guardian.co.uk — Soldiers, insurgents and bandits are routinely attacking Somalian civilians, carrying out murder, rape, and robbery on villagers, and destroying entire districts, Amnesty International said yesterday.
Gang rape and throat cutting — referred to locally as “killing like goats” — is prevalent. Incidents of gouging out eyes, beheadings and castration have also been reported. Amnesty’s report is based on interviews with scores of traumatized refugees who fled the war-ravaged country, where 6,500 civilians have been killed in the past year.
Unarmed civilians are reported to be caught up in the battle between Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers and Somalian government troops fighting the remnants of the Islamic Courts Union, which was ousted by Ethiopian Woyanne forces in 2006. Amnesty said the blame for civilian deaths was shared by all parties but it highlighted an “increasing incidence” of gruesome methods employed by Ethiopian Woyanne forces following incidents in which the bodies of several Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers were dragged through the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, by Islamist insurgents.
Ethiopia’s government Woyanne dismissed Amnesty’s report as unbalanced and “categorically wrong”. A spokesman said hundreds of Ethiopian Woyanne troops had died fighting the Islamist insurgency.
Guled, a 32-year-old refugee, described seeing neighbors with their throats slit, and their corpses left in the street. “Some had their testicles cut off,” Guled said, adding that a newly married woman who lived next door to him was raped by more than 20 Ethiopians. Another interviewee told Amnesty of a report that Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers had cut the throat of a young child in front of the mother. “Even schools are being used as cemeteries, because people cannot take bodies outside the city,” Galad, a 60-year-old journalist, was quoted as saying.
Michelle Kagari, the deputy director of Amnesty’s Africa Programme, said: “The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured; looting is widespread and entire neighbourhoods are being destroyed. The testimony we received strongly suggests that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity have been committed by all parties to the conflict in Somalia and no one is being held accountable.”
The Amnesty report said: “Among the most common violations reported were an increased incidence of gang rape, and scores of reports of a type of killing locally referred to as… ‘killing like goats’.”
It quotes Butaaco, a 30-year-old refugee from Mogadishu, as saying: “I saw girls get raped in my neighborhood and on the streets. I saw people get slaughtered. I saw people killed in their houses, their bodies rotting for days.”
Somalia has been in a state of chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre after 21 years in power and then turned on each other. Last year, Islamist militants took control of most of southern Somalia, including Mogadishu. Ethiopia Woyanne sent in troops in December 2006 and ejected them. Since then, Mogadishu has been caught up in a guerrilla war between the government and its Ethiopian Woyanne allies and the Islamist insurgents. Up to 1 million Somalians are internally displaced.
4 thoughts on “Woyanne troops behead, castrate Somalis (AI)”
The tigers dominated government in Adis led by the butcher of the horn of Africa mr meles zenawi is undoubtedly committing hideous war crimes and human rights violations in Somalia. this is the reality and the truth. speakers of Ethiopian government are bunch of lairs. they never ever acknowledge their mistakes. what their military are doing in Somalia proper and ogaden is inhuman atrocities. its a usual practice for the Ethiopian army to slit throats of their captives. the government denies and denies and never investigates any thing/
shame..shame
m ahmed
Oh lord have mercy; did America create another Taliban in Addis? fellas according to weyane media the development and democracy in Ethiopia is growing at the fastest rate than Ethiopias existense; however, the news to all Ethiopians and the government baby sitters, America, should be the people of Ethiopia are being hated by the fellow Africans for crimes they have nothing to do with; at the matter fact they are victims of these vicious thugs in Addis. The people of Ethiopia and particularly the people of Tigry must wake-up and tell these killers, “not in our name”. I do not believe every Tigryan is part of these killing machine but their silence make them look as such!
Simply despicable crimes committed by the ruthless thugs of mekele.All these horrific crimes committed on civilian by these thugs will one day have consequences on it’s own people.i don’t believe in the rule of “eye for an eye”, but all the crimes committed on innocent somalis, ogadenis, gamaballas and sidamas will one day have consequences. i still can’t believe some heartless,arrogant tigrayans support this ruthless regime.i am not even sure if Hitler was this much heartless.
Going back to the biblical time and using that old methods of punishing an enemy, the Woyanne soldiers have committed the following atrocities on the Somali people: raping a newly married woman 20 times by 20 Woyanne men, cutting the throat of a toddler in front of the mother, gouging out the eyes of the young Somalis, cutting off their testicles, and slitting their throats. The only thing they have not done yet is that roasting the bodies of those Somalis and eating them with some spices on them.
For the Woyanne soldiers, Somalis are animals that should be beheaded, cut their testicles, and slit their throats like goats or sheep, and their dead bodies be thrown onto the streets. Extremely frightened by such cruel killings of their friends, the citizens of the Somali people could not even bury their dead outside the city; instead, they bury them in the nearby schools. Such in humane killings will bring from heaven a curse on the entire Ethiopian population, and no sacrifices, fasting, and prayers by the Ethiopian Christians, Muslims, and Jews will ever purge the sins committed by the Woyanne soldiers on the innocent Somalis. No indemnity to the war victims of the Somali people will appease the broken hearts of the Somali mothers and fathers after the war is over; perhaps after seven or ten generations, there will be a new society in Somalia that says “forget the past, let us build a new friendship between Somalia and our neighbor Ethiopia.”
Most of us Ethiopians have already forgotten what the Italians did to us, so it is possible that the Somalis may forget what the Woyanne soldiers did to them. I hope they will distinguish between the Woyanne soldiers and the Ethiopian people who have also been the victims of Meles Seitanawi and his death squads. Americans will also be responsible for the many deaths of many Somali civilians.