webmaster
© Copyright DEHAI-Eritrea OnLine, 1993-2011
All rights reserved
From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Apr 29 2011 - 20:56:48 EDT
http://saveogaden.org/2011/04/25/u-s-ignores-ethiopias-war-crimes/U.S.
Ignores Ethiopia’s War Crimes
Posted by Boston On April - 25 - 2011
NAIROBI, Kenya — The United States and other Western governments are
ignoring clear evidence of war crimes by Ethiopia, a key U.S. ally that
launched a military crackdown on rebels last year, a human rights group said
Thursday.
Separately, a U.S.-based science group said satellite images confirm reports
(http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2008/0612ethiopia_images.shtml) that
villages have been destroyed in the country’s Ogaden region.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said America’s relationship with Ethiopia
means an alliance with a country repeatedly accused of violating human and
political rights. In recent years, Ethiopia has become a U.S. partner in the
fight against al-Qaida, which has been trying to sink roots in the Horn of
Africa.
“The United States is being willfully blind,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa
director for Human Rights Watch. “Because Ethiopia is viewed as a key ally
in the counterterrorism efforts, they are perhaps prepared to look the other
way at abuses committed by Ethiopian soldiers.”
In a 130-page report, Human Rights Watch said Ethiopian troops have beaten
and strangled civilians, staged public executions and burned villages during
a year-old campaign against rebels in the Ogaden, an arid stretch of land on
the border with Somalia. The group said the allegations were based on more
than 100 eyewitness accounts.
The country in the Horn of Africa is an ally in President Bush’s fight
against terrorism.
*U.S. says it’s not ignoring war crimes reports
*A State Department spokesman on Thursday dismissed claims that the U.S. is
minimizing or even ignoring war crimes by the Ethiopians. Gonzalo Gallegos
said officials “strongly reject” Human Rights Watch’s allegations.
The report said that since early 2007, when Ogaden rebels attacked a Chinese
oil site, “the Ethiopian military’s killings, torture and rape of civilians
have driven thousands of people from the region, while trade restriction and
limited relief aid are exacerbating the humanitarian situation.”
Gallegos said the U.S. has received reports from international
nongovernmental organizations and other aid groups of serious abuses and
harsh intimidation tactics by Ethiopian government soldiers and fighters of
the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
For the past year, he said, U.S. and nongovernmental personnel have
investigated, but it has been impossible to identify who carried out the
atrocities.
The U.S. ambassador “has persistently raised concerns over human rights
abuses with the highest level of the Ethiopian government, as have senior
U.S. government visitors” to the country, Gallegos said.
At the same time, Gallegos said, the U.S. military aid program has
continued, with $700 million given last year.
“U.S. government military assistance to Ethiopia is designed to transform
the military into an apolitical professional defense force that can secure
its borders and protects human rights,” he said.
*Ethiopia denies allegations*
Bereket Simon, special adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi,
denied all allegations in the report.
“It’s the same old fabrication,” he said.
But satellite images confirm reports that the Ethiopian military has burned
towns and villages in Ogaden, 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.
[image: Image: Relocation of Ethiopian villagers]
*AAAS *
*In this image of the town of Wardheer, Ethiopia, from Dec. 30, 2007, yellow
dots indicate structures removed since a previous image from February 2006.
Red dots indicate new structures added in that same period.*
The commercially available images corroborate the report by Human Rights
Watch, which also relies on 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.
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.
*Reports difficult to corroborate*
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.”
AAAS has used satellite images to support reports of widespread abuses in
Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Burma, Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan.
Meanwhile, Simon said Ethiopia had no plans to investigate. “How can we
investigate lies and innuendoes?,” he said. “How can we try to disprove lies
by investigating?”
Ethnic Somalis have been fighting in the Ogaden for more than a decade,
seeking greater autonomy or an independent state. Somalia lost control of
the region — the size of Britain and home to around 4 million people, in a
war in 1977.
“The Ethiopian army’s answer to the rebels has been to viciously attack
civilians in the Ogaden,” Gagnon said.
*‘Deafening silence’ from Western governments
*Ethiopia’s military has been stretched in recent years. Thousands of
soldiers are stationed in neighboring Somalia, propping up the government
there and trying to quash a vicious Islamic insurgency. Ethiopian troops
also are massing along the border with Eritrea amid signs of looming war.
Gagnon said Western governments and institutions give at least $2 billion in
aid to Ethiopia every year. The “deafening silence” by the United States,
Britain and the European Union, amounts to complicity in the crimes, she
said.
“Influential states use many excuses, such as lack of information and
strategic priorities, to downplay the grave human rights concerns in Somali
Region (the Ogaden),” she said. “But crimes against humanity can’t be swept
under the carpet.”
The report also said the army’s tactics could be fueling a looming
humanitarian crisis, brought on by a countrywide drought and skyrocketing
global food prices. Because of the military campaign, the government has
restricted humanitarian agencies and others from accessing the Ogaden at a
time when some 4.5 million people are in need of emergency food aid.
Human Rights Watch said the Ogaden National Liberation Front also has
violated humanitarian law by conducting the oil attack and by setting land
mines along roads.
ONLF spokesman Abdirahaman Mahdi said the oil attack targeted soldiers
guarding the area. The other victims were “caught in the crossfire,” he told
The Associated Press in a telephone interview from London.
He added that the situation in the Ogaden is “a deliberate international
connivance to annihilate our people.”
*This report contains information from The Associated Press and Reuters.
Source: MSNBC.COM
(Link)<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25121088/ns/world_news-africa/>
*
----[This List to be used for Eritrea Related News Only]----