http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/06/britain-supporting-dictatorship-in-ethiopia
'Britain is supporting a dictatorship in Ethiopia'
It's 30 years since Ethiopia's famine came to attention in the UK. Now, a
farmer plans to sue Britain for human rights abuses, claiming its aid has
funded a government programme of torture and beatings as villagers have
been removed from their homes.
David Smith
The Guardian, Sunday 6 July 2014 13.00 EDT
"Life was good because the land was the land of our ancestors. The village
was along the riverside, where you could get drinking water, go fishing and
plant mango, banana and papaya. The temperature there was good and we could
feed ourselves."
This is how Mr O - his name is protected for his safety - remembers the
home he shared with his family in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. The
fertile land had been farmed for generations, relatively safe from wars,
revolutions and famines. Then, one day, near the end of 2011, everything
changed. Ethiopian troops arrived at the village and ordered everyone to
leave. The harvest was ripe, but there was no time to gather it. When Mr O
showed defiance, he says, he was jailed, beaten and tortured. Women were
raped and some of his neighbours murdered during the forced relocation.
Using strongarm tactics reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, tens of
thousands of people in Ethiopia have been moved against their will to
purpose-built communes that have inadequate food and lack health and
education facilities, according to human rights watchdogs, to make way for
commercial agriculture. With Orwellian clinicalness, the Ethiopian
government calls this programme "villagisation". The citizens describe it
as victimisation.
And this mass purge was part bankrolled, it is claimed, by the UK. Ethiopia
is one of the biggest recipients of UK development aid, receiving around
£300m a year. Some of the money, Mr O argues, was used to systematically
destroy his community and its way of life. Now this lone subsistence farmer
is taking on the might of Whitehall in a legal action; a hearing took place
in the high court in London last Thursday, but judgment on whether the case
can go ahead has been reserved. Mr O and his legal team now await a
decision on permission from the judge, who will declare whether there is an
arguable case that can go forward to a full hearing.
"The British government is supporting a dictatorship in Ethiopia," says Mr
O, speaking through an interpreter from a safe location that cannot be
disclosed for legal reasons. "It should stop funding Ethiopia because
people in the remote areas are suffering. I'm ready to fight a case against
the British government." The dispute comes ahead of the 30th anniversary of
famine in Ethiopia capturing the world's gaze, most famously in Michael
Buerk's reports for the BBC that sparked the phenomena of Band Aid and Live
Aid. Now, in an era when difficult questions are being asked about the
principle and practice of western aid, it is again Ethiopia - widely
criticised as authoritarian and repressive - that highlights the law of
unintended consequences.
Mr O is now 34. He completed a secondary-school education, cultivated a
modest patch of land and studied part-time at agricultural college. He
married and had six children. That old life in the Gambella region now
seems like a distant mirage. "I was very happy and successful in my
farming," he recalls. "I enjoyed being able to take the surplus crops to
market and buy other commodities. Life was good in the village. It was a
very green and fertile land, a beautiful place." So it had always been as
the seasons rolled by. But in November 2011 came a man-made Pompeii, not
with molten lava but soldiers with guns. A meeting was called by local
officials and the people were told that they had been selected for
villagisation, a development programme the government claims is designed to
bring "socioeconomic and cultural transformation of the people".
Mr O says: "In the meeting the government informed the community, 'You will
go to a new village.' The community reacted and said, 'How can you take us
from our ancestral land? This is the land we are meant for. When a father
or grandfather dies, this is where we bury them.'"
The community also objected to the move because they feared ethnic
persecution in their proposed home and because the land would not be
fertile enough to farm. "Villagisation is bad because people were taken to
an area which will not help them. It's a well-designed plan by the
government to weaken indigenous people."
Land grab in the Gambella region in March 2011. Photograph: John Vidal for
the Guardian
The army used brutal means to force the villagers to resettle. Mr O says he
witnessed several beatings and one rape, and he knows of several women who
contracted HIV as a result. Some people simply disappeared. He claims to
have witnessed soldiers, police and local officials perpetrating the
abuses. The villagers, including Mr O and his family, found themselves in
a new location in Gambella. He says there was no food and water, no
farmland, no schools and no healthcare facility. Jobs, and hope, were
scarce.
So in 2012 he dared to return to his old village and tried to farm his
land. It was a doomed enterprise. In around April, he claims, he was caught
and punished for encouraging disobedience among the villagers. Soldiers
dragged him to military barracks where he was gagged, kicked and beaten
with rifle-butts, causing serious injuries. He was repeatedly interrogated
as to why he had come back. "I went to the farm and was taken by soldiers
to military barracks and locked in a room," Mr O recalls. "I was alone and
beaten and tortured using a gun. They put a rolled sock in my mouth. The
soldiers were saying: 'You are the one who mobilised the families not to go
to the new village. You are also inciting the people to revolution.' Other
people were in different rooms being tortured, some even killed. Some women
were raped. By now they have delivered children: even now if you go to
Gambella, you will meet them." He reflects: "I felt very sad. I had become
like a refugee in my homeland. They did not consider us like a citizen of
the country. They were beating us, torturing us, doing whatever they want."
In fear for his life, Mr O fled the country. The separation from his wife
and children is painful. He communicated indirectly with them last year
through a messenger. "I am sad. The family has no one supporting them. I am
also sad because I don't have my family."
But such is the terror that awaits that, asked if if he wants to return
home, he replies bluntly: "There's nothing good in the country so there is
nothing that will take me back."
Modern Ethiopia is a paradox. A generation after the famine, it is hailed
by pundits as an "African lion" because of stellar economic growth and a
burgeoning middle class. One study found it is creating millionaires at a
faster rate than any other country on the continent. Construction is
booming in the capital, Addis Ababa, home of the Chinese-built African
Union headquarters. Yet the national parliament has only one opposition MP.
Last month the government was criticised for violently crushing student
demonstrations. Ethiopia is also regarded as one of the most repressive
media environments in the world. Numerous journalists are in prison or have
gone into exile, while independent media outlets are regularly closed down.
Gambella, which is the size of Belgium, has a population of more than
300,000, mainly indigenous Anuak and Nuer. Its fertile soil has attracted
foreign and domestic investors who have leased large tracts of land at
favourable prices. The three-year villagisation programme in Gambella is
now complete. A 2012 investigation by Human Rights Watch, entitledWaiting
Here for Death, highlighted the plight of thousands like Mr O robbed of
their ancestral lands, wiping out their livelihoods. London law firm Leigh
Day took up the case and secured legal aid to represent Mr O in litigation
against Britain's international development secretary, whom it accuses of
part-funding the human rights abuses.
Mr O explains: "The Ethiopian government is immoral: it is collecting money
on behalf of poor people from foreign donors, but then directing it to
programmes that kill people. At the meeting, the officials said: 'The
British government is helping us.' Of all the donors to Ethiopia, the
British government has been sending the most funds to the villagisation
programme. "I'm not happy with that because we are expecting them to give
donations to support indigenous people and poor people in their lands, not
to create difficult conditions for them. They should stop funding Ethiopia
because most of the remote areas are suffering. The funds given to
villagisation should be stopped." Mr O did not attend last week's court
hearing at which Leigh Day argued that British aid is provided on condition
that the recipient government is not "in significant violation of human
rights". It asserted that the UK has failed to put in place any sufficient
process to assess Ethiopia's compliance with the conditions and has refused
to make its assessment public, in breach of its stated policy.
Starving families lift sacks of food at a Red Cross feeding centre in
Ethiopia. Photograph: Steven L Raymer/National Geographic/Getty Images
"There are credible allegations of UK aid money contributing to serious
human rights violations," states Leigh Day's summary argument. "In
particular, there is evidence that the 'villagisation' programme is partly
funded by the defendant's payments into the promotion of basic services
programme." The concerns have led to a full investigation by the World
Bank, it adds.
Rosa Curling, a solicitor in the human rights department at Leigh Day,
says: "It's about making sure the money is traced. When you're handing over
millions of pounds you have a legal responsibility to make sure the money
is being used appropriately. The experience of the village is absolutely
appalling. We're saying to the Department for International Development
(DfID), please look at this issue properly, please follow the procedure you
said you would follow, please talk to the people who've been affected. Look
at what happened to Mr O and his village. They haven't done that."
Mr O offered to meet British officials, she adds, but they decided his
refugee camp was too dangerous. He offered to meet them in a major city,
but still they refused. "They haven't met anybody directly affected by
villagisation." Curling urges: "If you've got money, trace it and put
conditions on it so it's not being used like this. It completely defeats
the point of aid if it's being used in this way. We're talking about
millions of British pounds."
The view is echoed by Human Rights Watch. Felix Horne, its Ethiopia and
Eritrea researcher, says: "Given that aid is fungible, DfID does not have
any mechanism to determine how their well-meaning support to local
government officials is being used in Ethiopia. They have no idea how their
money is being spent. And when they are provided [with] evidence of how
that money is in fact being used, they conduct seriously flawed assessments
to dismiss the allegations, and it's business as usual.
"While they have conducted several 'on the ground' assessments in Gambella
to ascertain the extent of the abuses, they have refused to visit the
refugee camps where many of the victims are housed. The camps are safe,
easy to access, and the victims of this abusive programme are eager to
speak with DfID, and yet DfID and other donors have refused to speak with
them, raising the suspicion that they aren't interested in hearing about
abuses that have been facilitated with their funding."
DfID is set to contest the court action, denying that any of its aid was
directly used to uproot Mr O or others affected by villagisation. A
spokesman says: "We will not comment on ongoing legal action. The UK has
never funded Ethiopia's resettlement programmes. Our support to the
Protection of Basic Services Programme is only used to provide essential
services like healthcare, schooling and clean water." Shimeles Kemal, the
Ethiopian government's state minister of communications, was unavailable
for comment
Received on Sun Jul 06 2014 - 13:46:19 EDT