Students from Ambo University and 11 high schools from the area were peacefully protesting the master plan designed to commit a systematic ethnic-cleansing against an estimated 8-10 million Oromo people from several Oromia's cities and rural districts over 10 years.
So far, many of the victims of the brutality have not been identified by name, age and gender, but most of them are high school and university students. Endale Desalegn (pictured above), a 9th grade student; and Tasfayee Gashe, also a 9th grade student from Liban Macha High School in Ambo, were among the confirmed 30 students and residents gunned down by heavily armed Ethiopia's TPLF soldiers. An eyewitness in the Afan Oromo audio above describes a horrific scene of how families carrying corpses were made to abandon corpses and flee under heavy fire.
To
save themselves from further atrocities and to prevent the convoys from
crossing over to Wallaga and carrying out similar atrocities, Qeerro reported that residents of Ambo and its surrounding fell big trees and blocked main roads going west at 16 different places.
The
Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front government soldiers doing the killings
were seen heavily armed not with AK-47, but with high-tech foreign
weapons never seen in the area before. While they were taking Oromo
lives by many dozens, the soldiers were seen wearing bulletproof vests
to spare their own lives even when they knew people were unarmed.
The
protest against the ethnic-cleansing master plan, the Addis Ababa
Master Plan, is spreading from universities, to high schools, elementary
schools and to rural areas involving a diverse cross section of the
Oromo public.
Despite
the non-violent and unarmed nature of the protest all over Oromia, the
Ethiopian government has responded to Oromo questions with heavy
violence, which has been its tradition for the last 24 years of TPLF
tyranny.
In
a related news, the TPLF soldiers fired on students of Madda Walabu
University and residents of Robe town in Bale, southern Oromia.
Widespread violent crackdown and arrests were reported at Adama
University, Dire Dawa University and many high schools in the area.
Frustrated
by the tragic news of massacre coming out of Oromia, Oromos in the
diaspora tried to tip international media such as CNN, Fox News, Al
Jazeera, BBC and CBS to cover the events, but the media have so far
turned deaf ears to the plight of the Oromo people just like many of the
countries they are based in have done.
Many
on social media expressed disappointment that such a major
breaking/developing news is denied international attention. Even one
killing by a government who is not a US ally is sure to make it to
mainstream American media, but in the case of the Oromo, the gruesome
killings of tens of people on the basis of ethnicity are swept under the
rug because Ethiopia is considered a US ally in the Horn.
Advocates for Human Dignity,
a human rights non-profit based in the United States, issued a press
release and condemned the widespread crackdown against peaceful
protesters in Oromia, saying:
It is with deep concern that Advocates for Human Dignity learned of the appalling and atrocious acts of human rights violations by the Ethiopian go-vernment against peaceful public protesters and innocent university and high school students in Oromia region. In different districts of the region including Ambo, Bale, Adama, Dire Dawa, Gimbi and Dembi Dollo, where students and the public went out on the street to claim their constitutional right, the government responded with bullets and beatings and dozens are reported dead.... AHD expresses its concern that the government of Ethiopia continue to diminish its own citizens by extra-judicial killings and dispossession of indigenous people from their heritages. We strongly condemn the widespread and systematic violations of human rights - See more at:
The
Oromo protests across Oromia state is a developing story and the number
of people killed, injured, arrested and disappeared will emerge
gradually. The most concerning issue is the fact that the violence
against Oromo are not receiving attention commensurate with the amount
of violence suffered everyday under Ethiopia's regime.
