About 167 university students were kidnapped last week by a militant ethnic Oromo Nationalist group otherwise mid last week at Gebre Guracha town, 155 km north of Addis Ababa while they were traveling from the Amhara region to the capital Addis Ababa.
In a recent statement, Ethiopia’s Oromia regional state announced that it has secured the release of 160 university students who were taken hostage by the militants while returning from Debark University in the country’s Amhara regional state. The Oromia regional state communication office said seven students are still held by captors.
Families of two hostages confirmed to APA that their children are not released and based on the information reaching APA, Other parents are disputing that the students are not released.
The Ethiopian government, like some students who managed to escape from the kidnapping, blamed “Shane” – a militant ethnic Oromo Nationalist group that calls itself Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) for the recent kidnappings.
On the other hand, the OLA is pointing fingers at ruling Prosperity Party as the cause for what it called a “proliferating kidnappings.”
A Press Release from OLF-OLA High Command on Friday said “…the recent incidents of kidnappings around Gerba Guracha of North Shoa appears to have been orchestrated by state intelligence officers and lower-level party cadres.”
The OLA sees three actors who are engaged in the practice of kidnapping and it appears that it has absolved itself from it. The primary cause, as OLA, seems to think is systemic at the government level.
Ruling party cadres/intelligence officials and jobless and hopeless youths are also actors engaged in kidnappings that are now increasingly looking like a business enterprise, the OLA’s statement said.
The OLA also alleged lower-level ruling party cadres and intelligence officers to undertake the kidnappings for “economic reasons,” and it thinks that this aspect is overlooked.
Despite the apparent move to absolve itself from kidnappings in the Oromia region, the OLA itself has been accused of kidnapping and massacring of ethnic Amhara people across the Oromia region of Ethiopia over the past five or so years.
MG/abj/APA