Anecia Forbes: At least 52 dead in Ethiopia after stampede at Oromo holy festival

Summary: At a holy festival on Sunday at least 52 people were killed in a stampede in central Ethiopia after police fired warning gun shots, Communications Minister Getachew Reda explained. "Troublemakers" at the festival in Bishoftu physically attacked elders who were making their way to the stage to say their blessings for the new year. And police fired warning shots into the air which provoked the stampede stated Reda. However, Ethiopia's opposition party describing that police fired live bullets into the crowd and as many as 120 people were killed. Merera Gudina, chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, said the number of casualties was still unknown.The Oromo are Ethiopia's largest ethnic group and make up at least a third of the country's 100 million people. But they have been treated horribly for decades, with tensions rising recently as the government promoted development that took over Oromo farmland.

Gudina said the violence broke out after festival attendees refused to listen to speakers from the ruling party. "The ruling party has been trying to control the festival and use it for its own political interests," he said. "The people gathered refused to listen to speeches of the ruling party. In that confrontation the security forces started to shoot and use tear gas and live bullets. That created chaos." Gudina said Ethiopians in other parts of Oromia are protesting the deaths, including in Ambo in western Oromia."The government should negotiate and the government should talk to people. The bullet should not be the answer to people demanding their right," Gudina said.

Reda vigorously denied the claim, saying the deaths were the result of a stampede."Of the people's bodies who were collected, they do not have any bullet wounds whatsoever," Reda said. "They were killed in the stampede. The security forces were mostly unarmed and none of them were involved in firing at the people.""There was no force involved on the part of the security forces after all, this event was a people's event," he added. Reda blamed diaspora elements for causing the chaos, saying they were trying to "take advantage to promote a political agenda." "We have a diaspora who are trying to drive a wedge in the people in the government who are using all sorts of violent means to achieve it."

"This goes down as one of the darkest days in modern Oromo history," Gudina told CNN.




Analysis/Synthesis: This is such a awful thing. Its so terrible to see an event that was meant for happiness and celebration to be turned into such a tragic event. This can be synthesized to American History to The Station Nightclub Fire Stampede and by how the people of Ethiopia are in disharmony with their government to how the colonist were in opposition with Great Britain in the 18th century.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/03/africa/ethiopia-oromo-deaths/index.html