This is a paper presented at the OSA Mid-Year Conference by Prof. Asafa Jalata. Read below the conclusion and click here for the Full Document (source: Ayyaantuu.com).

If President Obama wants to stick to his slogan of change, he should not leave his administration’s foreign policy on Oromia and Ethiopia to the bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of State and at the African Desk. Such bureaucrats, experts, and operatives lack deep knowledge and commitment for the promotion of democracy and the protection of human rights. President Obama needs to provide genuine leadership from the top by giving priority to the promotion of democracy and protection of human rights in Oromia and Ethiopia if he wants to fulfill his promises of making accountable corrupt, criminal, and deceitful leaders who cling to power through violence. Rather than continuing the U.S. relation with the authoritarian-terrorist regime of Meles Zenawi, the Obama administration should establish strong relationship with liberation fronts and opposition political parties and civil society organizations to promote genuine democracy and accountability to protect human rights and to reduce poverty.

We hope that President Obama will not listen to forces and voices within the American foreign policy establishment that try to maintain status quo in the Ethiopian Empire by supporting the ethnocratic and terrorist government of Meles Zenawi. The president “has a historic opportunity to fundamentally reshape relations between the United States and the African continent [in general and Oromia and Ethiopia in particular] in a way that will be truly transformational” (Prendergast and Norris, 2009: 7).
Of course, the Oromo people and others who oppose the Meles Zenawi’s government should intensify their various forms of struggle and combine with diplomatic efforts to convince the Obama administration by demonstrating the horrific crimes that have been committed against humanity by this regime with the support it has received from the West in general and the U.S. in particular. On his part, Obama as a transformational president has a serious moral responsibility to promote the principles of democracy, human rights, and social justice by stopping financing African criminal regimes such as that of Meles Zenawi.

As he has denounced genocide and human rights violations in Darfur, President Obama as the reformist president needs to denounce state terrorism, hidden genocide, and massive human rights violations in Oromia and Ethiopia, and to assist the efforts to make Meles Zenawi and his henchmen accountable for the horrendous crimes they have committed against humanity. Any credible U.S. foreign policy should reverse the previous policy that only focused on the U.S. national interest and the interest of the Ethiopian government at the cost of the colonized and oppressed peoples. The U.S. will benefit in security and economic arenas by genuinely promoting democracy and social justice and protecting human rights in Oromia and Ethiopia rather than protecting the interests of the corrupt and repressive Tigrayan ruling class and its state.

– Full Document (source: Ayyaantuu.com)