Margaret J. O’Connor on lessons she learned growing up in Ethiopia — and from Martin Luther King Jr.’s death
April 3, 2013
Margaret J. O’Connor
You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, but I have two native countries — Ethiopia and Australia — and an adopted one, America. I was born and raised in Ethiopia, a daughter of Australian missionaries. We lived in a small village in the highlands of the Great Rift Valley. There, I grew up surrounded by love, gentleness and kindness — not only from my family, but from the Amhara and the Arusi-Galla tribal people among whom we lived. For me, color was never an issue. It was not black or white, but rather, friend or not.
In the village where I grew up, we were the only white children. When I was 3, my family was returning to Australia for a yearlong furlough, and another missionary family with three children was coming to take over my parent’s mission post. The children were near our ages, and when they asked my sisters and I to play with them, we were shy and ran off into the village to play with our friends.
That night, my mother asked me why I’d run away. I’d said, “Mummy, they’re so different than us.” I’d never seen another white child, except for my sisters. I didn’t grow up noticing color. That’s why I know that bigotry is learned. Hatred is learned. It’s something we teach our children.
In 1967, my family came to America — one of the most important events in my young life. I really believed the streets would be paved with gold. America was the land of plenty, the new “promised land,” one filled with opportunity, the best of the best. But within 10 months, everything changed forever for me.
Forty-five years ago today, and just a few short months after my family came to America, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. I was 12, and it had a profound effect on me.
I had never been exposed to such violence or such discrimination based solely on skin color. I asked my father why they would kill him, and I have never forgotten what he said to me: “He wanted to make the world a better place, but it’s not that way right now, and one day because of him, it might be.”
From Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, I learned about things I had never known: Bigotry and violence and hatred. But I also learned how far one man’s dream can take him, a people and a nation. I learned about the passion of conviction; that nonviolence and love can triumph over blind hate. I learned about a man who awoke a nation to racial injustice and the struggle for freedom. He stirred souls and people to action with his call for unity.
If, in 1960, someone had asked if a black man coming out of the South could champion a movement whose effect would be heard and felt around the world — and by a young strawberry blonde girl from Ethiopia — the answer would be an emphatic no. But Martin Luther King Jr. saw the oppression and despair of a people. He believed that change needed to occur, “but within the framework of the American democratic set-up … One of the greatest glories of American democracy is that we have the right to protest for rights.”
With that, he began to lay the groundwork for equality for all. He believed, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” and, “Today, the choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
Martin Luther King Jr. moved a nation toward his dream. His dream sustained a people and began to turn the tide away from apathy and ignorance. And he ultimately laid down his life for his fellow man, an act of “no greater love.”
His life has taught me that anything is possible, even if I am only one. He taught me that dreams, moral fiber, integrity and compassion are essential life characteristics. And he also reminded me of that essential lesson I learned as a young girl growing up in Ethiopia — that all people should be treated equally.
Open Hearings to Family, Independent Monitors, Media
By Human Rights Watch
April 2, 2013
(Nairobi) – The prosecution of 29 Muslim protest leaders and others charged under Ethiopia’s deeply flawed anti-terrorism law raises serious fair trial concerns. The trial is scheduled to resume in Addis Ababa on April 2, 2013, after a 40-day postponement.
The case has already had major due process problems. Some defendants have alleged ill-treatment in pre-trial detention. The government has provided defendants limited access to legal counsel and has taken actions that undermined their presumption of innocence. Since January 22 the High Court has closed the hearings to the public, including the media, diplomats, and family members of defendants.
“There seems to be no limit to the Ethiopian government’s use of its anti-terrorism law and unfair trials to stop peaceful dissent,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director. “The government’s treatment of these Muslim leaders bears the hallmarks of a politically motivated prosecution.”
The defendants include Muslim leaders and activists arrested and detained in July 2012 following six months of public protests in Addis Ababa and other towns by Ethiopia’s Muslim community over alleged government interference in religious affairs. Others on trial include Yusuf Getachew, former managing editor of the now defunct Islamic magazine Yemuslimoch Guday, and two Muslim nongovernmental organizations, allegedly managed by three of the defendants. Solomon Kebede was arrested and is being held under the anti-terrorism law.
According to official figures, Muslims make up approximately 30 percent of Ethiopia’s population. The protest movement began after the government insisted that the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs accept members from an Islamic sect known as al Ahbash and tried to impose its teachings on the Muslim community. The government also sought to influence the operations of the Awalia mosque in Addis Ababa.
In January 2012 the Muslim community created a committee to represent it in discussions with the government. Nine of the 17 members of this committee are among those on trial: Abubekar Ahmed, Ahmedin Jebel, Ahmed Mustafa, Kamil Shemsu, Jemal Yassin, Yassin Nuru, Sheikh Sultan Aman, Sheikh Mekete Muhe, and Sheikh Tahir Abdulkadir. They were arrested as the Ethiopian security forces began a major crackdown on the protests at Awalia and Anwar mosques in Addis Ababa and on protests in other cities as well, arresting and assaulting hundreds of protesters. Although the government has not released numbers, credible sources told Human Rights Watch that as many as 1,000 people were arrested in July alone.
Journalists attempting to cover or report on the protests were also detained or intimidated. Despite these arrests, weekly protests have continued throughout the country.
As in Ethiopia’s earlier terrorism trials of journalists and opposition leaders, the current trial has been marred by serious due process violations.Defendants have had erratic access to lawyers and relatives, and a number of the defendants were initially held for almost two months without access to legal counsel.
Lawyers for the defendants have repeatedly complained to the courts about the treatment of their clients, and alleged that the Muslim committee members and Getachew were mistreated during their pre-trial detention at the Federal Police Crime Investigation Department, known as Maekelawi prison, in Addis Ababa, which is notorious for torture. The complaints do not appear to have been appropriately investigated. Both the first instance court and the higher court have claimed not to have the jurisdiction over these matters.
The defendants have all been charged with “terrorist acts” under article 3 of Ethiopia’s 2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, and with planning and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts under article 4. Descriptions of the charges in the initial charge sheet do not contain the basic elements of the crimes that the defendants are alleged to have committed.
Human Rights Watch, other human rights organizations, and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have repeatedly raised concerns about the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation’s overly broad provisions, which have been used to criminalize legitimate free expression and peaceful dissent. Thirty-four people, including eleven journalists and at least four opposition supporters, are known to have been sentenced under the law between late 2011 and mid-2012 in apparently politically motivated trials.
The government has also undermined the defendants’ presumption of innocence by broadcasting inflammatory material and accusations against them on state television. In February state-run Ethiopian Television (ETV) broadcast a program called “Jihadawi Harakat” (“Jihad War”) that included footage of at least five of the defendants filmed in pre-trial detention, including Muslim committee members Kamil Shemsu, Ahmed Mustafa, Abubekar Ahmed, and Yassin Nuru, and the activist Nuru Turki. The program equates the Muslim protest movement in Ethiopia with Islamist extremist groups such as Somalia’s armed al-Shabaab militants, and casts the Muslim protest leaders as terrorists. The High Court granted an injunction prohibiting the broadcast but ETV ignored the court order.
The ETV broadcast was the latest in a series of television programs – many of them produced by the government’s Communications Ministry in collaboration with police or security services –that try to smear the defendants in terrorism trials. In November 2011, ETV broadcast “Akeldama” (“Land of Blood”) during the terrorism trial of 24 people, including prominent members of the political opposition and journalists. The program, which included film of several of the defendants in pre-trial detention, apparently under duress, described the defendants’ alleged involvement in a “terrorist plot.”
Two Swedish journalists were the subject of another similar piece in 2011 after they were arrested in Ethiopia’s eastern Somali region. They were subjected to a mock execution during the filming.
“The unfair trial of the Muslim activists is compounded by the government’s TV program that demonizes them as ‘terrorists’ and threatens to raise suspicion of all Muslims and their ongoing protests,” Lefkow said. “The Ethiopian government is prosecuting people who are simply trying to protect their rights to religious freedom and free speech.”
The government has also continued to use the anti-terrorism law to silence the media.
Kebede, Getachew’s successor at Yemuslimoch Guday, has been held for more than two months in pre-trial detention without charges. Heis being held in Maekelawi prison, withoutaccess to legal counsel, which heightens concerns about his treatment and safety.
On March 15 the first instance court granted the police an additional 28 days for further investigation in Kebede’s case. The Anti-Terrorism Proclamation permits pre-trial detention for up to four months without charge, one of the longest periods in anti-terrorism legislation worldwide,in violation of Ethiopia’s international legal obligations. Under the Ethiopian constitution detainees must be charged or released within 48 hours.
“Rather than jailing peaceful protesters and critical journalists, the government should amend the anti-terrorism law and stop these politically motivated trials,” Lefkow said. “The government should be reaching out to the Muslim community and discussing their grievances rather than silencing their voices and leaders.”
“Every night, they took all of us girls to [interrogations]. They would separate us and beat us. The second time they took me, they raped me… All three of the men raped me, consecutively”.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) report in Collective Punishment, along with 15 other female students, this innocent 17 year-old Ogaden girl, was held captive for three months in a “dark hole in the ground” and raped 13 times. This is just one of countless accounts of abuse, from within the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, where it is widely reported criminal acts like these are perpetrated by the Ethiopian military and paramilitary forces on a daily basis. Untold atrocities like this; past and present are awaiting investigation, amid what is a much-ignored, little known conflict in the Horn of Africa.
In an attempt to hide the facts from the rest of the world, in 2007 the Ethiopian government banned all international media, and expelled many humanitarian aid groups from the area. It is reputed that any Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) allowed to stay do so on the condition that they sign a waiver document, agreeing not to report human rights violations by the government. Ethiopia, Leslie Lefkow of HRW states, “is one of the most difficult places to work for human rights groups or humanitarian agencies on the African continent”, and the Ogaden (a barren land, littered with military remnants from past conflicts), “is one of the most difficult places to work in Ethiopia.” There are “huge challenges to doing investigations on the ground because the security apparatus of the government is extremely extensive and permeates even the lowest levels, the grass roots, the village levels”, where regime spies and informers operate, reporting anything and anyone suspicious.
Information about life within the region comes from whispering sources on the ground, and from those who have fled the violence, and are now living outside Ethiopia. Many are in refugee camps in Kenya and Yemen, from where they recount stories of horrific abuse. Mohammed, from the Dhadhaab (or Dadaab) camp in Kenya, described to Ogaden Online (OO) 1/12/2012 how he was captured by the Ethiopian military, accused of being a supporter of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and mercilessly tortured. “They hogtied me”, he said, “and then flogged me while pinned down.” Mohamed’s face “was disfigured to the point where he can’t be recognized”. Refugees support Amnesty International’s (AI) findings of “torture and extrajudicial executions of detainees in the region” – women tell of multiple gang rapes, their arms, feet and necks tied with wire, for which they bear the scars, men speak of barbaric torture techniques at the hands of the Ethiopian military and paramilitary – the notorious, semi legal, completely barbaric Liyu Police, who, Laetitia Bader of HRW says, “fit into this context of impunity where security forces can do more or less what they want”.
The ONLF is cast as the enemy of the state, and regarded, as all dissenting troublesome groups are, as terrorists. They in fact won 60% of seats and were democratically elected to the regional parliament in the only inclusive open elections to be held, back in 1992. Civilians suspected, however vaguely of supporting the so-called ‘rebels’, are forcibly re-located from their homes. The evacuated villages and settlements, emptied at gunpoint HRW (CP) record, “become no-go areas” and in a further act of state criminality, “civilians who remain behind risk being shot on sight, tortured, or raped if spotted by soldiers”. Children, refugees report are hanged, villages and settlements razed to the ground and cattle stolen to feed soldiers: HRW record (CP), “water sources and wells have [also] been destroyed”. Systematic, strategic methods of violence and intimidation employed by the Ethiopian regime, that has, Genocide Watch (GW) state, “initiated a genocidal campaign against the Ogaden Somali population”.
Pervasive pernicious control
Spearheading the Governments campaign of terror in the region is the Liyu Police. A force of 10,000-14,000 18-20 year olds, with little or no knowledge of criminal law or human Rights, David Mepham UK Director of HRW told The Guardian 15/01/2013, that “for years we have documented egregious human rights abuses committed by the Liyu police, including the March 2012 extra-judicial execution of 10 men in their custody and the killing of nine other villagers”. Established in 2005 the Liyu initiative was the brainchild of a group led by the current regional President. His Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime was and remains, at war with the ONLF, who are seeking self-determination for the five million ethnic Somali’s, in line with their constitutional rights under the governments Ethnic Federalism policy.
The EPRDF is a highly controlling repressive regime, which has extended its pervasive reach in the nine districts of the Ogaden, to where, HRW (CP) records, “security committees, which exist at every administrative level [and]… include members of the armed forces, military intelligence, security officials.” The local Ogaden administration “does nothing but carry out Ethiopian dictates and represents the interests of the present, centralised regime,” the Ogaden Women’s Relief Association (OWRA) record in their study, A Place to Call Home. Dictates’ of government brutality and intimidation regimentally carried out by the Ethiopian military apparatus, fully equipped by their principle donor, America, who GW recommend, should “immediately cease all military assistance”.
Terrifying tools of oppression and imprisonment
The current regime operates under the premiership of Hailemariam Desalegn, who, true to his inaugural word, is following in predecessor Meles Zenawi’s shoes – has expanded the EPRDF’s repertoire of violence and control and, in addition to the range of violent measures employed, is imposing additional economic pressures, intimidation and extortion the name of the game. It is widely reported that In the midst of the current dry (or Jilaal) season, new taxes are being levied on water drawn from wells for livestock and domestic use. Sums of up to $150 are reportedly being charged to people living in rural areas, already burdened by an economic and aid embargo, which is causing civilians great hardship.
Additional tax demands are also being made – OO (8/03/2013) carry the story that, “reliable reports…. confirm the imposition of what the locals term an illegal ‘head tax’, imposed on the civilian population as well as on their livestock”. A local elder, whose “family consists of eight children and he and his wife” received an arbitrary charge of “150 Ethiopian Birrs ($8) per individual regardless of age or gender”, a total of 1200 birr ($56) – far beyond his means.
Kidnapping, with subsequent ransom demands, is another applied tool of terror. Family members, abducted and imprisoned, are released upon receipt of ransom payments, made either by relatives inside Ethiopia or those living overseas. Levels of extortion vary, with those in the west paying anything from “$300 to $1,500”; the McGill Report found “in some cases those amounts were contributions to total collected ransoms of more than $10,000”. This criminal practice is widespread: civilians are arrested and imprisoned, without regard to due process, often repeatedly as Ifraah, a 25 year-old Ogaden Somali woman, told the OWRA: “To be released, you have to pay the Ethiopian military from 1,000 ($56) to 2,000 birr ($112). And the price keeps going up. If they suspect that the family has money, they raise the price. Poor people often stay in prison much longer because they can’t raise the ransom. It happened to me twice. The first time I wasn’t yet married. I spent a couple of months in prison and had to pay 500 birr ($28); the second time, I had to pay 1,000.” It’s a business in human suffering, “arrests also benefit the military; it’s a flourishing trade. Innocent people are captured and have to come up with a lot of money to free themselves.” This illegal income, it is widely believed, is being used to supplement the paramilitary soldiers salaries’. “There are women thrown into prison five times, and each time they have to pay to get out. But economic factors are not the only ones. There’s also torture and rape”.
Civilians like Ifraah indiscriminately accused of supporting the ONLF are detained without charge. Leslie Lefkow of HRW makes clear that, “the way the EPRDF targets people, is an enormous problem from a human rights point of view”. HRW have been monitoring the situation in the region for the past five years, and have seen and documented a range of Human Rights abuses, including “arbitrary detaining [of] family members, often for long periods of time, sexual violence against women and girls, sometimes if they are viewed as being members of the ONLF or supporters or simply because they are family members [of ONLF supporters]. There is a kind of ‘guilt by association’ that is used to target the family members”, punishable by “summary executions… where suspected ONLF supporters have been executed in cold blood.”
Incarcerated in what are often makeshift prisons (e.g. deserted school buildings), prisoners held in appalling conditions, are tortured, abused and intimidated. Ina and Halima, two young women from the town of Saga, were, OO 21/01/2011 report, “suspended in the air by their ankles with their legs spread wide, while the soldiers poured water mixed with red chilli powder over them [and] applied [it] in and around the victims’ genitalia, causing severe burns.” In ‘prison’ there are no medical facilities and, Ifraah says, no food: “You get your food from relatives. If you don’t have anyone nearby, your relatives send money to people who live there so they can buy you food”; or inmates share what little they have. Abdullahi, held amongst, others without trial for nine months, related to OWRA how their captors “locked us in an underground room” Young girls are regarded as Liyu property, kidnapped, held captive and repeatedly raped, often falling pregnant in the process. “Little girls”, record OWRA, “13 to 15-year-olds, in prison and suddenly pregnant….at night you hear the girls screaming when soldiers take them from their cells” – their dignity and childhood stolen from them.
Government genocide
The government’s so-called counter-insurgency policy in the Ogaden is, in truth, a form of genocide and is regarded as such by GW. Is it ethnic hatred, fear and loathing of the ‘other’, or simply greed for the regions natural resources – the oil and natural gas that drives the government’s violent, multi-pronged approach? An approach that HRW (CP) makes clear, aims “at cutting off economic resources, weakening the ONLF’s civilian support base, and confining its geographic area of operation”. In pursuing these duplicitous goals, the Ethiopian regime seems to exist on an island of impunity, hidden from the international community; as The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) state, “there is a shocking lack of international attention directed at the situation” and, despite the “substantial documentation of the violations committed…published by human rights NGOs, governments and media outlets”, nothing is being done.
Let us be clear and state, unequivocally the findings of Human Rights groups: that the Ethiopian military and paramilitary is committing wide-ranging Human Rights violations in the Ogaden, which constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. “The situation” should, as GW demand, be “referred by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court (ICC)”.
Such Human Rights violations are not confined to the Ogaden region. GW consider “Ethiopia to have already reached Stage 7 (of 8), genocide massacres, against many of its peoples, including the Anuak, Ogadeni, Oromo, and Omo tribes”. The EPRDF, unsurprisingly, plead innocent to all such accusations of abuse and state criminality and dismiss allegations of human rights abuse substantiated by reports from international human rights group such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The Ogaden regional president claims, they “peddle lies and propaganda from our enemies”. However, if the Ethiopian government has nothing to hide, why don’t they allow independent investigators and journalists access to the Ogaden region?
The shocking accounts of violence and abuse are endless. The situation is clearly extremely critical and demands the immediate attention of Ethiopia’s main benefactors – America and sister donor nations, the European Union and Britain. To continue to ignore the evidence of state criminality and to blindly support the Ethiopian government in the face of such persecution, is to be complicit in the murder and violent abuse of the innocent people of the Ogaden region.
Graham Peebles is director of the Create Trust. He can be reached at: [email protected]
“Across the world, study after study affirms that where there is religious freedom, there is stability, harmony and prosperity, and where religious liberty is lacking, so are these blessings.”
Juhdi Jasser | Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
March 13, 2013
From Somalian anarchy to Eritrean and Sudanese tyranny and civil strife, the Horn of Africa has long been a turbulent region. A notable exception has been the nation of Ethiopia.
That might be changing.
From December 15 through December 19 of last year, I was in Addis Ababa heading a delegation from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). We met with a wide range of people, from the American ambassador to Ethiopian government officials, religious leaders and nongovernmental human rights and interfaith representatives.
Prior to our trip, we had seen reports about violations against Muslims, especially since July 2011. This was when the Addis Ababa government first sought to change how Islam was practiced in Ethiopia and began to punish those resisting its new policy. Our findings confirmed the assaults on religious liberty and their negative impact—both as a human rights issue and a potential security matter.
Until July 2011, Ethiopia’s government largely respected the religious freedom of its people, including Muslims, who are mostly Sufis and comprise one-third of the population. Article 27 of Ethiopia’s constitution guarantees religious freedom and “the independence of the state from religion.”
Four factors have fueled a shift away from honoring this right. First, in neighboring Somalia and Sudan, violent religious extremists pose a security threat. Second, within its own borders, Wahhabism—imported from Saudi Arabia—also poses a danger. Third, Ethiopia’s policies have undermined civil society. Its government has imposed draconian limits on foreign funding for human rights, democracy promotion and conflict mitigation, leaving many NGOs with stark choices. They can work with the government—foregoing their independent status and drastically curtailing their activities—or they can close up shop. Consequently, there are no independent groups in Ethiopia that can monitor religious freedom or undertake interfaith cooperation or intra-faith conflict resolution activities. Finally, Ethiopia’s government is perpetrating religious repression, purportedly in response to Wahhabist threats.
Starting in July 2011, Ethiopia’s government decided that the way to fight the Wahhabism of some Muslims was by limiting the freedom of all Muslims. It imported imams from Lebanon representing the al-Ahbash movement within Islam and compelled Ethiopia’s imams and Islamic educators to embrace and mirror their teachings. The government began dismissing dissenters by firing imams and closing their schools. This effort was conducted not only through Ethiopia’s government but also through the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (EIASC).
When it was launched, EIASC’s members had been appointed by the government rather than elected by the community, thus depriving Muslims of a recognized, independent voice. By December, the attempts to impose al-Ahbash triggered protests outside of mosques.
In the spring of 2012, an Arbitration Committee of 17 Islamic scholars was created by the protesters to negotiate with the government about respecting religious freedom guarantees such as ending the imposition of al-Ahbash, reopening schools and restoring dismissed imams and administrators. The Committee also asked for new EIASC elections.
By the end of July, negotiations had failed, protests increased and the government began conducting house-to-house searches. The government arrested 1,000 protestors, along with all 17 Committee members, eight of whom it later released.
In October, the government charged 29 protestors, including the nine Committee members it was still holding, with terrorism and attempting to establish an Islamic state. Thus far, it has offered no evidence that these people are terrorists.
We met with attorneys for 28 of the 29 who reported that their clients were tortured and that they’ve had trouble meeting with those imprisoned. The government prevented us from meeting with any of the prisoners directly.
Meanwhile, officials denied any role in the al-Ahbash trainings, rejected our concerns about foisting a particular belief onto a religious community, insisted that they do not meddle in religious affairs unless “red lines” are crossed—a which term they neglected to define—and blamed the EIASC alone for the al-Ahbash trainings, even though EIASC members were initially government appointees and remain entirely sympathetic to the government.
In our meeting with newly elected EIASC members, they reiterated the government’s talking points supporting separation of religion and state while labeling the demonstrators “terrorists,” even though some of its members had joined in protesting. Members kept deferring to the Council’s vice president, whom we learned is close to Ethiopia’s ruling party. We also learned that the Council’s president previously served in senior governmental postings. Finally, the EIASC members ominously said there would be no divisions within Ethiopia’s Muslim community and that dissenters would be “brought into the fold.”
What does this all mean?
While Ethiopia’s government fears violent religious extremism from Somalia and Sudan and the influence of Wahhabism, the way to counter religious extremism is not with religious repression but through religious freedom. It is not by manipulating outcomes in the marketplace of ideas, but supporting a marketplace that encompasses all ideas, including religious ideas. It is by trusting in the common sense of its people, believing that most will reject not just government repression but religious extremism and the totalitarian control it seeks over them and their families.
Indeed, across the world, study after study affirms that where there is religious freedom, there is stability, harmony and prosperity, and where religious liberty is lacking, so are these blessings.
Thus, the only way the radicals can win is if governments, in the name of fighting these extremists, repeatedly abuse their people’s freedom.
In Ethiopia, as elsewhere, freedom, not just for the sake of human rights but for peace and security as well, is the antidote to extremism.
M. Zuhdi Jasser serves as a Commissioner at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Omot Ojulu Odol, a 33-year old Ethiopian-American visiting his hometown in Gambella and five other local Anuaks were murdered in cold blood by Ethiopian security forces on March 2, 2013, according to the Vancouver, Canada-based Anuak Justice Council.
Omot Ojulu Odol, murdered by Ethiopian forces. Source: Goolgule.com
March 13, 2013
On March 2, 2013, seventeen Anuak men were ambushed by Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), as they were sitting under a tree near Gilo river in a rural area in the Gambella region of southwestern Ethiopia. Six men were killed. Among those killed was a 33-year old American citizen, Omot Ojulu Odol, [B.D. 2/2/1978] who came to the U.S. as a teenager more than fifteen years ago. Mr. Odol had been visiting his homeland.
The Ethiopian government claims Mr. Odol was killed for acts of terrorism in the region; however, eyewitnesses and others on-the-ground in Gambella share a different story, as learned by the Anuak Justice Council (AJC), a human rights organization that has been investigating the incident since it occurred. The AJC has many contacts on the ground, some of whom were eyewitnesses, family members of the deceased, friends and community members. As the Government of Ethiopia responds from afar to questions regarding what happened, those present during the incident provide a different scenario to the attack and its aftermath. The reality is, not only is the federal government in Addis Ababa disconnected from the region, they have repeatedly committed egregious human rights crimes in the region, fabricated propaganda and twisted information so as to advance their own deeply entrenched economic interests in the area.
Background: For those who do not know, the AJC was formed following the massacre of the Anuak by the same Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) in December 2003. At this time, 424 Anuak leaders were targeted and brutally slaughtered within three days. Most of their bodies were buried in mass graves and have never been recovered. This all has been documented by respected human rights organizations such as Genocide Watch in their two reports and by Human Rights Watch in their report entitled: “Targeting the Anuak: Human Rights Violations and Crimes against Humanity in Ethiopia’s Gambella Region [ http://www.hrw.org/news/2005/03/23/ethiopia-crimes-against-humanity-gambella-region]. Thousands more were killed over the next three years when the military presence was very heavy surrounding an attempt to drill for oil on indigenous Anuak land, which eventually failed. Since then, the region has never recovered. The Anuak, in particular, have never found safety and security and many have left for neighboring countries.
The tensions in the region have only been exacerbated by the large-scale land acquisitions by foreign and local investors that have displaced 70,000 local people from land the Anuak and others have depended upon for their livelihoods for centuries. [For more information on the displacements, please see the investigation by Human Rights Watch entitled: “Waiting Here for Death” Forced Displacement and “Villagization” in Ethiopia’s Gambella Region. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/01/16/waiting-here-death ] Between now and 2015, another 150,000 indigenous Gambellans are to be moved to resettlement villages in a villagization program that has left the displaced homeless, with inferior land, with poorer access to water, with fewer or non-existing services and in hunger. In this milieu, anyone who attempts to defend their constitutional rights to their indigenous land can be called a terrorist and subject to human rights crimes.
Incident: From eyewitnesses and testimony from other local people, the AJC has learned that the incident began when someone reported to the local security in Gambella that an Anuak farmer had purchased a gun from the highlands in Ethiopia and had brought it back to this lowland area. Prior to the Anuak massacre in 2003, the Anuak had been disarmed of their guns despite using them for hunting and protection from the wild animals in the region that would prey on their livestock. Notably, the disarmament was ethnic-based and did not include those from other local ethnic groups. In fact, as of today, the Anuak remain the only disarmed people in the Gambella region while others still maintain the right to possess guns.
After receiving the report of this gun purchase, authorities had gone to the farmer’s house on February 28, 2013. He was not at home; however, there were some other young men in the home, some of his relatives and others his neighbors. One of his relatives, Mark Omot, who is 26 years old and whose father was killed in the Gambella massacre of December 2003, was interrogated and tortured. He was beaten by the barrels of the guns and he sustained many serious injuries to his head, neck and chest before finally telling the authorities that during the dry season, the majority of men go to the riverbanks to fish and hunt. [If you want to eat during the dry season, it greatly helps to have a gun to hunt.]
A local Anuak security official, along with the ENDF, took this man and forced him to help them find the farmer. After a search lasting several days, on the morning of March 2, the farmer was located about 40 kilometers away on the bank of the Gilo River near the village of Abelean and Apoo. Mr. Odol and sixteen others, including a number of children as young as ten years of age, were found sitting under the shade of a tree. Without warning, the ENDF began shooting at them, killing six persons, including an eleven-year-old. The others escaped, including the farmer. No one shot back. After the six men died, the troops searched through the bodies and their belongings and found only one gun. During their search of the bodies, they found Omot Ojulu Odol’s American passport and Washington D.C. driver’s license on him. This is when the entire situation changed. Instead of focusing on the farmer, the others they had killed or those who had escaped, they focused only on Mr. Odol and justified killing an American citizen by calling him a terrorist. They separated his body from the others and videotaped his body, propping the gun up beside him along with his American passport and U.S. driver’s license.
The security forces left the other bodies behind, without burying them, but took Mr. Odol’s body with them to the town of Pinyudo, the capital of the district of Gok. When in Pinyudo, they placed his lifeless body in the back of their army truck, flagrantly displaying him as they drove through the town, boasting that they had killed the man who did not want investment or development in the region. They claimed that there would now be peace and development in the region because this man, who was “anti-development”, “anti-foreign investment” and “anti-villagization”, was now finally killed. The location where Mr. Odol was killed was near to the place where land had been leased to a Turkish land investor. They were among those who had been forcibly displaced from the area, ending up at the location 40 kilometers away where the farmer and they most of them were now living.
Following this, the ENDF forces brought Mr. Odol’s body to the regional capital of Gambella Town, publically announcing their intent to display his body the following day, Sunday, March 3; however, the next day the people were told that his body would instead be displayed at the stadium and that the people should come and see the remains of a man who was “anti-development” and “anti-foreign investment.”
They claimed that he had been responsible for the attack on employees at the Saudi Star agricultural farm in May 2012 and for the deadly bus ambush in April 2012, which had occurred when he was not in Ethiopia according to reports from the ground.
However, the anticipated showing of his body in the stadium never took place. Allegedly, the central government in Addis Ababa stopped their plans, warning local officials that there could be a backlash because Omot Ojulu Omod had been an American citizen. This information was also confirmed by Gatluak Tut, Gambella Regional Vice President, when he was interviewed by the government-run newspaper, “Reporter,” on Wednesday, March 6.
On Monday, March 4, some ENDF went back to the village in Gok Depach where the farmer had lived and killed another farmer, Okwier Ojulu, who lived in the same vicinity. They saw him walking from his home and they ordered him to stop but he did not listen to them; knowing what had happened to the others and that if he stopped, he would be interrogated and possibly tortured. The soldiers then shot him in the back and killed him. His whole family witnessed his death. The soldiers left him dead on the road. Soldiers then arrested another farmer, Omot Abella, and his two teenage sons as well as one other Anuak farmer. People suspected that the defense forces feared retaliation from the villagers because of the people killed on the riverbank along with Omot Ojulu Odol. Those arrested, as well as Mark Omot, remain in custody in Pinyudo in the military’s detention center.
Additionally, two others were also arrested. One was Mr. Oman Agwa, the chief of police of the Gambella region who had condemned the killing of Omot and the others, saying that these were innocent people and that there was no proof of them committing any crimes. Out of guilt or shame, the Anuak governor of the Gambella region, Omot Obang Olom, who was complicit in the massacre in 2003 of his own people, along with ENDF commanders, arrested this man in order to silence him. However, when Governor Olom was asked during an interview on Voice of America on March 5th about the arrest of the chief of police, he claimed that the man had been arrested because authorities had found a T-shirt in the man’s house that called for the secession of Gambella from Ethiopia. No one else had ever seen such a T-shirt, but obviously free speech does not exist in one of the most repressive countries in the world– Ethiopia. He remains in detention in Gambella.
The second man arrested is Paul Agwa, a security guard at the Mekane Yesus Church in Gambella. He was accused of being related to the farmer who had bought the gun and authorities believed he had been aware of the purchase of the gun and had not reported it. There are reports that he was tortured during his arrest. He remains in custody in Gambella. These are the facts from the people on the ground.
The Anuak, including family members, reported the incident to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa later confirmed the man’s death to the State Department.
In reports the AJC received from U.S. government sources, they indicate the following:
Ethiopian officials have informed the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa that a U.S. citizen was killed on March 2, 2013, as part of an Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) operation against a rebel group that operates in the Gambella region of Ethiopia.
The U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa has not been able to confirm the details of this reported incident, and is seeking additional information.
On March 7, Ethiopian television reported that security forces had killed Omot Ojulu Odol in Gambella because he was a terrorist. They never mentioned the other five persons who had been killed, including the eleven-year-old, perhaps because it would diminish their argument that they were fighting a “rebel group” operating in the region.
Conclusion: What began as a report of one gun being purchased by a farmer for hunting—a crime only for the Anuak—ended in the ambush and cold-blooded killing of six Anuak people who had committed no crime. Unknowingly, one of these victims they had killed had been an American citizen, which totally changed the rationale and focus of their actions, but yet it gives an accurate picture of the kind of insecurity the Anuak continue to face on a daily basis.
The AJC, as an organization that speaks for the well being of the Anuak, wherever they are found, finds it necessary to respond to the one-sided propaganda given in this case by the Ethiopian government. Most Anuak consider the TPLF/EPRDF regime, which has been in power for over 21 years, a terrorist regime that has a record of killing innocent people, not only in Gambella, but throughout the country. If they were genuine, they should have reported on the deaths and arrests of the others, but they did not. Sadly, this kind of biased and untruthful reporting by ETV and Tesfa- alem Tekle is not unusual, especially when the reporter, as in this case Tesfa- alem a hard-core TPLF supporter who based in Mekelle, northern Ethiopia.
From what we know, Omot Odol was not a terrorist. This was someone who was a responsible U.S. citizen who had had a job and reportedly, had never committed a crime in America, not even a driving violation; however, he had always spoken out against the human rights abuses committed by the current TPLF/EPRDF government. His own brother was killed by government-controlled military forces in 2008 and a few months later, his mother met the same fate. Maybe this was why he felt compelled to go back home to do what he could to speak out for justice. We are unaware of any crimes he has ever committed, and according to reliable sources, he was not even in Ethiopia at the time of either the Saudi Star attack or the ambush of the bus for which he is being accused.
On the other hand, since 2003, the Anuak, simply for being of that ethnicity, have been targeted for repeated egregious human rights violations in their own land. No one has yet to be held responsible for these crimes, including for the December 2003 massacre and aftermath. Over the last several years, as the land grabs are continuing to displace the Anuak, those who speak out against the injustice can be called terrorists and are at great risk. Those Anuak who return to their homeland for visits from other countries are regularly targeted as suspicious persons by the authorities. We have documented more than twenty-one cases over the last two years where Anuak coming from the US, Canada, Europe or Australia have been detained and interrogated. Some have even been victims of torture and abuse by the TPLF/EPRDF. In certain cases, Ethiopian military and other security forces have even crossed international boundaries to harass and intimidate Anuak in the Republic of South Sudan and in Kenya.
The killing of Omot Ojulu Odol is not unique to Gambella. What makes it different is the fact that Mr. Odol was an American citizen and that he was killed without any due process. The Government of Ethiopia now wants to avoid accountability to the U.S. Government by taking the easy way out, which is to label him as a terrorist and to accuse him of crimes that reportedly occurred when he was not even in the country. In a statement made by Gambella Regional governor, Omot Olom on ESAT [Ethiopian Satellite TV] on Friday, March 8, 2013, he said, “Anyone who broke the law in Ethiopia could be killed whether an Ethiopian or an American!”
Last month Governor Omot detained an Australian Anuak in Gambella, accusing him of aiding the rebels even though he lived in Australia. Allegedly security officials told him that they could kill him regardless of the fact he was an Australian citizen. In other words, educated Anuak from abroad are a real threat to them and they are obviously willing to break international laws in response to them.
We in the AJC are working to pressure the American government authorities to do their maximum in investigating this incident. To start, we have called on them to conduct an on-the-ground investigation in Gambella, beginning with exhuming the body in order to conduct forensic DNA tests to determine whether the remains are Omot Ojulu Odol’s, beyond a doubt. If it matches, we call on U.S. officials to claim his remains so that they might be given to his family for a proper burial.
As of now, the ENDF are the only ones who know where the body is buried. We also call on U.S. authorities to investigate who ordered the killing and who actually killed him so that they will be held accountable. Even if he was guilty of some crime, they should have arrested him and brought him to justice because of his American citizenship. This issue has already been taken up by some in the U.S. Congress and U.S. Senate.
The AJC and the Anuak as a whole, see Mr. Odol’s death and those of the other five Anuak killed alongside of him, as more names on the list of the thousands of Anuak who have already been killed by the TPLF/EPRDF since they came to power. The Anuak will not rest until justice has been served for all of them. It may not be done now, but surely there will be a day of accountability. Until then, the AJC will continue to gather the information and the names of those implicated in the crimes. When this government changes, the guilty will be found wherever they are and charged. This demand for accountability is not only for the Anuak, but for the rest of Ethiopians who have lost their lives throughout the country.
May God comfort and strengthen the families of those who have lost these loved ones. Ethiopia has become like a weeping mother, crying for her precious children who have come to a premature end. May their deaths not be in vain but be building blocks towards a more peaceful, life-affirming Ethiopia. May God strengthen the living to reach out to each other to bring an end to this regime and their crimes against our Ethiopian people.
May Ethiopia stretch out her hands to God who will not abandon us if we call him in humility and faith.
Please do not hesitate to e-mail your questions or comments to Mr. Ochala Abulla, Chairman of the Anuak Justice Council (AJC): E-mail:[email protected]
