AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
09-14-2007
Sultan Fowsi Mohamed Ali (m) and Ahmed Mohamed Tarah (m), engineer
Sultan Fowsi Mohamed Ali and Ahmed Mohamed Tarah were arrested on 28 August in Jijiga, the capital of
the Somali Region (known as the Ogaden) in eastern Ethiopia. They are held incommunicado in Jijiga military barracks, where they are at risk of torture or ill-treatment.
Both men are respected clan elders, Fowsi Mohamed Ali with the title of Sultan. Both had long been involved as independent mediators in conflict-resolution activities in the Somali Region, with the recognition of the authorities.
They are held illegally without charge, and have not been brought to court within 48 hours, as required by law. There have been reports that they were arrested to prevent them meeting and giving evidence to a UN fact-finding mission, which visited the Somali Region on 29 August to investigate reports that the army had been preventing humanitarian aid from being delivered to some areas and claims of killings of alleged supporters of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), an armed opposition group.
Amnesty International believes Sultan Fowsi Mohamed Ali and Ahmed Mohamed Tarah are prisoners of
conscience, detained for their criticism of human rights abuses in the Somali Region.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
For over 13 years the government has faced armed opposition in the Somali Region, which is an almost
completely closed off military zone, from the ONLF, which is fighting for secession of the Ogaden region..
The army have carried out numerous extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations in the course of this conflict. The ONLF attacked a Chinese oil installation at Abole on 24 April, killing 65 Ethiopian civilians and nine Chinese civilians. The government blamed the ONLF for an attempt to assassinate the Somali Region President in Jijiga in May.
The government intensified its military operations against the ONLF in May. It imposed a blockage on trade and movement of food supplies, and restricted access to humanitarian operations, resulting in a
humanitarian crisis. In July the government expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross, which
had been engaged for 12 years in humanitarian projects in the region, including water and sanitation projects and prison visits, and Médicins Sans Frontières. The army reportedly carried out extrajudicial executions of alleged ONLF supporters, arbitrary detentions and torture, and in some places forced people out of their villages so as to remove support for the ONLF.
RECOMMENDED ACTION:
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– expressing concern that Sultan Fowsi Mohamed Ali and Ahmed Mohamed Farah were arrested in Jijiga on
28 August of, and that they are held incommunicado in Jijiga military barracks, where they are at risk of
torture;
– asking why they were arrested, and why they have not been brought to court within the required 48-hour period;
– calling on the authorities to release them immediately and unconditionally;
– urging the authorities to allow them immediate access to their families, legal representatives and any
medical treatment they may require.
By Lauren Gelfand, World Politics Review
LONDON — Pomp, pagentry and the hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas accompanied Ethiopia’s celebration of its entry into the third millennium, seven years after the rest of the world but in line with the Coptic calendar of the Horn of Africa nation.
But with the exchange of fiery rhetoric threatening to upset a fragile peace with neighbor Eritrea, new broadsides in the internal conflict raging in the Ogaden region on the country’s border with Somalia, and dissatisfaction with progress toward improved social welfare, Ethiopia has entered the 21st century much the way it wrapped up the 20th: divided and poor.
In honor of the Sept. 11 and 12 celebrations, the capital, Addis Ababa, was lit up with fireworks that cast long shadows on the expensive civic projects funded by the increasingly unpopular government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
The elite — few and far between in the country of 70 million people that is ranked 170 of 179 on the U.N. Human Development Index — attended lavish celebrations at five-star hotels, including the Sheraton, considered one of Africa’s most luxurious.
Many among them are members of the Ethiopian diaspora, some of the more than 35,000 people who flew home from around the world, from Washington, D.C. to London.
For those diasporans who remained in their adopted cities, there were parties galore: London’s Trafalgar square hosted a concert attracting some 10,000 people, and Ethiopian restaurants around the United States advertised banquets, music and dance parties.
“People think of starving children and famine and poverty when they think of Ethiopia, when really we are a country where civilization took root and created sophisticated arts and music and education,” said one Addis native in London, an artist who refused to give her name, hunched over a plate of spicy chicken in sauce at a south London Ethiopian restaurant.
“This millennium party is a chance for us to change the way our country is perceived. Politics should not enter into the equation, it should be about partying and celebrating!”
‘There is Nothing’
For the average Ethiopian, however, unable to shell out the equivalent of two months’ salary for the extravagant parties, there seemed to be little on offer to preserve a festive mood.
Many of the planned festivities, including the annual racing of the Great Ethiopian Run, a “Taste of Ethiopia” celebration of national cuisine and a free concert hosted by the Rastafarian community, were all cancelled by the government amid “security concerns.”
Many residents of the capital spent the evening in church, following marathon prayers with meals of roasted goat and the spongy sourdough flatbread known as injera.
But even their festive meals were bare of the berberi spices essential to the traditional “wat” sauce that flavors many dishes. Price hikes put hot peppers out of reach for most of the population, leading many to decry the 21st century as the “pepperless millennium.”
So glum were residents of the capital that a wry joke was making the rounds, both of Addis Ababa and the international media: What’s Amharic for Millennium? The answer: minnum yellum, which literally translates to “there is nothing.”
Ogaden Humanitarian Crisis
Further east, in the Ogaden region on the border with Somalia, the atmosphere was anything but festive.
An untold number of refugees have flooded into makeshift camps, escaping rape, looting and murderous rampages perpetrated by Ethiopian troops and civilians on the mostly-Muslim population living in the triangle that juts into Somalia.
The Coptic Christian regime has launched a major crackdown on the mostly ethnic Somali and Muslim population of Ogaden, fueled, according to the Meles government, by its opposition to the independence-seeking rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
For nearly two decades, the ONLF has fought both with force and through diplomatic efforts to end what it considers the region’s systematic marginalization by Addis Ababa.
In ramping up efforts to crack down on the ONLF, however, humanitarian organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières have warned that civilians are facing collective punishment and being deprived of humanitarian aid — a public pronouncement that has resulted in the organization’s ouster from the region.
Three of the worst-affected areas have been decreed off limits to both MSF and the International Committee of the Red Cross, leaving an estimated 400,000 people in a very precarious state, with limited access to food, clean water and medical care.
Next Page: ‘There is a humanitarian crisis’ . . .
“There is a humanitarian crisis,” said William Robertson, the MSF head of mission, from Nairobi on Sept. 4.
“Our teams have treated people who were forced to flee their homes and who are now battling for their survival with next-to-no assistance. They are living in fear, the targets of armed groups or in the crossfire.”
So preoccupying is the evolving humanitarian crisis in Ogaden that the United States, a staunch ally of the Meles government and major contributor of foreign aid, has sent a senior diplomat to help resolve the issue.
Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, called the situation in Ogaden a “humanitarian crisis” on a Sept. 8 visit to the region, putting Washington squarely at odds with a country it relies upon to bring a measure of stability to the restive Horn of Africa.
Border Tension With Eritrea
Washington is also looking warily at the resumption of combustible rhetorical exchanges between Ethiopia and perennial rival Eritrea, seven years after they signed an agreement to end two years of bloody war.
Noting recently that Ethiopian troops were just “meters” away from their Eritrean counterparts, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin breathed new life into the intractable stalemate, a tacit warning that Addis would continue to obstruct the implementation of a ruling that awarded the disputed town of Badme to Eritrea.
Despite the presence of U.N. troops in the border region these last six years, the two sides have continued their dispute over Badme, a dry and dusty town that has limited strategic value beyond its symbolic worth to Addis and Asmara.
“At this time there is little separation of troops from the two neighbors. . . . The armies of the two countries are only 70 or 80 meters apart,” Mesfin said during a Sept. 10 news conference.
Mesfin also chided a U.N. border commission’s work to reinforce the 2002 border decision ahead of its dissolution in November, criticism that was backed up on Tuesday by Meles himself, who reiterated Ethiopia’s resistance to giving Badme to Eritrea.
Analysts contend that Meles is maintaining his bluster on the border dispute in order to boost his sagging popularity and to obfuscate the ongoing domestic travails faced by his impoverished population. But there is real concern that the stalemate could edge into violence again, as neither Addis nor Asmara shows any signs of backing down.
More than one in 10 Ethiopians is “food vulnerable,” according to development agencies, which means they have no financial security that will allow them to regularly purchase what they need to feed their families.
“It is absolutely the case that Ethiopia faces some very serious political and security challenges, both at home domestically and in the Horn of Africa,” said Tom Porteous, the London director of Human Rights Watch, in an exclusive interview with World Politics Review. “Violating human rights law and international humanitarian law is not an effective way of dealing with those challenges, aside from being wrong and causing a lot of civilian suffering.”
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Lauren Gelfand is a freelance journalist and commentator with a special interest in African issues.
By James Butty, VOA
James Butty interview with Hailu Araya Butty interview with Hailu Araaya
Ethiopia’s main opposition, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) says the struggle in Ethiopia is a struggle for democracy, and it hopes the United States will stand on the side of those fighting for democracy in Ethiopia.
In July this year, the Ethiopian government pardoned and released from prison 38 of the country’s top opposition leaders. They had been arrested and charged with treason in a government crackdown following the 2005 parliamentary elections. Now a five-man delegation of the opposition CUD is in the United States.
Spokesman Hailu Araaya told VOA that the delegation is here to thank the Ethiopian Diaspora for its support.
“You know we have been in prison for almost 21 months, and the Ethiopians in the Diaspora have been helpful, so supportive in many ways such as diplomatically, financially and so on. So we wanted to come to this country to meet them face-to-face and say thank you to them. The other thing is there is a struggle going on in Ethiopia to establish democracy there, and this democracy needs the support of the people not only in Ethiopia but also outside Ethiopia. And we are here to discuss with them how best we can work together to promote the struggle for democracy in Ethiopia,” he said.
Araaya said the delegation has been meeting with members of the U.S. Congress, and he hoped similar meetings could be arranged with Bush administration officials.
“Yes we have met with Congressman Donald Payne (chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa), and tomorrow we are going to meet other senators. And we hope that some program could be worked out for us so that we would have the opportunity to meet some of the people in the State Department,” Araaya said.
At a forum in Washington recently to mark Ethiopia’s third millennium, one speaker said current U.S. Ethiopia relations were frustrating the quest for democracy in Ethiopia.
Araaya said current Ethiopia-U.S. relations are good, but he hoped they would get better with U.S. support for the struggle for democracy in Ethiopia.
“I think Ethio-American relations are good at the moment. We hope that they will keep improving because the United States is the supporter and champion of democracy, and the struggle going in Ethiopia is to establish democracy in Ethiopia. We see no reason why the United States will not stand on the side of those forces that are struggling for democracy. I remember when President Bush made the inaugural speech, he said that the United States will be standing on the side of those who also fight for democracy. And we hope that the United States will keep its word and be on the side of people, parties that are determined to establish democracy in their respective countries,” Araaya said.
When the Ethiopian government pardoned and released from prison 38 opposition leaders in July, the government said the opposition leaders had signed statement of apology.
Araaya confirmed the opposition did sign a statement to be released from prison.
“Well we were released on pardon basis. We were pardoned. As you said yes, we did sign a document and then on basis of that document, a pardon board reviewed our case and then presented to the president of the country, and the president issued a pardon declaration. And so we are released with all our full rights that a citizen should have,” Araaya said.
Araaya said the opposition leaders signed the statement voluntarily with an apology to the Ethiopian government.
“We signed it voluntarily. We apologized to the people, to the government. Yes, we did. That’s what the paper said, and that’s what we signed,” he said.
Ethiopia’s next elections are in January 2008. Araaya said the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy would like to field candidates, but for now, it wants to concentrate on rebuilding.
“In principle we would like to participate in any kind of election. But as you know, we just came out of prison, and while we were in prison, our offices were closed and most of our activists were dispersed because of the harassment and other problems. So now what we’re trying to do is to regroup ourselves and also to obtain a certificate of recognition as a party,” he said.
On this month’s Sierra Leone presidential run-off election in which opposition candidate Ernest Bai Koroma defeated incumbent Vice President Solomon Berewa, Araaya said the Ethiopian opposition was proud of the performance of Sierra Leone Election Commission Chairwoman Christiana Thorpe.
“In the first place, we are very happy, we are proud of the electoral board in Sierra Leone. I wish our board would do the same thing. We hope the day will come when our electoral board would do the same. But I just wanted to say that we are very encouraged by what happened in Sierra Leone. And it could be a good moral symbol, very encouraging to us as opposition parties and also our electoral board would examine the Sierra Leone case and learn something from it,” Araaya said.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP): The United Nations said Wednesday that the situation in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region has “deteriorated rapidly,” and called for an independent investigation into the humanitarian issues there.
The U.N. sent a fact-finding mission to the Ogaden in the country’s volatile east from Aug. 30 to Sept. 6.
“The mission observed the recent fighting has led to a worsening humanitarian situation, in which the price of food has nearly doubled,” the U.N. said in a statement released late Wednesday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
The mission also called for a substantial increase in emergency food aid to the impoverished region where rebels have been fighting for increased autonomy for more than a decade.
The U.N. mission was sent after months of fighting that followed a crackdown ordered by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The government says the rebels, who killed 74 members of a Chinese-run oil exploration team, are terrorists, funded by its archenemy Eritrea.
The rebels have accused the Ethiopian Woyanne government of genocide — a charge the government denies. In a statement on Sept. 13, the front said the government was punishing civilians for the rebel activities and that the fact-finding mission had not visited areas where war crimes were being committed.
“The Ethiopian regime’s policy in Ogaden continues to be a campaign of state-sponsored terror that largely avoids engagements with ONLF forces and instead focuses on collectively punishing our civilian population,” the statement said. “Victims of the regime’s war crimes include victims of rape, torture, gunshot wounds and those fleeing burnt villages,” it said.
The front called on the international community to stop “yet another preventable African genocide,” and urged the U.N. to investigate further in the region, saying the recent trip had been too tightly controlled by the government.
Bereket Simon, the special adviser to the prime minister dictator, dismissed the rebels’ claims after the statement was issued last week.
“They said it is good that the U.N. has sent the fact-finding mission. And now when the facts from the ground are found to be not supporting their claims, they are fighting the fact-finding mission,” he said.
The group is fighting for greater political rights for the region, which is ethnically Somali.
Read the full report here:
