Targeting of Oromo Civilians can never Reverse the Course of our Advance!
(OLF-OLA Press Release)
After successfully repelling the regime’s heightened offensives against our forces over the past two months, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) has conducted multi-pronged operations across towns and cities of Western Oromia and the Regional State of Gambella in the past few days. These targeted special operations were conducted to neutralize threats from military installations across Western Ethiopia, free our citizens from concentration camps and release political prisoners from the regime’s gulags in the region. While operations across Western Oromia are ongoing at the time of writing, the operations conducted in the city of Gambella—carried out in close collaboration with our partners in the Gambella Liberation Front (GLF)—had been swiftly concluded by achieving their objectives.
One of the hallmarks of Abiy Ahmed’s operations over the past three years, particularly over the past two months, has been the retaliatory targeting of unarmed Oromo civilians every time our forces launch an attack or a counter attack against regime’s forces. After being routed at the hands of our gallant fighters, the regime has never forgotten targeting civilians in the area in the name of “harboring insurgents–” an act of finding entire communities guilty by association. These were done in Wollo, Matakkal, Guji, Eastern and Western Wollega, Ade’a Barga, Gindabarat, Warra Jarso and across Oromia.
True to nature, the regime has, once again, begun a killing spree targeting Oromo civilians
across the city of Gambella after our joint operation in the city had come to an end. Gambella Special Forces, Federal Police and associated régime security apparatus are hunting down Oromo civilians and extra judicially executing them in broad day light. Social and conventional media abound by evidence of execution of Oromo civilians for anyone to see.
OLF-OLA reminds the regime’s security officials that this corrosive and cowardly act of targeting civilians in the most brutal of forms only exposes the true nature of their “government”
and will not hinder the steady advance of our forces to an inevitable destination. We call upon our people at home and in the diaspora to continue to support our freedom fighters; the brutal killing of our citizens—part of the state’s Oromo-marginalization project—will soon come to an end and everyone responsive will be held to account. The international community should also remember its duty to protect civilians across the region by, inter alia, putting pressure on the regime.
Stabilizing the Horn region begins in Oromia!
OLF-OLA High Command
June 17, 2022
