The Ethiopian Government is utterly responsible for the unlawful killings at the Ardsade Irrecha (Thanksgiving) Oromo Celebration

Appeal for urgent action:

The Ethiopian Government is utterly responsible for the unlawful killings at the Ardsade Irrecha (Thanksgiving) Oromo Celebration

To: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

Palais Wilson
52 rue des Pâquis
CH-1201 Geneva, Switzerland.

Dear Commissioner,

Oromia Support Group Australia extremely shocked about the killings of innocent Oromo civilians at the Ardsade, few Kilometers from the capital city (Finfinnee – Addis Ababa) during today’s Irrecha (Oromo Thanksgiving) celebration on 2 October 2016.

The Ethiopian Federal forces, racially affiliated and heavily armed, known as Agazi and part of the select force of the ruling Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), violently opened fire and killed more than 140 people out for the celebration (please see attached evidence).

Ethiopia’s tight restrictions on civil society and free media make it difficult to external sources to verify the current, mounting killings, and the exact details of the ongoing agonising situation. This situation is made worse by the severe restrictions on access to Ethiopia which affects foreign media and neutral international organisations to query this brutality.

Particularly, since November 2015, every day we are seeing and hearing heartbreaking images and videos of hundreds of Oromo civilians (including children) being beaten to death and killed by shooting. There are credible reports of severe injuries and arbitrary arrests in many locations that the Ethiopian government armed forces and authorities are unable to deny and publicly admitted the killings. We are concerned that this pattern will continue to worsen.

We respectfully believe your office the has a duty to use its diplomatic relationships with the reciprocal expectation of protecting human rights and legitimate democratic governance. These accusations reveal not only violations of human rights but also serious of a criminal act and legal process, and without external accountability, many vulnerable people will die.

We, therefore, urge you to:

1. Request and conduct a country visit to Ethiopia as soon as practicable, in order to investigate, amongst other things, the massacre of Oromo civilians in Oromia particularly for the last two years including the more than 140 killings of Oromo civilians at the ArdSade Irrecha celebration.
2. Raise this case with the international community and other relevant United Nation bodies, and punishment of the perpetrators, in line with the UN Guidelines on the right to remedy.
3. Raise this case and the severe and worsening trend that it represents (and which the prominent bodies, such as, European Parliament resolution on the situation in Ethiopia (2016/2520(RSP) by the European Union and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, 13 September 2016 that requests be given access in order for it to conduct a human rights assessment, particularly in the Oromia and Amhara regions.
4. Urge Ethiopian officials to invite relevant UN and AU human rights mechanisms, including the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to visit Ethiopia.

Thank you for your giving attention to this very urgent matter.

Sincerely,
Marama Kufi,
Oromia Support Group Australia

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Appendix:
ArdSade Killings by the Ethiopian army
Photo: 2 October 2016

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Candlelight Vigil at The White House in Washington, DC

To: All Oromo and Friends of Oromo in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area  | October 03, 2016

Greetings,

The Oromo Community Organization of Washington DC is holding a candlelight vigil in memory of Oromo sisters and brothers who lost their lives by a deliberate violent action of the Ethiopian dictatorial regime on Irreecha 2016. The candlelight vigil ceremony will be held jointly with the DC task force on Tuesday October 4, 2016, in front of the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., at 5:00 pm.

As known, Irreecha is an annually celebrated Oromo cultural festival celebrated in many places; and in particular, at Lake Arsadii site in Bishoftu, Oromia, which is the largest cultural gathering in Africa. It is a completely peaceful cultural ceremony where the Oromo celebrants annually to thank and pray to the creator for all the good things to mankind. It was in this setting where our people were attacked with an unparalleled cruelty of the Ethiopian army, by helicopter gunfire and snipers from the ground, as eyewitnesses reported. We lost over 600 Oromo lives in one day, on Sunday, October 1, 2016, to horrific atrocity of the Ethiopian Government.

Therefore, the Oromo Community Organization of Washington DC is inviting all Oromo and Oromo friends to come to this memorial candlelight vigil to honor our people who lost their lives on the Irreecha 2016 incident.

Respectfully,

The Oromo Community Organization of Washington DC

Police arrest prominent Ethiopian blogger

Protesters in Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, raise the Oromo protest sign ahead of an October 2, 2016, stampede that left more than 50 people dead after police fired teargas and warning shots to disperse the crowd. (Reuters/Tiksa Negeri)

New York, October 3, 2016 (CPJ) – Ethiopian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release blogger Seyoum Teshome, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Police arrested Teshome on October 1, according to press accounts and opposition activists.

Seyoum is a frequent commentator on Ethiopian affairs who writes for the websiteEthiothinkthank.com and lectures at Ambo University’s campus in Woliso, some 110 km (68 miles) southwest of capital Addis Ababa. Police arrested him from his home there, searched the house, and confiscated his computer, an Ethiopian journalist exiled in Nairobi told CPJ, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Ethiopian bloggers also reported his arrest on social media.

It was not immediately clear what charges, if any, Seyoum faces. Ethiopia’s information minister, Getachew Reda, did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment.

“This arrest of a prominent writer and commentator is deeply disturbing as it comes against a backdrop of government moves to stifle protests and criticism,” CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney said. “Seyoum Teshome should be released without delay and without condition.”

Seyoum is a prolific writer, and international media frequently seek him out for comment on events in Ethiopia. In a recent New York Times article on the Ethiopian marathoner Feyisa Lilesa, who crossed his arms in a sign of solidarity with anti-government protesters at the finish line of the men’s marathon at the Rio Olympics, Seyoum was quoted as saying the athlete’s symbolic protest action had struck a blow against the Ethiopian government’s carefully constructed image as a thriving developing state.

“This was what the government was afraid of,” he told the newspaper.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent months to protest what they see as government abuses and the outsized representation of people from the northern Tigray ethnic group in government.

On Sunday, dozens of protesters died in a stampede after police fired teargas canisters and warning shots to disperse an anti-government protest at a religious festival in the heartland of the Oromo people, where the protests have drawn the highest level of support. Human Rights Watch estimates about 400 protesters died in the seven months leading up to June.

Ethiopia was the third-worst jailer of journalists in Africa, according to CPJ’s 2015prison census. Several bloggers are among those held on vague terrorism-related charges, including the prominent blogger Eskinder Nega, who is in the fifth year of an 18-year sentence following his arrest in September 2011 after he wrote an article highlighting the use of anti-terrorism legislation to harass opposition activists.