By Tadiyos Mitku,
Agazi, the Ethiopian regime’s notorious army division responsible for the barbaric killing of more than 300 people after the 2005 elections, is again killing innocent Ethiopian men, women and children. This time the guns are trained on the Oromo people who constitute nearly half of the Ethiopian population. The death toll has been in the hundreds. Gruesome pictures of dead bodies soaked in blood, dumped in the streets and marshes of Oromia have filled Ethiopian social media.
The Ethiopian regime has not shown any remorse for the barbaric acts of its soldiers. As a matter of fact, the regime has been issuing declarations of war on its citizens. During the Oromo protests of November – December last year, the Ethiopian Prime Minister vowed that his Government would take “merciless action” against the protesters.
Now, at a time when the popular uprising has engulfed vast swathes of Oromia, the minority regime’s response has been to unleash its killing machine on the peaceful demonstrators. And once again the Prime Minister declared the Government’s plan to take “decisive action.”
The words and deeds of the regime are nothing short of Crimes Against Humanity. But it feels as if the United Nations, African Union and the self-proclaimed defenders of Human Rights are not interested in what is happening in Ethiopia.
Back in 2011, when the late leader of Libya threatened to take action against armed rebels operating in the Western part of the country, European countries and the US were quick with their condemnation which later extended to the use of force. Now when the Ethiopian regime has deployed its soldiers backed by heavy artillery in the cities and villages of Oromia, and mercilessly killing unarmed civilian protesters, their reaction has not gone further than warning their citizens not to travel to the killing fields.
The reaction of the African Union, its Headquarters standing on where the execution chambers of the Alem Bekagn prison used to be, has been a deafening silence. The tragedy does not end with the silence. It was baffling to see the same Prime Minister of the minority regime who is overseeing the ruthless killing of innocent civilians in his own country was a member of the High-level AU Delegation to Burundi. A skeptic might think the inclusion of the Ethiopian Prime Minister could be for the purposes of providing advice to Government of Burundi on “how to get away with mass killings“.
The acquiescence and silence of the AU, UN and the countries and organizations who profess to care about Human Rights, in the face of the mass killings of the Oromo people by the minority regime in Ethiopia begs the question: Don’t Oromo Lives Matter?
