New evidences & old denials clash over human rights
violations in Gambella, as fortified evidences emerge;
but does the Meles regime have either the innocence
or credibility to fight this off?
18 January, 2012 | By Keffyalew Gebremedhin
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Certainly, the Ethiopian government is not happy with the Human
Rights Watch report, which was released Tuesday.
In the past, the government has persistently disputed charges of
human rights violations of any sorts, including forced relocations. Not
surprisingly, it has now strongly rejected the present report and its
overall conclusions.
Nevertheless, it would be recalled that, among others, the feisty State
Minister of Agriculture Wondirad Mandefro, confirmed to John Vidal,
environment editor for the Guardian, in March 2011 that no one was
forcibly relocated, notwithstanding a number of evidences the
journalist has collected and informed him of them, which also was
corroborated with video clips that speak to the contrary.
During the discussion with John Vidal, the state minister moved from
outright denial to scoffing over such allegations and the concerns
thereon, as he propounded his government’s position using
pretentious arguments that are sound on hearing them but do sinisterly
imply any action could be justified in removing dire poverty from the
country. In that regard, he said:
The Human Rights Watch’s report alleges that state security forces
have repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and arbitrarily arrested villagers
who resist the transfers. Of this disturbing situation, Jan Egeland,
Europe director at Human Rights Watch and formerly United Nations
Undersecretary General for the Office for Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs stated:
After initial refusal/hesitation to comment on the report, finally
Government Communications Affairs Minister Bereket Simon reacted
to the BBC on Tuesday, not only denying to Robin Lustig the charges,
but also questioning the motives of Human Rights Watch against
Ethiopia, as follows:
BBC World Service’s Robin Lustig interjected:
Bereket Simon:
Robin Lustig:
Bereket Simon:
Robin Lustig:
Bereket Simon:
Robin Lustig:
Bereket Simon:
Why has the government not investigated the allegations
internally and release its findings to date?
The problem, as usual, is that the Ethiopian government is claim of
only it what it says is true and right — no matter what the victims
allege, people in the region say, what experts and journalists write or
the concerns of the international community — I mean, anyone,
outside their powerful allies.
There is no more dangerous mix than a state firmly convinced about
its inexorable capacities to do everything and individuals that are
without moral controls. That is the ugly situation Ethiopia finds itself
today in terms of governance, where the line between truth and
falsehoods and reality and fiction have increasingly become hazy.
In a way, by smoothing the rough edges of past denials with numbers
and figures on services points, that exactly is what the minister’s
defense is all about. Unfortunately, the line of his argument has been
defeated from the start by the credibility gap Ethiopia’s development
state has continued to suffer. Thus, the minister’s long list of defenses
via ‘infrastructural amenities’ could not convincingly prevail over the
eloquence and persistence of the long running allegations coming from
frightened people who lack any recourses.
Another intriguing aspect of this question is that at no time has the
Meles regime established a mechanism to investigate to see through
the charges either to dismiss them or establish their veracity and
correct the mistakes thereon. In Ethiopia, growth and politics are
increasingly becoming a game for the chosen few, as the investor
world is being fooled by projects dangling as national development
undertakings. They are only the voodoos intended to fool under the
impression that regime is pro-poor, which it is more in its rhetorics.
If denials were an all cure, the government’s could have ended the
many censures around the world against itself. Clearly, their denials
hardly get dented in the face of wide condemnations; surprisingly, nor
do they get discouraged by the banality of their false defenses that
have barely had any impact on the global opinion coalescing against
Ethiopia’s harsh, repressive and violent developmental state.
People are right in distrusting the regime
In the circumstances, any citizen is within his or her rights to ask why
they should trust whatever the Ethiopian government says. After all,
numerous are the unfulfilled pledges and promises on delivering their
“liberation of Ethiopia”, with a democratic future for its people, where
its governance would be characterized by freedom and equality of
individual citizens.
On the contrary, under the TPLF/EPRDF the situation has only
proved that power itself is such a powerful broker. Instead it has
ended up successfully consummating the marriage between Ethiopia’s
political aristocracy and big capital. The regime has failed to balance
the interests of the people in better life and openness of the country
for foreign investment–never at the expense of one or the other.
Is it not now a public knowledge that Minister Bereket Simon, the
man who just made vigorous defense of his government’s actions
against Human Rights Watch’s allegations on BBC, and Sheik
Mohammed Al Amoudi, the 63rd billionaire in the world and 2nd
wealthiest person in Saudi Arabia, are “soul mates”, as the minister
described their relations at a lavish party given by the sheik on 22
December 2011 to promote the former’s controversial book on
Ethiopia’s 2005 and 2010 elections.
Of course, the tycoon owns agricultural lands in different parts of the
country. In Gambella, his was founded on lands cleared of people and
natural forests, when he started Saudi Star Agricultural Development,
initially on 10,000 hectares of land. There are news reports that he
has been planning to expand it to 500,000 hectares, according to
Addis Fortune.
Parsing the words of the sheik at that book event at his Sheraton
Hotel, actually what he promoted was not only a book but also, as he
put it, the wise and friendly leadership of the TPLF/EPRDF from
which he has learned great lessons.
The matrix of that teacher-student relations, Al Amoudi has revealed
at the party was something very interesting. He said, “ከዋናው ሰውዬ
ጀምሮ ወዳጆች ነን፤ ተግባብተን እና ተቻችለን ነው የምንኖረው፤
እኔ ግን አንድ ቀን እንዲህ ሆንኩ ብዬ ቅሬታ አቅርቤላቸው
አላውቅም እንደውም እነሱ እንደኔ ሁሉንም የሚጭኑበት ሰው የለም”
(Starting from the Number One Person, we are friends. We have
good understanding and mutually accommodate each other. However,
I never went to them to complain about anything. Nor do I believe
there is any other person they encumber for everything more than I.”)
This is to show that the prime minister himself is in the palms of his
hands.
As to the minister’s wishes becoming the sheik’s command, Ato
Bereket openly announced that his book and that of his brother-in-
law’s were published in Nairobi, with full publication costs covered
from the sheik’s deep pocket on the basis of “the instruction” he gave
the sheik.
Not only that. The sheik is also caretaker of the minister’s health, for
whose maintenance not long ago he paid a hefty sum in Rands in
South Africa, including arranging for the patient to fly by private jet.
Surely, in the eyes of the leadership this would be considered a crime
only when someone outside their circle does it or a member outlives
his usefulness. Certainly, they would inflict on him or her the full force
of the law as a punishment, which Ethiopian law provides up to ten
years of imprisonment for influence peddling and kickbacks received
by officials.
By all available indications, what we have known all along is that
Ethiopia’s political class is determined to defend and promote the
interests of the sheik and his category of people. that is exactly what
Minister Bereket Simon did on the BBC on 17 January, characterizing
Human Rights Watch’s allegations as false and baseless.
It would not require a genius of the obvious to figure out that this is
part of the job description of Ethiopian officials! Otherwise alleging
that mistakes were made and crimes were committed would only turn
the accusations on their head, exposing the collusion between
international capital and the Ethiopian leadership in displacing
Ethiopian citizens from their lands.
Conclusion
As bad as this is for Ethiopians, unlike Ethiopia’s long history of
tolerance, people are now being forced to see that their country is
being transformed into practitioner of ethnic discrimination as an
official practice — i.e., in breach of the laws of the land. In other
words, the state has been fulfilling its duties totally enmeshed in
corruption. This has placed ordinary citizens at the receiving end of its
ugliness,instead of the new direction and hopeful future the TPLF has
promised Ethiopians, even when they have been wary of it from the
get go.
This situation now points to the root causes of all its violences against
farmers, the free media and independent journalists, teachers, etc., it
has been unleashing for a long, long time. Its pervasive sense of
knowing it all and being always right that it has been demonstrating
speak to the continuing human sufferings in the country, which sooner
or later would become the very vortex of its very self-destruction.
(http://transformingethiopia.wordpress.com/)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer was a former civil servant and diplomat in the Ethiopian
government. Later he served as International Staff with the United Nations
and is currently in retirement, devoting his time for research and writing.
He can be reached at kef730@gmail.com.
violations in Gambella, as fortified evidences emerge;
but does the Meles regime have either the innocence
or credibility to fight this off?
18 January, 2012 | By Keffyalew Gebremedhin
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Certainly, the Ethiopian government is not happy with the Human
Rights Watch report, which was released Tuesday.
- The report accuses the
government of forcibly
relocating
approximately 70,000
indigenous people from
the western Gambella
region. It is reported
that these villages lack
adequate food,
farmland, healthcare,
and educational
facilities.
In the past, the government has persistently disputed charges of
human rights violations of any sorts, including forced relocations. Not
surprisingly, it has now strongly rejected the present report and its
overall conclusions.
Nevertheless, it would be recalled that, among others, the feisty State
Minister of Agriculture Wondirad Mandefro, confirmed to John Vidal,
environment editor for the Guardian, in March 2011 that no one was
forcibly relocated, notwithstanding a number of evidences the
journalist has collected and informed him of them, which also was
corroborated with video clips that speak to the contrary.
During the discussion with John Vidal, the state minister moved from
outright denial to scoffing over such allegations and the concerns
thereon, as he propounded his government’s position using
pretentious arguments that are sound on hearing them but do sinisterly
imply any action could be justified in removing dire poverty from the
country. In that regard, he said:
- “It is their choice…Either to choose to have these basic
services come to the villages…It is based on their
willingness. But of course, they have to abandon their
previous ways of life. [Otherwise] you cannot provide any
basic services to the community.”
The Human Rights Watch’s report alleges that state security forces
have repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and arbitrarily arrested villagers
who resist the transfers. Of this disturbing situation, Jan Egeland,
Europe director at Human Rights Watch and formerly United Nations
Undersecretary General for the Office for Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs stated:
- “The Ethiopian government’s villagization program is not
improving access to services for Gambella’s indigenous
people, but is instead undermining their livelihoods and
food security. The government should suspend the program
until it can ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in
place and that people have been properly consulted and
compensated for the loss of their land.”
After initial refusal/hesitation to comment on the report, finally
Government Communications Affairs Minister Bereket Simon reacted
to the BBC on Tuesday, not only denying to Robin Lustig the charges,
but also questioning the motives of Human Rights Watch against
Ethiopia, as follows:
- “First of all, regarding the current report I can tell you
that it is baseless – on both grounds – on both the land
grab issue and resettlement of the Gambella people. But at
a larger picture of the whole, it has been quite few years
since Human Rights Watch repeatedly started to report
negatively [against Ethiopia] and based on wrong
information and deliberate distortion of the facts on the
ground.”
BBC World Service’s Robin Lustig interjected:
- “Wait a minute, you say wrong information. They [Human
Rights Watch] have interviewed many, many people who
have told them stories which can lead them to the
conclusion that there can be no doubt that there is a policy
of forcible removal of tens of thousands of people from the
homes.”
Bereket Simon:
- “NO, in the first place Human Rights Watch has never
been on the ground. They say in their report, for instance,
there is no services on the ground. Let me give you the
facts on the ground. We have built 22 health facilities for
20,000 people; 19 schools, 72 irrigation water schemes,
128 kms of rural road, 18 animal health clinics, 30 grain
mills and 407 water pumps have been put in place.”
Robin Lustig:
- Ok, but do you deny that people are being forced to leave
their homes against their will?”
Bereket Simon:
- “No one is forced. This is an absolute lie. In the first place
let me tell you the facts on the ground. People around
Gambella are sparsely inhabiting their place in a very
scattered manner. They cannot be beneficiaries of the
development like electricity, water and telecom. So for all
practical purposes of helping those people who are denied
in the past such basic infrastructural amenities, the
government has decided to settle them. But it is not [just]
a decision; we have discussed the issue in a very thorough
manner with the beneficiaries; they have accepted it.”
Robin Lustig:
- “Do you accept what is being said by Human Rights Watch
and others that part of the impetus behind this villagization
program is the government’s awareness that this land has
commercial value and certainly has value to foreign
investors.”
Bereket Simon:
- “No. It is true that we are providing access to land on a
lease basis for 25 years for local and foreign developers.
We have about three million hectares of land which is not
inhabited by anybody.”
Robin Lustig:
- “You say not inhabited by anybody. So you are saying
there are no cases of people leaving their land by their own
will or by force in order to enable foreign investors or
others commercial use of their land.”
Bereket Simon:
- “Absolutely! This is their land. You know this is the land of
Ethiopians. They have every right to stay where they are.
Government cannot forcibly relocate them. It is only
consensual. On the other hand, we have abundant land
where we have not used before.”
Why has the government not investigated the allegations
internally and release its findings to date?
The problem, as usual, is that the Ethiopian government is claim of
only it what it says is true and right — no matter what the victims
allege, people in the region say, what experts and journalists write or
the concerns of the international community — I mean, anyone,
outside their powerful allies.
There is no more dangerous mix than a state firmly convinced about
its inexorable capacities to do everything and individuals that are
without moral controls. That is the ugly situation Ethiopia finds itself
today in terms of governance, where the line between truth and
falsehoods and reality and fiction have increasingly become hazy.
In a way, by smoothing the rough edges of past denials with numbers
and figures on services points, that exactly is what the minister’s
defense is all about. Unfortunately, the line of his argument has been
defeated from the start by the credibility gap Ethiopia’s development
state has continued to suffer. Thus, the minister’s long list of defenses
via ‘infrastructural amenities’ could not convincingly prevail over the
eloquence and persistence of the long running allegations coming from
frightened people who lack any recourses.
Another intriguing aspect of this question is that at no time has the
Meles regime established a mechanism to investigate to see through
the charges either to dismiss them or establish their veracity and
correct the mistakes thereon. In Ethiopia, growth and politics are
increasingly becoming a game for the chosen few, as the investor
world is being fooled by projects dangling as national development
undertakings. They are only the voodoos intended to fool under the
impression that regime is pro-poor, which it is more in its rhetorics.
If denials were an all cure, the government’s could have ended the
many censures around the world against itself. Clearly, their denials
hardly get dented in the face of wide condemnations; surprisingly, nor
do they get discouraged by the banality of their false defenses that
have barely had any impact on the global opinion coalescing against
Ethiopia’s harsh, repressive and violent developmental state.
People are right in distrusting the regime
In the circumstances, any citizen is within his or her rights to ask why
they should trust whatever the Ethiopian government says. After all,
numerous are the unfulfilled pledges and promises on delivering their
“liberation of Ethiopia”, with a democratic future for its people, where
its governance would be characterized by freedom and equality of
individual citizens.
On the contrary, under the TPLF/EPRDF the situation has only
proved that power itself is such a powerful broker. Instead it has
ended up successfully consummating the marriage between Ethiopia’s
political aristocracy and big capital. The regime has failed to balance
the interests of the people in better life and openness of the country
for foreign investment–never at the expense of one or the other.
Is it not now a public knowledge that Minister Bereket Simon, the
man who just made vigorous defense of his government’s actions
against Human Rights Watch’s allegations on BBC, and Sheik
Mohammed Al Amoudi, the 63rd billionaire in the world and 2nd
wealthiest person in Saudi Arabia, are “soul mates”, as the minister
described their relations at a lavish party given by the sheik on 22
December 2011 to promote the former’s controversial book on
Ethiopia’s 2005 and 2010 elections.
Of course, the tycoon owns agricultural lands in different parts of the
country. In Gambella, his was founded on lands cleared of people and
natural forests, when he started Saudi Star Agricultural Development,
initially on 10,000 hectares of land. There are news reports that he
has been planning to expand it to 500,000 hectares, according to
Addis Fortune.
Parsing the words of the sheik at that book event at his Sheraton
Hotel, actually what he promoted was not only a book but also, as he
put it, the wise and friendly leadership of the TPLF/EPRDF from
which he has learned great lessons.
The matrix of that teacher-student relations, Al Amoudi has revealed
at the party was something very interesting. He said, “ከዋናው ሰውዬ
ጀምሮ ወዳጆች ነን፤ ተግባብተን እና ተቻችለን ነው የምንኖረው፤
እኔ ግን አንድ ቀን እንዲህ ሆንኩ ብዬ ቅሬታ አቅርቤላቸው
አላውቅም እንደውም እነሱ እንደኔ ሁሉንም የሚጭኑበት ሰው የለም”
(Starting from the Number One Person, we are friends. We have
good understanding and mutually accommodate each other. However,
I never went to them to complain about anything. Nor do I believe
there is any other person they encumber for everything more than I.”)
This is to show that the prime minister himself is in the palms of his
hands.
As to the minister’s wishes becoming the sheik’s command, Ato
Bereket openly announced that his book and that of his brother-in-
law’s were published in Nairobi, with full publication costs covered
from the sheik’s deep pocket on the basis of “the instruction” he gave
the sheik.
Not only that. The sheik is also caretaker of the minister’s health, for
whose maintenance not long ago he paid a hefty sum in Rands in
South Africa, including arranging for the patient to fly by private jet.
Surely, in the eyes of the leadership this would be considered a crime
only when someone outside their circle does it or a member outlives
his usefulness. Certainly, they would inflict on him or her the full force
of the law as a punishment, which Ethiopian law provides up to ten
years of imprisonment for influence peddling and kickbacks received
by officials.
By all available indications, what we have known all along is that
Ethiopia’s political class is determined to defend and promote the
interests of the sheik and his category of people. that is exactly what
Minister Bereket Simon did on the BBC on 17 January, characterizing
Human Rights Watch’s allegations as false and baseless.
It would not require a genius of the obvious to figure out that this is
part of the job description of Ethiopian officials! Otherwise alleging
that mistakes were made and crimes were committed would only turn
the accusations on their head, exposing the collusion between
international capital and the Ethiopian leadership in displacing
Ethiopian citizens from their lands.
Conclusion
As bad as this is for Ethiopians, unlike Ethiopia’s long history of
tolerance, people are now being forced to see that their country is
being transformed into practitioner of ethnic discrimination as an
official practice — i.e., in breach of the laws of the land. In other
words, the state has been fulfilling its duties totally enmeshed in
corruption. This has placed ordinary citizens at the receiving end of its
ugliness,instead of the new direction and hopeful future the TPLF has
promised Ethiopians, even when they have been wary of it from the
get go.
This situation now points to the root causes of all its violences against
farmers, the free media and independent journalists, teachers, etc., it
has been unleashing for a long, long time. Its pervasive sense of
knowing it all and being always right that it has been demonstrating
speak to the continuing human sufferings in the country, which sooner
or later would become the very vortex of its very self-destruction.
(http://transformingethiopia.wordpress.com/)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer was a former civil servant and diplomat in the Ethiopian
government. Later he served as International Staff with the United Nations
and is currently in retirement, devoting his time for research and writing.
He can be reached at kef730@gmail.com.
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| A new village with land for maize cleared by hand by villagers, despite government promises to have such land cleared. Photo source: Human Rights Watch |