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Re: respect the oromo cushite
Posted By: barney In Response To: Re: respect the oromo cushite (Warrior Cherub)
Date: Sunday, 13 July 2003, at 6:13 a.m.
The Oromo were colonised during the last quarter of the nineteenth century by a black African nation - Abyssinia - with the help of the European colonial powers of the day. During the same period, of course, the Somalis, Kenyans, Sudanese and others were colonised by European powers. The fact that the Oromo were colonised by black African nation makes their case quite special.
During the process of colonisation, between 1870 and 1900, the Oromo population was reduced from ten to five millions. This period coincides with the occupation of Oromo land by the Abyssinian emperors Yohannes and Menilek. After colonisation, these emperors and their successors continued to treat Oromo with utmost cruelty. Many were killed by the colonial army and settlers, others died of famine and epidemics of various diseases or were sold off as slaves. Those who remained on the land were reduced to the status of gabbar (a peasant from whom labour and produce is exacted and is a crude form of serfdom).
Haile Selassie consolidated Yohannes and Meniiek's gains and with the use of violence, obstructed the process of natural and historical development of the Oromo society - political, economic and social. In all spheres of life, discrimination, subjugation, repression and exploitation of all forms were applied. Everything possible was done to destroy Oromo identity - culture, language, custom, tradition, name and origin. In short Haile Selassie maintained the general policy of genocide against the Oromo.
Menelik II, the slave trading Abyssinian king of the nineteenth and twentieth century was responsible for the massacre and disappearance of millions of Oromos, Sidamas, Wolayta, Somalis, and others. He was responsible for the physical and psychological torture of the Arsi Oromos at Anole, where his soldiers chopped off every man’s arm, and every woman’s breast.
“When the people came, they were told to enter the narrow pass one by one. All males who entered were cut off their right hands on orders of Ras Darge. The Shoans (conquerors) tied the hand they cut to the neck of the victim. In the same manner, the right breasts of women were also cut and tied to their necks. As a result everybody who went to Anole … returned by (sic) losing his right hand and (her) breast. This widely known as “Harka Mura Anole” )Abas Haji. 1982)
Menelik was a notorious slave trader, who sold Oromo and southern peoples’ prisoners of war into slavery. He also encouraged his generals to raid villages, capture slaves, and sell the captives into slavery and surrender some as gift or tax to him.
end Ethiopian colonization
Oromos continue 110-year fight for freedom
By: Shannon Gibney
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 1/23/2003Local leaders seek African American support to end Ethiopian colonization
“The history of what happened to Black people in this country is very, very similar to what’s happening to Oromos now. That’s why it’s very important for us to establish a good relationship with African Americans,” said Kano Banjaw, a teacher at Abraham Lincoln High School in Minneapolis and a member of the Oromo nation.
Banjaw is one of more than 12,000 Oromos who have come to the Twin Cities in order to escape the international and national oppression that has plagued the country for more than a century.Although every other African nation was colonized by various European powers, Oromia (located on the Horn of Africa) is the only country on the continent colonized by another African nation — Ethiopia.
“The Oromo nation — we used to have an independent and sovereign state. [About 110 years ago] Ethiopia, which was known at that time as Abyssinia, was being ruled by an emperor, who was part of an ethnic group known as Amhara, which are located in the northern part of Ethiopia, “ said Banjaw.
“At that time, the Amhara had a good relationship with the European powers. In order to facilitate their conquering ambitions, they befriended the Ethiopian powers — especially the British. They had military training and this kind of support from the British. And then, they marched south and started using the then-modern weapons, conquering and capturing the Oromo,” he continued.
The Oromo resisted the Amhara occupying forces, just like the Nigerians and other Africans around the continent resisted white colonizers. These conflicts, however, have resulted in the reduction of the Oromo population by nearly half, from 10 million to five million.
“There were massacres. Men had their arms amputated; women, they cut off their breasts,” said Banjaw. “We were also sold en masse as slaves to Arab countries, even to this country here [the United States]. Not only that, we have been reduced to second-class citizens. Our land was taken away, our culture was destroyed, our language was prohibited by proclamation not to be spoken officially,” he added.
This is why Banjaw and his friends Daniel Namara, a teacher at Edison High School in Minneapolis, and Keferi Fufa, a Minneapolis Public Schools employee, are working to educate the general public about the plight of the Oromos — they want to end such atrocities through local, national, and international support.
“The Oromo have never had the chance to determine what kind of future they have,” said Namara. “Currently, now, the Oromo Liberation Front [or OLF] believes that the Oromo should be given the right to determine how they want to live in the future. Whether they want an independent Oromia, or whether they want to be part of Ethiopia,” he continued.
Banjaw, Namara and Fufa, along with 30 million Oromos in Ethiopia and over 12,000 others in the Twin Cities, are fighting for something they have never had in over a century: self-determination.“The entire [Oromo] Liberation Front I guess is just an outgrowth of Oromo opposition to being occupied. Ever since we were occupied so many years ago, there hasn’t been a year when a revolt of some kind did not erupt in some area. And it has always been heavily suppressed,” said Fufa.
In the late 1970s, just four years after the OLF organized and sent out its formal liberation process, the Ethiopian government became socialist. “But socialism really wasn’t its program. It ended up being socialist simply because the United States stopped supporting it. So they automatically turned socialist overnight and went to Moscow and started getting all this ammunition and all that,” said Fufa.
He continued, “We lost quite a few educated Oromos and Oromo people who were really aware and could have been leading the revolution, who thought they would be working with the government to make things better for our people. They were captured and then they were killed.”
Since then, the Oromos have continued to fight for self-determination, even in the face of mounting odds. “Up to 1991, all nationalities in Ethiopia were being ruled by the Amhara. Then came another ethnic group, the Tigrea — which makes up about five percent of the population [the Oromos constitute about 60 percent]. And they came into power through the massive assistance of Western powers [namely, the United States],” said Banjaw.
“They are being held... [in power] artificially. I want to make clear that now another ethnic group has come into power after being assisted by foreign powers. Just like they did 120 years ago. Still, we are the slaves,” he added.
Because Oromia has been the site of so many atrocities, Fufa, Namara and Banjaw all believe that the nation’s liberation would solve many of the issues the Horn of Africa faces.
“ [Oromia’s occupation] is the root cause of many problems — in Somalia, in the Sudan, in Eritrea, in Kenya, in Ethiopia. All these countries, they suffer things. It is so sad that the Western powers just look at Ethiopia as an ally in Christianity among pagans.Because I am Christian; my mother is actually a Lutheran minister,” said Namara.
If the Oromo did achieve liberation, Banjaw is certain that they would not use their newfound power to oppress those who have oppressed them for so many years. He claims that they would not appeal to Western powers, as have other ethnic groups in the region.
“Oromia, before it was colonized, was ruled by an indigenous African democratic system known as Gada. So democracy is not new for Oromo. The Gada system has meant that we don’t impose anything upon any other person. So, there’s no fear that we would become dominant,” he said.Fufa, however, is decidedly more cautious. “I don’t believe we are less susceptible than any other people to corruption. The problem with freedom, at least in Africa, is that people got their political freedom, but they kept the mentality of the colonizer. And so the tendency to act like the colonizer has been there. I am hoping that we will we different, and that’s why we have to be vigilant. We can’t let whoever the liberator might be...have their way,” he said.
“The old democracy we had was very good. And we also know that we can’t use the 150-year-old system in today’s world. Somehow, we have to glean the good things out of that: the ideology that let us in the end bring a freeing strategy out. It’s a question that we have to continuously ask,” he added.
Fufa, Banjaw and Namara are looking support from all communities in the area, but particularly from African American communities. “At least earlier, when we were going out of our way to get sympathy for our people, African Americans were the toughest to sympathize with us, simply because how could you speak against another African nation?” said Fufa.
He stated that more interaction between area Oromo and African American communities, as well as offering more African- and African American-centered courses in the school systems, would address these cultural and historical chasms.
To that end, the three encourage African Americans to socialize with area Oromos wherever and whenever possible, and invite anyone interested to the Oromo Lutheran Church, located at Franklin and 27th Avenue in Minneapolis.
“Especially this time in United States, very tough for Oromos,” said Namara. “Like the terrorist attacks holds us, overshadows us, really. But still, we don’t give up. There are 30 million Oromos back home in Oromia, and we can’t really forget — they’re our relatives there. My parents are there; my sisters are still there.
“It’s very hard to forget. But there are problems that come, as you can imagine, from frustration. We try to get over these problems and then focus our attention to the struggle — the big strain we have in front of us,” he said.
If you would like to find out more about the Oromo liberation struggle or learn how you can support it, call Kano Banjaw at 651-639-9001.
Shannon Gibney welcomes reader responses and can be reached at target=_blank>sgibney@spokesman-recorder.com.
Oromo History
The Undeniable Fact that Shines Like the Sun
The Oromo people are one of the ancient people of the region. The Oromo people belong to the Cushitic group of people that inhabited the southern half of the western Red Sea coast, and the whole of Horn of Africa including the coastal areas and hinterlands. The Afar, Somali, Saho, and Sidama are some of the Cushitic people of Africa. These people are related to ancient Egyptian (Nubians), and are the original inhabitants of the region. Their history in the region is more than the three thousand years claimed by the Abyssinians.
Ever since their arrival from south Arabia, the Abyssinians have been encroaching on the Cushitic land, and slowly pushing the Cushitic people in different directions. This movement was checked and stopped by the Oromos in the sixteenth century. The make believe history of the so called "Galla Migration" of the sixteenth century is a war of liberation from the Abyssinians who were slowly encroaching on the Cushitic and other people's lands.
Abyssinians desire to control the resources of the Oromos and other people living in what today is known as southern Ethiopia, led to a bad relationship of war and instability in the region. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Abyssinia with the help of European arms, military advisors and commanders from Russia and France succeeded to colonize Oromiyaa and other people of the southern Ethiopia. Ethiopia, as it is known today has never existed before, and present Ethiopia is a colonial creation of no more than a century old. For more details click on History of Oromia.
Colonization of Oromiyaa
The long dream of Abyssinia to occupy Oromiyaa and its southern neighbors became reality with the help of European arms, advisors, some of whom were directly involved in the war of occupation against Oromo and the south.
"Britain, France, Italy, and Russia poured arms and some military advisors into Ethiopia, each believing it would require a corresponding measure of local leverage." (Lewis)
Menelik was able to amass, a tremendous amount military hardware.
" ... he (Menelik) was able between 1880 and 1900 to import over one million rifles, a quantity of hatchkiss guns and military pieces, also making use of French and Russian military experts to train his soldiers in their use. No other pre-colonial African state had been able to build such an armory. (Luckman and Bekele)
Under such conditions, Menelik II, Amhara King of Shewa was able to occupy and colonize Oromiyaa and southern region. Menelik created a settler colonial rule over Oromos and other southern people. Many of the newly occupied or colonized people were captured and sold into slavery, and the ramining were placed in a situation that is no better than slavery. It is Italian occupation of Ethiopia that abolished slavery in Ethiopia. The defeat of Italy in World War II, and the return of Haile Sellasie to power brought more misery to Oromos and people of the south. Please refer to the page on Oromo resistance to Abyssinian colonialism for more details.
Put simply and honestly, HaileSelassie was perhaps the most shrewd and malicious of all the emperial oppressors the Ethiopian empire ever produced. He has managed to create a subtle but fake black, African hero on the outside, while he is truly and merely another tyrant and shame to Africa and Africans, in the real landscape.
His fictitiously heroic facade that people associate to him out side of the country, and particularly in the West stems from both demented Western particularly (English) obsession with royalty and Christendom, plus the uncritical as well as uninformed embrace of him by some 'black' Americans (both Southern as well as North American) of African origin.
Britain's royality, usually fascinated by the iconic/symbolic but practically useless and dysfunctional, upheld Selassie because he brokered more influence for Britain in Ethiopia (and hence, East Africa) if they gave assistance to his kingdom. Britain's war against the Fascist Italians and the German Nazis also later coincided with Ethiopia's war against Musollini's invaders. So the British didn't care and still don't care about the situation of the Ethiopian system, if it is just or not, since the royalty of Ethiopia kind of submitted to them in the person of Haileselassie. Haileselassie (on top of being a leader of indegenous African colonialism-Abyssinians over the Oromos and the rest of the south) in that way, can't even be a hero to stand in equal footage with true African sons/daughters who FOUGHT AGAINST European colonialism of Britain and the rest. He rather associated with them, so long as they approved of his empire, and didn't act against their illegitimate dominance in the land of Africans, Africa.
The Jamaicans and other people of African origin in the Americas grabbed and held on to "Abyssinia/Ethiopia" and Teferi(Haile) because of its simbolic significance in the rest of the world than out of the awareness of its real essence/or for what it really is. The prevailing notion that there was this African nation that was not colonized by Europeans...but fought and defeated them (1989), kinda gave the Africans in the Americas an icon to hold on to in their struggle..and for further inspiration and crystalization of their movement. So even if HaileSelassie didn't do anything in favor of true justice (even in his own land, let alone abroad), he, in the uncritical and unaware mind of many came to be associated with the desperate cry for freedom from oppression of the White man. Plus...even there are Abyssinians who try to tell us today..that HaileSelassie was a pioneer of the failed movement for "Pan-Aricanism", while its true champions are black leaders from the Americans and that of decolonized Africa like Nkruma or Kenyatta, etc. HaileSelassie didn't do anything except come to the west and visit places and deliver some phony speeches. All that was done came out of the distorted notion of the great "free Abyssinia/Ethiopia myth" that people had in their mind, and even would have created if it helped their cause (it didn't matter if it was true or not, people at that time would create anything to energize their struggle against slavery/racisim/or segregation).
In fact, the truth is, as BM pointed out, HaileSelassie insulted and looked down upon the rest of Africa. He did so not only by claiming Jewishness/semitism (for himself and his people) both by succession and tradition but also by LITERALLY declaring "Ethiopians" as better breed than that of the rest of Africans. There is a detestful resedue of that among Habasha society today. Habashas DO NOT CALL THEMSELVES AFRICANS. In their own terms, "they are better than the "barias" (black Africans). Plus, they think they are more beautiful than Africans. They don't believe nor accept that they are blacks. It is not only that that kind of notion beauty is sick and ignorant but also that THE HABASHAS (along with their phony little king) are RACISTS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER. We don't even have to mention the DEGRADATION and dehumanization, and the poverty that thier system have put the empire they call "Ethiopia" into in the face of the rest of the world. We don't even have to mention that their "Ethiopia", that they run, is the least developed, least fed, least managed, least stabilized, least peaceful, least just, least democratic, least free, least honest, least in ALL-POSITIVE-ASPECTS/TERMS. We don't have to mention that, bluntly but honestly speaking, the "Ethiopia" that they run, and they are SO PROUD OF, that "Ethiopia" of noble history and 3,000 years of greatness is JUST AN ARMPIT OF THE WORLD, that stinks like a ghetto/slum in a hell, a symbol of shame to the black race, and a laughing stock of the world. It is the evil that Abyssinians (Haile's people) HAVE brought on the land of the free and the prosperous. Their culture of greed, heirarchical, manipulative, prejudiced, colonizing grip coerced the egalitarian, hardworking, free, democratic, just and proud Oromia and of its people. And Haile Selassie, related to "PanAfricanism" wanted the OAU to center in Finfinne not because he was really up for a free, collaborative All African system..(since He himself was heading the most subversive and barbarous and attrocious empire), but to FURTHER consolidate his power and to enjoy more of publicity and attention he was getting out of the fictitious and dubious adoration of him he enjoyed among blacks abroad and in the Pan-African movement. Plus, the fact that many African nations were not on their foot and free at a time kind of destined that to be in Ethiopia. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the health and justice of Haileselassie's stature nor the country he led.
Coming to Teferi's perpetrations of evil against the Oromo. Teferi (Haile) played a pivotal role in consolidating and perpetuating the COLONIAL/oppressive legacy basically instituted by his predecessor, Menilik, that created it. Menilik called himself "Menilik II" after Menilik I(Menilik I being the mythic son of Solomon that Queen Sheba (of Ethiopia-like today's Ethiopia was the Ethiopia of then). This is the Abyssinian leap in another fictitious and pathetically/groundlessly romantic indulgence in their "great history." Menilik II, by way of Menilik I, who was allegedly the Son of King Solomon of Israel, claimed divine appointment. Haileselassie CONSOLIDATED THAT claim by adopting "Lion of Judah" emblem and self-attribution, and invoking on himself as A GOD-APPOINTED ruler of the GREAT kingdom of Ethiopia. The historical inaccuracy is one thing. The very pathetic ignorance and lie ,irregularity and inconsistency and non-logic and non-reality INFESTED mentality that ASSUMED THAT being christian (which Abyssinia claims to be) to be synonymous with being Jewish is ANOTHer one.
In fact, on top of justifying and further maintiaining and expanding the outlandish and disastorous colonial conquest and oppression of Abyssinia over the South (Oromia and the rest), Haile Selassie annexed and further expanded the Ethiopian empire by taking over Eritrea, coercively, triggering the DECADES long war Against Ethiopia by Eritreans till they gained back their independence. And HAILESELASSIE IS responsible for the wealth of Oromia and lives of Oromos that was lost in keeping his pathetic dream and ever intensifying empire. Plus, It was Haileselassie..that made another historic perversion not only about his phony "divine authority" notion...but also the stealing and claiming the HISTORY of the Cush and the Nubians to his own line. He officially changed the name "Abyssinia" to "Ethiopia", just to claim the history of the GREAT kush,,,the Nubians of the Sudan and Northern Egypt and the South beyond the land of Punt...written in the ancient annals to his own. "Ethiopia" in fact in its Greek original, in the hellenistic world was only used to refer to the BLACk (AT times charcoal black) people that do not have a trace of Semitic heritage nor black..PLUS it is a translation of what literally refers to "Cush." So it is a historical perjury to claim the great heritage of the ancient Egypt as well as Nubian civilization to a Semitic refugees that intermingled with Africans quiet later, the habash. Visit one of the latest Pharoah's of the Nubian civilization..the real Ethiopia..in a discovery some days back as an instance at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2677919.stm
Economically, HaileSelassie's regime didn't only claim the lives of perhaps millions of lives through the poverty that it hid from the rest of the world that eventually brought his downfall, but also his feudalistic empire brought Abyssinian puppet rulers from Gojjam and Gonder and appointed them in Oromo lands who never believed a man can OWN a land, let alone sucking on its inhabitants (OROMOS have always thought land and nature was so divine that we out to take care of it and share and noone can really possess and claim it exclusively for themselves, creating a blood sucking feudalistic even capitalistic stingy and greedy egocentric system). Haileselassie's system and legacy was so coercive and evil that a movement of the oppressed, even including some of some learned and elightened but few of habash roots STRUGGLED till they brought his downfall. Basically and mainly, however, the student and civil disobedience that brought him down was a product of Oromo nationalism and that of the oppressed people of the south.
At anyrate, not to mention the humanitarian violations perpetrated by his repressive system, the infrastructural, politico-structural, educational, developmental prejudices and schemes it applied on Oromos can be inumerated in biblical proportions. Plus, the CULTURAL and linguistic oppression over the people of the Oromo BY HAILESELASSIE (who is, btw, hailed as pro-modernity by Ethiopians)IS so evil that, even the dictatorial system that followed it was not as such severe (allowing the utilization of cultural elements to a certain extent). THE oromo identity was termed "Galla" (savagery, inhuman, uncivilized, pagan, etc). Oromummaa was trappled to the point that you won't even get to school unless u changed your Oromo name and spoke Amharic fluently. Haileselassie's system was so cruel and so disgusting that Oromos were subjected to hate their own humanity. It is no less than the dehumanization suffered by black slaves under the white slave owners of America,,or that the black South Africans felt under the alien occupying foce of the Europeans.
An IMMENSE substantial as well as concrete instances can be enumerated to further unveil the evil and the repression and the predicament that Haile symbolized, that not at all praising, (forget about worshipping), but a slight AFFIRMATIVE consideration about his humanness in word and deed CAN NOT BE CONCEIVED ever, by any freedom loving and just person or society that knows for who HE REALLY IS.
All Ethiopianists and Abyssinians who hail him and desperately try to revive his disastrous legacy DESERVE NO RESPECT but only REJECTION AND serious FIGHT and defeat by ALL FORCES OF the good.
STAND for the truth, EVEN WHEN you are the ONE left saying it!!!
Freedom to the Oppressed!Colonial Origin of the Ethiopian Empire State
4.1. The modern Ethiopian empire state was created by the conquest of emperor Menelik II of the Shewa Amhara dynasty (1889-1913). Menelik was the only successful black African partner in the "scramble for Africa" designed by the European powers in the Berlin Conference of 1884-5. The three major colonial powers competed to use Menelik as a client to widen their spheres into the richer and historically impenetrable prize of the hinterland of northeast Africa. Menelik, aware of the inter-imperial rivalry, feigned special friendship with each one to acquire such massive modern European weaponry that by the mid 1 880's he had transformed his army into one of the largest and strongest in the region, so much so that by 1889, he felt confident enough to send out a circular to the Great Powers asking for his own booty of the Horn far beyond his Amhara enclave to include the Oromo, Somali, Afar, Sidama, Omotic, Nilotic and Southern areas, spreading well beyond the confines of modern Ethiopia.(See map next page)
4.2. At no time before the conquest by Menelik was the present day Ethiopia a single country. What existed were independent polities--kingdoms in Abyssinia to the north, various confederacies in Oromia and others under the Gada system, the southern kingdoms of Walayita, Kaficho, and Yem, and various communal systems in the Nilotic and Omotic regions. The official Ethiopian history that, echoed by some less critical scholars, presents Menelik's era as "the unification of Ethiopia" is a fabrication, pure and simple. As in the rest of colonial Africa, the Oromo and other southern peoples were subjugated, their peace, their cultural identities and human dignity deprived.
4.3. The conquest of the south took Menelik forty years. (See map, Menelik's Conquests). In the case of the Oromo, five entire gada-grades mounted unrelenting resistance. The critical role played by the European armament and technical assistance in the subjugation of the Oromo was recorded by Earl Lytton, a British diplomat then in Ethiopia, who wrote in his book The Stolen Desert-Firms:
"Without massive European help, the Galla (Oromo) would not have been conquered at all. Menelik seems to have operated with French technicians, French map makers, French advice on the management of a standing army, and more French advice as to holding captured province with permanent garrisons of conscripted colonial troops. The French also armed his troops with firearms and did much else to organize his campaigns. The Galla (Oromo) were thus conquered by Abyssinians for the first time in recorded history."
Millions of Oromos were exterminated by carnage of war, millions were taken away and sold into slavery, and hundreds of thousands perished by war-induced famine. By the end of it all, half of the Oromo population--estimated at about 10 million during the late 19th century--was exterminated. It was a genocide.
4.4. The Oromo and other peoples of the south who survived the genocide were subjected by Menelik to the most dehumanizing form of domination. Their land was confiscated and divided among Minelek's war- lords, the clergy, and "colonial troops" known as "naftenya". The warlords, "naftenyas" and the clergy were entitled to personal servitude of the subject people, and to collect dues often to the tune of 75% of the produce of the subjects who had absolutely no legal protection against the conquerors.
4.5. When Emperor Haile Selassie came to power, he tried to consolidate and perpetuate Amhara domination with Tigray as a junior partner. A highly repressive centralism was engineered to design and carry out a policy of Amharization under the mask of Ethiopianization. The subjugated peoples of the South were inflicted cultural genocide. European jurists were employed to draw up a legal system that defined and protected the rights of the oppressors. American legal experts assisted in formulating a highly centralized system of government designed to effectively exercise a repressive rule. Technical assistance poured in to bolster the emperor's policy of social engineering; strong military and security forces were built to suppress resistance to national domination.
4.6. Emperor Haile-Selassie's policy of repressive centralism did not successfully weld a nation state. It fostered more hatred, wrath and enmity. In the case of the Oromo who were more brutalized, not one decade passed without uprisings against their oppressors. Their effort was repeatedly frustrated largely through decisive willed or unwitting intervention by foreign powers.
4.7. It is a historical fact that, despite unquestioning military and economic support from the entire western alliance, emperor Haile Selassie's attempt to perpetuate Amhara domination under the guise of Ethiopianization failed disastrously. The emperor was overthrown by his own armed forces after some period of popular unrest
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