Of the AU’s itchy bottom and smelly fingers!

Listen to this African Union; if you go to bed with dogs then you will wake up with flies!

Africans revere wise-saying and proverbs. I am African and the AU is as African as it can get so surely the regional body must listen up when I introduce my ranting with yet another popular saying; He who goes to bed with an itchy bottom wakes up with smelly fingers.

Does the AU have smelly fingers?

Yes! I will tell you why.

The majestic African Union, formerly the Organization of African Unity has been sitting in the bosom of the tyrant, quietly hiding its shame from the world as one of its very own perfects the art of torture and repression.

The AU sits in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It glows and gloats about being the regional master for a liberal and fairly democratic Africa while its host, the Ethiopian regime has thrived over decades stifling descent and beating to a pulp the people of Oromia region.
The Oromo from Ethiopia’s Oromia region are a sad story of cruelty and gross human rights violations that has persisted unabated for years.
There is no sugar-coating the testimonies of brutality that flow from generations of Oromo descent.
As you read this, you may need to quickly grab a copy of a report that has just been released by Amnesty International on the plight of the Oromo of Oromia region in Ethiopia.

The report “Because I am Oromo” ( http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR25/006/2014/en/539616af-0dc6-43dd-8a4f-34e77ffb461c/afr250062014en.pdf ) is a summary of human ruthlessness at its worst. It reads like a rendition from the slavery years when Africa was wilting under the colonialism invasion, only that this time, the perpetrator is African!
It is a scenario that is all too familiar with the region; a regime in power aspires to stay in power and clamps down on any voice of dissent especially from within. If the dissenter is a community, then woe unto them because the regime will victimize the community from generation to generation and make it a crime to be born in such.
And to imagine that this is something that the African Union is aware of and has been aware of ever since and yet still persists is sacrilegious to say the least!

Because I am Oromo is a painful walk into the reality of the sufferings of one of the biggest ethnic communities in Ethiopia for the mere reason of dissenting with the government.
This reality is beyond comprehension because sadly, torture to the Oromo almost comes as second nature, thanks to an oppressive regime.

“We interviewed former detainees with missing fingers, ears and teeth, damaged eyes and scars on every part of their body due to beating, burning and stabbing - all of which they said were the result of torture,” said Claire Beston of Amnesty International.
Claire was referring to the myriads of real-life testimonies given to the researchers on condition of anonymity.

In Oromia it seems, almost every house-hold of the Oromo has experienced the wrath of torture and police brutality.
In the streets and in the village squares in the Oromia region sits the shadows of men and women who have been physically brutalised and maimed while emotionally and psychologically scarred for life in the hands of Ethiopian security forces.
When I speak of torture, I speak of state-sanctioned gang rapes to both men and women, electrical shocks, water-barding, thorough beatings, detentions without trial, forced disappearances and arbitrary killings that continue with shocking impunity. And this list is not exhaustive of the actual violations as detailed in the report.

The profiles of brutality are vast in Because I am Oromo. Infarct, Amnesty International says they spoke to over 240 victims of this brutality in a period of one year.

It is these heart-wrenching testimonies and the impunity of how the violation is meted that leaves a real bad taste in my mouth when I think of the AU sitting pretty in its headquarters in Addis Ababa as if absolutely nothing wrong is going on in its backyard!
The truth is that the people of Oromia region have been under siege for almost three decades now. The OAU knew this and the AU knows it too for they are one and the same, right?
So when the AU focusses the world’s attention to the many wonderful things that the continent seems to be getting right and totally ignores the situation of the Oromo people its pretence stinks to the high moon of repression!
Somebody please tell the AU that with every sip of Ethiopian coffee they take from their air-conditioned Chinese-built headquarters, the blood of the Oromos is spilling on the floor under their feet, enlivened by the silence they have mastered over the atrocities committed by the Ethiopia government against the Oromo community.

Somebody tell the AU that its emblem and its flag and its national anthem means absolutely nothing to the children of the continent for as long as the children of Oromia weep at the graves of their executed fathers and quiver at the feet of their physically tortured and traumatised mothers.

Somebody tell the AU, that the Clarion call; “ Oh sons and daughters of Africa, flesh of the sky and flesh of the sun, let us make Africa the tree of life” is utterly nonsensical if it does not flinch as the sons and daughters of Oromia are crushed under the whims of repression.

Somebody, please remind the AU that Africa’s children do not give up on liberty struggles – they as member states never gave up on the colonial liberation struggles so why do they imagine that the people of Oromia are any different?
Like I have said, there is blood on the floor of the AU as Africa’s leaders meet to deliberate and panel beat the continent to shape and as they do it sleeping on the bed of the hospitality of the Ethiopian government, they know that they sleep with an itch in their bottoms which they cannot ignore for they will surely wake up with smelly fingers!

*The views expressed here are entirely the author’s own.