<
http://www.timesleader.com/business/Rights_group__Ethiopia_forcibly_resettl
ed_70_000_01-17-2012.html> Rights group: Ethiopia forcibly resettled 70,000
Posted: January 17
Updated: Today at 10:40 AM
(AP) Ethiopia has forcibly moved tens of thousands of semi-nomadic people in
the country's west to barren villages and threatened, assaulted and arrested
those who resisted, an international rights group said in a report Tuesday.
The Human Rights Watch report said that Ethiopia last year resettled about
70,000 people in its western Gambella region after the first of a three-year
"villagization" program.
The rights group said it suspects people have been moved to lease out
farmland to investors, and not just to lift them out of poverty. It said
that security forces "repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and arrested
villagers" who resisted relocation. The watchdog also reported rape, killing
of cattle and burning of houses among rights violations.
Instead of the promised improved life with "access to basic socio-economic
infrastructures," locals found new villages that lacked food, farmland,
schools and health clinics, the New York-based watchdog said.
Human Rights Watch said its report is based on 100 interviews in 2011 with
residents in Gambella and in a refugee camp in Kenya. The report also relied
on visits to 16 affected villages.
The organization called upon the Ethiopian government to suspend its program
until all promised facilities have been provided for.
Ethiopia's minister of federal affairs, Shiferaw Teklemariam, denounced the
allegations in a letter to Human Rights Watch as "downright fabrications" of
a "politically motivated" organization. He wrote that Human Rights Watch
"willfully ignores the fact that more than 50,000 people are utilizing
services from the newly built" villages.
He said the Gambella resettlement is a success and that "villagers for the
first time in their history started to produce excess product maize,
sorghum, rice, potatoes, beans, vegetables, fruits, etc. beyond and above
their family consumption."
Shiferaw said resettlement is voluntary. He denied any presence of military
troops and claimed that interference of security forces was unnecessary
because participants showed a "keen interest."
Ethiopia plans to relocate a total of 45,000 households in Gambella by 2013.
According to the Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based policy think tank,
Ethiopia's government has earmarked 42 percent of Gambella's land for
investment.
The Gambella resettlement plan is part of a larger scheme that aims to
relocate a total of 1.5 million people in four regions. Ethiopia has
earmarked a total of 3.5 million hectares for leasing nationwide and
according to the country's ministry of agriculture website it rented out
more than 350,000 hectares to 24 investors in the last two years.
Jan Egeland, Europe director of Human Rights Watch, said that resettlement
takes place "in the exact same areas of Ethiopia that the government is
leasing to foreign investors for large-scale commercial agricultural
operations".
"This raises suspicions about the underlying motives of the program," he
said in a statement.
Human Rights Watch cited an official from the U.S. government's aid arm
USAID as saying the U.S. organization had concerns about underlying motives
of the resettlement scheme but wasn't successful in getting the government
to respond to allegations of a link between relocation and investment.
Ethiopia is one of the top recipients of U.S. aid.
Egeland said that it "seems that donor money is being used, at least
indirectly, to fund the villagization program." He said donors should take
the responsibility "to ensure that their assistance does not facilitate
forced displacement and associated violations".
USAID did an assessment of the Gambella resettlement program in March 2011
and, while the report has not been made public, concluded that relocation
was voluntary, Human Rights Watch said.
U.S. Ambassador Donald E. Booth and USAID deputy country director Jason
Fraser traveled to Gambella last week but were not immediately available for
comment.
Gambella, in west-central Ethiopia, is a traditionally marginalized area of
the country that suffers internal conflicts over resources like water and
land between indigenous peoples like the pastoral Nuer and agrarian Anuak.
It also is affected by its border with South Sudan, as refugees pour across
into Gambella when violence erupts in that newly independent nation.
Gambella also saw a large influx of Ethiopians who the former dictatorship
forced to relocate after a devastating famine in the 1980s.
Human Rights Watch has accused Ethiopia's military of murder, rape and
torture of scores of ethnic Anuak in Gambella in December 2003. The
government conducted an investigation but largely absolved the military.
Ethiopia's Walta Information Center has reported that most of the 4.45
million acres (1.8 million hectares) that Ethiopia's government leased to
foreign companies last year are in Gambella, and that most of the leased
Gambella land has gone to Indian companies.
A World Bank report last year on leasing agricultural land to foreign
companies noted that some of Ethiopia's leases last up to 100 years and
favor rich foreigners over poor Ethiopians, with large investors receiving
land and water free of charge along with tax benefits, while local peasants
have to pay land taxes and other fees.
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Received on Tue Jan 17 2012 - 11:58:51 EST
