The brutal TPLF minority regime has been arresting, torturing and mercilessly killing Ethiopians for the past 23 years. As recently as last week, the regime in Ethiopia made a house to house search and arrested Blue Party leaders and members who were in the process of staging a peaceful demonstration. This week the regime’s security forces arrested three journalists, social media activists and six pro-democracy bloggers (founders of a group known as Zone Nine). Yesterday, Addis Ababa’s killing machine that has zero tolerance for dissent struck again, killing Oromo students and innocent civilians who protested Addis Ababa’s new Master Plan that enlarges the area of the city by evicting poor Oromo peasants from their ancestral land and annexing surrounding towns against the will of the Oromo people.
On April 30, 2014 armed security forces opened fire on Oromo students who were waging a peaceful protest in the town of Ambo, Western Oromia. According to CNN iReport and eye witness testimonies, the TPLF security forces shot and killed more than 30 people including 8 students, and wounded unspecified amount of protesters.
Ginbot 7, Movement for Justice, Freedom and Democracy condemns the killing of peaceful demonstrators in its strongest terms and holds the Ethiopian regime fully accountable for its indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians, and for all political and social unrests that unfold with the killing. Ginbot 7 strongly believes that regardless of their ethnic and religious background, all citizens of Ethiopia have the right to freely express their ideas and wage peaceful demonstrations. Ginbot 7 urges the TPLF regime to immediately and unconditionally alienate itself from the “Gun solves everything” attitude and understand or comprehend that it’s about time to be civil.
The TPLF regime must understand that the Oromo students have every right to protest when the regime uproots their mothers and fathers from their ancestral land and sells the land to foreigners and its surrogates. The demand of the Oromo students is simple and unambiguous; it is to halt the forced eviction of the Oromos from their land. The answer to this legitimate demand is not and will never be killing people.
The recent crackdown and arrest of journalists, bloggers and human right activists took place days before US Secretary of State John Kerry set his foot on the soil of Ethiopia, and yesterday’s killing of peaceful demonstrators happened while Kerry was having talks with those who ordered the killing. It is clear now that the TPLF regime with its ethno-biased economic and political policies is taking Ethiopia to the brink of civil war with impunity. Ginbot 7 believes that if such a scenario unfolds, it could unravel this great multi-ethnic nation and has the potential to destabilize the entire Horn of Africa. It is the responsibility and strong desire of Ginbot 7 to remind the international community, especially the United States and other donor nations to save Ethiopia from this seemingly imminent danger of disintegration. Ginbot 7 also uses this opportunity to make a call to all Ethiopians to come together and save our great nation from the grave danger of disintegration.
Rest in Peace to those who gave their life to the cause of freedom,
We shall overcome !
We shall overcome !
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