Rights watchdog accuses Ethiopia of human rights violence in Ogaden
June 12, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — In its battle against rebels in eastern Ethiopia’s Somali Region, Ethiopia’s army has subjected Tens of thousands of ethnic Somali civilians living in eastern Ethiopia’s Somali regional state to executions, torture, and rape, US based Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
The widespread violence, part of a vicious counterinsurgency campaign that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity, has contributed to a looming humanitarian crisis, threatening the survival of thousands of ethnic Somali nomads.
According to HRW since the mid-2007, thousands of people have fled; seeking refuge in neighboring Somalia and Kenya from widespread Ethiopian military attacks on civilians and villages that it said amounted to crimes against humanity.
The 130-page report said,Collective Punishment: Crimes Against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State , those who remain in the war affected area are being subjected to continuing abuses by both the rebels and Ethiopian troops which it said posed a direct threat to their survival and create a pervasive culture of fear.
While the report said the Ethiopian military campaign of forced relocations and destruction of villages reduced in early 2008 compared to its peak in mid-2007, but other abuses including arbitrary detentions, torture and mistreatment in detention were continuing.
“These are combining with severe restrictions on movement and commercial trade, minimal access to independent relief assistance, a worsening drought, and rising food prices to create a highly vulnerable population at risk of humanitarian disaster”, said the report.
Although the conflict has been simmering on for years with intermittent allegations of abuses, it took a dramatic new momentum after the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) attacked a Chinese-run oil installation in the Somali region in April 2007, killing more than 70 Chinese and Ethiopian civilians.
“In these zones, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) have deliberately and repeatedly attacked the civilian population in an effort to root out the insurgency”it said
According to the report, Ethiopian troops have forcibly displaced entire communities, ordering villagers to leave their homes within a few days or witness their houses being burnt down and their possessions destroyed and even risk death.
Over the past one year, HRW has documented the execution of more than 150 individuals, many of them in demonstration killings, with Ethiopian soldiers singling out relatives of suspected ONLF members, or making apparently arbitrary judgments that individuals complaining to soldiers or resisting their orders are ONLF supporters.
These executions have sometimes involved strangulation, after which their bodies are left lying in the open as a warning, to villagers to bury.
The report also notes that mass detentions without any judicial oversight are also routine, with hundreds and possibly thousands of individuals are held in military barracks, adding that these crimes are being committed with total impunity.
HWR is now calling for the military personnel who ordered or participated in the attacks to be held responsible for the war crimes.
“The widespread and apparently systematic nature of the attacks on villages throughout the Somali region is strong evidence that the killings, torture, rape and forced displacement are also crimes against humanity for which the Ethiopian government bears ultimate responsibility”, said HWR.
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Ezeyakum
Rights watchdog accuses Ethiopia of human rights violence in Ogaden
Satellites confirm Ethiopia destruction – US group
Thu 12 Jun 2008, 14:13 GMT
WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) – Satellite images confirm reports that the Ethiopian military has burned towns and villages in the remote Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia, the American Association for the Advancement of Science reported on Thursday.
Eight sites in the rocky, arid region, which borders Somalia, have clear signs of burning and other destruction, the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program said.
The commercially available images corroborate a report by Human Rights Watch, also issued on Thursday, that uses eyewitness accounts of attacks on tens of thousands of ethnic-Somali Muslims living in the area, the AAAS said.
“The Ethiopian authorities frequently dismiss human rights reports, saying that the witnesses we interviewed are liars and rebel supporters,” Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
“But it will be much more difficult for them to dismiss the evidence presented in the satellite images, as images like that don’t lie,” he said.
Ethiopia, a key regional ally of the United States, launched its latest offensive after the Ogaden National Liberation Front attacked a Chinese-run oil field in the region in April 2007, killing more than 70 people.
Ethiopian government officials in Addis Ababa routinely reject allegations against their counter-insurgency operations and accuse the rebels of abusing locals.
Lars Bromley, project director for the Science and Human Rights Program at AAAS, said his team analyzed several before and after satellite images of villages identified by Human Right Watch as possible locations of human rights violations.
They found eight, mostly in villages and small towns in the Wardheer, Dhagabur and Qorrahey Zones, that appeared to have been burned or destroyed recently.
For example, in the town of Labigah, 40 structures identified in a September 2005 image were gone in images taken in February 2008. In the Human Rights Watch report an eyewitness said the Ethiopian army “went into every village and set it on fire.”
Such reports are nearly impossible to corroborate because the region “may well be the most isolated place on earth, save perhaps the densest parts of the Congolese or Amazon rain forests,” Bromley said.
It is also difficult to tell what is going on in some villages, AAAS said.
“While some towns are considered permanent, they can grow and shrink over the course of a year due to fluctuations in nomadic populations, and many smaller villages will relocate altogether,” the report reads.
“To ensure the most accurate results, AAAS for the most part sought to review only permanent towns in the Ogaden, as indicated by their location along a well-defined road and by the presence of square structures with metal-sheet or brick roofing, and most often including a mosque.”
The report is available on the Internet at http://shr.aaas.org/.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox; editing by David Wiessler)
http://africa.reuters.com/country/ET/news/usnN12461380.html