Paper short abstract:

The objective of the article is to examine how violence, repression and the militarization of the state attributes to the onset of popular protest.

Paper long abstract:

Oromia is entering a new wave of massive popular movement waving the whole region. On the 5th of December 2022, footage and pictures displaying two decapitated heads on pikes surfaced all over social media. The two decapitated heads belong to Oromos residing in Wollega and who were labelled ‘Shene’ by Amhara militants. This is in the aftermath of the recurrent drone strikes, mass displacement and the burning of villages and harvests linked with the violence spread along the Oromia-Amhara border districts and the Ethiopian government intensified attack against the resistance of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in Western Oromia. The incident is narrated as the modern-day resistance echoing the imperial expansion of the late 1880s. The incident mobilised all across Oromia, including within the diaspora and gave birth to the outbreak of a popular movement called Oromoo haa Baraaruu (#OB) meaning Save Oromo (#SO). The Oromoo haa Baraaruu (#OB) literally named #OB protest is a movement rocked at Haramaya University, Eastern Oromia, in reaction to the continued organized violence by the state and non-state actors in western Oromia since 2018. Like the grand Oromo rally, ‘Oromo protest’ (2014-2018), students and youths (Qeerroo) pioneered the movement. Relying on the fieldwork made on the mundane local politics and the everyday life of the society since the 1st of September 2022 in Oromia, I try to discuss about the made of, the mobilization, and the narrations of the #OB movement. Finally, The paper tries to highlight the current state of turmoil and the implication of the #OB protest on the wider Oromia and Ethiopian politics.