Today (June 9, 2024) marks the third month since Jaal Batte Urgessa was brutally assassinated. Batte was callously murdered because he was an articulate voice of the Oromo with towering integrity and principle. Profiteering from human suffering, the defining characteristics of the PP government and its minions, was never part of his lexicon.
He was also targeted because of his transnational engagement. Batte engaged people from all political persuasions on any media, anywhere, and on any issue. For the retrograde PP eccentrics, that registers as a dangerous Oromo who could contribute to a broader alternative vision for the country and region, and therefore to be robbed of life.
By targeting Batte, PP misfits also aimed to cow into silence all other Oromo voices. After all, “if you take out ten lives, in a Mengistu on steroids revolutionary elimination, a hundred more will be cowed into silence.”
Batte is but a reminder of the unabated annihilation of countless innocent lives at the hands of Abiy and Co. All calls on the Ethiopian authorities to allow credible international investigation remain unheeded. True to its continued deafening silence in the face of state-led atrocities across Oromia and Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission appears to sweep the findings of its initial investigation under the carpet.
#Oromia #Ethiopia