By Abraasaa Dirree | July 6, 2013
Despite George Santayana’s admonition that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, we, Oromos, are better forgetters than rememberers.
Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Ellie Wiesel once wrote: “without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” We, Oromos, must heed Ellie Wiesel’s words. We must memorialize the Aanolee and Calanqoo genocides. We must ensure that the Aanolee and Calanqoo victims and lessons are never forgotten. We must commemorate, each year, the thousands of innocent men, women and children massacred at the hands of the Abyssinians during the most heinous chapter in Oromo history – colonization. We must pay tribute to the courage of the Oromo people in that time of gravest peril.
But to honour the victims, it is not enough simply to remember. Truly remembering the Aanolee and Calanqoo genocides must also be an understanding and an undertaking.
On one hand, it is an understanding that we continue to live under occupation – oppressed, exploited, and dehumanized. Although the name “empire” has been removed from the constitution, Ethiopia remains an empire. And the relation of Oromiya to Ethiopia is still colonial. The current Ethiopian government and other Abyssinians forces are using the mantra of Ethiopian unity or one Ethiopia (Ethiopian empire in disguise) to protect ill-gotten gains and privileges enjoyed at the expense of our people.
We see it in in the number of Oromo political prisoners.
We see it the continued harassment of Oromo elders, intellectuals, artists, students and businesses.
We see it in the ethnic cleansing policy of the Ethiopian government. The Ethiopian government purposely arms minority groups and back-stops them through special police force in order to kill and drive Oromos away from their ancestral land.
We see it the land grabbing, without compensation, where Oromo farmers are being driven from their ancestral homes and land they rely on to grow food to eat. The goal is to uproot the thriving Oromo communities and make them landless slave labourers in their own homeland with untold misery and suffering.
We see it in the systematic economic marginalization of Oromos.
We see it in the high level of unemployment among Oromo youth.
We see it in the wanton destruction of Oromiya’s environment – burning forests and destroying the flora and fauna.
We see it in the reckless exploitations of Oromiya’s natural resources with no regards whatsoever for the sustainability and environmental concerns.
We see it in the low quality education deliberately devised for Oromiya region.
We see it in the absence of Oromo students in higher education.
We see it in the continued negative re-branding of Oromos – systematic demonization of anything and everything about Oromo – while they continue to further whitewash their historical wrongs and get mired in mass self-hypnosis to glorify their myths as history.
We see it in everything that has been done to deprive Oromos of any element of power (be it at regional, judicial, municipal, or local levels). Even within the surrogate organizations such as the OPDO, the power base resides with non-Oromo members. Of course, within Oromiya, the coercive machinery of the state is virtually manned by non Oromos.
On the other hand, it is an undertaking of a solemn responsibility to fight for our freedom. Here, the decisive factor to bear in mind is that national liberation movements such as ours are historically and socially progressive forces fighting to end the colonial bondage. So, history is on our side and that is why the Ethiopian colonial policy of suppression and exploitation of Oromos is doomed to defeat, slowly, but surely.
Finally, I would like to call upon all the diaspora Oromo communities, starting 2014, to make Aanolee and Calanqoo Memorial Days realty. Moreover, we need our historians to provide us with vivid accounts/facts about the Aanolee and Calanqoo genocides and tell it the way it should be told so that we can establish fixed date(s) for the annual commemoration and teach the current and future generations to ensure that those memories are never lost. We must use it as source of passion and creative fire to light the Orommummaa flame in each and every Oromo soul in order to re-dedicate and re-strengthen our resolve to free ourselves from the colonial yoke, once and for all.
Oromiya shall be free!
Abraasaa Dirree
July 5, 2013
Abraasaa Dirree can be reached at abraasaa.dirree@gmail.com
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