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Democracy is founded on principles of freedom, justice, social inclusion and participation in civil society. Where these qualities of fairness are absent so too is democracy.

To agree to elections, and speak of democratic values is easy enough. To honour their expression is quite another thing.

The EPRDF government of Ethiopia knows little of democracy, human rights or the manifestation of democratic principles and much of repression and intimidation.

They claim to govern in a democratic pluralistic manner, but the regime systematically violates fundamental human rights, silences all dissenting voices and rules the country in a suppressive violent fashion which is causing untold suffering to millions of people throughout the country.

There is no freedom of the media. The judiciary, which is constitutionally and morally bound to independence, operates as an unjust arm of the government. Public assembly is all but outlawed. Political dissent at any level is not tolerated and the major opposition party leaders are behind bars.

The May election, contrary to US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s ignorant recent comments (that “Ethiopia is a democracy that is moving forward in an election that we expect to be free, fair and credible and open and inclusive”), is a hollow piece of democratic theatre, a sham, with no credibility whatsoever. The result, as everyone in the country and amongst the diaspora knows, is a forgone conclusion.

2. Increasing Anger

To the untrained eye the economy appears to be developing, and the country gives the appearance of stability in a region of almost total instability. But this is a misleading image of development and social steadiness, and masks deep-seated inequalities, endemic corruption, widespread bitterness and simmering fury towards the ruling party.

And, as the regime intensifies its violent suppression of the populace in the lead up to the elections, there are many within the country and the diaspora who believe that a popular armed uprising is the only way to overthrow the EPRDF and bring about lasting democratic change.

Violent incidents are already being reported in provincial cities, with police and officials being attacked by angry mobs.

Large numbers are gathering inside Eritrea on the border with Ethiopia. Ginbot 7 and the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) have now merged to form one group, and are building, what is described as ‘a united armed force’, an army in other words, an army of many

thousands of men. Armed and receiving training to engage in combat with the Ethiopian forces.

Given the repressive picture in the country and the regime’s total intransigence, the frustration felt inside and outside Ethiopia is not surprising. But is an armed uprising the way forward, would it be successful in ousting the ruling regime, or would there be a tightening of repressive legislation – the ‘rebel group’ branded as terrorists, large numbers of deaths and arrests and perhaps a long drawn out civil war igniting conflicts between one ethnic group and another? Indeed is violence and hate ever the way to counter violence and hate?

My view is consistent with that of Martin Luther King, who maintained that “hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” An armed campaign in Ethiopia, I believe, would be a terrible mistake.

But the people’s frustration and anger is understandable, as is their bewilderment at the neglect and complicity of Ethiopia’s major donors. America, the European Union and Britain, who collectively give almost half of Ethiopia’s federal budget in various aid packages, are well aware of the regime’s brutal form of governance and shamefully do and say nothing.

3. Social responsibility and collective action

The regime, seeks, as all isolated, paranoid dictatorships do, to centralise power and suppress the people by intimidation and violence. Disempowerment and fear are their aim; the means are well known, crude and unimaginative – keep the people frightened, uneducated and divided, restrict their freedom of association and expression and keep them entrapped.

With between 70 and 80 tribal sets within the seven major ethnic groups, and a 45/35% Christian-Muslim split, cooperation, tolerance and unity are essential factors in the country. However, a united civilian population is a threat to the ruling elite, who therefore separate the ethnic groups, fragment the people and make them compete for resources, including aid; and thus maintain dominion. This divide and rule strategy is the methodology employed by the highly centralized EPRDF regime.

And the answer to such crude means of control is not an armed uprising. It is unity.

Unity of the people, rich in diversity united in purpose, is the need and song of the time, for Ethiopia and indeed for the world. Now is the time for the Ethiopian people to unite, and, overcoming the fear that has inhibited them for so long, demand an end to tyranny and their right to justice, freedom and fundamental democratic change.

Together there is safety and strength beyond measure. “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you,” proclaims an African proverb. This truth applies to the individual, the family, the people of a nation. Brothers and sisters of one humanity we are, and no government can withstand the unified strength of a people held together by a common and just cause.

Democracy is not an ideology, an ‘ism, it is in truth a way of living, a creative living expression of certain perennially accepted values: Social responsibility, participation and peaceful

collective action are key principles in any democratic environment. The EPRDF government is a shameful, brutally repressive regime, that must either fundamentally reform, or be removed from office. It is the responsibility, indeed the duty I would say, of the people, both inside the country and within the diaspora, to overcome their apathy and fear, organize themselves and take responsibility for their own destiny. We are living in unprecedented times, times of tremendous opportunity and potential change; out of step with the times the days are numbered for regimes like the EPRDF – it is simply a question of when they collapse – not if.

Because change is afoot: people throughout the world are uniting against social injustice, repression, greed and corruption, taking to the streets in huge numbers to demand change, and a new political/economic system, which is inclusive and just.

“Nothing happens by itself, man must act and implement his will.” Thus said a wise man. It is time for the Ethiopian people to implement their will, to unite and cry out with one voice; The people of Oromo and Amahra, Ogaden and Gambella, look to each other and fear not, look to your neighbour’s and friends, share your concerns, your hopes, and fear not; for fear is the weapon of the bully the enemy of the good. Look to the next village, comm
unicate and organize, fear not, for fear inhibits and controls. Look to the adjoining street and neighborhood where live others, who too shiver in fear of government spies, the police and armed forces. Unite and act. Be creative in you protest, be consistent in your efforts, be resolute.

Be inspired by the movements in Tunisia, Hong Kong, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil and elsewhere, and find the courage to peacefully stand up against what is a brutal group of men, who are despised by the majority and have no legitimacy to govern Ethiopia. It is only then, when the people act, that the donor countries – America, Britain and Europe – will take their neglectful, complicit heads out of the sand and stand together with the people, who have suffered far too much for far, far too long.

European Parliament Talk 23rd April 2015

http://unpo.org/downloads/1427.pdf

 

On 23rd June 2014 Andergachew Tsige was illegally detained at Sana’a airport in Yemen whilst travelling from Dubai to Eritrea on his British passport. He was swiftly handed over to the Ethiopian authorities, who had for years posted his name at the top of the regime’s most wanted list. Since then he has been detained incommunicado in a secret location inside Ethiopia. His ‘crime’ is the same as hundreds, perhaps thousands of other’s, publicly criticising the ruling party of Ethiopia, and their brutal form of governance.

Born in Ethiopia in 1955, Andergachew arrived in Britain aged 24, as a political refugee. He is a British citizen, a black working class British citizen with a wife and three children. Despite repeated efforts by his family and the wider Ethiopian community – including demonstrations, petitions and a legal challenge – the British government (which is the third biggest donor to Ethiopia, giving around £376 million a year in aid), have done little or nothing to secure this innocent man’s release, or ensure his safe treatment whilst in detention.

After nine months of official indifference, trust and faith in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is giving way to cynicism and anger amongst Tsige’s supporters. Is the FCO’s apathy due to his colour, his ‘type’ or ‘level’ of Britishness, is there a hierarchy of citizenship in Britain? If he had been born in England, to white, middle class parents, attended the right schools (educated privately as over half the British cabinet was) and forged the right social connections, would he be languishing in an Ethiopian prison, where he is almost certainly being tortured, abused and mistreated?

Consistently ignored

Tsige is the secretary general of Ginbot 7, a peaceful campaign group which fiercely opposes the policies of the Ethiopian party-state, controlled for 24 years by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). It highlights the regime’s many and varied human-rights violations and calls for adherence to liberal ideals of justice and freedom, as enshrined in the country’s constitution—a broadly democratic piece of fiction which is consistently ignored by the ruling party (even through the EPRDF wrote it).

Political dissent inside Ethiopia has been criminalised in all but name by the EPRDF. Freedom of assembly, of expression, and of the media, are all denied, so too affiliation to opposition parties. Aid that flows through the government is distributed on a partisan basis, so too employment opportunities and university places. The media is almost exclusively state owned, Internet access (which at 2% of the population is the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa), is monitored and restricted; the government would criminalise thought if they could.

The population lives under suffocating repression and fear and the vast majority appear to despise the government. Human rights are ignored and acts of state violence– some of which, according to human rights groups, constitute crimes against humanity – are commonplace.  Such is the reality of life inside the country for the vast majority. It is this stifling reality of daily suffering which drives Tsige and other members of Ginbot 7, forcing them to speak out—action that has cost him his liberty.

For challenging the EPRDF, in 2009 and 2012, he was charged under the notorious Anti-Terrorist Proclamation of 2009, tried in absentia and given the death penalty. The judiciary in Ethiopia is constitutionally and morally bound to independence, but in practice it operates as an unjust arm of the EPRDF. The judiciary in Ethiopia is constitutionally and morally bound to independence but in practice it operates as an unjust arm of the EPRDF. A trial where the defendant is not present violates the second principle of natural justice, audi alteram partem (hear the other party) – and is therefore illegitimate. Such legal niceties, however, mean nothing to the EPRDF, who have dutifully signed up to all manner of international covenants, but ignore them all. The regime likes trying its detractors who live overseas (activists, journalists, political opponents) in their absence and securing outrageous judgements against them, particularly the death penalty or life imprisonment. They rule, as all such groups do, by the cultivation of that ancient tool of control: fear.

British complicity

Given the nature of the EPRDF government, little in the way of justice, compassion and fairness can be expected, in relation to Tsige, or indeed anyone else in custody. Self-deluding and immune to criticism, the EPRDF distorts the truth and justifies violent acts of repression and false imprisonment as safeguarding their country from ‘terrorism’. The only form of terrorism rampaging through Ethiopia is State terrorism, perpetrated by the EPRDF and their vicious thugs, in and out of uniform. 

Andergachew Tsige is a UK citizen and the UK government has a constitutional and moral responsibility to act energetically and forcefully on his behalf; to their shame, so far the FCO and the coalition government more broadly, have been consistently woeful in their efforts. In February a delegation of parliamentarians, led by Jeremy Corbyn, his local MP, was due to visit Ethiopia in an effort to secure his release. But the trip was abandoned after a meeting with the Ethiopian ambassador. A member of the team, Lord Dholakia, vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Ethiopia, said it was made clear that they would not be welcome: the ambassador reportedly told them “that there was no need for them to go to Ethiopia as the case is being properly handled by the courts”.

Again – nonsense: Andergachew is yet to be formally charged, has been denied contact with his British solicitors, as well as consular support, and has received only one brief visit from the British ambassador, in August; a meeting controlled fully by the Ethiopians. The FCO have said they “remain deeply concerned about Ethiopia’s refusal to allow regular consular visits to Mr. Tsege and his lack of access to a lawyer, and are concerned that others seeking to visit him have also been refused access.” So why are you not acting, using your ‘special’ position to secure this innocent man’s release: do something, is the cry of the family, the community and all right minded people.

At what point, does neglect in the face of injustice and abuse become complicity? If a Government allows illegal detention and the violation of international justice to take place and says and acts not, are they not guilty in aiding and abetting such actions? If Governments give funds to a ruling party – the EPRDF – that is killing, raping, imprisoning and torturing its own citizens, and they do and say nothing – as the British, the American’s, and the European Union do, even though they know what’s happening – they are, it is clear, complicit in the crimes being committed.

 March 2015

https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/graham-peebles/andargachew-tsige-ethiopian-brutality-british-apathy

As the Ethiopian government intensifies its violent suppression of the populace in the lead up to the illusion of national elections in May, there are many within the country and the diaspora who believe a popular armed uprising is the only way to bring about change in the country. The people’s frustration and anger towards the government is understandable as is their bewilderment at the neglect and complicity of Ethiopia’s major donors. America, the European Union and Britain collectively give almost half of Ethiopia’s federal budget in various aid packages, are well aware of the regime’s brutal form of governance and shamefully do and say nothing.

The ruling regime, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) came to power in 1992 when they overthrew the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE). The ideologically driven group of freedom fighters led by Meles Zenawi ousted the Derg dictatorship and drew up a new liberal constitution based on democratic principles of freedom and human rights. Once enthroned in Addis Ababa, however, they swiftly followed in their predecessor’s repressive footsteps and all democratic ideals where neatly filed away to be forgotten about.

The government has imprisoned almost all major opposition leaders, as well as large numbers of troublesome journalists. An array of repressive laws has been passed to suffocate dissent and virtually criminalise freedom of expression and assembly – all contrary to their own constitution and in violation of a plethora of international conventions which they have dutifully signed up to.

With the major opposition party leaders behind bars and the regime maintaining total control of the electoral process the result of the forthcoming May election is a forgone conclusion. It is a hollow piece of democratic theatre, which the European Union has refused to legitimise with a team of observers, a mistake in my view, but understandable given the distorted result of the past two elections which the EU observed but did not validate.

Unite and act

Given the repressive picture in the country and the regime’s total intransigence, the frustration of huge numbers of people inside and outside the country is unsurprising. But is an armed uprising the way forward, would it be successful in ousting the ruling regime, or would there be a tightening of repressive legislation – the ‘rebel group’ branded as terrorists, large numbers of deaths and arrests and perhaps a long drawn out civil war igniting conflicts between one ethnic group and another? Is violence and hate ever the way to counter violence and hate? Not according to Martin Luther King, who presided over a largely peaceful civil rights movement in America, against an extremely violent, not to say ignorant adversary; “darkness”, he said “cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

That other giant of non-violence, Mohandas Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement undermined the British, united the population and was crucial in bringing about independence in India. His legacy is vital, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has said, “in today’s world where the rights of too many people are still violated,” so is his means of achieving his goal.

Like all repressive regimes the EPRDF follows a systematic methodology of divide and rule; the answer to such crude means of control is unity.

We are living in unprecedented times, times of tremendous opportunity and potential change; out of step with the times the days are numbered for regimes like the EPRDF – it is a question of when they collapse – not if.

The people of Ethiopia, and those who make up the diaspora in Europe, America and elsewhere need to come together, and overcome their apathy and fear, organize themselves and take responsibility for their own destiny, be creative, be heartened and learn from movements in Tunisia, Hong Kong, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil and elsewhere. They need to be inspired by the strategic actions successfully employed in the non-violent struggle led by Gandhi, and find the courage to act peacefully, to unite against what is a brutal group of men who are despised by the people and have no legitimacy to govern Ethiopia, and act with love not hate, to bring lasting change to their country.

February 2015

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/20/is-violent-change-inevitable-in-ethiopia/

Nobody trusts politicians, but some governments are more despicable than others. The brutal gang ruling Ethiopia are especially nasty. They claim to govern in a democratic pluralistic manner, they say they observe human rights and the rule of law, that the judiciary is independent, the media open and free and public assembly permitted as laid out in the constitution. But the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) systematically violates fundamental human rights, silence all dissenting voices and rules the country in a suppressive violent fashion, that is causing untold suffering to millions of people throughout the country.

There is no freedom of the press, journalists are persecuted, intimidated and arrested on false charges, so too their families. All significant media outlets and print companies are state owned or controlled, as is the sole telecommunications company – allowing for unfettered Government monitoring and control of the Internet. Radio is almost exclusively state owned and, with adult literacy at around 48%, remains the major source of information. Where private media has survived they are forced to self-censor their coverage of political issues, if they deviate from “approved content”, they face harassment and closure.

In many cases journalists are forced to leave the country, some are illegally tried in absentia and given long prison sentences or the death penalty. Human Rights Watch (HRW) states in its detailed report ‘Journalism is Not a Crime,’ that Ethiopia has more journalists in exile than “any country in the world other than Iran,” and estimates, “60 journalists have fled their country since 2010 while at least another 19 languish in prison.” More than 30 left in 2014, twice the number escaping in 2013 and 2012 combined, and numerous publications were closed down, revealing that the media situation and freedom of expression more widely is becoming more and more restrictive. “If they cannot indoctrinate you into their thinking, they fire you,” said a dismissed journalist from state-run Oromia Radio, summing up the approach of the ruling party to press freedom and indeed democracy as a whole.

With upcoming elections in May the media should be allowed to perform its democratic responsibility – revealing policies and the incumbent regime’s abuses, providing a platform for opposition groups and encouraging debate. However, the guilt ridden EPRDF government, desperate to keep a lid on the human rights violations it is committing, sees the independent media as the enemy, and denies it the freedom, guaranteed under the constitution, to operate freely.

Tools of control

Soon after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, President George W. Bush made his now notorious speech in which he reaffirmed Ronald Reagan’s 1981 declaration to initiate a worldwide ‘war on terror’, against terrorism and nations that “provide aid or safe haven to terrorism.” Bush’s understandable if hypocritical political statement of intent allowed regimes perpetrating terror like the EPRDF to impose ever more repressive laws under the guise of ‘fighting terrorism’ and ‘containing extremism’.

A year before the 2010 Ethiopian general election the government introduced a raft of unconstitutional legislation to control the media, stifle opposition parties and inhibit civil society: The Charities and Societies Proclamation introduced in 2009 decimated independent civil society, and created, Amnesty International (AI) says, “a serious obstacle to the promotion and protection of human rights in Ethiopia.” It sits alongside the equally unjust Anti–Terrorism Proclamation (ATP) of the same year, which is the sledgehammer commonly used to suppress dissent and silence critical media voices both inside the country, abroad and on the Internet. Overly broad and awash with ambiguity, the ATP allows for long-term imprisonment and the death penalty for so-called crimes that meet the government’s vague definition of terrorism, and allows evidence gained through torture to be admissible in court, which contravenes the United Nations Convention Against Torture, ratified by Ethiopia in 1994. In 2012 the government added the Telecom Fraud Offences Proclamation to its arsenal of repression, criminalizing “the use of popular voice over IP (VoIP) communications software such as Skype for commercial purposes or to bypass the monopoly of state-owned Ethio-Telecom.” Eight years imprisonment and large fines are imposed if anyone is convicted of “using the telecommunications network to disseminate a “terrorizing message” – whatever that may be.

The anti-terror legislation violates international law and has been repeatedly condemned by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. As well a group of United Nations (UN) human rights experts, who in September 2014 urged the ruling party “to stop misusing anti-terrorism legislation to curb freedoms of expression and association in the country.” The eminent group went on call upon the Government “to free all persons detained arbitrarily under the pretext of countering terrorism,” saying: “let journalists, human rights defenders, political opponents and religious leaders carry out their legitimate work without fear of intimidation and incarceration.” Their visit followed one made by members of the European Parliament’s Sub-committee on Human Right who visited Ethiopia in July 2013 when they pressurized the government to release journalists and opposition activists imprisoned under the ATP.

Wrapped in arrogance and paranoia the EPRDF disregarded these righteous demands as well as requests to allow a visit by the “Special Rapporteurs on freedom of peaceful assembly and association, on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” to visit the country and report “on the situation of human rights defenders.” No doubt the people of Ethiopia would welcome such a visit; one questions the protocol that allows regimes like the EPRDF the right to deny such a request.

Keep quiet

The ATP has been widely used to punish troublesome journalists who criticize the government or publish articles featuring opposition members and regional groups calling for self-determination. Anyone who challenges the EPRDF’s policies or draws attention to the human rights violations taking place throughout the country are branded with the T word, intimidated and silenced.

The two most prominent journalists to be imprisoned are award-winning Eskinder Nega and Reeyot Alemu Gobebo. Arrested at least seven times Nega is currently serving an 18 year sentence for doing nothing more than calling on the government to respect freedom of expression laws enshrined in the constitution (that the EPRDF themselves penned), and end torture in the country’s prisons. Reeyot Gobebo, winner of the 2013 UNESCO-Guilermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, is currently serving a five-year jail term (commuted from 14 years after two of the charges were dropped on appeal), after being charged with a variety of unfounded, unsubstantiated terrorist related charges. These two courageous professionals, HRW relates, have “come to symbolize the plight of dozens more media professionals, both known and unidentified, in Addis Ababa and in rural regions, who have suffered threats, intimidation, sometimes physical abuse, and politically motivated prosecutions under criminal or terrorism charges.” When an article critical of the government is published, writers or editors receive threatening phone calls and text messages (e-mails in my case) from government stooges. If publications and broadcasters persist in publishing such pieces they suffer persecution, arrest and closure.

The ERPDF’s paranoid desire to control everything and everybody inside Ethiopia is not restricted to the national media alone. Voice of America (VoA) and Deutsche Welle (DW), who both have a presence in Addis Ababa, are routinely targ
eted by the government, as is ESAT TV, a shining light of independent broadcasting in Amharic from America and Europe. Their satellite transmissions are regularly jammed, their staff and family members threatened and harassed; on 11th January 2015 the wife of Wondimagegne Gashu, a British Citizen, long time human rights activist and ESAT worker, was violently detained with her three young children for two days inside Addis Ababa airport. Before being deported security personnel threatened to kill her husband if he continues his associations.

The government also restricts access to numerous websites including independent news, opposition parties and groups defined by the government as terrorist organisations and political blogs. The required technology and expertise to carry out such criminal acts is supplied by unscrupulous companies from China and Europe; companies that should “assess [the] human rights risks raised by potential business activity, including risk posed to the rights of freedom of expression, access to information, association, and privacy.” In other words: behave in a responsible ethical manner.

State Terrorism 

Freedom of the media and freedom of expression, sit alongside other democratic principles, like an independent judiciary, consensual governance, participation and freedom of assembly. Where these basic tenets are absent so too is democracy. If the state systematically crushes independent media and commits widespread human rights violations, as in Ethiopia, we see not a democratic government but a brutal dictatorship committing acts of state terrorism.

In HRW’s damning report on media freedoms within the country a series of commonsense recommendations are made that should be immediately enforced. Chief among these are that all journalists currently imprisoned be released; that the government immediately cease jamming radio and television stations and unblock all websites of political parties, media, and bloggers; that all harassment of individuals exercising their right to freedom of expression stops and that the regime repeal or amend all laws that infringe upon privacy rights.

By essentially banning independent media and making freedom of expression a criminal offense, the Ethiopian government is in gross violation of its own legally binding constitution as well as a raft of international covenants. All of which is of no concern to the ruling party who treat international law with the same indifference they apply to their own people. Pressure then needs to be applied by those nations with longstanding relationships with Ethiopia: America and Britain come to mind as the two nations who have the biggest investment in the country and whose gross negligence borders on complicity. As major donor nations they have a moral responsibility to act on behalf of the people, to insist on the observation of human rights and the rule of law and to hold the EPRDF regime accountable for its repressive criminal actions.

February 2015

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29051-suffocating-dissent-gagging-the-media-in-ethiopia

Faced with a brutal repressive regime, the people of Ethiopia inside the country and within the worldwide diaspora – frustrated, angry and desperate – are considering all options to elicit fundamental change in the country.

The EPRDF, who seized power from the communist Derg in 1991, rule the country through fear and intimidation. Development aid, including food and other essentials, is distributed in a partisan manner, so too employment opportunities. The Government’s human rights record is appalling and an arsenal of ambiguous, universally condemned legislation is used to control and suppress the populace. The “deeply flawed” [Human Rights Watch (HRW)] Anti Terrorism Act, being the bluntest judicial weapon, is repeatedly employed to silence critical voices and imprison those who dare to speak out against the government. Since its adoption in 2009 “the independent media have been decimated by politically motivated prosecutions under the law…Blogs and Internet pages critical of the government are regularly blocked,” [Ibid] and an all-pervasive atmosphere of fear is created by the paranoid dictatorship that spies on opposition members and journalists using surveillance practices that “violate the rights to freedom of expression, association, and access to information.” [HRW]

Although enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution (a liberally acceptable, consistently ignored document written by the EPRDF) as basic rights, as well as in various African and international conventions, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Ethiopia has ratified, freedom of the media, of assembly and association, together with all forms of political dissent are essentially outlawed. The opposition parties have up until now been marginalized and largely ineffective.

Fictitious charges

The latest innocent voice to be silenced is that of Andargachew Tsige, a British citizen and secretary general of the Ginbot 7 (G7), a unity movement founded in 2008 to bring about “a national political system in which government power and political authority is assumed through peaceful and democratic process based on the free will and choice of citizens of the country.”[Ginbot 7] He was charged in absentia and “sentenced to death while in exile for plotting a coup,” [BBC] a trumped up charge that has no basis in fact, which he has repeatedly vehemently denied.

On 23rd June Yemeni security personnel detained Mr. Tsige while transiting via Sanaa to Eritrea. He is now imprisoned inside Ethiopia, where torture and violent mistreatment is commonplace. The British government, a major donor and misguided supporter of the Ethiopian regime has a duty to apply all pressure to secure his immediate release; “If the British government is not complicit with this kidnapping and this rendition of Mr Andargachew Tsige to the Ethiopian regime – [which] will obviously torture him, accuse him of all sorts of things and eventually kill him – then the British government has to get immediately the release of Mr Andargachew.” [Ana Gomez MEP on BBC]

The Ethiopian government, who in May signed an agreement of cooperation relating to economic, investment and security issues with the Yemen authorities (although it is unclear if this includes extradition), welcomed the arrest, saying “he is a criminal, and he definitely will have his day in court.”  The judiciary functions more or less as an arm of the government enforcing EPRDF policy and denying justice. Getachew Reda, government spokesman, predictably and spuriously, “accused him of plotting terror attacks in Ethiopia.” [Al Jazeera] In 2011 the government unsurprisingly labeled G7 a terrorist organization, along with the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), who are fighting for the Ogaden people’s right to self-determination and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), who are struggling for independence for the Oromo population – the single largest group in the country.

To the untrained eye Ethiopia appears stable in a region of almost total instability; it is a misleading social steadiness however, and masks deep-seated widespread bitterness and simmering fury towards the ruling party. The arrest of Andargachew Tsige is part of a government strategy to undermine any movement for change, to create an atmosphere of fear amongst those who are brave enough to speak out against the regime, and cultivate a false impression, presumably aimed at Ethiopia’s principle donors (Britain, America, the European Union), that there is some kind of terrorist plot at work, and they are the righteous ones fighting alongside their Western allies against extremism. Since the 9/11 attacks on America and George W’s reiterated declaration of a ‘war on terror’, the ‘T’ word has been used by repressive regimes throughout the world to tarnish opposition groups and civilian protest movements. Terrorism is indeed operating within Ethiopia. It can be seen at work in Gambella where villagers are forced from their homes into camps, their land taken from them and sold to foreign corporations, in the Omo Valley, Amhara, Oromia and the Ogaden region where women are raped and mutilated, men killed and tortured children scarred for life, villages burnt to the ground: it is State Terrorism. The terrorist commanders are the EPRDF politicians, the military and Liyu Police the front-line henchmen carrying out their masters’ terrifying orders. In many cases throughout the country the human rights violations committed daily by the Ethiopian government qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is time long overdue that the country’s allies acted to support the people and challenge what is a vicious criminal dictatorship.

Catalyst for Action

The illegal detention of Andargachew Tsige in Yemen and his subsequent transfer to Ethiopia has enraged many in the country as well as those ardently working for change within the diaspora community. Whilst some extreme voices may be calling for an armed uprising, the way forward is through sustained political activism, peaceful protest and community unity. If we are ever to build a just world at peace, and create a new civilization based on altogether different values, the destructive, violent patterns of the past must be laid aside. Revenge and retribution must give way to forgiveness and justice, tolerance and understanding. In this devoutly religious country let Love not hate be the guiding force of those working for change, the source and sustenance of their actions, for as Martin Luther King rightly said “darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”[From ‘A Testament of Hope]

The understandable emotional reaction to the arrest of Tsige needs to give rise to sustained, coordinated collective action inside Ethiopia, supported by worldwide demonstrations by the diaspora. For too long the people have been silent in the face of injustice and violent suppression; fearful of government retribution they have looked to others to act – the British, the Americans, the E
uropeans – and whilst they do indeed have a duty to stand up for the people of Ethiopia, it is the people themselves that must take their destiny in their own hands. With a population of 92 million spread across nine different states and dozens of tribal groups, it is essential that the people unite against the government and do not turn on one another. Many groups around the country are subjected to the same government abuse and mistreatment, in Gambella, Amhara, the Ogaden region, the Lower Omo valley and in Oromia; they are confronted by a common enemy and need to unite behind a collective cause.

Social revolution and collective action is often triggered by a catalyst, an event that demands action – a final straw that breaks the back of apathy and complacency. The arrest of Andargachew Tsige is such an event. Now is the time for the Ethiopian people to unite, and, overcoming the fear that has inhibited them for so long, demand an end to tyranny and their right to justice, freedom and fundamental democratic change.

Graham Peebles

July 2014

http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/07/is-the-arrest-of-andargachew-tsige-the-final-straw-for-the-people-of-ethiopia/

There are tentative signs that the people of Ethiopia are beginning to organise themselves and stand up against the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government, a brutal dictatorship, albeit one dressed in democratic western garb.

After 23 years of suppression at the hands of the EPRDF, simmering discontent and anger appears to finally be spilling over onto the streets. Robbed of hope, the people have had enough, enough of the wide-ranging human rights abuses. The denial of constitutional rights, the arbitrary imprisonments and torture, regime violence, the displacement of people from ancestral land, the partisan distribution of aid, and the rising cost of living.

The right to peaceful protest

Like many democratic principles, the right to protest is enshrined in Ethiopia’s constitution. Written in 1991 by the EPRDF, the legally binding document of liberal correctness is routinely ignored by the regime, whose response to public protests has been consistently violent.

 Last year Addis Ababa witnessed the first mass demonstrations since 2005, when “security forces killed dozens of protesters [some estimate that up to 200 people were murdered by government forces] and arbitrarily detained thousands of people across the country.” [Human Rights Watch (HRW)] Unsurprisingly since then the streets have been quiet. Until 2013 that is, when in June thousands found the courage to march through the capital demanding the release of political prisoners, “respect for the constitution” and “Justice! Justice! Justice!” [Reuters] And again in November, when enraged demonstrators gathered outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Addis Ababa and cities across the world to protest the appalling abuse meted out to Ethiopian migrants in the Gulf State. Many hoped this united response was the beginning of a coordinated movement of collective action, a long overdue movement for change.

Ethiopia is young, 65% of the population are under 25, the median age is a mere 17, and like protest movements elsewhere — Egypt, Brazil, Turkey e.g., it is the young who are leading the way. They see clearly the injustices, the violations of fundamental freedoms and the duplicity of a government that presents a democratic face to its international allies and benefactors whilst brutalising its own people.

Since 25th April, students have demonstrated throughout the Oromia Regional State, protesting against the government’s sinister sounding ‘Integrated Development Master Plan’. The Oromo people constitute Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group — around 27 million people — almost a third of the population. They have been marginalised and discriminated against since the 19th century when Empress Taytu Betul (wife of Menelikk II) chose the site of Addis Ababa for the capital. As the city grew Oromos were evicted from their land and forced onto the margins — socially, economically and politically: “time and again, Oromo farmers were removed from their land under the guise of development without adequate compensation.”[Geeska Africa]. Like tyrants everywhere, the paranoid EPRDF is hostile to all forms of dissent no matter the source; however they react with greater levels of brutality to dissenting voices in Oromia than perhaps anywhere else in the country, and “scores of Oromos are regularly arrested based on their actual or suspected opposition to the government.” [Amnesty International (AI)]

 The proposed ‘master plan’ would substantially expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa into areas of Oromia surrounding the capital. “Protestors claim they merely wanted to raise questions about the plan — but were answered with violence and intimidation.” [BBC] They rightly feel smallholder farmers and other groups living on government land (all land in Ethiopia is government owned) would once again be threatened, leading to large scale evictions to make way for land leasing or land sales, as has happened elsewhere in the country. In addition many Oromos see the proposed expansion as a broader threat to their regional and cultural identity and say the scheme is “in violation of the Constitutionally-guaranteed protection of the ‘special interests’ of the Oromia state.” [AI] Constitutional guarantees that mean nothing to the members of the ruling party, or a politically controlled judiciary.

Killing, beating, intimidating 

University campuses have formed the beating heart of the protest movement that has now spread throughout the region. On Tuesday 29th April around 25,000 people, “including residents of Ambo town in central Oromia, participated in a city wide demonstration, in the largest show of opposition to the government’s plans to date.” [Revolution News] Somewhat predictably, security forces, consisting of the federal police and military Special Forces known as the ‘Agazi’, have “responded by shooting at and beating peaceful protesters in Ambo, Nekemte, Jimma, and other towns with unconfirmed reports from witnesses of dozens of casualties.” [Human Rights Watch (HRW)] A witness told Amnesty International that on the third day of protest in Guder town, near Ambo, the security forces were waiting for the protesters and opened fire when they arrived. “She said five people were killed in front of her. A source in Robe town, the location of Madawalabu University, reported that 11 bodies had been seen in a hospital in the town. Another witness said they had seen five bodies in Ambo [80 miles west of Addis Ababa] hospital.”

Whilst the government says that “at least nine students have died” during the protests, “a witness told the BBC that 47 were killed by the security forces” — a misleading term for government thugs, who are killing, beating and intimidating innocent civilians: Amnesty reports that children as young as 11 years of age were among the dead. In addition to killing peaceful protesters, large numbers have been beaten up during and after protests, resulting in scores of injuries, and hundreds or “several thousands”, acc
ording to the main Oromia opposition party, the Oromo Federalist Congress (AFC), have been arbitrarily arrested and are being detained incommunicado.  Given the regime’s history those imprisoned face a very real risk of torture.

In many cases the arrests took place after the protesters had dispersed. “Security forces have conducted house to house searches in many locations in the region, [looking] for students and others who may have been involved. New arrests continue to be reported,” [AI] and squads of government thugs are reportedly beating local residents in a crude attempt at intimidation. Amnesty reports the case of a father whose son was shot dead during a protest, being ‘severely beaten’ by security forces, who told the bereaved parent “he should have taught his son some discipline.”

The Oromia community has often been the target of government aggression, and recent events are reminiscent of January 2004, when several Oromia students at Addis Ababa University were shot and killed when protesting for the right to stage an Oromo cultural event on campus. Many more were wounded and 494 [Oromo Support Group (OSG)] were arrested and detained without charge or trial.  HRW reported how “police ordered both male and female students to run and crawl barefoot, bare-kneed, and bare-armed over sharp gravel for three-and-half hours; they were also forced to carry each other over the gravel.”  The Police, HRW goes on to say,  “have repeatedly employed similar methods of torture and yet are rarely held accountable for their excesses.”

The recent level of extreme violence displayed by the State is not unusual and takes place throughout Ethiopia; what is new is the response of the people. Anger at the security forces criminality has fuelled further demonstrations in Oromo as friends and family of those murdered have added their voices to the growing protest movement. This righteous stand against government brutality and injustice is heartening for the country and should be supported with condemnation and pressure from international donors and the UN more broadly. Those arrested during protests must be immediately released and investigations into killings by security personnel instigated as a matter of utmost urgency.

Tools of control

The government’s heavy-handed reaction to the Oromo protests is but the latest example of the regime’s ruthless response to criticism of its policies. Political opposition parties, when tolerated at all have been totally marginalised, dissenting independent voices are quickly silenced and a general atmosphere of fear is all pervading. Despite freedom of expression being a constitutional right virtually all media outlets are either government owned or controlled; “blogs and Internet pages critical of the Ethiopian government are regularly blocked and independent radio stations, particularly those broadcasting in Amharic and Afan Oromo, are routinely jammed.” [HRW] The EPRDF has created “one of the most repressive media environments in the world.” Reinforcing this condition, “the government on April 25th and 26th arbitrarily arrested nine bloggers and journalists in Addis Ababa. They remain in detention without charge.” [Ibid] International human rights groups (whose activities have been severely restricted by the stifling Charities and Societies Proclamation of 2009) as well as foreign journalists are not welcome, and reporters “who have attempted to reach the current demonstrations have been turned away or detained,” [Ibid] making it difficult to confirm exact numbers of those killed by government security personnel.

The UN Human Rights Council recently reviewed Ethiopia’s human rights record under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Since the first review in 2009 the human rights condition has greatly deteriorated. The EPRDF rules the country through fear and intimidation, they have introduced ambiguous, universally condemned legislation to control and intimidate: the Charities and Societies Proclamation (CSO law) and the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation specifically. Laws of repression that together have made independent media and civil society completely ineffective. Freedom of assembly – another constitutional right – is not allowed, (or as can be seen with the Oromo protests) is dealt with in the harshest manner possible; the Internet and telecommunications are controlled and monitored by the government and phone records/recordings are easily obtained by security personnel. Arbitrary arrests and false Imprisonment of anyone criticizing the government is routine as is the use of torture on those incarcerated. In the Ogaden region the regime is committing gross human rights abuses constituting crimes against humanity and in Gambella and the Lower Omo Valley large numbers of indigenous people have been forcibly moved into government camps (Villagization Programme), as land is sold for pennies to international companies. In short, human rights are completely ignored by the Government in Ethiopia. As the people begin to come together and protest, international pressure should be applied on the regime to observe the rule of law and uphold the people’s fundamental human rights.

We are living in extraordinary times, times of opportunity and change, times of great hope. With elections due next year now is the time for the various ethnic groups and factions inside and outside Ethiopia to unite, and speaking with one voice demand their rights, to freedom and justice and to live with hope in their hearts.

May 2014

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/23/rise-up-people-of-ethiopia/

In the last 10 days persecution of Ethiopian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia has escalated. Men and women are forced from their homes by mobs of civilians and dragged through the streets of Riyadh and Jeddah. Distressing videos of Ethiopian men being mercilessly beaten, kicked and punched have circulated the Internet and triggered worldwide protests by members of the Ethiopian diaspora as well as outraged civilians in Ethiopia. Women report being raped, many repeatedly, by vigilantes and Saudi police. Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT), has received reports of fifty deaths and states that thousands living with or without visas have been detained awaiting repatriation. Imprisoned, many relay experiences of torture and violent beatings.   

Earlier this year the Saudi authorities announced plans to purge the kingdom of illegal migrants. In July, King Abdullah extended the deadline for them to “regularize their residency and employment status” [from 3 rd July] to November 4th [HRW[i]]. Obtain the correct visa documentation, or risk arrest, imprisonment and/or repatriation. On 6th November, Inter Press Service[ii] (IPS) reports, Saudi police, “rounded up more than 4,000 illegal foreign workers at the start of a nationwide crackdown,“ undertaken in an attempt (the authorities say), to reduce the 12% unemployment rate “creating more jobs for locals”.

Leading up to the “crackdown” many visa-less migrants left the country: nearly a million Bangladeshis, Indians, Filipinos, Nepalis, Pakistanis and Yemenis are estimated to have left the country in the past three months. More than 30,000 Yemenis have reportedly crossed to their home country in the past two weeks,” and around 23,000 Ethiopian men and women have “surrendered to Saudi authorities” [BBC[iii]].

The police and civilian vigilante gangs are victimizing Ethiopian migrants, residing with and without visas; the “crackdown” has provided the police and certain sectors of the civilian population with an excuse to attack Ethiopians. Press TV[iv] reports that “Saudi police killed three Ethiopian migrant workers in the impoverished neighborhood of Manfuhah in the capital, Riyadh, where thousands of African workers, mostly Ethiopians, were waiting for buses to take them to deportation centers.” Hundreds have been arrested and report being tortured: “we are kept in a concentration camp, we do not get enough food and drink, when we defend our sisters from being raped, they beat and kill us,” a migrant named Kedir, told ESAT TV[v]. Women seeking refuge within the Ethiopian consulate tell of being abducted from the building by Saudi men and raped. ESAT, reports that several thousand migrants have been transported by trucks to unknown destinations outside the cities.

Whilst the repatriation of illegal migrants is lawful, the Saudi authorities do not have the right to act violently; beating, torturing and raping vulnerable, frightened people: people, who wish simply to work in order to support their families. The abuse that has overflowed from the homes where domestic workers are employed onto the streets of the capital reflects the wide-ranging abuse suffered by migrant workers of all nationalities in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Gulf States.

Trail of abuse

This explosion of state sponsored violence against Ethiopians highlights the plight of thousands of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia. They tell of physical, sexual and psychological abuse at the hands of employers, agents and family members. The draconian Kafala sponsorship system, (which grants ownership of migrants to their sponsor), together with poor or non-existent labour laws, endemic racism and gender prejudice, creates an environment in which extreme mistreatment has become commonplace in the oil-rich kingdom.

There are over nine million migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, that’s 30% of the population.  They come from poor backgrounds in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia and Ethiopia and make up “more than half the work force. The country would grind to an embarrassing stand still without their daily toil. “Many suffer multiple abuses and labor exploitation [including withholding of wages, excessive working hours and confinement], sometimes amounting to slavery-like conditions”, Human Rights Watch (HRW[vi]) states.

The level of abuse of domestic workers is hard to judge: their isolation combined with total control exerted by employers, together with government indifference, means the vast majority of cases go unreported. Until August this year there was no law covering domestic abuse. Legislation has been passed: however, the authorities, HRW[vii] reports “are yet to make clear which agencies will police the new law…without effective mechanisms to punish domestic abuse, this law is merely ink on paper.” All pressure needs to be exerted on the rulers of Saudi Arabia to ensure the law is implemented and enforced so victims of domestic violence feel it is safe to come forward.

Ethiopian governments negligence

Whilst thousands of its nationals are detained, beaten, killed and raped, the Ethiopian government hangs its negligent head in silence in Addis Ababa, does not act to protect or swiftly repatriate their nationals, and criminalises those protesting in Addis Ababa against the Saudi actions.

Although freedom to protest is enshrined within the Ethiopian constitution (a liberal minded, largely ignored document written by the incumbent party), dissent and public demonstrations, if not publicly outlawed, are actively discouraged by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime. In response to the brutal treatment meted out by the Saudi police and gangs of vigilantes in Riyadh and Jeddah, outraged civilians in Addis Ababa staged a protest outside the Saudi Embassy, only to be confronted by their own police force, wielding batons and beating demonstrators. Al Jazeera[viii] reports that police “arrested dozens of people outside the Saudi embassy [in Addis Ababa] in a crackdown on demonstrators protesting against targeted attacks on Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia.” A senior member of The Blue Party, Getaneh Balcha was one of over 100 people arrested for peacefully protesting.

The government’s justification, rolled out to defend yet another suppressive response to a democratic display, was to assert that the protest “was an illegal demonstration, they had not got a permit from the appropriate office”: petty bureaucratic nonsense, hiding the undemocratic truth that the government does not want public protests of any kind on the streets of its cities: effectively, freedom of assembly is
banned in Ethiopia. The protestors, he said, “were fomenting anti-Arab sentiments here among Ethiopians.” Given the brutal treatment of Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia, anger and anti-Saudi sentiment (not anti Arab) is, one would imagine understandable, and should be shared by the Ethiopian government.

The people of Ethiopia are living under a duplicitous highly repressive regime. The EPRDF consistently demonstrates it’s total indifference to the needs and human rights of the people. Freedom of expression, political dissent and public assembly is denied by a regime that is committing a plethora of human rights violations in various parts of the country, atrocities constituting in certain regions crimes against humanity. In fact, according to Genocide Watch[ix], the Ethiopian government is committing genocide in the Somali region, as well as on the “Anuak, Oromo and Omo” ethnic groups (or tribes).

The recent appalling events in Saudi Arabia have brought thousands of impassioned Ethiopians living inside the country and overseas onto the streets. This powerful worldwide action presents a tremendous opportunity for the people to unite, to demand their rights through peaceful demonstrations and to call with one voice for change within their beloved country. The time to act is now, as a wise man has rightly said, “nothing happens by itself, man must act and implement his will”[x].

November 2013

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/22/ethiopian-migrants-victimized-in-saudi-arabia/

endnotes

[i] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/01/saudi-arabia-protect-migrant-workers-rights

[ii] http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/11/saudi-arabia-arrests-thousands-of-illegal-migrant-workers/

[iii] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24938570

[iv] http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/17/335070/saudis-beat-ethiopians-video-shows/

[v] http://ethsat.com/2013/11/15/the-anguish-of-ethiopian-migrant-workers-in-saudi-arabia/

[vi] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/01/saudi-arabia-protect-migrant-workers-rights

[vii] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/03/saudi-arabia-new-law-criminalize-domestic-abuse

[viii] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/11/arrests-at-anti-saudi-protest-ethiopia-201311151464025832.html

[ix] http://www.genocidewatch.org/ethiopia.html

[x] http://www.shareintl.org/maitreya/messages/message_31.htm

They speak of democracy, but act violently to suppress dissenting voices and control the people through the inculcation of fear: they ignore human rights and trample on the people, they are a tyrannical wolf in democratic sheep’s clothing, causing suffering and misery to thousands of people throughout Ethiopia. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government repeatedly scoffs at international law and consistently acts in violation of their own Federal constitution – a liberal document written by the regime to please and deceive their foreign supporters. They have enacted laws of repression: the widely condemned Charities and Societies  (ATD) law (CSO law) and the Anti Terrorism Declaration, which is the main tool of political control, together with The ‘Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation’ they form a formidable unjust arsenal of government control. Freedom of the media (which is largely ‘state-owned’) is denied and political dissent is all but outlawed.

Against this repressive backdrop, the Semayawi (Blue) party, a new opposition group, organized peaceful protests on the 2nd June in Addis Ababa. Ten thousand or so people marched through the capital demanding the release of political prisoners, “respect for the constitution” and Justice! Justice! Justice! It was (Reuters 2/06/2013 reported), an “anti-Government procession…. the first large-scale protest since a disputed 2005 election ended in street violence that killed 200 people”, a ‘disputed election’ result that was discredited totally by European Union observers and denounced by opposition groups and large swathes of the population.

The Chairman of the Semayawi Party, Yilekal Getachew, told Reuters, “We have repeatedly asked the government to release political leaders, journalists and those who asked the government not to intervene in religious affairs”. In keeping with the recent worldwide movement for freedom and social justice, he stated that, “if these questions are not resolved and no progress is made in the next three months, we will organize more protests. It is the beginning of our struggle”. To the disappointment of many and the surprise of nobody, the government has made no attempt to ‘resolve’ the questions raised, and true to their word a second demonstration was planned for 1st September in Addis Ababa. In the event, as the BBC report, around “100 members of Ethiopia’s opposition Semayawi (Blue) party were arrested and some badly beaten”, and “equipment such as sound systems were confiscated”, ahead of the planned rally, which was banned by the EPRDF. Government justification formed, and a cock and bull story was duly constructed with Communication Minister Shimeles Kemal stating “the venue [for Semayawi’s event) had already been booked by a pro-government group condemning religious extremism”.

Non-interference in religious affairs is one of the key demands of the Semayawi party, a demand based upon the constitutional commitment of religious independence from the State, which Muslim groups claim the government has violated. Enraged by government interference in all matters religious, the Muslim community have organised regular small-scale protests and sit-ins in the capital for the last two years. In early August, Reuters 8/08/2013[i] reported “Demonstrators chanted “Allahu Akbar” and hoisted banners that read “respect the constitution”, referring to allegations that the government has tried to influence the highest Muslim affairs body, the Ethiopia Islamic Affairs Supreme Council”. Around 40% of Ethiopia’s population (around 85 million) are Muslim, for generations they have lived amicably with their Orthodox Christians neighbours, who make up the majority in the country; they are moderate in their beliefs and peaceful in their ways. The EPRDF in contrast are violent, intolerant and ideologically driven; ‘Revolutionary Democracy’ being the particular tune to which the democratic dictatorship hums and drums its partisan rule.

“Name-Calling”

The government’s response to the peaceful demonstrations, has unsurprisingly been intolerant and dismissive; their comments inflammatory and predictable, stating Mail@Guardian 14/07/2013[ii] record, “most of these demonstrators are Islamic extremists”, and showing their own ‘extreme’ tendencies, authoritively declaring that “the protesters aimed to set up an Islamic state in the country and were bankrolled and guided by “extremists” [this time] overseas”. Duplicitous nonsense, which serves to distract attention from the underlying issues being raised and the imperative (and legal requirement) for the government to act in accordance with its own constitution.

Along with such disingenuous comments the regime has responded to the protests in a repressive manner; imprisoning Muslims calling for justice, causing Amnesty International[iii] 8/08/2013 to be “extremely concerned at reports coming out of Ethiopia… of further widespread arrests of Muslim protesters”, Amnesty demand that the “on-going repressive crackdown on freedom of speech and the right to peacefully protest has to end now”. Despite the fact that the protests have been peaceful and good-natured the regime has consistently described the protesters as violent terrorists, in February the ‘Holy War Movement’ was shown on State Television, it presented protestors and those arrested (including journalists), as terrorists.  And in a clear violation of people’s constitutional right to protest, the regime has threatened to take firm action against further protests.

Whilst the majority of actions during the last two years have been without incident, protests in Kofele in the Oromia region on 8th August ended in “the deaths of an unconfirmed number”, there have also been reports of large numbers of people being arrested in Kofele and Addis Ababa, including two journalists. Following the Kofele deaths Amnesty called for “an immediate, independent and impartial investigation into the events in Kofele, as well as into the four incidents last year which resulted in the deaths and injuries of protestors”. Legitimate demands which the regime has duly ignored.

The EPRDF does not tolerate any independent media coverage within the country and indeed does all it can to control the flow of information out of Ethiopia and restrict totally dissenting voices. And they don’t care who the journalist is working for, key allies or diaspora media; In October 2012 a reporter from the Voice of America (VOA) covering a protest in Anwar Mosque in Addis was arrested and told to erase her recorded interviews, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)[iv] report. This was not the first time a VOA journalist had been detained. “They are criminalizing journalism,” said Martin Schibbye a Swedish freelance journalist who was jailed [in 2011] along with a colleague for more than 14 months in Ethiopia”, for entering the Ogaden region. A heavily militarized area where wide ranging human rights violations constituting crimes against humanity are taking place, which has been hidden from the International media and aid organisations since 2007. Fearing imprisonment, many journalists have left Ethiopia, CPJ report that
in 2012, along with Eritrea, it was were Africa’s ‘top jailer’ of journalists”, coming in eighth worldwide.

Unjust Laws of Control

In July last year, hundreds of protesting Muslims peacefully demanding that the government stop interfering in their religious affairs and allow them to vote freely for representatives on the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (EIASC). Most were released, but 29 members of the protest committee were charged on 29th October under the universally criticized Anti Terrorist Declaration (ATD), accused of “intending to advance a political, religious or ideological cause” by force, and the “planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt of terrorist acts.” Their arrest has been slammed by human rights groups as well as the United States Commission on religious Freedom[v], who  “are deeply concerned that Ethiopia’s government is seeking to silence peaceful religious freedom proponents by detaining and trying them in secret under trumped-up terrorism charges.  They should be released now and their trials halted”. The men claim to have been “tortured and experienced other ill-treatment in detention”.

The ambiguous ATD was introduced in 2009 and has been used by the Ethiopian government, “to severely restrict basic rights of freedom of expression, association, and assembly”, Human Rights Watch (HRW) state. It violates dues process, which like a raft of other internationally recognized and legally binding rights, is enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution. The legislation cause outrage amongst human rights groups and the right minded when it was proposed. HRW (30/06/2009)[vi] said of the draft law, (which un-amended found its way onto the statute books) that it would “permit the government to repress a wide range of internationally protected freedoms”, – precisely the reason for it’s introduction, and it provides “the Ethiopian government with a potent instrument to crack down on political dissent, including peaceful political demonstrations and public criticisms of government policy”. The unjust law allows for long-tem imprisonment and the death penalty for so called crimes that meet some EPRDF definition of terrorism, and denies in some cases a defendants right to be presumed innocent – the bedrock of the international judicial system.

Torture is used without restraint by the military and police, under the ATD evidence obtained whilst a prisoner is being beaten, hanged, whipped or drowned is admissible in court, this criminal act contravenes Article 15 of the United Nations Convention against Torture (ratified by Ethiopia in 1994), which  ‘requires that any statement made as a result of torture is inadmissible as evidence’. Terrorism is indeed an issue of grave concern in Ethiopia, it is not rooted in the Muslim community, the media, the Blue Party or the Universities, it is State Terrorism that stalks this land, that kills and falsely imprisons, tortures and rapes the innocent, it is the EPRDF; the rebel group that ousted a communist dictator in 1991 only to take up his tyrannical mantle, who manipulate the law to serve their repressive rule and who violates a plethora of human rights, consistently and with impunity. Ethiopia’s donors and international friends, (primarily America and Britain) have other, larger fish on their minds, and even though they give the country over a third of its federal budget they seem unconcerned by the criminality being committed, much of which is taking place under the cloak of development. Violent rule however is a storm that is imploding throughout the world, the people, who have suffered long enough, sense their collective strength and are awakening.

Need for Unity

Although completely contrary to the EPRDF’s pledge of Federal Federalism, divide and rule is the effective methodology of division employed by the regime. In a country with dozens of tribal groups, various ethnicities and different religious beliefs (Islam and Christianity), unity is the key to any popular social revolution, much needed and ardently longed for by millions throughout the land. We are witnessing a worldwide protest movement for change; age-old values of freedom, equality and social justice, brotherhood and peace are the clarion call of many marching and protesting. And so it is in Ethiopia, the Blue party and other opposition groups, the Muslim community and the students on the streets demanding Justice! Justice! Jusitce! are in harmony with the rhythm of the times.

Out of step and blind to the needs of the people and their rightful demands, the ruling party acts with violence to drown out their voices and suppress their rights: in Addis Ababa, where thousands marched in June, in Oromia and the Ogaden, where the people seek autonomy, in Amhara, where thousands have been displaced, in Gambella and the Lower Omo Valley, where native people are being driven off their ancestral land into state created villages, women raped and men beaten.       

Unity is the song of the day, rich with diversity united in intent, the collective will of the people of Ethiopia and indeed throughout the world is an unstoppable force for change. All steps need to be taken to remove the obstacle to the realization of unity throughout the country, ethnic prejudices and tribal differences; all need to be laid aside. The Ethiopian regime may succeed in subduing the movement for change that is simmering throughout the country, however with sustained unified action, peacefully undertaken and relentlessly expressed, freedom and social justice longed for by millions throughout the country, will surely come.

September 2013

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/20/ethiopian-regime-repression/

endnotes

[i] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/08/us-ethiopia-islam-protests-idUSBRE9770NQ20130808

[ii] http://mg.co.za/article/2013-07-14-ethiopias-opposition-holds-rare-protests

[iii] http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/ethiopian-repression-muslim-protests-must-stop-2013-08-08

[iv] http://www.cpj.org/2012/10/ethiopia-briefly-detains-voice-of-america-correspo.php

[v] http://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/whats-new-at-uscirf/4063-press-release-uscirf-calls-on-ethiopia-to-release-religious-freedom-advocates-on-trial-july-22-2013.html

[vi] http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/06/30/analysis-ethiopia-s-draft-anti-terrorism-law#_Summary

In many parts of the world development has become an invisible cloak under which all manner of “state sponsored” atrocities and human rights violations are being committed. Married to growth, development has been (largely) reduced to economic advancement – meaning maximizing Gross National Product (GNP) figures month on month, year on year, and turning over glowing returns to the insatiable global monetary bodies – The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and – profit to private investors. No matter the human impact and environmental consequences.

A term overflowing with contradictions, development is often employed to dignify corporate activities, which are commonly no more than exploitation and profiteering, as in the case of the worldwide appropriation of land, usually to irresponsible, profit-driven foreign corporations and private hedge funds and equity fund managers, who boast of returns between, 20% to 40% on investments. Huge pay offs which Anuradha Mittal[i] of the Oakland Institute says is luring in “endowments including university endowments such as Harvard University, Vanderbilt University” and others. Such institutions Friends of the Earth[ii], state “are stimulating land grabbing, which is destroying thousands of communities worldwide. “The financial sector”, they demand, “must take responsibility for their activities and ensure their investments respect human rights and abide by local environmental regulations”.

A broader more substantive definition of development would include the fulfillment of innate potential, the continuation of traditional lifestyles and the integrated development of individuals.  Ideas that go beyond crass GNP or GDP measurements, globalisation statistics and Power Point clichés, which sees everything as a commodity and everyone as a consumer,

The homogenisation of life, a consequence of globalization, and the market economy (with its inherent inequality and lack of social justice), denies individuality, squashes or appropriates culture and imposes competition in all areas. A recipe for injustice and division fuelling anger and frustration, which for long suppressed, have surfaced in the popular uprisings and protest movements seen recently throughout the world.

The Lower Omo Valley

Over 70 different tribal groups contribute to the rich cultural tapestry that makes up Ethiopia. The beautiful Lower Omo Valley, in the south east of the country is home to a group of eight ancient tribes, indigenous people who have lived upon the land, for thousands of years, leading self-sufficient, simple lives in harmony with the environment. They live east and west along the 760 km long Omo River (the heartbeat of their lives), which flows from Ethiopia into Kenya, where it comes to rest in Lake Turkana.

In order to develop the rich and fertile land of the region, and honour leasehold agreement with foreign companies, the government is evicting indigenous people from their homes and driving them into settlement camps where, “the government promises us paradise, but we know that we are going to hell,” says one of the aggrieved Bodis, “Between tribes we have always found a solution, when a land conflict has arisen, but with the government it’s impossible”, the Oakland Institute (OI) report in Omo Local Tribes Under Threat[iii].

Their homes destroyed and their land stolen from them, local people (including children and women) tell of horrendous government abuse. These ancient people are, (they themselves say) being subjected to a range of atrocities constituting state criminality: the list of atrocities, shocking and vile, is made no less disturbing by its familiarity: arbitrary killings, rape, false imprisonment and torture are the methodology of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in the region as they clear people off land that is rightfully theirs, and either forcibly relocate them into state constructed vilages, drive them into the forests to perish, or simply kill them in cold blood.

Land rights are complex, and whilst the Ethiopian constitution (written by the ruling regime but used at its convenience), states that all land ultimately belongs to the state, indigenous people are protected by a range of international treatise, to which Ethiopia is a signatory and binding articles within their own constitution. In addition, the government has said that the only land appropriate to be leased is land described as ‘marginal’, ‘unused’ or ‘wasteland’. Land regarded by the government as marginal is seen as central to the lives of indigenous people.

“Because the land is traditionally owned, under international law the traditional owners have the right to it as property. Changes to its use or seizure are illegal without the consultation and compensation of the lands’ traditional owners”, Human Rights Watch (HRW) make clear in their report ‘What Will happen If Hunger Comes”[iv]. As well as protecting indigenous people the constitution also safeguards agro-pastoralists (which the majority of affected tribal groups are made up of); section 40 (5) [v] makes this clear; “Ethiopian pastoralists have the right to free land for grazing and cultivation as well as the right not to be displaced from their own lands”. Driving local people off their ancestral land which supplies their food and medicine, also breaches the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states, “in no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence”. Add to this the violation of the Right to Culture and Religion and the Right to Health and a substantive legal shield forms to protect the tribal people in the Omo Valley, from government development plans. That is, providing such legal obligations are observed and enforced.

Gibe III Dam and Associated Land Development

Remote and culturally diverse, with prized United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage status, the Lower Omo valley is home to over 200,000 indigenous tribal people, including the Kwegu, Bodi, Mutsi, Suri and Nyangatom tribes. Their ancient ways of life and the delicate ecosystem, is being threatened, Human Rights Watch (HRW)[vi] report, “by the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam, known as Gibe III, on the Omo River and associated plans for large scale irrigated agriculture”. The massive Gilgel Gibe III dam was started in 2006, and we are told, is now 62% complete. Funding for the $2 billion project has come from a range of sources, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). The Europeans looked at the project and, concerned by the lack of impact assessment studies, culturally appropriate project consultations (required under the constitution), and under heated pressure from NGOs, wisely decided not to get involved, as did the World Bank.

International and regional aid organisations, Survival International (SI)[vii] among them, believe “the Gibe III Dam will have catastrophic consequences for the tribes of the Omo River, who already live close to the margins of life in this dry and challenging area”. Gibe III, no doubt much to the delight and misplaced pride of the government, will be the largest dam of its kind in Africa (243 meters tall), causing potentially some of the worst environmental and human carnage, by seriously impacting the lives of tribal groups of the Lower Omo area, as well as the 300,000 people who live around Lake Turkana in Kenya, which receives the majority of its water from the Omo River.

Water from the dam, which will double Ethiopia’s energy capacity, will be stored in a giant reservoir which will feed the plantations (445,000ha has so far been earmarked by the government) via hundreds of kilometers of pipelines. “Up to 200 kilometers (125 miles)” of such primary irrigation canals have already been built, along with an “earthen dam” to water the plantations which, OI tell us, “has stopped the annual flood that all people along the river depend on for agriculture, and in the process inundated cultivation sites of the Bodi and Kwegu people upstream.” In addition, SI makes clear; the combined effects of the projects “will result in the drying out of much of the riverine zone and will eliminate the Riparian Forest. Indigenous people such as the Kwegu who rely almost exclusively on fishing and hunting will be destitute”. One could be forgiven for thinking that this government is working to intentionally decimate native peoples’ lives and shatter the delicate ecology of the region.

The construction of the Gibe III dam and the interconnected development project of leasing ancestral land for agriculture (including bio-fuels), are being pursued by the government in a manner that is violating a range of human rights, as well as internationally binding legal agreements. Both schemes have been widely condemned by human rights groups and concerned NGOs, even USAID.[viii], Ethiopia’s largest single donor have berated the regime over their mistreatment of indigenous people.

Ideologically driven by narrow, distorted ideas of development and obsessed with economic growth, the EPRDF is pursuing a land sale policy that is causing enormous suffering to the lives of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people throughout the country. With the Lower Omo Valley projects there is a real risk “that the livelihoods of 500,000 people may be endangered, tens of thousands will be forcibly displaced, and that the region will witness increased inter-ethnic conflict as communities compete for scarce resources” HRW report.

Over 375,000 ha of fertile land in the Lower Omo valley, the Oakland Institute (OI) report in ‘Ignoring Abuse in Ethiopia’, is being turned over for “industrial scale plantations for sugar and other monocrops“ – the controversial, albeit high yield agricultural practice, of growing a single crop, year after year on the same land. Such methods damage the soil ecology, creating dependency on pesticides and fertilisers (all good for the agro-chemical giants) and use lots of water. Driven solely by profit, investors are only interested in high-quality, well irrigated water with good water supplies: they care little about the environmental impact on eco-systems and the devastation being caused to indigenous people and rural livelihoods, nor would it seem do the ruling EPRDF.

HRW estimate “around 100,000 ha is being made available to private ‘investors”, corporations from Malaysia, India, Italy and Korea who are planting biofuels and cash crops, e.g. cotton and maize. Together with state-owned sugarcane and cotton plantations run by the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation – an umbrella organisation of the central government, (which has taken 150,000 ha of tribal land for itself) and whose operations OI state, “will [negatively] impact the people of the Lower Omo most, especially the 170,000 along the river”.

Violent Evictions Killing and Rape

Mass displacements are accompanying these projects, OI report “260,000 local people from 17 ethnic groups in the Lower Omo and around Lake Turkana [in Kenya]—whose waters will be taken for plantation irrigation—are being evicted from their farmland and restricted from using the natural resources they have been relying on for their livelihoods”. The military are the violent enforcers of much of the regimes unlawful policies up and down the country, and so it is in the Omo valley: HRW report that “on the east bank of the Omo River, where farms are being cleared, grazing lands have been lost, and livelihoods are being destroyed. According to government maps and local sources this is just the beginning of a major transformation of the Lower Omo area”, [where] more than 2,000 soldiers are said to have been drafted into the area downstream of the dam and “most of the Omo valley is now off limits to foreigners”, The Guardian (7/02/2013)[ix] report. Including the international media and NGOs, “virtually no nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) work in the area, and members of indigenous communities have been warned not to speak to outsiders, especially foreigners“. Government gagging practices consistent with their approach elsewhere, the Ogaden and Gambella regions, as well as Oromia, where state terrorism is widespread, come readily to mind.

This re-settlement of indigenous people to allow for the commercialization of their land is taking place without the “free, prior and informed” consent (legally) required for any development project, with no compensation for loss of land and livelihood and without consultation, required within the constitution.

Indeed far from consulting with local people and allowing them the right to speak out freely (another constitutional fantasy), military units regularly visit villages, HRW record, to “suppress dissent related to the sugar plantation development [and associated re-settlement plans]. According to local people anything less than fully expressed support for sugar development was met with beatings, harassment, or arrest”. The Guardian reports that killings and repression are now common, and go on to recount the story of a villager who says he “was shot with a bullet in my knee [when walking on his land]. That day 11 people were killed and the soldiers threw four bodies off Dima Village Bridge. They were eaten by hyenas”. Rape is a military weapon of choice being employed to frighten and intimidate, OI relay the particularly distressing account of “the gang rape of a young herd boy. They took a small boy that was herding cattle. They had sex with him for a long time in the forest. He was screaming. The boy couldn’t walk afterward. He had to be picked up and carried”.  

Frustrated and angry and seeing no alternative, members of the Suri tribe on the west bank of the Omo river have taken up arms against the military. The government has decimated their land, clearing trees and grass to “allow Malaysian invest
ors to establish plantations, water has also been diverted from the mainstay Koka River to these plantations leaving the largely pastoral Suri without water for their cattle”, according to the Oakland Institute.  Government forces are maintaining a brutal campaign aimed at the Suri people. Friends of Lake Turkana[x], a Kenyan NGO reported in May 2012 that, “government forces killed 54 unarmed Suri in the market place at Maji in retaliation [to Suri actions against the military]. It is estimated that between 57 and 65 people died in the massacre and from injuries sustained on that day. Five more Suri have been killed since then… [and] Suri people are being arrested randomly and sentenced to 18, 20, and 25 years in prison for obscure crimes”.

Not only is the government destroying the lives of these tribal groups, they are also creating food insecurity and dependence on humanitarian food aid. Barred from “cultivating their own fields and [with the military] destroying crops and grain stores to cause hunger. People are then lured to the [resettlement] sites with food aid from international agencies”.

In 2011 former Prime-Minister Meles Zenawi, asserted that the industrial farms would “benefit the people of this area and hundreds of thousands of other Ethiopians, by creating employment”. Hollow political rhetoric – in fact, the government’s development plans for this region are destroying lives and livelihoods for the pastoralist indigenous people, whose only choice OI make clear “will be work on plantations for a low wage”. Zenawi cited the example of sugarcane plantations established in the Awash valley, but failed to say that tribal groups in the region lost their homes and their way of life and are now dependent on food aid to feed their families – the same is now happening in the Lower Omo valley.

In addition to losing their land, their homes and livelihoods, with the arrival of foreign workers, plus 2,000 soldiers in this previously quiet, hidden corner of Ethiopia, the people of the Lower Omo Valley have become exposed to a spate of health concerns. Prostitution is flourishing and due to men’s arrogant refusal to wear condoms, HIV/Aids is now prevalent amongst tribal members and “numerous cases of Hepatitis B, a disease transferred through blood and sex” has, OI state been reported in the area. Food insecurity, violent evictions (including killings and rape), cultural carnage, environmental destruction prostitution and HIV/Aids: all brought to the beautiful Lower Omo Valley by the government, and all, in the name of development.

August 2013

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/09/ethiopian-development-destroying-lives/

endnotes

 [i] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YD1X7wDpg

[ii] http://www.foei.org/en/media/archive/2013/european-banks-and-pensions-funds-fuel-land-grabs-in-uganda

[iii] http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/…org/files/OI_Report_Omo_Ethiopia.pdf‎

[iv] http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ethiopia0612webwcover.pdf‎

[v] http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Hornet/Ethiopian_Constitution.html

[vi] http://www.hrw.org/node/107954/section/2

[vii] http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/omovalley

[viii] http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ethiopia0612webwcover.pdf‎

[ix] http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/07/ethiopian-dam-project-devastating-remote-tribes

[x] http://www.friendsoflaketurkana.org/

To many people land is much more than a resource or corporate commodity to be bought, developed and sold for a profit. Identity, cultural history and livelihood are all connected to ‘place’. The erosion of traditional values and morality (which include the observation of human rights and environmental responsibility) are some of the many negative effects of the global neo-liberal economic model, with its focus on short-term gain and material benefit. The commercialisation of everything and everybody has become the destructive goal of multi-nationals, and their corporate governments manically driven by the desire for perpetual growth as the elixir to life’s problems.

Land for profit

Since the ‘food crisis in 2008’ agricultural land in developing countries has been in high demand. Seen as a sound financial investment by foreign brokers and agrochemical firms, and as a way to create food security for their home market by corporations from Asia and the Middle East in particular.

Three quarters of worldwide land acquisitions have taken place in Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty ridden and economically vulnerable countries (many run by governments with poor human rights records) are ‘encouraged’ to attract foreign investment by donor partners and their international guides. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and donor partners, powerful institutions that by “supporting the creation of investment-friendly climates and land markets in developing countries” have been a driving force behind the global rush for agricultural land, the Oakland Institute (OI) report in Unheard Voices (UV)[i].

Poor countries make easy pickings for multi-nationals negotiating deals for prime land at giveaway prices and with all manner of government sweeteners. Contracts sealed without consultation with local people, which lack transparency and accountability, have virtually no benefit for the ‘host’ country (certainly none for indigenous groups), and as Oxfam[ii] make clear “have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and destruction of livelihoods”.

Ethiopia is a prime target for investors looking to acquire agricultural land.  Since 2008 The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government has leased almost 4 million hectares, for commercial farm ventures.  Land is cheap – they are virtually giving it away, tax is non-existent and profits (like the food grown) are smoothly repatriated. Local people are swept aside by a government unconcerned with human rights and the observation of federal, or international law. A perfect environment then, where shady deals can be done and large corporate profits made. In their desperation to be seen as one of the ‘growth gang’ and “to make way for agricultural land investments”, the Ethiopian government has “committed egregious human rights abuses, in direct violation of international law,” OI state.

Forced from home  

Bordering South Sudan the fertile Gambella region (where 42% of land is available), with its lush vegetation and flowing rivers, is where the majority of land sales in the country have taken place. Deals in the region are made possible by the EPRDF’s ‘villagisation programme’. This is forcibly clearing indigenous people off ancestral land and herding them into State created villages. The plan has been intensely criticised by human rights groups, and rightly so – 1.5 million people nationwide are destined to be re-settled, 225,000 (over three years) from Gambella.

More concerned to be seen as corporate buddy than guardian of the people, the Ethiopian government guarantees investors that it will clear land leased of everything and everyone. It has an obligation, OI says, to “deliver and hand over the vacant possession of leased land free of impediments” and to “provide free security against any riot, disturbance or any turbulent time”. (OI) Bulldozers are destroying the “farms, and grazing lands that have sustained Anuak, Mezenger, Nuer, Opo, and Komo peoples for centuries”, Cultural Survival (CS)[iii] records: and dissent, should it occur, is brutally dealt with by the government. Since you do not accept what government says, we jail you.’” The elder told from Batpul village told Human Rights Watch (HRW) [iv]. He was jailed without charge in Abobo, and held for more than two weeks, during which time “they turned me upside down, tied my legs to a pole, and beat me every day for 17 days until I was released”.

Hundreds of thousands of villagers, including pastoralists and indigenous people are being forcibly moved by the regime, HRW reports, they are “relocating them through violence and intimidation, and often without essential services,” such as education (denying children ‘the right to education’), water, and health care facilities – public services promised to the people and championed to donor countries by the government in their programme rhetoric.

Murder, rape, false imprisonment and torture are (reportedly) being committed by the Ethiopian military as they implement the federal governments policy of land clearance and re-settlement in accordance with its villagisation programme. ”My village was forced by the government to move to the new location against our will. I refused and was beaten and lost my two upper teeth”. This Anuak man told the NGO Inclusive Development International (IDI)[v], His brother “was beaten to death by the soldiers for refusing to go to the new village. My second brother was detained and I don’t know where he was taken by the soldiers”.  

To the Anuak People, who are the majority tribal group in the affected areas, their land is who they are. It’s where the material to build their homes is found it’s their source of traditional medicines and food. It’s where their ancestors are buried and where their history rests. By driving these people off their land and into large settlements or camps, the government is not only destroying their homes, in which they have lived for generations, it is stealing their identity. Indigenous people tell of violent intimidation, beatings, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture in military custody, rape and extra-judicial killing. State criminality breaching a range of international and indeed federal laws, that Genocide Watch (GW)[vi] consider “to have already reached Stage 7 (of 8), genocide massacres”, against the Anuak, as well as the people of Oromia, Omo and the Ogaden region.

The Ethiopian government is legally bound to obtain the ‘free, informed and prior consent’ of the indigenous people it plans to move. Far from obtaining consent, Niykaw Ochalla in Unheard Voices, states that, “when [the government] comes to take their land, it is without their knowledge, and in fact [the government] says that they no longer belonged to this land, [even though] the Anuak have owned it for generations”. Consultation, consent
and compensation the ‘three c’s required by federal and international law. Constitutional duties and legal requirements, which like a raft of other human rights obligations the regime dutifully ignores. Nyikaw Ochalla confirms that “there is “no consultation at all”, sometimes people are warned they have to move, but just as often OI found the military “instruct people to get up and move the same day”. And individuals receive no compensation “for their loss of livelihood and land”. In extensive research The Oakland Institute “did not find any instances of government compensation being paid to indigenous populations evicted from their lands”, this despite binding legal requirements to do so.

‘Waiting here for death’

The picture of state intimidation in Gambella is a familiar one. Refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, recount stories of the same type of abuse, indeed as do people from Oromia and the Lower Omo valley. Tried and tested Government methodology used to enforce repressive measures and create fear amongst the people. “The first mission for all the military and the Liyuu is to make the people of the Ogaden region afraid of us”, a former commander of the Liyuu police told me. And to achieve this crushing end, they are told “to rape and kill, to loot, to burn their homes, and capture their animals”. From a wealth of information collated by HRW and the OI, it is clear that the Ethiopian military in Gambella is following the same criminal script as their compatriots in the Ogaden region.

 We were at home on our farm, a 17-year-old girl from Abobo in Gambella (whose story echoes many), told HRW[vii] “when soldiers came up to us: ‘Do you accept to be relocated or not?’ ‘No.’ So they grabbed some of us. ‘Do you want to go now?’ ‘No.’ Then they shot my father and killed him”; a villager from Gooshini, now in exile in South Sudan, described how those in his settlement “that resisted…. were forced by soldiers to roll around in the mud in a stagnant water pool then beaten”.

The new settlements that make up the villagisation programme, are built on land that is “typically dry and arid”, completely unsuitable for farming and miles from water supplies, which are reserved for the industrial farms being constructed on fertile ancestral land. The result is increased food insecurity leading in some cases to starvation. HRW documented cases of people being forced off their land during the “harvest season, preventing them from harvesting their crops”. With such levels of cruelty and inhumanity the people feel desperate as one displaced individual told Human Rights Watch, “The government is killing our people through starvation and hunger . . . we are just waiting here for death”.

And should families try to leave the new settlement (something they are discouraged from doing) and return to their village homes, the government destroys them totally, burning houses and bulldozing the land. “The government brought the Anuak people here to die. They brought us no food, they gave away our land to the foreigners so we can’t even move back,” HRW record in ‘Waiting Here for Death’[viii]. People forced into the new villages are fearful of government assault, parents “are afraid to send their children to school because of the increased army presence. Parents worry that their children will be assaulted”. (UV)

In the face of such government atrocities the people feel powerless; but like many suffering injustice throughout the world, they are awakening demanding justice and the observation of fundamental human rights. “We don’t have any means of retrieving our land” Mr.O from the village of Pinykew in Gambella, told The Guardian (22/01/2013)[ix].  “Villagers have been butchered, falsely arrested and tortured, the women subjected to mass rape”. Enraged by such atrocities, he is bringing what could be a landmark legal case against Britain’s Department for International Development (DfiD). Leigh Day & Co, solicitors based in London, have taken the case, “arguing that money from DfiD is funding the villagisation programme”, that  “breaches the department’s own human rights policies.” DfiD administer the £324 million given by the British government to Ethiopia, making it the biggest recipient of aid from the country. They deny supporting forced re-location, but their own documents reveal British funds are paying the salaries “of officials implementing the programme and for infrastructure in new villages”, The Daily Mail 25/05/2013 [x] reports. Allegations reinforced by HRW, who state that “British aid is having an enormous, negative side effect – and that is the forcible ending of these indigenous people’s way of life.”

In an account that rings with familiarity, Mr.O, now in Dadaab refugee camp, says he was forced from his village at gunpoint by the military. At first he refused to leave, so “soldiers from the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) beat me with guns.” He was arrested, imprisoned in military barracks and tortured for three days, after which time he was taken to the new village, which “did not have water, food or productive fields”, where he was forced to build his house.

Government duplicity donor complicity

The government unsurprisingly denies all allegations of widespread human rights abuse connected with land deals and the ‘villagisation programme’ specifically. They continue to espouse the ‘promised public service and infrastructure benefits’ of the scheme that “by and large” OI assert, “have failed to materialise”. The regime is content to ignore documentation provided by human rights groups and NGOs and until recently had refused to cooperate with an investigation by the World Bank into allegations of abuse raised by indigenous Anuak people. The Bank incidentally that gives Ethiopia more financial aid than any other developing country, $920 million last year alone. Former regional president Omod Obang Olum oversaw the plan in Gambella and assures us resettlement is “voluntary” and “the programme successful”. Predictable duplicitous comments that IDI said “are laughable.”

An independent non-profit group working to advance human rights in development, IDI, has helped the Anuak people from Gambella “submit a complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel implicating the Bank in grave human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ethiopian Government“. The complaint alleges, “that the Anuak people have been severely harmed by the World Bank-financed and administered Providing Basic Services Project (PBS)”. A major development porgramme which is described as “expanding access and improving the quality of basic services in education, health, agriculture, water supply and sanitation”, OI report[xi]. However IDI make clear that “villagisation is the principle vehicle through which PBS is being implemented in Gambella”, and claim “there is “credible evidence” of “gross human rights violations” being committed in the regi
on by the Ethiopian military. Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that donors are “paying for the construction of schools, health clinics, roads, and water facilities in the new [resettlement] villages. They are also funding agricultural programs directed towards resettled populations and the salaries of the local government officials who are implementing the policy”.

IDI’s serious allegations further support those made by many people from the region and Mr.O in his legal action against the DfID. The Banks inspection panel have said the “two programmes (PBS and villagisation) depend one each other, and may mutually influence the results of the other.” The panel found “there is a plausible link between the two programmes but needs to engage in further fact-finding”. It is imperative the bank’s Inspection Panel have unrestricted access to Gambella and people feel safe to speak openly about the governments brutality.

All groups involved in land sales have both a moral duty – a civil responsibility – and a legal obligation to the people whose land is being leased. The Ethiopian government, the foreign corporations leasing the land and the donors – the World Bank and DfID, who, through PBS are funding the villagisation programme.

The Ethiopian government is in violation of a long list of international treatise that, in- keeping with their democratic pretentions, they are happy to sign up to, but less enthusiastic to observe. From the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and all points legal in between. Investors if not legally obliged, are certainly morally bound by the United Nations (UN) “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework,[xii] which, amongst other things, makes clear their duty to respect and work within human rights.  Donor’s responsibility first and last is, to the people of Ethiopia, to ensure any so-called ‘development’ programmes (that commonly focus on economic targets), support their needs, ensures their wellbeing and observes their fundamental human rights.

To continue to turn a blind eye to widespread government abuse, and to support schemes, whether directly or indirectly, that violate human rights and cause suffering to the people is to be complicit to State criminality that is shattering the lives of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people, in Gambella and indeed elsewhere in the country.

July 2013

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/02/ethiopia-lives-for-land-in-gambella/

endnotes

[i] http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/unheard-voices-human-rights-impact-land-investments-indigenous-communities-gambella 

[ii] http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/land-and-power-the-growing-scandal-surrounding-the-new-wave-of-investments-in-l-142858

[iii] http://www.culturalsurvival.org/take-action/ethiopia-stop-land-grabbing-and-restore-indigenous-peoples-lands/ethiopia-stop-land  

[iv] http://www.hrw.org/node/109149

[v] http://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/ethiopia-gambella-villagization-program/

[vi] http://www.genocidewatch.org/ethiopia.html

[vii] http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/08/28/ethiopia-army-commits-torture-rape

[viii] http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ethiopia0112webwcover_0.pdf‎

[ix]http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jan/22/ethiopia-resettlement-scheme-lives-shattered

[x] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330911/UK-foreign-aid-Ethiopian-sues-Britain-claiming-1-3billion-programme-supports-Stalinist-regime-sent-worlds-biggest-refugee-camp.html#ixzz2UQj1KeIn

[xi] Development Assistance Group Ethiopia, PBS, http://www.dagethiopia.org/ index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=14&Item id=16 (accessed May 2013).

[xii] http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/…/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf‎