HANDS OFF TSEGAYE R. ARARSSA

Tsegaye R. Arassa, a former professor of Law at Addis Ababa University and ECSU, is a brilliant legal mind, an influential public intellectual, and a devout human rights activist, who now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Apart from his years of service as one of the most popular law lecturers in Ethiopia and beyond, and on top of his scholarly contributions in the field of his specialization (i.e., constitutional law, federalism, human rights, legal theory, minority rights, etc) as an accomplished academic lawyer, Tsegaye has already made a mark on the public discourse by generously contributing to the political and legal debates in contemporary Ethiopia through his numerous interventions on social and conventional media outlets.

Tsegaye's relentlessly critical voice has been prominent, especially in the service of the cause of social justice in Ethiopia. Over the years, Tsegaye has mobilised his native talent, legal expertise, and his acdemic experiences to stand, invariably, on the side of the oppressed peoples of Ethiopia. He has been particularly attentive to the particular predicaments of the southern half of the country, which, owing to the historical processes of incorporation into the modern Ethiopian state, have been generally on the social, cultural, and political margins of the Ethiopian state imaginary. As an Oromo person himself, Tsegaye has added his distinctively engaging voice to the contemporary struggles of the Oromo people for social justice in Ethiopia. He has also been the most articulate proponent of the rights of other nations and nationalities of the wider south of Ethiopia who have for long suffered oppression ever after they were reduced into near permanent minorities under successive Ethiopian regimes.

His chosen mode of engagement for his work of speaking truth to power, is writing, speaking, and contributing to blog posts on social media outlets (mainly facebook and twitter), and doing live commentaries, analyses, debates on conventional media outlets (tv and radio networks). Apart from his Publishing insightful articles in magazines, speaking on multiple Televisions broadcasting via satellite to Ethiopia, Ararssa has been a widely recognised legal expert known for critiquing and unmasking state violence in Ethiopia.

Needless to say, he employs his social media accounts for the same end. As an advocate of human rights and a persistent supporter of peaceful resistance of Ethiopia's oppressed nations, Ararssa immensely contributed to the promotion of a just and harmonious relation between various groups in the country.

At this particular moment, we are aware that the regime in power in Ethiopia has been irate because of what Tsegaye does on behalf of the oppressed nations. The government allied itself with reactionary, extremist right-wing racist groups in the diaspora and is making a consistent effort to bully and silence him. Famous for their racist rant against the Oromo and all other nations, these right-wing racist groups in the diaspora are working to suppress independent voices like Tsegaye’s.

To this end, they are not only making use of all social media platforms but also created deceptive titles to run a smear campaign against him claiming, bogusly, that he is involved in violence of all sorts.To advance their smear campaigns intended to intimidate and silence him, these right wing groups are calling for innocent and uninformed people to sign multiple petitions demanding Australia's government to deport him. (Several times, they ganged up in an organized scheme of mass reporting in order to have his social media accounts disabled. On Facebook alone, they have managed to have blocked his account and public page which, together, had over 300,000 followers.)

This they do, not only to mar his reputation through character assassination, but also to gag him and thereby to render voiceless the oppressed peoples he speaks for. In this atrocious act of grave violence against him, they are trying to stiffle the voice of an intellectual that is practically

serving as a "voice of conscience of the nation."

We believe that this protracted act of smear campaign against him is far reaching in its consequences not just for him and his family but also for us as a society (of the diasporic Oromos as well as of our host countries).

We believe that t's utterly a disgrace for Ethiopia and a disrespect to all oppressed nations.

We also believe that it is high time that we stand against right wing attempts at silencing (our) public intellectuals. It is therefore imperative, for the sake of maintaining a free, healthy, and toletant civic space, that critical voices of social justice be protected from cyber bullying, intimidation, defamation, and all forms of abuse or violence.

We believe it is imperative that no one should be silenced just because he demanded social justice for his community let alone a committed public intellectual and activist such as Tsegaye.

We, therefore, kindly ask you to sign this petition to counter the torent of abusive and defamatory campaigns being waged incessantly against Tsegaye Ararssa.