Sidama Liberation Front
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The TPLF/EPRDF Ethiopian Fascist Regime Must Stop Uprooting the Sidama People from Their Ancestral Land!
Press Release by the Sidama National Liberation Front (SNLF)

1/17/2018

The TPLF/EPRDF dictatorial regime of Ethiopia has continued to terrorise the various oppressed nations for 27 years now. Thousands of unarmed civilians are gunned-down on yearly basis for peacefully expressing their opposition to relentless abuses of human and democratic rights in the country. Independent estimates put the numbers of summarily executed civilians by the army and security apparatuses of the regime between 15,500 and 19,000 in the past 20 years alone. There are also over one hundred sixty thousand civilians who are unlawfully incarcerated to date languishing in various substandard prisons where torture is common. Tens of millions of people from various regions have been uprooted from their ancestral lands for the benefits of the TPLF officials without compensation, thus being rendered destitute and beggars on their own lands. At least 5 million people fled the country in the past 27 years alone due to TPLF/EPRDF induced poverty and persecution.

The regime totally controls the economy, political decision making, security apparatus, military leadership and foreign affairs, with the sole objective of prolonging its brutal rule and total control over 100 million citizens of the country. This is the reason why the Oromo nation, the largest nation in the country, has rejected the TPLF/EPRDF’s apartheid by waging massive peaceful resistances since October 2015. We strongly believe that, all people of Ethiopia must join the Oromo resistances without delay.

The Sidama people are one of those who bore the brunt of TPLF apartheid in the past 27 years. Over 50, 000 households of Sidama peasants have been displaced from their lands, from the villages and farmers associations surrounding Hawassa to allow the expansion of the city to benefit, not the Sidama people, but the TPLF/EPRDF’s regime and its Sidama and southern Ethiopia loyal affiliates such as puppet PM, Hailemariam Desalegn, Shiferaw Shigute, Zenebe Kumo, Samuel Sheba, and dozens of other surrogates, who are facilitating the enslavement of the Sidama people. We recall that, it as these same surrogates who, tighter with the Federal TPLF agents, stage-managed the Sidama Looqee massacre in May 2002. As we speak, the TPLF/EPRDF regime is beating war drum to repeat such massacre in Sidama land, as it plans to uproot at least a million Sidama from the two districts, namely, Tuula and Malge Wondo (Wondogenet) under the pretext of urbanisation.

The regime’s southern Ethiopia representatives have announced that, they are planning to exponentially expand Hawassa city by annexing both neighbouring Sidama districts into Hawassa. The southern regional state executives are planning to take such criminal actions against the interests of the Sidama nation by displacing at least a million Sidama people from their lands. This is not the first time the TPLF/EPRDF apartheid took such actions against the Sidama. As indicated above, over 50,000 households have already been displaced in the past 20 years. Those who have been displaced are, to date left destitute. Tens of thousands of Sidama women, men, youth and old have been dehumanised and impoverished during the past 27 years of barbaric reign of the TPLF/EPRDF regime. No Sidama land has been confiscated in the scale this regime has done in the past 27 years.

In addition to these atrocities, the regime is also instigating war between the two downtrodden nations of Sidama and Wolayta. The regime has repeatedly attempted but miserably failed to instigate conflicts between the Oromo and Sidama nations due to wise leadership of the elders of the both fraternal nations. The TPLF regime is instigating conflicts by forcing the Sidama people who are living in bordering areas to handover their land to Wolayta. This is a premeditated anti-Sidama plan of the criminal regime. The Sidama peasants took the case of the land bordering Wolayta to the House of Federation about 15 years ago, where after lengthy processes, it was decided that the land belonged to the Sidama nation. After 15 years, TPLF agents such as Samuel Sheba, Shiferaw Shigute and numerous others, are planning to hand over the Sidama land to Wolayta to buy favours from TPLF and Hailemariam Desalegn who happens to be their blood relative. However, the TPLF regime should understand that the Sidama nation will never surrender its land to anyone. It will defend its land at any cost.

Moreover, there is an ongoing imprisonment of the Sidama youth, who have graduated from colleges but who don’t have jobs, for fear of potential uprising against the TPLF and its anti-Sidama policy. We have also learnt that about 6 Sidama prisoners including some from outside of prison have been shot dead by TPLF/EPRDF’s police personnel and Agaazi in Yirgalem about a week and so ago. Over 20 people have been seriously wounded who to date remain undergoing treatment. The TPLF/EPRDF regime also highly militarized Sidama to keep its southern cash cow in the pipeline for it to be able to continue its barbaric rule. The Sidama nation is under continuous surveillance as is Oromia, Ogaden, Amhara, Gambella. Therefore, the Sidama nation has only one option, join the Oromo resistance to remove the TPLF/EPRDF’s barbaric regime with all possible means.

Therefore, the SNLF unequivocally demands the TPLF/EPRDF apartheid to unconditionally stop its anti-Sidama policy in Sidama land. We urge the Sidama youth, elders, business community, peasants, intelligentsia, TPLF/EPRDF’s Sidama cadres who have been and are facilitating the demise of their nation to rethink that their silence is wholly unacceptable. The Sidama nation must actively engage and reject such criminal actions of the TPLF/EPRDF apartheid who has proved its enmity to the Sidama and the other nations and peoples of the south who are forcefully amalgamated into one fake region, SNNPR.

Finally, we call up on all oppressed nations to stand shoulder to shoulder against the barbaric TPLF/EPRDF regime for freedom and democracy!

Justice and Freedom for the Sidama and all peoples in Ethiopia!

The Sidama National Liberation Front (SNLF)
January 17, 2018