Amhara Association of Nebraska (AAN)
Asefa Zebene (Dr.)
June 3, 2024
Proposal for a Joint Petition by Amhara Associations in the U.S.A.
Against the nomination of Lencho Bati as Ethiopian Ambassador to the U.S.
Mr. Lencho Bati is an Oromo nationalist who is aspiring for the creation of an Oromia country
from within the womb of Ethiopia, through the annihilation of the entire Amhara population and
the destruction and disintegration of Ethiopia. Mr. Lencho Bati had said the following to his
invited Oromo audience at a meeting in Saudi Arabia on November 18, 2023:
Mereja.com Lencho Bati video transcript:
“We are giving birth to a country called Oromia. It is necessary to bleed during childbirth. And
our attention is not for the Amhara blood that will be shed, but for the Oromo child that will be
born or the Oromia that will be born. This is our last chance, which we will never get. To buy
time, we will continue to strengthen our daily agenda of massacres throughout Ethiopia. Because
there is no country founded without bloodshed. Not only is the entire country taken away, but all
the places that were considered important for the establishment of Oromia will be included in the
great Oromia. We have done our homework to do this. There is a project that was started on the
far side. We will complete it with a victory. We had him killed.”
Mr. Lencho Bati portrays the Amhara people as occupiers of the Oromo land, totally denying and
in opposition to the history of the Galla invasion of Ethiopia in the 16th century as documented
by Abba Bahriy, a prominent historian of the time. Abba Bahriy’s book, Zenahu Le Galla, is
circulated throughout major libraries in the world, including Europe and the US, namely,
Cambridge University Press & Assessment and the Library of Congress. The original book was
written in Geez, but through the years, it was translated to Amharic, French, German, and
English, just to name a few.
Lencho Bati has intentionally disillusioned himself to shy away from the truth. Lencho Bati
cannot deny the fact that Ethiopia existed as an independent country prior to Oromo’s mass
exodus to Ethiopia in the 16th century. Nonetheless, fanatic Oromo elites’ deceptive narratives
(often backed up by word-of-mouth stories and fictitious books such as Yeburka Zimita, authored
by Tesfaye Gebreab) are instrumental to persuade the unquestioning Oromo people into believing
that Amharas came from somewhere else (probably Madagascar?), occupied and named their
mystical Oromia country as Ethiopia, and, by extension, named their Finfinnee capital city as
Addis Ababa.
Despite the fact that Abiy throned and crowned himself with no opposition from the Amhara
people, Abiy Ahmed and his comrade in arms have waged genocide and ethnic cleansing against
the Amhara people for no practical reason. As it is natural and legitimate to fight back existential
threats of any kind and form, Amharas have borne arms to defend themselves against the Abiy
Ahmed military force (the army, air force, police, and militia).
Currently, all government activities are in shambles, be it the economy, the military, the rule of
law, the courts, or otherwise. Everything looks crumbling down: There are huge incompetencies
among executives of administrative organs of the Abiy Ahmed government, and as such, they
have become enablers of corruption, theft, genocide, starvation, torture, etc.
Despite all these odds, Abiy Ahmed has proposed Mr. Lencho Bati’s ambassadorship to the U.S.
Mr. Lencho is a hard-liner who does not understand or care to understand the art and language of
diplomacy. Mr. Lencho Bati is a proponent of hate and genocide against the Amhara people,
especially in the Oromia region and anywhere else in Ethiopia. He has no legitimacy to be a
representative of the Amhara people as an ambassador of Ethiopia to the U.S.
By default, Mr. Lencho is institutionalizing the 16th-century Gada system, which was
temporarily withheld from being inscribed among the lists of intangible cultural heritage of
humanity by UNESCO due to strong opposition from Kenyan intellectual groups, namely the
Alliance of Nillotic and Omotic People of Africa (ANOPA), on July 10, 2015, but got finally
inscribed in 2016 due to strong lobbying efforts made by the Abiy Ahmed government at
UNESCO’s summit conference held in Addis Ababa.
Respectfully,
Asefa Zebene (Dr.)
Chairman, AAN
A brief portion of the content of the letter from ANOPA reads:
World Heritage Centre
UNESCO
7 Place de fontenoy
75352 Paris
France
10th July 2015
His Excellency Mr. Kishore Rau
Director
World Heritage Centre (CLT/HER/WHC)
Subject: our opposition to the pending process for the inscription of the so called Gada age-
grade system on the Representative lists of Intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
Your Excellency
Here with we the Alliance of Nillotic and Omotic People of Africa (NOPA) would like to bring to
your attention that we categorically reject the gada age grade cycling system of Oromo
pastoralists to be recognized as world heritage. The self called Oromo (Galla) clans who invaded
the Ethiopian Empire in the wake of Adal-Muslim jihadist War in the first half of the 16th century
began to become sedentary in the Ethiopian fertile highland. ……..
Your Excellency
It must be noted that the most brutal expansionist War of the Galla pastoralists in Northeast
Africa has resulted in the extinction of many developed states and communities in Ethiopia and
Kenya. …..Oromo clans treated their conquered enemies with greater savagery of emasculation
and annihilation……The Gada system has nothing to do with a democratic system of
government…….Its main objective is to perpetuate violence towards others. We ……request you
to reject the Gada, the most barbaric system of expansion, subjugation and the continual
conflict propagation in East Africa not to be recognized as an intangible cultural heritage of
humanity.
Yours sincerely
Prof. Gelebew Sengogo
Prof. Samuael Karanja
Dr. Thomas Machar
Dr. Anne Soi