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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