HRLHA
HRLHA Press Release
November 20, 2016 The March 2014 Oromo student protests, which began at Jima University and spread quickly to Ambo University then in a few days to all universities, colleges, high schools and elementary schools in Oromia and continued for two months, captured the attention of the world community for the first time. In those two months, over 81 Oromos, mostly university students, were killed and thousands detained by the crackdown on the protest by Agazi force and silenced. After eighteen months, the protest flared up again on November 12, 2015 in Ginchi Town in Western Showa 80 km south of the capital city. Since then, Oromia has remained in a human rights and humanitarian crisis. The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) lists over 2000 Oromo deaths, thousands of disappearances and tens of thousands of detentions. Many more thousands have left their homes behind and are now living in forests in order to escape the TPLF sponsored killing squads. To calm the peoples’ anger- after indiscriminate shootings from both the ground and the air of innocent Oromos at the Irrecha festival in Bishoftu on October 2, 2016- the government declared a state of emergency on October 8, 2016repression-in-ethiopia