Deception Carried to the Diaspora: The Ethiopian Embassy in Canada

On March 10, 2005 the Ethiopian television reported that the Ethiopian ambassador to Canada briefed members of Oromo community here and, reportedly, they expressed their support for the activities of the government back home.
Accordingly the official briefed the attendants on the current political democratization, human rights protection, development achievements and especially business opportunities for the Diaspora if they return home.

We Oromo people fled our homeland due to successive oppressive regimes in Ethiopia, the latest being the current TPLF/EPRDF led one. We have been following developments at home closely through our family members and relatives whom we left behind, whose life is deteriorating day by day. We have been airing our disapproval of the policies of the current regime through rallies,
demonstrations, and letter-writing campaigns to our members of parliament and other appropriate bodies in Canada. Even as the Ethiopian media was reporting that tens of Ethiopians were dying while running away from the regime loaded in desperately overcrowded boats that sank near Yemeni seashores.

We also know that thousands of Oromo political prisoners are kept behind the bar illegally. The land they are offering for the Diaspora to buy is illegally grabbed from the Oromo owners by the very regime the current ones claim to overthrow purportedly to improve the lot of the downtrodden. The previous regime
left the people on the land. These ones dispossess them. In other words they are offering Oromo land to sell spelled “lease” to another Oromo. It is an irony when someone rushes to buy land that he cannot resell if one wants to abandon or trade it.

Many business people have been pushed out of market through unfair competition by government business companies, disguised as private, and directly by the government through unbearable tariffs. What business opportunity is there for the Diaspora if those at home are daily losing their business?

We know this regime has succeeded in deceiving many foreigners. As far as we are concerned, they need to know that we are the extensions of those whose lives and livelihood is put in jeopardy by the policies of the very regime whose ambassador has been working hard to convince some individuals that life is rosy back home. His harvest doesn’t worth the hundreds of KM’s-long endless trips he
had to make from his office and the hotel bill he had to pay to lure
un-expecting victims into the trap. They were required to provide all their personal information here as well as that of their relatives at home plus registration fee of about $100.00 that goes to the coffers of the TPLF/EPRDF regime.

Therefore; we members of Oromo community in Canada:
1. Condemn the atrocities the TPLF/EPRDF regime is committing on our people at home,
2. Express our complete dissociation from the machinations of the embassy of Ethiopia in Canada,
3. Strongly deny existence of any communication with the embassy
4. Forewarn the embassy to desist from such deceptive misinformation regarding the Oromo community in Canada.
5. We want to advise those who rush to grab Oromo land under any pretext that our ownership of our land is tied to Oromo identity.

Oromo Canadian Community Association of Toronto
Oromo Christian Fellowship, Toronto
Islamic Oromo Cultural Society, Toronto
Oromo Canadian Cultural Association of Ottawa-Carleton
Oromo Youth Association of Ottawa
Gaddisa Oromo Manitoba, Winnipeg
Oromo Community of Alberta, Calgary
Oromo Community of British Columbia, Vancouver

 

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