Accounts of human rights violations in Ogaden, gathered by
NGOs, attempt to raise international awareness of the cruel acts
Ethiopian military and para-military forces commit.
Below is an article published by Media With Conscience News:
“Every night, they took all of us girls to [interrogations]. They
would separate us and beat us. The second time they took me, they raped
me… All three of the men raped me, consecutively”. Along with 15 other
female students, Human Rights Watch (HRW) report in Collective
Punishment, this innocent 17 year-old Ogaden Somali girl was held
captive for three months in a “dark hole in the ground” and raped 13
times.
This is just one of countless accounts of abuse, from within the
Ogaden region of Ethiopia, where it is widely reported criminal acts
like these are perpetrated by the Ethiopian military and paramilitary
forces on a daily basis. Untold atrocities like this; past and present
are awaiting investigation, amid what is a much-ignored, little known
conflict in the Horn of Africa.
In an attempt to hide the facts from the rest of the world, in 2007
the Ethiopian government banned all international media, and expelled
many humanitarian aid groups from the area. It is reputed that any
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) allowed to stay do so on the
condition that they sign a waiver document, agreeing not to report human
rights violations by the government.
Ethiopia, Leslie Lefkow of HRW[i]
states, “is one of the most difficult places to work for human rights
groups or humanitarian agencies on the African continent”, and the
Ogaden (a barren land, littered with military remnants from past
conflicts), “is one of the most difficult places to work in Ethiopia.”
There are “huge challenges to doing investigations on the ground because
the security apparatus of the government is extremely extensive and
permeates even the lowest levels, the grass roots, the village levels”,
where regime spies and informers operate, reporting anything and anyone
suspicious.
Information about life within the region comes from whispering
sources on the ground, and from those who have fled the violence, and
are now living outside Ethiopia. Many are in refugee camps in Kenya and
Yemen, from where they recount stories of horrific abuse. Mohammed, from
the Dhadhaab (or Dadaab) camp in Kenya, described to Ogaden Online (OO)
1/12/2012 [ii] how he was captured by the Ethiopian military, accused
of being a supporter of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and
mercilessly tortured. “They hogtied me”, he said, “and then flogged me
while pinned down.” Mohamed’s face “was disfigured to the point where he
can’t be recognized”. Refugees support Amnesty International’s
(AI)[iii] findings of “torture and extrajudicial executions of detainees
in the region” -women tell of multiple gang rapes, their arms, feet and
necks tied with wire, for which they bear the scars, men speak of
barbaric torture techniques at the hands of the Ethiopian military and
paramilitary – the notorious, semi legal, completely barbaric Liyu
Police, who, Leticia Bader of HRW[iv] says, “fit into this context of
impunity where security forces can do more or less what they want”.
The ONLF is cast as the enemy of the state, and regarded, as all
dissenting troublesome groups are, as terrorists. They in fact won 60%
of seats and were democratically elected to the regional parliament in
the only inclusive open elections to be held, back in 1992. Civilians
suspected, however vaguely of supporting the so-called ‘rebels’, are
forcibly re-located from their homes. The evacuated villages and
settlements, emptied at gun point HRW (CP) record, “become no-go areas”
and in a further act of state criminality, “civilians who remain behind
risk being shot on sight, tortured, or raped if spotted by soldiers”.
Children, refugees report are hanged, villages and settlements razed to
the ground and cattle stolen to feed soldiers: HRW record (CP), “water
sources and wells have [also] been destroyed”. Systematic, strategic
methods of violence and intimidation employed by the Ethiopian regime,
that has, Genocide Watch (GW)[v] state, “initiated a genocidal campaign
against the Ogaden Somali population
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