Oromo Studies Association (OSA) Workshop

17 03 2008
Toward Understanding and Interpreting the Oromo Concept of Peace
 A
Workshop
Organized by
The Oromo Studies Association
 

22 March 2008
Blackburn Auditorium
Howard University
Washington, DC 
Schedule
8:30 - 9:00: Registration
9:00 - 9:30
Opening Remarks: Abebe Adugna, World Bank; President-elect, Oromo Studies Association
9:30 - 11:00
Roundtable 1: Oromo Peace: Philosophical Foundations
Chair:  Ezekiel Gebissa, Kettering University
Peace and Conflict in the Horn of Africa
              Lahra Smith, Georgetown University
Oromo Philosophy
              Charles Verharen, Howard University
The Oromo Concept of Forgiveness and Justice
              Charles Schaefer, Valparaiso University
Coffee Break: 11:00 – 11:30
Discussion: 11:30 – 12: 30
2: 00 – 3: 30 Lunch Break
Roundtable 2 Oromo Peace: Moral and Practical Dimensions
              Chair:  Abebe Adugna, World Bank
The Concept of Peace in the Oromo Gadaa System
              Tenna Dewo, Addis Ababa University
The Role of Women in Peacemaking among the Oromo
              Bonnie Holcomb, The George Washington University
 Traditional Mechanisms of Reconciliation among the Oromo
              Lube Birru, University of Maryland , Baltimore County
Coffee Break: 3:30 to 4:00
Discussion: 4: 00 to 5:30





Tibet and Oromia

17 03 2008

tibet.jpg……..FREEDOM……..tibetoromia.jpg

Few people allover the world knew that guy; but one thing is certain: Champa Phuntsok will soon be very, very famous. As his name suggests, that guy is a Tibetan. Still few people even in China know that he is the (appointed not elected) chairman of the Tibetan government.

Few words suffice to make know such people; and truly, Champa Phuntsok did not say much these last days. Regarding the national uprising that invaded like a thunderstorm the streets of Tibet, the renegade Tibetan Champa Phuntsok said simply this:

- This plot is doomed to failure.

His compatriots took to the streets only to be mercilessly massacred by the Chinese soldiers who prolong an illegal occupation of the vast Central Asiatic plateau that in the past only occasionally and briefly belonged to China.

Justifying China’s grip over Tibet equals to acceptance of eventual Iranian irredentist claims over Israel on the “basis” that before 1400 years the Sassanid emperors controlled the Eastern Roman provinces of Syria Coele and Syria Palestinia for some years.

Contrarily to his terrorized, deprived, and multi-dimensionally tyrannized compatriots, the warped Mr. Champa Phuntsok is not intimidated by the Chinese, as he is empowered by them to play their game. Having sold his soul for a plate of lentils (Genesis, 25:34), Champa Phuntsok represents the epitome of the rascality and high treason.

Tibet and Oromia

With an average elevation of 4900 m, the Tibetan plateau has become the theater of unprecedented despotism and cruel cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic oppression ever since China crushed the 1959 rebellion.

At a great distance from Lhasa, in another continent, a different, African, plateau has similarly become the theater of extensive genocidal practices, and racial hatred, oppression and inhumanity; at an elevation of ca. 2300 m, Finfinne, the historical capital of the Oromo Kushites, has been viciously renamed Addis Ababa to become the capital of the tyranny that ensued from the military expeditions of the 19th century barbaric and heinous ‘kings’ of Abyssinia.

The subjugated (since the second half of the 19th century) Oromos, rightful descendants of the Ancient Meroitic Ethiopians (who were centered further in the North, in the area of today’s Sudan), have been deprived of their lands and properties, terrorized, and exposed to multifaceted tyranny.

A name like Champa Phuntsok may not be known to the African Oromos, but the effect of such renegades has been highly understood and their immoral, treacherous and criminal attitude adequately reprimanded.

Oromos and Tibetans: similarly oppressed by ‘Ethiopia’ and China

The Afro-Asiatic parallels that can be drawn between the Central Asiatic and the Eastern African plateaus help us identify both, Tibetans and Oromos, martyred nations engaged in the path of Freedom, Independence and National Dignity.

Tibet is certainly larger than Oromia; with a surface totaling ca. 1800000 km2, Tibet is far larger than the Tibet Autonomous Region, a Chinese administrative invention geared to divide Tibet (and the Tibetans) and let the Chinese rule.

The Oromia region has similarly been reduced to ca. 370000 km2 as one of the administrative regions of the pseudo-republican, bogus-federal state of Abyssinia (fallacious renamed ‘Ethiopia’). In fact, the largest part of Benishangul province, and sizeable areas peremptorily attached to the Amhara province belong to Oromia, being demanded by the Oromo liberation parties, movements, associations, and organizations. According to correct estimates, Oromia stretches over a surface of ca. 500000.

Tibetan population attains ca. 5 m people, being in decline since 1959, due to persecution, oppression, forced displacement and assimilation, tyranny and physical extermination.

Oromos total ca. 40 million people, being by far the largest ethnic group in the racist and totalitarian hell of Abyssinia; Oromos live also in Kenya (Northern province).

In the same way Tibetans are ethnically and linguistically different from the Chinese, the Oromos are marked by striking ethno-linguistic divergence as regards the ruling Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians. Part of the Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibetan is different from Chinese, and even the formation of the so-called Sino-Tibetan linguistic family is largely hypothetical.

Things are even clearer in the African plateau; the Modern Oromo language belongs to the Kushitic family of languages (along with Somali, Sidama, Berberic and Hausa), and they are all very different from the Semitic languages (like the Ancient Assyrian, Babylonian and Phoenician languages, Aramaic and Modern Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic) to which belong the languages spoken by the Amhara (Amharic) and the Tigray (Tigrigna) Abyssinians that have been derived from Gueze (Ancient Axumite Abyssinian).

Oromos and Tibetans: Parallel Paths to Liberation

After having been disputed by Mongols, Nepalese and Chinese, Tibet became part of the colonial rivalry between Russia and England in Central Asia; the 1903 – 1904 British expeditions obliged the Dalai Lama to flee to Urga in Mongolia. After signing a treaty with a delegation of monks the British force left Lhasa on September 24, 1904. The Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1906 confirmed the Anglo-Tibetan treaty, and one year later in the Anglo-Russian Convention, Britain recognized the ‘suzerainty of China over Tibet’. The Anglo-Russian rivalry over Tibet is hidden in-between the lines of the notorious Tibetan – Mongolian treaty of 1913 and the Simla Convention (1914). While trying to keep the Russians far, the British even when they recognized Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, never admitted explicitly that Tibet would be a regular Chinese province. With China abolishing monarchy and establishing a republic in 1912, the Chinese control over Tibet became nominal.

Only after the rise of the People’s Republic of China, the Beijing authorities expressed a nationalistic interest for Tibet. According to a 1951 agreement between the Tibetan and Chinese central governments, the Dalai Lama-ruled Tibetan area was supposed to be a highly autonomous area of China. However, the terrible cultural clash with the communists in Beijing, the diverse interpretations of the terms of the agreement as regards the different provinces of Tibet, and the involvement of America precipitated the 1959 insurrection and the Chinese military intervention.

All this sounds very familiar to the African Oromos; British military and diplomatic experts voluntarily become the advisors of the barbaric pseudo-kings of Abyssinia, sold them guns, accepted the slave trade that the Abyssinian rulers extensively practiced (although Britain fought against it in adjacent Sudan!), and tolerated the genocides undertaken by the Amhara and Tigray military rulers against the subjugated Oromos and other Kushitic nations. All that mattered for Britain was to prevent Italy from seizing control over the entire area of the Horn of Africa and the African plateau.

What the Oromos experienced since 1865 the Tibetans started undergoing almost 100 years later. A brief enumeration of the similar Chinese and Abyssinian practices involves:

1. Mass extermination

2. Extrajudicial killings

3. Imprisonment and tortures

4. Internal and external displacement

5. Selection of traitors ready to supposedly represent their nations – against their national interests, and to the benefit of the invading forces (Chinese and Amhara – Tigray Abyssinians)

6. Extensive implantation of new settlers (Chinese in Tibet, Amhara and Tigray naftanya in Oromo Ethiopia)

7. Brutally enforced cultural assimilation (the Chinese practiced it by destroying the Buddhist temples and by forcing Tibetans to accept the Communist indoctrination, whereas the Abyssinians implemented it by desecrating the Oromo sacred places and by erecting their infamous and profane pseudo-churches)

8. Unprecedented linguistic assimilation (by prohibiting the use of Tibetan and Oromo languages at the level of the education and the administration throughout Tibet and Oromia for long periods)

9. Cultural and national discrimination (involving use of pejorative descriptions, and state-promoted disrespect as regards the Oromo Religion Waqqefanna and Buddhism).

We intend to terminate this article, calling every humanist and political activist, every free citizen concerned, to join forces with the Tibetan Government in exile and with the Oromo Liberation parties, movements, associations, and organizations in view of

A. the most definite eradication of the Chinese presence from Lhasa and Tibet, and
B. the most unambiguous obliteration of the Amhara – Tigray existence from Finfinne and Oromia.

For more visit buzzle.