered by government forces. In addition 500 have been injured, while over 5000 students have been detained at unknown camps!
Ethiopia’s violation of human rights has been well known and documented, however, as Oromo’s and United States citizens we can no longer stand by as the future of Oromia (priceless students) are destroyed by gun touting government forces. In addition the recent visit by Secretary of State of John Kerry to show Ethiopia as a model democracy is not only unacceptable it is irresponsible. Mr. Kerry was present in Ethiopia while students were gunned down by Ethiopian forces and he failed to raise awareness on this grave matter. Unfortunately, CNN too failed to cover this important event in East Africa. Therefore, we must raise awareness of the ongoing struggle and we ask CNN, its affiliates, the Obama Administration, and various governing bodies of the world to join us in our fight to end the senseless murder of innocent students. THANK YOU FOR HELPING US RAISE AWARENESS!
If there is a lesson to be learned from these past few weeks it should be that Oromo’s across the globe have responded to the ongoing threat to annex parts of Finfine (Addis Ababa) with a single and resounding NO. This response has galvanized communities across the globe from San Francisco and Washington DC to Johannesburg, Tel Aviv, Jeddah, Melbourne, Paris, Berlin, Geneva, New Zealand, and beyond. It is this sort of galvanized, resounding, and unequivocal NO in support of the farmers as well as the students injured, imprisoned, and murdered by the rogue government forces that may help lead us to the rise of democratic forms of government in the near future.
As the young and old alike unite as Oromo’s without religious, regional, and political differences and in unison join forces among the Diaspora and within Ethiopia we have for lack of a better term tasted the possibility!
The mere fact the Diaspora community protested in more than 30 cities around the world all on the same weekend shows our strength. We will no longer be the sleeping giant. And, as we shed light on the ongoing atrocity we cannot afford to allow the pressure to subside. We have to push forward and sustain the ongoing protests, candlelight vigils, hunger strikes, and so forth. Because in the past we have made the mistake of rallying against abuse by the Ethiopian government, however, within weeks if not days we return to our normal livelihood. This kind of un-sustained pressure has kept us from advancing our cause forward because we make noise and then lay dormant until another despicable crime impacts the greater Oromia State or community at large. However, as we have shown this past weekend we can unite and we certainly can articulate to others the crime our people have suffered for over a century which was recently put on display by Ethiopian government forces when they chose to kill innocent students. What the government did not realize is the level of unity Oromo’s would show across the globe as they voiced their opinion against atrocity. As we speak there are families who continue to lose their young and beloved children to abduction, imprisonment, or bullets by government forces.
So the lesson for all Oromo’s in this dire time when future leaders are slaughtered by government forces is to NOT let this impressive response from the Diaspora community subside. After all, history for the most part was not shaped by individuals, but rather by the actions of much larger number of people who tackle dire circumstances with aggressive passion for change. Therefore, we must fight to sustain this ongoing effort to galvanize support from all over the world. One great example is the house resolution passed on May 9, 2014 in the Minnesota Legislature thanks to the efforts of the “Little Oromia” community who held a rally, candlelight vigil, and above all a massive and exemplary #hungerstrike in solidarity with #oromoprotests. This extraordinary movement showed us we can indeed raise awareness throughout the Diaspora community and bring a much needed change for Oromia. After all, the students killed did not die in vain. They died standing up for their inherent belief that all people regardless of religion, political affiliation, gender, and ethnicity deserve the most basic of human rights; free speech, free press, and above all freedom from a tyrannical government.
As President Obama on his first trip to Africa said, “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.” Indeed, what Africa needs and what Oromo’s in Ethiopia and across the globe demand is strong institutions that can both guarantee and ensure the safety and wellbeing of Oromo’s all over Ethiopia, while simultaneously democratic norms are enshrined in the governed and the government. Here in the Diaspora we are fortunate enough to have these basic democratic norms which respect human rights not only recognized by our respective governments, but cherished by all citizens. So why should the Ethiopian government not abide by the most basic principles of humanity? We have to continue to be the voice for the voiceless throughout Oromia and beyond. We have to prove to the Ethiopian government we will no longer standby as they commit these heinous acts. And we will support the ongoing protests throughout Ethiopia at all costs.
After all, their freedom is our freedom! Their suffering is our suffering! Their unmet demand for freedom is our collective demand! Their heroic stand against government forces who abuse, imprison, and kill innocent protesters should also be our collective stand as communities across Africa, Europe, Australia, and North America showed this past weekend. Whether you took part in Minnesota’s various forms of raising awareness, Australia’s rose handout, Seattle’s candlelight, or San Francisco’s small but passionate protest. You are obligated to continue this effort in hopes of maximizing the ongoing effort to demand for our collective stand against the Ethiopian government and its inhumane government forces because “the Addis Ababa Master Plan is a Killer Plan!”
We have the tools like social media, the means, and ultimately the freedom to speak our mind, and the ability to collectively protest across the globe. We owe it to the mothers who will forever yearn for their murdered children, the fathers who will never see their child, and above all the young innocent children who stood in the path of bullets to demand basic human rights. In honor of these heroes and heroines let us NEVER FORGET what has been done to our people for over a century and most importantly the most recent barbaric acts against our future leaders. The days of seeing a free, fair, and democratic Ethiopia are fast approaching so let us NOT STOP short of the ultimate goal!!! Let us continue to sustain our protests, build on our achievements, and find new and creative means to engage all of the Diaspora communities as one single and united OROMO VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS!
(May 11, 2014) – The Oromo community in France held demonstration in Paris to oppose the controversial master plan to expand Finfine (Addis Ababa) and the mass killing act committed against the Oromos in Ethiopia. The protesters gathered from every corner of the country to the capital (Paris) in front of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs and the Ethiopian Embassy.
The protesters expressed their deep condolences by the massacre committed against the innocent students, farmers and urban-dwellers in Oromiya, and urged the French government to stop its diplomatic and professional support and assistance to the dictatorial Ethiopian government. Besides that, they urged the cities of Paris and Lyon to abstain from their roles in Finfine master plan that is politically motivated to uproot our people from their ancestral farmlands in the name of development.
They presented their written appeal* to the Office of the French President, Office of the Prime Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Parliament and the Cities of Paris and Lyon to use their diplomatic channels to stop this unpopular and destructive plan.
They appealed also to the UNESCO headquarters in Paris for this plan could destroy the natural resources and cultural heritages of the Oromo people. Finally, they vowed to intensify their struggle until our people attain their full human, social and political rights and democracy reign in our country.
#OromoProtests Remembering Oromo Mothers and Candle light Vigil following a prayer by the Oromo Church of the Bay Area. Prayer led by Pastor Guta Yadeta. 11th May 2014
Portland’s Ethiopian community holds rally to protest brutal killings
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May 9th, 2014 — Portland, Oregon — Members of Portland’s Ethiopian community and others march to protest killings in Ethiopia. Dave Killen / The Oregonian
Summary notes on the Oromo demonstration in Berlin, Germany
Oromos and Oromo friends in Germany flood along the street in the main city of Germany, Berlin, on 9 th of May 2014 in protest against the ongoing mass killing of Oromo students in Oromia by the TPLF/EPRDF regime of Ethiopia. Ogadeni, Sidama and people from Gambela have joind the Oromo rally and showed their unflinching support and solidarity to the Oromo people in the struggle against TPLF led Ethiopian regime. Every observer and partcipant of this rally wittnessed that this rally was the first of its kind in which all oromos and Oromo friends massivelly stood shoulder to shoulder togetherwith greate anger on EPRDF regime. The demonstration started infront of German Chancellor office, Willy-Brandt-Straße 1, and followed to German parliament (Deutscher Bundestag), Platz der Republik 1, then US Embassy, France Embassy, Pariser Platz 5, Hause of EU representative, Unter den Linden 78, British Embassy, Wilhelmstraße 70 – 71, Russian embassy, Unter den Linden 63-65, to the German Foreign affairs Ministry, Werderscher Markt 1, and finally to Alexanderplatz. The rally condemned the fascistic act of the TPLF regime against the defenceless peaceful protestors of Oromo students and urged democratic governments to use their influential leverage in immediately stopping the TPLF regime from further mass killing and hidden brutality. It also demanded to set an independent enquiring commission that investigate into the massacre, mass imprisonment, torture and rape of Oromo students. The demonstrators also urged the International Community to stop giving financial and material aid to the Ethiopian regime, which is using the tax payers money to kill its subjects. The protestors called up on unified act, strengthining of Oromo liberation struggle and unfolding support for Oromo liberation army and Qeerroo(Oromo youth activities). Oromia shall be free!!!! Gumaabas Biyyaa, Berlin, Germany
Oromos and Friends of Oromo in Minnesota have started a Hunger-Strike in solidarity with the demands of #OromoProtests and for justice for the Oromo students and civilians massacred by the Agazi Special Forces of the Ethiopian TPLF regime. The Hunger-Strike is expected to last from May 9, 2014 to May 12, 2014, and will be in front of the Minnesotan State Capitol – Stay tuned for more updates.
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Statement from United Sidama Parties for Freedom and Justice (USPFJ): the Indiscriminate Killings of Oromo University Students and Civilians by Ethiopian Security Forces Is Deplorable! Posted: Caamsaa/May 8, 2014 · Finfinne Tribune | Gadaa.com
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By United Sidama Parties for Freedom and Justice (USPFJ) May 7, 2014 It has been confirmed that the Ethiopian regime’s security forces have indiscriminately massacred over 50 unarmed Oromo University students who were all peacefully demonstrating against the plan of the regime to uproot Oromo peasants from the outskirts of Finfine/Addis Ababa. The casualties were said to have included children of age 6 and the elderly who were marching against the proposed plan. Over 250 Oromo youth and other civilians were seriously injured during the shootings which is said to be continuing sporadically as we speak. More than 2000 Oromo University students and other members of the Oromo nation were unlawfully detained. There is also allegations of torture of those detained. All Universities throughout Oromia were targeted and being encircled by the regime’s killing squad, the infamous ‘Agi’azi’ special force. The massacre began on 29th of April 2014 when Oromo University students peacefully expressed their dissatisfaction and anger over the TPLF/EPRDF’s government’s master plan to expand the territory of Finfine/Addis Ababa. The demand of the Oromo students emanates from the fear that, if the plan is implemented, it leaves Oromo peasants who have got strong attachments with their lands without hope and aspirations. This has been the case with hundreds of Oromo peasants around Buurrayyuu areas; who have been deceived into selling their land to the TPLF’s business companies and others for little amount of money only to become beggars in their own land, few months after they lost attachment to their legitimate lands. Read More:- http://uspfj.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-indiscriminate-killings-of.html
Union of Oromo Evangelical Churches of Europe (UOECE) Denounces the Ongoing Killing, Torturing and Arresting of Oromo Students by Ethiopian Government Forces
Posted: Caamsaa/May 13, 2014 · Gadaa.com
The following letter is from the Union of Oromo Evangelical Churches of Europe (UOECE).
———— The Union of Oromo Evangelical Churches of Europe (UOECE) strongly condemns the ongoing killing of Oromo students by Ethiopian government forces. We are deeply saddened by the loss of innocent lives and the mass arrest of our people. The killing of defenceless civilians by live ammunition for no other reason than exercising of their God given right is inhuman, unconstitutional and unacceptable at any international standard. Killing of civilians just for participating in a peaceful rally is a violation of human rights and a crime against humanity. Therefore, we urge the government of Ethiopia to refrain from killing, arresting and torturing of students and innocent civilians. We also urge for the establishment of a neutral body of inquiry in order to bring to justice the perpetrators of this brutal act. We call up on human rights organizations to give due attention to the ongoing situations in Oromia and make known the human rights abuse to the International community. We also request the governments of all peace loving and democratic countries to use their influence on the Ethiopian government to stop killing students and unarmed civilians and to respect its own constitution. During this difficult time, we call up on our churches, fellowships and believers to pray for and stand with the victims and their families in every possible way and advocate for peace and justice. Union of Oromo Evangelical Churches of Europe (UOECE) http://gadaa.com/oduu/26264/2014/05/13/union-of-oromo-evangelical-churches-of-europe-uoece-denounces-the-ongoing-killing-torturing-and-arresting-of-oromo-students-by-ethiopian-government-forces/#.U3HzdrDTL0Y.facebook May 8, 2014
Letter to the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Jointly from the Oromo Community Organizations of the United States and Oromo Studies Association (OSA)
Posted: Caamsaa/May 8, 2014 · Gadaa.com
A Joint Letter of the Oromo Community Organizations of the United States and OSA to Mr. John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State.
————————- Date: May 6, 2014 The Honorable John Kerry Secretary of State 2201 C St NW Washington, DC 20520 Re: Ethiopian Government on going violations of human rights and land-grab Dear Mr. Secretary, We, the Oromo Community of Chicago, write this letter to bring to your attention and seek your intervention in the widespread and systematic violation of human rights, discrimination and persecution that Oromo people in Ethiopia are facing. Our heart is bleeding while we tell your good office the Ethiopian government’s continued massacre and shocking suppression of peaceful protesters and journalist continued unabated. These acts of state violence, apart from destroying the targeted society, will cause irreparable damage not only to Oromos and the wider Ethiopia but also the international community’s geopolitical interests in the region over the long run. The Oromo people, the single largest nation in the Horn of Africa, constitute about 40 percent of the population of Ethiopia. The ruling Ethiopian regime came to power following the collapse of the Communist military dictatorship in 1991. The regime is dominated by the former rebel group Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which hails from the Tigray people. The Tigray people approximately constitute about 6 percent of the Ethiopian population and dwell in the barren and over cultivated land of North Ethiopia. The Oromo country, the largest and richest region in Ethiopia, is the breadbasket and the economic backbones of Ethiopia. For Ethiopian elites, who are traditionally the Northerns, maintain a tight grip on the Oromo country. Therefore, in Ethiopia, despite their numeric superiority and richness of their land, the Oromo have always been treated as a minority group, perpetually subjected to political, economic, and cultural depredations and dispossession. Because of their preponderant number, the Tigrayan minority considers the Oromos an existential threat to its political hegemony. For this reason, the TPLF regime is hell-bent on undermining the human, economic, and intellectual capacity of the Oromo people. Repressive measures such as targeted killings, abductions and disappearances, unlawful imprisonments and torture against the Oromo people have been widespread for over two decades. The government denies them freedom of association, press and expression; marginalizes them from political decision-making; stifles and intimidates dissent through invoking arbitrary and draconian laws. Several international organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and International Crisis Group have archived and well-documented scores of these atrocities over the years. Decades old practice of discrimination and persecution of the Oromo people is now translating into a broad day massacre of the country’s young lives on the streets and villages of the Oromo people. Just over the past few days, when Secretary John Kerry visited the country, only in one city, at least 47 young lives perished under the weight of live ammunition fired at peaceful protestors drawn from high schools and Universities. These protests were staged by the students following the government’s so called “Integrated Master Plan” for the city of Addis Ababa. The implementation of this master plan will dislocate and dispossess millions of Oromo farmers off their land. The non-violent protest is facing an extreme and disproportionate level of violence from the government. To date, it has claimed the lives of dozens of students while a greater number of students are seriously injured by government force. Dear Mr. Secretary, We like to stress that this pattern of gross violation of human rights of the Oromo is repeating itself time and again and has become habitual practice. In 2003, over 300 Oromo students were illegally dismissed from the Addis Ababa University because they protested against the decision of the government to relocate the seat of Oromia from Addis Ababa (Finfinnee). The students were banned from schools, their only ticket to life in the country of little opportunity. Most of them ended up in jail and lived incommunicado for a long time. Some of them died crossing border to escape persecution at home. We, the community of the Oromo Community of Chicago, would like to draw your attention to these tragic series of events in the last couple of weeks as we call on you to use your office’s diplomatic and/political influence, resources, and network of friends in order to put pressure on the government of Ethiopia by calling upon it:
To stop the acts of violence immediately and to stop implementing the so called “Integrated Master Plan”.
To establish a commission of inquiry to investigate the violation and recommend the remedial measures that need to be taken to restore the victims and to penalize the perpetrator;
To bring the perpetrators of this atrocious crimes to court to account for their acts of violence;
We also like to call upon you to voice your solidarity with the victims to alert the international community to the events unfolding in Ethiopia. We have faith in you that you will act promptly before the violence and unrest evolve into a full-fledged humanitarian crisis and destabilize the region. Kind Regards, Ibrahim Elemo, M. D, M.P.H President, Oromo Studies Association Email: ielemo@oromostudies.org The Joint Letter of the Oromo Community Organizations of the United States and OSA:
The Oromo Studies Association
The Oromo Community of Chicago
The Oromo Community of Ohio
The Oromo Community of Michigan
The Oromo Community of Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee
Oromo-Canadian Community Association Waladaya Hawaasa Oromoo-Kanadaa 94 Kenhar Dr. Suite # 3 Toronto, Ontario, M9L1N4 Tel: (416) 767 8784 Fax: (416) 767 7223 www.oromocanadian.org
May 3, 2014
The Right Honorable Stephen Harper Prime Minister 80 Willington Street Ottawa, On K1A0A2
Dear Prime Minister,
We, members of the Oromo-Canadian Community Association, are outraged with the Ethiopian government recent onslaught on the Oromo students who have been peacefully demonstrating against the so called ‘Master Plan of the City of Addis Ababa.’
For the last two weeks, Oromo students at various universities across the Regional State of Oromia, Ethiopia, have been staging demonstrations against the ‘Master Plan’ due for implementation. Using their democratic rights, the students have been legally and peacefully demonstrating within and around their respective university campuses against the plan that will uproot the Oromo communities residing in towns surrounding the City of Addis Ababa.
This plan is highly contested on the ground that it contravenes the constitutional rights of the people of Oromia. The immediate political, economic, and social impact on the communities slated for evictions will be enormous; that it will erode their political rights and expose them to abject poverty like those who have already been dispossessed of their land and ended up in the city slums with no means of living.
Voicing this concern of the Oromo society, the students began opposing the plan in various forms one of which is demonstration. While the demonstration of students against the plan is within the bound of their democratic rights, it did not sit well with the Ethiopian government – the government that has been notoriously known for its zero tolerance to any opposition during the last 23 years of its reign. In the last couple of days, crafting its usual bogus pretext, the government has launched its crackdown on the students. Alleging that the ‘students are against development’, it has dispatched to university campuses in Ambo, Adama, Walaga, Robe, Jima, Haramaya, Dire Dawa, Metu, and Finfinne (Addis Ababa) its elite security force drawn predominantly from Tigray Region, the ‘Agazi Special Security Force’ known for its brutality, to quash the rightful opposition of the Oromo students.
Now credible reports from back home reveal that the Agazi force has embarked on its terrorizing mission. In a broad daylight, in just the last two days, they cold-bloodedly murdered many students and unarmed residents of the various towns who were attempting to shelter students escaping from brutal beating and mass arrest by the Agazi force. As the killing rampage has not relented, it is very hard to provide the exact death toll. We know for sure, in Ambo alone, BBC reported the death of 47 students and residents of the city. At Harmaya and Mada Walaabu universities similar killings have been reported.
To fully subdue the students and muzzle their voice against injustice, the government force has continued with its campaign of mass arrest, torture, and killing spree at various campuses throughout Oromia. The situation is now exceedingly dire. We fear that it could escalate to a level that gravely threatens the lives of the students.
With independent local and international media totally banned by the Ethiopian regime, we are concerned that the heinous crimes that the regime commits could go unnoticed by the international community. With its abysmal record of human rights abuse that parallels few in the world and yet facing no consequence from the international community, the regime will undoubtedly continue perpetrating atrocities on citizens with dissenting views.
Your Excellency,
The Ethiopian regime has a history of repeatedly committing heinous crimes. The type and scale of the crimes it has perpetrated on the people of Oromia and other ethnic groups during its 23 years of reign are well documented by prominent international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. With no consequences for its actions from the international community, the regime is emboldened to continuously trample upon the rights of citizens.
It is this Ethiopian regime, one devoid of democratic ethos and respect for human rights, which the Government of Canada financially supports with no string attached. Canadian tax payers deserve better. Aids from the Canadian Government should not sustain the Ethiopian regime that has total disregard for democratic values and the rule of law.
Your Excellency,
We appeal to you and your government to weigh the actions of the Ethiopian regime and use your good office to exert an appropriate pressure on the rulers of Ethiopia to play by the rule of law and stop terrorizing citizens who voice legitimate concerns. We feel strongly that Canada with its global reputation as a defender of human rights has the high moral authority to raise the issue of human rights with the Ethiopian regime.
Sincerely,
For Abebe Challaa Hordofa Gussa President of the Oromo-Canadian Community Association
CC: The Honorable Thomas Mulcair, Leader of the Official Opposition Mr. Justin Trudeau, Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada Ms. Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada
http://gadaa.com/oduu/26040/2014/05/08/oromo-canadian-community-association-open-letter-to-the-prime-minister-of-canada/#.U2sga5UtmuY.facebookhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jsbCz9koswMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsbCz9koswM (Seattle, Washington, 6 May 2014) – We the Oromo Community of Seattle, Washington demand the Ethiopian government immediately halt all the senseless killings of innocent University students throughout Ethiopia. Furthermore, we demand the Obama Administration unequivocally condemn the actions of the Ethiopian Government and urgently take action to end the massacre! Students are being murdered for peacefully protesting against the Addis Ababa Master Plan which would expand the capital city and annex land from farmers in the surrounding area. This planed annexation is in violation of United Nations and African Union Charters on Human Rights. According to reports from trusted sources, since April 25, 2014 as many as 100 civilians have murdered by government forces. In addition 500 have been injured, while over 5000 students have been detained at unknown camps! Ethiopia’s violation of human rights has been well known and documented, however, as Oromo’s and United States citizens we can no longer stand by as the future of Oromia (priceless students) are destroyed by gun touting government forces. In addition the recent visit by Secretary of State of John Kerry to show Ethiopia as a model democracy is not only unacceptable it is irresponsible. Mr. Kerry was present in Ethiopia while students were gunned down by Ethiopian forces and he failed to raise awareness on this grave matter. Therefore, we must raise awareness of the ongoing struggle and we ask you to join us in our fight to end the senseless murder of innocent students. THANK YOU FOR HELPING RAISE AWARNESS!
OromoProtestsOromo Diaspora Mobilizes to Shine Spotlight on Student Protests in Oromia Seattle Rally, 7th May 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZLX4yGNkgVU#OromoProtestsOromo Diaspora Mobilizes to Shine Spotlight on Student Protests in Oromia #Norway Rally Members of the Oromo community organised a protest in front of the Arab League in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Wednesday to denounce the killing of Oromo protesters in Ethiopia last week. Dozens of the Oromo protesters demanded the Arab League, African Union and the United Nations intervene in the situation in Ethiopia’s Oromo state, where tens of ethnic Oromos were killed last week in protests over the expansion of the capital Addis Ababa. Ethnic Oromo students have been protesting since April against the Ethiopian, who they accuse of intending to displace farmers from their territories in the capital of Addis Ababa through plans to develop and urbanise the city. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/100727/Egypt/Politics-/Ethnic-Oromos-protest-in-Cairo-over-violence-in-Et.aspx#OromoProtestsOromo Diaspora Mobilizes to Shine Spotlight on Student Protests in Oromia #Cairo, Egypt Rally 7th May 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=71cRF1jPCBQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LYqBjKESXdQ#OromoProtestsOromo Diaspora Mobilizes to Shine Spotlight on Student Protests in Oromia #Chicago Rally 6th May 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kdDYZ75FkVs#OromoProtestsOromo Diaspora Mobilizes to Shine Spotlight on Student Protests in Oromia #USA, DC Rally 6th May 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kdDYZ75FkVs#OromoProtests Washington DC happening now. Kids tell TPLF ” Killing Oromos never stop the Oromo struggle” 6th May 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CoyiB9clTKc#OromoProtestsOromo Diaspora Mobilizes to Shine Spotlight on Student Protests in Oromia 6th May 2014 in London (UK) in front of the Parliament. Aljazeera English and Arabic on the scene. Caamsaa/May 6, 2014 · Gadaa.com Oromo Diaspora Mobilizes to Shine Spotlight on Student Protests in Ethiopia The Oromo Community of Minnesota hall was packed yesterday afternoon. Twice we scooted our chairs forward to make room for the crowds at the back; our knees were pressed up against the backs of the chairs in front of us. And when community members took the microphone, we could hear a pin drop. People I spoke with said the turnout and show of unity was unprecedented. The Oromo diaspora in Minnesota was gathering together to develop strategies to show support for the student protests that have been breaking out over the past two weeks in their homeland. Who are the Oromo people? The Oromo people are near and dear to my heart. I learned about them first-hand when I taught social studies for English Language Learners at Minneapolis South High School. Most of my ELL students were newly arrived refugees from Ethiopia. But many bristled at being called “Ethiopians.” They identified themselves as Oromos, and their homeland was Oromia—the largest of nine federal states in Ethiopia. The Oromos are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, and there are Oromos in northern Kenya and parts of Somalia as well. Oromos speak Oromiffa, or Afan Oromo, a Cushitic language that shares approximately 35% of its vocabulary with Somali. Approximately 47% of Oromos are Muslim, and a similar percentage are Christian. As a civics teacher, I was fascinated to learn that the Oromo people had a sophisticated traditional system ofdemocratic governance called the Gadaa system. The Oromo people have long faced persecution from the Ethiopian Government and in Ethiopian society. In fact, one of the reasons I decided to leave teaching and become a human rights lawyer was to try to play a role in stemming the systematic human rights abuses that had driven my refugee students away from their homelands. The Advocates for Human Rights highlighted some of the persecution that Oromos face in astakeholder report for the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review of Ethiopia, which takes place tomorrow in Geneva. Oromo students are mobilizing for change in Oromia Last month, the Ethiopian Government announced a controversial “Integrated Development Master Plan for Addis Ababa.” The Ethiopian capital, which Oromos call Finfinnee, is surrounded by the state of Oromia. The Master Plan would expand the territory of Addis Ababa, annexing thousands of hectares of Oromia’s fertile agricultural lands, and then selling or leasing them to commercial agricultural enterprises. Oromo students sounded the alarm about the Master Plan, recognizing that it would displace Oromo farmers and leave them without a livelihood or access to their traditional lands. Students have been staging protests at 12 universities in Oromia. Last week, federal special forces opened fire on what seems to have been a peaceful student demonstration at Ambo University. The government has confirmed 11 fatalities, but people on the ground say the toll is closer to 50. The Ethiopian government asserts that the protests have been led by “anti-peace forces.” One Oromo diasporan based in London told me that his sister fled Meda Welabu University in Oromia on Sunday after military forces took control from the local police and then began beating students. She saw one student killed. Students in several universities have been under lock-down, ordered confined to their dormitory rooms and not allowed to leave campus. There are reports that officers come through the dorms at night and arrest people. One female student leader is being kept incommunicado, raising concerns that she is being ill-treated. At transportation check-points, officials check passengers’ identification and detain people with student IDs. Students who have fled are not allowed back on campus. Getting the word out: The power of remote monitoring Ethiopia has one of the most restrictive governments in the world. There are no independent local media organizations. No Ethiopian non-governmental organizations work openly on controversial human rights issues, and international human rights groups have been expelled from the country. In these circumstances, it’s nearly impossible to safely conduct human rights monitoring on the ground. Oromos in the diaspora have expressed frustration that major international human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have been silent about the protests. Remote human rights monitoring is a critical tool for diaspora communities like the Oromo who want to show support for and solidarity with human rights defenders on the ground in their countries of origin. In 2009, The Advocates published a report based on a remote fact-finding project here in Minnesota called Human Rights in Ethiopia: Through the Eyes of the Oromo Diaspora. The report has been used for advocacy at the United Nations and in support of applications for asylum. In our new toolkit, Paving Pathways for Justice & Accountability: Human Rights Tools for Diaspora Communities, we expanded on the human rights monitoring we did with the Oromo diaspora to develop an entire chapter on remote monitoring strategies. Oromo diaspora mobilizes to conduct remote monitoring Over the past two weeks, the Oromo diaspora has mobilized to shine an international spotlight on the protests. Like many diaspora groups, Oromos outside of Ethiopia maintain contacts with friends and family “back home,” some of whom have been victims of police violence or have witnessed events. Through telephone calls, text messages, email, and social media, Oromos in the diaspora have their fingers on the pulse of the student protest movement in Oromia. The Oromo diaspora has been buzzing on social media, quickly adopting the #OromoProtests hashtag to allow people around the world to follow and contribute to the remote monitoring process. People are posting photos of victims on twitter and uploading video of some of the demonstrations to YouTube. The Oromos I’ve talked to have also recommended following certain prominent Oromos on facebook and twitter who have the trust of Oromos on the ground and feed them breaking news. Ayantu Tibeso has compiled a list on facebook of ways that diasporans can support the Oromo protests and get involved in raising awareness. Paving Pathways includes an appendix on effective human rights advocacy using social media platforms, and the Oromo diaspora is deploying many of these tactics. I’ll be using one of my favorite social media strategies—live tweeting—during the UN’s Universal Periodic Review of Ethiopia tomorrow morning. The Oromo diaspora also has more traditional media, including the newly launchedOromia Media Network, Oromo Voice Radio, as well as diaspora blogs and news websites like Gadaa.com, Ayyaantuu New Online, and O-Pride. These media have helped consolidate information into useful posts, first-hand accounts, and broadcasts for people who are unable to keep up with the flurry of activity on twitter, facebook, and YouTube. And they have started a more systematic effort to verify reports of deaths and injuries, maintaining lists of victims and connecting photos with dates and locations. The diaspora’s efforts are beginning to get traction with mainstream media, with some initial coverage from the BBC, Voice of America, Think Africa Press, and an editorial piece in Al Jazeera America. Human Rights Watch just published a statement. A Minnesota-based radio program called Reflections of New Minnesotans just released apodcast of a show it did with two members of the Oromo diaspora talking about recent developments in Oromia. Momentum is building, and Oromos in the diaspora are pressing mainstream media and human rights organizations to raise visibility on the issues. They’re planning protests around the world on Friday, May 9. But diasporans who want to pitch stories and lobby policymakers will need to undertake careful remote monitoring to find receptive audiences. With the restrictions on civil society in Ethiopia, reporters, lawmakers, human rights organizations outside of the country will need to work with the Oromo diaspora to verify sources and confirm reports coming out of Oromia. This post is the first in a four-part series about human rights in Ethiopia. Part 2 will highlight Tuesday’s Universal Periodic Review of Ethiopia at the United Nations. Part 3 will explore the Oromo diaspora’s strategies for showing solidarity with the Oromo students while pushing for human rights and holding perpetrators accountable for the violence against peaceful demonstrators. Part 4 will tell the stories of Oromos in the diaspora who have spoken with friends and family members on the ground in Oromia about events over the past two weeks.If you are an Oromo diasporan who has talked to people on the ground who are involved in the protests, facing restrictions on their freedom of movement or freedom of speech, or have other first-hand information, and you’d like to share what you’ve heard for an upcoming blog post, please contact me at abergquist@advrights.org or 1-612-746-4694. By Amy Bergquist, staff attorney for the International Justice Program of The Advocates for Human Rights. http://gadaa.com/oduu/25944/2014/05/06/oromo-diaspora-mobilizes-to-shine-spotlight-on-student-protests-in-ethiopia/#.U2hVNkSG1iU.facebookhttp://theadvocatespost.org/
The early Egyptians settled along the fertile Nile valley as early as about 6000 BC, and they began to record the patterns of lunar phases and the seasons, both for agricultural and religious reasons. The Pharaoh’s surveyors used measurements based on body parts (a palm was the width of the hand, a cubit the measurement from elbow to fingertips) to measure land and buildings very early in Egyptian history, and a decimal numeric system was developed based on our ten fingers. The oldest mathematical text from ancient Egypt discovered so far, though, is the Moscow Papyrus, which dates from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom around 2000 – 1800 BC.
It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration system at least as early as 2700 BC (and probably much early). Written numbers used a stroke for units, a heel-bone symbol for tens, a coil of rope for hundreds and a lotus plant for thousands, as well as other hieroglyphic symbols for higher powers of ten up to a million. However, there was no concept of place value, so larger numbers were rather unwieldy (although a million required just one character, a million minus one required fifty-four characters).
Ancient Egyptian method of multiplication
The Rhind Papyrus, dating from around 1650 BC, is a kind of instruction manual in arithmetic and geometry, and it gives us explicit demonstrations of how multiplication and division was carried out at that time. It also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge, including unit fractions, composite and prime numbers, arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means, and how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and geometric series. The Berlin Papyrus, which dates from around 1300 BC, shows that ancient Egyptians could solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations.
Multiplication, for example, was achieved by a process of repeated doubling of the number to be multiplied on one side and of one on the other, essentially a kind of multiplication of binary factors similar to that used by modern computers (see the example at right). These corresponding blocks of counters could then be used as a kind of multiplication reference table: first, the combination of powers of two which add up to the number to be multiplied by was isolated, and then the corresponding blocks of counters on the other side yielded the answer. This effectively made use of the concept of binary numbers, over 3,000 years before Leibniz introduced it into the west, and many more years before the development of the computer was to fully explore its potential.
Practical problems of trade and the market led to the development of a notation for fractions. The papyri which have come down to us demonstrate the use of unit fractions based on the symbol of the Eye of Horus, where each part of the eye represented a different fraction, each half of the previous one (i.e. half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, sixty-fourth), so that the total was one-sixty-fourth short of a whole, the first known example of a geometric series.
Ancient Egyptian method of division
Unit fractions could also be used for simple division sums. For example, if they needed to divide 3 loaves among 5 people, they would first divide two of the loaves into thirds and the third loaf into fifths, then they would divide the left over third from the second loaf into five pieces. Thus, each person would receive one-third plus one-fifth plus one-fifteenth (which totals three-fifths, as we would expect).
The Egyptians approximated the area of a circle by using shapes whose area they did know. They observed that the area of a circle of diameter 9 units, for example, was very close to the area of a square with sides of 8 units, so that the area of circles of other diameters could be obtained by multiplying the diameter by 8⁄9 and then squaring it. This gives an effective approximation of π accurate to within less than one percent.
The pyramids themselves are another indication of the sophistication of Egyptian mathematics. Setting aside claims that the pyramids are first known structures to observe the golden ratio of 1 : 1.618 (which may have occurred for purely aesthetic, and not mathematical, reasons), there is certainly evidence that they knew the formula for the volume of a pyramid –1⁄3 times the height times the length times the width – as well as of a truncated or clipped pyramid. They were also aware, long before Pythagoras, of the rule that a triangle with sides 3, 4 and 5 units yields a perfect right angle, and Egyptian builders used ropes knotted at intervals of 3, 4 and 5 units in order to ensure exact right angles for their stonework (in fact, the 3-4-5 right triangle is often called “Egyptian”).
See more at : – http://www.storyofmathematics.com/egyptian.html
Related:-
Scientific System, Mathematics and Ancient Kemetic Traditions
” “Assyrians themselves are shown to have been of a very pure type of Semites, but in the Babylonians there is a sign of Kushite blood. … There is one portrait of an Elmite king on a vase found at Susa; he is painted black and thus belongs to the Kushite race.” The myths, legends, and traditions of the Sumerians point to the African Cushite as the original home of these people (see. Perry, 1923, pp. 60-61). They were also the makers of the first great civilisation in the Indus valley. Hincks, Oppert, unearthed the first Sumerian remains and Rawlinson called these people Kushites. Rawlinson in his essay on the early history of Babylonian presents that without pretending to trace up these early Babylonians to their original ethnic sources, there are certainly strong reasons for supposing them to have passed from Cushite Africa to the valley of the Euphrates shortly before the opening of the historic period: He is based on the following strong points: The system of writing, which they brought up with them, has the closest semblance with that of Egypt; in many cases in deed the two alphabets are absolutely identical. In the Biblical genealogies, while Kush and Mizrain (Egypt) are brothers, from Kush Nimrod (Babylonian) sprang. With respect to the language of ancient Babylonians, the vocabulary is absolutely Kushite, belonging to that stock of tongues, which in postscript were everywhere more or less, mixed up with Semitic languages, but of which we have with doubtless the purest existing specimens in the Mahra of Southern Arabia and the Oromo.” https://oromianeconomist.wordpress.com/…/oromia-untwist-th…/
The Sumerians were one of the earliest urban societies to emerge in the world, in Southern Mesopotamia more than 5000 years ago. They developed a writing system whose wedge-shaped strokes would influence the style of scripts in the same geographical area for the next 3000 years. Eventually, all of these diverse writing systems, which encompass both logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic, and syllabic systems, became known as cuneiform.
It is actually possible to trace the long road of the invention of the Sumerian writing system. For 5000 years before the appearance of writing in Mesopotamia, there were small clay objects in abstract shapes, called clay tokens, that were apparently used for counting agricultural and manufactured goods. As time went by, the ancient Mesopotamians realized that they needed a way to keep all the clay tokens securely together (to prevent loss, theft, etc), so they started putting multiple clay tokens into a large, hollow clay container which they then sealed up. However, once sealed, the problem of remembering how many tokens were inside the container arose. To solve this problem, the Mesopotamians started impressing pictures of the clay tokens on the surface of the clay container with a stylus. Also, if there were five clay tokens inside, they would impress the picture of the token five times, and so problem of what and how many inside the container was solved.
Subsequently, the ancient Mesopotamians stopped using clay tokens altogether, and simply impressed the symbol of the clay tokens on wet clay surfaces. In addition to symbols derived from clay tokens, they also added other symbols that were more pictographic in nature, i.e. they resemble the natural object they represent. Moreover, instead of repeating the same picture over and over again to represent multiple objects of the same type, they used diferent kinds of small marks to “count” the number of objects, thus adding a system for enumerating objects to their incipient system of symbols. Examples of this early system represents some of the earliest texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jamdat Nasr around 3300 BCE, such as the one below. http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html
The majority of the 500,000-strong Borana tribe live in Kenya but some also live in Ethiopia and Somalia
Women use clarified butter (ghee) to keep their hair in perfect condition and wear it in elaborate plaits
Girls have the crown of their heads shaved, with the hair only allowed to grow after they marry
Other beliefs include the fear that having your photo taken removes some blood and steals your shadow
They also believe in a single god named Wak, although more are converting to Christianity and Islam
By Ruth Styles for MailOnline
January 24, 2015 (TKG News) Split between Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, the 500,000-strong Borana tribe might be numerous but their fascinating customs and religious beliefs are entirely unique.
A nomadic people, their lives revolve around finding good grazing for their herds of camels and cattle, which combined, provide everything they need to survive in the striking semi-arid scrub land they inhabit.
But while men dominate village life and are in charge of the herds, women play a vital role and are in sole charge of building Borana homes and performing the elaborate dances that signal the birth of a baby.
Dressed in her best: A Borana woman wearing traditional garb made from goat skins. The expensive dresses are now kept only for best
Rules: Many of the Borana’s rules apply to children, including a prohibition on addressing anyone older than themselves by their first name
With so little water to be had, their beauty routine is an unusual one and involves anointing their locks with ghee (clarified butter) to keep hair smooth and shiny.
Girls are given the most striking hairdos and wear the crown of their heads shaved until they marry, at which point the hair is allowed to grow back while the rest is plaited into elaborate designs.
But hair isn’t the only part of life governed by the Borana’s centuries-old laws. The majority of rules apply to children who, for instance, aren’t allowed to call anyone older than themselves by their first names.
Those names are also governed by tribal law and are inspired by the time of day they were born. ‘Boys born in broad daylight are always called Guyo,’ explains photographer Eric Lafforgue who took these incredible pictures.
‘Some are named after a major event, a ceremony (Jil), a rainy season (Rob) or a dry season (Bon). Others are named after weekdays while a few get odd names such as Jaldes (ape), Funnan (nose), Gufu (tree stump) and Luke (lanky long legs).’
Whatever their parents decide to call them, all children are given a place in the social pecking order at birth – and once done, it is rare for it to be changed.
Welcome: The birth of a baby of either gender is marked by a traditional women-only dance which welcomes the infant into the world
Hard work: Women are in sole charge of building Borana homes and since they move four times a year, have to work extremely hard
Elaborate: A woman carries milk in an engraved gourd and shows off a bead ring (left). Right: The chief’s wife is given special jewellery
Shaved: Girls such as this one have the crowns of their heads shaved until marriage. Afterwards, hair grows back and is plaited
Changing times: Traditionally, the Borana believed in a single god called Wak. Now Islam and Christianity are beginning to make inroads
Moving: Many of the young people are leaving the tribe behind for jobs in town, among them this trio who send money home to their families
Screened: Borana women are not allowed to come face-to-face with their son-in-laws. If they do, both must immediately cover their faces
The luckiest are the sons of village chiefs who are placed in the top grade, daballe, at birth and show their status with long locks that make them resemble girls.
As future chiefs themselves, no one is allowed to punish them, even when they misbehave, while their mothers gain an honoured place in society and are frequently asked to bless well-wishers.
These women are also given special jewellery to wear usually made from colourfully beaded leather, enlivened on occasion with recycled Coca-Cola caps.
Those who aren’t married to a chief, although often forced to share a husband, do get some special benefits including being in sole charge of who can and cannot enter their homes – spouses included.
‘A wife always decides who will enter in the house,’ explains Lafforgue. ‘If her husband comes back and finds another man’s spear stuck into the ground outside her house, he cannot go in.’
Women are also in sole charge of raising their daughters and usually insist that they become excellent housewives. Men, when they come to choose a wife, will often judge the girl by her mother, which makes getting it right all the more important.
Older women are honoured as the keepers of tribal lore, although not all of it makes sense to Western ears. ‘Old people are afraid of having their picture taken,’ says Lafforgue. ‘They believe that when you take their photo, you remove their blood and steal their shadow.’
New religion: An increasing number of Borana are becoming Muslim and have adopted Islamic customs such as the headscarf
Respected: Older women are honoured as keepers of village lore while this boy (right) is the son of a chief and can never be punished
Important man: This man is the overseer of one of the Borana’s network of wells. It is taboo to fight over water
Chief: The Borana elect a leader every eight years. The ‘father of the village’ wears a special headdress called a kalacha
Home: Women have the final say on who can enter their homes. If a man finds another man’s spear outside his wife’s hut, he can’t go in
Laborious: Women are tasked with building all the houses, as well as dismantling and rebuilding them when the village moves on
Livelihood: The Borana’s cattle and camels are their most precious possessions and are nearly always cared for by men
Featuring Raya Wollo (Raya Oromo) People: Northernmost Cushitic Oromo People
January 8, 2014 (kwekudee trip down memory lane) — Celebrating our African historical personalities,discoveries, achievements and eras as proud people with rich culture, traditions and enlightenment spanning many years.
The Raya Wollo people, sometimes called Raya Oromo are agricultural and music-loving Cushitic Oromo people but now mixed with small amalgamated Tigre and Amhara bloodlines living in the Debubawi Zone of the current Tigray Regional State at the eastern edge of the Ethiopian highlands in Ethiopia.
Historically, the Raya Wollo (Raya Oromo), with the Yejju Oromo, are the northernmost groups of the Oromo people and are a part of the Wollo Oromo Tribe. Their women especially are known by their distinctive hair-braiding styles and facial tattoos.
The Wollo Oromo (particularly the Raya Oromo and Yejju Oromo) were early Oromo holders of power among the increasingly mixed Ethiopian state. The later north-to-south movement of central power in Ethiopia led to Oromos in Shewa holding power in Ethiopia together with the Shewan Amhara. “In terms of descent, the group that became politically dominant in Shewa – and Subsequently in Ethiopia – was a mixture of Amhara and Oromo; in terms of language, religion and cultural practices, it was Amhara.
Currently, Debubawi Zone/Raya-Azebo woreda (county) is bordered on the south by Alamata, on the southwest by Ofla, on the northwest by Endamehoni, on the north by Hintalo Wajirat, and on the east by the Afar Region. The administrative center of this woreda (county) is Mersa; other town in Raya-Azebo includes Weyra Wuha.
Despite their historic resistance against dominance (read any literature on Ethiopian history, the Raya Oromo revolt given below is mentioned as the first revolt against the Teferi government as early as the late 1920′s and as the predecessor of the Bale Oromo revolt), Raya’s ties with the rest of Oromia have weakened due to years of wars in that part of the region. Today, the challenge should be given to Oromo artists to produce music of the Raya in Afan Oromo; music serves as a cultural ambassador as well as a path to reconnect to one’s historic past (heritage). It’s also paramount that the Oromo Studies Association (OSA) set up a session during its annual meeting to deliberate on the history of Raya Oromo and on ways to bring about the renaissance of Oromummaa in Raya.
Why the name Raya Wollo?
Wollo was an historical region and province in the northeastern part of Ethiopia, with its capital city at Dessie. The province was named after the Wollo Oromo, who settled in this part of Ethiopia in the 17th century. An older name for Wollo is Lakomelza.
Following the invasion by Britain that toppled Italian colonial authority in 1941, the provinces of Amhara Sayint, Azabo, Lasta, Raya Province, Wag, and Yejju were added to Wollo. A number of peasant rebellions rocked Wollo, which included the Woyane rebellion in 1943, and revolts of the Yejju Oromo in 1948 and 1970. With the adoption of the new constitution in 1995, Wollo was divided between the Afar Region, which absorbed the part of the province that extended into the Afar Depression; the Tigray Region, which annexed the northwestern corner; and the Amhara Region, which absorbed the remainder of the province in the Ethiopian highlands.
Northern Marginalization under Shewan Rule
The northern provinces of Gonder, Gojjam, Wollo and Tigray are the heartland of the “core” culture of Ethiopia — the Ethiopian Orthodox church, the Amharic language and script, plow-based agriculture, and many elements of the social system of the country derive from this historic region. Most of the Emperors also came from here.
At the end of the 19th century, the center of power in Ethiopia decisively shifted from the north to Shewa, with the assumption of the title of Emperor by Menelik, King of Shewa. Menelik was an Amhara, from the dynasty that ruled Manz, at the northern tip of the modern province of Shewa. The majority of the inhabitants of the rest of Shewa were Oromo — as is the case today. In terms of descent, the group that became politically dominant in Shewa (and subsequently in Ethiopia) was a mixture of Amhara and Oromo; in terms of language, religion and cultural practices, it was Amhara. The northern Amhara regarded the Shewans as “Galla” (the pejorative term for Oromo), and together with the Tigrayans and some of the Agau and Oromo people in Wollo, resisted the new Shewan domination, which led to their economic and political marginalization.
Revolt in Wollo
Between 1928 and 1930 there was a rebellion — or a series of rebellions — in northern Wollo against Shewan domination. The specific political cause was support for Ras Gugsa Wale, a northern Amhara lord with a strong claim on the throne, against the Shewan Ras Teferi (who crowned himself the Emperor Haile Selassie after defeating the revolt). The government suppression of the revolt led to quartering soldiers with local people, interrupting the salt trade, and involved massive looting and confiscation of cattle. Combined with drought and locusts, the result was famine. Haile Selassie ordered the importation of grain from India to supply Addis Ababa, but there was no relief for north Wollo. Political measures were taken after the revolt, including the replacement of much of the administration, which formerly had local roots, with appointees from Shewa; and the joining of the rebellious districts to the province of southern Wollo, which was ruled with harshness and venality by the crown prince. These helped to contribute to the further marginalization of the area, and the series of famines which plagued the area up to the fall of the Emperor.
The cumulative impact of imperial misrule and the petty tyrannies of local landlords created an atmosphere in which development was extremely difficult, as described by two consultants investigating the possibility of starting livestock projects:
Wollo is virtually impossible … there is such an obscuring weight of disbelief, suspected innuendo and antagonisms; such a mess of mis-government at petty levels, and such a
lading of landlords that there is almost nothing to start with and nowhere to start that
will not go wrong or sour … [there is] the smothering welter of the weeds of an
entrenched and stagnant society.
The Weyane in Tigray
Following the restoration of Haile Selassie after the defeat of the Italians in 1941, there was a revolt in Tigray. Known as the Weyane, this was the most serious internal threat that Haile Selassie faced. An alliance of the Oromo semi-pastoralists of Raya Azebo, disgruntled peasants, and some local feudal lords, under the military leadership of a famous shifta, Haile Mariam Redda, the rebels nearly succeeded in overrunning the whole province.4 British aircraft had to be called in from Aden in order to bomb the rebels to ensure their defeat. While some of the aristocratic leaders, such as Ras Seyoum Mengesha, were treated gently and ultimately allowed to return and administer the recalcitrant province, there were reprisals against the ordinary people. Most notably, the Raya and Azebo Oromo were subjected to wholesale land alienation, and much of their territory was transferred to the province of Wollo. This area was badly hit in subsequent famines, partly as a consequence.
Tax Revolts in Gojjam
Gojjam treasured its independence for centuries, and did not submit willingly to Shewan rule. The issue around which opposition repeatedly coalesced was any attempt by the central government to measure land and tax it. Taxation was not only resented as the imposition of unjust exertions by government, but was feared as the means whereby the traditional land tenure system would be undermined, and the farmers’ independence destroyed.
In the 1940s and ’50s there was a series of attempts to measure land in Gojjam, prior to taxation. In the face of peasant resistance, including violence, all attempts failed. In the early 1960s, only 0.1 per cent of the land had been measured, and Gojjam, one of the richest and most populous provinces, paid less land tax than the poor and thinly populated province of Bale. In 1950/1 there was armed resistance, including a plot to assassinate Haile Selassie. However the most serious revolt occurred in 1968, in response to the most systematic attempt to levy an agricultural income tax to date.
In February 1968, in reaction to the arrival of parties of government officials accompanied by armed police, the peasants of Mota and Bichena districts resorted to armed resistance. After months of stalemate while much of the province remained out of government control, Haile Selassie sent troops to Gojjam in July and August. The air force bombed several villages; it burned houses but its main task was probably intimidating the resistance. Several hundred people died, according to contemporary accounts, but the Gojjamis remained defiant.
Finally, in December, Haile Selassie backed down. He visited Gojjam in 1969, cancelled all tax
arrears, and made no serious attempt to collect the new taxes.
Famines in Wollo and Tigray
In 1974, the Emperor Haile Selassie became notorious for his attempts to conceal the existence of the famine of 1972-3 in Wollo. This, however, was only one in a succession of such incidents. Prof. Mesfin Wolde Mariam of Addis Ababa University has documented how the famines of 1958 and 1966 in Tigray and Wollo were treated with official indifference, bordering on hostility towards the peasants who were considered sufficiently ungrateful for the divinely-sanctioned rule of Haile Selassie as to allow themselves to defame his reputation by dying of famine.
There was severe famine in Tigray in 1958 which went without significant government relief. In 1965/6, reports of famine from Were Ilu awraja in Wollo arrived at the Ministry of the Interior in November 1965, one month after the situation became clear to the local police, but no action was taken. The information took a further 302 days to reach the Emperor, who then requested the Ministry of the Interior to act — which it did by asking officials in Wollo to send a list of the names of the people who had died.6 A small relief distribution was then authorized.
The only consistent response to famine was to regard it as a security problem — famine created destitute migrants, who needed to be prevented from entering towns, particularly Addis Ababa.
Both the 1958 and 1965/6 famines killed tens of thousands of people.
The famine that struck Wollo during 1972-3 played a crucial role in Ethiopian history:
“the revelation of that famine by the British television journalist Jonathan Dimbleby played a key
role in precipitating the downfall of the rule of Haile Selassie. Between 40,000 and 80,000
people died.” The famine also led directly to the creation of the Relief and Rehabilitation
Commission (RRC), the powerful government department mandated to prevent and ameliorate
future famines, and to coordinate international assistance. The 1972-3 famine was the last one
in which there were no functioning mechanisms for the delivery of large-scale humanitarian
relief.
The Wollo famine was popularly blamed on drought, a backward and impoverished
social system, and the cover-up attempted by the imperial government. These factors were all
important — though it must be remembered that specific actions by the government, especially
after the Ras Gugsa and Weyane revolts, were instrumental in creating the absence of
development. In addition, forcible alienation of resources and violence also played an important
role.
The group that suffered most from the famine were the Afar pastoral nomads of the
Danakil desert. Famine had already gripped them in early 1972. The Afar inhabit an arid semi-
wilderness, utilizing pastures over a large area to support their herds. In times of drought, they
are forced to move to areas which they do not normally exploit. Traditional drought reserves
included the Tcheffa Valley, on the rift valley escarpment, and pastures along the inland delta of
the Awash river where the waters dissipate into the desert. In the 1960s the Tcheffa Valley
became the location of commercial sorghum farms, and small farmers from nearby also began
to use much of the land. Meanwhile, large cotton plantations were developed along the Awash.
By 1972, 50,000 hectares of irrigated land had displaced 20,000 Afar pastoralists.
During the years of good rainfall, the loss of the drought reserves was not noticed by the
Afar, but when repeated drought struck, they found that a necessary resource they had utilized
sporadically for generations had been alienated, without compensation. Famine among the Afar
was certainly caused by drought — but by drought acting on a society that had been deprived of
the means of responding to that threat.
Official indifference to the plight of the Afar is illustrated by an incident in 1974, when
the flood waters of the Awash river were directed to the Dubti valley in order to irrigate cotton
plantations. The resident Afar population was not informed, and 3,000 lost their homes, while
100 were “missing.”
Mobility is crucial to survival among the Afar. Nomadic in normal times, the ability to
move freely over large distances becomes a vital concern when resources are short. In the early
1970s, the Afar’s mobility was further restricted by the flow of weaponry to their nomadic
neighbors and competitors, the Issa (who are ethnic Somali). The Issa themselves were
suffering from the alienation of much of their pasture and restrictions on their movement. The
result was an attempt by the Afar to appropriate wells formerly used by the Issa. This led to
widespread armed clashes, especially in 1972. One Afar reported “Many people die. Disease is
the first cause but the Issa are the second.” Meanwhile, a survey done among the Issa reported
that homicide by the Afar was a major cause of death. The famine also resulted in large-scale
armed clashes between the Afar and their Oromo neighbors in Wollo.
The second group which suffered severely from the famine included farmers in a narrow
strip of middle-altitude areas of northern and central Wollo. Those who suffered most were
tenants. The Raya and Azebo Oromo had been reduced to that state by massive land alienation
after they participated in the Weyane revolt against Haile Selassie in 1943. Others were forced
to mortgage or sell their land by the stresses of repeated harvest failures in the early 1970s.
Landlords took advantage of their tenants’ penury by insisting on the payment of large rents,
often in kind. This demand could be backed up by force, as most influential landlords had a
retinue of armed guards. The enforcement of crippling tenancy contracts in time of shortage had
the effect of taking food from the hungry. Thus, during 1973, the famine area exported grain to
the provincial capital, Dessie, and to Addis Ababa.
The famine was much less severe in Tigray province, despite the drought affecting both
provinces. The difference can be largely accounted for by the different modes of land tenure —
in Tigray, most farmers owned their own land; in middle-land Wollo, most were tenants.
Finally, the Emperor Haile Selassie considered that the peasants and nomads of Wollo
were shaming His reputation by starving, and resolved to ignore them. Reports of famine were
consistently ignored or denied. In response to a report by UNICEF documenting famine
conditions in July 1973, the Vice-Minister of Planning retorted: “If we have to describe the
situation in the way you have in order to generate international assistance, then we don’t want
that assistance. The embarrassment to the government isn’t worth it. Is that perfectly clear?”
Though the governor of Wollo, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, was both greedy and
incompetent (at the time of the famine he forced the closure of commercial sorghum farms in
the Tcheffa Valley by engaging in litigation, claiming their ownership), Haile Selassie was
never in ignorance of the conditions in Wollo. A UN official visited him in early 1973 and
found him well-informed — his attitude was that peasants always starve and nothing can be
done, and that in any case it was not the Shewan Amhara who were dying. On belatedly
visiting the province in November 1973, his one remedial action was to announce that all who
had sold or mortgaged their land in the previous year could return and plow it during the coming
season, only leaving it to their creditors afterwards. Even this minimal and tardy gesture was
not enforced.
The 1975 Northern Rebellions
The Wollo famine contributed to the downfall of Haile Selassie, not because the hungry
peasants and nomads revolted and forced him out, but because the issue gained political
currency among the students and middle classes of Addis Ababa. However, that is not to say
that the famine, and more generally the eight decades of political marginalization and economic
stagnation that preceded it, did not have serious consequences at the time of the 1974 revolution
and the years following.
In the early 1970s, “peasant risings in various provinces [were] an even more closely
guarded secret than the famine”. These revolts intensified in during the revolution, with a
series of rebellions led by feudal leaders in each of the northern provinces. In Wollo, there was
a revolt by a feudal lord, Dejazmatch Berhane Maskal. In March 1975, he destroyed an
Ethiopian airlines DC3 at Lalibella. In October, he rallied supporters after a spree of killings of
former landlords by peasants and government security officers. Dej. Berhane’s ill-armed force
of 5,000 was defeated by government militia and air force attacks near Woldiya in December
1975, but he continued to cause problems for the government for years. Another feudal leader,
Gugsa Ambow, had brief military successes in northern Wollo, before the army foiled an
attempt to capture Korem in mid-1976, reportedly causing 1,200 fatalities among Gugsa’s
peasant army and local villagers.18 Other smaller revolts occurred in Gojjam and Shewa.
The most significant rebellion started in Tigray. This was an insurrection led by the
former governor, Ras Mengesha Seyoum (son of the governor at the time of the 1943 Weyane).
Ras Mengesha fled to the hills with about 600 followers in November 1984, when the Dergue
executed 60 officials of the previous regime. Ras Mengesha combined with other members of
the aristocracy, notably General Negga Tegegne (former governor of Gonder) and formed the
Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU) in 1976. They obtained encouragement from western
countries. With Sudanese military assistance, the EDU occupied the towns of Metema, Humera
and Dabat (all in Gonder province) between February and April 1977,19 but was defeated by the
militia force sent to the province in June-July.
The EDU remained active in Tigray, where two other rebel groups were also
operational. The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was set up in February 1975 by a
group of left-wing students and peasants, incorporating the Tigray National Organization,
created three years earlier. Prominent among its early leaders was Berihu Aregawi; later the
front was headed by Meles Zenawi. In 1978, the TPLF set up the Relief Society of Tigray
(REST), headed by Abadi Zemo. It espoused a mix of Tigrayan nationalism and socialist
transformation. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP), after defeat in the urban
Red Terror (see chapter 6), retreated to a base in rural eastern Tigray in mid-1977.
The EDU was rent by divisions between its leaders, and its aristocratic leaders failed to
gain popular support among their erstwhile tenants. Crucially, it suffered defeat at the hands of
the TPLF.20 The EPRP was also defeated by the TPLF and driven into Gonder, creating lasting
bitterness between the two organization.
After the ill-fated Peasants’ March of 1976, the government launched a series of five military offensives in Tigray: November 1976, June 1978, October-November 1978, March-
April 1979 and May-June 1979. Small towns such as Abi Adi changed hands several times. By
1979, REST estimated that 50,000 people in Tigray were displaced on account of war.
Refugees from Tigray and Gonder began to arrive in Sudan in early 1975. By May there were
34,000; by 1978 there were 70,000. In February 1979, the Ethiopian army invaded Sudanese
territory at Jebel Ludgi, forcing the evacuation of the nearby refugee camp of Wad el Hileui.
Dates and Event of Raya Wollo (Raya Oromo) people
1929: Oromo peasants and nomads in Yejju, Raya or Wajerat districts of present southern Tigray and northern Wallo revolted against the rule of Haile Selassie and refused to pay the heavy taxes imposed on them. The government dispatched troops to put down the revolt. The peasants with few arms they possessed were able to defeat the troops and capture a large quantity of arms and ammunition. Additional arms were obtained by the nomads from the Red Sea coast in Tajura.
1929: The Oromo fighters of the revolt in Yejju and Raya controlled a large part of their area and closed the trade route that connected Dasee, the capital of Wallo, to the south. In a battle with the government forces in October 1929, the Oromo fighters captured 2,000 rifles and 12,000 cartridges.
1930: Tafari Makonnen, throne name Haile Sellassie I, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God and Emperor of Ethiopia, succeeded Zawditu to the throne.
1930: A large government force, led by the war minister, Mulugeta, arrived in Yejju and Raya regions. The Oromo fighters put up stiff resistance. The Oromo resistance was finally put down, although temporarily, mainly by the use of airplanes. It was the first time airplanes were ever used in a war in the Empire.
1931: The first constitution of Ethiopia was introduced. In this document the term “Abyssinia” was dropped in favor of “Ethiopia,” thereby defining Abyssinians and all the colonized peoples as “Ethiopians.”
1935/1936: Oromo of Raya and Qobbo were fighting Haile Selassie’s army. At one point, on April 3, 1936 near Ashange Lake, they almost trapped Haile Selassie himself fleeing from the Italians. He never put his feet in this area again after that. During the same period, the Oromo guerrillas attacked the retreating Ethiopian army led by Ras Mulugeta and inflicted heavy casualties. They revenged his earlier (1930) aerial attack on them by killing his son; he himself narrowly escaped. One of the reasons for the attack was, the Ethiopian army on its way to the war had looted the property of the Oromo communities.
1943: The Oromo uprising in Raya was temporarily suppressed with the assistance of the British Royal Air Force stationed in Aden. Many of the leaders of the Oromo movement were also implicated in the Woyane revolt in Tigray in 1943.
1947/1948: The Raya Oromo rose up in arms again. Again after they had liberated a large area of their land, the movement was stopped when the British Royal Air Force in Aden, at the request of the Ethiopian regime, bombed the Oromo guerrilla positions
Read more @ original source: http://ayyaantuu.com/horn-of-africa-news/oromia/featuring-raya-wollo-raya-oromo-people-northernmost-cushitic-oromo-people/
Maaram is believed to be the divinity of women. Maaram was created by Waaqa and addressed as haadha boor (the mother of ocean). I think this is to indicate that Maaram came to the Oromo from outside. The Oromo believe that Mooram is the mother of a child. The Oromo women perform traditional ceremonies in respect of Maaram. It is believed that Maaram will help barren women to beget a child, and help pregnant women to give birth to a child. When a woman gives birth to a child Oromo women will gather and ululate (say ilili ilili). They also prepare porridge, and splash butter. It is normal for the Oromo to sacrifice an animal during this ceremony. Moreover, Maaram is worshipped for the health of the environment, animals, human beings and crops. The Oromo Qoolluu leaders pray to Maaram every two weeks for the continuation of offspring of humans. Maaram has her own ritual house. Ritual goods include Jaaloo (earthen caldron), and Qoloo (traditional shirt). It has also madabii (raised platform of Earth). The dancing ceremony is performed on Tuesdays, Thursdays,. and Saturdays.
Some writers have explained the nature of Ateetee and Maaram. Knutsson states that the names Ateetee and Maaram are used interchangeably for the same kind of being (Kmitsson 1967,55). Daniel states that the various songs of Ateetee imply that “[a]teete is a ceremony prepared for Ayyolee, Maaram and Waaqa as thanksgiving by those who have children and a lamentation by the barren women” (Daniel 1984, 111). Bartels, however, questioned this assertion. To the Oromo of Western Matcha, Ateetee is the name of the ritual in which Maaram is invoked (Bartels 1983). Baxter (1979) had similar observation concerning the belief of the Arsi Oromo. For Cerulli, Ateetee is conceived as the goddess of fecundity (Cerulli 1922,127; Harris 1968,50).
In the traditional Oromo society, women played distinct roles through an institution called the Siiqqee (a symbolic decorated stick given to all women by their mothers upon marriage). This is an exclusively women’s solidarity institution sanctioned by tradition and respected by society. It is a sort of sorority that provides women with channels to participate in village councils, and a cultural vehicle to mobilize en masse against violence and abuse. Infringement of certain rights that women enjoy is regarded as an attack on human rights. In the event of violation of their rights, women take out the Siiqqee and mobilize to fight for the respect of rights, and for any perpetrator of abuse to be tried by society. The use of Siiqqee draws an enormous religious, ritual and moral authority and in the pursuit of peace and social tranquility. According to tradition peace is not merely the absence of war, but a constant state of unity and cooperation among the people as well as harmony with God and nature, with the power to bless or curse. Historically, women as a sector of society were designated as strangers and excluded from the Gadaa structures and rituals, but, they stuck together through the Siiqqee counting on one another within this common sorority. –http://oromowomensinternationalconferenceonline.com/general-information.html
In Oromo mythology, the divinity for motherhood and fecundity is Ateetee or Maaram. Maaram or Ateetee is invoked and praised on birth-rituals. In addition, women prepare a feast and invoke Her, praise Her kindness so that they could be fertile, healthy, prosperous, and happy (Bartles, 1990,124; Cerulli 1917, 127, Tilahun Gamta, 2004,101)
Get-together, for today is Maaram
Let us rejoice, throw away the boredom!
O Maaram, O dear Maaram,
Reconcile, with us who lack wisdom.
Maaram with beautiful eyes, O Maaram,
Have a sit, in front of me, please come!
When in pain, the mattress one clutches
When in labour, the wall one clutches
After delivery, a baby one snatches!
In return for your labour pain
Here, the little one is your gain.
O prolific woman, your clothes smell bad,
But Maaram has adorned your backyard,
The husband laughs from the front yard.
O sterile woman, with beautiful dress
Your husband furiously grumbles,
For your backyard, Maaram avoids.
If I were Balas,
That Balas of Boongaa,
To a bad-shooter his trophies I give;
So he could boast about it with relief.
If I were Maaram,
Our great lady Maaram,
A son I would give to the sterile woman,
So she could intimidate her man.
O Maaram, my dear Maaram
Be merciful to the childless.
O Maaram, with beauty and grace
You have revered blood in your face
O Maaram, you are my commuter [between me and God]
My parturifacient mother.
Two kinds of mothers are there
One is far across the river [The biological one]
The other one is the one here. [Maaram]
I know a rider’s thought and will
He gallops down the hill
I know a husband’s thought
He loves the prolific wife the most;
He equates me to a mule, dry and bare
and makes me carry his ploughshare.
O Maaram every women’s’ queen
Resolve this problem for me
Either grant me a baby boy
I call him “he the wise”
Either grant me a baby girl
I call her “she the wise”
Or either give me death
So I could get done with my worries.
Yaa dhabduu masoo dhirsa
Dhirsatu dhaanu hawwee.
Yaa saree eegee dabbasaa
Kan quufee Waaqiin darbata
Kan Maaram namaa gootu
Haati ofii namaa hingootu.
Sibiila mutaa gootee
Kan djiiga mucaa gootee.
Baddaan qullubbii hinqabu
Muree laga dhaabbata
Kan kee dhukkubbii hinqabu
Turtee nama yaadattaa.
Araarfanne yaa maaram
Sirraa deenyee.
Gadi jedheen xaafii haamaa
Ol jedheen Waaqiin waama
An old horse’s rise from the stable,
I wonder if dogs have seen it and been able?
To have eaten it, and then did settle?
Cry of a baby-longing childles
Lament of a health-longing patient
A trophy-longing hunter’s plight
I wonder if Maaree have seen?
If She has seen and granted!
Ululation for Waaqa is a must
I ululate and beseech Waaqa;
Market of the taxing tanner
I am Waaqa’s earnest prayer!
The Loomee firewood of the street
When do you think we could meet?
Tomorrow, around mid-day
We will meet slipping away.
A handful of barley
That a widow parched and eat
the sterile prospered with it
the prolific counted it. [To equally divide.]
You know what the prolific said?
“Do not see my baby.” she said
“Do not enter my inner-room” she said.
What if I enter her inner-room?
What if I see her baby?
To her baby, I give a gift
To my stomach, porridge I eat.
No calf is kept in her inner-room,
She thinks I pine her child, I presume.
What a pity for the sterile lady
She could not get pregnant and eat a hunk of meat
She could not deliver and have showers of gift.
Abundance of rock and escarpment
Is hanging and piling up
The sterile did not hate giving birth
It is Maaram that un equalizes.
The prolific with smelly skirt
Her backyard is full of spirit.
But, the childless in a pretty skirt
Her backyard is devoid of spirit.
The sterile, the husband’s name-sake
The husband wishes to punish her.
O dog with a hairy tail
The over-fed hurls at Waaqa
The favour Maaram does for one
One’s own mother would not do.
She turned iron to needles
She turned blood to a baby that toddles.
The high land does not have onion
They cut and plant in the valley;
Your delay is not offensive
for you compensate gradually.
Reconciliation with you, O Maaram
You gave us deliverance.
I bow down and harvest xaafi [food plant]
I rise up and invoke Waaqi
This article is for those who did not have the opportunity to know how democracy evolved in human society. Democracy is only one type of government supposedly based on the will of the masses. There had been other types of government like monarchy or aristocracy, dictatorship or autocracy and totalitarian. One can find overlapping characters in all these. So what ever form we may talk about we have to expect element of one in the other. For much, democracy is an ideal type of government but not all proclaimed democracies are fully pro-people. Here the writer is trying to introduce the essence of both Western and Oromo democracy in an easy way. For those who are well versed in theory and practice of democracy this is an opportunity to enrich this work for the benefit of the youth. In particular the young generation that is showing pride in its historic past from oral tradition if armed with the facts may show more interest and start to inquire about it. To prepare the following information in addition to oral tradition and experience this writer was exposed to, the books: Gadaa and Oromo Demokrasii by Asmirom Laggasaa, The Oromo by De Salviac as translated by Qannoon, Folk Litrature by Ceruuli, Aadaa Booranaa by Ton Leus, Ethiopia through Russian Eyes by Bulatovich and Wikiipedia from internet were refered to.
Short note on Western Democracy
Democracy is a term frequently heard from lips of everyone to express equality, justice and liberty in one word. There are no governments that do not claim to follow democratic principles in their governance. Even totalitarian states call themselves “democratic republics” (probably with exception of fascism) in spite of flagrant violation of their subjects’ rights. Just like true democrats they talk about the inviolability of people’s and human rights and respect for the rule of law and fair and free election. They claim that it is to protect these rights on behalf of the masses when they take what are inhuman actions for others. Their founding documents are full of borrowed phrases from ideal democracies. Democratic governmental structures are adopted minus their functions from different countries.
Democratic models many emulate are American governmental structure with its system of separation of powers. The functions of legislature, executive and judiciary are separated into three branches in such a way that one can check on excesses of the other to maintain the balance of power. The executive or President and the legislative or members of Congress are elected directly by the people. Members of the Supreme Court are nominated by the president and endorsed by the legislature for life. The other models are Parliamentary Democracy where the executive is elected by the legislature. Those can be its members or non elected persons that are answerable to it. Britain and European governments fall under this. They have mainly different styles of organization. Still others are traditional rulers blended with modern jargons.
All these claim their objective to be safeguarding peoples’ democratic interests. The term democracy is a legacy of ancient Greek city state, Athens. It is derived from Greek demokratia which means government of the people (“demos”, people, and “kratos”, power). In this aspect “people” for Athens includes only male citizens above 20 years of age. That does not include women, children under 20, those not born in the city state and slaves.
In the city state all those qualified had the right to be present at meetings and participate in deliberations directly. That is why it is now referred to as direct democracy. After many modifications it has reached the present level of modern Western democracy. Here people elect representatives that participate in deliberations on its behalf. The two methods of electing representatives are plurality and proportional voting systems. In the first one with the highest vote is elected even if one represents minority of voters. The second shares votes in proportion of the votes parties got in overall election. Those are the features of modern indirect democracy. In both not all electorates are represented.
Now in most cases men and women above certain age have the right to vote depending on the law of each democratic country. The right to vote for women was achieved, for example, for Switzerland in 1971 on federal level and 1990 at Canton levels. It took a long time and a relentless struggle to attain universal suffrage. Though all accept these basics of democracy the structure and function of elected offices are not yet standardized and methods of elections fall short of including every voter’s voices. For example if hundred people vote for three persons and two of them got thirty votes each and the third one gets forty he/she wins the whole thing. That leaves 60 persons unrepresented. Proportional representation may improve this but cannot totally correct it. Here seats are divided in proportion to votes parties got overall.
For African countries democracy was imposed on them by departing colonial masters that keep on insisting to this day not to abandon it even if it was a fake one. Africans did not participate to construct a government relevant to their culture and tradition. Even those who later wanted to introduce amendments tried to mix the various world systems instead of looking into their own history and tradition and make it reflect national personality or psyche. As copy and eclectic as it is, it is understood only by elites who themselves are copies of colonial culture.
They rule the way they wanted, constitutions are only window dressings. On the other hand the West had modified the concept of democracy in such a way that it fits their particular national needs not as it was practiced by Athenians or any other pioneer democracies. Therefore there is no one common blueprint for it.
Had it not excluded a segment of the population Athenian democracy could have been an ideal one where the concern of every member is taken care of. Much has been tried to approximate that but the world did not yet achieve flawless democracy. Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address “Government of the people, by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.” reflects that aspiration. The question to be answered is who are the people that influence decisions, are they really the people or oligarchs? Though the ideal is not yet achieved there are those that had come nearer and worth emulating. Had Oromo democracy been able to answer that question?
Be as it may there are certain basics that underlie every governance of those that claim to be democratic. Principles like equality, freedom, fair and free election; rule of law and respect for people’s and individual rights run through all of them. Even dictators and totalitarian government claim to apply these principles in their own way. Thus these are universally accepted principles of governance though malpractice is rampant in so many countries. Ethiopian rulers had tried to adopt constitutionalism under pressure against their established tradition. The emperor had instituted a semblance of Westminster parliament without political parties. His successor (Darg) had one party state. The next (Wayyaanee) is a pseudo multiparty system but only its party is destined to win.
Be him the last emperor or the two dictators after him used democratic phraseology to cover up their core authoritarian values. Their inherited autocratic practices could not go away. The Habashaa in most part of their own history were ruled by forces that come through coup d’états violently or outlaws overthrowing the preceding government. That was so before they formed the empire and remained so even after it. All the three came to power overthrowing their predecessors. The first two staged coup d’états the third was an outlaw.
It was not consensus but brut force that kept that highland kingdom together under one crown. Democracy assumes one man one vote in a fair and free election that should be carried out periodically. Democracy is the rule of majority. Who ever gets most of the votes comes to power. In numbers they are the minority in the empire and are scared of others outnumbering them at the ballot box. They have no confidence of winning an election by strength of their platform and performance. Therefore they believe that many opportunities would be at stake if they really change from the old ways bowing down for democratic principles. The situation makes the rulers greedy, self centered, chauvinistic and paranoid that they believe only in their own ways and wisdom and are not permeable to new possibilities. They do not believe that even their own people would elect them in a democratic election. That is why human right abuse became their trade mark.
Brief note on Gadaa Democracy
When one discusses Gadaa it would be preposterous to claim understanding its depth and breadth. It was a highly complicated and sophisticated societal system to be attributed only to few generations. That it has a background of ancient civilizations can be deduced from organization of society, its legal system and patterns of knowledge it emanates. For this reason what this article presents is only a simplistic superficial aspect of it, which yet could give a clue to its democratic legacy. Leaving aside procedures, rituals and the regalia what interests us here is the legal and democratic principles enshrined in it. To discover the truth of it much effort is needed from nationals that so far considered it to be just one among the age grade initiation systems found in so many societies. They have to erase all they learned about the Oromo in colonial schools and start unraveling the truth about this so far neglected great African nation.
Gadaa was an all encompassing national system where by every male of all ages had roles to play in groups based on peerage. Accordinglly all institutions in society were managed by elected bodies that decide in counsel. Though all activities in general fall under the Gadaa system, it was more visible in its political aspect. Major divisions to be considered are the temporal and the spiritual institutions and within the temporal one the social and the political functions. Gadaa is temporal while Qaalluu is spiritual. It is said that the Qaalluu office used to assist in Gadaa operations like elections. But sovereignty is vested in Gadaa Assembly. Therefore Qaalluu as an institution does not interfere in running political affairs of the country. That means Gadaa was secular. Here we are more interested in Gadaa secular democracy. The social and political aspect of the spiritual institution may worth following for its historical and academic significance. There are several Oromoo that follow traditional religion to this day.
Gadaa was practiced by the Oromo people from time immemorial. In social aspect male members of society are grouped into age grade “hiriyaa” (peer) system. To simplify, these were Dabbalee from 1-8 years, Foollee or Gaammee 9-24 and Qondaala or Kuusaa 25-33, Raaba didiqqaa 30-38, Raaba Doorii, 38-46 Luba 46-54 and Yuba 55-78 and gadamoojjii or jaarsa above 78 (taken from different regions practice for convenience). Each member of a society had rites to pass through. At each grade there were roles to be played and training to go through.
Activity of a hiriyaa group starts from cradle to calf herding, to different hurdles of fitness that include military training to ruling and counseling the country. It is from these hiriyaa groups that members of national leadership evolve and gradually become Luba, members of the Gadaa ruling group. These leaders in most cases had been leaders of hiriyaa group from the beginning. Women, non naturalized aliens (kan luba hin bahin) and artisans were not included in Gadaa power sharing process.
One Gadaa period is eight years. At the end of that period there used to be great feast. That ceremonial feast was called “Buttaa”. Buttaa also served as measurement of time. To know someone’s age one asks “how many Buttaa did you eat?” All those who were born during the eight years tell the same age, one, two, three etc. Buttaa. From that a wise man could tell to which hiriyaa group or Gadaa party one belonged. Five buttaa are slain in one Gadaa cycle of forty years. Those born into each Gadaa are hiriyaa (peers) irrespective of up to eight years possible differences. A boy born at the beginning of the eight years and one born on Buttaa day after eight years are considered to have eaten one Buttaa.
On the political side society is divided into Gadaa of five parties. Members in each Gadaa party were recruited from their own generational age grades. Each Gadaa has a role to play in the political life of the nation depending on the time and level in the Gadaa tier. The oldest group is the Yuba. It is composed of person whose members were in power in previous times. Next is Luba, the ruling party. Below that is the Itmakoo or Raba Doorii (these may have other names with different tribes) juniors that lead in defense and nation building. The next group follows the foot steps of their seniors and engages in different aspects of society appropriate for their ages. Each hiriyaa group maintains close relationship and prepare themselves for the next stage of partisan responsibility. They all elect their leaders. Those at the bottom of the ladder are the dabbalee to whose raising society gives much attention. It is there that the basis of Oromummaa is laid down and hunting for generational leaders start.
At any one period there are three Gadaa levels that engage is serious party work and has conventions or yaa’a. The bottom one is Raabaa Doorii a group that is preparing to take power after eight years (from), the middle one is the Gadaa in power Luba and the last one is the one that leaves office, Yuba. Each Gadaa comes to power after a cycle of forty years. Since there is a party in waiting to replace the other no party can stay in power for more than eight years. No crisis can be obstacle to transfer Baallii for there is a ready made leadership. To transfer Baallii means to transfer authority. As symbol of authority the old Abbaa Gada hands over to the incoming ostrich feather that was in his custody. Each Gadaa proclaims its own constitution and laws. Therefore there is no stagnation in waiting for cumbersome methods of amendments. Even if there is no article to be changed the past law is formally made null and void and proclaimed again as new. The five Gadaa had set names or are called after their leaders.
The highest Assembly of the nation is Caffee or Gumii. The Caffee sits under shade of an Odaa tree. The General Assembly includes all members of the ruling party and any such persons that want to attend it. In this way it is a representative indirect democracy with some elements of direct democracy. Living Abbaa Gadaas and the Yuba can also participate in the assembly. Abbaa Gadaa or Abbaa Bokkuu is the head of the Caffee and the chief executive as well. There is a case where their were two heads of Caffee, one ritual head called Abbaa Bokkuu and another elected head, Abbaa Gadaa. The Luba usually consults “raagaa” wise man or philosopher on the future or consequences of certain decisions. But the raagaa has no power to avert a decision.
In addition to mentioned institutions there are several others that should not escape our attention. For example the institution of clan elders which are hereditary have no place in the Gadaa structure but has important role in organizing and guiding the tribe. Members of Gadaa were recruited (nominated) from tribes they lead. They have ritual symbols and roles to play in cursing and blessing. When Gadaa is the national leadership these ones are tribal ones. It was from among these ones that the colonizers embraced and recruited as agents for all their grassroots activities. In tribal protocol the eldest of the clans is called or seated first. Since tribal structures have already been rendered obsolete it has no nationwide political relevance in modern setting. There is also the Siiqqee institution that gives women social and political authority to some degree. In principle this can be integrated into any modern adaptations.
For the Oromo rights like equality, freedom, fair and free election; rule of law and respect for people’s and individual rights, respect and protection for environment and wild life are inbuilt qualities of Gadaa democracy. All human beings are equal; no one is above the law; discrimination because of origin, color or economic status etc is unjust. Respect for human rights, freedom of expression that are not safuu or morally repulsive, freedom of movement and association are protected by law. Elected officials are loved and respected as long as they serve the people whole heartedly and with the highest morale standard. An incompetent and corrupt official can be removed from office by the assembly before the expiry of his term of office. In meetings it was preferred if decisions were reached by consensus. Each member of a meeting or assembly has the right of veto to halt a discussion. Once decisions were reached all are required to acclaim and the law becomes sacred.
Gadaa Assembly combines executive, legislative and judiciary powers. Gadaa here is to mean the ruling class as well as the eight years of their rule. Leaders of current Gadaa are called Luba. The outgoing Gadaa which participates as advisors and judges are called Yuba. The Yuba group includes two previous Yuba. Though all powers and responsibility lie with the Luba, Yuba and all living Abbaa Gadaas had also roles to play in matters of law and checking on excesses of Luba and had great influence on all political matters. Full retirement comes three Gadaa after they leave office. From thence they are called gadamoojjii or jarsaa. Another hiriyaa group that is active during a Gadaa period is the Itmakoo or Raaba Doorii with defense as their major activity with their eye on the bokkuu when the time comes.
In Oromo society there was a tendency of the weak to form alliance against the strong. For example grandparents and grandchildren ally against parents. In the same way it is logical for Raabaa Doorii to ally against the strongest institution of the land, Luba. In that way power of Luba can be checked before it gets corrupted and become abusive.
The chief Luba is the Abbaa Bokkuu or Abbaa Gadaa (Hayyuu Fiixee). In places he has two deputies one having greater power than the other. The executive power is held by Salgee, the top nine Luba or six in some places. Those were elites elected by the people for eight years with Abbaa Gadaa as their leader. Committees were usually formed at different levels for different functions. Prerogatives of decision making at each level is known. There will always be consultation before decisions are taken. They were it is believed, those frequent meetings to make seera (law, legislation) that gave rise to Amaara legal term “seeraa” to mean conspiracy.
Abbaa Bokkuu implements what is decided by Salgee. Abbaa Bokkuu’s role as a chief is defined by law. Thus he has internal constraint imposed on him by peers and external ones by Yuba and Raaba Doorii and Caffee periodic assembly that is chaired by Abbaa Seera who is a well respected past Abbaa Gadaa. The limitation of office term of only eight years for a party is by it self a reason not to get corrupted lest face humiliation with no chance of reelection. Thus Gadaa democratic system was a well balanced system with inbuilt checks and balance mechanism. The Abbaa Gadaa and Luba had assistances called makala (Makkala). Makala kan be compulsory service to Gadaa offices.
Military functions are assigned to Raaba Doorii by law and tradition. But Abbaa Gadaa was commander in chief and only Caffee can declare war. Commanders are appointed by Abbaa Gadaa for each engagement. After a campaign is over the person went back to his normal duties.
But lack of efficient communication and contingent law enforcement mechanism had given rise for Abbaa Duulaas to defy tradition starting in the course of the 16th century.
Some cardinal points of Gadaa system
Gadaa is equal: There should be no one to be denied passing through Gadaa process, elect and be elected when ones turn comes. There should not be partiality or discrimination in services and protections Gadaa provides. Every member has the right to directly or through elected representative be heard in all affairs that affect people’s life; to be equally treated in matters of administration of justice. No one is above the law. No one may be prohibited to attend Gadaa deliberations.
Odaa is equal: Odaa is a national symbol for people’s government, demokratia. It represents freedom of speech and expression, freedom of assembly, equality of all participants that meet there, freedom of worship, peace and araaraa (reconciliation) and liberty to rest for persons and animals under its shade without worry of being disturbed.
Malkaa is equal: Ford or river crossing (confluence) is open to all for crossing; perform rituals; using water for drinking, washing etc for humans and animals. No one for any one reason can bar any one from using it. Malkaa is a symbol of transiting from status quo to something new.
Market is equal: every one has equal rights to take ones produce to the market and exchange with goods and services that it provides. Every one is free to participate in such exchanges and any trade of ones liking that the market provides
Road is equal: every one is entitled to the right of way; no one can be denied an access from his home to outer world or restricted from using of existing roads like all others; there will not be restriction to the right of travel; no one has the right to close an existing road for own use.
Is there any point that modern society discard from these? So far we have tried simplistic approach to uncover old Gadaa practice. Gadaa was more inclusive in its membership than Greek City state democracy. It involves every member of society to equally participate in all activity of the nation according to generations. All male nationals are grouped into generational hiriyaa and play roles society assigned for them. For this reason the Gadaa system involves all in the process of managing a society. Each division stays in the age grade for eight years before it is initiated into the next level. Probably except kids under nine all elect their leaders through electoral process. Gadaa was a representative democracy with some elements of direct democracy. Anyone that can travel to Caffee Assembly can participate in its deliberations and express ones opinion. That gives it semblance of direct democracy. Gadaa was practiced when Qaalluu institution had significant role in Oromo society and the nation was at a different level of economic and technological development than the present. Taking these variations into account let us see if there are principles that we could salvage for new democratic Oromiyaa.
Societal development takes place on two lines. One is the social age grade system and the other is the party system. One follows the gradual mental and physical development of a child, while the other handles its political development. At stage of adult hood both overlap. In the political aspect society is grouped into five hiriyaa category and a party name is attached to them. Each party takes turn in governing every eight years. A party has to wait for forty years to reign again. All five parties exist at the same time with different roles to play.
In Gadaa executive and legislative functions are combined. Bokkuu and Caffee (Gumii) are the highest authority of the land. Sovereignty lies with the people but expressed through Caffee and Bokkuu.
Decisions are reached by consensus how ever long it may take. That means minority opinion is never neglected.
Abbaa Bokkuu is the commander in chief of the fighting force. Caffee is the only power that can declare war. People love and respect the leaders because of their valor and uprightness not out of fear and threat.
Yuba is the highest advisory body and also heads the supreme court of the land. Its head is the most respected among the living retired Abbaa Gadaas and usually taken as the Supreme Judge (Chief Justice).
Itmakoo/Raaba Doorii is a power in waiting to replace the incumbent Luba. It is responsible for recruiting, training military personnel and conducting war.
Qaalluu is the spiritual leader with some functions concerning elections but never interferes in secular affairs of the Gadaa. Gadaa was a temporal institution.
Women were recognized as subjects of rights through Siiqqee institution. There were also rituals that cannot be performed without them. But full equality was not guaranteed.
The top Gadaa counselors were nine ( Salgee) or Six
The Luba are assisted by unelected official called makala (Aide de camp)
Each Gadaa general assembly convenes at the beginning of its term to declare laws. Then it will assemble in its mid term to make progress report. Then members can be criticized, condemned or uprooted for wrong doings if any. That means electors had the right to recall their representatives for corruptions and abuses. Caffee meetings are open for citizens that can attend.
Raagaa is a wise usually old man or philosopher that can advise on the future
Hayyuu were notables (elites) that can give decisions and counseling on several issues. They were knowledgeable members of the society without any flaw in character.
To summarize, the people are sovereign; representative system mixed with direct democracy were practiced; rulers were elected for a limited term of only eight years; citizens had the right to elect and be elected according to their ages; no one was above the law; people can recall their representative; humans, animals and nature are protected by law; the welfare of children was concern of all members of society; their was majority rule but by making decision by consensus minority views were protected; all human being were equal, ill treatment was abhorred; right to assemble and freedom of expression were protected; right to engage in any trade was protected; right to travel were granted; right to worship was recognized and discrimination based on race, age, gender and economic status are forbidden. There was inbuilt check and balance system in the political process but not so spelled out.
Now, that we have seen a brief introduction to western and ancient Oromo Gadaa democracy, let us try if we can come out with a fitting system for reorganizing modern Oromiya. The system of dividing and managing society into generations is not different from modern world school systems. Children learn what is assigned them according to peerage, “preschool, kindergarten, primary, secondary, college”. This is not far from what they call “dabbalee, Foollee, Gaammee, Raaba etc.” Existing political parties recruit members from this school system. But the Oromo as different as they are, had something to add and their own outlook. Oromo see the system in interrelation with all other societal activities. To pass from one stage to the other are rights of all citizens not of particular classes.
Probably it would be essential to revise certain things and see how they may serve modern society better. Instead of collectively saying Oromo youth association if one says association of Foollee, Gaammee, Raaba etc it will help to mobilize in unison generation that under stand each other better. It may also give better opportunity to develop future leadership for society. In the past stages in the Gadaa were seen from fathers’ point. For this reason the age at which one has to produce a child was determined. If one is born before that it was bad omen. Now all children should be treated equally and age has to be considered from childrens point. So, age should not be calculated by butta and father’s Gadaa grade, but the exact date of a child’s birth. All those excluded to participate in gadaa activities and elections must now be included to make true that all humanbeing are eqal. This is only the skeleton otherwise social functions require deeper research. During the period of Abbaa Gadaa there was only one Qaalluu, now they are numerous (in addition to those of other religions). In the past we go for pilgrimage only to Abbaa Muudaa now we crossed the sea and added Mecca and Jerusalem etc. After all, what do you think? This is a big challenge for Oromoo intellectuals. It may require liberating ones mind from the shackles of foreign influences to appreciate what we had. Gadaa is never obsolete but may need refurbishing. Go and make research before responding.
Let us get prepared to be ourselves and show the world that Gadaa still dwells in our minds and body. This will not be difficult for one who has pride in Oromummaa.
Honor and glory for the fallen heroines and heroes; liberty equality and freedom for the living and nagaa and araaraa for the Ayyaanaa of our fore parents!
Ibsaa Guutama
July 2011
…The presence of the aged, both men and women who attired in traditional costumes, and carrying ritual sticks—bokkuu and siiqqee—the symbols of power and justice of the gadaa system decorated the march which reflected the authentic Oromo tradition. This authenticity is articulated not only in the words spoken by the elders and sung by the artists but also expressed in the peacefulness of the gathering of millions of people. Oromo nationalism is reviving and thriving in the fertile soil of rich symbolic cultural resources that have come to the open since the 1990s. The array of national symbols such as the odaa tree which decorate the costumes worn by men, women and children, the siiqqee, the bokkuu and other pre-colonial pan-Oromo symbols carried by men and women at the festival represent and reinforce the pride of the nation and unite the multitude gathered for the festival through a common imagery of shared memories, myths and values—in other words the shared structures of feeling.
is the principle of deep moral honor and accountability that was fostered by Waaqayyo fearing people of Oromia. “Yoon maqe, Waaqni na arga” is the principle rooted in each Oromo proven to be worthy of wholesomeness, to have virtue, and love other. These type of people have a desire to understand and live by traditional values.
Young Oromo children often spoke about the fundamental principle that telling the truth, respecting nature, being trustworthy, and standing for the right thing is natural to human beings. As an Oromo, we were taught these values and it made us women and men of such noble character.
Not only our characters were shaped by Safuu Oromo, even the process of Seera tumu (law making) was inspired by this principle and the Gadaa system was framed on the basis of Safuu. Basically then, Safuu is the principle of restoration of human dignity in a significant way. Because of Safuu, Birmadummaa and honesty is expected from each Oromo so that we all can live virtuous life of divine purposes.
When the Oromo people lived according to the Gadaa system, they dominated the horn of Africa and established their republic, and the Oromoo Foollee turned into statesmen and defended the norm of Gadaa governance. Because they believed in being honest, true, benevolent and virtuous in doing good to humanity, they demanded no money for their work and time. They worked on their farms but served their country as abbaa Seeraa, abbaa Alangaa, abbaa Caffee, abbaa Bokku and as Hadha sinqee etc..
Because of Safuu, the Oromos are inspired to respect nature and committed to deal justly with humankind! That’s why we are indebted to freedom-loving individuals everywhere who had the integrity necessary to build the foundations of human societies upon safuu’s fundamental moral values. Only in an atmosphere of freedom and trust could values like honesty and integrity truly flourish.
Safuu Oromo therefore is an expectation that people must rise above self-interest and act in the public interest with wisdom and courage both on the national and the local political scene.
One reason for the decline of Safuu in Oromia to day is that people invented new standards that constantly changes and undependable moral conduct. As a result, individuals define good and evil as being adjustable according to each situation but doing so is in direct contrast to the Safuu standard.
The vast majority of so called educated Oromos speak or think based on this mindset where right and wrong are calculated to either remain neutral or to be liked by others at the expenses of own value, the Safuu. In the process, our people lost their ancestral knowledge of what is right and what is wrong and went astray by longings for luxury and leisure that they think will be found in the western world style of living and thinking.
The devastation that comes from such fraudulent life style and self misrepresentation is immeasurable. It leads to a false belief that they can worship anything they want following the rules they set for themselves.
However, the continued survival of a free and open society is dependent upon a high degree of divinely inspired values and moral conduct (safuu), as stated by the Oromo Ayaantus. People must have trust in their institutions and in their leaders. Hence, a great need today is for leadership that exemplifies truth, honesty, and decency in both public and private life.
Honesty is not only the best policy, it is the only policy according to Safuu Oromo.
There are several things we can do to develop SAFUU.
Desire It (Fedhii Safuu horadhu)
Live honest life (hin Maqin)
Be Humble (Fayaalessa ta’i)
Study (Qu’adhu)
Search and ponder on ideas (Yaada xiinxali)
Love nature ( Umaa jaaladhu)
This paper deals, among others, with the development of Meroitic studies, the Meroitic civilization, the destruction of the city of Meroe, the dispersal of the Meroitic people after the collapse of their state, the Christianization of the post Meroitic states in Ethiopia (i.e. Northern Sudan / it is to be reminded that the modern state of Abyssinia is fallaciously, illegally and criminally rebaptized ‘Ethioipia’), the migration of the remnants of the Meroitic people in the direction of the Blue Nile, and their possible relation of ancestry with the modern Cushitic language speaking Oromo nation. It must be stated clearly at the outset that the issue of Meroitic ancestry of the Oromo nation has not yet been considered, much less published in an academic journal or scholarly books. The paper was first presented in an academic conference organized by the Oromo Studies Association. Footnotes have been added in view of the aforementioned publication (see Pdf).
1. The Development of the Meroitic Studies, the History of Kush and Meroe, and the Efforts to Decipher the Meroitic Writing
Interest in what was Ethiopia for the Ancient Greeks and Romans, i.e. the Northern territory of present day Sudan from Khartoum to the Egyptian border *1, led to the gradual development of the modern discipline of the Humanities that long stood in the shadow of Egyptology: the Meroitic Studies.
Considerable advances had been made in academic research and knowledge as the result of the exploratory trips of the Prussian pioneering Egyptologist Richard Lepsius *2 (1842 – 1844) that bestowed upon modern scholarship the voluminous ‘Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien’ (Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia), and as the direct consequence of the series of excavations undertaken by E. A. Wallis Budge *3 and John Garstang *4 at Meroe (modern Bagrawiyah) in the first years of the twentieth century, by Francis Llewellyn Griffith *5 at Kawa (ancient Gematon, near modern Dongola, 1929 – 1931), by Fritz Hintze *6 at Musawwarat es Sufra, by Jean Leclant *7 at Sulb (Soleb), Sadinga (Sedeinga), and Djebel Barkal (ancient Napata, modern Karima) in the 1950s and the 1960s, by D. Wildung *8 at Naqah, and by Charles Bonnet at Kerma. The pertinent explorations and contributions of scholars like A. J. Arkell *9, P. L. Shinnie *10, and Laszlo Torok *11 that cover a span of 80 years reconstituted a large part of the greatness and splendor of this four millennia long African civilization.
Yet, due to the lack of direct access to original sources and genuine understanding of the ancient history of Sudan, the legendary and historical Ethiopia of the Greeks and Romans, which corresponds to what was ‘Kush’ for the Hebrews (mentioned many times in the Bible) and ultimately ‘Kas’ for the ancient Egyptians *12 (mentioned in thousands of hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic texts), we face a serious problem of terminology when it comes to Ancient Sudan’s earlier historical periods.
We are confined to such terms as Period (or Group) A (3100 – 2700 BCE), *13 Period B *14 (2700 – 2300 BCE that starts with Pharaoh Snefru’s expedition, *15 which marks indeed the beginning of the time-honored and multi-faceted relationship between Kemet-Egypt and Kush), and Period C *16 (2300 – 2100 BCE), for one millennium of Ancient Sudanese (Ethiopian or Kushitic) History. For the said period, thanks to Ancient Egyptian texts, we have a plethora of ethnic names and state names referring to populations living in North Sudan’s territory (notably Wawat, Irtet, Setjiu,Yam, Zetjau, and Medjay *17); but we fail to correctly establish to whom these names exactly refer as ethno-linguistic groups (Kushitic? Nilo-Saharan? Western Hamitic?).
Subsequent periods of Ancient Sudanese History are also denoted in conventional manner, as this is highlighted by the term Period of Kerma *18 (2100 – 1500 BCE); this period is named after the modern city and archeological site, 500 km in the south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border.
What we know for sure is that, when the first Pharaohs of the New Empire invaded and colonized the entire area down to Kurgus *19 (more than 1000 km alongside the Nile, south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border), they established two top Egyptian administrative positions, namely “Viceroy of Wawat” and “Viceroy of Kush/Kas”. Wawat is the area between Aswan and Abu Simbel or properly speaking, the area between the first and the second cataracts, whereas Kas is all the land that lies beyond. With the collapse of the Kerma culture, comes to end a first high-level culture and powerful state in the area of Kush.
We employ the term ‘Kushitic Period’ *20 to refer to the subsequent periods:
a) the Egyptian annexation (1500 – 950 BCE), which involved a permanent effort to egyptianize Kush that triggered in turn ceaseless Kushitic revolutions against the Pharaohs,
b) the Kushitic independence (950 – 800 BCE), when a separate state was formed around Napata *21, present day Karima, 750 km south of the Sudanese – Egyptian border,
c) the Kushitic expansion and involvement in Egypt (800 – 670 BCE, which corresponds mostly to the XXVth – ‘Ethiopian’ (meaning literally Sudanese) according to Manetho *22 – dynasty of Egypt, when the Theban clergy of Amun made an alliance with the Kushitic ‘Qore’, i.e. the Kings of Napata, who ruled Kush and Upper Egypt based on their two capitals, Napata and Thebes *23, (the alliance was directed against the pact that the Heliopolitan clergy of Ra had made with the Libyan princes who thus strengthened the separate state of Lower Egypt),
d) the Kushitic expulsion from Egypt, following the three successive invasions of Egypt by Emperors Assarhaddon *24 (in 671 BCE) and Assurbanipal *25 (in 669 BCE and 666 BCE) of Assyria, who made an alliance with the Heliopolitan *26 priesthood and the Libyan princes against the Theban clergy and the Kushitic kings, and
e) the subsequent Kushitic state’s decline – period during which took place the successive invasions led by Psamtik/Psammetichus II of Egypt *27 (in 591 BCE) and by the Achaemenid *28 Persian Shah Kambudjiyah / Cambyses *29 (in 525 BCE).
The entire Kushitic period is considered as terminated with the completion of the transfer of the capital city at a much safer (and more distant from Egypt) location far in the south, namely at Meroe, in the area of present day Bagrawiyah beyond the point whereby Atbarah river unites with the Greater Nile. This event occurred at the end of the reign of Qore (King) Nastasen *30 between 335 and 315 BCE.
We call ‘Meroitic’ the entire period that covers almost 700 years beginning around 260 BCE with the reign of the successors of Nastasen, notably Arkamaniqo / Ergamenes *31 (the most illustrious among the earliest ones and the first to be buried at Meroe / Bagrawiyah), and ending with the end of Meroe and the destruction of the Meroitic royal cities by the Axumite Abyssinian Negus Ezana *32 (ca. 370 CE). It is easily understood that the ‘Kushitic’ period antedates ‘Meroitic’ period, but both appellations are quite conventional.
The ancient people of Kush (or Ethiopia) entered into a period of cultural, intellectual, and scriptorial radiation and authenticity relatively late, around the third century BCE, which means that the development took place when Meroe replaced Napata as capital of the Kushites / Meroites. Before that moment, the ancient people of Kush (or Ethiopia) used Egyptian hieroglyphic writing for all their scriptorial purposes, be they administrative, economic, religious and/or monumental – royal. The introduction of the Meroitic alphabetic hieroglyphic writing spearheaded the development of a Meroitic cursive alphabetic scripture that was used for less magnificent purposes than palatial and sacred relief inscriptions. The first person to publish copies of Meroitic inscriptions (then unidentified) was the French architect Gau *33, who visited Northern Sudan as early as 1819. Quite unfortunately, almost two centuries after the discovery of the first Meroitic inscriptions, we are left in mysteries with regard to the greatest part of the contents of the epigraphic evidence collected in both scriptural systems.
The earliest dated Meroitic hieroglyphic inscriptions belong to the reign of the ruling queen Shanakdakheto *34 (about 177-155 BCE), but archaeologists believe that this scripture represents the later phase of a language spoken by Kushites / Meroites at least as far back as 750 BCE and possibly many centuries or even millennia before that (hinting therefore at a Kushitic / Ethiopian continuity from the earliest Kerma days at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE). The earliest examples of Meroitic cursive inscriptions, recently found by Charles Bonnet in Dukki Gel (REM 1377-78) *35, can also be dated in the early 2nd century BCE. The latest text is still probably the famous inscription from Kalabsha (Ancient Egyptian Talmis) mentioning King Kharamadoye (REM 0094) *36, which dates back to the beginning of the fifth century CE, although some funeral texts from Ballana *37 could be contemporary or even posterior.
Despite the fact that F. L. Griffith identified the twenty three (23) Meroitic alphabetic writing signs already in 1909, not much progress has been made towards the ultimate decipherment of the Meroitic *38. Scarcity of epigraphic evidence plays a certain role in this regard, since as late as the year 2000 we were not able to accumulate more than 1278 texts in all types of Meroitic writing. If we now add to this fact the lack of lengthy texts, the lack of any bilingual text (not necessarily Egyptian /Meroitic, it could also be Ancient Greek / Meroitic, if we take into consideration that Arkamaniqo / Ergamenes *39 was personally well versed in Greek), and a certain lack of academic vision, we understand why the state of our knowledge about the history of the Ancient Meroites is still so limited.
Linguistics and parallels from other languages have been repeatedly set in motion in order to help the academic research. Griffith and Haycock *40 tried to read Meroitic, through use of (modern) Nubian – quite unsuccessfully. K.H. Priese *41 tried to read the Meroitic texts, using Eastern Sudanese (Beja *42 or Hadendawa *43) languages – also unsuccessfully. On the other hand, F. Hintze *44, attempted to compare Meroitic with the Ural-Altaic group (Turko-Mongolian languages) to no avail. More recently, Siegbert Hummel *45, compared the “known” Meroitic words to words attested in languages of the Altaic family which he believed was a substrate language of Meroitic; as this hypothesis is totally wrong, no result came out of this effort. At times, scholars (like Clyde Winters *46) were driven to farfetched interpretations, attempting to equate Meroitic with Tokharian, after assuming a possible relationship between the names Kush and Kushan *47, the latter being the appellation of a sizeable Eastern Iranian state of the late Arsacid *48 (250 BCE – 224 CE) and early Sassanid *49 (224 – 651 CE) times. However, one has to conclude that the bulk of the researchers working on the Meroitic language never believed that the language of the Ancient Sudanese (Ethiopians) could ever be a member of the so-called Afro-Asiatic group of languages (the term itself being very wrong and quite fraudulent).
So far, the only Meroitic words for which a solid translation had been given by Griffith and his successors are the following: man, woman, meat, bread, water, give, big, abundant, good, sister, brother, wife, mother, child, begotten, born, feet. The eventual equivalence between Egyptian and Meroitic texts was a strong motivation for any interpretational approach, recent or not. More recent, but still dubious, suggestions are the following: arohe- ‘protect’, hr- ‘eat’, pwrite ‘life’, yer ‘milk’, ar ‘boy’, are- or dm- ‘take, receive’, dime ‘cow’, hlbi ‘bull’, ns(e) ‘sacrifice’, sdk ‘journey’, tke- ‘love, revere’, we ‘dog’. It is clear that vocalization remains a real problem *50.
Through the aforementioned we realize why collective works, like Fontes Historiae Nubiorum. Textual Sources for the History of the Middle Nile Region (vols. I – IV, edited by T. Eide, T. Haegg, R.H. Pierce, and L. Torok, University of Bergen, Bergen 1994, 1996. 1998 and 2000), are still seminal for our – unfortunately indirect, as based on Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Latin and Coptic texts – knowledge of Ancient Meroe.
2. The End of Meroe
Amidst numerous unclear points of the Kushitic / Meroitic (Ancient Sudanese / Ethiopian) History, the end of Meroe and the consequences under which it happened still remain a most controversial point among scholars. Quite indicatively, we may mention here the main efforts of historical reconstitution.
A. Arkell, Sayce and others asserted that Meroe was captured and destroyed, following one military expedition led by Ezana of Axum.
B. Reisner insisted that, after Ezana’s invasion and victory, Meroe remained a state under another dynasty tributary to Axum.
C. Monneret de Villard and Hintze affirmed that Meroe was totally destroyed already before Ezana’s invasion, due to another, earlier Axumite Abyssinian raid.
D. Torok, Shinnie, Kirwan, Haegg and others concluded that Meroe was defeated by a predecessor of Ezana, and continued existing as a vassal state.
E. Bechhaus-Gerst specified that Meroe was invaded prior to Ezana’s raid, and that the Axumite invasion did not reach further lands north of Meroe *51.
With two fragmentary inscriptions from Meroe, one from Axum, two graffitos from Kawa and Meroe, and one coin being all the evidence we have so far, we have little to properly reconstruct the details that led to the collapse of Meroe. One relevant source, the Inscription of Ezana (DAE 11, the ‘monotheistic’ inscription in vocalized Ge’ez), *52 remains a somewhat controversial historical source to be useful in this regard. The legendary Monumentum Adulitanum *53, lost but copied in a confused way by Cosmas Indicopleustes *54, may not shed light at all on this event. One point is sure, however: there was never a generalized massacre of the Meroitic inhabitants of the lands conquered by Ezana. The aforementioned DAE 11 inscription mentions just 758 Meroites killed by the Axumite forces.
What is even more difficult to comprehend is the reason behind the scarcity of population attested on Meroitic lands in the aftermath of Ezana’s raid. The post-Meroitic and pre-Christian, transitional, phase of Sudan’s history is called X-Group *55 or Period, and also Ballana Period; this atypical appellation underscores the lack to historical insight that happens once more in the History of Ancient Sudan (Ethiopia).
During the Ballana Period (X-Group) and contrarily to what happened for many centuries of Meroitic History, when the Meroitic South (the area between today’s Shendi *56 and Atbarah *57 in modern Sudan with the entire hinterland of Butana that was called Insula Meroe / Nesos Meroe, i.e. Island Meroe in the Antiquity) was overpopulated comparatively with the Meroitic North {the area between Napata / Karima and Abu Simbel *58 or further in the North, Aswan *59 (the area between Aswan and Abu Simbel was then called Triakontaschoinos *60 and politically, it was divided between Meroe and the Roman Empire)}, the previously under-populated area (i.e. the Meroitic North) gives us the impression of a more densely peopled region, if compared to the previous center of Meroitic power and population density (the Meroitic South). The new situation contradicts therefore the earlier descriptions and narrations by Dio Cassius *61 and Strabo *62.
Furthermore, the name ‘Ballana period’ is quite indicative in this regard, because Ballana is located on Egyptian soil, whereas not far, south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border, lies Karanog with its famous tumuli that bear evidence of Nubian (not Kushitic / Meroitic) upper hand in terms of social anthropology. The southernmost counterpart of Karanog culture can be found in Tangassi (nearby Karima, which represented the ‘North’ for what was the center of the earlier Meroitic power). This means that for the period immediately after the destruction of Meroe (ca. 370 CE), the Meroitic North offers the archaeological evidence that serves to name the entire period (Ballana Period), whereas the Meroitic South seems to have been totally uninhabited.
In addition, in terms of culture, X-Group heralds a total break with the Meroitic tradition, with the Nubians and the Blemmyes/Beja outnumbering the Meroitic remnants and imposing a completely different cultural and socio-anthropological milieu out of which would later emanate the first and single Nubian state in the World History: Nobatia.
Much confusion characterized modern scholars when referring to Kush or Meroe by using the modern term ‘Nubia’. By now, it is clear that the Nubians lived since times immemorial in both Egypt and the Sudan, being part of the history of these two lands. However, the Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan ethno-linguistic group different from the Hamitic Kushites / Meroites. At the times of X-Group and during the long centuries of Christian Sudan, we have the opportunity to attest the differences and the divergence between the Nubians and the Meroitic remnants.
Following the collapse of the Meroitic state, the epicenter of the Nubian land, i.e. the area between the first (Aswan) and the third (Kerma) cataracts, rose to independence and prominence first, with capital at Faras, nearby the present day Sudanese – Egyptian border, around 450 CE. Nobatia institutionalized Coptic as religious (Christian) and administrative language, and Nubian language remained an oral only means of communication. The Nobatian control in the areas south of the third cataract was vague, nominal and precarious. Nobatia was linked with the Coptic (‘Monophysitic’) Patriarchate of Alexandria.
This means something very important for the Christian History of Sudan (Ethiopia); Christianization did not come from Abyssinia, and there was no cultural or religious impact exercised by Axum on (Ethiopia) Sudan. As in pre-Christian times, Ethiopia remained the absolute opposite of Abyssinia. In the true, historical Ethiopia (Sudan), Christianization came from the North (Egypt). Abyssinia (which cannot be called ‘Ethiopia’ and which has absolutely no right to the name of Ethiopia) was a marginal and isolated, tiny and mountainous state that basically controlled the land between Axum and Adulis (on the Red Sea shore). And King Ezana’s invasion and destruction of Meroe was an occasional and inconsequential event that did not bring forth any immediate major result.
The Meroitic remnants underscored their difference from the Nubians / Nobatians, and the depopulated central part of the defunct state of Meroe rose to independence only later, in the first decades of the sixth century. Its name, Makuria, is in this regard a linguistic reminiscence of the name ‘Meroe’, but we cannot know its real origin and meaning. The remnant of the Meroitic populations inhabited the northern circumference of Makuria more densely, and the gravitation center revolved around Old Dongola (580 km south of Wadi Halfa), capital of this Christian Orthodox state that extended from Kerma to Shendi (the area of the sixth cataract), so for more than 1000 km alongside the Nile. But beyond the area of Karima (750 km in the south of Wadi Halfa) and the nearby famous Makurian monastery at Al Ghazali we have very scarce evidence of Christian antiquities. The old African metropolis of Meroe remained at the periphery of both, the Kushitic Ethiopian states of Makuria and Alodia and the Semitic Abyssinian state of Axum.
Makurians highlighted their ideological – religious divergence from the Nubians, by adopting Greek, not Coptic, as religious language. They even introduced a new scripture for their Makurian language that seems to have been a later phase of Meroitic. Makurian was written in alphabetic Greek signs. Risen at a time of Christological disputes and theological conflicts that brought about a forceful polarization between the Greek Orthodox and the Coptic ‘Monophysitic’ Patriarchates of Alexandria, the state and the Christian church of Makuria sided with the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria, in striking opposition to the Nobatian state and church that allied themselves with the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria.
Further in the South, Alodia has long been called by modern scholars as the ‘third Christian state’ of Sudan, but recent discoveries in Soba, its capital (15 km at the east of Khartoum), suggest that Alodia rose first to independence (around 500 CE) and later adhered to Christianity (around 580 – 600 CE), following evangelization efforts deployed by missionary Nobatian priests (possibly in a sort of anti-Makurian religious diplomacy). In general, we know little about Alodia (or Aluwah or Alwa), and we actually don’t know whether they used a particular Alodian writing system.
The later phases of the History of Christian Ethiopia (Sudan) encompass the Nobatian – Makkurian merge (around 1000 CE), which was necessary for the two Christian states to defend themselves against the Islamic pressure coming manly from the North (Egypt), the islamization of Makkuria in 1317, and finally, the late collapse of Christian Alodia in 1505.
The question remains unanswered until today:
– What happened to the bulk of the Meroitic population, i.e. the inhabitants of the Insula Meroe, the present day Butana? What occurred to the Meroites living between the fourth and the sixth cataracts after the presumably brief raid of Ezana of Axum, and the subsequent destruction of Meroe, Mussawarat es Sufra, Naqah, Wad ben Naqah, Basa and all the other important cities of the Meroitic heartland?
3. Reconstruction of the Post-Meroitic History of the Kushitic Oromo Nation
Certainly, the motives of Ezana’s raid have not yet been properly studied and assessed by modern scholarship. The reasons for the raid may vary from a simple nationalistic usurpation of the name of ‘Ethiopia’ (Kush), which would give a certain Christian eschatological legitimacy to the Axumite Abyssinian kingdom, to the needs of international politics (at the end of 4th c. CE) and the eventuality of an Iranian – Yemenite (Himyaritic) – Meroitic alliance at the times of Shapur II (310 – 379), aimed at outweighing the Eastern Roman – Abyssinian bond.
Yet, this Iranian – Sudanese political alliance may have been only the later phase of a time-honored Iranian infiltration that could have taken the form of an (easily assessable by both civilizations and nations, the Meroites and the Iranians) heliocentric theology and imperial ideology. No less than 300-350 years before Ezana’s raid and destruction of Meroe, the famous Jebel Qeili reliefs of Shorakaror mark an impressive penetration of Mithraic artistic and religious concepts and forms.
Whatever the reasons of Ezana’s raid may have been, we can be quite sure, when it comes to the destruction of Meroe, about two determinant points that impose a fresh approach and interpretation of the historical development:
a) the absence of any large-scale massacre is evident, and
b) the impressive scarcity of population in the old, central Meroitic provinces is a fact for the period that follows Ezana’s raid and the destruction of Meroe.
The only plausible explanation is that the scarcity of population in the Meroitic mainland after Meroe’s destruction must be due to a large scale migration to safer areas far from the reach of the king of Axum.
The only explanation to match the historical facts and the archeological evidence is that, following Ezana’s raid, the Meroites in their outright majority (at least for the inhabitants of Meroe’s southern provinces) fled and migrated to areas where they would stay independent from the Semitic Abyssinian kingdom of Christian Axum. This explanation hinges on the best utilization and interpretation of the already existing historical – archaeological data.
From archeological evidence, it becomes clear that during X-Group phase and throughout the Makurian period (so for many long centuries) the former heartland of Meroe remained mostly uninhabited. The end of Meroe is definitely very abrupt, and this makes obvious that Meroe’s driving force had gone elsewhere. The correct question would then be ‘where to’?
There is no evidence of Meroites sailing the Nile downwards to the area of the 4th (Karima) and the 3rd (Kerma) cataracts, which was earlier the northern circumference of Meroe and remained totally untouched by Ezana. There is no textual evidence in Greek, Latin and/or Coptic to testify to such a migratory movement toward the North. Christian Roman Egypt would certainly be an incredible direction, but if this had been the case, the migration would have been recorded in some texts and monuments due to its importance. To the above, we have to add the impossibility of marching to the heartland of Abyssinia, because this must have been for the migrating Meroites the only direction to avoid, and again if it had occurred, it would have been mentioned in some historical sources, Ge’ez, Coptic, Syriac, Greek or Latin.
Having therefore excluded all the migration alternatives as per above, we can examine the remaining possibilities. The migrating Meroites could therefore have a) gone either to the vast areas of the Eastern and the Western deserts , b) entered the African jungle or c) ultimately searched for a possibly free land that, being arable and good for pasture, would keep them far from the sphere of the Christian Axumites.
It would be very erroneous and highly unlikely to expect settled people to move to the desert. Such an eventuality would be a unique oxymoron in the History of the Mankind. Nomadic peoples move from the steppes, the savannas and the deserts to other parts of the steppes, the savannas and the deserts or preferably to fertile lands and settle there, at times crossing really long distances. However, settled people, if under pressure, move to other fertile lands that offer them the possibility of cultivation and pasture. When dispersed by the invading Sea Peoples, the Hittites moved from Anatolia to Northwestern Mesopotamia, crossing long distances; they did not cross shorter distance to settle in the small part of Central Anatolia that happened to be desert. The few scholars, who may think that Meroitic continuity can be found among the present day Beja and Hadendawa, are oblivious to the aforementioned reality that was never contravened throughout World History. In addition, the Blemmyes had never been friendly to the Meroites. Every now and then, they had attacked parts of the Nile valley and the Meroites had had to repulse them thence. It would rather be inconceivable for the Meroitic population, after seeing Meroe sacked by Ezana, to move to a land where life would be far more difficult and, in addition, enemies would wait them!
At this point, we should briefly examine Meroe’s surrounding environment, how it is today, and how it was before 1650 years, at the times of king Ezana’s raid. Modern technologies help historians and archeologists better reconstruct the ancient world; paleo-botanists, geologists, geo-chemists, paleo-entomologists, and other specialized natural scientists are of great help in this regard. It is essential to stress here that the entire environmental milieu of Sudan was very different during the times of the Late Antiquity that we examine in our approach. Butana may look like a wasteland nowadays, and the Pyramids of Bagrawiyah may be sunk in the sand, whereas Mussawarat es Sufra and Naqah truly demand a real effort in crossing the desert. However, in the first centuries of Christian era, the entire landscape was dramatically different.
During the Meroitic and Christian times, the entire Butana region, delineated by the rivers Atbarah in the northeast, United Nile in the north-northwest, and Blue Nile in southwest, was not a desert, but a very fertile and extensively cultivated land. We have actually found remains of reservoirs, aqueducts, various hydraulic installations, irrigation systems, and canals in Meroe and elsewhere. Not far from Mussawarat es Sufra there must have been an enclosure where captive elephants were trained before being transported to Ptolemais Theron (present day Suakin, 50 km south of Port Sudan) and then further on to Alexandria. Desert was in the vicinity, certainly, but not that close.
We should not imagine that Ezana crossed desert areas, moving from the vicinities of Agordat, Tesseney (both cities being located in Eritrea), and Kessala (in Sudan) to Atbarah and Bagrawiyah, as we would do today. These lands were either forested or cultivated and used as pasturelands. For what the Meroitic Ethiopian state was in the middle – second half of the 4th c. CE, its capital was located quite close to the Abyssinian borders in the mountains beyond the modern Sudanese city of Kessala; the distance between the two capitals, Meroe and Axum, was much smaller than the distance between Meroe and its northern borders with the Christian Eastern Roman Empire.
In fact, the end of the Meroitic state is a historical irony; it was established with the transfer of capital from Napata to Meroe, ca. 750 years earlier, an act which was due to defense reasons and imposed only after the 6th c. BCE attacks that originated from the North (Egypt). By transferring their capital far to the southeast, the Ancient Kushites / Meroites of Ethiopia (Sudan) made it impregnable from the North; but by so doing, they exposed their capital to an attack from the southeast. However, one has to admit that, at the times of the Ethiopian – Kushitic capital transfer to the southeast (5th – 4th c. BCE), the presence of the Yemenite tribe of Habashat in the African coast land of Eritrea was insignificant and Axum did not exist.
Further expanding on the natural environment of the Ancient Meroites, we have to add that it would be highly unlikely for anyone to attempt to cross at that time the lands south of present day Khartoum, alongside the White Nile. In ancient times, impenetrable jungle started immediately in the south of Khartoum, and cities like El Obeid, Kosti, Sinnar, and Jabalayn are today located on deforested soil.
Contrarily to the aforementioned improbabilities (desert, jungle), the southernmost confines of the Meroitic state offered a certain possibility for migration, since pasturelands and arable land could be found alongside the Blue Nile Valley. Reaching that area, they would achieve safety from Axumite Abyssinia due to the greater distance.
Jungle signified death in the Antiquity, and even armies feared to cross forests and be forced to stay overnight there. We therefore have good reason to believe that, following Ezana’s raid, the Meroites, rejecting the perspective of forced christening, moved first southwestwards up to Khartoum. From there, they proceeded southeastwards alongside the Blue Nile in a direction that would keep them always safe and far from the Axumite Abyssinians whose state did not expand at those days as far in the south as Gondar and Tana Lake. Proceeding in this way and crossing successively areas of modern cities like Wad Madani, Sennar, Damazin, and Asosa, and from there on, they expanded in later times over the various parts of Biyya Oromo.
We do not imply that the migration was completed in the span of one lifetime; quite contrarily, we have reasons to believe that the establishment of Alodia (or Alwa) is rather due to the progressive waves of Meroitic migrants who settled first in the area of Khartoum that was out of the southwestern confines of the Meroitic state. Only when Christianization became a matter of concern for the evangelizing Nobatians, and the two Christian Sudanese states of Nobatia and Makuria were already strong, the chances of preserving the pre-Christian Meroitic cultural heritage in the area around Soba (capital of Alodia) became truly poor. Then, perhaps more than 100 years after the first migration, another wave of migration took place with the early Alodian Meroites proceeding as far in the southeast as Damazin and Asosa, areas that remained always beyond the southern border of Alodia (presumably between Khartoum and Wad Madani). Like this, the second migratory Meroitic Alodian) wave may have entered around 600 CE in the area where the Oromos, descendents of the migrated Meroites, still live today.
A great number of changes at the cultural – intellectual – behavioral levels are to be expected, when a settled people migrates to faraway lands. The Phoenicians had kings in Tyre, Byblos and their other cities – states in today’s Lebanese and Syrian coast lands, but they introduced a democratic system when they sailed faraway and colonized various parts of the Mediterranean. In their colonies, there were no more kings.
Ezana’s raid ended up with the extermination of some garrison and the Meroitic royal family. The collapse of the Meroitic royalty was an unprecedented event and a greater shock for the Nile valley. The Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia were all ruled by kings whose power was to great extent conditioned and counterbalanced by that of the Christian clergy.
With the Meroitic royal family decimated by Ezana, it is quite possible that high priests of Apedemak and Amani (Amun) took much of the administrative responsibility in their hands, inciting people to migrate and establishing a form of collective and representative authority among the Meroitic – Alodian Elders who thus retained the sacerdotal heritage without a royal – palatial contextualization. They may even have preserved the royal title of Qore within completely different socio-anthropological context and thus made it known to the ancestors of today’s Somalis when the next waves of migration brought the two Kushitic nations close to one another; and the Somalis preserved the term a Boqor within their language until our times.
4. Call for Comparative Meroitic-Oromo Studies
How can this approach, interpretation, and conclusion be corroborated up to the point of becoming a generally accepted historical reconstitution at the academic level? On what axes should one group of researchers work to collect detailed documentation in support of the Meroitic ancestry of the Oromos?
Quite strangely, I would not give priority to the linguistic approach. The continuity of a language can prove many things, and at the same time, it can prove nothing. Today’s Bulgarians are of Uralo-Altaic Turco-Mongolian origin, but, after they settled in Eastern Balkans, they were linguistically slavicized. Most of the Greeks are Albanians, Slavs, and Vlachians, who were greecized linguistically. Most of the Turks in Turkey are Greeks and Anatolians, who were turkicized linguistically.
People can preserve their own language in various degrees and forms. For the case of languages preserved throughout millennia, we notice tremendous changes and differences. Within the context of Ancient Greece, Plato who lived in the 5th – 4th c. BCE could never understand the Achaean Greek dialect which was spoken 800 years earlier at Myceanae and written by means of what we call today ‘Linear B’ (a syllabic, not alphabetic, writing system).
Egyptian hieroglyphics as a Holy Language (the Ancient Egyptian name of this writing system was ‘medu netsher’ which meant ‘the words of the God’) and as a sacerdotal scripture favored a certain archaism and a constant linguistic purification. However, we can be sure that for later Pharaohs, like Taharqa the Kushite (the most illustrious ruler of the Kushitic – Sudanese / Ethiopian dynasty), Psamtik and Nechao (the rulers of the ‘Libyan’ dynasty), and Ptolemy II and Cleopatra VII (of the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty), a Pyramid text (that antedated them by 1700 to 2300 years) would almost be incomprehensible.
A. National diachronic continuity is better attested and more markedly noticed in terms of Culture, Religion and Philosophical – Behavioral system. The first circle of comparative research should encompass the world of the Kushitic / Meroitic and Oromo concepts, anything that relates to the Weltanschauung of the two cultural units/groups under study; this should involve a religious-historical comparison between the Ancient Kushitic / Meroitic religion and Waaqeffannaa. A common view of basic themes of life and a common perception of the world, same virtues and values, shared concepts and principles would bring a significant corroboration of the Meroitic ancestry of the Oromos. So, first it is a matter of history of religions, African philosophy, social anthropology, ethnography and culture history.
B. Archeological research can help tremendously too. At this point, one has to state that the critical area for the reconstruction of the suggested Meroitic migration did not attract the interest of Egyptologists, and of archaeologists specializing in Meroitic and Sudanese Antiquities. The area was indeed marginal to both civilizations, and to some extent it is normal that it did not attract scholars who could easily unearth other monumental sites elsewhere and have more spectacular results. The Blue Nile valley in Sudan and Abyssinia was never the subject of an archeological survey, and the same concerns the Oromo highlands. Certainly modern archeologists prefer something concrete that would lead them fast to a great discovery, being therefore very different from the pioneering 19th c. archeologists. An archeological surface survey would therefore be necessary in the Blue Nile valley and in the Oromo highlands in the years to come.
C. A linguistic – epigraphic approach may bring forth even more spectacular results. It could eventually end up with a complete decipherment of the Meroitic, and of the Makurian. An effort must be made to read the Meroitic texts, hieroglyphic and cursive, with the help of Oromo language. Meroitic personal names and toponymics must be studied in the light of a potential Oromo interpretation. Comparative linguistics may unveil affinities that will lead to reconsideration of the work done so far in the Meroitic decipherment.
D. Last but not least, another dimension would be added to the project with the initiation of comparative anthropological studies. Data extracted from findings in the Meroitic cemeteries must be compared with data provided by the anthropological study of present day Oromos. The research must encompass pictorial documentation from the various Meroitic temples’ bas-reliefs.
To all these I would add a better reassessment of the existing historical sources, but this is not a critical dimension of this research project.
I believe my call for Comparative Meroitic – Oromo Studies reached the correct audience that can truly evaluate the significance of the ultimate corroboration of the Meroitic Ancestry of the Oromos, as well as the magnificent consequences that such a corroboration would have in view of
a) the forthcoming Kushitic Palingenesia – or Renaissance if you want – across Africa,
b) the establishment of a Post -Colonial African Historiography, and – last but not least –
c) the Liberation of Oromia and the Representation of the Ancient Kushitic Nation in the United Nations.
Notes
1. To those having the slightest doubt, trying for purely political reasons and evil speculation to include territories of the modern state of Abyssinia into what the Ancient Greeks and Romans called ‘Aethiopia’, the academically authoritative entry Aethiopia in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklopadie der klassischen Altertumwissenschaft consists in the best and irrevocable answer.
4. Mythical figure of the British Orientalism, Garstang excavated in England, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and the Sudan; Albright, William Foxwell: “John Garstang in Memoriam”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 144. (Dec., 1956), pp. 7-8; Garstang’s major articles on his Meroe excavations are the following: ‘Preliminary Note on an Expedition to Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 3 (1911 – a), ‘Second Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia, I. Excavations’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 4 (1911 – b), ‘Third Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 5 (1912), ‘Forth Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 6 (1913), and ‘Fifth Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 7 (1914). His major contribution was published in the same year under the title ‘Meroe, the City of Ethiopians’ (Oxford). A leading Meroitologist, Laszlo Torok wrote an entire volume on Garstang’s excavations at Meroe: Meroe City, an Ancient African Capital: John Garstang’s Excavations in the Sudan.
5. Griffith was the epigraphist of Grastand and had already published the epigraphic evidence unearthed at Meroe in the chapter entitled ‘the Inscriptions from Meroe’ in Garstang’s ‘Meroe, the City of Ethiopians’. After many pioneering researches and excavations in various parts of Egypt and Northern Sudan, Faras, Karanog, Napata and Philae to name but a few, Griffith concentrated on Kerma: ‘Excavations at Kawa’, Sudan Notes and Records 14.
6. Basically: http://www.sag-online.de/pdf/mittsag9.5.pdf; among other contributions: Die Inschriften des Loewentempels von Musawwarat es Sufra, Berlin (1962); Vorbericht ueber die Ausgrabungen des Instituts fuer Aegyptologie der Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin in Musawwarat es Sufra, 1960-1961 (1962); ‘Musawwarat es Sufra – Preliminary Report on the Excavations of the Institute of Egyptology, Humboldt University, Berlin, 1961-1962 (Third Season)’, Kush 11 (1963); ‘Preliminary Note on the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, 1962′, Kush 11 (1963); ‘Preliminary note on the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, 1963′, Kush 13 (1965)
7. As regards my French professor’s publications about his excavations at Sudan: Soleb and Sedeinga in Lexikon der Aegyptologie 5, Wiesbaden 1984 (entries contributed by J. Leclant himself); also J. Leclant, Les reconnaissances archéologiques au Soudan, in: Etudes nubiennes I, 57-60.
8. His recent volume Sudan: Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile, Paris/New York (1997) contains earlier bibliography.
9. Some of his most authoritative publications: ‘A History of the Sudan from the Earliest Times to 1821′, 1961 (2nd Ed.), London; ”The Valley of the Nile’, in: The Dawn of African History, R. Oliver (ed.), London. Arkell is mostly renowned for his monumental ‘The Royal Cemeteries of Kush’ in many volumes.
24. Basics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assarhaddon; the edition of the Assyrian emperor’s annals by R. Borger (Die Inschriften Assarhaddons, Koenigs von Assyrien, AfO 9, Graz, 1956) remain our basic reference to formal sources. More recently, F. Reynolds shed light on private sources, publishing ‘The Babylonian correspondence of Esarhaddon, and letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-Sarru-Iskun from Northern and Central Babylonia’ (SAA 18, 2004).
25. For the Greater Emperor of the Oriental Antiquity:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurbanipal; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamash-shum-ukin;http://web.utk.edu/~djones39/Assurbanipal.html; until today we have to rely mostly on the voluminous edition of Assurbanipal’s Annals by Maximilian Streck (Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Koenige bis zum Untergang Niniveh, Leipzig,1916); see also M. W. Waters’ Te’umman in the neo-Assyrian correspondence (Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1999, vol. 119, no3, pp. 473-477)
26. Heliopolis (Iwnw in Egyptian Hieroglyphic, literally the place of the pillars; On in Hebrew and in Septuagint Greek) was the center of Egyptian monotheism, the holiest religious center throughout Ancient Egypt; it is from Heliopolis that emanated the two foremost Ancient Egyptian theological systems, namely the Isiac ideology and the Atum Ennead. Basic readings: the entry Heliopolis in Realenzyklopaedie and in Lexikon der Aegyptologie; more recently:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_%28ancient%29.
28. Hakhamaneshian is the first Persian dynasty; it got momentum when Cyrus II invaded successively Media and Babylon. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_dynasty(with selected bibliography); the 2nd volume of the Cambridge History of Iran is dedicated to Achaemenid history (contents: http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/c … 0521200911.
29. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II_of_Persia (with bibliography and sources). Cambyses invaded Kush and destroyed Napata at the times of Amani-natake-lebte, but his embattled army was decimated according to the famous narratives of Herodotus that still need to be corroborated. What seems more plausible is that, having reached in an unfriendly milieu of the Saharan desert where they had no earlier experience, the Persians soldiers, at a distance of no less than 4000 km from their capital, faced guerilla undertaken by the Kushitic army remnants and their nomadic allies.
30. Nastasen was the last to be buried in Nuri, in the whereabouts of Napata. Contemporary with Alexander the Great, Nastasen fought against an invader originating from Egypt whose name was recorded as Kambasawden. This led many to confuse the invader with Cambyses, who ruled 200 years earlier (!). The small inscription on the Letti stela does not allow great speculation; was it an attempt of Alexander the Great to proceed to the south of which we never heard anything? Impossible to conclude; for photographical documentation:http://www.dignubia.org/bookshelf/ruler … 00017&ord=. Another interpretation:http://www.nubia2006.uw.edu.pl/nubia/ab … 94e6349d8b.
32. For Abyssinia’s conversion to Christianity: http://www.spiritualite2000.com/page.php?idpage=555, and http://www.rjliban.com/Saint-Frumentius.doc. The Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezana_of_Axum) is written by ignorant and chauvinist people, and is full of mistakes, ascribing provocatively and irrelevantly to Ezana’s state the following territories (using modern names): ‘present-day Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, northern Somalia, Djibouti, northern Sudan, and southern Egypt’. This is just rubbish. All this shows how misleading this irrelevant ‘encyclopedia’ can at times be. Neither southern Egypt, nor northern Sudan, nor northern Somalia, nor Djibouti, nor Yemen, nor southern Saudi Arabia ever belonged to Ezana’s small kingdom that extended from Adulis to Axum. It is only after that king’s victory over Meroe that his kingdom included also a tiny portion of modern Sudan’s territories, namely the region between Kessala, Atbara and Bagrawiyah where the site of Ancient Meroe is located. But this was quite precarious and soon the Abyssinian control over that part of Ethiopia (: Sudan) ended.
33. Richard A. Lobban, ‘The Nubian Dynasty of Kush and Egypt: Continuing Research on Dynasty XXV’: http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:4F … clnk&cd=2; these inscriptions were published as early as 1821: E. F. Gau, Nubische Denkmaeler (Stuttgart). Other early publications on Meroitic antiquities: E. Riippell, Reisen in Nubien, Kordofan, & c. (Frankfort a. M., 1829); F. Caillaud, Voyage a Meroe (Paris, 1826); J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, e5fc. (London, 1819); G. Waddington and B. Hanbury, Journal of a Visit to some parts of Ethiopia (London, 1822); L. Reinisch, Die Nuba-Sprache (Vienna, 1879); Memoirs of the Societe khediviale de Geographic, Cairo.
34. Readings: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/candace.html;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanakdakhete; more analytically:http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … graphy.htm. The only inscription giving her name comes from Temple F in Naga (REM 0039A-B). The name appears in Meroitic hieroglyphics in the middle of an Egyptian text. See also: Laszlo Torok, in: Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, Vol. II, Bergen 1996, 660-662. The first attempts to render full Meroitic phrases into hieroglyphs (not only personal names, as it was common earlier) can be dated from the turn of the 3rd / 2nd century BCE, but they reflect the earlier stage of the development.
35. C. Rilly, ‘Les graffiti archaiques de Doukki Gel et l’apparition de l’ ecriture meroitique’. Meroitic Newsletter, 2003, No 30: 41-55, pl. IX-XIII (fig. 41-48).
38. His publications encompass the following: ‘Karanog: the Meroitic Inscriptions of Karanog and Shablul’, (The Eckley B. Coxe Junior Expedition to Nubia VI), Philadelphia, 1911; ‘Meroitic Inscriptions, I, Soba to Dangul, Oxford, 1911; ‘Meroitic Inscriptions part II, Napata to Philae and Miscellaneous’, Egypt Exploration Society, Archaeological Survey of Egypt, Memoirs, London, 1912; ‘Meroitic Studies II’, in: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 3 (1916).
40. B. G. Haycock, ‘The Problem of the Meroitic Language’, Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning, no.5 (1978), p. 50-81; see also: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … nology.htm. Another significant contribution: B. G. Haycock, ‘Towards a Data for King Ergamenes’, Kush 13 (1965)
41. See: K. H. Priese, ‘Die Statue des napatanischen Koenigs Aramatelqo (Amtelqa) Berlin, Aegyptisches Museum Inv.-Nr. 2249 in: Festschrift zum 150 jaehrigen Bestehen des Berliner Aegyptischen Museums, Berlin; of the same author, ‘Matrilineare Erbfolge im Reich von Napata’, Zeitschrift fuer Aegyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 108 (1981).
43. Basic reading: Egeimi, Omer Abdalla, ‘From Adaptation to Marginalization: The Political Ecology of Subsistence Crisis among the Hadendawa Pastoralists of Sudan’, in: Managing Scarcity: Human Adaptation in East African Drylands, edited by Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed and Hassan Abdel Ati, 30-49. Proceedings of a regional workshop, Addis Ababa, 24-26 August 1995. Addis Ababa: OSSREA, 1996 (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/ossrea/ossreabiblio.html).
45. In various publications; see indicatively: ‘Die meroitische Sprache und das protoaltaische Sprachsubstrat als Medium zu ihrer Deutung (I): Mit aequivalenten von grammatikalischen Partikeln und Wortgleichungen’, Ulm/Donau (1992).
61. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dio_Cassius; see details of the early Roman rule over Egypt here: Timo Stickler, ‘Cornelius Gallus and the Beginnings of the Augustan Rule in Egypt’
In most of Africa, indigenous African religions have been pushed to the margin because of a number of factors. The implied and open relegation of indigenous African religions to the levels of inferiority and inconsequentiality in world affairs by colonial powers and post-colonial contemporary African states not only undermines and stereotypes the examination of the unique contributions of these religions to peacemaking, but also discards with them unique mythologies, values, laws, cultures and meaning-making systems. I argue that applying North American conflict resolution models, without considering African religious values that existed for many millennia before the arrival of world religions, will be an enormous hindrance to building lasting peace from the bottom-up in the vastly rural and agrarian Africa that is still steeped in traditions and rituals.
Contributing to a range of negative stereotypes about African religions (example, uncivilized, barbaric and conflict-generating) is the fact that many of them have been orally transmitted from generation to generation and lack written major holy books unlike the world religions. The purpose of this paper is to shift attention from common misconceptions about African religions to a productive examination of the constructive roles they can be made to play.
I will focus on the case of Waaqeffannaa, an Oromo indigenous religion of East Africa, and its core values and laws. It will be significant to examine Waaqeffannaa’s complex concepts, such as concept and view of Waaqaa (God), Eebba (prayers and blessings), safuu (the place of all things and beings in the cosmic and social order), issues related to cubbuu (sin) and other religious and ritual practices. Although there is no holy book forWaaqeffannaa thus far, I will obtain my data from published ethnographic books, journal articles, periodicals, relevant reports and press releases. The interactions between Waaqeffannaa and other organized religions, such as Christianity and Islam, will be examined in context.
The paper will seek answers to three related questions:
What are the contributions or lack thereof orally transmitted values and laws of Waaqeffannaa to peacemaking and relationship-building? If there are any contributions, how can they be compared to other forms of conflict resolution? What will be the role of Waaqeffannaa in peacemaking in the ever changing global and local contexts of religious diversity and difference?
The Concept of God in Waaqeffannaa’s Monotheistic System
In order to examine the hermeneutic advantages and disadvantages of Waaqeffannaa and compare it to modern or Western conflict resolution methods, it is essential to examine the concept of God (Waaqaa) in the religion in its own right. There is a consensus among researchers and observers of Waaqeffannaa—the most prominent of whom are pre-colonial European missionaries, explorers and anthropologists and local religious leaders and scholars—that Waaqeffannaa is one of the ancient indigenous African monotheistic religions.[1] The Oromo, the Cushitic African people of Ethiopia, among whom this religion emerged and developed, call their one God Waaqaa or more intimately and endearingly Waaqayyoo (good God). It is difficult to capture with one definition the complexity of the ways in which the followers of this religion (Waaqeffataas) relate to God and make sense of God (not gendered) is hard to capture just with one definition. The question of ways of understanding and relating to God is a question of Waaqeffannaa’s worldview that is indigenous and unique, in some ways, and thus, different from ways in which followers of major world religions understand and relate to God.
While monotheism is a key similarity it shares with Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Waaqeffannaa has the following worldview of its own:
We believe in God who created us. We believe in Him (sic) in a natural way … We believe in God because we can see what God has done and what he does: he makes rains and the rains grow greenery, and crops that we consume. He lets the sun shine. So believing in him is instinctive and inbuilt. It is as natural as the desire we have for food and drink, and as natural as the reproduction of living things. We go to the nature, the nature that He created: mountains and rivers to praise and appreciate Him impressed by His works … [2]
This contemporary declaration of the faith centers on nature and creation that can be pragmatically seen and experienced in daily life. There is no mention of “heaven” and “hell” here. Concerning the followers’ perceptions of the residence of God, Bartels writes, “They do not visualize Waaqaa(sic) existing outside this world in time or space … In this sense Waaqaa is as much of this world as the vault of the sky.”[3] Bokku concurs with Bartels findings that God exists among people on earth, but Bokku makes a radically different claim as follows: “Waaqeffataas don’t [sic] believe in after life. They don’t believe that God would come in the future to judge people and send the righteous to heaven and the sinful to hell. God is with us always.”[4] Bokku’s claims can be controversial because in much of the literature I reviewed, I found that the question of “after life” is either overlooked or ambiguously treated, except in the work of Father De Salviac whose much older field research (1901) explicitly states the existence of the belief in life after death among Waaqeffataas in eastern Oromia as follows:
They acknowledge three places destined to receive the souls after death. The paradise, which they call: the ‘Happiness of God’,Ayyaana Waaqaa; or the: ‘Response of God’, Bayanacha Waaqaa; or even Jenneta Waaqaa; ‘Paradise of God’, is reserved for the just who go there to enjoy the company and infinite blessings of the Lord … they say of death ‘That he passed on to Waaqaa;’ – ‘That he entered into Waaqaa,’ – ‘That he went to his eternal house with Waaqaa’.[5]
Reference to life after death, punishments and rewards in hell and heaven respectively are very rare features of the religion. Nonetheless, the argument that De Salviac makes about the existence of the belief in life after death in Oromo society is enough to make Bokku and other writers’ denial of the existence of “life after death” contested and curious. The issue of justice and how people relate to each other may hold for every writer. The question of relationships between peoples, and nature and justice will be treated in later sections for safuu.
Waaqeffataas generally view and worship Waaqaa based on their amazement with the ingenious works of Waaqaa’s hands that they experience and find them overwhelming to comprehend and explain. Even family prayers around the hearth contains many such instances: “UNIQUE AND SO GREAT GOD SUPPORT WITHOUT PILLAR THE DOME OF THE BLUE SKY.”[6]
Waaqeffataas view the earth as one of the major ingenious works of God. The earth is viewed inseparably from God. The image that followers of this religion have of the relationship between Waaqaa and the Earth “comes close to that of a human couple”[7]: ‘the earth is Waaqaa’s wife—Lafa niti Waaqaa,’[8] According to Bartels, there are four manifestations of the close connection between Waaqaa and the earth in four spheres of theWaaqeffannaa religious life:[9]
Blessings
May the Waaqaa and the earth help you.
May Waaqaa and the earth cause you to grow up (a blessing for children.) …
Curses
Be not blessed either by Waaqaa or the earth.
May Waaqaa and the earth burn [make dry] your kidneys and your womb (the curse is addressed to a woman).
Oaths
The man who takes the oath breaks a dry stick, saying:
‘May the earth on which I walk and Waaqaa beneath whom I walk do the same to me, if I have done such and such a thing.’
Rituals
There are rituals of slaughtering a bull or sheep for Waaqaa and making libation (dhibayyuu) under a tree for the earth.[10]
Waaqeffannaa rituals honor both God and the earth. Followers of the religion seem to take cue from God Himself, who created the earth, to inform their ways of relating to Waaqaa and earth (lafa). Evidence that suggests a relationship based on fears, intimidations or punishment between God and persons is less prevalent than those that are mostly based on respect for God, one another and for the earth. Waaqeffataas embrace and celebrate the egalitarian view of God and the diversity of names people call God. Despite some differences among people, research points to followers’ similar attitudes towards God. “… it has become clear that their attitude towards him [sic] is not only inspired by awe but also marked by familiarity and even, from time to time, by lack of respect. In his despair, a man may claim: ‘Waaqaa does not exist!’”[11] This just showsWaaqeffataas have a more liberal relationship with God. It does not mean that they are less pious as there is enough evidence to suggest many magnificent examples of humility, piety and obedience.
The question of Waaqeffataas’ acknowledgement of the oneness of God and the multiple names various religions call Him does not only show the openness of the concept of God to various interpretations, but it also shows the religion’s acceptance of religious diversity. It is easier to engage in interfaith or other conflict resolution activities when such an acknowledgement is extant than when religions claim “my way or the highway.” The ways some prayers are rendered testify to this progressive values of Waaqeffannaa: “O Black God who created the dark sky and the clean waters, who is one but called by multitudes of names, who has no competitor, the omniscient, the omnipotent, the omnipresent, who is eternal and ever powerful, whose power can never decline.”[12] Because of the view of God described here, Waaqeffataas believe that God is patient and that it is not in His nature to become angry if people believe in other things abandoning Him. Bokku holds the Waaqeffannaa God is too self-confident to be angered into punishing people who do not obey or defect to other religions.[13]
Prayers and Blessings
Boran society sometimes appears to float on a river of prayers and blessings…
Common to private, collective and family prayers is the focus of Oromo/Waaqeffataas’ prayers on the material conditions and well-beings of the self, the family and the group. Prayers mediate conditions of people to God so he can intervene and alter their current conditions.[15] The faithful pray for peace, health, deliverance from wrongdoing and harmful sprits and things, human and livestock fertility, growth of babies (little ones), long life for adults, for the goodness of the inside and the outside, rain, harvest and development, inter alia.
The Waaqeffannaa prayer is barely about inheriting the kingdom of heaven nor is it about seeking the help of God in a battle against Satan and sin. Evidence suggests that the concept of Devil/Satan does not exist in Waaqeffannaa while spirits that cause all kinds of suffering and misfortune or harm (ayyaana hamaa) are believed to exist.[16] Instances of talk about Devils by Waaqeffataas are generally understood as the borrowing of a religious vocabulary from the adjacent/co-existing major faiths, such as Christianity and Islam. For instance, Waaqeffataa pray to God to prevent them from wrongdoing and errors committed in ignorance. The religion has no room for addressing anxieties and fears arising from the imaginary realm of the devil/evil. For instance, words used in prayers include, “Prevent us from wrongdoing …” (dogogora nu oolchi). In terms of how people experience and understand misfortunes and fortunes (good things) Oromo proverbs capture the peoples’ dependence on Waaqaa. Indeed, the proverbs below indicate how Waaqaa is perceived as the source of good and bad things that happen in real life:[17]
A house that is built by Waaqaa will be completed.
It is Waaqaa who brings hunger;
It is Waaqaa who brings a full stomach.
The one Waaqaa clothes will not go naked.
Who trusts on Waaqaa will not lack anything.
Man wishes, Waaqaa fulfills.
Waaqaa is there [therefore] the sun rises.
It is Waaqaa who makes a person sick;
It is Waaqaa who restores him to health.
Waaqaa is never in a hurry;
But he is always there at the proper time.
There are standard prayers that have been codified in oral tradition and bequeathed down to generations. The codification of prayers, rituals and ceremonies in oral traditions serve the purpose of making Oromo worships definite and unarbitrary. The question of precise transmissions of spoken messages are always up for debates as there are obviously some room for improvisation and modification as the word of mouth (message) travels through time and space. I believe that the improvisation aspect of oral narratives will add an interesting dimension of dynamism to the hermeneutics of Waaqeffannaa.
De Salviac praises the endurance of Waaqeffannaa for many millennia in spite of the oral mode of transmission. De Salviac aptly critiques the West for generally believing that the sole sources of “valid” or “authentic” knowledge are written texts (books) as follows: “We, accustomed to the cycle of knowledge by turning pale over the books, our careless memory resting on the permanence of typography, we hardly take into account the power of tradition, which sufficed, for centuries, for the civilization of many peoples. With the Oromo, religious and secular traditions are formulated in thousands of short sentences …”[18]
What I understand from De Salviac is that Western or modern industrialized societies privilege written knowledge. His critique is on tangent because preference for written and formal communication in the West will certainly shape intervention policy-making, official diplomacy and the attitudes of interveners towards indigenous cultures. Third party interveners with fixed or rigid approaches are not only likely to disrespect and shun local knowledge systems, but they are also likely to impose rigid and unproductive conflict resolution processes developed in the context of limited civilizations.
One can only anticipate the stiff resistance that locals are likely to put up against Western models in today’s Africa where there is an increasing awareness about the importance of self-reliance and going back to the roots in order to solve indigenous problems. The true superficiality of strict Western models of dialogue, mediation, problem-solving workshop can be revealed by observing how in most of Africa’s peripheries cut of modern laws, bureaucracies and infrastructures, people thrive on the strong indigenous knowledge systems. This is how most conflicts are resolved and how people do communal work in either irrigating the land or protecting the environment. In the contexts of corrupt and partisan politics, these efforts by local people to overcome the daily challenges must be given credit because some of them are providing themselves important social services that that their governments have failed to provide them. In any effort of conflict resolution or peacemaking in such dire circumstances, it is imperative to bring local knowers (the wise men and women) into the sphere of diplomacy and peacemaking.
Prayers, sometimes synonymously called blessings or benedictions, in the form of litany and chants are integral parts of indigenous communities. Every communal activity whether it is weddings, funerals or dances and music begins with blessings or prayers. Eebba is aimed moderating the way people relate to each other at certain venues and beyond. They are about building constructive relationships even in times of wars. Here are some examples of Oromo prayers/blessings of different periods and crowds’ responses.
Gadaa (social system) is the system of rain and peace!
The year is the year of abundance/development and full stomach.
These contemporary prayers cited from the Waaqeffannaa magazine are powerful. They are usually used in order to open any public/communal gatherings secular and spiritual. This is how things are called to order. The religious prayers give authority or credibility to whatever event that is to take place. At the center of this messaging is reaching the hearts and minds of parties to an event by cleansing the air of any hard feelings and ensuring that the heart and minds are softened and ready for the secular or non secular events and exchanges that will proceed from that.
Historically, Oromos made ecumenical pilgrimages to holy sites of Abbaa Muudaa, Spiritual Father,[22]in order to receive blessings for them and to bring back blessings into their communities with them. Blessings are still considered serious religious activities that serve as glues of social life. Spiritual Fathers can give blessings to people on a range of personal and communal matters: such as long life, being alive, more property and wealth, peace in the household, on productions (calves, children, crops).
I have not come across modern mediation, negotiation or other third party intervention processes that start with prayers. Obviously, if blessings are not built into the processes, an attempt at conflict resolution in African societies, such as the Oromo, will be in vain. In the first place, people will not recognize what is not authorized and endorsed by their own knowledge system. Most importantly, empowering and funding Abbaa Mudaas or elders to engage in conflict resolution is likely to be accepted and bear fruit because of the tremendous reputations these people wield in society. They are highly regarded in society and leaving them out of official processes simply works against peace.
In Waaqeffannaa, one sees from the content of the payers and blessings above that most of them take on the nature of what Gopin succinctly characterizes as “Premordial prosocial moral/spiritual values.”[23] Although many of the conflicts in Ethiopia (Africa) are not religiously driven, the application of religious values will have a huge impact on conflicts driven by ethnicity, nationalisms and competition over resources and power. People listen when one reaches out and talks to them at their own level. Gopin provides a detailed critique of why current modern conflict resolution approaches fail to understand the importance of using prosocial religious values in the context of the Arab/Israel conflict in the Middle East, but his appraisal also holds true for the Horn of Africa region, where the volatility and intractability of conflicts are comparable to the ones in the Middle East. Among the important reasons Gopin cites are the West’s refusal to recognize non-Western models and knowledge systems. Gopin articulates the consequences of modern cultures failure to reckon with indigenous religious and cultural systems as follows:
As religion becomes more important in the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the political power generated by this commitment will either lead to a more peaceful world or to a more violent world, depending on how that power is utilized … Methods of peacemaking that continue to focus only on political and intellectual elites or that fail to address the broadest possible range of religious believers are leading to systematic and potentially catastrophic diplomatic failures in key areas of the world … [24]
Survival through Religious Diversification and Rituals
It is accurate that Waaqeffannaa and similar Africa indigenous religions are being reincarnated and are slowly starting to become explicitly important in the lives of so many people. Religious traditions, including those from indigenous religions, form the bedrock of the values of those Africans who converted to Christianity and Islam. Often these values moderate the foreign values associated with the cultures from which these major religions originated. It is not just the Waaqeffataas who only follow the indigenous religion, but a swathe peoples seem to have accepted double or triple religious lives. They shuttle between various religious and cultural values in their daily decision-makings so as to adapt to changing socio-economic circumstances. Pointing to the loose nature of individual’s and group’s negotiations between multiple religious identities, Aguilar[25] presents a case of the importance of “religious diversification for survival” among the Kenyan Boran/Oromo in northern Kenya. Aguilar provides the best illustration for survival and adaptation by accepting diverse religious values. He cites how Muslim and Waaqeffaannaa parents send their children to Catholic schools in northern Kenya and that the children do perfectly well shuttling between religious worldviews without facing physical dangers.[26] The same religious rituals performed by followers of Waaqeffannaa form the cores of the rituals and daily cultural practices of the followers of Islam and Christianity, as a mechanism of preserving and transmitting their identity. For instance, some of the religious traditions and rituals kept by Oromo communities who converted to major religions in north Kenya include similar types of blessings, prayers, and peacemaking through rituals of coffee beans-slaughtering and symbolic prayers.[27] These subtle practices of syncretism not only form the core identity of Oromo in north Kenya and connect them to the mainland (Oromia-Ethiopia), but they also play stabilizing roles in a families and communities there.[28]
The phenomenon of syncretism/ “religious diversification” serves as a survival strategy where minority communities cut off into another country from the mainstream because of colonial map-making try to cope with the alien majority they are swallowed up by. The case of Kenyan Oromos imitating the Waaqeffannaa values of the mainland is an example of such an essential survival strategy. Aguilar puts this as, “It is clear that the strategy of diversification provides the household (and a manyatta [place of settlement]) with security should something happen to either of the herds.”[29]
It is no accident that somebody whom an outsider may perceive as a follower of one religion is actually found at the crossroads of multiple religious values. It takes a deeper look to discern such subtle and significant dynamics. For an intervener who has no interest or who is not patient to take time and learn, the subtlety of the power of tradition will ever remain inaccessible. Because one has no access to the right cultural tools, the very people he/she trying to reach and help will become inaccessible and unresponsive, especially if one attempts to impose some ivory-tower (imported) conflict resolution framework or process on local situations. People have been handling their affairs everyday for centuries independently of outsiders. To assume that they somehow do not or their methods are not in par with modern approaches will defeat the purpose of thinking to help others in the first place.
Safuu in Peacemaking and Social Harmony
This section analyzes the role of Safuu as one of the key elements of Waaqeffannaa. Safuu is a prosocial variable that needs a deeper analysis to see its roles in indigenous peacebuilding. Safuu is a broad concept that governs relationship in and between families, communities, national groups and relationship between people and nature and things.
Bartels provides a nuanced anthropological definition of the term Safuu:[30]
Saffu is a fundamental and all-pervading concept in the Matcha’s [Oromo] life. It implies that all things have a place of their own in the cosmic and social order, and that they should keep this place. Their place is conditioned by the specific ayana [good spirit] each of them has received from Waaqaa. Every creature, and especially man, has to act according to its own ayana and to respect the others’ ayana. Saffu implies both rights and duties. In the people’s eyes wisdom is ‘knowing saffu and abide [sic] by it.’
Gemetchu Megerssa, a leading Oromo anthropologist and former research assistant to Lambert Bartels, probably influenced by Bartels himself, states that safuu is one of the key founding concepts in Oromo culture and Waaqeffannaa tradition.[31] Bartels’ definition is more encapsulating, while it shares one central common feature with Megerssa’s definition, “… the concept of saffu(mutual relationship between elements of the social and cosmic orders) which maintains practice obligatory [sic] through ethical conduct.” They both agree that safuu governs relationships between people and people, and people and nature, but Megersa introduces a newer and more specific idea of safuu as “an ethical conduct.”
Another leading expert on Waaqeffannaa, Bokku quotes Bartels directly and extends the concept of Safuu to broad areas of “morality”, “norm” and “laws” that govern social and ecological order.[32] Bokku states his extended definition building on Bartels: “Safuu is the understanding of differences and appreciation of differences for the peaceful coexistence of all natural things.” For Bokkuu, as opposed to man-made laws “safuu is not subject to change.” He concludes that safuu as laws of nature is necessary for the “smooth operation of life”, which is harmony. Everyone invokes the notions that Safuu owes its authority over social relationship because it derives from the will or the spirit of God (ayyaanaa). Thus, experts agree that Safuuis one of the fundamental principles of Oromo culture that governs relationships and keeps society together.
In Waaqeffannaa in particular and Oromo culture in general, it is believed that “breaking safuu would cause some sort of trouble.”[33] Breaking safuulaws is seen as committing sin. The consequences of breaking various categories of safuu are understood as generating unhappy reactions from God. In Waaqeffannaa when someone sins, God turns His back on him/her. The meaning behind this is that if one misses the face of God, it means that one lacks ayyana (a guardian, blessings or will of God). This core law encourages people to maintain friendly relationships between themselves and with nature. Safuu is a law of rights and obligations. Since Safuu is not something in people, but something between them, it is assumed to promote collective harmony. Paying attention to the concept of “sin” in the meaning system of Waaqeffannaa is important because it comes from the Oromo word, “‘balleessuu’, which actually means ‘to destroy, to damage, to spoil’”[34]
When one engages in destructive activities one is considered to be destroying, damaging, and spoiling relationships between at least three parties: God, creation (nature) and other human beings. In Oromo life, not damaging relationship between oneself and creations is given more importance than not damaging relationship between human and God.[35]
The Dynamisms of the Indigenous Faith System
It is hard to understand how one can be effective in conflict resolution in Africa without having at least the working knowledge of important key principles governing all-rounded relationships, such as safuu. Religious values of Waaqeffannaa may not require so much hermeneutic transformation because they already exist in pro-social form. Keeping natural and social orders is already a stringent requirement on top of acceptance for differences of any sort.
In Waaqeffannaa, destroying (for example killing humans in conflict) is prohibited by the religion’s laws. Those who violate traditional laws and destroy anything will face alienation and banning from God as well as from fellows humans. They are denied opportunities to sit and eat at a table with family members and others; they become social outcasts. My evidence does not suggest any anti-social principles/laws in the Waaqeffannaaworldview so far. Even some of the curses that are put on people have the goal of ensuring social harmony and can be viewed positively. If I had come across anything that says, “if you kill your enemy or someone, God will reward you with heaven or sainthood or some other rewards,” I would have paused and thought, this is a justification for war and destruction that needs to be hermetically transformed. Transformation may be due if violence is made into something sacred. In my opinion the values of this religion particularly those about safuu are poised to play important peacebuilding and relationship-building roles at least in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.
One can think of the lack of written scriptures (there are oral ‘scriptures’) for African religion as both advantages and disadvantages. In terms of the creativity and improvisation of transmissions of oral values/laws, the lack of written scriptures is an advantage because followers or leaders of indigenous religions will have the ability to interpret the concepts in ways that meet the physical and spiritual needs of their time. But that can also be a disadvantage since some lament that African could not have converted to Christianity and Islam if they had written scriptures and transformed their religions into organized faith systems.[36]
The question of whether Africans had concepts of God or not or whether they were ‘pagan hordes’ as the colonialists viewed them is now an outdated and irrelevant question because a number of scholars have produced research revealing that indeed Africans had believed in one God even before the advent of Middle Eastern religions.[37] Mbiti’s findings are credible because he stayed in Africa for 15 years and conducted studies on about 300 African communities and their belief systems.
Because indigenous African religions, including Waaqeffannaa, lack written scriptures, culturally biased scholars who judge everything according to Western standards may think religions, such as Waaqeffannaa, are inferior, static and things of the past. In rebuttal, one can respond to that arguing that oral mode of transmission makes African religions dynamic, ever-changing and ever-adapting to social changes even after some converted to other faiths. This happens because African religions do not punish defections and because their religious leaders are less likely to make claims to the permanence of specific oral texts or think of the values/traditions of their religion as the only “Truth” to die for.
About the locus of the existence of African religions, Mbiti writes, “Religion in African societies is written not on paper but in people’s heart, minds, oral history, rituals, and religious personages like the priests, rainmakers, official elders … African religions have neither founders nor reformers.”[38]Mbiti’s notion of the lack of founders and reformers can be contested because it could be that founders and reformers might have existed millennia ago and simply no written records were kept about them. The key point here is that words of mouth are dynamic. The best way to reach the hearts and minds of the vast peoples of rural Africa should be through oral traditions and spoken language. The prevalent practice by third party interveners shows an opposite tendency of bureaucratizing everything and transmitting messages via the written medium (forms and documents) through the agency of “rational professionals”.
Authors caution against viewing Waaqeffannaa religious traditions as part of a static tradition of the past[39], and encourage us to view them as dynamic traditions that are continually changing based on wider experiences that are part of their present. Aguilar is succinct about the advantages of the dynamism of Waaqeffannaa’s hermeneutics: “… traditions are transmitted, never as static forms but as changeable manifestations of an Oromo religion [Waaqeffannaa] that interacts [sic] with other traditions and other ethnic groups, and therefore becomes capable of reshaping society itself.”[40]
Lessons for Conflict Resolution
The values and laws of Waaqeffannaa identified and analyzed in this research suggest the importance of recognizing African indigenous religious systems and the prosocial contributions of their values and laws to conflict resolution.
I deliberately tried not to impose a theoretical framework over my analysis although my approach was influenced by hermeneutics.[41] Engaging in peacemaking in indigenous African communities requires the use of what Gopin, drawing on Lederach, calls “elicitive and cross-cultural methods.”[42] Concepts such as safuu, the Waaqeffannaa worldview, prayers, blessings, harmony are predominantly about building relationships between people and people, and them and nature. The most effective way of arriving at these principles and using them in interventions is to do one’s best to involve indigenous peoples, religious leaders, elders and parties to conflict and to elicit from them the best practices they have evolved over centuries in peacemaking.
Indigenous African religions are caught up in multipronged challenges, such as lack of recognition from interveners, states and richer and more organized religions despite their prevalence and appeal to many African communities. Established conflict resolution methods, such as mediation, negotiation, facilitation, problem-solving workshop and dialogue, are often too Western, rationalistic, elitist and foreign to accommodate other grassroots approaches to peacemaking, such as obeying safuu. If we look at official mediation, for instance, we find the reliance on rigid processes and professionals as its main features. Such formal stages may include collecting data, building hypothesis about a conflict, searching for theories, selecting theory, making intervention, and verifying and nullifying hypothesis.[43] It is not necessarily bad to prepare for mediation in stages, but when everything is prefigured, there is a danger of learning very little on the field while doing the intervention itself. In most rationalistic conflict resolution methods listed above, the immediate settlement of conflict is desired. This may turn out to be a shortcoming because long-term relationship-building and peacemaking, which is the hallmark of indigenous systems, are and sidelined.
Limitation of the Indigenous Religion
The most important limitation of many African indigenous religious values and traditions, including Waaqeffannaa, is that the practice of peacemaking is inbound to groups in which these traditions originated. There are also perceptions and tendencies to associate the good prosocial aspects of religious principles this religion with ethno-nationalist competitions of the day, and therefore, to readily dismiss them as unrepresentative of the whole. A much productive approach, however, is to see the commonalities of multiple African religious traditions and to take key principles from each of them and combine them in order to make everyone feel good about their faiths. There is so much to learn from this culture if one is willing to follow the elicitive path to conflict resolution.
The second obvious limitation is the lack of written scriptures and the challenges of accessing oral scriptures for outsiders due to language barriers, but which can still be overcome with translators and interpreters.
Thirdly, African indigenous religions have not been given the places they deserve in some continental interfaith organizations whose member religions tend to be organized and rich major religions. For instances, the United Religious Initiative (URI) Africa chapter, an international faith network that operates in 25 African countries, professes that it aims to look for solutions to Africa’s challenges at community levels in the areas of corruption, human rights violation, poverty and HIV/AIDs[44], but unfortunately no indigenous African religious tradition from any community is represented by such an important organization. The network carries it activities in Africa through major faiths, such as Christianity and Islam. Another domestic (Ethiopian) interfaith network, Interfaith Peace-building Initiative (IPI), a member of the URI, has no indigenous Ethiopian religions (Waaqeffannaaincluded) as its members.
The problem with URI and IPI is not only a simplistic and envious question of who is represented or who is not, but it appears that the mentioned interfaith networks have been systematically coopted and used to advance the interests of the Ethiopian state since Ambassador Mussie Hailu is serving simultaneously as the Regional Director of URI and the Board Chair of IPI.[45] The more intractable and absurd aspect of IPI is that it is an interfaith organization as far as the major religions are concerned, but the founders and its leaders are members of a single ethno-national group who are publicly known to lean toward the ruling party from the same group. This is a clear negative messaging to others in Ethiopia where the issues of ethnicity are sensitive. To be sure, it is possible to have an interfaith organization with wonderful goals like IPI, but with ethno-nationalist ideological agenda at same time. That will do more to keep peoples apart than bring them together.
Despite its growing popularity in Oromiya regional state, the most populous in Ethiopia, Waaqeffannaa’s attempts to transform itself into an organized religion have failed many times so far because the Ethiopian state has first denied and then revoked the license of the group citing that its leaders sympathize with the Oromo Liberation Front[46], a secular rebel group in conflict with the government on the question of autonomy and self- determination for Oromiya.
Conclusion
Waaqeffannaa’s pro-social principles, laws and values did and will contribute to building constructive relationships between communities. In addition to improving human relations, laws, such as safuu, that emphasize the need to maintain good relationship with nature, can be extended and used in areas of environmental conflict resolution, specially where climate change is threatening pastoralist and agrarian communities in many observable ways today.
I explored and discussed the ways in which the egalitarian but respectful views of God by Waaqeffataas can be helpful in curbing extremist tendencies. Neither oral scriptures of the religion nor its leaders condone acts of violence as something leading to rewards or sainthood. Prayers and blessings function as authoritative moderators and they can be used in opening and closing any intervention efforts. Waaqeffannaa is a very pragmatic religion whose most themes are linked to and earthbound to the material conditions of people. Therefore, people in conflict may have the same questions they want answered through prayers to be answered through interventions.
The potential and capacity of the religion in national or regional peacemaking is promising if it be recognized and the multi-pronged obstacles in its way are removed.
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References
Abu-Nimer, Mohammed. Nonviolence and Peace Building in Islam: Theory and Practice. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.
Aguilar, Mario I. The Politics of God in East Africa: Oromo Ritual and Religion. Trenton, N.J.: The Red Sea Press, 2009.
Appleby, Scott R. “Retrieving the Missing Dimension of Statecraft: Religious Faith in the Service of Peacebuilding.” In Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik, ed. Douglas Johnston, 2003. Oxford: OUP.
____ The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence and Reconciliation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000.
Bartels, Lambert. Oromo Religion: Myths and Rites of the Western Oromo of Ethiopia-An Attempt to Understand. Berlin: Dietrich Reamer Verlag, 1983.
Bokku, Dirribi Demissie. Oromo Wisdom in Black Civilization. Finfinne, Ethiopia: Finfinne Printing & Publishing S.C., 2011.
De Salviac, Martial. An Ancient People: Great African Nation: the Oromo. Translation from the 1901 original French edition by Ayalew Kanno. Paris, the French Academy, 2005.
Gopin, Marc. Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
____ Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Megerssa, Gemetchu. “Oromumma: Tradition, Consciousness and Identity.” In Being and Becoming Oromo: Historical and Anthropological Enquiries, Edited by P.T.W. Baxter, Jan Hultin and Alessandro Triulzi. Lawrenceville, N.J.: The Red Sea Press, 1996.
Montville, Joseph V. “Psychoanalytic Enlightenment and the Greening of Diplomacy.” In The Psychodynamics of International Relationships, Eds. Vamik D. Volkan, Demetrios A. Julius, and Joseph V. Montville. Lexington Mass.: Lexington Books (1990-1991): 177-192.
Moore, Christopher W. The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict. 3rd Ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003.
MTA. Waaqeffannaa: Ayyaana Irreechaa Birraa, 2010.Vol. V. No. 1. Finfinnee: MTA, 2010. (trans. Waaqeffannaa: Thanksgiving Holiday of Fall 2010.)
Sandole, Dennis J.D. “Paradigm, Theories, and Metaphors in Conflict and Conflict Resolution: Coherence or Confusion?” In Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice, Ed., Dennis Sandole. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, (1993): 3-24.
Stenger, Mary Ann. “Gadamer’s Hermeneutics as a Model for Cross-Cultural Understanding and Truth in Religion.” In Religious Pluralism and Truth: Essays on Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, Ed., Thomas Dean. New York: State University of New York Press, (1995): 151-168.
Volkan, Vamik D. “Psychological Processes in Unofficial Diplomacy Meetings.” In The Psychodynamics of International Relationships, Eds. Vamik D. Volkan, Demetrios A. Julius, and Joseph V. Montville. Lexington Mass.: Lexington Books (1990-1991): 207-219.
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Footnotes
[1] De Salviac, 1901:43; Bartels, 1983:89; Bokku, 2011: 54). The two previous books on Oromo religion (now named Waaqeffannaa) by European missionaries are widely regarded as authoritative secular scholarly sources closest to the source ever to be published on an indigenous African religion of antiquity. Bokku adds his own recent perspectives on the religion and revises his predecessors’ perspectives without altering the essence of their work.
[12] Bokku, 2011: 66. The quote was an English translation the author provides from the Afaan Oromoo (Oromo language) version, which runs:“Gurraacha garaa garbaa, leemmoo garaa taliilaa, tokkicha maqaa dhibbaa, guddicha hiriyaa hinqabne, kan waan hundaa beeku, kan waan hundaa gochuu danda’u, kan bakka maraa jiru, kan hinkufine, kan hinduuneefi kan hincabne.”
[20] Translated by me from Afaan Oromoo into English from the Waaqeffannaa magazine, p i.
[21] Haroo Walaabuu is considered the origin of Oromo community and the source of all walking humans on earth. It plays an important symbolic/mythic role in standard prayers. Water bodies are considered sources of life.
Hararqee, the vast land in Eastern Ethiopia, is where over 50% of Ethiopia’s (possibly including Horn of Africa)
rock paintings are found (Bravo 2007:137). Among these is the famous Laga Oda Site “dating to at least 16,000
BP” (Shaw and Jameson 1999:349) and comprising depictions of bovines and many different types of animals. This vast land of Hararqee is settled by the Oromo, the largest tribe of the Cushitic stock, and hence it is part of the Oromia National State. The Oromo people, one of the richest in ancient (oral) cosmogonal- social history , literature and especial owners of the unique socio-philosophico-political institution known as Gada or Gada System, consistently insist that theirs as well as human being’s origin is in the Horn of Africa specifically a place known as Horra βalabu/Ŵolabu ‘the Place of Spring-Water of Genesis of Humanity’ (Dahl and Megerssa 1990).
This and a plethora of Oromo social epistemology has been studied by the plausible Oromo historians (Gidada 2006, Hassen 1990, to mention a few) and non-biased European theologico-ethnologists (Krapf 1842; De Abbadie 1880; De Salviac 1980, Bartels 1983, to mention a few). Similarly, social semiosis is not new to the Oromo. Although Eurocentric archaeologists rarely acknowledge, “the identification of cultural themes and symbolic interpretation has revealed affinities between contemporary Oromo practices and those of other East African culture groups, both ancient and modern (Grant 2000: np.).In like manner, the Classical Greek philosophers wrote that the Ancient Ethiopians were “inventors of worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifice, and of every religious practice” (Bekerie, 2004:114). The oral history of the Oromo states that it was Makko Billii, whom Antonio De Abbadie, one of the early European scholars who studied and lived with the Oromo, described as “African Lycurgus” (Werner 1914b: 263; Triulzi and Triulzi 1990:319; De Abbadie 1880) and son of the primogenitor of the Oromo nation (Raya or Raâ), who hammered out the antique, generation-based social philosophy known as Gada System (Legesse 1973, 2006; Bartels 1983; Gidada 2006). A key ingredient in Gada system is the For Oromo, the first Qaallu “Hereditary ritual officiant” and “high priest” was of “divine origin” and, as the myth tells us, “‘fell from the sky itself’…with the first black cow” and he was the “‘eldest son of Ilma Orma’” (Hassen 1990:6; Baxter, Hultin and Triulzi 1996:6). In its “dual[ity] nature”, Waaqa, the black Sky-God “controlled fertility, peace, and lifegiving rains… [hence] prayers for peace, fertility, and rain” are the core recursive themes in Oromo religion (Hassen 1990:7). Hence, the concept/word Qaallu refers at large to “Divinity’s fount of blessings in the world” (Baxter, Hultin and Triulzi 1996: 1996: 21). As De Salviac (2005 [1901]: 285) explicated “The Oromo are not fetishists. They believe in Waaqa took, a unique universal creator and master. They see His manifestations in great forces of nature, without mistaking for Him.” As a result of this ‘pre-historic’, Spinozaean like social epistemology, but unlike Martin Heideggerean “ancients” who never dared questioning or confronting ontology but endorsed only veneering it, for the Oromo social semiosis has never been new since time immemorial. Despite all these antique history and tradition, it is unfortunatel, the so-far few studies made on the Ethiopian ancient rock paintings and rock arts never consider—sometimes apparently deliberately isolate–the social history, tradition, culture or language of the Oromo people as a possible explanatory device. What the available few studies usually do is only positivist description of the paintings (types, size and/or number of the signs) rather than inquiry into and explanation of the social origin and the underlying social meaning, praxis or worldview. Partly, the reason is the studies are totally dominated by Eurocentric paradigms that de-Africanize and extrude the native people and their language, religion, social structure, material cultures and, in general, their interpretive worldview. Besides, some of the native researchers are no different since they have unconditionally accepted this Eurocentric, hegemonic epistemology (Bekerie 1997; Smith 1997; Gusarova 2009; Vaughan 2003). As a result, we can neither understand the social origin of these amazing ‘texts’ nor can we explain the underlying social semiosis.. Equally, under this kind of mystification or possible distortion of human (past) knowledge, we miss the golden opportunities that these ancient documents offer for evolutionary, comparative and interdisciplinary social science research and knowledge. Above all, the old Eurocentric view narrowed down the sphere of semiotics (archaeological, social) to only ‘the sign’, extruding the human agents or agency and the social context.
The aim of this paper is to use the ancient Qaallu Institution of Oromo as analytical ‘devices’ in order to understand and explain the underlying social epistemological, semiotical and rhetorical structures, i.e., expressed in all forms of linguistic and non-linguistic structures. In sharp contrast to the aforementioned positivist, narrow, colonial semiotics, in this analysis,
Theo van Leeuwen’s postmodern and advanced approach to social semiotics is adopted. Primarily, Van Leeuwen (2005: 3) expands “semiotic resource” as involving “the actions and artefacts we use to communicate, whether they are produced physiologically – with our vocal apparatus…muscles…facial expressions and gestures, etc. – or by means of technologies – with pen, ink and paper…computer hardware and software…with fabrics, scissors and sewing machines.”
Van Leeuven (2005: xi) introduces the changing semiosphere of social semiotics:
Just as in linguistics the focus changed from the ‘sentence’ to the ‘text’ and its ‘context’, and from
‘grammar’ to ‘discourse’, so in social semiotics the focus changed from the ‘sign’ to the way people use semiotic
‘resources’ both to produce communicative artefacts and events and to interpret them;
Rather than constructing separate accounts of the various semiotic modes – the ‘semiotics of the image’, the ‘semiotics of music’, and so on – social semiotics compares and contrasts semiotic modes, exploring what they have in common as well as how they differ, and investigating how they can be integrated in multimodal artefacts and events.
Indeed, the Classical Western dualism which separates the linguistic from the non-linguistic, the literary from the
non-literary, the painting from the engraved, the notional from the artefactual must be eschewed, especially when
we build evolutionary perspective to analyzing pre-historic arts.
CLEARING SOME CONFUSIONS
Scholars have already explicated and explained away the old de-Ethiopianization historiographies in social sciences
(Bekerie 1997; Smith 1997; Gusarova 2009; Vaughan 2003), humanities (Ehret 1979) and archaeology
(Finneran 2007). Therefore, there is no need to repeat this here. But, it is necessary to briefly show disclose some
veils pertaining to Hararqee pre-historic paintings. As usual, the ‘social’ origin of ‘pre-historic’, Classical or Medieval era Hararqee rock paintings is either mystified or hailed as agentry “Harla” or “Arla” (Cervicek and Braukämper 1975:49), an imaginary community:
According to popular beliefs Harla generally refers to a mysterious, wealthy and mighty people, (frequently even
imagined as giants!), who had once occupied large stretches of the Harar Province before they were destroyed by the supernatural powers through natural catastrophies as punishment for their inordinate pride. This occurred prior to the Galla (Oromo) incursions into these areas during the 16th and 17th centuries” (Cervicek and Braukämper 1975: 49; emphasis added).
In footnote, Cervicek and Braukämper (1975:49) quote Huntingford (1965:74) to on the identity of the Harla: “The
name “Harla” is first mentioned, as far as we know, in the chronicle of the Ethiopian Emperor ‘Amda Seyon in the
14th century (Huntingford 1965:74).” It is clear that this mystification prefigures in the usual gesture of de-Africanizing civilization of Black Africans to justify the so-called Hamitic myths, as explained well in the works of the aforementioned post-modern scholars. Thanks to Professor Claude Sumner (Sumner 1996: 26), today we know the fact of the matter, that it was not Huntingford who composed about the imaginary “Harla”. It was the French Catholic missionaries by the name
François Azais and Roger Chambard who reconstructed to fit it to their interest the imaginary ‘Harla’ (spelling it
rather as “Arla”) from an oral history told to them by an Oromo old man from Alla clan of Barentuu.The story itself
is about a “wealthy” Oromo man called “Barento” who was “very rich but very proud farmer” (Sumner 1996: 26).
For it is both vital and complex (in its ironic message, which cannot however be analyzed here) we have to
quote it in full:
There was in the Guirri country, at Tchenassen [Č’enāssan], an Oromo, a very rich but very proud farmer called Barento. A cloth merchant, an Arab who was also very rich, lived a short distance from there at Derbiga. The merchant’s daughter went one day to see the farmer and told him: “I would like to marry your son.”—“Very well, I shall give him to you,” he answered. The merchant in turn, gave his daughter and made under her daughter’s steps a road of cloth, from Derbiga to Tchenassen, residence of the rich farmer. The tailor replied to this act by making a road of dourah and maize under his son’s steps, from Tchenassen to Derbiga. But God was incensed by this double pride and to punish him, shaked Tchenassen Mountain and brought down a rain of stones which destroyed men and houses; it was then that the race of Arla [Alla] was destroyed (Sumner 1996: 26). Confirming the antiquity and unity of this story and the Oromo, similar story is found in Western Oromo as far closer to the Southern Sudan: “in interpreting certain of their [Oromo] myths about the beginning of things, it was because of man’s taking cultivation and pro-creation toomuch into his own hands, that Waqa[Waaqa] withdrew from him–a withdrawal resulting in a diminution of life on earth in all its forms” (Bartels 1975:512). As a part of the general social semiotics adopted in this study, onomasiology (the scientific analysis of toponyms, anthroponyms,ethnonyms as well as of semiotic metalanguages) is considered as important component for evolutionary social semiosis, particularly for any researcher on Oromo since these are coded or they code social epestemes, are cyclical, based on the principles of Gada System’s name-giving tradition, and, hence, are resistant to change (for detail on this see Legesse 1973). For instance, Cervicek and Braukamper (1965:74) described the Laga Gafra area and its population as: “The area of the site is part of the Gafra Golla Ḍofa village, and the indigenous Ala [Oromo] call it Gada Ba’la (“large shelter”)”, but appropriately, Baalli Gada. Here, let us only remember that Alla and Itťu clans are two of the Hararqee Oromo self-identificating by Afran Qalloo
(literally the Quadruplets, from ancient sub-moiety) who “provide[d] a basis for…construct[ing] models for
prehistoric land and resource use” (Clark and Williams:
Social semiosis, language and reality in the ancient ‘texts’ Social semiosis might be considered as old as homo
sapiens sapiens. But, for our analytical purpose, it is logical to begin from the Ancient Black Africans that some
19th century European missionaries and researchers referred to as ‘Ancient Egyptians’ (although still others
refer to them by Ancient Cushites, Ancient Ethiopians, Ancient Nubians or Meroes), who are the originators of
the first writing systems known as ‘hieroglyphics’. Chiekh Anta Diop (Diop 2000), Geral Massey (Massey 1907)
and other scholars have illuminated to us a lot about hieroglyphics. Initially, hieroglyphics was pictogram or semagram. That is, pictures of real world were ‘painted’ to communicate a sememe or motif, the smallest meaningful structure or concept, for instance, a picture of sitting man for their word equivalent to the English ‘sit’; a picture of man stretching his/her arms to the sky for ‘pray’; a lion for ‘great man’, etc., all or some of which is determined by
the lexical structures (phonological, syllabic, semantic, imagery they arise, etc) of their respective words. Based
on their social philosophy/paradigm, literary/figurative symbolism, and/or their word’s/language’s phonology/syntax, for instance, equivalent to the English ‘woman’, they might have also depicted a picture of a pigeon, or an owl or a cow. This zoomorphic mode of representation as the ‘Sign-Language of Totemism and Mythology’ was the first and early writing system in human history. The Ancient Egyptians used the principles of, among others, sound-meaning association, semantic and ontologic (what something/somebody can cause) similarization, physical resemblance, grouping (duplication or triplication of the same pictograms to represent meaning), aggregation (pictograms are combined in or around a spot or a pictogram is duplicated as many as necessary and congregated in or around a spot), sequencing vertically or horizontally (representing lexico-grammatic, syntactic, semotactic or stylistic structure) and so forth.
Some of these or similar principles or ‘stylistic features’ are observed, particularly, in the Laga Oda painting styles. Cervicek (1971:132-133 122-123), for instance, observed in Laga Oda paintings such stylized ‘discourse’ as ‘group of horseshoe-like headless bovine motifs’, ‘paired ‘soles of feet’ from Bake Khallo [Bakkee Qaallu ‘Sacred Place for Qaallu Ritual]’, ‘oval symbo accompanied as a rule by a stroke on their left side’, sun-like symbol, in the centre with animal and anthropomorphic representations grouped around it’, paired ‘soles of feet’, carefully profiled styles (overhead, side, back point-of-view of bovines), zooming (large versus small size of bovine motifs), headless versus headed bovines, H-shaped anthropomorphic
representations with raised hands’, superimposition and so forth. Any interpretation that renders these as isolated
case, arbitrary or pointless marks can be rejected outright. Some of these ‘early spelling’ are found not only across the whole Horn of Africa but also in Ancient Meroitic-Egyptian rock paintings, hieroglyphics and, generally, organized social semiosis.By the same token, Oromo social semiotical ‘texts’, like any ancient texts, textures “intimate link…between form,
content and concrete situation in life” (Sumner 1996:17-18). Professor Claude Sumner, who produced three volume analysis of Oromo wisdom literature (Sumner 1995, 1996, 1997), sees that like any “ancient texts”, in Oromo wisdom literature, “a same unit of formal characters, namely of expressions, of syntactic forms, of vocabulary, of metaphors, etc., which recur over and over again, and finally a vital situation…that is a same original function in the life of [the people]” (Sumner 1996:19). An elderly Oromo skilled in Oromo wisdom speaks, to use the appropriate Marxian term, ‘historical materialism’, or he speaks “in ritual language, as it was used in old times at the proclamation of the law” (Bartels 1983:309).
Moreover, he speaks in rhythmatic verses, full of “sound parallelism” (Cerulli 1922), “parallelism of sounds” or
“image” or “vocalic harmony” (Bartels 1975: 898ff). Even Gada Laws used to be “issued in verse” (Cotter 1990:
70), in “the long string of rhyme, which consists of repeating the same verse at the end of each couplet” or “series of short sententious phrases” that are “disposed to help memory” (De Salviac 2005 [1901]: 285). The highly experienced researchers on the ancient Oromo system of thought, which is now kept intact mainly by the Booran Gada System, emphasize that “‘the philosophical concepts that underlie the gadaa system’…utilize a symbolic code much of which is common to all Oromo” (Baxter, Hultin and Triulzi 1996: 21). Long ago, one scholar emphatically stated, this is a feature “surely has developed within the [Oromo] language” and “is also only imaginable in a sonorous language such as Oromo” which “as a prerequisite, [has] a formally highly developed poetical technique” (Littmann 1925:25 cited in Bartels 1975:899).
Claude Sumner formulates a “double analogy” tactic as prototypical feature of Oromo wisdom literature, i.e., “vertical” and “horizontal” parallelism style (Sumner 1996:25), known for the most part to linguists, respectively, as ‘paradigmatic’ (‘content’ or ‘material’) and ‘syntagmatic’ (‘form’ or ‘substance’) relations or in both literature and linguistics, as contextual-diachronic and textual-synchronic, relations. Oromo social epistemological concepts/words/signs offers important data for historical and evolutionary social sciences for they recycle and, consequently, are resistant to change both in form and meaning (Legesse 1973). In the same way, in this analysis of the ancient rock paintings of Hararqee, an evolutionary and multidisciplinary analysis of the interrelationship among the traditional ‘semiotic triangle’—the sign (sound or phonon, word or lexon, symbol or image), the signified (the social meaning, ‘semon’, episteme or theme) and the referent (cultural-historical objects and ritual-symbolic actions)——and among the metonymic complex (referring here to layers and clusters of semiotic triangles in their social-natural contexts) is assumed as vital meta-theoretical framework.
METHODS AND THE SEMIOTIC RESOURCES
For this analysis, both archival and field data or semiotic resources are collected. In 2012 visits were made to the
some of the popular (in literature) ancient rock painting sites in Hararqee (Laga Oda, Goda Agawa, Ganda Biiftu,
etc.; comprehensive list of Ethiopian rock painting sites is presented by Bravo 2007). Also, field visits were made to
less known (in literature) ancient to medieval era painting sites were made in the same year (e.g., Goda Rorris,
Huursoo, Goda K’arree Ǧalɖeessa, Goda Ummataa, Goda Daassa, etc). Huge audiovisual data (still and
motion) of both paintings and engravings were collected, only very few of which are used in this paper. On the one
hand, the previously captured data (as photos, sketches or traces) from some of the popular sites, for instance
Laga Oda and Laga Gafra (as in Cervicek 1971; Cervicek and Braukamper 1975), are sometimes found to be
preferably clearer due to wear-off or other factors. On the other hand, from the same sites, some previously
unrevealed or undetected motifs (painted or engraved) were collected. Therefore, both field and archival data are
equally important for this analysis. However, since the Qaallu Institution , and its sub-themes, is used as sensitizing device or a means rather than end— hence is capitalization upon social semiotic and linguistic aspects–there is an inevitable risk of undermining these complex philosophical notions. Yet, for the pertinent (to Qaallu Institution) anthropological-ethnological archivals used as additional secondary data or, to use Theo van Leeuwen’s term, as “semiotic resource”, original and influential references are indicated for further reading. More importantly, two old men skilled in Oromo social epistemology, customarily referred to as ‘walking libraries’, are used as informants. Taaddasaa Birbirsoo Mootii, 87, from Wallagga, Western Oromia (Ethiopia) and Said Soddom Muummee, 85, from Hararqee Eastern Oromia (Ethiopia). Mootii, Addoo Catholic Church Priest (‘Catechist’ is the word they use), was one of the infor- mants and personal colleagues of Father Lambert Bartels, who studied in-depth and wrote widely on Oromo religion, rituals and social philosophy. His scholarly and
comparative (with Biblical) analysis of Oromo religion and world view, child birth custom, praise song for the cow,
Qaallu Institution, Gada system geneaological-social hierarchy are among his seminal works. Although Bartels
only indicated Mootii as “one priest”, he and his colleague Shagirdi Boko (one of the Jaarsa Mana Sagadaa ‘Old
Men of Church’) were among his informant colleagues. Muummee, is not only well seasoned wiseman, but he
still celebrates and identify himself as Waaqeeffata—believer, observer and practitioner of the pre-Christian
Oromo religion founded on Waaqa, the Black Sky-God.
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Qaallu Institution and the praise to the cattle Above, under Introduction section, we briefly touched upon the mythical-social origin of the Qaallu Institution and its relation with genesis and cow-milk. Qaallu comes from the gerundive qull (qul’qullu, intensive) ‘pure, holy, sacred, blameless; being black, pretty, neat’, pointing to the color and quality of Waaqa (see Bartels 1983; Hassen 1990 for detail).. The “ancient” Qaallu Institution of Oromo (Baxter 1987: 168 quoted and elaborated in Gidada 2005: 146-147) had been widely practiced in Eastern, Hararqee Oromo until the first half of the 20th century. It is as much cosmogonal, cosmological and ideological (identificational) as it is theo-political to the Oromo nation, in particular, and, at large, the pre-colonial (pre-Christian, pre-Islam) Cushite who uniformly believed in Water, as a source of life and on which life is unilaterally dependent, and in Waaqa–a concept/word that means, on the one hand, the abstract ‘Supreme Being, God, Devine, Heave’ and, on the other, the ‘concrete’ ‘Sky, Divinely Water (rain)’. For Oromo, the first Qaallu “a high priest”, the “spiritual leader” was of “divine origin”, as the myth tells us, “ ‘fell from the sky itself’…with the first black cow” and he was the “‘eldest son of Ilma Orma’” and in its “dual nature”, Waaqa, the black Sky-God “controlled fertility, peace, and lifegiving rains…[hence] prayers for peace, fertility, and rain” are the core recursive themes in Oromo religion (Hassen 1990: 6-7). For more on Oromo genealogical tree and history, see Gidada (2006), Bartels (1983), BATO (1998), to mention a few.
The Booran Oromo, who still retains the Qaallu Institution ‘unspoiled’:
The Booran view of cosmology, ecology and ontology is one of a flow of life emanating from God. For them, the benignancy of divinity is expressed in rain and other conditions necessary for pastoralism. The stream of life flows through the sprouting grass and the mineral waters [hoora] of the wells, into the fecund wombs and generous udders of the cows [ɢurrʔ
ú]. The milk from the latter then promotes human satisfaction and fertility (Dahl and Megerssa 1990: 26).
In this worldview, the giant bull (hanɡafa, hancaffa) is a symbol of angaftitti “seniority of moieties: stratification
and imbalance” (Legesse 2000: 134). Hence, the separation of the most senior or ancient moieties or the cradle land imitates hariera ‘lumbar and sacral vertebrae’ (other meaning ‘queue, line, suture’) or horroo ‘cervical vertebrae’ of the bull.
The primogenitors (horroo) of the Oromo nations (mainly known as Horroo, Raya, Booro) set the first ßala ‘moiety, split (from baɮ ‘to flame, impel, fly; to split, have bilateral symmetry’) or Ẃalaßu ‘freedom, bailing, springing’. The formation of moieties, sub-sub-moieties grew into baɭbaɭa‘sub-sub-sub-etc…lineages’ (also means ‘door, gate’; the reduplication showing repetitiveness). Jan Hultin, an influential anthropologist and writer on Oromo, states “Among the Oromo, descent is a cultural construct by which people conceive of their relations to each other and to livestock and land; it is an
ideology for representing property relations” (Hultin 1995: 168-169). The left hand and right hand of the bovine always represent, in rituals, the “sub-sections of the phratry” (Kassam 2005:105). That is, as the tradition sustains,
when the ancient matrilineal-patrilineal moieties sowed, dissevered (fač’á) from the original East (Boora), the
Booreettúma (designating matrilineality, feminine soul) took or went towards the left hand side, while the Hoorroo
(also for unclear reason βooroo, designating patrilineality, masculine soul) took the right hand side. Both correspond, respectively, to the directions of sunrise and sunset, which configure in the way house is constructed: Baa, Bor ‘the front door’ (literally ‘Origin, Beam, morning twilight’) always faces east, while the back wall (Hooroo) towards west (also Hooroo means ‘Horus, evening twilight’). This still governs the praxis that the backwall “is the place of the marriage negotiations and of the first sexual intercourse of sons and their bride [i.e., behind the stage]” (Bartels 1983: 296). For this reason, Qaallu Institution has had a special Law of the Bovine as well as Holiday of the Cattle/Bovine, Ǧaarrii Looni (Legesse 1973:96; Dahl and Megerssa 1990). On Ǧaarrii Loonii, cattle pen are renovated and embellished, and festivities and dances with praise songs to cattle was chanted (for more, Bartels 1975; Wako 2011; Kassam 2005). An excerpt from the praise song ‘talks’ about them with admiration (See also Bartels 1975: 911):
Chorus: Ahee-ee
Soloist: Sawa, sawilee koo–Cows, o my cows,
Bira watilee koo–and also you, my calves.
Ǧeɗ’e malee maali–Could I say otherwise?
Yá saa, yá saa—o cattle, o cattle!
saa Humbikooti–cattle of my Humbiland,
Saa eessa ǧibbu?–What part of cattle is useless?
Saa qeensa qičču–Our cattle with soft hoofs,
koṱṱeen šínii ta’e—from their hoofs, we make coffee-cups
gogaan wallu ta’e—from their skins, we make wallu
[leather cloth]
gaafi wanč’a ta’ee, — from their horns, we make wáɳč’a
[large beer cup]
faɭ
ʔ
anas ta’a!—as well as spoons! [See Fig.1A, B, C, D,
E]
Chorus: Ahee-ee
Lambert Bartels, a Catholic Father and scholar lived with the Oromo, writes “When they bless, they say: ɡurrači
ɡaraa ǧ’abbii siif ha kenu ‘May the dark one [God] with hail under his abdomen give you all (good things)’
(Bartels 1983:90-91). Cervicek (1971:124 Fig.10) wonders about the unexplained but recurrent “oval
representations… painted black [and] white-dotted” and consistently painted “below” the cow udder (see Fig.2B).
This can be compared with wáɳč’a ‘drinking horn-cup’ or č’óč’oo, č’iič’oo ‘milking (horn-)cup’ (see Fig.1D). On
Irreečča ritual of Thanking Waaqa the Black Sky-God, a line of the doxology mentions, among others, “Waaqa
č’iič’oo gurraattii” ‘God of the dark č’iič’oo milking-cup’ (Sabaa 2006:312). The deadjectival č’óč’orree means ‘white dotted (black background); turkey or similar white dotted bird’, while Waaɳč’ee is a proper name for white-dotted cow.
Qaallu as ecotheological concept
Qaallu is also an ontological concept referring to the spirit that resides in sacred realities, the mountain hills, seas, river
beds, pasture land, etc. As an important place for ritual place for immortalizing (primogenitors, ancestors), blessing
(children, the young), initiations (to Gada classes, power take-over), praying (for fertility, abundance, fortune, rain),
and praising (God, nature, cattle), the sacred land of spirituality must be mountain foot (goda) where there must
be, naturally, laga ‘lagoon, river’, č’affee ‘marshy area with green grasses’ (symbol of the parliamentary assembly),
χaɭoo ‘pasture land’, and the evergreen oɖaa fig sycamores. Oɖaa serves not only as “a depiction of a political power”,
but “is also a centre of social and economic activities” and “symbolizes the entire corpus of their activities, history,
culture and tradition” (Gutamaa 1997:14). Five Qaallu centres are known in Booran sub-moiety: (1) Qaallu Odiituu, (2) Qaallu Karrayyuu, (3) Qaallu Matťarii, (4) Qaallu Karaar, (5) Qaallu Kuukuu, (10) Qaallu Arsii (Nicolas 2010). These centers are like cities of (con-)federal states and simultaneously are (sub-)clan names. These names are codes and decoders of not only genealogical and landscapes, but also of ancient (sub)-moieties and settlement patterns. Since they are cyclical, based on the principles of Gada System’s name-giving principle, they are widespread across Oromia and resistant to change. Werner (1915:2) observed that in Booran Oromo, “every clan has its own mark for cattle, usually a brand (ɢuʋa [ɡuƀá ], which is the name of the instrument used, is an iron spike fixed into a wooden handle)”, a fact which is
significated in other parts of Oromia with different signifiers, for instance, pattern of settlement, which is determined by a
korma karbaʑaa ‘bull that bulldozes jungles’ or korma qallaččaa ‘kindling bull’ (Gidada 2006: 99-100) or bull’s
anatomy (BATO 1998). For instance, quoting Makko Billii, the ancient Gada System law maker, the Wallaga Oromo
recite their settlement pattern in the anatomy of Korma the virile ‘buffalo-bull’ or ‘macho man’: Sibuun garaača. Haruu č’inaacha, Leeqaan dirra sangaati, ‘The Sibuu [Sabboo] clan is the abdomen, the Haruu [Hooroo] is the ribs, and Leeqaa is the chuck of the bull’ (BATO 1998:164).
Qallačča bull as a kindler is related defined qallačča “a white patch between the horns of a cow running back down the
two sides of the neck; a charm” (Foot 1913:33). See Fig.2 A, B, C and D . It is the symbol of a Qaallu’s qallačča, here
meaning, an inherited, from ancestors, spiritual and intellectual grace or sublimity. This is quite related to of
book’a ‘a black cow or bull or ram that has a white mark upon the forehead’ (Tutschek 1844:135-136), a natural
phenomenon considered as a good omen. Adda isá book’aa qaba ‘his forehead has a blaze’ is an idiom appropriately
meaning the person has the natural capacity, inherited from ancestors, to prophesize, foreknow. For this reason, “white-headedness” or wearing white turban is a symbol of (passage to) seniority or superordinate moiety (Kassam 1999). As usual, there is “intimate link…between form, content and concrete situation in life” (Sumner 1996:17-18).
Qallačča as a mysterious metal
Qallačča is a key concept in Qaallu Institution. One instantiation of this complex concept is that it is a mysterious
sacred material culture (Fig.3). Informants tell us that true. qallačča worn on the forehead by the Qaallu was made of
iron that fell from sky as qorsa (comet, metorite); it was only recovered after pouring milk of a black cow on the specific
spot it dropped. For some ethnologists/anthropologists, it is a “white metal horn which is worn on the forehead” and is
“horn-symbolism” for “every man is a bull”, a symbol of virility (Bartels 1983: 146). For others it is just a ‘white
metal horn’ which is a symbol of fertility or just is “phallic ornament” (Haberland 1963:51 quoted in Bartels
1983:146). These argumentations share the root qaɾa ‘horn (sharp and tall), acute; graining fruit, granulate,
shoot’ and the inavariable qaɾ-ɳî ‘sex (characteristics)’. The very Oromo word for ‘sex (intercourse)’, namely
saala, also designates ‘horn, oryx, penis; awe, honor, esteem; shame, shameful’. But, these notions are only
part of the polysemantic and complex concept of qallačča. Amborn (2009: 401) might be wrong when he completely
rejects the “phallisphication” of qallačča by “some anthropologists”. He is right that qallačča is also a symbol
of “socio-religious mediator which is able to bundle positive and negative “cosmic” (for want of a better word)
energies” and rather “symbolizes a link between the human and the supernatural world; its function is to open
up this connection between different spheres.” Knutsson (1967:88-90 quoted in Bartels 1983:145) describes
qallačča as “a conically formed ‘lump’ of black iron…brought from the heaven by the lightening.” Plowman (1918:114), who took a sketch of qallačča (Fig.3 D), described it as “emblem” of the Qaallu “Chief Priest” or of the retired Abba Gadaa ‘the president’. Plowman fleshes out the components of qallačča: (1) “seven bosses superimposed on a raised rim running
round the emblem”; (2) “upright portion made of polished lead”; (3) “circular base of white polished shell-like substance resembling ivory”; (4) “leather straps for fastening emblem to forehead of weaver” (Plowman 1918:114). This mysterious cultural object has multifunction. Taaddasa Birbirsso Mootii, who is not only an informant, but, in the expression of the locals, ‘a man who has sipped mouthful’ (of Oromo traditional wisdom) explains the social epistemological structure underlying qallačča: During the time of Gada System, government by the people’s justice, the Waaqeeffataa used to pour out milk of black cow on Dibayyuu ritual and discover/see their qallačča [truth and abundance]. For it is a sacred object,
qallačča never moved [transported, communicated] withoutsacrificial blood of bulls. It must be smeared on
the forehead [See Fig.3A and P7B on the forehead]. How can urine/semen without water, child without blood, milk
without udder/teats be discovered [gotten]? In the aftermath of lengthy drought, too, they used to take
qallačča to depression/ford and hill-top to pray with one stomach [unanimously] to God with Qaallu the Spiritual
Father. Immediately, qallačča [God’s riposte] reconciled streaming milk from the sky [rains]. Hence, qallačča was
used for collective welfare. Qallačča is God’s qali ‘alethic truth, promise’. Note that from Laga Oda Cave, archaeologists (Brandt 1984:177) have found “‘sickle sheen’ gloss and polish”, which helped archaeologists to recover “possible
indications of intensive harvesting of wild grasses as early as 15, 000 B. P.”; “one awl”, “one endscraper” and
“one curved-backed flake” all “dated 1560 B.C.”; and, “a few microliths that show evidence of mastic adhering
close to the backed edges” which “strongly suggests” that by “1560 B.C…stone tools were being used (probably as components of knives and sickles).”
Qallačča and Gadaa—the generation-age-based sociopolitical system
Baxter (1979:73, 80) calls it “phallic” or “ritual paraphernalia”, which is worn on the head “by men at crucial stage in the gaada [gadaa] cycle of rituals”. Informants make distinction between two types of qallačča: qallačča laafa (of the soft, acuminous), which is worn by the Qaallu or Abba Gadaa; and qallačča korma (of the virile man or bull, macho). Viterbo (1892) defines “kallaéccia”, qallačča as ‘disciple, pupil’, which cuts para-llel with the anthropologist Baxter (1979: 82-84) who
states that, in Oromo Gada System, a young man’s grown tuft (ɡuuɗuu; see Fig.3D; we shall come back to Fig.3A in the final part of the discussion) is “associated symbolically with an erect penis” and discourses that he is “guutu diira”, which means a “successful warrior”, the one who has reached a class of “member of political adulthood”, for he has “become responsible for the nation”. At this age, Baxter adds, “each of its members puts up a phallic Kalaacha”, a “symbol of firm but
responsible manliness.” The feminine counterpart to ɡuuɗuu hairstyle is “ɡuɖeya” (Werner 1914a: 141), guʈʈiya (literally go-away bird or its tonsure) or qarré ‘tonsure’ (literally, ‘kite’ or similar bird of prey) (Bartels 1983:262), while of the masculine qallačča head-gear is the feminine qárma (literally ‘sharpened, civilized’). In Gada System, this age-class is called Gaammee Gúɖ’ɡuɖá (reduplication ɡuɖá ‘big’) ‘Senior Gamme III’, the age of at which the boys elect their six leaders to
practice political leadership (Legesse 2006:124-125).
Bokkuu: Insignia of power, balance and light of freedom
Hassen (1990:15) discusses that bokkuu has “two meanings”. One is “the wooden scepter kept by the Abba
Gada in his belt during all the assembly meetings”, an “emblem of authority…the independence of a tribe,
and…a symbol of unity, common law and common government” (Fig.4). De Salviac describes it “has the
shape of a voluminous aspergillum (a container with a handle that is used for sprinkling holy water) or of a mace
of gold of the speaker of the English parliament, but in iron and at the early beginning in hard wood” (De Salviac
2005 [1901]: 216). Legesse (2006: 104) describes it as “a specially curved baton”, which shows that there are two
types in use. The second meaning of bokkuu is, “it refers to the keeper of the bokkuu—Abba Bokkuu” (Hassen
1990:15), or in plural Warra Bokku “people of the scepter” (Legesse 2006: 104). Hence, after serving for full eight year, Abba Bokkuu must celebrate Bokkuu Walira Fuud’a (literally to exchange the scepter bokkuu), a Gada system concept
that refers to two socio-political “events as a single act of “exchange”” (Legesse 1973:81): (1) the event of power
“take over ceremony”, i.e., the symbolic act of “the incoming class” and (2) the event of power “handover
ceremony”, i.e., the symbolic act of “the outgoing class”. This power-exchange ceremony is also called Baalli
Walira Fud’a “Power Exchange” or “transfer of ostrich feathers” (Legesse 1973: 81-82; 2006: 125). Here, baalli
refers not only ‘power, authority, responsibility’ (Stegman 2011: 5, 68), but also ‘ostrich feather’ and ‘twig
(leaved)’, both of which are used as symbolic object on the Baalli power transfer ceremony. De Salviac (2005 [1901]: 216) witnessed “the power is transferred to the successor by remittance of the scepter or bokkuu.” After power exchange ceremony, the ‘neophyte’ Abba Bokkuu: “falls in his knees and raising in his hands the scepter towards the sky, he exclaims, with a majestic and soft voice: Yaa Waaq, Yaa Waaq [Behold! O, God!] Be on my side…make me rule over the
Doorii…over the Qaallu…make me form the morals of the youth!!!…” (De Salviac 2005 [1901]: 213). See Fig.4B.
Then, the new Abba Bokkuu takes possession of the seat and “immolates a sacrifice and recites prayers to obtain
the assistance of On-High in the government of his people….The entire tribe assembled there, out of breath
from emotion and from faith” (De Salviac 2005 [1901]: 212). Above we raised that two symmetrical acts/concepts are
enfolded “as a single act [or word] of “exchange”” is performed by exchanging the Bokkuu scepter during
Baalli ceremony (Legesse 1973:81). That is, when the scepter is the one with bokkuu ‘knobs’ on each edge, it
suffices to enfold it ‘Bokkuu Baalli’ since the symmetricality principle of the act of reciprocal remittance
or power exchange is as adequately abstracted in the phrase as in the iconicity of the balanced bokkuu. Besides, the horooroo stick with a knob (bokkuu) on one side and a v-/y-shape (baalli) on the other side is a semagram and semotactic for the same concept of symmetricality principle, i.e., Bokkuu Baalli.
Ateetee in Qaallu Institution: Fertility symbolism
Cerulli (1922:15, 126-127) “Atētê …the goddess of fecundity, worshipped by the Oromo” and adds that “the
greatest holiday of the [Oromo] pagans is the feast of Atetê”; she is “venerated” by “even the Mussulmen”; she
is referred to “in the songs ayô, ‘the mother,’ often with the diminutive ayoliê, ‘the little mother’”. Women sing
“songs asking the goddess to grant them fecundity and lamenting the woes which are caused by sterility.” Long
before Cerulli, Harris (1844:50) wrote as follow: “when sacrificing to Ateti, the goddess of fecundity, exclaiming
frequently, “Lady, we commit ourselves unto thee; stay thou with us always”.”
The symbolic material cultures pertaining to Aɖeetee are important for our purpose in this paper. Bompiani
(1891:78) saw the Oromo on their “long journeys to visit Abba Múdā” who, “as a sign of peace they make a sheep
go before them on entering the village… and instead of a lance carry a stick, upon the top of which is fixed the horn
of an antelope” (this is well known Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph). Indeed, sheep (ḫooɭaa), common in ancient
rock paintings of Hararqee, is also the favorite for sacrificial animal for Qaallu institution of “peacemaking
and reconciliation”, particularly black sheep, “a sheep of peace” (hoolaa araaraa)” (Gidada 2001: 103). In fact, the
word ḫooɭaa for ‘sheep’ and rêeé, re’ee for ‘goat’ (re’oṱa, rooɖa, plural) have meronymic relationship. The semantic
structure underlying both is ‘high fertility rate’ (arareessá, from ɾaɾí ‘ball, matrix; pool, rivulet’). The “antelope” that Bompaini names is in fact the beautifully speckled ʂiiqqee ‘klipspringer’ (Stegman 2011:45, 35), common in Laga Oda and other paintings along with ‘fat-tailed’ sheep. At the same time, ʂiiqqee (literally, ‘splendid, lustrous, graceful’) is, according to the
Aṱeetee Institution, a sacred, usually tall and speckled, “stick signifying the honor of Oromo women…a blessing… a ceremonial marriage stick given to a girl…a religious stick Oromo women used for prayer” (Kumsaa 1997:118). Kumsa observed that “the very old, the very young and all women, in the Gadaa system, are considered innocent and peace-loving” and quoted the renowned anthropologist Gemetchu Megerssa who expressed that in Oromo Gada tradition women “were also regarded as muka laaftuu (soft wood–a depiction of their liminality) and the law for those categorized as such
protected them” (Kumsa 1997:119). Concentric or circular or ‘sun-burst’ geometric motifs are as abundant as ‘udder chaos’ in the Hararqee and Horn of African ancient rock paintings (Fig.5C from Qunnii or Goda Ummataa; A and B Goda Roorris traditionally known as ‘Errer Kimiet’; G from Goda K’arree Ğaldeesaa or Weybar in Č’elenqoo; E Laga Oda from Cervicek
1971). Bartels (1983) studied well about another symbolic object in Aɖeetee Institution, namely ɡuɳɖo, a grass-plate, made from highly propagative grasses, plaited in a series of concentric-circles (see Fig.5D). It is used to keep bîddeena ‘pizza-like circular bread’ and fruits. Bartels (1983: 261) documented that, on her wedding day: [T]he girl has with her a grass-plate (gundo), which she made herself. This gundo is a symbol of her womb [ɡaɖāmeʑa]. Since…she is expected to be a virgin
[ɡuɳɖúɖa], nothing should have been put in in this grass plate beforehand. Gundo are plaited [with an awl] from
outside inwards, leaving a little hole in the centre [ɡuɖé, qaa]…this little hole is not filled in by the girls themselves,
but they ask a mother of a child to do it for them. If they do it themselves, they fear they will close their womb to
child-bearing (Square brackets added).While, ɡuɳɖó stands for a woman’s gadameʑa ‘womb’ (from gadá ‘temple; generation, time-in-flow), the concentricity of the plaits (marsaa, massaraa, metathesis) is a symbol of the ‘recyclers’ of generations, namely mûssirró ‘the bride-woman’ and marii ‘bride-man’ (marii also means ‘cycle, inwrap, plait’). A bigger
cylindrical ɡuɳɖó with cover called suuba is particularly given as hooda ‘a regard’ to the couples (on their good
ethos, virginity) and is a symbol of súboo ‘the newly married gentlemen, the prudential gentlemen’. Father Lambert Bartels (Bartels 1983: 268) wrote that a buffalo-killer would bring a special gift for his mother or wife from the wilderness: namely, elellee (elellaan, plural) from his buffalo skin” Elellee and č’aačč’u refer to a string of cowries (of snail shells, obsidian rocks or fruits of certain plant called illilii) and festooned to a sinew cut from a sacrificial animal (Fig.5F). They are worn only by
women on the breastplate or forehead or worn to č’ooč’oo, č’iič’oo milk-pots, symbol of “a woman’s sexual and reproductive organ” (Østebø 2009: 1053). See also Fig.5F and G.
We need to add here a praise song to a beauty of woman, which symbolizes her by élé ‘circular cooking pot or oven made of clay’ and bede smaller than élé (Sumner 1996: 68): Admiration is for you, o <ele>… <But> I take out of <bede>…
Admiration is for you, moon shaped beauty. Rightly, Sumner (1996:68) states élé symbolizes “the mother, of woman” while bedé symbolizes “daughters” or the “moon [báṱí] shaped beauty”, i.e., her virginity (ɡuɳɖuɖa), uncorruptedness (baʤí) combined with ethos of chastity (aɖeetee). Woman is expressed arkiftu idda mačč’araa literally ‘puller of the root of one-body/-person’,a paraonomastic way to say circulator, recycler or propagator of the genealogy of Oromo moieties, namely
Mačč’a and Raya/Raã. Here, it is fascinating to observe the unique social semiosis at work—selecting and stitching (qora) the language and world according to the semblance and image the reality (world) offers as a cognitive possibility to operate upon. cowries of “giant snail shells…kept with a string made.
Spear piercing coffee bean
According to the Aṱeetee tradition, on her wedding ritual, the bride “hands her gundo to her mother-in-law who puts
some sprouting barley-grains in it. They are (a symbol of) the children Waqa will give her if he will’’ (Bartels 1983:
261). The mother-in-law will, according to the long tradition, adds some coffee-beans (coffee-beans and
cowries are look-alike, Fig.5 F from Cervicek 1971 and H); “coffee-beans are a symbol of the vagina,
representing the girl to be a potential mother. The beans are children in the shell at this moment, protected and
inaccessible as a virgin’s vagina” (Bartels 1983:261). Later on during the ritual, the elderly bless her: “May
Waqa cause the womb [gundo] sprouts children [grains]! Let it sprout girls and boys!” Amid the ceremony, the
bride “gives the gundo to her groom’s mother. She herself now takes his [bridegroom’s] spear and his stool.
She carries the stool with her left hand, holding it against her breast. In her right hand she grasps the spear….”
The spear, a representation of the male organ, is expressed in the Girl’s Song:
O sheath [qollaa] of a spear,
Handsome daughter,
Sister of the qaɽɽee [us colleagues of marriage-age]
Let us weep for your sake
The buna qalaa ‘slaughtering of coffee fruit’, which reflexes, in direct translation, the ‘slaughtering’ (qaɭa) the
virgin is “a symbol of procreation” (Bartels 1975: 901). The bride “puts the coffee-fruits from the gundo in butter
together with others and put them over the fire” (Bartels 1983: 263). Butter (ɗ’aɗ’á) is a symbol of fecundity
(ṯaɗ’āma) while the floor of the fire, or hearth (baɗ’ā) is a symbol of the nuclear family that is taking shape
(Legesse 1973:39). While, all this was captured by Bartels in the late 20th century in Wallagga, Werner (1914
b: 282) captured similar events a thousand or so kilometers away at Northern Kenya with the Booran:
On the wedding morning, a woman (some friend of the bride’s mother) hangs a chicho [č’iič’oo, č’ooč’oo] full of
milk over the girl’s shoulder….The bridegroom, carrying his spear and wearing a new cloth and a red turban, goes
in at the western gate of the cattle-kraal and out at the eastern, and then walks in a slow and stately way to the
hut of his mother-in-law, where the bride is waiting for him. They sit down side by side just within the door; after
a time they proceed to the cattle-kraal, where his friends are seated. She hands him the chicho and he drinks
some milk, and then passes it on to his friends, who all drink in turn.
In general, matrix-shape, milk-pots, sprouting beans all symbolizes feminineness quality, the natural power to
‘reproductive faculty’ (ʂaɲɲí), a capacity to generate many that, yet, keep alikeness or identity (ʂaɲɲí).
Woman and a cow and infant and a calf
Cows are “a symbolic representation of women” (Sumner 1997: 193; Bartels 1975: 912) because both are equally
haaɗ’a manaa ‘the flex of the home/house’:
Sawayi, ya sawayi—o my cow, o my cow [too high
hypocorism]
ʼnīṱī abbaan gorsatu–a wise man’s wife/a wife of wisest
counselor husband
amali inmulattu–her virtues are hidden;/is virtuous and
has integrity;
saa abbaan tiqsatu–o careful owner’s cow/ similarly, cow
that the owner himself
shepherds/feeds
č’inaači inmuľaṱu–her ribs are hidden/her hook bone is
invisible (full and swollen).
Saa, saa, ya saa–cattle, cattle, o cow,
ya saa marī koo–o cow, my advisor/darling
ţiqē marartu koo–good in the eyes of your herdsman/am
overseeing you spitefully.
(Bartels, 1975: 912)
Likewise, an infant and a young calf are not only congruous, but also sung a lullaby to comfort them:
Sleep, sleep!
My little man slobbers over his breast.
The skin clothes are short.
The groin is dirty
The waist is like the waist of a young wasp
The shepherd with the stick!
Sleep, sleep!
He who milks with the ropes!
Sleep, sleep!
He who takes the milk with the pot!
Sleep, sleep!
The cows of Abba Bone,
The cows of Dad’i Golge:
They’ve gone out and made the grass crack;
They’ve [come home] again and made the pot.
(Sumner 1997: 181)
Basically, there is no difference between a newborn calf and an infant; no need of separate lexisboth is élmee—
diminutive-denominative from elma ‘to milk’. Young calves or children are worn kolliʥa ‘collar’, ǧallattii
‘diadem, crown, tiara’ or č’allee ‘jewelry’ wrapping around their necks, all of whose semiotic significance is to
express ǧalla, ǧallačča ‘love’ and protection from ɡaaɖiɗú ‘evil spirit’ that bewitches not only infants and young of
animals, etc (Bartels 1983: 284-285, 196-197). The first meaning of ɡaaɖiɗú, gádíṱú is ‘silhouette’ or ‘human
shadow’ (see also Tutschek 1844: 54), but, in this context it refers to an evil spirit that accompanies or inhabits a
person. The evil spirit comes in a form of shadow and watches with evil-eye, hence it is also called, in some areas, ɮaltu, ilaltu ‘watcher (wicked)’. All these concepts are common motifs in Hararqee rock paintings (Cervicek 197). See
Fig.6 especially the silhouette-like background and in C an evil-eye motif is seen watching from above.
In accordance with the Qaallu Institution, the Qaallu (or Qaalličča, particulative) receives and embraces new
born children, giving them blessings, buttering their heads and ɡubbisaa ‘giving them names’, literally,
‘incubating’ from ɡubba ‘to be above, over’ or ɡuƀa ‘to brand, heat’ (Knustsson 1967). Women call this process of entrusting children to the Qallu ‘aɖɖaraa ol kaa’, literally ‘Putting/Lifting up oath/children to the topmost (related to the prayer epithet Áɖɖaraa ‘Pray! I beseech you!’). Or, they call it Ők’ubaa ɢalča, literally ‘entering/submitting the Őq’ubaa’, which refers to “the act of kneeling down and raising one’s hands with open fingers towards the sky (Waaqa) and thus submitting oneself to Waaqa” (Gidada 2006:163), from the prayer epithet: Őq’uba ‘Pray!, Prayer!’, literally,
‘Take my fingers!’ A “perfect attitude at prayers in the Oromo’s eyes is to lift the hands towards heaven”
(Bartels 1983: 350). An unfortunate Oromo father/mother has to but say élmee koo ana ǧalaa du’e, literally ‘my offspring/child died from under/underside me’ while an unfortunate child would say abbo/ayyo koo ana’irraa du’e ‘my dear dad/mum died from above/over me’. Some lines from a song for a hero illustrate caressing and kissing the belly of his mother (Cerulli 1922: 48):
The belly which has brought you forth,
How much gold has it brought forth?
Who is the mother who has given birth to you?
If I had seen her with my eyes,
I would have kissed her navel.
These symbolic-actional rhetorical organizations are most probably the underlying ‘grammar’ of the recurrent
anthropomorphic signs, along with a newborn calves, ‘embracing’ the belly, navel of a cow (Fig.6CandD from
Cervicek 1971). Culturally, cows are given as an invaluable gift to an adoptee child, so that she/he never
sleeps a night without a cup of milk. The gift-cow is addressed by hypocoristic aɳɖ’úree ‘navel, umbilical cord’
(aɖɖ’oolee, plural, by play on word ‘good parous ones, the gray/old ones’), which means ‘dear foster-mama’
symbolizing cordiality, wish to long-life and strong bond, protection of the child (see also Hassen 1990: 21).
Earlier in this paper, we saw how matrilineal-patrilineal and moiety phratry are represented partly by bovine
anatomy. As recorded by the Catholic Father Lambert Bartels and others, Waaqa ‘Devine, God, Sky’
symbolizes Abbá, Patriarchic-side of the cosmos or Father or Husband “who goes away” while, Daččee
‘Earth’ symbolizes, the Matriarchic-side, Mother or Wife who “is always with us” (Bartels 1983: 108-111) and
“originally, Heaven and Earth were standing one next to the other on equal terms” (Haberland 1963: 563 quoted in
Bartels 1983: 111). As we observe the Laga Odaa pictures (see Fig.5A), we consistently also find another
interesting analogy–bulls are consistently drawn above the cows. In Oromo worldview, a bull represent ßoo
‘sacred domain of the male’ (vocative form of bâ ‘man, subject, being, masculine 4th person pronoun’), while a
cow (saa, sa’a) represent çâé, îssi ‘sacred domain of the female’ (also ‘feminine 4th person pronoun’) (Kassam
1999:494). From this worldview comes Oromo concept of Ḿootumma ‘rule, government, state, kingdom’:[Ḿootumma comes] from moo’a, autobenefactive: moo’ď/ʈ, is a cattle image. For example, Kormi sun him moo’a, “that bull is in heat” and sa’a sun iti moo’a ‘he is mounting that cow’. With reference to human beings, the implication is not necessarily sexual, but can denote superiority or dominance in general. An moo’a, an mooti is a formula of self praise by a new Abba Gada during his inauguration (Shongolo 1996: 273).
Qallačča and Qaallu: A jigsaw motif
In this last section of this analysis, we must consider the symbolic significance of what an old man skilled in
Oromo oral history says is tremendously important: The Qaallu did this. For the daughter/girl of Ǧillee
[eponymous clan name] he took a heifer; for the daughter/girl of Elellee [eponymous clan name] he also
took a heifer. Then, for the Elellee girl he erected the heifer of Elellee in such a way that her (the heifer’s) head
is faced upwards. For the Ǧillee girl, he erected the heifer of Ǧillee in such a way that her (the heifer’s) is faced
downwards. The girl of Ǧillee too siiqqee stick and hit the Mormor River; then, the Mormor River split into two
(BATO 1998:75; My translation).
This story offers us a tremendously important insight.It corresponds with the amazing critical observation and re-interpretation of my informant Muummee. Muummee rotated 90oCW Cervicek’s (1971) Laga Oda Figure 47 (=
Fig.7 A) and got Fig.7B after rotating. In this motif, the Qaallu , with his qallačča headgear, is at the centre. We
can observe one heifer above the Qaallu (perhaps Ǧillee heifer) her head inverted, serving as qallačča headgear,
and behind him to the right handside, two heifers (cattle, one headless), both of whose heads are facing
downwards but in between them and the qallačča cattle is one anthropomorphic motif, unlike on the lefthand
where there are many, possibly a chorus in praise of the sublime black cow and of the reverenced Qaallu. We also
observe, a heifer (cow?) whose head is faced upwards (possibly Elellee heifer).
As usual, it is likely also that this style is as much for associal-epistemological as is it for grammatical- semotactical reason. The downward-faced heifer or Ǧillee (hypocoristic-diminutive from ǧiɭa ‘ritual ceremony, pilgrimage’), which is equivalent to qallačča headgear of the Qaallu anthropomorphic, is a signification of the semantic of ɡaɮa ‘to safely travel away and come home (or ɢaɮma ‘the Sacred Temple of Qaallu’)’ by the help of the Qallačča the providence of God. Thus, the collocation
forming gaɮa-gaɮča gives the polysemous metonymic senses: (1) to invert, make upside down, (2) one who causes safe home-come i.e., Qallačča. The same ‘play on word’ is true of Elellee: (1) reduplication (emphasis) of ēɮ, éla ‘spring up; well (water)’, and (2) őɮ literally ‘go up; upwards; spare the day peacefully, prevail’. “Őɮa!” is a farewell formula for ‘Good day!’ (literally ‘Be upward! Be above! Prevail!’).Yet, the most interesting aspect lies beyond the lexico-syntactic or semotactic motives. If we look carefully at this motif, the head of the Qaallu and the foreparts of the downwards (ɡaɗi) Ǧillee heifer merge, which makes the latter headless (ɡaɗooma). The Elellee heifer apparently with only one horn but full nape (bok’uu)
appears to be another jigsaw making a thorax (ɡûɗeɫča) of the Qaallu, possibly because in the “Barietuma” Gada
System, the Qaallu are “central”, i.e., “occupy a special position, and their members act as “witnesses” (Galech)
on the occasion of weddings or other important transaction” (Werner 1915:17, 1914a: 140; See also Legesse 2006: 104, 182, for “Gada Triumvirate System”). This is not arbitrary, but is stylized so that the notions of seniority are textured simultaneously, in caput mortuum. Pertaining to the “seven bosses” of the qallačča (Plowman 1918:114) ) is possibly equivalent to Cervicek’s (1971:192) description of this same motif: “Seven animal representations, painting of a symbol ((cen-tre) and pictures of H-shaped anthropomorphic figures…Painted in graphite grey, the big cattle picture a
little darker, the smaller one beneath it in caput mortuum red.” While we can consider, following Dr. Gemetchu Megerssa, anthropology professor, that the seven bosses might stand for the seven holes of human body (above the neck) which still stand for some mythical concepts we cannot discuss here, it is also possible to consider the (related) socio-political structure of the democratic Gada System. They must stand for what Legesse (1973: 82, 107) calls “torban baalli” “the seven
assistants” of Abba Gada in “power” (his in-powerness is makes him Abba Bokkuu, ‘Proprietor/Holder of the
Scepter’). Long before Legesse’s critical and erudite study of Gada System, Phillipson (1916) wrote:
The petty chiefs act in conjunction with the king. These are, however, appointed by election of officers called Toib
[Tor b] or Toibi (= seven councilors or ministers). These are men of standing and character…. They are governed
by, and work in unison with, the head. These officers are appointed by the king, and each of the seven has an
alternative, so that the number is unbroken. Their office is to sit in council with the king, hear cases, administer
justice, and in the king’s absence they can pass sentence in minor cases; but all they do is done by his authority.
For all that, this may act as a check if the king inclines to despotism. There is no such thing as favoritism; the Toibi
stands in the order elected: 1, 2, and c (Phillipson 1916:180). These seven high ranking officials (aɡaoɗa) are
purposely represented by forepart of bovine body (agooda), because this is the strongest and most
powerful part. Ól, literally ‘up, upwards, upper’ is a metaphoric expression for those “On-High in the
government of his [Abba Bokkuu] people” (De Salviac 2005 [1901]: 212). Cervicek (1971:130) is accurate when he theorized “anthropomorphic representations do not seem to have been painted for their own sake but in connection with the cattle and symbolic representations only.” Despite the guttural sounds dissimilarization, as in the expression
ɢaɮčaan naaf ɡalé ‘I understood it by profiling. i.e., symbolically (i.e., from the gerundive ɢaɮču, kalču ‘profiling, aligning, allying’, or kaɬaṯṯi ‘perspective, façade’, or the base kala, χala ‘to construct, design’; see Stegman
2011:2, 17), the very word qallača itself is a metasemiotic language, meaning ‘symbolic interpretation’.
*Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD) is Assistant Professor, School of Foreign Language, College of Social Science and Humanities, Haramaya University
‘Nagaa Oromoo’ from Raya to Mombasa as We Welcome New Season, Irreecha 2014!
Finfinne Tribune | Gadaa.com |
From the Gadaa.com Editor’s Notebook
While researching about the Oromo tribes in Kenya, we ran into a video of Orma Oromo men engaged in friendly fighting competitions, where two men fight to see who will tackle their opponent first. Such a fighting match does also exist as a proud cultural element of the Raya Oromo, who nowadays speak Tigrigna or Amharic, which they have picked up from their neighbors in the North and West, respectively.
It’s to be noted that there are at least five Oromo tribes, in addition to the Borana and Garba, which call Kenya home. These five tribes, including their traditional homes, are listed below (alphabetically).
These tribes have been given many names over the last century-and-half by several authors, mainly without asking the people the name refers to (the same way the derogatory name for the Oromo made its way into academic works). The reason for this mix-up was primarily as a result of the use of second-hand sources, instead of the people themselves. It’s the task of the OromoQeerroo to conduct the researches on its own to learn about its own people’s history and roots.
Krapf, one of the early European travelers to Central Oromia (near the Tulama-land) and the southern Oromo tribes north of the Mombasa in the Tana Delta region in the 1850′s, had studied extensively about the Oromo on both sides of the border; he had published one of the early dictionaries of Oromo – one for each Oromo dialect. The dictionary by Krapf in Kenya was with Swahili and Afan Oromo. Unlike Krapf, many Kenyans do not have any idea about the ingenious Oromos who call Kenya home, and who are also their fellow citizens, in the Tana River, Isiolo and Marsabit regions; their only exposure to ‘Oromo’ is through the Ethiopian regime’s propaganda of the violence it inflicts in southern Oromia.
Reclaiming ‘Nagaa Oromoo’ Qeerroo (of both sides of the border) is at a historic position to reclaim the lost ‘Nagaa Oromoo’across the East African region; this historic mission will lead not only to the revival of Oromummaain the region, but also to the renaissance of Cushitic peoples in East Africa. ‘Nagaa Oromoo’ was disrupted by the invasion of Abyssinian warlords and the subsequent aggression of Abyssinian warlords – which still continues to this day. ‘Nagaa Oromoo’ is not only for Oromo; the Oromo people believe that, if their neighbor is not at peace, they are not at peace. ‘Nagaa Oromoo’ is not only for humans, but also for other living things and the environment. There is no peace when other living things and the environment where one thrives on and lives with – are exploited and polluted by reckless actions, like the one imposed on the Oromo Nation by Woyane thugs. ‘Nagaa Oromoo’from Raya to Mombasa as we welcome the new season, Irreecha 2014!
The Oromo Nation opposes the TPLF Ethiopian regime’s Addis Ababa Master Plan to annex the Oromo-land in Central Oromiyaa and to demographically alter the ethnic makeup of the region. Such genocidal campaigns disturb ‘Nagaa Oromoo’, and the Oromo people (old and young) will fight to regain ‘Nagaa Oromoo’ in the region.
The five tribes (in addition to the Borana and Garba) in Kenya:
1) Munyoyaya: live in the Tana River County near Garissa, Anole and Kora, and adjacent to the Orma tribe. One can listen to “Afan Munyoyaya” here; the linguistic similarity with Afan Oromo is unmistakable at a glance; more studies need to be conducted.
2) Orma: live in the Tana River County, north of the Galana River and West of the Tana River. Linguists have studied the Orma dialect of Afan Oromo, and some dictionaries are also available.
3) Waata: live in the Tana River County (a sub-group of Orma); live near the Kipini area by the Indian Ocean (by the north of Mombasa).
4) Wardei: live in the Tana River County; though Wardeis speak mainly Somali, they believe they are Oromo. As in the case of the Raya and Wollo of northern Oromia, Wardei have adopted their neighbor’s language; however, Wardeis trace their ancestry to Oromo.
Report on Wardei in Swahili:
5) Waso Boran: live in the Isiolo County. According to the book, “Being Oromo in Kenya” by Mario Aguilar, Waso Boran have still maintained many of the cultural elements of Oromummaa.
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The following map below is from early 2000′s and shows the approximate distributions of Oromo in the Ethiopian Empire and Kenya:
‘Nagaa Oromoo’ from Raya to Mombasa as we welcome the new season, Irreecha 2014!
Waaqeffannaa (Amantii Oromoo), the traditional faith system of the Oromo people, is one version of the monotheistic African Traditional Religion (ATR), where the followers of this faith system do believe in only one Supreme Being. African traditional religion is a term referring to a variety of religious practices of the only ONE African religion, which Oromo believers call Waaqeffannaa (believe in Waaqa, the supreme Being), an indigenous faith system to the continent of Africa. Even though there are different ways of practicing this religion with varieties of rituals, in truth, the different versions of the African religion have got the following commonalities:
– Believe in and celebrate a Supreme Being, or a Creator, which is referred to by a myriad of names in various languages as Waaqeffataa Oromo do often say: Waaqa maqaa dhibbaa = God with hundreds of names and Waaqa Afaan dhibbaa = God with hundreds of languages; thus in Afaan Oromoo (in Oromo language) the name of God is Waaqa/Rabbii or Waaqa tokkicha (one god) or Waaqa guraachaa (black God, where black is the symbol for holiness and for the unknown) = the holy God = the black universe (the unknown), whom we should celebrate and love with all our concentration and energy
– No written scripture (ATR’s holy texts are mostly oral), but now some people are trying to compose the written scripture based on the Africans’ oral literature.
– Living according to the will of the Supreme Being and love also those who do have their own way of surviving by following other belief systems, which are different from that of the Waaqeffannaa. It includes keeping both safuu (virtues) and laguu (vices); i.e. to love safuu as well as to hate and abhor cubbuu (sin).
– Correspondence with the Supreme Being in times of a great need (i.e. in times of natural calamities, unexplained deaths) and try to walk always on the karaa nagaa (on the way of peace = on the way of righteousness, on the road of truth).
– Having a devout connection with ancestors; in case of Oromo, the ancestors are all ways blessed and celebrated for the good inheritance we got from them, but not worshiped as some people want to mis understand.
The word “culture” is most commonly defined as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group; different cultures are the distinct ways that classified people living in different parts of the world, that represented their experiences and acted creatively. African peoples have got our own culture, which distinguish us from other parts of the world, of course also having our own sub-cultures among ourselves. Aadaa Oromoo (Oromo culture) being one part of the Cush culture is one of the sub-cultures within the common African culture, which consists also the faith system of Waaqeffannaa as part and parcel of the Oromo/African culture.
Waaqeffannaa’s interaction with other religions
According to the expert opinions written up to now, the concept of monotheism is the whole mark of African Traditional Religion including the faith system of the Cush nations. It seems that this concept of monotheism have moved from Cushitic black Africans (including the Oromo) first to ancient Egypt, secondly, further to Israel of the Bible and lastly to the Arab world of Koran. The experts tell us that Moses was not the first monotheist, but Akhenaten was the first revolutionary monotheist; they even claim that Moses might have been black. It is also argued that Moses was an Egyptian Pharaoh known as Akhenaten before the exodus. Additionally, they do argue that Akhenaten’s monotheism revolution in Egypt was not inspired from inside, but induced from outside by the Cushites, i.e. Akhenaten might have derived his monotheism concept from Africa’s/Oromo’s concept of Waaqa tokkicha in a form of “Waaq humna malee bifa hin qabu (God has no physical form, but power).” This concept may have been misinterpreted so that the other religions later started to talk about God with a physical form.
It is also interesting to observe many similarities between some old Egyptian words and Afaan Oromo words; for instance, the similarities of the ancient Egyptian words “Anii and Matii” with the Oromo words of “Ana (Ani) and Maatii.” Anii of Egyptians, which means I (I am who I am), that is equivalent to God is similar to the Oromo word Ani, which also means I and refers to the first person singular (the actor = the main character of GOD). Matii being the designation of God’s congregation and the Oromo word Maatii for the family which is the “congregation” of ani (first person = God) are surprisingly the same. This is only one of many similarities between Oromo and Egypt registered by experts till now. It is not my intention to talk about this historical relationship here, but just to show the relation between Oromo’s traditional religion and the three Abraham religions, even though Judaism is not part of the current religions practiced by the Oromo. It means the new acceptance of both Christianity and Islam by Africans is the coming back of the same belief in Waaqa tokkicha to Africa in different forms.
This historical relation between Amantii Oromoo and the two big religions of the world suggests that Waaqeffannaa is the older version of monotheism and humanism. Waaqeffannaa as a faith system and Irreechaa as a major national celebration were part and parcel of Oromo public life. Now, some Oromo nationals prefer the name Amantii Oromo/Amantii Africa to Waaqeffannaa. It is important if we all can agree to call the Oromo traditional religion as Amantii Oromo/Amantii Africa, just like we agreed on calling our language Afaan Oromo and our country Biyya Oromo. So in short, we can say: Our land is Biyya Oromo, our language is Afaan Oromo and our religion is Amantii Oromo. It is known that some people may argue by saying “how can we call it Amantii Oromo, when we do see that more than half of the Oromo nowadays have Christianity and Islam as their religion?” Are Oromo with other first language rather than Afaan Oromo not Oromo, despite their lost Afaan Oromo? Should we say just because of these Oromo, who nowadays speak only English, German, Amharic, etc., that Oromo language is not Afaan Oromo? The same way, it is not logical not to call Oromo religion as Amantii Oromo because of the Oromo who overtook other religions. Actually, the designation Waaqqeffannaa (believing in and living with Waaqa) can also be applied to Christian Oromo and Islam Oromo even though most of the Islam Oromo prefer the name Rabbii to the name Waaqa. They all are believers in Waaqa = God = Allah = Rabbii. Amantii Oromo differs only because of its specificity for it is the older Oromo faith embedded in only Oromo/African culture without any influence from alien culture.
The fact to be accepted here is that God is universal even though we call HIM Waaqa, Rabbii or Allah. But, Amantii Oromo is the way how our forefathers believed in this universal Waaqa of humankind. We don’t have God or Waaqa, who is specific only to Oromo/Africa and doesn’t care for other nations. Waaqa is the God of nations. But, we Oromo do have a specific way and culture regarding how we do practice our belief in Waaqa. This way of practicing our faith is what we call Amantii Oromo. Amantii Oromo is simply the Oromo way of practicing the faith in the universal Waaqa. It is part of the Oromo way of dealing with the problems of life (it is part of Aadaa Oromo). Accordingly, aadaa (culture) can also be defined as the way, in which a certain collective or group of people deals with its own life problem.
The difference between this Amantii Oromo and the other two big religions practiced by Oromo is that the other two got not only the faith in one God, but also the elements of cultures from the people in which they first emerged. We can see here the Arabs accepted the concept of Waaqa tokkicha while still keeping pre-Mohammad Arab culture in Islam, which is far different from Oromo/from African culture, but Islam practiced by Oromo in Oromia is colored by Arab culture for it is adopted from there. Interestingly, this is the difference between Islam Arab and Islam Oromo; Islam Arabs adopted only the concept of Waaqa tokkicha from Cush of Africa/Egypt/Israel, but don’t seem to exercise alien culture from these areas, whereas Islam Oromo tend to adopt both the faith and the culture from Arabs. Egyptians and Israelis, who accepted the concept of the same Waaqa tokkicha, also do practice their faith being colored by their own previous culture; they don’t seem to practice Cush culture; but again Christianity practiced in Oromia is mostly colored by the culture of the Israelis, the Habeshas as well as by that of the Western world for Christian Oromo tend to adopt not only the faith, but also the alien culture.
That is why it is not actually bad that some Oromo nationals accept and believe in the two monotheist religions (Christianity and Islam) per se, but not good is giving more value to the culture of the nations from which the religions come to us, at the cost of the very valuable Aadaa Oromo. Of course, good elements of foreign cultures can be accommodated without damaging the good elements of our own. For instance, the similarity between dibbee Qaallu (Qaallu’s drum) and the beat of Tigrinya music shows how Tegarus have inherited and kept some elements of Oromo’s culture. This can verify that the suggestion of Donald Levine, who in his book called Greater Ethiopia wrote that “Tegarus are part of the Cushites of the Old Testament who denied their identity”, may be true. After all, why do they call their mother Aadde? Where does the name Barentu in Eritrea come from? Are they only inheritance of names or were they part of the lost Oromo/Cush? Anyways, it is good to follow the advice given once by Luba Shamsadin. He said (paraphrased here), when we try to accept religions from other nations, we have to identify and separate “the bone of the fish from the meat”; i.e. we need to identify and leave the unnecessary cultural elements of other nations, which are usually mixed with their religions we Oromo do tend to accept and adopt.
So as it is put here in short,
Waaqeffannaa (believe in one Waaqa of the universe) is practiced not only among the Cush nations, but also among almost all African nations. This faith system of Africans including Waaqeffannaa has been devalued as something “paganism, barbarism, religionlessness, uncivilization, Godlessness, animism, primitivism, etc”. The black color, which is the symbol of holiness in Waaqeffannaa was/is demonized as a symbol for Satan. All the blessing ceremonies of Waaqeffannaa and the utensil used for the blessings are condemned as a service, an instrument and worshiping of demons/Satan. Despite this denigration, the current revival of Waaqeffannaa and the celebration of Irreechaa in Oromia can be a good example-setting for the other African nations to revive their hitherto devalued and almost lost culture and religion.
To serve this purpose of revival, the right way of Waaqeffannaa (believing in, celebrating of and living with Waaqa) must be cleaned from alien non-constructive elements as well as from non-productive practices and rituals like that of “qaalichaa” (infiltrating idolatry), which are not serving the purpose of Waaqa in our personal or national life. That means, we have to differentiate Waaqeffachuu (realizing God’s purpose in our life) from waaqessuu (serving alien gods). Waaqeffachuu is applying Waaqa’s goodwill in our practical life, whereas waaqessuu is making someone or something be our Waaqa, i.e. practicing idolatry. The Oromo people in general have never had an idol to worship, but always had only one Waaqa to believe in and to celebrate. Of course, there are very few Oromo individuals nowadays tending to practice waaqessuu. Such purification of the African faith system from unimportant and useless elements must be done in all versions of the practices and rituals among all African nations.
Concept of God in Waaqeffannaa
To make Waaqeffannaa a little bit clear, here is a short narration about this faith system in practice. Oromo nationals practicing this faith do talk about Waaqa tokkicha, which is one of the evidences for the faith to be monotheism, just as the Christianity and Islam are. The concept of God among these believers is summarized by their usual saying: “Waaq humna malee bifa hin qabu.” These believers do not misinterpret Waaqa tokkicha as an expression of physical form for even the whole nature as a physical form is also an expression of his power. The believers and the Qaalluu or Qaallitti (local spiritual leader) are usually very lovely; specially the leaders are simply like a love in person. All their followers are selfless people full of good deeds and love; they do talk about Waaqa, calling him as abbaa koo (my father), and they usually do pray for children saying: “akka ijoollee keenyaa eebbisuuf abba keenya gaafanna (let’s ask our father to bless our children),” they usually don’t say “abba keenya kadhanna (let’s beg our father).”
Whenever they are challenged by life problems, they do assert by saying: “Waaq abbaan keenya eessa dhaqeetu (our God is not far away)”, denoting that Waaqa is always ready to help his children. They some times also talk as prophets in a way: “Abbaan keenya akkas jedha, ani sin wajjin jira, ani nan sin gargaara (our father says, I am with you and I will help you)”. According to them, the spiritual father is Waaqa garaa gurraachaa, i.e. Waaqa with holy heart, symbolized with black color, most of whose holiness is unknown to humans. Knowledgeable believers do tell that the concept “Waaqa gurracha garaa garba (black God with heart like ocean)” actually refers to the unknown future. What Waaqa may bring in the future is unknown, and that is signified by black color. Here, garaa garba is also about the unknown. One couldn’t know what is inside the body of water from afar. This point of view seems to be the reason for the color black in the Oromo tricolor to signify the unknown future.
In some regions of Oromia, there are a lot of congregations visited by Oromo at some big houses called gimbi (galma) which have got different names: gimbii diloo, maram, abbaa jama, hiike, etc; the spiritual practices done there include the following: dalaguu (dancing), irreenssa kennu (green leaf as a gift), wareeguu (offerings), hammachiisaa (blessing babies), gashaa (delicious food brought to gimbi), etc. Actually, people go to such gimbi regularly carrying green leaves of Irreensaa. In this culture, green grass or green leaf is a powerful symbol for life and prosperity, and it is an element present in all public rituals of Waaqeffataa Oromo, including funerals and prayers of remembrance, during which grass is spread on the ground or grave. The above listed different names of gimbi are Oromo spiritual holy places and palaces, which are equivalent to temple, church and mosque. In all the places mentioned, everyone prays to Waaqa. The practices mentioned above are just variations of spiritual practice to Waaqa.
It is also to be observed among the practicing Waaqeffattaa how balanced is their way of discussion and relationship. During sorts of discussions, they often discuss very wisely. For example, when they give comments, here is a sample of how they do: “Ilaa, kanaa fi sana waan gaarii jette. Haa ta’u malee, kunimmoo otoo akkana ta’e wayya (here and there you said good, but it is better if this one be so and so)”. They do not denigrate the opinion of the other side, but tell the better alternative to the opinion they do disagree with. They do tolerate the mistake of others and just tell the consequence of the mistake. As far as they are concerned, there is always cubbuu (sin) in their consciousness, but no concept for hell or condemnation after death. This simply implies that we all do experience the consequence of our trespasses regarding the safuu (virtues) and laguu (vices) expected from us during our life time.
Not to suffer such consequences of cubbuu, Waaqeffattaa Oromo have got a lot of very well said prayers in their practical life activities. The following are very few of the impressive prayers in the day to day life of the Oromo, which need to be presented here as examples. They are usually heard from the believers of Amantii Oromo, and they are almost similar to what the believers in Christianity and Islam do pray, let alone the similarity of the greatly formulated prayers we do hear during Irreechaa celebration with what the Christian Qesis and the Islam Sheiks usually do pray:
– Yaa Waaq kan dubbatee nu dubbachiisu fi kan hamaa nutti yaadu nurraa qabbi (God keep us from those who speak evil and make us speak the same).
– Yaa Waaq mirga nu oolch (help us to walk on the right way); hamaa nurraa qabi (protect us from evil).
– Yaa Rabbii, ilmi ga’e haa fuudhu (Oh God, let the young man be married), dubarri geesse haa heerumtu (let the young woman be married), this prayer shows howimportant family building for human blessing is.
– Yaa Waaq, ani galee, kan galee hin rafne narraa qabi; ani rafee kan rafee hin bulle narra qabi (I am now at home to sleep, save me from the evil ones who didn’t yet be at their home and didn’t sleep).
– Yaa Waaq galgala koo hin balleessiin (let my old age not be cursed), this is related with the conse -quence of cubbuu. The believers are asking Waaqa to help them stay away from cubbuu so that their “galgala (late age)” will not be bad/painful. Here we see something similar with the native American’s culture. They say: “when you came to this world, you cried and everybody else laughed; live your life so that when you leave this world, you laugh and everyone else cries”; i.e. to say live your life free from cubbuu and its conse -quence (suffering), the life style which leads you to the blessing in your old age.
This prayers indicate the fact on the ground how Oromo look at Waaqa and at the human-being. Waaqa is conceived as a holy father with whom we can correspond during our day to day life problems or when ever we face calamities or difficulties for his will is always good, whereas human-beings can be with either bad or good intention in relation to each other. Both Gadaa and Qaalluu institutions look at all individuals as human with equal rights in front of Waaqa; that is why there is no a “respect form” of addressing human-being or God in Afaan Oromo, just as there is non in English language. After losing our sovereignty, the Oromo people had to learn how to “respect” authority figures. For there is no such option in Afaan Oromo, we had to use plural verbs to address the authority figures. Even Abbaa Gadaa (chief of the government) and Abbaa Mudaa (the spiritual leader) were addressed as “ati = you in a singular form,” not as “isin = you in a plural form.” Today, we have to address our fellow human being with certain authority as “isin” to show “respect.” It is not bad if such addressing would have been mutual/symmetrical as for instance it is in German language. But such “respect,” which we are now applying is asymmetrical (only the authority figure is addressed with the “respect” form, whereas the authority figure can address the other person without using the “respect” form. Where it is the reality that we don’t use the “respect” form during addressing our Waaqa, as seen in the above prayers, why should we bother to use it in addressing our fellow human being? It would be better if we leave this culture, which we adopted from others with authoritarian culture in contrast to our own egalitarian one. Our concept of Waaqa doesn’t allow us to behave so submissively to any human being, who is equal to us.
Virtues and Vices of Waaqeffannaa
Here in short, safuu (virtue) can be defined as the “to do list” in order to serve Waaqa and to achieve his kaayyoo/goal in our personal and national earthly life; whereas laguu (vice) is the “not to do list” or the taboo, so that we can refrain from doing such activities diverting us from the kaayyoo Waaqa for our life. Cubbuu (sin) then in short includes both not doing the safuu and doing the laguu. Just as an example, if we take bilisummaa (national freedom) as Waaqa’s kaayyoo for the Oromo nation, what are the safuu and the laguu to be respected? If the kaayyoo of Waaqeffannaa is individual healing from any sort of illness, what are the safuu and the laguu, which both the healer and the sick person should respect?
In order to look at the virtues and vices of the traditional Oromo/African belief system for our earthly life, let us now try to describe Waaqeffannaa as we experienced it and knew it. Note that all the descriptions and notions we try to put here on paper are based on our own argaa-dhageetti (based on our own perception), which may differ from that of the other Oromo nationals. For instance, we could observe that Oromo is a nation filled with celebrations of eebba (blessing), who do have different celebrations for almost everything and everybody related to our life. For instance, taaboree as a blessing ceremony for young boys; ingiccaa for blessing young girls; ayyaana abbaa for blessing the ancestors for the good inheritance we got from them; ateetee for blessing our women; borantichaa for blessing adult men; jaarii looni for blessing our useful animals; jaarii qe’e or jaarii kosii for blessing our residence area; jaarii midhaani to bless our farms; garanfasa mucucoo as a celebration of the rainy season and, of course, gubaa and irreechaa for celebration of the coming birraa (the coming spring season) etc. We hope that Oromo students of anthropology, sociology and theology will make a scientific research on these blessing ceremonies and tell us the constructive and non-constructive elements of the activities in them.
But, let us mention few of the virtues (positive aspects) of Waaqeffannaa in our earthly life time. Here the reference point to judge certain elements as negative or positive is the position of the purpose, which Waaqa do have for our personal and national life, i.e. based on the kaayyoo (goal) our Waaqayyoo do have for us. To elaborate this relationship between kaayyoo and Waaqayyoo, we can ask: is Waaq-aayyoo our ka-ayyoo / is our ka-ayyoo the Waaq-ayyoo? It is about knowing what purpose we do serve in our daily life both cognitively and behaviorally, as individuals or as a nation. Be it that we do think and walk at political, religious or private level, we do try to serve certain purpose in life. In order to identify that purpose, we only need to be conscious about it, reflect on it and ask our selves: whom do we privately or collectively serve in our endeavors? Do we serve Waaqa’s purpose for us or that of the others’? Simply put, which purpose should we serve? Fortunately the hitherto cumulative knowledge and wisdom of different societies in general and that of the Oromo society in particular tell us what we ought to serve: i.e. to serve Waaqa’s purpose which is good for us as an individual and as a collective. This good purpose is given a sacred name and it seems to be what people call the will of Waaqa.
As a support for this assertion, we can look at an example written in the Bible of Christians, that states : “God is my objective”. Is this to be understood also as: “my objective is God”? Can we say that our good personal or political purpose is the will of Waaqa, whom we ought to serve? To comprehend this, it is no where clearly written other than in Afaan Oromo. Surprisingly the words kaayyoo and Waaqayyoo in our language do indicate to have the same source. As we know, the short word KA is the name given by our Cushitic ancestors to God and the word aayyoo is, of course, the name given to a mother, who does wish all good things for her children and does plan and try to fulfill it. So KA can be defined as the Supreme Being, which has good purpose for ayyoo’s children. This purpose is the “Goodness” for her children. So KA-ayyoo is God’s will (his good objective to her beloved children). The term Waaqayyo is the short form of waan-KA-ayyoo (what is planned from KA for aayyoo and for her children). So we can see that the good end, we have to serve, can be called kaayyoo from Waaqa. So the will of Waaqa is simply to be defined as the good end we should choose to serve as part of the balanced universe created by HIM.
To fulfill this service to the good end, fortunately the best thing we do observe among Waaqeffataa Oromo is the work-ethics they do have to achieve the purpose of Waaqa in their earthly life, specially in the life areas of career and family. They do love to be the best in both life areas; they love their family and most of them are very enthusiastic to be successful in their profession. They usually say “Waaq taa’i taa’i namaan hin jedhin (let HE not make us idle);” simply put, diligence is part of safuu and to be idle and lazy is part of laguu. We know that there are certain contamination from other cultures to be practiced as rituals contradicting this virtue and which are not serving the purpose of Waaqa for us. That is why we do recommend not only the revival of this marvelous belief system, which was the creation of our forefathers, but also we do suggest a necessary reformation to make the faith system to be fit, so that it can help us to cope with the 21st century challenge and situation. Waaqa’s creation and his keeping the balance of the universe is still going on, so that HE demands also a dynamic creative work from his creature, from the human being. Another impressive virtue of Waaqeffannaa necessary to be mentioned is its relation with nature and its persuasion to help us keep the environment healthy; it is the faith system which is simply through and through green.
Waaqeffannaa’s position on the life after death
According to this belief system, we all will live further after death as ekeraa (in a form of soul/spirit) with our father, with Waaqa, without any possibility of punishment in hell. We recently read Martial De Salviac’s translated book, in which he wrote “Oromo invariably believe that they will go to heaven.” So, the consequence of our cubbuu is not losing eternal life, but suffering in our earthly life. To Waaqeffataa Oromo, Waaqa is the one who wants us not to do a collective cubbuu, but expects us to protect the balanced nature, in which HIS power is manifested. The wisdom that guides Waaqeffataa Oromo in fulfilling this mission seems to be our arga-dhagetti (believe and act on a principle of reality, i.e. based on what we see and hear).
According to argaa-dhageetti, the concepts like “cubbuun ni qabdi (sin has got consequence), cubbuun ni sirriqxi (the consequence of sin can be inherited), cubbu abbaatu eeggata or cubbuu irra abbaatu uf eega (everyone should keep him-/herself from committing sin and everybody is responsible for the consequences of the sin he/she commit)” are nice and practical. What we liked most from the principles of Waaqeffannaa is this concept of cubbuu. The consequences of cubbuu are only to be seen here on this earth, not in the coming life after death. There is no hell that Waaqayyoo has prepared to punish the people with cuubbu. This is hilarious and very healing for those who always have to live with the fear of hell or punishment after death.
Another interesting aspect of Waaqeffannaa is that we never heard from the practicing believers that they are believing in the presence of an evil spiritual power in the form of Satan, which acts and lives against the almighty power of Waaqa. Accordingly, there is only one sovereign power doing and undoing all things in a universe, that is Waaqa. Unfortunately, the concept Satan is now already spread among the whole Oromo population as a contamination taken from other religions. Waaqeffataa Oromo do believe that the evil things we do experience in life are due to the imbalance of nature as a result of the unwise or wicked deeds of humans as collective, i.e. it is a human cubbuu with its consequences on the earth. That is why they usually ask their Waaqa for wisdom to keep the balance of nature and that HE lead them to only those with good intention and protect them from those with bad intention, for example, in a prayer like: “yaa Waaq tolaa nutti qabi, hamaa irraa nu eegi (God lead who is good to us and keep away who is evil from us). Here it seems that good is someone, who works to keep the balance of nature; and evil is the contrary.
According to the faith system of Waaqeffannaa, there is nothing we have to do now to earn eternal life after death; life after death is simply a free gift we got from our father, Waaqayyoo, whom we just need to celebrate and thank as we do daily and during the yearly celebrations like Irreechaa. We also don’t need a savior, who has to suffer and die for us, so that we can get life after death. The only area where we have to work on is trying to live the quality life (the character of the eternal life) according to the will of Waaqa here on earth. To live this quality life, we need to activate our potentials given to us from Waaqa and then walk on the karaa nagaa towards the kaayyoo Waaqa for our life, being free from cubbuu by keeping both safuu and laguu.
Further recommendation
The very important aspect of Waaqeffannaa as part of Oromo/African culture is its principle of argaa-dhaggeetti (it is relatively an evidence based faith system, possibly trying to be free from superstition). This principle is about reading the real situations at hand and finding the appropriate solutions for the situations. Waaqeffannaa teaches that only Waaqa is not prone to change for HE is perfect, but all his creature and all the situations are changing with time; that is why his creative action is still going on and that we also need to be in a position to find new solutions for the changed situations. In short, we need to be situation oriented, time oriented and live accordingly. That means, it is good to know the past version of aadaa and Amantii Oromo/Africa; but better is to live and practice the present version of aadaa and Amantii Oromo; of course the best is to create the most beneficial version of aadaa and Amantii Oromo as well as to inherit it to our coming generation. So let’s learn from the past version, live the present version and love to create the future verion of aadaa Oromo in general, and Amantii Oromo in particular.
This article is of course coloured by subjective perceptions, so that Oromo nationals are welcome to complement or contradict it. All the sub-titles given in this article need a further meticulous research and study. Through scientific studies, it can be possible to cleanse Waaqeffa -nnaa from certain meaningless rituals adopted from the other sub-cultures, e.g rituals like that of “qaalichaa” (idolatry), xinqolaa (sorcery), etc, where the practitioners are actually making business in the name of the religion. Waaqeffannaa needs not only revival, but also reformation as part and parcel of the ongoing liberation from such sensless practices. Elements, which are against the will of Waaqa for all human-being in general and for African nations in particular must be removed, so that we can say Waaqa bless Oromia/Africa and then live accordingly. Adopting good elements, which serve the will of Waaqa for us, from other cultures and faiths is not bad as it is usually said: “waan gaariin bade hundi kan Oromo ti” (every good thing lost belongs to Oromo). Again, good and bad is defined from the position of the will of Waaqa for our life, i.e. from the position of his kaayyoo in our life, which is always a good purpose.
So, only celebrating the holidays and reviving the religion are not enough, if we want to be fit for the present 21st century situation and for the situation in which our future generation will live. Our forefathers created a faith system as part of the solution to their situation; we also need to do the same. So let’s not try to use the same key used by our forefathers in the past to open doors with totally different keyholes at the present and the future or we don’t need to ride a donkey at this age of driving a limousine; in short we need a right solution for the present and the future situations. Our next generation need to inherit from us the latest and modern model/edition/version of our faith system, Waaqeffannaa, which they also can reform, edit and secure for their children and grand children, so that we human-being continue to be as creative as our father, Waaqa.
Let’s give a simple suggestion as an example in the required reforming: why can’t we use bundle of flowers for Irreechaa, instead of only grass used by our forefathers? Why don’t we use water or oil, instead of butter to anoint others during the blessing ceremonies just for the sake of hygiene? Why don’t we use candle light or the modern beautifully colored electric light decorations instead of bonfire during wa-maraa (demera)? etc. Now it is a time to have Waaqeffannaa free from non-productive and untimely elements, so that it will be a faith system, which will be accepted and believed by the enlightened and informed Oromo in particular as well as by Africans in general (so that it will be a faith system serving the will of Waaqa for Oromia in particular, and for Africa in general).
Last but not least, Waaqeffataa Oromo need to be creative in realizing the will of Waaqa in our life, which is the only way to “evangelize” and convert others to the “karaa nagaa (to the right way) HE wants us to walk. We need to learn from the past (the known part of life, which is symbolized by white color), live the present (the challenging part of life symblized by red color) and love to know the future (the unknown part of life symbolized by black color). The karaa nagaa at this particular era/time includes the virtue of a passinate struggle in life both individually and collectively, not an attitude of the pacifistic stoicism. Waaqeffannaa doesn’t persuade us to do things to secure life after death, but it tells us that our effort and enthusiasm are part of the safuu we have to keep and implement in order to make our life here on earth the excellent success story.
Meroe, Oromo and Old Nubian: Solving the Mystery of Meroitic Language
By Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD), College of Social Science and HumanitiesHaramaya University, Ethiopia
Abstract
Meroitic language is one of the most controversial ancient languages but one of the few having advanced writing systems. Some classify it Asian, European, non-African, Semitic,or ‘unclassified’. This paper contends Meroe, similar to their Cushitic friends, are left victims of preconceived ideas based on an entirely argument from silence, an hegemonic epistemology that elevates a single perspective and silences other(s). This paper, thus,comparatively analyzes Meroitic and Old Nubian lexical and grammatical items with corresponding Oromo, a Cushitic family which,
a Cushitic family which,vocabulary possibly the Ancientlanguage of the Nile Valley and/or Horn of Africa. Meroitic and Old Nubian lexical, grammatical and epigraphic data were collected from secondary sources by Meroitic researchers. Oromo corpora are obtained both from classical and modern descriptions and native-speakers. Results indicate Oromo lexemes show significant level of cognates with not only Meroitic and Old Nubian, but also with the Ancient Egyptian to their northern part.
Keywords: Oromo, Meroe, Nubian, Ancient Egyptian, Cushitic, Chiekh Anta Diop
The Meroitic Ethiopian Origins of the Modern Oromo NationBy Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
This paper deals, among others, with the development of Meroitic studies, the Meroitic civilization, the destruction of the city of Meroe, the dispersal of the Meroitic people after the collapse of their state, the Christianization of the post Meroitic states, the migration of the remnants of the Meroitic people in the direction of the Blue Nile and their possible relation of ancestry with the modern Cushitic language speaking Oromo nation. It must be stated clearly at the outset that the issue of Meroitic ancestry of the Oromo nation has not been considered, much less published in an academic journal or scholarly books. The paper was first presented in an academic conference organized by the Oromo Studies Association. Footnotes have been added recently.
1. The Development of the Meroitic Studies, the History of Kush and Meroe, and the Efforts to Decipher the Meroitic Scripture
Interest in what was Ethiopia for the Ancient Greeks and Romans, i.e. the Northern territory of present day Sudan from Khartoum to the Egyptian border1, led to the gradual development of the modern discipline of the Humanities that long stood in the shadow of
Egyptology: the Meroitic Studies.
Considerable advances had been made in academic research and knowledge as the result of the exploratory trips of the Prussian pioneering Egyptologist Richard Lepsius2 (1842 – 1844) that bestowed upon modern scholarship the voluminous ‘Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien’ (Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia), and the series of excavations by E. A. Wallis Budge3 and John Garstang4 at Meroe (modern Bagrawiyah) in the first years of the twentieth century, Francis Llewellyn Griffith5 at Kawa (ancient Gematon, near modern Dongola, 1929 – 1931), Fritz Hintze6 at Musawwarat es Sufra, Jean Leclant7 at Sulb (Soleb), Sadinga (Sedeinga), and Djebel Barkal (ancient Napata, modern Karima) in the 1950s and the 1960s, D. Wildung8 at Naqah, and Charles Bonnet at Kerma. . The pertinent explorations and contributions of scholars like A. J. Arkell9, P. L. Shinnie10 and Laszlo Torok11 that cover a span of 80 years reconstituted a large part of the greatness and splendor of this four-millennia long African civilization.
Yet, due to the lack of direct access to original sources and genuine understanding of the ancient history of Sudan, the legendary Ethiopia of the Greeks and Romans, which also corresponds to what was ‘Kush’ of the Hebrews Bible and ultimately ‘Kas’ of the ancient Egyptians12, we face a serious problem of terminology. We are confined to such terms as Period (or Group) A (3100 – 2700 BCE),13 Period B14 (2700 – 2300 BCE that starts with Pharaoh Snefru’s expedition,15 and the beginning of time-honored enmity between Egypt and Kush), Period C16 (2300 – 2100 BCE, when we have no idea to what specific ethnic or state structures the various Egyptian names Wawat, Irtet, Setjiu,Yam, Zetjau, and Medjay refer)17, Period Kerma18 (2100 – 1500 BCE, named after the modern city and archeological site, 500 km in the south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border). What we know for sure is that, when the first Pharaohs of the New Empire invaded and colonized the entire area down to Kurgus19 (more than 1000 km alongside the Nile in the south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border), they established two top Egyptian administrative positions, namely ‘Viceroy of Wawat’ and ‘Viceroy of Kush/Kas’. Wawat is the area between Aswan and Abu Simbel or properly speaking, the area between the first and the second cataracts whereas Kas is all the land that lies beyond. With the collapse of the Kerma culture comes to end a first high-level culture and state in the area of Kush.
We employ the term ‘Kushitic Period’20 to refer to the subsequent period: a) the Egyptian annexation (1500 – 950 BCE) that was followed by a permanent effort to egyptianize Kush and the ceaseless Kushitic revolutions against the Pharaohs;
b) the Kushitic independence (950 – 800 BCE, when a state is formed around Napata21, present day Karima, 750 km in the south of the Sudanese – Egyptian border);
c) the Kushitic expansion and involvement in Egypt (800 – 670 BCE, which corresponds mostly to the XXVth – ‘Ethiopian’ according to Manetho22 – dynasty of Egypt, when the Theban clergy of Amun made an alliance with the Kushitic ‘Qore’ – Kings of Napata, who had two capitals, Napata and Thebes);23 and d) the Kushitic expulsion from Egypt (following the three successive invasions of Egypt by Emperors Assarhaddon24 in 671 BCE, and Assurbanipal25in 669 and 666 BCE, and of Assyria, who made an alliance with the Heliopolitan26 priesthood and Libyan princes against the Theban clergy and the Kushitic kings), and gradual decline (following the invasions by Psamtik/Psammetichus II27 in 591 BCE, and the Achaemedian28 Persian Shah Kambudjiyah/Cambyses29 in 525 BCE) until the transfer of the capital far in the south at Meroe, at the area of present day Bagrawiyah (at the end of the reign of Qore Nastasen30between335 and 315 BCE).
We call ‘Meroitic’ the entire period that covers almost 700 years beginning around 260 BCE with the reign of the successors of Nastasen (Arkamaniqo / Ergamenes31 (the most illustrious among the earliest ones and the first to be buried at Meroe / Bagrawiyah), down to the end of Meroe and the destruction of the Meroitic royal cities by the Axumite Abyssinian Negus Ezana32 (370 CE). It is easily understood that ‘Kushitic’ antedates ‘Meroitic’, but the appellations are quite conventional.
The Ancient people of Kush (or Ethiopia) entered into a period of cultural and scriptural radiation and authenticity relatively late, around the third century BCE, which means that the development took place when Meroe replaced Napata as capital of the Kushites / Meroites. Before that moment, they used Egyptian Hieroglyphic scripture for all purposes of writing, administrative, economic, religious and/or royal. The introduction of the Meroitic alphabetic hieroglyphic writing spearheaded the development of a Meroitic cursive alphabetic scripture that was used for less magnificent purposes than palatial and sacred relief inscriptions. The first person to publish Meroitic inscriptions was the French architect Gau33, who visited Northern Sudan in 1819. Quite unfortunately, almost two centuries after the discovery, we risk being left in mysteries with regard to the contents of the epigraphic evidence collected in both scriptural systems.
The earliest dated Meroitic hieroglyphic inscriptions belong to the reign of the ruling queen Shanakdakheto34 (about 177-155 BCE), but archaeologists believe that this scripture represents the later phase of a language spoken by Kushites / Meroites at least as far back as 750 BCE and possibly many centuries before that (hinting at a Kushitic continuity from the earliest Kerma days). The earliest examples of Meroitic cursive inscriptions, recently found by Charles Bonnet in Dukki Gel (REM 1377-78)35, can be dated from the early second century BCE. The latest text is still probably the famous inscription from Kalabsha mentioning King Kharamadoye (REM 0094)36 and dated from the beginning of the fifth century AD, although some funeral texts from Ballana37 could be contemporary if not posterior.
Despite the fact that F. L. Griffith has identified the 23 Meroitic alphabetic scripture’s signs already in 1909, not much progress has been made towards an ultimate decipherment of the Meroitic38. Scarcity of epigraphic evidence plays a certain role in this regard, since as late as the year 2000 we were not able to accumulate more than 1278 texts. If we now add to that the lack of lengthy texts, the lack of any bilingual text (not necessarily Egyptian /Meroitic, it could be Ancient Greek / Meroitic, if we take into consideration that Arkamaniqo / Ergamenes39 was well versed in Greek), and a certain lack of academic vision, we understand why the state of our knowledge about the history of the Meroites is still so limited.
Linguistics and parallels from other languages have been repeatedly set in motion in order to help the academic research. Griffith and Haycock40 tried to read Meroitic using (modern) Nubian. K.H. Priese41 tried to read the Meroitic text using Eastern Sudanese (Beja42 or Hadendawa43); and F. Hintze44, attempted to compare Meroitic with the Ural-Altaic group. Recently Siegbert Hummel45, compared the “known” Meroitic words to words in the Altaic family which he believed was a substrate language of Meroitic. At times, scholars (like Clyde Winters46) were driven to farfetched interpretations, attempting to equate Meroitic with Tokharian, after assuming a possible relationship between the name Kush and the name Kushan47 of an Eastern Iranian state (of the late Arsacid48, 250 BCE – 224 CE, and early Sassanid49, 224 – 651 CE, times)! However, one must state that the bulk of the researchers working on the Meroitic language do not believe that it was a member of the Afro-Asiatic group.
So far, the only Meroitic words for which a solid translation had been given by Griffith and his successors are the following: man, woman, meat, bread, water, give, big, abundant, good, sister, brother, wife, mother, child, begotten, born, feet. The eventual equivalence between Egyptian and Meroitic texts was a strong motivation for any interpretational approach, recent or not. More recent, but still dubious, suggestions are the following: arohe- «protect», hr- «eat», pwrite «life», yer «milk», ar «boy», are- or dm- «take, receive», dime «cow», hlbi «bull», ns(e) «sacrifice, sdk «journey», tke- «love, revere», we «dog». It is clear that vocalization remains a real problem50.
Through the aforementioned we realize why collective works, like Fontes Historiae Nubiorum. Textual Sources for the History of the Middle Nile Region (vols. I – IV, edited by T. Eide, T. Hägg, R.H. Pierce, and L. Török, University of Bergen, Bergen 1994, 1996. 1998 and 2000), are still seminal for our – unfortunately indirect, as based on Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Latin and Coptic texts – knowledge of Meroe.
2. The End of Meroe
Amidst numerous unclear points of the Kushitic / Meroitic history, the end of Meroe, and the consequences of this event remain a most controversial point among scholars. Quite indicatively, we may mention here the main efforts of historical reconstitution.
A. Arkell, Sayce and others asserted that Meroe was captured and destroyed, following one military expedition led by Ezana of Axum.
B. Reisner insisted that, after Ezana’s invasion and victory, Meroe remained a state with another dynasty tributary to Axum.
C. Monneret de Villard and Hintze affirmed that Meroe was totally destroyed before Ezana’s invasion, due to an earlier Axumite Abyssinian raid.
D. Torok, Shinnie, Kirwan, Haegg and others concluded that Meroe was defeated by a predecessor of Ezana, and continued existing as a vassal state.
E. Bechhaus- Gerst specified that Meroe was invaded prior to Ezana’s raid, and that the Axumite invasion did not reach lands further in the north of Meroe51
With two fragmentary inscriptions from Meroe, one from Axum, two graffitos from Kawa and Meroe, and one coin being all the evidence we have so far, , we have little to reconstruct the details that led to the collapse of Meroe. One relevant source, the Inscription of Ezana (DAE 11, the ‘monotheistic’ inscription in vocalized Ge’eze),52 remains a somewhat controversial historical source to be useful in this regard. The legendary Monumentum Adulitanum53, lost but copied in a confused way by Cosmas Indicopleustes54, may not shed light at all on this event. One point is sure, however: there was never a generalized massacre of the Meroitic inhabitants of the lands conquered by Ezana. The aforementioned DAE 11 inscription mentions just 758 Meroites killed by the Axumite forces.
What is even more difficult to comprehend is the reason behind the scarcity of population attested on Meroitic lands in the aftermath of Ezana’s raid. The post-Meroitic and pre-Christian, transitional phase of Sudan’s history is called X-Group55 or period, or Ballana Period and this is again due to lack to historical insight. Contrary to what happened for many centuries of Meroitic history, when the Meroitic South (the area between Shendi56 and Atbara57 in modern Sudan with the entire hinterland of Butana that was called Insula Meroe / Nesos Meroe, i.e. Island Meroe in the Antiquity) was overpopulated, compared to the Meroitic North (from Napata / Karima to the area between Aswan58 and Abu Simbel59, which was called Triakontaschoinos60 and was divided between Meroe and the Roman Empire), during the X-Group times, the previously under-populated area gives us the impression of a more densely peopled region, if compared to the previous center of Meroitic power and population density. The new situation contradicts earlier descriptions and narrations by Dio Cassius 61 and Strabo.62
Furthermore, the name ‘Ballana period’ is quite indicative in this regard, Ballana being on Egyptian soil, whereas not far in the south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border lies Karanog with its famous tumuli that bear evidence of Nubian upper hand in terms of social anthropology. The southernmost counterpart of Karanog culture can be found in Tangassi (nearby Karima, which represented the ‘North’ for what was the center of earlier Meroitic power gravitation)
In addition, in terms of culture, X-Group heralds a total break with the Meroitic tradition, with the Nubians and the Blemmyes/Beja outnumbering the Meroitic remnants and imposing a completely different cultural and socio-anthropological milieu out of which would later emanate the first and single Nubian state in the World History: Nobatia.
Much confusion characterized modern scholars when referring to Kush or Meroe by using the modern term ‘Nubia’. By now it is clear that the Nubians lived since times immemorial in both Egypt and the Sudan, being part of the history of these two lands. But Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan ethnic / linguistic group different from the Khammitic Kushites / Meroites. At the times of X-Group and during the long centuries of Christian Sudan, we have the opportunity to attest the differences and divergence between the Nubians and the Meroitic remnants. The epicenter of Nubian center, the area between the first (Aswan) and the third (Kerma) cataracts, rose to independence and prominence first, with capital at Faras, nearby the present day Sudanese – Egyptian border, around 450 CE. Nobatia institutionalized Coptic as religious (Christian) and administrative language, and Nubian language remained an oral only vehicle of communication. The Nobatian control in the south of the third cataract was vague, nominal and precarious. Nobatia was linked with the Coptic – Monophysitic Patriarchate of Alexandria.
The Meroitic remnants underscored their difference from the Nubians / Nobatians, and the depopulated central part of the defunct state of Meroe rose to independence in the first decades of the sixth century. Its name, Makkuria, is in this regard a linguistic resemblance of the name ‘Meroe’ but we know nothing more. The Meroitic remnants inhabited the northern circumference of Makkuria more densely, and the gravitation center turned around Old Dongola (580 km in the south of Wadi Halfa), capital of this Christian Orthodox state that extended from Kerma to Shendi (the area of the sixth cataract), so for more than 1000 km alongside the Nile. But beyond the area of Karima (750 km in the south of Wadi Halfa) and the nearby famous Al Ghazali monastery we have very scarce evidence of Christian antiquities. The old African metropolis Meroe remained at the periphery of Makkuria, Alodia and Axumite Abyssinia.
Makkurians highlighted their ideological – religious divergence from the Nubians, by adopting Greek as religious language. They even introduced a new scripture for their Makkurian language that seems to be a later phase of Meroitic. Makkurian was written in alphabetic Greek signs, and the Makkurians preferred to attach themselves to Christian Orthodoxy, and more particularly to the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria.
Alodia has long been called the ‘third Christian state’ in Sudan, but recent discoveries in Soba, its capital (15 km at the east of Khartoum), suggest that Alodia rose first to independence (around 500 CE) and later adhered to Christianity (around 580 – 600 CE) following evangelization efforts deployed by missionary Nobatian priests (possibly in a sort of anti-Makkurian religious diplomacy). We know nothing of an Alodian scripture so far.
The later phases of the Christian history of Sudan encompass the Nobatian – Makkurian merge (around 1000 CE), the islamization of Makkuria in 1317, and finally the late collapse of Christian Alodia in 1505. The question remains unanswered until today:
What happened to the bulk of the Meroitic population, i.e. the inhabitants of the Insula Meroe, the present day Butana? What occurred to the Meroites living between the fourth and the sixth cataracts after the presumably brief raid of Ezana of Axum, and the subsequent destruction of Meroe, Mussawarat es Sufra, Naqah, Wad ben Naqah and Basa?
3. Reconstruction of the Post-Meroitic History of the Kushitic Oromo Nation
Certainly, the motives of Ezana’s raid have not yet been properly studied and assessed by modern scholarship. The reasons for the raid may vary from a simple nationalistic usurpation of the name of ‘Ethiopia’ (Kush), which would give Christian eschatological legitimacy to the Axumite Abyssinian kingdom, to the needs of international politics (at the end of 4th century) and the eventuality of an Iranian – Meroitic alliance at the times of Shapur II (310 – 379), aimed at outweighing the Roman – Abyssinian bond. Yet, this alliance could have been the later phase of a time honored Meroitic diplomatic tradition (diffusion of Mithraism as attested on the Jebel Qeili reliefs of Shorakaror). What we can be sure of are the absence of a large-scale massacre, and the characteristic scarcity of population in the central Meroitic provinces during the period that follows Ezana’s raid and the destruction of Meroe.
The only plausible explanation is that the scarcity of population in Meroe mainland after Meroe’s destruction was due to the fact that the Meroites in their outright majority (at least for the inhabitants of Meroe’s southern provinces) fled and migrated to areas where they would stay independent from the Semitic Christian kingdom of Axumite Abyssinia. This explanation may sound quite fresh in approach, but it actually is not, since it constitutes the best utilization of the already existing historical data.
From archeological evidence, it becomes clear that during X-Group phase and throughout the Makkurian period the former heartland of Meroe remained mostly uninhabited. The end of Meroe is definitely abrupt, and it is obvious that Meroe’s driving force had gone elsewhere. The correct question would be “where to?â€
There is no evidence of Meroites sailing the Nile downwards to the area of the 4th (Karima) and the 3rd (Kerma) cataracts, which was earlier the northern circumference of Meroe and remained untouched by Ezana. There is no textual evidence in Greek, Latin and/or Coptic to testify to such a migratory movement or to hint at an even more incredible direction, i.e. Christian Roman Egypt. If we add to this the impossibility of marching to the heartland of the invading Axumites (an act that would mean a new war), we reduce the options to relatively few.
The migrating Meroites could go either to the vast areas of the Eastern and the Western deserts or enter the African jungle or ultimately search a possibly free land that, being arable and good for pasture, would keep them far from the sphere of the Christian Axumites. It would be very erroneous to expect settled people to move to the desert. Such an eventuality would be a unique oxymoron in the history of the mankind. Nomadic peoples move from the steppes, the savannas and the deserts to fertile lands, and they settle there, or cross long distances through steppes and deserts. However, settled people, if under pressure, move to other fertile lands that offer them the possibility of cultivation and pasture. When dispersed by the invading Sea Peoples, the Hittites moved from Anatolia to Northwestern Mesopotamia; they did not cross and stay in the small part of Anatolia that is desert. The few scholars who think that Meroitic continuity could be found among the present day Beja and Hadendawa are oblivious to the aforementioned reality of the world history that was never contravened. In addition, the Blemmyes were never friendly to the Meroites. Every now and then, they had attacked parts of the Nile valley and the Meroites had had to repulse them thence. It would rather be inconceivable for the Meroitic population, after seeing Meroe sacked by Ezana, to move to a land where life would be difficult and enemies would wait them!
Modern technologies help historians and archeologists reconstruct better the ancient world; paleo-botanists, geologists, geo-chemists, paleoentomologists, and other specialized natural scientists are of great help in this regard. It is essential to stress here that the entire environmental milieu of Sudan was very different during the times of the Late Antiquity we examine in our approach. Butana may look like a wasteland nowadays, and the Pyramids of Bagrawiyah may be sunk in the sand, whereas Mussawarat es Sufra and Naqah demand a real effort in crossing the desert. But in the first centuries of Christian era, the entire landscape was dramatically different.
The Butana was not a desert but a fertile cultivated land; we have actually found remains of reservoirs, aqueducts, various hydraulic installations, irrigation systems and canals in Meroe and elsewhere. Not far from Mussawarat es Sufra there must have been an enclosure where captive elephants were trained before being transported to Ptolemais Theron (present day Suakin, 50 km in the south of Port Sudan) and then further on to Alexandria. Desert was in the vicinity, certainly, but not that close.
We should not imagine that Ezana crossed desert areas, moving from the whereabouts (vicinities?) of Agordat, Tesseney and Kessala to Atbarah and Bagrawiyah, as we would do today. And we should not imagine the lands in the south of present day Khartoum, alongside the White Nile, were easy to cross in the antiquity. In ancient times, impenetrable jungle started immediately in the south of Khartoum, and cities like Kosti and Jabalayn lie today on deforested soil. At the southernmost confines of the Meroitic state, pasturelands and arable land could be found alongside the Blue Nile Valley.
Since jungle signified death in the antiquity, and even armies feared to stay overnight in a forest or even more so in the thick African forest, we have good reason to believe that, following the Ezana’s raid, the Meroites, rejecting the perspective of forced christening, migrated southwestwards up to Khartoum. From there, they proceeded southeastwards alongside the Blue Nile in a direction that would keep them safe and far from the Axumite Abyssinians whose state did not expand as far in the south as Gondar and Tana lake. Proceeding in this way and crossing successively areas of modern cities, such as Wad Madani, Sennar, Damazin, and Asosa, and from there on, they expanded in later times over the various parts of Biyya Oromo.
We do not imply that the migration was completed in the span of one lifetime; quite contrarily, we have reasons to believe that the establishment of Alodia (or Alwa) is due to the progressive waves of Meroitic migrants who settled first in the area of Khartoum that was out of the westernmost confines of the Meroitic state. Only when Christianization became a matter of concern for the evangelizing Nobatians, and the two Christian Sudanese states were already strong, the chances of preserving the pre-Christian Meroitic cultural heritage in the area around Soba (capital of Alodia) were truly poor; then another wave of migrations took place, with early Alodian Meroites proceeding as far in the south as Damazin and Asosa, areas that remained always beyond the southern border of Alodia (presumably around Sennar). Like this, the second migratory Meroitic (Makkurian) wave may have entered around 600 CE in the area where the Oromos, descendents of the migrated Meroites, still live today.
A great number of changes at the cultural – behavioral levels are to be expected, when a settled people migrates to faraway lands. The Phoenicians had kings in Tyre, Byblos and their other cities – states, but introduced a democratic system when they sailed faraway and colonized various parts of the Mediterranean. The collapse of the Meroitic royalty was a shock for the Nile valley; the Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makkuria and Alodia were ruled by kings whose power was to great extent counterbalanced by that of the Christian clergy. With the Meroitic royal family decimated by Ezana, it is quite possible that high priests of Apedemak and Amani (Amun) took much of the administrative responsibility in their hands, inciting people to migrate and establishing a form of collective and representative authority among the Meroitic Elders. They may even have preserved the royal title of Qore within completely different socio-anthropological context.
4. Call for Comparative Meroitic-Oromo Studies
How can this approach, interpretation, and conclusion be corroborated up to the point of becoming a generally accepted historical reconstitution at the academic level? On what axes should one group of researchers work to collect detailed documentation in support of the Meroitic ancestry of the Oromos?
Quite strangely, I would not give priority to the linguistic approach. The continuity of a language can prove many things and can prove nothing. The Bulgarians are of Uralo-Altaic Turco-Mongolian origin, but, after they settled in Eastern Balkans, they were linguistically slavicized. Most of the Greeks are Albanians, Slavs, and Vlachians, who were hellenized linguistically. Most of the Turks in Turkey are Greeks and Anatolians, who were turkicized linguistically. A people can preserve its own language in various degrees and forms. For the case of languages preserved throughout millennia, we notice tremendous changes and differences. If you had picked up Plato and ‘transferred’ him at the times of Linear B (that was written in Mycenae 800 years before the Greek philosopher lived), you should be sure that Plato would not have understood the language of his ancestors with the exception of some words. Egyptian hieroglyphics was a scripture that favored archaism and linguistic puritanism. But we can be sure that for later Pharaohs, like Taharqa the Kushite (the most illustrious ruler of the ‘Ethiopian’ dynasty), Psamtik, Nechao, Ptolemy II and Cleopatra VII, a Pyramid text (that antedated them by 1700 to 2300 years) would almost be incomprehensible.
A. National diachronic continuity is better attested and more markedly noticed in terms of Culture, Religion and Philosophical – Behavioral system. The first circle of comparative research would encompass the world of the Kushitic – Meroitic and Oromo concepts, anything that relates to the Weltanschauung of the two cultural units/groups under study. A common view of basic themes of life and a common perception of the world would bring a significant corroboration of the Meroitic ancestry of the Oromos. So, first it is a matter of history of religions, African philosophy, social anthropology, ethnography and culture history.
B. Archeological research can help tremendously too. At this point one has to stress the reality that the critical area for the reconstruction suggested has been totally indifferent for Egyptologists, Meroitic and Axumite archeologists so far. The Blue Nile valley in Sudan and Abyssinia was never the subject of an archeological survey, and the same concerns the Oromo highlands. Certainly modern archeologists prefer something concrete that would lead them to a great discovery, being therefore very different from the pioneering nineteenth century archeologists. An archeological study would be necessary in the Blue Nile valley and the Oromo highlands in the years to come.
C. A linguistic – epigraphic approach may bring forth even more spectacular results. It could eventually end up with a complete decipherment of the Meroitic and the Makkurian. An effort must be made to read the Meroitic texts, hieroglyphic and cursive, with the help of Oromo language. Meroitic personal names and toponymics must be studied in the light of a potential Oromo interpretation. Comparative linguistics may unveil affinities that will lead to reconsideration of the work done so far in the Meroitic decipherment.
D. Last but not least, another dimension would be added to the project with the initiation of comparative anthropological studies. Data extracted from findings in the Meroitic cemeteries must be compared with data provided by the anthropological study of present day Oromos. The research must encompass pictorial documentation from the various Meroitic temples’ bas-reliefs.
To all these I would add a better reassessment of the existing historical sources, but this is not a critical dimension of this research project.
I believe my call for Comparative Meroitic – Oromo Studies reached the correct audience that can truly evaluate the significance of the ultimate corroboration of the Meroitic Ancestry of the Oromos, as well as the magnificent consequences such corroboration would have in view of
a) the forthcoming Kushitic Palingenesia – Renaissance if you want – in Africa,
b) the establishment of a Post – Colonial African Historiography, and – last but not least –
c) the Question of the Most Genuine and Authoritative Representation of Africa in the United Nations Security Council.
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NOTES
1. To those having the slightest doubt, trying purely for political reasons and speculation to include territories of the modern state of Abyssinia into what they Ancient Greeks and Romans called “Aethiopiaâ€, the entry Aethiopia in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklopadie der klassischen Altertumwissenschaft consists in the best and irrevocable answer.
4. Mythical figure of the British Orientalism, Garstang excavated in England, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and the Sudan; Albright, William Foxwell: “John Garstang in Memoriam”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 144. (Dec., 1956), pp. 7–8. Garstang’s major articles on his Meroe excavations are the following: ‘Preliminary Note on an Expedition to Meroë in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 3 (1911 – a), ‘Second Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroë in Ethiopia, I. Excavations’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 4 (1911 – b), ‘Third Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroë in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 5 (1912), ‘Forth Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroë in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 6 (1913), and ‘Fifth Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroë in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 7 (1914). His major contribution was published in the same year under the title ‘Meroë, the City of Ethiopians’ (Oxford). A leading Meroitologist, Laszlo Torok wrote an entire volume on Garstang’s excavations at Meroe: Meroe City, an Ancient African Capital: John Garstang’s Excavations in the Sudan.
5. Griffith was the epigraphist of Grastand and had already published the epigraphic evidence unearthed at Meroe in the chapter entitled ‘the Inscriptions from Meroë’ in Garstang’s ‘Meroë, the City of Ethiopians’. After many pioneering researches and excavations in various parts of Egypt and Northern Sudan, Faras, Karanog, Napata and Philae to name a few, he concentrated on Kerma: ‘Excavations at Kawa’, Sudan Notes and Records 14.
6. Basically: www.sag-online.de/pdf/mittsag9.5.pdf; among other contributions: Die Inschriften des Löwentempels von Musawwarat es Sufra, Berlin (1962); Vorbericht über die Ausgrabungen des Instituts für Ägyptologie der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Musawwarat es Sufra, 1960-1961 (1962); ‘Musawwarat es Sufra. Preliminary Report on the Excavations of the Institute of Egyptology, Humboldt University, Berlin, 1961-1962(Third Season)’, Kush 11 (1963); ‘Preliminary Note on the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, 1962’, Kush 11 (1963); ‘Preliminary note on the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, 1963’, Kush 13 (1965).
8. His recent volume Sudan: Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile, Paris/New York (1997) contains earlier bibliography.
9. Some of his most authoritative publications: ‘A History of the Sudan from the Earliest Times to 1821’, 1961 (2nd Ed.), London; ‘’The Valley of the Nile’, in: The Dawn of African History, R. Oliver (ed.), London. Arkell is mostly renowned for his monumental ‘The Royal Cemeteries of Kush’ in many volumes.
More particularly on Qustul, and the local Group A Cemetery that was discovered in the 60s by Dr. Keith Seele:http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/qustul.html (by Bruce Beyer Williams). Quite interesting approach by Clyde Winters as regards an eventual use of Egyptian Hieroglyphics in Group A Nubia, 200 years before the system was introduced in… Egypt:http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/anwrite.htm.
24. Basics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assarhaddon; the edition of the Assyrian emperor’s annals by R. Borger (Die Inschriften Assarhaddons, Königs von Assyrien, AfO 9, Graz, 1956) remain our basic reference to formal sources. More recently, F. Reynolds shed light on private sources, publishing ‘The Babylonian correspondence of Esarhaddon, and letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-Sarru-Iskun from Northern and Central Babylonia’ (SAA 18, 2004).
26. Heliopolis (Iwnw in Egyptian Hieroglyphic – literally the place of the pillars –, On in Hebrew and in Septuaginta Greek) was the center of Egyptian monotheism, the holiest religious center throughout Ancient Egypt; it is from Heliopolis that emanated the Isiac ideology and the Atum Ennead. Basic readings: the entry Heliopolis in Realenzyklopaedie and in Lexikon der Aegyptologie; more recently:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_%28ancient%29.
29. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II_of_Persia (with bibliographya nd sources). Cambyses invaded Kush and destroyed Napata at the times of Amani-natake-lebte, and his embattled army was decimated according to the famous narratives of Herodotus that still need to be corroborated. What seems more plausible is that, having reached in an unfriendly milieu of the Saharan desert where they had no earlier experience, the Persians soldiers, at a distance of no less than 4000 km from their capital, faced guerilla undertaken by the Kushitic army remnants and their nomadic allies.
30. Nastasen was the last to be buried in Nuri, in the whereabouts of Napata. Contemporary with Alexander the Great, Nastasen fought against an invader originating from Egypt whose name was recorded as Kambasawden. This led many to confuse the invader with Cambyses, who ruled 200 years earlier (!). The small inscription on the Letti stela does not allow great speculation; was it an attempt of Alexander the Great to proceed to the south of which we never heard anything? Impossible to conclude. For photographical documentation:http://www.dignubia.org/bookshelf/ruler … 00017&ord=. Another interpretation: http://www.nubia2006.uw.edu.pl/nubia/ab … 94e6349d8b.
32. For Abyssinia’s conversion to Christianity: http://www.spiritualite2000.com/page.php?idpage=555, and http://www.rjliban.com/Saint-Frumentius.doc. The Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezana_of_Axum) is written by ignorant and chauvinist people, and is full of mistakes, ascribing provocatively and irrelevantly to Ezanas following territories (using modern names): “present-day Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, northern Somalia, Djibouti, northern Sudan, and southern Egyptâ€. All this shows how misleading this encyclopedia can be. Neither southern Egypt, northern Sudan, northern Somalia and Djibouti nor Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia ever belonged to Ezana’s small kingdom that extended from Adulis to Axum, and following the king’s victory over Meroe, it included modern Sudan’s territories between Kessala and Atbara. Nothing more!
33. Richard A. Lobban, ‘The Nubian Dynasty of Kush and Egypt: Continuing Research on Dynasty XXV’: http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:4F … clnk&cd=2; these inscriptions were published as early as 1821: E. F. Gau, Nubische Denkmaeler (Stuttgart). Other early publications on Meroitic antiquities: E. Riippell, Reisen in Nubien, Kordofan, &c. (Frankfort a. M., 1829); F. Caillaud, Voyage a Me’roe (Paris, 1826); J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, e5fc. (London, 1819); G. Waddington and B. Hanbury, Journal of a Visit to some ‘parts of Ethiopia (London, 1822); L. Reinisch, Die Nuba-Sprache (Vienna, 1879); Memoirs of the Societe khediviale de Geographic, Cairo.
34. Readings: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/candace.html;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanakdakhete; more analytically:http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … graphy.htm. The only inscription giving her name comes from Temple F in Naga (REM 0039A-B). The name appears in Meroitic hieroglyphics in the middle of an Egyptian text. See also: Laszlo Török, in: Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, Vol. II, Bergen 1996, 660-662. The first attempts to render full Meroitic phrases into hieroglyphs (not only personal names, as it was common earlier) can be dated from the turn of the 3rd / 2nd century BCE, but they reflect the earlier stage of the development.
‘Karanog: the Meroitic Inscriptions of Karanog and Shablul’, (The Eckley B. Coxe Junior Expedition to Nubia VI), Philadelphia, 1911; ‘Meroitic Inscriptions, I, Sôbâ Dangûl’, Oxford, 1911; ‘Meroitic Inscriptions part II, Napata to Philae and Miscellaneous’, Egypt Exploration Society, Archaeological Survey of Egypt, Memoirs, London, 1912; ‘Meroitic Studies II’, in: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 3 (1916).
40. B. G. Haycock, ‘The Problem of the Meroitic Language’, Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning, no.5 (1978), p. 50-81; see also: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … nology.htm. Another significant contribution by B.G.Haycock, ‘Towards a Data for King Ergamenes’, Kush 13 (1965).41. See: K.H.Priese, ‘Die Statue des napatanischen Königs Aramatelqo (Amtelqa) Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum Inv.-Nr. 2249’ in: Festschrift zum 150 jährigen Bestehen des Berliner Ägyptischen Museums, Berlin; of the same author, ’Matrilineare Erbfolge im Reich von Napata’, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 108 (1981).
43. Basic reading: Egeimi, Omer Abdalla, ‘From Adaptation to Marginalization: The Political Ecology of Subsistence Crisis among the Hadendawa Pastoralists of Sudan’, in: Managing Scarcity: Human Adaptation in East African Drylands, edited by Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed and Hassan Abdel Ati, 30-49. Proceedings of a regional workshop, Addis Ababa, 24-26 August 1995. Addis Ababa: OSSREA, 1996 (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/ossrea/ossreabiblio.html).
44. F. Hintze, ‘Some problems of Meroitic philology”, in: Studies in
45. In various publications; see indicatively: ‘Die meroitische Sprache und das protoaltaische Sprachsubstrat als Medium zu ihrer Deutung (I): Mit _quivalenten von grammatikalischen Partikeln und Wortgleichungen’, Ulm/Donau (1992).
61. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dio_Cassius; see details of the early Roman rule over Egypt here: Timo Stickler, ‘Cornelius Gallus and the Beginnings of the Augustan Rule in Egypt’,
Two things happened simultaneously on May 1st, both involving the U.S. State Department and its relation to Ethiopia. Thing one was the State Department’s news program, Voice of America, broadcasting its brief account of Ethiopian security forces firing upon student demonstrations the previous day (April 30) at three universities resulting in 17 dead and many wounded. Thing two was the Secretary of State John Kerry in Ethiopia giving a speech full of praise for Ethiopia’s rapid economic development as well as the U.S.-Ethiopia partnership in addressing the violence against civilians in neighboring Sudan and Somalia. Apparently, Kerry was unaware that the day before, just a two-hour’s drive down the road from where he was speaking, America’s supposed partner, the Ethiopian government, had committed acts of violence against its citizens. In fact, thousands of individuals at universities and in cities across the Oromia region of Ethiopia had been protesting for days, and as the journalist Mohammed Ademo’s article for Think Africa pointed out on Tuesday (August 29), what they were protesting was precisely the consequences of the rapid economic development and foreign direct investment that Kerry praised in his speech – the eviction and displacement of tenant farmers and poor people due to the expansion of the capital city Addis Ababa into the Oromia region.
We might observe a contradiction here within the same State Department. While the State Department’s news program laments an event and clearly points to the root cause, the State Department’s secretary appears ignorant of the event and also strangely unable to discern the causes of ethnic unrest across Africa. An Al Jazeera op-ed responding to Kerry’s speech suggests that the United States fails to see the contradiction in its policy that talks about democracy and human rights but in practice emphasizes security for foreign direct investment (as per the State Department’s own report on such investment in Ethiopia published shortly before Kerry’s visit.) Noticeably, two contradictory ideas are coming out of the State Department simultaneously. What do we make of that contradiction?
Before I answer that question, I might add on to this strange state of affairs by pointing out that Kerry did criticize the Ethiopian government for using repressive tactics against its journalists — the famous Zone 9 bloggers — but what strikes me is that at the very moment that Kerry criticizes the state of journalism in Ethiopia, the mainstream American news outlets such as CNN, National Public Radio, and the NY Times have for a long time neglected to give any serious coverage of the issues within Ethiopia and in fact did not report on the student demonstrations. The only American media mention of the recent student demonstrations and deaths is a very brief Associated Press article that appeared the day after Kerry’s speech (May 2) and that article embarrassingly gets its facts wrong about what happened and why. Such poor journalism is increasingly perceived to be the norm of America’s once celebrated media whose many factual inaccuracies and lack of any genuine will to truth arguably contributed to the Iraq War back in 2003. Curiously, the only news organization in America that did its job (the VOA) is the news organization intended to serve communities outside of America. Moreover, the VOA is part of the very same “department” that Kerry heads. The quality of mainstream American media coverage might seem excusable if it weren’t for the fact that BBC covered these tragic events in Ethiopia reasonably well, first on its radio program immediately after the massacre (May 1st) and then more comprehensively on its website the following day.
Two things happened simultaneously on May 1st, both involving the U.S. State Department and its relation to Ethiopia. Thing one was the State Department’s news program, Voice of America, broadcasting its brief account of Ethiopian security forces firing upon student demonstrations the previous day (April 30) at three universities resulting in 17 dead and many wounded. Thing two was the Secretary of State John Kerry in Ethiopia giving a speech full of praise for Ethiopia’s rapid economic development as well as the U.S.-Ethiopia partnership in addressing the violence against civilians in neighboring Sudan and Somalia. Apparently, Kerry was unaware that the day before, just a two-hour’s drive down the road from where he was speaking, America’s supposed partner, the Ethiopian government, had committed acts of violence against its citizens. In fact, thousands of individuals at universities and in cities across the Oromia region of Ethiopia had been protesting for days, and as the journalist…
January 16, 2015, Steinkjer, Norway (Trønder-Avisa – Google Translation) — Thursday could hear slogans chanted throughout the square in Steinkjer. The reason was that a group of Ethiopians demonstrated against what they perceive as a dictatorial regime in their homeland. Being persecuted: – We belong to the Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, with around 40 percent of the population. The Government of Ethiopia is dominated by minority tribe that makes around 6 percent of the Ethiopian Population. Oromo being pursued by this government – including putting journalists and politicians from our group of people in jail, telling Alisee Fira Aynagee, who organized the demonstration. – You are far away from Ethiopia now. What do you hope to achieve? – We hope that some of the residents in Steinkjer come to hear our message, and we hope to arouse the Norwegian government, which supports the regime in Ethiopia, says Aynagee. Amnesty calls for action A report by Amnesty International tells of persecution, imprisonment, torture and killing of Oromo people in Ethiopia. Among other reports of youths being captured in military camps, where they get glowing coal on empty stomach, because they support the Oromo People’s Liberation Movement, Oromo Liberation Front. Teachers are being tortured when they refuse to teach in government friendly propaganda, and it is expected that Oromo politicians will be gagged towards the election in Ethiopia later this year. “At least 5,000 of the Oromo people have been imprisoned in Ethiopia between 2011 and 2014 because of peaceful opposition against the government,” writes Amnesty. The organization believes regional and international human rights organizations must react against the Ethiopian government to put an end to the persecution, which is described as “often shocking brutal.” Want secession Oromo people want Oromia shall be independent again. Land area was independent until 1890, when it was conquered and incorporated into Ethiopia. Since 1978, the Oromo celebrated their National Day to commemorate those who sacrificed their lives to liberate the people from what they see as Ethiopian colonialism. Oromia is a land area of 600,000 km2, ie about ten times as large as Norway, and about 35 million people considered Oromo. Source: 
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Oromo-American Citizens Council (OACC) is a Minnesota based, non-profit organization set up, among others, to expose human rights violations against the Oromo people and influence the policy of the U.S. towards Ethiopia. Minnesota is a state with the highest population of Oromos outside Africa. OACC collaborated with the Advocates for Human Rights in the 96-page report issued in 2009 under the title, “Human Rights in Ethiopia: Through the Eyes of The Oromo Diaspora.” That Report documented the experiences Oromos in Diaspora faced when they lived in Ethiopia. In May 2005, the Human Rights Watch also issued a report entitled, “Suppressing Dissent: Human rights Abuses and Political Repression in Ethiopia’s Oromia Region.” This report, for the first time, exposed the mechanisms used the Ethiopian government to control rural communities in Oromia through the Gott and Garee Systems. Furthermore, the periodic U.S. State Department’s own annual reports have documented rampant human rights violations against the Oromos over the years. Amnesty International’s report, ETHIOPIA: BECAUSE I AM OROMO: SWEEPING REPRESSION IN THE OROMIA REGION OF ETHIOPIA, is the most researched and the most comprehensive report ever conducted about human rights violation against the Oromos. The vivid descriptions of tortures conducted against Oromos, the long imprisonment without trial, the murders by security forces, the harsh actions taken against peaceful protests are all well documented with irrefutable evidences. The report further disclosed that any act of Oromo nationalism that is not controlled by the government, such as the Oromo language and the culture development movement, results in detentions and tortures. For that, we want to take this opportunity and congratulate and thank Amnesty International. While appreciating the efforts and achievements in documenting human rights violations against Oromos under the circumstances, we also want to reiterate that this is only the tip of the iceberg; the reality is much worse than what is documented in this report. Furthermore, we want to warn all stakeholders that this is not a time to rest on our laurels. Especially, as the 2015 election is approaching, the human rights violations will get worse. We, therefore, call up on: (a) All Oromo and Ethiopian civic organizations to come forward and work on the recommendations of the report mostly in mobilizing the communities and in putting pressure on the government. We need to get united and make our voices heard opposing such violations together as this is an issue that unites all of us. (b) All other international human rights organizations, based on this report, to put pressure on donor countries to make the respect of human rights a precondition to further assist the Ethiopian government. Nagessa Dube, Executive Director Oromo-American Citizens Council (OACC)
The OCUK has organised a big demonstration to protest against the never ending human rights violations in Oromia and to support the Amnesty International on its 2014 Report “Because I am Oromo” – which was the response of Oromos who had been the victims of the Ethiopian prisons to the interview questions by the Amnesty International on why they were persecuted by the Ethiopian government. Please come along and join the demonstration, and be the voice for the voiceless Oromo in Ethiopia: “I am arrested, tortured, looted, my property confiscated, and dehumanised ‘Because I am Oromo.’” Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2014 Time: 12:00 noon – 4:30 PM Address: Westminster, Parliament Square, SW1P 3BD – Closest station: Westminster (Jubilee, District and Circle Lines) OCUK Management Committee
November 6, 2014 (The Advocates Post) — This fall was a busy time for advocacy at the United Nations on human rights in Ethiopia. It was also a great time to see The Advocates for Human Rights’ new toolkit, 
Several non-governmental organizations took the floor and raised concerns about the human rights situation on the ground in Ethiopia. Civicus World Alliance for Citizenship Participation, for example, expressed concern about Ethiopia’s refusal to accept recommendations to remove draconian restrictions on free expression. Renate Bloem (left), speaking for Civicus, added:
There’s much more to be done in the effort to build respect for human rights in Ethiopia. In addition to the next steps mentioned above, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights will be reviewing Ethiopia’s human rights record in its 
IOYA and 
Photo Cred: 
Fuulbaana 15 Bara 2014 Hiriiri Nagaa Mootummaa Wayyaanee irratti Magaalaa Torontooti Geggeeffame. (suuraa kana olii ilaalaa). Sept. 15,2014 Demonstration in Toronto by Oromo community to protest the Tyranny of TPLF Ethiopia. #OromoProtests. (see above in pictures) 
The Human Rights for Oromia concert held in Melborne, 9th August 2014, #OromoProtests 
#OromoProtests #FreeOromoStudents, 1st August 2014. The above pictures are huge crowd at the Oromo Washington DC rally marching from the white house to State Department, 1st August 2014. #OromoProtests. The day also marking the 50th Golden Jubilee Anniversary of Maccaa & Tuulamaa Movement. 
#OromoProtests: Oromo Peaceful Protest Rally in Washington, DC- August 01, 2014.
The joint appeal letter of the Oromo Community Organization(OCO) of Washington-DC, OYSA/WWDO and IOWO to President Obama on the Hunger Strike conducted from July 23 – 25, 2014. ——————— President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 RE: Staging Solidarity Hunger Strike to Protest Massacre, Torture, Detention of the Oromo People by the Ethiopian Government Dear Mr. President, On May 9, 2014, the Oromo Community Organization of Washington D.C. Area (OCO), the Oromo Youth Self-help Association (OYSA) and the International Oromo Women’s Organization (IOWO) held a large demonstration in front of the White House and State Department to express our deep concern and outrage about the massacre of Oromo students in April and May, just for peacefully demonstrating against government land grab; some as young as nine years, from Ambo and other towns of Oromia Regional State by the TPLF Aga’azi force and army of the Ethiopian government. Similar demonstrations were held in many state capitals of the United States, Europe, Australia, Middle East, and Africa to condemn the callous crime of the Ethiopian Government. Candlelight vigils were also held in front of the White House on May 22, 2014, and in many states of the U.S. and other countries, at different times, where Oromo communities reside. According to partial reports received, 61 students were shot dead, 903 students are detained and still being tortured. The massacre of Oromo students by the Ethiopian regime is parallel to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre of 69 black people by the Apartheid regime of South Africa for demonstrating against the Pass Law. The blood of the black South Africans led to the abolition of Apartheid and creation of Democratic South Africa with the support of democratic nations of the world. We hope the blood of the innocent Oromo students will not be ignored and left in vain but motivate the leaders of the democratic nations of the West to help bring justice, liberty, peace and democracy in Ethiopia in general and Oromia State in particular. Today, it is estimated that there are more than 50,000 Oromo political prisoners in Oromia in various concentration camps and prisons. Although it is difficult to know exactly how many Oromos have been killed or massacred by the regime, mass graves have been discovered in many places, including Hamaressa in eastern Oromia. The annual reports of the U.S. Department of State and other credible sources regarding human rights abuses in Ethiopia indicate that the Department is familiar with the massive human rights violations that have been committed by the Ethiopian government on the Oromo and other peoples in the country. During our demonstration in May, we submitted appeal letter to the State Department to use their leverage to make a difference in the social, political, and economic crisis perpetrated by the Ethiopian regime against the Oromo people and others in Ethiopia. In response to our appeals, the State Department units handling Ethiopian affairs have jointly granted us audience to discuss the problem of human rights abuse, detentions without warrant, extrajudicial killings, torture, land grab and eviction without appropriate compensation, lack of freedom of expression, right of assembly, justice and democracy. Though they have the information, we have given them additional extensive dimensions of the problem. The State Department has also replied to our appeal letter expressing their concerns about human right abuses in Ethiopia. Similarly, United States Senators, Honorable Al Franken and Honorable Amy Klobuchar representing Minnesota State; and Honorable Patty Murray and Honorable Maria Cantwell representing Washington State have written letters to Secretary Kerry expressing their deep concerns of Ethiopian government violence against its citizens. They asked the Honorable Secretary to use his influence for the respect of rule of law and human rights in Ethiopia. They stressed the Ethiopian Government’s equal treatment of all ethnic groups and implementation of democratic system must be central to their relationship with the United States. A member of the Parliament of Australia also has tabled the Oromo plight in Ethiopia for debate and asked his government for action to curb the Ethiopian government violence against peaceful citizens. – Read More (Ayyaantuu.com) 
Photos: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (L) and Sen. Al Franken (R) of Minnesota Two more U.S. Senators, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, to express concerns about the Ethiopian government’s human rights violations, particularly the Ethiopian government’s recent acts of violence against Oromo peaceful demonstrators in Oromia. In the letter, the U.S. Senators urged the U.S. State Department to make the “respect for the rule of law and human rights in Ethiopian government’s treatment of all ethnic groups” central to the U.S.-Ethiopia relationship. It’s to be noted that U.S. Senators from the State of Washington, Sen. Maria Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray, 
Sen. Maria Cantwell (L) and Sen. Patty Murray (R) 
#OromoProtests- United Nations, Human Rights. Oromo Community Switzerland 
OromoProtests- 
OromoProtests- Solidarity Rally – Nova Scotia, Halifax, Canada (18 May 2014) 
#OromoProtests-
#OromoProtests, Brooks, Canada, 15th May 2014 
Rallying in Thousands Across the World, Oromos and Friends of Oromos EXPRESSED SOLIDARITY WITH #OROMOPROTESTS, AND DEMANDED JUSTICE FOR SLAIN OROMO STUDENTS AND CIVILIANS (see more 
#OromoProtests, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 9th May 2014 
Las Vegas (May 9, 2014) 
Melbourne, Australia (May 9, 2014) 
Minneapolis, Minnesota (“Little Oromia”) (May 9, 2014) 
Oslo, Norway (May 9, 2014) 
Rome, Italy (May 9, 2014) 
Minneapolis, Minnesota (“Little Oromia”) (May 9, 2014) 
Porltand, Oregon (May 9, 2014) 
South Africa – Forum (May 9, 2014) 
Minneapolis, Minnesota (“Little Oromia”) (May 9, 2014) 
Portland, Oregon (May 9, 2014) 
Minneapolis, Minnesota (“Little Oromia”) (May 9, 2014) 
Washington, DMV (May 9, 2014) 
South California (May 9, 2014) 
Minneapolis, Minnesota (“Little Oromia”) (May 9, 2014) 
Toronto, Canada (May 9, 2014) 
The Hague, The Netherlands (May 9, 2014) 
Denver, Colorado (May 9, 2014) 
Calgary, Canada (May 9, 2014) 
Members of the Oromo community organised a protest in front of the Arab League in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Wednesday to denounce the killing of Oromo protesters in Ethiopia last week. Dozens of the Oromo protesters demanded the Arab League, African Union and the United Nations intervene in the situation in Ethiopia’s Oromo state, where tens of ethnic Oromos were killed last week in protests over the expansion of the capital Addis Ababa. Ethnic Oromo students have been protesting since April against the Ethiopian, who they accuse of intending to displace farmers from their territories in the capital of Addis Ababa through plans to develop and urbanise the city. 
Historically, the Raya Wollo (Raya Oromo), with the Yejju Oromo, are the northernmost groups of the Oromo people and are a part of the Wollo Oromo Tribe. Their women especially are known by their distinctive hair-braiding styles and facial tattoos.
Oromian Economist 
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