Oromia-Ethiopia: Prominent Oromo Prosecutor Abandons Zenawi’s Regime
Mr. Leggese Alemu Gurmu, who was the Director of the Legal Research, Drafting, Training and Public Legal Education Directorate in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), has abandoned Zenawi’s regime, according to independent news sources, Oromedia and the Indian Ocean Newsletter. Mr. Leggese Alemu Gurmu is an Oromo, the largest nation in the Horn of Africa and Ethiopia, but a nation politically and economically marginalized and repressed for the last 120 years in its own homeland, Oromia.
Mr. Leggese Alemu Gurmu was a member of the delegation led by the Minister of Justice, Mr. Berhanu Hailu, on a trip to the United States when he decided to not return to Ethiopia in July 2011.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has increasingly become the most oppressive apparatus of the Meles Zenawi regime as it implements a slew of recently promulgated controversial legislation, which human rights organizations have called “draconian.”
For instance, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) evaluated the Civil Society Law, one of the recently promulgated draconian laws, as “inherently abusive of basic human rights.” Similarly, the Anti-Terror Law was grilled by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) as far-reaching and vague during the latest review of Ethiopia’s compliance to international human rights laws and covenants. Another legislation, the Press Proclamation, was criticized by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) for its lack of inputs from the public and the opposition, and its continued repression of press rights.
Some observers have noted that the defection of one of the highest-level officials in MoJ, Mr. Leggese Alemu Gurmu, may indicate the divisions that have slowly emerged among prosecutors in MoJ as MoJ ratchets up the implementation of the aforementioned laws. Especially, the harsh implementation of these laws on Oromo political dissidents, who are regularly rounded up under the pretext of breaking this law and that law, and thrown into prison without due process, will most likely continue to cause more defections from the MoJ.
Probably, a similar case, where a series of laws had been used to institute tyranny and domination, is the Apartheid Legislation in South Africa. Between 1948, when the first Apartheid law was enacted, and the early 1990′s, when the Apartheid laws were repealed one by one, the Nationalist government put in use some 20 laws to form, sustain and protect the Apartheid oppressive system. In short, the Apartheid government shielded its violations of human rights by enacting laws that had effectively made the violations of human rights by the government legal. Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi seems to be using a similar approach of legalizing human rights violations through legislation.
10 Comments
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Jiregna said,
August 26, 2011 @ 8:48 am
Here we go Woyane. I know Legesse personaly and he is honest and professional person above all a dynamic head. he must be one of the best legal mind in Oromia land. He can not be tool of Woyane to oppress its own people. I hope he will find a place to live in peace
Solomon said,
August 26, 2011 @ 8:53 am
Nazi and fascist regimes whether old or new, white or black can only have Nazi laws that exclusively protects the Nazi system and its leaders.
Nothing new! Unity and sustained resistance is a way out of the inhuman criminal strangle. They can not stop the forward march of history and the progressive social change.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.” ~Mahatma Gandhi
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Kutu said,
August 26, 2011 @ 10:34 am
I salute Obbo Legesse for the historic determination he made in avoiding the oppressive system and decided to remain behind in America. U hv betrayed the state that legislates laws in order to ligitimize its colonial structure.I salute Obbo Legesse for the historic determination he made in avoiding the oppressive system and decided to remain behind in America. U hv betrayed the state that legislates laws in order to ligitimize its colonial structure.
zelalem said,
August 26, 2011 @ 5:44 pm
Bravo lege, my previous classmate, you really did great job! and it would be wonderful if you publicise the crime, and existing reality in Ethiopia through one of the main medias, like voice of america or gadaa.com. We have to fight tyrany from all direction.
I ill try to reach you through my own way.
victory for oppressed people!
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Hawwinee Barii said,
August 27, 2011 @ 5:44 am
Obbo Laggese,
Congratulation for coming to the decision not to serve Ethiopian colonial regime in Oromia.Now, it is your chance to compensate Oromia with the knowledge you have. In your future endeavor, specially your interaction with Oromians, continue to be independent thinker. This is my brotherly advice for us you start new life in foreign land.
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Abdi Ibrahim said,
August 27, 2011 @ 9:01 am
Legesse!!!! I do n’t say anythink more ,but go ahead as a true man.
Good JOB Legesse.
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Bisho jarso said,
August 28, 2011 @ 8:40 am
How an Ethiopian slave became a South African teacherSandra Rowoldt Shell
University of Cape Town
Bisho Jarsa, trained as a domestic servant, went on to become a teacher
When Neville Alexander used to visit his maternal grandmother Bisho Jarsa as a boy, he never suspected the extraordinary story of how she had come from Ethiopia to the South African city of Port Elizabeth.
Bisho was one of a group of Ethiopian slaves freed by a British warship in 1888 off the coast of Yemen, then taken round the African coast and placed in the care of missionaries in South Africa.
“We were overawed in her presence and by the way she would mumble to herself in this language none of us understood,” recalls Mr Alexander, now 74.
This was Ethiopia’s Oromo language, Bisho’s mother tongue, which she reverted to as she grew older.
Mr Alexander, who was a political prisoner in the 1960s, sharing Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, is today one of South Africa’s most eminent educationists.
He remembers his younger siblings asking their mother, Dimbiti: “What’s Ma talking about… what’s the matter with her? What’s she saying?”
Their mother would respond: “Don’t worry about Ma… she’s just talking to God.”
When he was in his late teens, his mother told him about his Ethiopian origins but Mr Alexander thinks even she may not have known all the details, which he only discovered when he was in his fifties.
He found out that the freed Ethiopians had all been interviewed on their arrival in South Africa.
The story began on 16 September 1888, when Commander Charles E Gissing, aboard the British gunship HMS Osprey, intercepted three dhows carrying Ethiopians to the slave markets in the Arabian port of Jeddah.
Sold for maize
Commander Gissing’s mission was part of British attempts to end the slave trade – a trade that London had supported until 1807, when it was abolished across the British Empire.
On their arrival in Yemen, the children were looked after by local families and missionaries
All the 204 slaves freed by Commander Gissing were from the Oromo ethnic group and most were children.
The Oromo, despite being the most populous of all Ethiopian groups, had long been dominated by the country’s Amhara and Tigrayan elites and were regularly used as slaves.
Emperor Menelik II, who has been described as Ethiopia’s “greatest slave entrepreneur”, taxed the trade to pay for guns and ammunition as he battled for control of the whole country, which he ruled from 1889 to 1913.
Bisho Jarsa was among the 183 children found on the dhows.
She had been orphaned with her two brothers, as a result of the drought and disease that swept through Ethiopia in 1887, and left in the care of one of her father’s slaves.
But the continuing threat of starvation resulted in Bisho being sold to slave merchants for a small quantity of maize.
After a journey of six weeks, she reached the Red Sea, where she was put on board one of the Jeddah-bound dhows intercepted by HMS Osprey.
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The missionaries recorded detailed histories of the former slaves, educated them and baptised them into the Christian faith”
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Her first memory of the British was the sound of automatic gunfire blasting into the sails and rigging of the slave dhow while she huddled below deck with the other Oromo children.
They all fully expected to be eaten as this is what the Arab slave traders had told them would happen if they were captured by the British.
But Commander Gissing took the Oromo to Aden, where the British authorities had to decide what to do with the former slaves.
The Muslim children were adopted by local families. The remaining children were placed in the care of a mission of the Free Church of Scotland – but the harsh climate took its toll and by the end of the year 11 had died.
The missionaries sought an alternative home for them, eventually settling on another of the Church’s missions, the Lovedale Institution in South Africa’s Eastern Cape – on the other side of the continent.
Bisho and the rest of the children reached Lovedale on 21 August 1890.
The missionaries recorded detailed histories of the former slaves, educated them and baptised them into the Christian faith.
Mandela fascinated
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Her real liberation was not the British warship but the education she later received in South Africa”
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Neville Alexander
Life was tough here too, however, and by 1903, at least another 18 of the children had died.
In that year, the Lovedale authorities asked the survivors whether they would like to return to Ethiopia.
Some opted to do so, but it was only after a protracted process, involving the intervention of German advisers to Emperor Menelik, that 17 former slaves sailed back to Ethiopia in 1909.
The rest had by this time married or found careers and opted to stay in South Africa.
Bisho was trained for domestic service, but she must have shown signs of special talent, because she was one of only two of the Oromo girls who went on to train as a teacher.
In 1902 she left Lovedale and found a position at a school in Cradock, then in 1911 she married Frederick Scheepers, a minister in the church.
Frederick and Bisho Jarsa had a daughter, Dimbiti. Dimbiti married David Alexander, a carpenter, and one of their children, born on 22 October 1936, was Neville Alexander.
By the 1950s and 60s he was a well-known political activist, who helped found the short-lived National Liberation Front.
Continue reading the main story
Ethiopia Returnees
If you know these people – the freed slaves who decided to return home in 1909 – please use the form below to let us know:
Aguchello Chabani
Agude Bulcha
Amanu Figgo
Baki Malaka
Berille Boko Grant
Dinkitu Boensa
Fayesse Gemo
Fayissa Umbe
Galgal Dikko
Galgalli Shangalla
Gamaches Garba
Gutama Tarafo
Hawe Sukute
Liban Bultum
Nagaro Chali
Nuro Chabse
Rufo Gangilla
Tolassa Wayessa
He was arrested and from 1964 until 1974 was jailed in the bleak prison on Robben Island.
His fellow prisoners, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, were fascinated by his part-Ethiopian origins but at the time, he was not aware that his grandmother had been captured as a slave and so they could not draw any comparisons with their own fight against oppression.
So what did he feel when he found out how is grandmother had ended up in South Africa?
“It reinforced my sense of being an African in a fundamental way,” he told the BBC.
Under apartheid, his family was classified as Coloured, or mixed-race, rather than African.
“We always struggled against this nomenclature,” he said.
He also noted that it explained why he had often been mistaken for an Ethiopian during his travels.
The strongest parallel he can draw between his life and that of his grandmother is the role of schooling.
“Her real liberation was not the British warship but the education she later received in South Africa,” he said.
“Equally, while on Robben Island, we turned it into a university and ensured that all the prisoners learned to read and write, to prepare them for their future lives.”
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hikaa said,
August 28, 2011 @ 5:34 pm
I would rather die in starvation than being a part of the system that subjugate my people. Our people who are serving the current tyrant regime of the empire are saying enough to the rotten regime. This a good news for our people. We should support and encourage such move. Once they got here we have to accommodate them with everything possible to keep them welcomed. Meles is surviving for most part due oromos support. Once our support is drained, his time in palace in minik’s palace will be numbered. One message i convey to any oromo is support this courageous man whereever he may have chosen to settle. Thank you bro. You have clearly paved the way for others to follow. Good job and i wish you the best in your quest in this foreign land.
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Diina said,
August 30, 2011 @ 9:44 am
I think we in the Oromo community should invite Legesse to a public event and hear from him and share his exprience. We should also support him so that other would be encouraged to take such great measures for te sake of their own and their people.
***
Bravo!!
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September 1, 2011 @ 12:36 pm
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