THE OROMO UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND THEIR CHALLENGES IN ETHIOPIA By: Behailu Mengistu Oromia is known as its the most populous state in Ethiopia. When the Oromo people have been challenging the ruling government’s policies, the Oromo resources and people mainly targeted for the destruction by the government. The government elites have had political fear regarding the Oromo peoples national struggle. This is mainly due to the Oromo people are the half of the eight five million people of the country and they internaly believe that Oromo people and its resources are the key to Ethiopian polotical social, economical and cultural developments. As a result, the ruling government strated to deny polotical space for the Oromo people. Followng this a large number of Oromo people started to show their opposition to the government in different ways. This brought for hundreds of Oromo`s to be imprisoned, to be killed, to be flee to abroad as a political refuges, and etc. This widely contributed for the human right violations and political repression in Oromia. Still, opposing these violations and repression was ongoing among different Oromo group. Among this, Oromo students mainly opposed the government demanding policies that were undermining the Oromo state and as a result many of them are detained, interrogated, and tortured by the government. In school, we have learned civics and ethical education. In this class, we have learned that there is no relationship between politics and school, but what is thought in reality is: there is propaganda, we are learning about the currently ruling government. Mostly teachers who teaches this subject are came from head of sub-city, they are government officials. That is why they come and teach us about the currently ruling government is good. Ethnic discrimination faced many times on students in exercising their right to education. In Oromia, there is a right to learn in their language, but there is no material supply. In contrast, when we see the Tigray region, they have the best teachers with full of material supply. Its very clear that in Oromia there is no enough education and Oromos especially the students, cannot compete with that of Tigray. While the government attempted to deny Oromos educational leadership, it gives the right and prepares the Tigrayan children for leadership by giving a better opportunity for education. In terms of expressing culture, students of Oromos are subjected to discrimination. During their expression of their cultural identity, there is a time when the government relates it with the movement of politics group. There is no ways in which they can exercise their cultural practices and way of life. The events happened during celebration of the Oromos cultural celebration named ”Erecha” can be taken as good example for this statement. A lot of Students, Artist and other professionals have been targeted during their expression of their cultural right. It needs to do something to compact from the government, but nothing done yet regarding the expansion of the hostility Oromo students are facing in University. The other ethnic group students are used the word ”Galla” a derogatory word for Oromo Students. The word shows hostility towards the students of Oromos. In my understanding it means ”’Pagan” or ”without religion or background.” when we see this in detail it gives that Oromo students have no culture of their own, no religion or tradition in relation with their ethnicity. In different institutions, the clash between students was observed. The government always recognized the oromo students as they are the cause for the conflict. The mass arrest which is took place in late January 2013 in Addis Ababa University could be taken as a good example. Mostly the route cause of the conflict was about ”ethnicity”. In addition, there is a question among oromo students regarding ”Why oromo students was treated negatively in different universities?”. There is also a frequently raised question among oromo students ”Why we oromo students are always targeted for putting to prison or death?”. There is also discrimination on Oromo students in terms of opportunity to work. After they are successfully completed their education, they requested for job in one of governmental institutions. However, opportunity of employment cannot be given simply for the graduates who are not the member and not support the currently ruling government. The Oromo graduates primarily requested to be a member of the ruling party to get opportunity of work rather they late them to go with out a job. Most of the graduates are not the member and do not support it, as a result of this those graduates negatively effected. This means that the individuals who do not support the currently ruling party faced discrimination in exercising their right to work. Currently, this discrimination is frequently encountered in governmental work places and other sectors of society. What if those graduated students tells or shows the fault of the currently ruling government leaders and their practices in any ways in which they could have. For instance, the students made a research on their graduation. They may be interested of researching about their culture, people, and others. Some of them tried to tell and show the leaders fault, poor service given to public, and others negativity based on the findings they collected from governmental institutions. There are a lots of Oromo graduates who are putted to jail as a result of their research they have made. The government related such activities to political activities and it leads us to say there is no freedom of explaining idea and feeling, freedom of telling the truth, and leaving the real life etc. Mostly the mind and mouth of the people are in prison. The outsmarted graduates, professionals and journalists of the country are suffering in prison since they reflected their internal feeling with right based gathered data of society. Suprisingly, those actions are still on going and different medias reported as there is pervasive human rights violations and systematic political repression in this largest and most populas state. However, as we all knows, torturing, arresting, and killing could not be the response for such democratic opposition.What we are observing is while the government has continued repression, the more the students protest against the government was continued. Inline with this the government also continued thousand of Oromo students to put jail, to killed because of their resistance to injustice. Among those, there are Oromo womens and girls and they are raped by government soldiers. After being jailed, some of them are released from prison and they are confirmed that almost 99% of the prisoners are Oromo. As result they said that ”esir betu Oromigna yinageral,” this means ”the prison speaks Oromiffa ( its Oromo peoples language). Generally, there are different tactics used by the ruling governmenrt to controll and destroy the Oromo students. As a result, thousands of Oromo students are imprisoned, killed and flee to abrod from their homeland as a political refuges. In practice, Oromo´s peoples have no freedom to speak freely, they have no right to organize political activities, and challenge their governments policies through peaceful way. Oromo students are widely denied their civic rights, political rights, Social rights, and cultural and language rights. Victory to Oromo Pepoles!!!
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 18:19:29 +0000