በሲዳማ ያለው የሰብኣዊ መብት ጥስት ተባብሷል፤ የመንግስት ጸጥታ ኃይሎች በተማሪዎች ላይ ጉዳት ማድረሳቸው እየተነገረ ነው
Serious Human Rights Violations in Sidamaland: State-Sponsored Violence in Continuity as Ever.
By: Hawassa Times, 03 April, 2014, (Hawassa, Sidama).
Hawassa city under Ruthless security grip following legitimate quests by students.
At least the main gates of the city and all schools compounds are surrounded by armored gunmen.
Several shot by police and many wounded by police action since yesterday.
Social unrest and public arousal felt in Sidamaland.
It has already been asserted that the rigorous human rights violations under the rule of parochial TPLF leadership became the contemporary reality in Ethiopia. Many international human rights activists and organizations have outpoured and lauded their voices regarding the bitter situation of the rights contravention, and so explicitly along the ethnic lines. Sidaamaland has specifically been subjected to endless human rights abuses, massacres, killings and arbitrary detentions since the turn of 1990’s and ultimately culminated in the shockingly brutal ‘Looqqe Massacre’ in which hundreds of unarmed civilians lost their lives unlawfully by the state armed security forces. This continued to live as a collective memory among the suffering Sidaama public today. Letting aside repenting for its extremely disproportionate military actions on the peaceful demonstrators who were claiming their constitutional rights to regional self-administration, the regime continued to act vehemently rather in a way to suffocate peaceful political atmosphere in the region.
Supported and closely assisted by its puppet regional affiliate-SEPDM, the TPLF’s aspiration to sustain hard won victory and maintain political hegemony in the country’s body politics have forced the authoritarian TPLF to undertake tremendously hazardous measures against the clearly stipulated constitutional covenants-contravening its own declarations for ‘human rights protection, ethnic right to self-determination, equality etc’. The Sidaamas are particularly vulnerable to TPLF’s abusive measures since this people are the famous and leading ones to challenge specifically the regional restructuring of the federation-being forcedly amalgamated in to the so called SNNPR-‘prison house’ of more than 56 Nations, nationalities and peoples.
Since the unfolding of TPLF’s ethnic federal arrangement in the country, Sidaamaland has been under a special focus as the said people have been vigilantly claiming to exercise their right to regional self-determination. The TPLF actors, on the other hand, saw this as an assault on their pragmatic/sensible political settings which originally aimed to sustain their hegemonic power positions. Since the Looqqe mass murder, different tumultuous occasions have taken place where the regime took ruthless measures on the Sidaama civilian population and its young elites in order to crush potential challenge in their bid to endlessly transfer the Sidaama resources to their homeland, and ease the political friction which may occur when Sidaama’s continued call for regional self-administration is to materialize. This has given a rise to endless turmoil in the region where assault on the fundamental rights of the Sidaama nationals has become the order of the day.
In June 2012, the regime introduced a very niggling and/or troublesome agenda in their continued bid to put out of articulation/displace Sidaama administration from their home city-Hawassa-by rearranging the administration of the city through making the responsibility of administering the city common for all ethnic groups. Their stipulation clearly preordained that the Sidaamas must surrender the administration posts to either federal or regional government and has no right to claim whatever about the city. This necessitated the unprecedented mobilization of the entire Sidaama public as a national call agenda to defend, safeguard and free their ancestral land from ‘politicized invasion’ hitherto unparalleled in the history of the country.
This resistance movement resulted in the worsening of the already deteriorated peace in the area in which hundreds of the citizens were forcedly put in to jail, tortured, several shot and victimized. According to some analysts, the chorocratic TPLF has maintained this divide-and-rule policy on Sidama by controlling and mentoring its affiliated regional parties and effectively recruiting and mobilizing top officials against the Sidaama public.
Though the current situation and its whereabouts of the party’s said agenda cannot be stated in precise terms, the Sidaama public, at least curbed the detrimental ‘metropolitan agenda’-as it was called- by paying life sacrifices. By looking at the ostentatious reality, commentators on the politics operational in Sidaamaland came to observe that ‘the TPLF/SEPDM’s anti-Sidaama measures-to weaken the Sidaama nationalism, dismember/dissect their ancestral territory and split their resistance-has taken a form of constant and perpetual shape in post 1991 Ethiopia’.
This year as well, following some manifestly legitimate quests from the Sidaama high school students, the regime has unleashed the ‘hostilities of terror’ against the Sidaama public in general and the incapable and innocent students in particular. The claims of the students-in line with the very policy of the regime- is the quest to learn in their own mother tongue, to rename the schools’ name along the Sidaama parlance and safeguard their constitutional interests-the quests which are quite legitimate and do not negate the rights of others. These are some of the enduring questions which are deep-seated in the Sidaama public as well.
However, the incumbent military regime with fake civilian coat staged to take unnecessarily harsh and repressive measures against the innocent students rather than to deal with the issues amicably. A belief in military might-inherited from its past successive Abyssinian authoritarian traditions-is still found to be impacting the peaceful dialogue and democratic consensus resulting in the prevalence of conflicting tendencies in the greater Sidaamaland-this also negatively impacting the incentives of social transformation and improvement in public life.
Since April 2014-this month-Hawassa city, a capital of Sidaamaland-has been put under the security clench as it is common phenomena in the area under the leadership of this regime. The regional special security force, Ag-az-the cruel federal police branch and others have been engaged in shootings and firing on the unarmed and peaceful-innocent students for the simple reason that they are Sidaama or speak Sidaama language.
Despite the cruel police measure including shootings, torture and inhumane treatment of those arrested, the students have continued their peaceful quests for their genuine demands mentioned above. The situation is worsened when the students in rural high schools are also joining the stage. As of April 2, 2014, the police shot dead 3 and wounded many in Hawassa Tabor and Alamura high schools, and much more catastrophic injuries according to reliable local sources and eye witnesses. This figure of death is subject to increase or double since the hunting and torturing students continued unabated. As a result, the situation is feared not to result in another tense social annoyance and arousal which-in the due course-may mobilize and join the discontented Sidaama public in the struggle against the allegedly discriminatory and abusive TPLF rule.
Whatever the trend and the far-reaching consequences may be, the concerned state organs should deliver appropriately fitting solutions for the quests of the students-which are also quests of the larger Sidaama community. The military action under the guise of ‘maintaining public security’ has much exceeded its upper limit drawing its past experience of assault on the Ethiopian public at large. The regime must become conscious that military measures could not be-in the long run-a sound and lasting solution-rather than worsening the already deteriorated social harmony and peace-largely occurring between the Sidaamas and the incumbent regime-typified as vertical conflict.
Here, it is commendable to propose that the right-based, legitimate and genuine demands of the students and the public at the back of them should be addressed through compromise and peaceful dialogue. If opted different way, its detrimental/destructive consequences would be far-reaching and requires second thought!
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