I met Hasan Juure immediately after I was assigned to Bale by EPRDF. At the time he commanded an armed group belonging to the Oromo Islamic Front which was part of the parliament of the so-called transitional government formed in 1991. Till I was removed from Bale I met him almost
regularly together with the representative of the branch office of the Front in Goba. As a result I came to know him closely. He was a middle aged man of about fifty, looking much younger for his age, a short man, dark and agile. For years he had led a small group of fighters against the DERG in eastern Bale putting up an obstinate resistance and distinguishing himself as a heroic fighter fully committed to the fighting tradition of his people. The Bale lowland, especially Hawaxxuu and Raayitu, are the cradle of Oromo resistance against Amhara domination in Bale as far back as I remember from my early childhood. Here you find the race of men who are born fighters generation after generation and were rarely cowed despite constant repression. Unlike in the upper Bale regions where the peasantry was most of the time passive, the government could not establish full control in the dominantly pastoral and nomadic lowland. My father had great love and respect for these people and received their leaders for years when they turned up in Shabo, our village, near Goba, now wiped out from the map, due to forced villagisation under the DERG, to protest the atrocities of the security forces under Haile Selassie regime against the civilian population. The most famous among those leaders was Haji Ishaaq Daadhii, a very close associate of my father.
Hasan Juure was a practisng Moslem but not what one might call a fanatic or fundamentalist in any sense. Though uneducated, he gained through action extensive fighting skills and was always amenable to reason. I talked with him for hours in Goba and Ginnir many times and was impressed by his honesty and openness. Towards the end of my time in Bale, the Woyane army units started harassing him without informing me about their move. At that time I happened to be in Ginnir to attend the so-called routine assessment meetings in the OPDO headquarters. There were a number of TPLF commanders in the compound. It was midday. Having been sick I avoided taking food for two days and sat up in bed with my back against the wall, covering my head with a blanket. I heard somebody whispering assalaam aleikum. I looked up to see Hasan Juure standing in front of me, draping a big towel over his head and shoulders. He told me he slipped past the guards to see me, having heard the day before, of my presence in Ginnir. He said the military was after him and his men to hunt them down in violation of the charter of the transitional government. .
The OPDO cadres and the Woyane officers were clearly shocked by his daring presence. When I asked the OPDO cadres what was going on I found them in utter confusion. The Woyane commanders denied trying hunting him and his men down and said they were only looking for him to discuss with him certain security problems in the area. When I asked if they could discuss the matter then with him in my presence they became suddenly cagey and uncommunicative..I insisted on knowing what the problem was. One of the commanders said nervously at this point that they acted on unfounded rumours and there was no need to discuss anything further. I asked what the rumours were. He suddenly looked perplexed. After a long silence he said he had no mandate to talk about them. Juure openly mentioned situations where TPLF army unit opened fire on him and his men. Had they not been helped by armed ordinary people in the area, surrounding the unit, he and his men would have been liquidated a number of times. I had no reason to suspect the truth of Juure’s statement and started really worrying. The commanders said they had no idea what happened and promised to check. I called a short meeting of Woyane commanders and OPDO cadres and made it clear to them that any violent action against Juure and his men was tantamount to the violation of the charter of the transitional government because, I said, I knew personally that Juuree and his men were strictly observing the charter. I said that because I knew the fact on the ground. Juree was in no position in those days to challenge the military. After the meeting both Woyane commanders and OPDO cadres tried to appear extremely amicable and friendly towards Juure, reassuring him and shaking hands with him, finally inviting us all to tee. At the end they even offered him protection on his way back to his base. Juure thanked them, saying he did not need any protection.
Almost five months after my removal from Bale the Woyane army units penetrated Juuree’s base area in a dark moonless night and surrounded him and his colleagues, gunning them down in cold blood in the early morning while they were doing morning prayers.
Together with some friends I mourned their death silently in Addis Ababa. Later a number of people informed me that the Woyane security had early on already gunned down in cold blood a number of very old peaceful and highly respected Moslem clerics in Addis Ababa and Wollo, men who, unlike Juure, were not involved whatsoever in politics. Soon, a little before I came back to Germany in 1995 the Woyane army stormed the central mosque in Addis Ababa by broad day light as we know and gunned down a large number of innocent people. The BBC tried to play down the incident. Woyane started liquidating respected Moslem figures even before the global war on terror started.
Although it is mainly targeting Muslems and oppressed nations, Woyane is also actually holding hostage the people of Abyssinia proper as well. The main instrument that it is effectively using for the systematic control of the masses in the entire country is called Kebele structures. It is the invention of the fascist Mengistu regime, the result of forced brutal villagization. It became clear also that individuals who guided the Woyane army to locate Juuree were members of the Kebele.
The governments of the western democracies know very well these instruments of repression and mass control. Yet they are determined to ignore them because the regime is serving their military strategy in the so-called war on terror.The regimes in Ethiopia and Eritrea are the only ones in Africa who openly and eagerly supported the American invasion of Iraq. Now it is becoming clear to the great majority of the peoples of the world that most of the human beings bombed out of existence in this war whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan , Ethiopia, Somalia, Lebanon and Palestine are innocent civilians. It seems to me that Muslems are purposely provoked to legitimize the war as a part of mainly Anglo-American strategy for world domination in post soviet era. So what does it matter if the peoples of Ethiopia are quarantined in fascistic Kebele structures even though half of them are Christians?
It is axiomatic that certain figures in the Eritrean opposition based in Addis Ababa hailed the election victories in Ethiopia and the Sudan as a breakthrough in African democracy! None, it is said long ago, are so blind as those who have eyes but refuse to see . It is also aptly said: never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you
It is possible to remove Woyane from power decisively if opposition forces unite around a minimum program. This endeavor is, however, made impossible by the Abyssinian ( Ethiopian ) opposition groups especially by the Amhara groups who rigidly refuse to accept that Ethiopia is an empire-state and reject automatically the right to self-determination including independence of the oppressed nations. For them Ethiopian unity is not discussable, is not part of politics, but it is religion, an absolute truth beyond any doubt and question. Here we are dealing not with a man made reality, historical legacy, but dogma based on centuries old lies. What does it take to make them wake up from their dream world and accept the reality after the Eritrean independence? They refuse to learn the lesson and want to speak for us all as before. They hate to see that times are changing .They still reject the facts of Amhara domination in the past They do not seem to see that even the mighty Russian empire fell apart because it was a prison of nations.
More important for us, the question is how can we overcome our own culture of dreary passivity, fatalism and helplessness before countless poor men such as Hasan Juree are eliminated by Tigray militarists or, even worse, our nations become nations of refugees? Strange enough, we, the children of the oppressed nations of Ethiopia, refuse also to learn the lessons of our history for different reasons: We need very sober and honest self-examination to exactly determine our priorities before we see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I call upon the freedom loving peoples of the entire world especially on peoples in western democracies to be aware of the Gulag nature of the fascistic Kebele structures and bring pressure to bear on their governments to force the Ethiopian regime to dismantle them immediately. Mr. Obama’s promise made during election campaigns to turn around American politics for the better has already evaporated in thin air?. He knows very well that the Ethiopian regime can coerce the masses whichever way it likes thanks to these inhuman structures. Its victory in the so-called election is the result of Kebele coercion.