RESISTANCE AGAINST OPPRESSION AND STATE VIOLENCE: Exploring the Nexus between Ethiopian State Violence and Social Suffering with Evidences from Oromia

1. INTRODUCTION

Ethiopian state violence against the Oromo, which Bulatovich (2000, 68–9) characterized as ‘the dreadful annihilation of more than half of the population’, started with the creation of the Ethiopian Empire during the scramble for Africa in which Abyssinian king Menelik II participated and subsequently conquered millions of people including the Oromo (Baxter 1978; Donham and James 1986; Holcomb and Ibssa 1990). But as Bulcha stated “while we know a lot about the violence of European colonialism in Africa, the story of violence which was inflicted on those who were colonised by the Abyssinians is yet to be told and acknowledged” (2011:321). European colonial rule has ended in Africa, but the subjugation of the Oromo and other conquered peoples of the Empire continued to date. Despite the rhetoric of radical departure from its predecessor, every regime that came to power in Ethiopia maintained the status quo, even worse (Ibid. 569). They failed to bring relative peace and stability, let alone address large issues such as freedom, equality and justice demonstrating only continuity in change (Tolera 2003).

The Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government that came to power in 1991 also followed its predecessor’s violent system of rule and this provoked resistance that lasted nearly three decades. The epicenter of the resistance was Oromia, the largest and most populous state, which bore the brunt of state violence and the key player in realizing the fall of the ruling coalition in 2018. On Feb.15, 2018 PM Desalegn announced his ‘resignation in the bid to carry out reforms that would lead to sustainable peace and democracy’, which led to a major shakeup in the EPRDF and concluded with the appointment of Abiy Ahmed as the “reformist” PM on April 2, 2018.

Despite a long history of resistance and violent state response (Jalata 2016, 1993; 2002 Hassen, n.d.) and pain and suffering of the Oromo, little research was done on the lived experiences of those affected (Tolera 2022). Often, the victims are blamed for their suffering. Within the broader understanding of the nexus between resistance and state violence, this article explores brutal crackdown by security forces and the social suffering people experienced with particular focus on the peak of the Oromo resistance movement of 2014-18.^[1] It taps into experiences of social suffering and pain of civilians and engages with broader social suffering discourse. The victims are ordinary people engaged in everyday activities, Irreecha celebrants, children hanging out in the neighborhoods, and suspected/presumed supporters or members of opposition parties or dissident groups.

As objective recordings of the lived experiences, particular or shared, of people affected by state violence, these materials shed light on how resistance and social suffering studies use ethnographic evidences from below to speak to large issues of (lack of and quest for) freedom, equality and justice. They demonstrate that through institutionalized state violence, immense social suffering is made invisible to perpetuate the reproduction of invisibility both in academic discourse(s) and large issues of social invisibility. They also attest to the fact that state violence secures only false compliance, and people’s quest for freedom, equality and justice continues not in spite of state violence, but because of its excessive and lethal nature.

2. RESISTANCE AND SOCIAL SUFFERING IN THE FACE OF STATE VIOLNCE: THEORETICAL LENSES

Anthropological resistance studies have passed through different phases, ‘from one of neglect to the position of activist or engaged researcher’ (Wright 2016). First, Gluckman (1954) emphasized the maintenance of social order despite the ‘presence of oppressive colonial system’ (ibid.). This trend changed ‘as Marxist and post-colonial theoretical approaches gained ground in anthropological work’ exposing the ‘ways in which European powers maintained their rule but also faced persistent challenges to it by colonised peoples’ (ibid. p.3), heralding the second phase. During the 1970s and 1980s, anthropologists began focusing their attention on how the spread of global capitalism was affecting small communities around the globe (Sivaramakrishan 2005). Wolf’s (1982) and Mintz’s (1985) works ‘on the entanglement of local economic and political processes with global markets and systems of inequality provided key reference points for those who wished to understand how changing global economies led to sometimes unfamiliar and often ambivalent forms of resistance’ (Wright 2016, 3).

Foucault (1978) through his conception of ‘power is everywhere’ and Gramsci (1991) through “his concept of cultural hegemony, which Scott adopted by transforming it to fit his concept of everyday resistance” (Duncombe 2008), heavily influenced the development of the concept of resistance in anthropology. Consequently, the anthropological concept of resistance expanded with Foucault’s attention to pervasive, less institutionalized forms of power, and Scott’s emphasis on unorganised, hidden, everyday forms of resistance (Ortner 1995). Comaroff (1985) developed this arguing: ‘The fact that the oppressed are frequently forced to voice their protest in domains seemingly marginal to the real exercise of power makes them “primitive” and “pre-political” only to a vulgar, ethnocentric social science’.

In recent anthropological studies of contemporary activism, resistance encompasses ‘images of protest and dissent widespread and frequently circulated in news broadcasts and social media posts, resistance to prevailing power structures’ (Wright 2016, 1). In her entry ‘Resistance’ to The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2016) Wright demonstrates ‘how ethnography can reveal many small and subtle acts as forms of resistance, and as linked to more obvious and public forms of protest’. She challenges the traditional so-called difference between protest and resistance which ‘seems to be an expected and regular feature of contemporary life’ (ibid.). Therefore, literature on anthropological studies of resistance ranges from its more traditional, i.e., ‘a moot concept’ (ibid. p.2), to ‘everyday forms of resistance’ (Scott 1985) to the outer limits of symbolic understandings (Hollander and Einwohner 2004, 535–6) and yet to an ‘attempt to analyze the contemporary proliferation of protest movements’ (Wright 2016, 2). Despite the debates, resistance remains a productive conceptual framework in anthropology for highlighting various dynamics within diverse power relations, including ‘widespread acknowledgment of researchers’ responsibility to research participants’ (ibid.:10).

Discussion on ‘experience and event of social suffering’ goes back to the late 18^th century (Wilkinson 2005, 146). From the 1990s onwards, however, social suffering has been formally incorporated within the language of social sciences and became the subject of key scholarly works: Social Suffering (Kleinman et al. 1997); Violence and Subjectivity (Das et al. 2000); and Remaking a World: violence, social suffering, and recovery (Das et al. 2001). In their 1997 volume, Kleinman and colleagues applied the term ‘social suffering’ to a wider sphere of reference, that is any situation in which experiences of pain, trauma and disorder take place as a result of ‘what political, economic and institutional power does to people and, reciprocally, from how these forms of power themselves influence responses to social problems’ (1997: ix). Another pertinent work of the volume is Morris’ ‘About Suffering: Voice, Genre, and Moral Community’ (p:25-45) in which he argues, in the Western literary tradition, ‘suffering is about the voices (and silences) as well as the genres of moral communities that range from the local to the global’ (Kleinman, et al, ibid.: xxi). Criticizing the selective acknowledgment approach to suffering, he posits, ‘inclusions and exclusions usually reflect dominant values of the community within which a text is written’ (Morris, ibid.: 40). Morris advocates for an ‘expansion of the borders of moral community so that we may extend recognition to those whose suffering is otherwise excluded’ (Kleinman et al. 1997, ibid.: xxi).

Kleinman and Fitz-Henry call upon social scientists to bring a renewed focus to ‘the particularity of experience’ so as to ‘affirm that our subjectivities and the moral processes within them are forever in flux …contingent and open to transformation’ (2007:55). For Kleinman, an advocate of critical anthropology, it is in the context of ‘ordinary lives’ that we stand to apprehend the moral dilemmas and political possibilities afforded under present conditions of modernity; and that this is where we must start to engage with the task of building better social worlds (Wilkinson 2005, ibid.: 9). Das’s work on the Bhopal disaster, a methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leak incident at the UCIL pesticide plant, India, which claimed ‘2500 lives between Dec. 3-6 [1984] as a result of inhaling this deadly vapour’ (1995:9) is also informative. Although lawsuits were filed on behalf of several victims, ‘The large number of deaths within a few hours of the leak were attributed’, by experts, to ‘the behaviour of the people who tried to run when faced with this inexplicable phenomenon’ (ibid.:151), blaming the victims for their suffering.

Informed by these theoretical orientations, the article explores the nexus between resistance and state violence through critical analyses of evidences of pain and social suffering experienced by the Oromo since suffering ‘once encountered… may be used to illuminate corners of human experience too dark to even imagine before’ (Morris, ibid.:141-2). Despite institutionalized state violence to suppress resistance and secure acquiescence, the determination to fight for freedom, equality and justice continues taking different forms ranging from subtle acts of everyday resistance to popular protest movements.

3. METHODOLOGY

This work is guided by a methodological honesty and objectivity not by the empty promises of neutrality because ‘honesty, not neutrality, is the prerequisite for good teaching and for good scholarship’ (Berreman 1968, 395). It has been established a long time ago that ‘science, as a social activity, entails responsibility to society; as a search for truth … it cannot function in isolation from reality’ (Gjessing 1968, 397). Of the fields of social sciences, anthropology has a special responsibility to humanity, first because of its historical complicity with colonial expansion (e.g., Britain) and imperial aggression (US against Vietnam^[2]), which it had to redress, and second, because ‘science without humanity is a monster and social science without humanity is a contradiction in terms’ (Berreman, ibid.). Lévi-Strauss argues:

Anthropology is not a dispassionate science like astronomy, which springs from the contemplation of things at a distance. It is the outcome of a historical process which has made the larger part of mankind subservient to the other, and during which millions of innocent human beings have had their resources plundered and their institutions and beliefs destroyed, whilst they themselves were ruthlessly killed, thrown into bondages, and contaminated by diseases they were unable to resist. Anthropology is daughter to this era of violence: its capacity to assess more objectively the facts pertaining to the human condition reflects, on the epistemological level, a state of affairs in which 1 [one] part of mankind treated the other as an object. (1966:126)

This article argues, as Winetrout incisively posited in his essay on the courageous intellectual contributions of C. Wright Mills, ‘In our present-day world it is not enough to be scholarly; one must be concerned and angry enough to shout. It is not enough to understand the world; one must seek to change it’ (1964:160).

Within this methodological lens, this article is based on critical observation of and reflection on Ethiopian state violence and the Oromo resistance against oppression, exploitation and political marginalisation and the documentation of pertinent evidences. The analysis is informed by rights organizations’ reports such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), published works, conference papers, articles published on various websites, mainstream media reports, as well as survivors’ interviews aired on different radio stations and TV channels. Focused informal discussions and reflections on Oromo resistance movement, state violence and experiences of pain and social suffering with different people were a good source of inputs. The paper has also benefitted from the comments of colleagues, friends and family members.

4. OROMO RESISTANCE AGAINST OPPRESSION: AN OVERVIEW

The Oromo resistance against Abyssinian rule started with the advent of the oppressive colonial structure (e.g., Holcomb and Ibssa 1990; Gnamo 2014; Gebissa 2014; M. Hassen 2014) ‘characterized by political repression, economic exploitation, and cultural denigration’ (Bulcha 2011, 510).^[3] Although organized political activism like the Western Oromo Confederation of 1936 (Gebissa 2014), the Bale Oromo Uprising (1964-70) (Tareke 1996), the Maccaa-Tuulamaa Self-help Association (MTSA) (founded in 1963)^[4] and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF, founded in 1973), started relatively recently, ‘the Oromo did not always passively accept Amhara hegemony’ (Keller 1988, 161), and as Bulcha (2011, 321) posits Oromo resistance was ‘recorded only in its outlines’.

A brief contextual background to the recent Oromo resistance movement is in order. The Oromo believe Finfinnee (Addis Ababa (AA)), the capital of the Ethiopian Empire, is an Oromo land, which is why it was recognized as the capital of the Oromia National Regional State (ONRS) at the founding of the Federal arrangement in July 1991. In 2003, however, the EPRDF government decided that Adaama (100kms to the east of Finfinnee) will be the capital of Oromia. The Qeerroo^[5] and Qarree (Oromo youth) opposed the decision and protested throughout Oromia, including in Addis Ababa University (AAU) from which over 350 students had been dismissed as a punishment for staging ‘illegal protest’ on campus. Suffering devastating loss in the 2005 general election, the EPRDF government reversed that decision and Finfinnee once again was recognized as the capital of Oromia. Nevertheless, gradual and systematic concentration of power at the centre (federal level) and the suppression, incarceration,^[6] torture and extrajudicial killings of the Oromo continued hand in hand.^[7] These forced the Oromo in general and the Qeerroo in particular to continue fighting against injustice and for democracy. Ethiopian state used all means within its disposal including firing live ammunitions on protesters killing several hundreds, including boys and girls as young as five and elderly people in their eighties, to quell Oromo resistance against oppression.

On April 12, 2014 the AA City Administration (AACA) launched urban development plan known inconveniently (Gebissa 2021) as the Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Master Plan (Master Plan for short) to expand the municipal boundary of the city to “twenty times its present official size” (Sirna 2018, 85) into neighboring Oromia districts kindling organised and sustained Oromia-wide resistance movement popularly known as Qeerroo protest movement. The expansion of the city over the years had already increased its total area from 222.04 sq km in 1984 to 530.21 sq km in 1994 (Kifle 2003, 3)^[8] resulting in dislocation, resource dispossession and loss of livelihoods of the surrounding communities. The Master Plan was the immediate cause for the resurgence of Oromia-wide Oromo resistance movement that started in early 1990s, even though the history of organised Oromo quest for freedom, equality and justice goes back to the establishment of the MTSA and the founding of the OLF. Confronted by sustained popular resistance spearheaded by the Qeerroo and in the bid to quash a genuine demand for freedom, equality and justice, Ethiopian state declared State of Emergency (SOE) twice (2016 and 2018), which allowed the government to deploy the army nationwide, shut down communication lines, limit freedom of speech and make arbitrary arrests to it (ICG, 2019).

For the farming communities who faced multiple dislocations, land is more than a source of livelihood and a place of abode. It is the record of their identity because ancestral lineage is often traced through the place names, named after the different Oromo clans of the area, for example Boolee, Lammii, Eekkaa, Abbaadho, Marii, Galaan and Gullallee. To illustrate this, it is fair to present a story of an incident that happened in 2017. A 12^th grade student in Finfinnee had to miss a day of school because of the unrest on her street in one of the Oromia towns surrounding the city. To the relief of her friends, she had managed to safely return to school the next day. Over their lunch break, she reported the events of the previous day, going into the details of what had happened in her neighborhood. She recounted there had been severe violent unrest and that the front windows of their new house had been broken by protesters hurling rocks. Understandably, she was bitter about it – her family had just moved into this new house a few months back. Reflecting on the events of that day, and on issues of the land on which her friend’s family and thousands of others in the neighborhood had built houses, one of the victim’s friends (close biological relative of the author, but preferred to remain anonymous) wrote the following in her personal note shown to the author.

Those houses were built on land cultivated and nurtured by the hands of farmers. Farmers that had cried as they were forced off their only means of living. I remembered my grandparents, who merely hours after receiving their medication from the pharmacy in the city for their various ailments, raised hell trying to force us to take them back to their farm lands. They knew just as well as we did that it would be better for their physical health if they stayed back in the city and monitored how the disease progressed. However, we also knew that they’d never feel mentally rested if they did exactly that. Eventually, we always succumbed to their wishes and sent them on their way, with promises of regular phone calls and checkups. For them, land was not just a means of living, it was their home, the land of their ancestors, and that of future generations. It was history, and it was hope. It was happiness and sadness, terror and joy. Without their land, they were empty.

The dislocated members of the farming communities become daily laborers, guards, cleaners, etc. in the burgeoning new suburbs. Some resorted to begging, the most dehumanizing options. Up till then, these were proud-surplus-producing farmers, who produce magna, the best teff (Eragrostis tef) variety, for the wealthy city dwellers. Resistance to the Master Plan continued in the form of street demonstrations, market boycott, stay-at-home protests, road blockade, etc. On several occasions, protesters clashed with security forces, which often fired live ammunitions killing several hundreds and injuring thousands.

The turning point in the Oromo resistance against the oppressive EPRDF regime was sparked by the Oct. 2, 2016 Irreecha incident, which some call the ‘Irreecha Massacre’ (OPride 2016), in which over 700 people perished and thousands injured. What exactly triggered the incident is not yet known. The government claims it was the stampede triggered by "anti-peace protesters" that caused the incident. Oromo activists say: 'the stampede was caused by security forces, who fired tear gas canisters into the crowds, and shot live ammunition into the crowd’ (AI, 2017), planned and executed by the EPRDF to quell the Oromo resistance once and for all. The controversy on the cause, number of casualties and its impact on the Oromo resistance against the EPRDF will be discussed in section 6.

5. STATE VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL SUFFERING: EVIDENCES FROM BELOW

Ethiopian state violence and stories of lived experiences of individuals and victim families confront us as compelling evidences and those experiences are shared and induce immense social suffering. This section presents a few of those evidences, excerpts of longer stories, deferring detail engagement with some of them for a moment.

i. Hailu Ephrem, 16, killed by soldiers on Sept. 6, 2016 in Dambii Doolloo, western Oromia. Hailu’s mother told VOA:

‘After the soldiers shot and killed my son, “They told me to sit down on my dead son’s body” …. I sat holding his body with my little girl by my side worried they might shoot my little girl, too’ (Hora 2016).

ii. Ayaantu Mohammed – a 20-year-old ‘mother of four-year-old girl was shot dead by a military officer, on April 8, 2018 in Qobbo town, East Hararghe… She was three months pregnant. Ayaantu’s body was discovered after it was dumped in an area called Shambel house’ (Fasil 2018).

iii. Obsa - was shot by security forces on Feb. 25, 2018 and died on Feb. 28 at Tikur Anbessa Hospital, Addis Ababa. His father’s interview with VOA translated by OPride:

One of the children shot in Nekemte last week was my eldest son, Obsa, 15-year-old 7^th grader. He left home that day around 4pm. He usually visits a friend…, I assumed that is where he was. Then I heard gunfire. People started calling his name and saying he was shot. This is how I learned of the situation…. Because he was losing so much blood, through series of referrals we took him to Tikur Anbessa Hospital…He was shot on his right leg by the security forces who opened fire on them [while he was walking with other children] from behind…. Since he had already lost a lot of blood he passed away while waiting for the operation to remove the bullet from his leg (OPride 2018).

iv. Kakuu - the 5-year-old boy was shot by Ethiopian soldiers while his father was taking him in 2018 from Gidaami to Naqamte for summer school (Waqo 2019).

Their vehicle stopped by soldiers at Abbaa Seena, midway between Gimbii and Naqamte, for something that looked like a security check. But the soldiers started beating them accusing them of being Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) fighters disguised as civilians. Then they shot both, Kakuu’s father twice and Kakuu in the leg, both taken to Dhidheessa Military Training Centre. Kakuu was referred to Black Lion hospital for treatment of the serious injury he sustained on his right leg, which finally was cut off, a difficult decision his doctors made to save his life (ONN TV, Dec. 12, 2019).

v. Obbo^[9](Mr.) Morodaa Moossaa, 80, killed on 24^th Oct. 2019 in Ambo.

‘Mr. Morodaa … on his home from a pharmacy where he went to get some medicine, saw a young boy lying soaked in blood after being shot by the police. Mr. Morodaa was struggling to stop the bleeding and lift the victim up. While he was at such engagement to fulfill his humanely and fatherly duty as a senior in the community, the Ethiopian police shot and killed him on the spot inhumanely.’ (BBC 2019)

vi. Amanuel Wondimu, a 17-year-old boy [a grade 10 student, who worked at a church] summarily executed by Ethiopian government forces. Human Rights Watch documented the following:

‘On May 11, 2021, government forces apprehended and beat Amanuel in Dembi Dollo, a town in the Kellem Wellega zone of western Oromia. A video posted on social media by the town’s administration shows security forces taunting a bloodied Amanuel with a handgun tied around his neck. He was executed in public that day…. witnesses described how the authorities ordered Amanuel to turn his head and then shot him at least two times in full sight of residents. A photo posted on social media appears to show Amanuel lying down with his hands still tied behind his back, slumped over at the town’s roundabout… Since Amanuel’s killing, government authorities have intimidated and harassed Dembi Dollo residents, including Amanuel’s family members and friends …who were gathered at the family home mourning Amanuel’s death. Other residents were warned not to visit the house anymore.’ (June 10, 2021)

These are not isolated incidents, but part of the institutionalized state violence perpetrated against the Oromo.^[10] On the systemic crackdown on civilian protesters during the Qeerroo resistance, HRW (2016) documented:

State security forces…used excessive and lethal force against largely peaceful protests that have swept through Oromia…since November 2015. Over 400 people are estimated to have been killed, thousands injured, tens of thousands arrested, and hundreds…have been victims of enforced disappearances. Security forces…shot into crowds, summarily killing people during mass roundups…many of those arrested or killed were children under the age of 18. …several female detainees described being raped by security force personnel.

Lalisaa Tafarii was killed in police custody in Wallagga. His mother Aadde Caaltuu brought food for him at the police station only to be confronted with a hard and irreversible fact of his death (BBC 2020b). Lalisaa’s extrajudicial killing left not only his mother and relatives in shock, but also all who learned about this story as he was arrested (May 10, 2020) in a market where he met his fiancée to discuss about and fix the date of their wedding. His fiancée could even be more devastated as her lover and would-be husband was snatched from her arm and killed by security forces.

Ten days after Lalisaa’s killing, May 21, Amsalu Guddata, a mother of four, ‘shot in the neck and was killed in her farm field in Anfilo, Wallagga, because a soldier boasted he could kill her with one shot’ (Trueman 2021), target shooting competition. When her husband arrived at the scene, a one-year-old baby girl was sitting beside and touching her mother’s dead body, probably thinking her mother would respond to her little hands’ enticement (BBC 2020a).

The widower was beaten and severely injured by security forces one week before his wife was killed by the same forces. He said, ‘Now, they killed my wife who is supporting us all. The kids are bothering me saying ‘when is our mother coming’?’ It is difficult to know when the kids will stop asking: ‘When is our mother coming?’; when and if their father will ever tell their family’s tragic experience. What is known is the trauma and suffering will continue. Asked if those responsible for his wife’s killing are held to account, he replied, ‘No one was arrested for this crime, no one accused’. This shows the level of impunity with which Ethiopian state security forces operate in Oromia.

Taking citizen’s life in ‘target practice shooting’, in streets or in police custody by the military/security forces are not isolated criminal acts of individual officers but state sanctioned acts of violence targeting civilians to ‘instill fear among a much wider population’ (Blakeley 2010, 19). The experience of Amsalu’s family and the future of their four little children pose a serious challenge to one’s conscience. Looking at the picture of the surviving family members, one can tell, the family is already, to borrow from Fanon (1967), the ‘wretched of the earth’, and now with the young mother killed by a soldier, one would wonder if there are words that can adequately capture the life trajectories of these orphans, at that if they have a ‘knack for life’ (Scheper-Hughes 1992) to survive into adulthood.

6. HORA HARSADI IRREECHA SITE: CONTESTED MEANING OF ‘SACREDNESS’

Irreecha, Oromo Thanksgiving, is celebrated annually, the last Sunday of September or the first Sunday of October, at sacred lakes across Oromia to mark the end of the rainy season and welcome the harvest season. Hora (Lake) Harsadii in Bishoftu, Oromia, 40 kms southeast of AA, is the most popular Irreecha festival site with millions of attendees partaking every year. Irreecha is one aspect of the Gadaa system, the indigenous Oromo socio-political system, included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on Dec.1, 2016. Customarily, Irreecha festival is opened by the presiding Tuulamaa Abba Gadaa blessings and the celebrants follow him to the Lake to thank and pray to Waqaa (God) for the smooth transition from the rainy season and to the new Birra (Spring) season marked with ripening crops and abundant harvests.

Since 1990s, Hora Harsadii Irreecha festival has become a site where not only Thanksgiving takes place, but also where Oromos of all walks of life meet once a year and express their national aspiration waving a flag that represents an independent Oromia they envision. Since carrying that flag is perceived by the government as OLF membership/support, there had been growing tensions that on several occasions resulted in clashes between the Irreecha celebrants and security forces. Against the backdrop of this, the 2016 Irreecha festival was preceded by more than three years of popular resistance against the oppressive EPRDF government, its peak being a nationwide Grand #OromoProtest of August 06, 2016, that took place in over 200 towns and cities. On excessive state violence, Amnesty International reports: ‘The security forces used excessive and lethal force against protesters. By the end of the year, the security forces had killed at least 800 people since the protests began in November 2015. On 6 and 7 August …when an open call to protest was made in Addis Ababa, government forces killed at least 100 people’ (AI, 2017).

Not unexpectedly, the 2016 Hora Harsadii Irreecha festival became another battle ground between the Qeerroo and the government. HRW (2016, 13) interviewed Abba Gadaa:

The Gadaa Council had…expressed concerns to the government during their annual discussions with authorities about the role the government wanted to play at Irreecha….They expressed concern about security preparations for the festival including warning the government about the danger of a very deep natural trench that was located near the stage and recommended fencing it or filling it in.

In spite of the Abba Gadaas pleading with the government, a much larger than usual security forces were deployed, including many more security checkpoints. Moreover, ‘All witnesses described seeing the presence of military helicopters – for the first time at Irreecha – flying low overhead in the lead up to the ceremony beginning, dropping pamphlets to welcome people to Irreecha’ (ibid.:14).

The immediate cause of frustration among the festival celebrants was the absence of the legitimate council of Abba Gadaas from the stage and their replacement by the government officials and a retired Abba Gadaa, who was known for his loyalty to and involvement in the ruling party, to officiate the event. The festival celebrant Qeerroo expressed their disapproval of such a blatant violation of the tradition and the heavy presence of the military crossing their hands above their heads, the famous ‘X’ resistance symbol, and chanting ‘Down, Down Woyane (a slang for the TPLF-led EPRDF government)!’ (See Figure 1)

Figure 1.Protest @ Hora Harsadii Irreecha: first image (Midega 2016) and second image (Getty images).

Instantly, security forces started firing tear-gas, live ammunitions into the air. ‘While there is no evidence that security forces on stage fired into the crowd, attendees report hearing “many gunshots” during the stampede. This is backed up by several videos of 2016 Irreecha in which numerous gunshots and firing of teargas can be heard’ (ibid.:16).

The Oct. 2, 2016 Irreecha festival turned Hora Harsadii, the otherwise sacred place and land of blessing into a site of disaster that claimed hundreds of lives, injured thousands and forced millions to return home with a memory of collective loss. It went into history books as a black spot in the long history of Hora Harsadii, a place where harmony among people and between human beings and Waaqa is sought, a sacred place where Oromumma (Oromo nationalism) is nurtured and the commitment for the common good revitalised. The incident forced people to wonder if they were at some other place, a strange one at that, where Abba Gadaas’ blessings and prayers turned into a curse?’ witnessing the sacred grounds of Hora Harsadii littered with dead bodies, graphic images of people struggling to get out of a ‘very deep trench nearby, people drowned in nearby Lake (ibid.:17), people fell on top of others, and those trampled in the ensuing chaos’.

Hora Harsadii Irreechaa festival, OPride (2016) observed, 'will be entered into history books as the Irreechaa Massacre, the sacred grounds of Harsadii were littered with dead bodies.’ Concurring with OPride, Worku Gadisaa, a native of Bishoftu, from Atlanta noted, ‘The Hora Harsadii valley of death, weeping and grief, will be a sacred ground and is going to be remembered more than ever. …. you will not be forgotten. You will live in our hearts forever’ (Gadissa, n.d.). Henceforth, besides its sacredness, Hora Harsadii draws relevance and symbolic meaning from the memory of this tragic incident and will be remembered as a historic site where hundreds of innocent lives perished within a few hours. Its shock, in symbolic sense, was felt thousands of miles away, such as in Atlanta where Gadisaa lives, because it was powerful enough to be felt in the farthest of places.

The incident is full of the unknowns that beg for answers, probably for many years to come. ‘Based on available evidence, people ran in various directions immediately after the tear gas was fired. In video footage, attendees appear blinded by dust and teargas and unaware of which direction to run for safety’ (HRW 2017, 17). Some people said that they ‘couldn’t determine the origin of the gunshots’ although ‘most…believed they were coming from the armed security forces that were stationed next to the stage’. What was going on in the minds of the people caught-up in this terrible situation? Who was shooting what and why? And what/who was the target? One survivor said: ‘I was running with the crowd…the person in front of me fell over. I tripped over him. I got up but he didn’t…he had been shot and blood was pouring out of his neck. I was very scared. There were soldiers running around and shooting on the road and I saw other people with small guns but I don’t know who specifically shot him’ (ibid.:18). These indicate soldiers and other people with hand gun were there and shooting. A student at the scene reported seeing: ‘several plain clothes men shooting and killing people at close range’. He saw one plain clothed man shoot and kill a lecturer at Tepi University. He added ‘I saw him fall down but I could not assist him because I was also running for my life’ (ibid.).

These evidences confirmed the widely held suspicion that plain clothed armed security personnel had been deployed with a mandate to kill festival celebrants who travelled hundreds or thousands of miles to partake in the event. But, why does the government kill festival celebrants deploying plain clothed security/military personnel? Why do security/military personnel, whose job was to ensure the safety and security of the public, kill civilian festival celebrants? Why should a university lecturer and several other people be killed at this sacred place? The answer is, according to the Oromo, the Ethiopian state used the 2016 Hora Harsadii Irreechaa festival as an effective platform to demonstrate its most powerful and sophisticated apparatuses of repression to quell Oromo resistance. Or, to borrow from Blakeley (2010, xiii), it ‘engaged in the unvarnished brutality characteristic of state terrorism’ to instill fear among the wider population and secure acquiescence.

Several families have lost more than one of their loved ones (e.g., the Hirpho brothers from Gindeberet district, Oromia) on that day and many families did not conclude their grief by ceremoniously burying them. The questions that continue haunting the surviving family members are: why were they not given back to them? What happened to their bodies? Will they ever put this to rest? The incident leaves permanent trauma and pain not only on families who did not have the luxury of burying their loved ones, but also on the ones who were “fortunate” to do so. A. B (full name initials are used for the widower, while first name initial S is used for his deceased wife to protect the anonymity of the two families devastated by this tragic incident), a newlywed young man whose three months pregnant wife was killed in the Irreecha “massacre” recounts what had happened on that day and how he would like to (re)connect with Hora Harsadii.

Because it was our first Irreecha festival as couple, we were excited to partake in the event. Both of us went to the site well decorated in [Oromo] cultural costumes. After a short while at the ritual site, we [his wife, brother and friends] moved to a tree shade for S’s safety, who was pregnant, because it was sunny and hot day. Then, my brother and I wanted to take pictures getting closer to the Lake and agreed with S and our friends that they return to the town so that we will join them when we finish from here…As soon as we parted, shooting began and everybody started running to save their lives. What happened after that was terrifying. We could not know the safety of my wife and our friends. After countless attempts, my friend answered a call and told me he was hospitalised. I rushed to the hospital… and saw the corpse of my pregnant wife among other dead bodies in a tent [pitched in the hospital compound for dumping dead bodies]. My brief recollection is that, people were helping me regain my consciousness. I cannot remember what happened afterwards. (BBC 2017)

Asked at Hora Harsadii during the 2017 Irreecha festival, A. B said, ‘I lost my eye here, when I come here, I think I will see her eyes’, figuratively likening the tragic death of his wife to a loss of (eye)sight and vision, a state of helplessness. He lost his wife and their would-be child at a time. His wife had already been grieving the killing by security forces of her university student brother and her tragic death doubles the grief of her parents who had callously been robbed of their two children to Ethiopian state violence. From these, one can extrapolate two things. First, A. B and S had participated in Irreecha festivals before but had been eagerly awaiting the 2016 festival to partake in such a colorful occasion as young couple decorated in cultural costume, which sadly turned into a nightmare. Second, A. B will continue going to Hora Harsadii festival for many years to come, not to celebrate the event and enjoy himself, but because it was there that he had last seen his beloved wife, with final words to her, 'go to the town and rest a bit, I will join you there soon’.

These stories force one to think how the world around and one’s perspective on life could change forever instantly. As one survivor testified: ‘None of us could believe what happened and the fact that we all survived’ (Midega 2016). For A. B and hundreds who lost their loved ones, Hora Harsadii, that sacred place of prayers, festivity, nourishment of Oromumma and renewal of commitment to fight for freedom, equality and justice was instantly inscribed with a scar that can’t easily fade. Simultaneously, for the millions of Irreecha celebrants of that day and those who had been following the occasion closely from afar, it will be the place where the sacrifice of their compatriots will serve as a reaffirmation of the commitment to fight for a just cause.

7. CONCLUDING REMARKS

‘We are living in a violent kind of peace.’

Resistance against imperial ambitions and repressive rules of Ethiopian state goes back to the formation of the Empire. As the evidences presented amply demonstrate, state violence was meant to quell Oromo quest for justice as all oppressive regimes do by ‘instilling fear among an audience beyond the direct victim of state violence’ (Blakeley 2010, 18) because it ‘serves as a lesson and as a warning to all those who sympathised with the Oromo cause’ (Hawani and Kassam, 1996:33) “hoping to break the free, independent Oromo spirit” (Hasselblatt 1992, 17, cited in Jalata 2016, 36). The evidences also show the pain and suffering resulting from state violence are both individual and collective, since, as Das (1995, 138) argued, though located in individual bodies, they are “actively created and distributed by the social order itself”. From Kakuu (5) to Morodaa (80), Ayaanttu (pregnant mother) to Lalisaa (soon to-be-wed), the summarily execution in public of a tenth grader Amanuel, and to the death of hundreds of people in the 2016 Irreecha ‘massacre’, all show the systemic nature of the violence and the collective character of social suffering. Through this systemic and institutionalized state violence, the Ethiopian state clearly wants the Oromo people to know that they can, and will, be killed at will if they do not submit to its imperial ambitions. As Baxter, Hultin, and Triulzi (1996, 13) argue, the Oromo ‘not only offered a political challenge but also a cultural and national one. They would not be assimilated and were too numerous to be ignored. The Oromo movement seemed doubly subversive because it stood for a different moral order to that of the Abyssinian elite; which explains why the regimes used the cruelest and crudest forms of violence against any signs of distinct Oromo identity’.

Through its repressive structures the Ethiopian state makes these stories invisible. Even the publicly financed EHRC denied the military has used lethal force in Oromia, and blames the victims and some dissident groups for the pain and suffering people experienced as a result of state violence. Wondering why the modern institutions such as the bureaucracy, law, and medicine failed the Bhopal disaster victims, Das asked, ‘how do these institutions maintain and signal their legitimacy in the face of massive human suffering?’ (1995:138)

In Ethiopia, it is through systemic and institutionalized state violence, which can secure false compliance (Scott 1985), because violence only achieves what an 18-year-old student from Ambo told Al Jazeera in 2016: ‘We are living in a violent kind of peace’ (Foltyn 2016). Whatever this oxymoronic expression might mean in academic discourse, the student told Al Jazeera, ‘He was shot in his hand when the military opened fire at the protesting crowd… He hasn’t returned to school in fear of intelligence officers…He was trying to conceal the dressing on his hand to avoid attracting the attention of security personnel roaming the streets in civilian clothing’ (ibid.). There wasn’t any confrontation with the security forces when Al Jazeera interviewed people in Ambo. But there was no peace, people were scared to take the victims of brutal crackdown to nearest health facilities for life saving treatments. F. B, a resident of Ambo, ‘watched her nephew bleed to death after he was shot by security forces" because the police didn’t let them take him to the hospital, "for over an hour we just stood there, watching his blood run down the street’ (ibid.). These are the ‘violent kind of peace’ the 18-year-old student bears witness to.

The evidences were compelling that regime changes have repeatedly failed to realize true reforms in Ethiopia, and people’s quest for freedom, equality and justice continues not in spite of state violence, but because of its excessive and lethal nature. Ethiopian state violence did not only fail to ‘lead to Oromo acquiescence to Ethiopian rule’ (Bulcha 2011, 654) but, as Clapham observed, it also ‘fostered resistance’ (1988). Successive governments, irrespective of their ideological differences, failed to get nearer to satisfying people’s aspirations, i.e., freedom, equality and justice, which is fostering multipronged resistance against oppression, including armed rebellion often threatening the survival of the Ethiopian state.^[11] Therefore, it behooves students of Anthropology to investigate the history of peoples’ resistance - from small and subtle acts to public protest movements - against oppression, their struggle for equality and social justice and their lived experiences in the face of institutionalized state violence, or ‘real people doing real things’ (Ortner 1984, 144) because it is these ‘great noises in a little room’ that ‘speak to large issues’ (Geertz 1973, 22–3). As Wendy James incisively remarked almost a quarter of a century ago, ‘history is still going on in Africa, and we [anthropologists] must find a way of writing about it that retains a critical distance from the dominant discourse of the present’ (1999:20).