The Lamentations of the Ethiopian Jeremiah

One of the great rewards of an author is the readers’ feedback; when a letter turns to be am illuminating poetical text, the author’s task is limited in that of an editor. I republish therefore integrally the Oromo Ethiopian Lamentations that so much reminded me of the Great Prophet Jeremiah.

Thia letter – lamentation I received from one leading Oromo intellectual, who happens to be a polyglot, poet, entrepreneur and author. Well versed in both, the traditional monotheistic and aniconic Oromo religion, Waqqafanna, and in Christianity, this great Kushite is a convinced Multi-cultural and an original Tolerant. Having lived and studied in Abyssinia, Soviet Union and the US, Mr. Rundassa Eshete is the Chairman of the US-based Oromian National Academy. Beyond all his endeavours, Rundassa is a Great African Visionary, one of today’s pillars of the Oromo Literature and the Oromo National Struggle for Independence.

To me, his text sounded like the famous verse of Jeremiah about the two daughters, one in desolation until the time of her redemption, and the other in vain joy until the time of her punishment.

This verse becomes of the utmost urgency in our times, and I have to end my introduction, correctly paraphrasing the Lamentation:
- The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished,
O daughter of Oromo Ethiopia; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity,
O daughter of Amhara / Tigray Abyssinia; he will discover thy sins.
The Oromo Lamentations – by Rundassa Eshete

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

I must start with this deep essence of thanking you for your indomitably unconquerable sprit that advocates for the right of the subjugated Nations such as the Cush-Oromo, who are suffering the conquest of the Habasha People of Ethiopia, namely the Tigre minority ruling classes who are currently jailing tens of thousand Oromo youth and educated class for their anti-slavery movement practices.

Back in late 1800s, the Abyssinians conquered the Oromo nation by the military and intelligence support they have received from their Christian counterpart Europe, and now they receive the same assistance from the western world by labeling the Oromo nation as Islamists when in fact the Oromo people practice a religion that is so common to every humanity.

Today’s Oromians’ question, and their heroic battle against the occupying Habasha -Tigre colonizing rule, is to have the right to govern themselves by using their own democratic government philosophy called the Gadaa system and worship their God (Waqayyoo) who they believe is the Creator of all humanity and also including other universes.

While praying, we the Oromians express ourselves to our Waaqayyoo with an
ineffable feelings in trying to describe our love for all humanity and for our great fullness to our Creator, for giving us all the intellect he had provided people like you to make us free from the slavery we suffer and feel proud of ourselves once again as an indigenous people upon whom God has bestowed richness - upon our land Oromia and its inhabitants.

Indeed, an era of freedom will be unfolded right in front of our eyes, as wise men like you start paying attention to the plight of the subjugated nations such as the Oromo who deserve the attention of universalist and realist men around the world.

Dear Dr. Megalommatis!

We the Oromians are suffering systematic segregation, slavery, insult, and degradation practices, here in our own country, simply because there are some Harvard University American lobbyists never get satisfied with the good income they earn by advising the Ethiopian minority Tigre tribe, and by lobbying for them in the same way as the British Intelligence men did for Haile Selassie and his forefathers in the past.

Today, the Tigre tribe of Abyssinia is forcing the Oromo nation to celebrate along with the Abyssinians the so-called Christian millennium as if their identity belong to us the Oromians. But the truth of this matter is, we the Oromians are forced to celebrate the ‘Ethiopian millennium’ with anger and anguish in our hearts.

Simply put it, I am writing this letter to you to thank you for standing for the truth, and for standing against the inexplicably cruel silence of the international community in the face of this open and announced aggression.

It amazes me why the US-led international community is against the indigenous peoples of these planet. Since late 1800s, Britain and the US worked hard to deny the Oromians their rightful demands for independence. While doing this against the peaceful nation such as the Oromians, they concocted, instead, the secession of many states from Russia for example under the guise of a democratic formula that they will never apply to nations they believe that they don’t deserve the right to be free, and enjoy freedom in the same way as the Ukrainians or the Croatians do.

During Oromians lone and arduous struggle for independence in the 1950 and 1960s, the British and the US financed armed and trained the Haile Selassie regime's army and gendarmerie in their attempt to crush the Oromians by militarily means; and this was done in Wallo and Bale, the north and the south of Oromia. During Mengistu's brutal rule of in Oromia, alternatively the Soviet Union undertook all the financing, arming and training. The US, and the rest of the West, fed Mengistu’s starving millions of people, thus solidifying that dictator’s "development", which included even forced re-settlement projects.

Even in 1991, when Oromians almost controlled their territory thanks to the blood of their daughters and sons, the US made a last attempt to thwart our freedom by using a new ethnic-based, mischievous charter that brought forth a dummy president who figuratively seemed to represent Oromo interests while actually disarming the Oromo people.

That's History now, and the Oromians have forgiven and forgotten the unfairness and injustices done before 17 years, but the attitude of the US-led international community as regards the current Abyssinian Tigre Tribe colonization of our land is still sending the Oromians back to the phantoms of the past.

Practically, every nation in the West, starting with the US and the EU, is feeding or siding with the Christian Habasha Tribe. That is, of course, tantamount to guarding its backyard, while the latter crush the Oromo identity. The rest of the world is pathetically neutral, an even the OAU remains ambiguous in front of the death of tens of thousands of Oromians.

Our main problem in Abyssinia is the myth that makes of us "The sick people of Africa", which is rooted in the interpretation of the Habasha myth, the myth the "Ethiopian" alternating rulers have found it vital to evoke, namely the myth of "three thousand years of freedom and glory", in order to stay in power.

The truth in this matter however is that we, the Oromians, do not share this myth, the myth which the Abyssinians used to link their blood to Judah of Israel and White Europe. For us, the Oromians, the Abyssinians’ myth is just of folkloric value, fabricated by the Tigre /Amhara Habasha tribes of Abyssinia.

What is surprising to us, the Oromians, is that we never felt that some ‘Myth’, which supposedly took place three thousand years ago, should ‘come back’ in the year 1991 in the form of brutal and corrupt Ethiopian regimes to subjugate us till today. We fought it since late 1800s to dispel this imposition, this ingeniously usurped political fiction.

Apart from strategic interests in the Horn, which obviously give priority to the so-called Christian Tigre/Amhara tribes of Abyssinia over these poor Oromians, our problem with the West has also been their blind and total acceptance, if not fascination with, the so-called ‘Ethiopian’ myth. An array of their own scholars - the Pankhursts, Clapham, Gilkes, Ehrlich, Marcus, Rodinson, and a former American spy named David Shinn, to name a few, have repeatedly shown to us that the Abyssinian ruling class’ version of history is firmly implanted in their Minds, and their ‘superior’ Western thinking.

These men I mentioned are career ‘Ethiopianists’ whose every prediction about Oromia has been disproved by Oromia’s present existence and status. They can't wait to see Oromummaa is gone, or re-created as Habasha of ‘Ethiopia’, as if it were possible.

Despite all this, what is true for the future is that the new Oromian generation will be defiant against the Tigre tribe colonization over the majority, and against this Western-supported myth. By doing so, Oromia will some day join the international community from the outside, literally, "from the bushes," not by the permission of great powers, but via our own forceful heroic victory.

History has taught us that "thirteen, tiny, scrawny states," as Malcolm X once referred to them, revolt against the might of the British Empire to become the mighty USA, and it is funny to see the US resenting the fact that Oromia of not much consequence has to be denied freedom, although we go through the same process to re-create our own original self, as they did earlier.

True, some mythical-minded men will probably say that, more than the way Oromians want to be, it is better to make the Oromians in the way they want them to be; however these kinds of odd thinking only puts us at odds with the US-led international community.

Granted all what they think of us and offer us, it is probably wise for the West to leave nations alone. In reality, Western planned slavery for the Oromians (under the Tigre minority tribe) alone is not enough reason for their apparent disregard of Oromians’ rights.

What does not prevent me from being ceaselessly amazed is my inability to answer questions such as, should we the Oromians be resented for having our distinct Gadaa system and our Waqeffannaa religion, and therefore be subjected to colonization by a small tribe? Is it a sin to insist on owning and managing one's own affairs? Are we being punished for not buying the Abyssinian Judah linkage myth? Are we being chastised for insisting on preserving our social structure as our own traditional institutions, such as Gadaa and Hirechaa, stipulate?

Aren't many of our Gadaa system’s prescriptions precisely the same as the lofty tenets of "good governance" which the Westerners are preaching today?

No matter which way one sees it, nothing can ever justify the conspiratorial silence over this minority Tigre colonization over the country’s Oromian majority. The Meles Zenawi regime may be seen by the Westerners as accomplishing beats, all sensible reasoning and rationality, just because he fights the war of the West in Somalia and in Oromia, but the expectation that the Oromians will submit to another era of Habasha rule is naivety and narrow-mindedness at its most extreme.

The Abyssinian Tigre-Amhara may dream of dissecting the Oromo society Into its ethno-linguistic components, thus pitting its people against each other as they already are at it in Borana and Guji areas but this is an old agenda that did not work even for the astute and wily Haile Selassie. Neither did it work for those masters of the principle of divide and rule - the British colonialists of the 1940's. How on earth did our greedy upstarts in Addis Ababa even think they would succeed in this venture will remain a riddle.

In the meantime, a terrible war is being fought in Oromia today, with thousands of Tigre spies being driven out of Oromia, while the Tigre Hitler man Meles Zenawi is burning forests in his attempt to drive Oromian fighters out of Oromia by using young hungry Tigre boys as human wave, which is invariably, resulting in massive massacres. Thousands of proud and self-reliant Oromians are being forced to leave their environs into displacement camps. Here is a humanitarian crisis that is purely man-made, purely the result of the Tigre invasion of Oromia.

As ever, Oromians stand alone to face another, and much worse, brute destruction. The most likely possibility is that its defense forces will some day reverse minority Tigreans’ initial advantage, and advance to deal it a telling blow.

I hope that the US-led international community's silence does not mean that it continues supporting the Meles regime's absurd wish to subjugate the Oromians for the centuries to come. The repercussions of such an attitude, Waqayyo forbid, must be carefully weighed. The Oromo nation are a nation that has paid dearly for freedom. Any attempts to deny hard-earned Oromo civilization will only provoke the wrath of the Oromo people, and experience has shown the extent to which the Oromians can defend or retake what is rightfully theirs. At any event, I am grateful for all the hard work you have done for the Oromians.

Sincerely,

Rundassa Eshete
Oromian National Academy (ONA)
www.oromianationalacademy.com