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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Aug 05 2011 - 09:07:55 EDT
Ethiopia 'using aid as weapon of oppression'
Watch Angus Stickler's full report and Ethiopian and UK responses
Friday, 5 August 2011 12:48 UK
Video- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9556288.stm
A joint undercover investigation by BBC Newsnight and the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism has uncovered evidence that the Ethiopian
government is using billions of dollars of development aid as a tool for
political oppression.
Posing as tourists the team of journalists travelled to the southern region
of Ethiopia.
There they found villages where whole communities are starving, having
allegedly been denied basic food, seed and fertiliser for failing to support
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
The investigation has also gathered evidence of mass detentions, the
widespread use of torture and extra-judicial killings by Ethiopian
government forces.
Yet Western donors including Britain - which is the third largest donor to
Ethiopia - stand accused of turning a blind eye by continuing to provide aid
money despite being warned about the abuses.
The aid in question is long-term development aid, not the emergency aid
provided in response to the current drought in Ethiopia and its neighbours
in the Horn of Africa.
Government response
Ambassador Abdirashid Dulane, the Deputy Head of Ethiopia's UK Mission, has
rejected the allegations saying that the Newsnight/Bureau report "lacked
objectivity, even-handedness". "The sole source of the story was opponents
of Ethiopia who have been rejected by the electorate, and time and again it
has been shown that their allegations are unfounded".
Our reporters visited one village in southern Ethiopia with a population of
about 1,700 adults.
Despite being surrounded by other communities which are well fed and
prosperous, this village, which cannot be named for fear of reprisals, is
starving. We were told that in the two weeks prior to our team's arrival
five adults and 10 children had died.
Lying on the floor, too exhausted to stand, and flanked by her
three-year-old son whose stomach is bloated by malnutrition, one woman
described how her family had not eaten for four days.
"We are living day to day on the grace of God," she said.
Another three-year-old boy lay in his grandmother's lap, listless and barely
moving as he stared into space.
"We are just waiting on the crop, if we have one meal a day we will survive
until the harvest, beyond that there is no hope for us," the grandmother
said.
'Abandoned'
In another village 30 km (19 miles) away it was a similar story.
There our team met Yenee, a widow who along with her seven children is
surviving by begging, eating leaves and scavenging scraps from the bins in
the nearest town.
"The situation is desperate," she said. "We have been abandoned... It is a
matter of chance if we live or die."
The two villages sit just 15km (9 miles) either side of a major town,
surrounded by other communities where the populations are well fed and
healthy. They are in desperate need, but no-one is helping.
According to local opposition members they are being punished for failing to
vote for the ruling party, the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic
Front (EPRDF), which Mr Meles leads.
Further north a group of farmers alienated by Mr Meles' government met the
BBC/Bureau team at a secret location on the edge of a remote village.
One farmer described how he had been ostracised for failing to support
EPRDF: "Because of our political views we face great intimidation. We are
denied the right to fertiliser and seeds because of political ideology," he
said.
'Buying support'
The Ethiopian federal and regional governments control the distribution of
aid in Ethiopia.
Professor Beyene Petros, the current vice-chairman of the Ethiopian Federal
Democratic Forum, an alliance of eight opposition parties known as Medrek,
told our reporters that aid is not distributed according to need, but
according to support for the EPRDF:
"Almost all of the aid goes through the government channels... in terms of
relief food supply and some of the safety net provisions, they simply don't
get to the needy of an equitably basis.
"There is a great deal of political differentiation. People who support the
ruling party, the EPRDF, and our members are treated differently. The
motivation is buying support, that is how they recruit support, holding the
population hostage," he said.
Mr Beyene said that the international community, including the British
government, is well aware of the problem and that he has personally
presented them with evidence:
"The position of the donor communities is dismissive... they always want to
dismiss it as an isolated incident when we present them with some proof. And
we challenge them to go down and check it out for themselves, but they don't
do it."
Accountability
The UK International Development Minister Stephen O'Brien issued a statement
in response to the allegations raised by the investigation, saying:
"We take all allegations of human rights abuses extremely seriously and
raise them immediately with the relevant authorities including the Ethiopian
Government, with whom we have a candid relationship. Where there is
evidence, we take firm and decisive action.
"The British aid programme helps the people of Ethiopia, 30 million of whom
live in extreme poverty. We demand full accountability and maximum impact on
the ground for support from the British taxpayer."
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Newsnight also gathered evidence
of a crackdown and human rights abuses in Ethiopia's Somali region, the area
bordering Somalia and Kenya, also know as the Ogaden region.
Ethnic Somali rebels from the outlawed Ogaden National Liberation Front
(ONLF) and Ethiopian government forces have been fighting for control of
Ogaden since the 1970s.
The media and most aid agencies are banned from the region.
Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries of the world, is currently suffering
from horrific drought.
Many of those fleeing the ensuing humanitarian crisis have headed to Dadaab
refugee camp in northern Kenya.
It is the largest refugee camp in the world, and the vast majority of the
400,000 people there are from Somalia, but among them are an increasing
number of Ethiopians from the Ogaden.
'Revenge killings'
Abdifatah Arab Olad, an Ogaden community leader, told our reporters that up
to 100 refugees are arriving every month with tales of killings and the
burning of villages by government troops. "Whenever fighting has taken place
between the rebels and the army, for each army member that is killed, the
military go to the nearest town and they start killing people," he said.
"For each army member killed it equals to 10 civilians losses."
In the corner of a makeshift shack in the camp, an old woman who had arrived
from Ogaden three weeks earlier described being arrested along with 100
others in her village.
She said they were taken to a jail where they were locked up in a shipping
container, and picked out on a nightly basis to be tortured:
"They beat me then started to rape me; I screamed and fought with them... I
tried to bite them... they tied me this way," she said, gesturing to her
legs.
"They raped me in a room, one of them was standing on my mouth, and one tied
my hand, they were taking turns, I fainted during this... I can't say how
many, but they were many in the army," she said.
'Assaulted when pregnant'
Other women in the camp also said they had been arrested and accused of
being members of the OLNF.
They included one who said that she was eight months pregnant when she was
detained and raped by eight soldiers:
"They were beating me while I was being raped, I was bleeding," she said,
describing how one soldier stamped on her stomach and beat her with the
stock of his rifle:
"I fell unconscious when I saw my baby... a man jumping on your stomach, you
can imagine what happened to the child, very big kicks blows with the back
of a gun. As a consequence of that the child died."
We cannot substantiate these individual allegations. But other credible
sources have reported similar stories of the widespread use of rape by
Ethiopian security forces against women in the Ogaden.
Speaking on Newsnight, Ethiopia's Ambassador Abdirashid Dulane said that the
claims of rape and torture were a "rehash" of old allegations that the
Ethiopian government had answered time and again.
"The Ethiopian government is governed by the rule of law, and human rights
and democratic rights are enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution," he said.
Starving villagers in southern Ethiopia
The team found villagers eating leaves in order to survive
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