Michael's Blog

    Xavier Selga Managing Director Coca-Cola Beverages Africa - East Africa Bottling S.C. Dear Mr. Selga, I write to you regarding your recent sponsorship of a select group of artists from Ethiopia to participate in Coca-Cola’s flagship African music show, Coke Studio Africa. For the first time this year, the show featured five performing artists from Ethiopia and that's a good thing. Whereas your efforts to open doors for Ethiopian artists to perform on the continental stage is appreciable, your failure to make the composition of the group more diverse is very disappointing. In a November 2 interview with EBS television, the Coca-Cola Ethiopia Brand Manager stated that the decision on who to send to the show was made by her and people in her circle, and that the group reflected “balance in terms of the background of the artists.”  However, this could not be further from the truth. It is a selection that completely disregards Ethiopia’s linguistic...

Michael C. Mammo When Shibiru Amana heard gunshots ring out near his home in the town of Mandi on 26 September, he immediately rushed outside where he saw people clamouring for safety and kids running for their lives. Across the commotion, he later told  VOA  Afaan Oromo, Amana spotted a young boy lying lifeless on the ground. He mustered up the courage and took a few steps towards him. It was his younger brother Lidata. Lidata, who was just 15 years old, had been shot in the torso. His transgression had been shouting a few anti-government slogans at a gathering on the eve of the Meskel holiday. A week later, enormous numbers of people from all corners of the Oromia region descended on the town of Bishoftu to celebrate Irreecha, an annual Oromo thanksgiving festival. When some began to protest, security officers responded by firing tear gas and live ammunition, according to witnesses and videos that later emerged on social media. The crowd was packed between a lake a...

Juneydi Saado, former president of Oromia regional state and cabinet minister, has recently resurfaced years after he fled Ethiopia following a fall out with authorities, and is creating a social media buzz with his interviews. Here is why I don't buy his posturing as a dissident of sorts:   1. He is presently lamenting at length about the monopoly of power by the TPLF in the EPRDF coalition but it doesn’t take decades to come to the realization that this is the case. A casual observer of Ethiopian politics can tell who the string pullers are with far less time, let alone someone who knows the inner workings of the party as much as Juneydi does. He had been a loyal servant of the TPLF for far too long and there is no way their tyrannical nature suddenly occurred to him in the twilight years of his political life with the EPRDF. He is no Young Turk. 2. In his VOA, OMN and ESAT (part 1) interviews, he wasn't taken to task for flip flopping on the issue of TPLF dominance....

This is a translation of a letter by  Bekele Gerba and other Oromo political prisoners  secretly smuggled out of Kilinto Prison on 30th of August 2016. The original letter is in Afaan Oromo.  In the soon-ending year, we have lost huge numbers of our young children, tens of thousands have been imprisoned while the whereabouts of several others still remains unknown. We had recently announced a three-day national mourning to pay homage to the lives lost, to which the public gave an exceedingly positive response. This has left our adversaries in a state of shock and, needless to say, it has us beaming with pride. We appreciate the huge sacrifices you have paid and your courage to stand alongside the people. Please accept our gratitude and respect for your selfless acts.   If we listen to one another, stick up for each other and stand in unison, it should not take long before the collective humiliation we are subjected to comes to an end. And it must end! W...

This is a translation of a letter by Bekele Gerba and other Oromo political prisoners secretly smuggled out of Kilinto Prison. The original letter is in Afaan Oromo. Over the past 20 years, the people of Oromia have been unable to exercise genuine self-rule, systematically robbed off their possessions, locked up en masse and doomed to a life of despair. In the past three years in particular there has been a thoroughly orchestrated plan to displace the Oromo from their ancestral land, destroy their language, wipe-out their culture and strip them of their identity with the pretext of the Addis Ababa Master Plan. Copy of the letter courtesy of Jawar Mohammed In the past 10 months, our people have been fighting tooth and nail with forces bent on destroying them. This courageous act of resistance is showing no signs of slowing down and is in fact on the rise. Nevertheless, immense sacrifices have been made in the process: thousands have been imprisoned; students have been...

For the past six months, thousands of people have taken to the streets in Ethiopia’s largest region, Oromia, to protest alleged abuses by their government. The protests, unprecedented in recent years, have seen Ethiopia’s security forces use lethal force against largely peaceful protesters, killing hundreds and arresting tens of thousands more. EXPAND Protesters in Oromia region, Ethiopia, December 2015. The government is inexorably closing off ways for Ethiopians to peacefully express their grievances, not just with bullets but also through the courts. In recent weeks, the Ethiopian authorities have lodged new, politically motivated charges against prominent opposition politicians and others, accusing them of crimes under Ethiopia’s draconian counterterrorism law. Just last week, Yonatan Tesfaye Regassa, the head of public relations for the opposition Semayawi Party (the Blue Party), was charged with “planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt” of a terrori...

Ethiopian security forces are violently suppressing the largely peaceful protests in the Oromia region that began in November 2015. Almost daily accounts of killings and arbitrary arrests have been reported to Human Rights Watch since 2016 began. Security forces, including military personnel, have fatally shot scores of demonstrators. Thousands of people have been arrested and remain in detention without charge. While the frequency of protests appears to have decreased in the last few weeks, the crackdown continues. EXPAND Protesters in Oromia region, Ethiopia, December 2015. “Flooding Oromia with federal security forces shows the authorities’ broad disregard for peaceful protest by students, farmers and other dissenters,” said  Leslie Lefkow , deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government needs to rein in the security forces, free anyone being held wrongfully, and hold accountable soldiers and police who used excessive force.” The Ethiopian governmen...