Voice of Oromo Liberation (VOL)

Click here for printer-friendly version

We, members of Oromo Action Group are dismayed and angered by the World Bank's approval of a $60 million dollar loan to Ethiopia as well as the $400.6 million dollar credit to help the Ethiopian government with postwar recovery. We are dismayed because from our previous experiences we know that the loan will be diverted to the development of the state of Tigray, the home base of the ruling ethnic group in Ethiopia. We are angered because the $400.6 million dollar credit, which is meant to assist postwar recovery, will be diverted to the private coffers of Tigrayan leaders who are already millionaires. As you may be aware, there are more than 100,000 wounded and disabled Ethiopian soldiers from all ethnic groups. There is no mechanism for the World Bank to ascertain the identity of the 17,000 disabled war veterans that are to be demobilized and reintegrated into civilian life at the cost of $171 million. We believe that the 17,000 disabled war veterans are all Tigrayans. We are outraged with this blatant discrimination that has indirect approval of the World Bank. We are very concerned about the fate of the more than 83, 000 disabled war veterans who are not Tigrayans. We suspect that they will be returned to their home villages where they will spend their remaining days as beggars. Since they captured power in 1991, the TPLF leaders have been engaged in discriminatory policies that favor their home state of Tigray. If your office so requires, we can substantiate this statement with evidence.

In an attempt to expose discriminatory development projects of Mr. Meles Zenawi's regime and also to avert a humanitarian catastrophe of immense magnitude in this troubled region of Africa, we the undersigned Oromos and Oromo Americans hand-delivered a long letter to the UN Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan on April 17, 2000, and met with UNEP officials on May 12, 2000. We also submitted a letter with a similar content, dated September 14, 2000, to the Honorable Madeline Albright, the United States Secretary of States and several other concerned US and European Bureaus. We were encouraged by all the responses we received from the aforementioned offices. As we articulated in those appeal letters and expressed at the meetings, all financial supports rendered to the Tigrean led minority regime in Addis Ababa has been and will be used to expand and maintain the dictatorial rule of Mr. Meles Zenawi over the Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia. All international help including food aid to Ethiopia is consistently diverted to support the regime's expansive army. Thus, all financial loans granted to the regime will unduly burden the non-Tigrean people of Ethiopia since the sole beneficiary of the loans will be the Tigray region of Ethiopia, Mr. Zenawi's ethnic home base.

As we have shown repeatedly at several occasions, Meles Zenawi's government has been pursuing a discriminatory policy in its regional development in Ethiopia. Oromia has around thirty million inhabitants, while Tigray has less than five million people. And yet for the past nine years the annual budget of Tigray has been twice that of Oromia. Oromia produces more than 65 percent of the Ethiopian government revenues, and yet its share of budget allocation is the smallest compared to the size of its population. Hundreds of millions of dollars, raised from the international community through loans and aid grants for the whole country, have been diverted for the development of the Tigray state during the last ten years while southern states such as Oromia were deliberately neglected. We are disturbed by this ongoing and growing trend, with the latest delivery coming from your esteemed office. Impressive number of schools, colleges, highways, airports, factories, telecommunication network, school computers, and electrification of towns and districts are some of the projects carried out in the Tigray state while Oromia and the south are deliberately neglected in terms of development services. Our experience over the past nine years convinces us beyond doubt that the current World Bank aid to Ethiopia will be earmarked for Tigray, adding to the existing developmental imbalance. Such a discriminatory and unequal treatment to which your office is contributing has frustrated our people who have been losing not only their resources but also their lives by the misguided policies of these minority rulers from the north.

Menelik's colonial conquest was accomplished with European military technology and technical assistance in military science. Menelik confiscated land from the conquered peoples and appropriated it for the crown, the state church, and the colonial administration, which was decentralized and subsisted on feudal levies, slaves, and personal servitude of the subjugated people. The loosely organized colonial administration consisted of hierarchies of feudal lords with power of life and death over the subjugated people. Hereditary leaders were promoted from among the subjects to serve as intermediary between the colonized population and the colonial authority.

Dear Mr. Wolfensohn:

The regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi even failed to admit the existence of catastrophic famine this year in many parts of the country including Borana and other lowland areas of Oromia until it was too late. Its recent admission of the famine underestimated the affected population by more than 50%, a number later corrected by NGOs such as Oxfam, World Vision, and the Red Cross. At the same time, the regime spent millions of dollars lavishly celebrating its anniversary. In fact, it detained two officials who attempted to alert the world by taking BBC reporters to Gamu Gofa region where severe famine had consumed thousands of people. As reported by several human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch/Africa, US State Department, Survival International, The Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Commission of Jurors, Ethiopia Human Rights Council and Oromia Support Group, the regime has consistently muzzled any opposition and denied them their democratic rights to compete freely in the political process while improvising the contrary in order to win international support and legitimacy, of establishing a working democracy. Thousands of Oromos have been imprisoned, tortured and killed extrajudicially for no apparent reason except being Oromos and not endorsing the regime's repressive rule. And yet, the World Bank gives economic assistance to the same regime that will use it to strengthen its oppressive machinery.