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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Oct 07 2010 - 17:49:58 EDT
Ethiopian refugees say they are tricked, forced onto security force;
families punished
By Katharine Houreld (CP) -
07/10/2010
DADAAB, Kenya - Ethiopian refugees in Kenya say they are being tricked into
joining a government security force in a violent region of Ethiopia, and
that their families face retaliation if they refuse.
Ethiopia's government says it is unaware of anyone coercing refugees to
return or join the new police force it set up in the volatile eastern Ogaden
region, which borders chaotic Somalia and is home to a long-simmering
rebellion led by Ethiopians of Somali origin.
Putting a local face on Ethiopia's security forces - which Human Rights
Watch accused of rape, torture and executions in a 2008 report - is
essential to clinching a peace deal with a faction of the rebels. A rebel
spokesman said the deal could be reached this month.
The refugees, though, say abuses are still happening, and that many of them
are being tricked or coerced into joining the new police force.
"Whenever (the recruiters) meet a young man, they say if you don't go with
us, your family (in Ethiopia) will be beaten," said 27-year-old Nur, a
refugee who says he fled to neighbouring Kenya nearly two years ago after
Ethiopian troops killed his brother and uncle.
Nur said about 10 of his friends have joined the new force. The recruits are
lured by the promise of money and an escape from this dusty refugee camp in
eastern Kenya, and are frightened by threats to their families.
Nur and 16 other Ethiopian refugees interviewed by The Associated Press late
last month asked that their full names not be used to protect them from
reprisals. All but one said they had either been recruited, approached by
recruiters, or had seen family members join.
The refugees said that recruiters promise money and either a job or the
opportunity to go and see how peaceful the region is before returning with
their families.
Such offers can be enticing. Even a little cash is a fortune in the Dadaab
camps because the Kenyan government prohibits refugees from leaving or
seeking work.
The recruits travel in groups of up to 25 by vehicle to the border and then
to the Ethiopian town of Suf. There they are given uniforms, guns and
training, said the deserters, who said they got some of their information
from men who had stayed.
Ethiopia is a military powerhouse in East Africa and a U.S. ally in the
fight against al-Qaida-linked insurgents in neighbouring Somalia. Last year
it received $865 million in U.S. aid, plus an unpublished amount for
counter-terrorism assistance.
It also has a history of forcing its citizens to join pro-government forces,
said Leslie Lefkow, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. She said she has
heard dozens of stories of forced recruitment. Family members could be
beaten, detained or forced to pay money if they couldn't furnish a recruit,
she said.
That's what Abdisalam, 38, said happened after he rescued his younger
brother and two friends from the recruiters.
"They threatened to kill me," Abdisalam said quietly, as he sat hidden from
the baking sun and prying eyes in the mud-walled sitting room of a local
youth leader.
Less than a week after he persuaded his brother to return to the overcrowded
Dadaab camp, their sister in Ethiopia was jailed. Family members were told
it was in retaliation for her brother's "anti-government" activities.
"They said I am a rebel and working against the government," he said. "I
told them I'm only saving my brother. Now my sister is in jail. The war that
we fled has followed us and we are not safe anywhere."
Ethiopia government spokesman Shimeles Kemal confirmed that the government
was talking to one rebel faction and regional authorities had founded a new
police force in the Ogaden aimed at "mopping up" the rest of the rebels. But
he said he was unaware of any recruitment by government agents in refugee
camps.
"That's not possible," he said. "It's not in line with the principles of the
regional government ... I have no knowledge of such incidents."
The rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front, founded in 1984, accuses the
ethnically Tigray-dominated government of starving Ethiopia's ethnically
Somali region of resources and killing its residents. The conflict is also
complicated by clan loyalties.
"They are going to claim they have an agreement with the ONLF (rebels)
soon," said Abdirahman Mahdi, a London-based rebel spokesman. "Their
strategy before was to recruit militias and fight us. This is a new strategy
because there is a lot of pressure from the international community for a
settlement but people are still very angry."
Mahdi said his faction of the ONLF would not negotiate unless another
country was willing to act as a credible guarantor.
In Dadaab, many refugees say they no longer believe peace is possible. Among
them was a woman who arrived to speak to AP veiled from head to foot. She
was too fearful even to give her first name.
Through a translator, the woman said that five months ago Ethiopian forces
came to her home in the Ogaden. They killed the men, she said, and
gang-raped the women before throwing them into a fire. After the translator
stepped outside, she disrobed in the fading light, pressing a journalist's
hand against the bands of puckered burn tissue across her torso.
"I can't forget what happened," she said later. "How can I trust the
government speaking of peace?"
Copyright C 2010 The Canadian Press.
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