Unrest in Ethiopia Worries Local Oromo
Minnesota Public Radio, MN - September 21, 2007

Robsan Itana directs the Oromo-American Citizens' Council. This year the organization hosted an Oromo Human Rights Conference. (MPR photo/Roseanne Pereira)

Minnesota has one of the largest Oromo populations in the country. The Oromo is an ethnic group from Ethiopia. The estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Oromo in the Twin Cites are trying to make new lives for themselves. But they say, their thoughts are often elsewhere -- as they monitor what's happening to family and friends in Ethiopia.

St. Paul, Minn. — Birhanemeskel Abebe sits alone at a table with his laptop. Behind him, towers a massive whiteboard crammed with writings in black marker.

Every square inch seems to have another fact -- the percentages of the different ethnic groups in Ethiopia, words like 'cell phone' -- to remind him to mention the government's restrictions on text messaging.

The board is like a map of Abebe's mind. It's overflowing with vital information about the Oromo and their sometimes violent troubles with the Ethiopian government.

"The regime is following a kind of ethnic apartheid policy, which is very difficult probably to understand in the United States, because the politics here is more along racial lines, black and white," says Abebe. "But in Ethiopia, we don't have racial line divisions, we have ethnic divisions."

The Oromo make up 40 percent of Ethiopia's estimated 77 million people. The ruling party of Ethiopia, on the other hand, is made up of people of a different ethnicity, the Tigre. They make up about 7 percent of the country's population ...