Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:24:32 +0100
Thousands of Ethiopians tortured by brutal government security forces...
while Britain hands over £1 BILLION in aid money
* Amnesty International says 5,000 people tortured, raped and
'disappeared'
* Over the last three years the UK Government has given Ethiopia £1
billion
* It pocketed £324 million in 2012 – more than any other country
By
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Tom+McTague,+Dep
uty+Political+Editor+for+MailOnline> Tom McTague, Deputy Political Editor
for MailOnline
Published: 16:46 GMT, 29 October 2014 | Updated: 16:46 GMT, 29 October 2014
Thousands of Ethiopians have been tortured by the country’s brutal security
forces while Britain funnelled almost £1billion in aid to the country’s
government, a damning report has revealed.
Human rights group Amnesty International said more than 5,000 Ethiopians had
been arrested, raped and ‘disappeared’ in a state-sanctioned campaign to
crack down on political dissent over the past three years.
At the same time, the Department for International Development gave Ethiopia
£1 billion, including £74 million for ‘governance and security’ projects.
The east African country is the second largest recipient of British aid
after Pakistan.
It pocketed £324 million in 2012 – more than any other country – and is due
to get another £390 million this year.
David Cameron wrote to the Ethiopian prime minister earlier this month after
a British man was sentenced to death without access to lawyers.
The British ambassador in Addis Ababa has been allowed to meet Andargachew
Tsige only once, seven weeks after he was arrested.
His wife, Yemi Hailemariam, said she fears that Mr Tsige will face the same
brutal treatment described in the Amnesty report.
Its dossier of ‘sweeping repression in the Oromo region of Ethiopia’ was
based on 240 testimonies and interviews with 176 refugees from the country's
majority Oromo ethnic group, reported the Times newspaper today.
Women were gang raped by groups of prison guards, and men told how they had
bottles of water ‘suspended from their genitalia’.
The report says: ‘One man interviewed by Amnesty said his brother had had to
have 70 per cent of his penis removed after release from detention as a
result of being subjected to this treatment.’
Others had ears and fingers cut off. Some had broken teeth, burns and
damaged eyes, including ‘where the lids were fused or the eyeball sunken in
the socket’.
A young woman held at an army base said security forces ‘put coals on our
stomachs’.
She said: ‘Our clothes melted on us. We screamed but the soldiers didn't
care. They're accustomed to screaming.’
According to the report several Ethiopians reported being ‘handcuffed or
tied by one or both wrists to a point high on the wall or the ceiling so
their feet barely touched the floor’.
Redwan Hussein, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government, ‘categorically
denied’ the allegations in Amnesty's report.
It accused the human rights organisation of being ‘hellbent on tarnishing
Ethiopia's image’.
A Foreign Office spokesman said that Britain raised human rights with ‘the
highest level of the Ethiopian government’.
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pa04458133_The_Prime_Min.JPG
Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Hailemariam Dessalegn, has rejected accusations
that his government tortures its own people
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/10/29/1414600398323_Image_galleryImage_D
owning_Street_London_UK_.JPG
International Development Secretary Justine Greening is under pressure to
investigate allegations that major recipients of British aid are guilty of
torture state-sanctioned murder
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