Aagaa, Ethiopia

“In my home country of Ethiopia around 45% of the population is living in poverty. Poverty has multiple dimensions of different social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. Life as a child in Ethiopia has problems including exploitation, abuse, and neglect. I was a college instructor who began to speak out about what I was witnessing around me.
I was imprisoned five times for being an ethnic Oromo by Ethiopian security, without any court warrants between 2000 and 2015. They beat you, insult and demean you for being who you are. They forced me to sign documents that criminalized myself as a sort of terrorist. They have no respect for who you are as a fellow human being, denying me of my basic rights to food and drink. I was imprisoned in a tiny room which was extremely cold and filthy. I was detained and cruelly treated with insults and beatings. I only went to court once, where the charges were completely different to what they had arrested me for. I was interrogated about the Oromo Liberations Front. They target you and your family as collaborators against the regime.
The projected photograph shows an Oromo demonstration that I help organize in Washington, DC, in 2016. We protested about the injustices that ethnic Oromos experience under the Ethiopian empire. It is both sickening and painful to experience. We are a peaceful people suffering exile because of the violent system built on false narratives and enforced by the barrel of the gun. We want to live by our own cultural peaceful Gada system and be a beacon of world democracy. The protest is a symbolic harmony between the exiled and the Oromo peaceful protesters in Oromia.”