Thousands of Ethiopians are being relocated or have already fled as their land is sold off to foreign investors without their consent
By John Vidal | The Guradian
Farm workers remove weeds from young plants at the palm oil plantation owned by Karuturi Global, near the town of Bako, in Ethiopia
February 6, 2013
Ethiopia‘s leasing of 600,000 hectares (1.5 acres) of prime farmland to Indian companies has led to intimidation, repression, detentions, rapes, beatings, environmental destruction, and the imprisonment of journalists and political objectors, according to a new report.
Research by the US-based Oakland Institute suggests many thousands of Ethiopians are in the process of being relocated or have fled to neighbouring countries after their traditional land has been handed to foreign investors without their consent. The situation is likely to deteriorate further as companies start to gear up their operations and the government persues plans to lease as much as 15% of the land in some regions, says Oakland.
In a flurry of new reports about global “landgrabbing” this week, Oxfam said on Thursday that investors were deliberately targeting the weakest-governed countries to buy cheap land. The 23 least-developed countries of the world account for more than half the thousands of recorded deals completed between 2000 and 2011, it said. Deals involving approximately 200m ha of land are believed to have been negotiated, mostly to the advantage of speculators and often to the detriment of communities, in the last few years.
In what is thought to be one of the first “south-south” demonstrations of concern over land deals, this week Ethiopian activists came to Delhi to urge Indian investors and corporations to stop buying land and to actively prevent human rights abuses being committed by the Ethiopian authorities.
“The Indian government and corporations cannot hide behind the Ethiopian government, which is clearly in violation of human rights laws,” said Anuradha Mittal, director of the Oakland Institute. “Foreign investors must conduct impact assessments to avoid the adverse impacts of their activities.”
Ethiopian activists based in UK and Canada warned Indian investors that their money was at risk. “Foreign investors cannot close their eyes. When people are pushed to the edge they will fight back. No group knows this better than the Indians”, said Obang Metho, head of grassroots social justice movement Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), which claims 130,000 supporters in Ethiopia and elsewhere.
Speaking in Delhi, Metho said: “Working with African dictators who are stealing from the people is risky, unsustainable and wrong. We welcome Indian investment but not [this] daylight robbery. These companies should be accountable under Indian law.”
Nyikaw Ochalla, director of the London-based Anywaa Survival Organisation, said: “People are being turned into day labourers doing backbreaking work while living in extreme poverty. The government’s plans … depend on tactics of displacement, increased food insecurity, destitution and destruction of the environment.”
Ochall, who said he was in daily direct contact with communities affected by “landgrabbing” across Ethiopia, said that the relocations would only add to hunger and conflict.
“Communities that have survived by fishing and moving to higher ground to grow maize are being relocated and say they are now becoming dependent on government for food aid. They are saying they will never leave and that the government will have to kill them. I call on the Indian authorities and the public to stop this pillage.”
Karuturi Global, the Indian farm conglomerate and one of the world’s largest rose growers, which has leased 350,000 ha in Gambella province to grow palm oil, cereals maize and biofuel crops for under $1.10 per hectare a year, declined to comment. A spokesman said: “This has nothing to do with us.”
Ethiopia has leased an area the size of France to foreign investors since 2008. Of this, 600,000 ha has been handed on 99-year leases to 10 large Indian companoes. Many smaller companies are believed to have also taken long leases. Indian companies are said to be investing about $5bn in Ethiopian farmland, but little is expected to benefit Ethiopia directly. According to Oakland, the companies have been handed generous tax breaks and incentives as well as some of the cheapest land in the world.
The Ethiopian government defended its policies. “Ethiopia needs to develop to fight poverty, increase food supplies and improve livelihoods and is doing so in a sustainable way,” said a spokeswoman for the government in london. She pointed out that 45% of Ethiopia’s 1.14m sq miles of land is arable and only 15% is in use.
The phenomenon of Indian companies “grabbing” land in Africa is an extension of what has happened in the last 30 years in India itself, said Ashish Kothari, author of a new book on the growing reach of Indian businesses.
“In recent years the country has seen a massive transfer of land and natural resources from the rural poor to the wealthy. Around 60m people have been displaced in India by large scale industrial developments. Around 40% of the people affected have been indigenous peoples“, he said.
These include dams, mines, tourist developments, ports, steel plants and massive irrigation schemes.
According to Oakland, the Ethiopian “land rush” is part of a global phenomenon that has seen around 200m ha of land leased or sold to foreign investors in the last three years.
The sales in Africa, Latin America and Asia have been led by farm conglomerates, but are backed by western hedge and pension funds, speculators and universities. Many Middle Eastern governments have backed them with loans and guarantees.
Barbara Stocking, the chief executive of Oxfam, which is holding a day of action against landgrabs on Thursday, called on the World Bank to temporarily freeze all land investments in large scale agriculture to ensure its policies did not encourage landgrabs.
“Poor governance allows investors to secure land quickly and cheaply for profit. Investors seem to be cherry-picking countries with weak rules and regulations because they are easy targets. This can spell disaster for communities if these deals result in their homes and livelihoods being grabbed.”
Oxfam will be placing huge “Sold” signs on the Sydney harbour bridge, the Lincoln memorial in Washington and the Colosseum in Rome to mark its action day.
Statement by Mr. Obang Metho, Executive Director of the SMNE
Understanding Land Investment in East Africa
Seminar Hall II, India International Centre, Max Muller Marg, New Delhi
A Day Light Robbery in Ethiopia: “Doing Business” With African dictators “
Organized by
Centre For Social Development (CSD) in association with Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), New Delhi; Kalpavriksh, Pune; Popular Education and Action Centre (PEACE), New Delhi and The Oakland Institute, Oakland, USA
February 5, 2013
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Africa has emerged as the premiere frontier market in the world for vast agricultural land acquisitions, often called “land grabs” due to widespread evidence that the land being acquired is not “free and clear” of inhabitants. Instead, repressive African governments, like in Ethiopia, are forcing some of the poorest people in the world from their homes and land without consultation or compensation, leaving most of them more destitute than before. Those who resist have faced arbitrary arrests, beatings, rape, torture, and death.
In Ethiopia, huge swathes of fertile, well-watered agricultural land are being leased for up to 99 years and for negligible amounts to foreign countries, foreign multinational companies and private investors. At the forefront of these mostly secretive deals are investors from India, China and Saudi Arabia.
Africa has a history of being abused, whether through the trafficking of human beings during slavery, during the centuries of colonialism or through the more modern-day exploitation of its diamonds, oil, gold or some other natural resource; however, the expropriation of land in a country where nearly 80% of the people depend on subsistence farming may threaten African life at its roots.
Mr. Obang Metho, the Executive Director of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), a grassroots social justice movement advocating for the rights and freedom of the Ethiopian people, will be speaking at the Understanding Land Investment in East Africa.
The SMNE partnered with the Oakland Institute in completing an in-depth study on “Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa.” Mr. Metho originates from Gambella, Ethiopia, said to be at the epicenter of land-grabs on the continent and the location of the largest Indian agricultural enterprise in the country—a potentially 300,000 hectare farm being leased to Karuturi—as well as the location of many other Indian business ventures.
Mr. Metho will voice concerns regarding the lack of transparency and accountability surrounding these land acquisitions in a country known for its authoritarian, one-party, ethnic-based government, which has been in power for 21 years. Elections have not met international standards with the current regime “winning” the election in 2010 with a purported 99.6% victory. Only 1 out of 547 members of the Ethiopian parliament is a member of the opposition. The government controls all the media. Journalists and dissidents are charged as terrorists under vague anti-terrorism laws.
Restrictive laws on civil society have essentially closed down all independent institutions, replacing them with government-controlled look-alike organizations. These are the facts about Ethiopia and so if any think that these land acquisitions have the input, let alone support of the people, they are mistaken. Even though it is required under the law, no one can anyone assume that this has been followed.
Even though India may be struggling with its own land issues, Ethiopia and India are very different countries. In India, there may be a debate between peasant groups, landowners, developers and the government; however, in Ethiopia, such a debate would be outlawed. In India, the media can discuss the issues and write about it in newspapers, but in Ethiopia, those involved may end up in jail if they oppose the government position. When normal avenues for public discussion or legal action are blocked, conflict, including violent conflict, will sometimes erupt, particularly where government security forces have abused the people.
When Ethiopia promotes land investments to prospective foreign partners, they emphasize the immense opportunity, while minimizing the rising risk of insecurity that will be inevitable as more and more people are evicted from their homes and land, as they become hungry, no longer being able to feed themselves or as water is diverted from local use to instead irrigate new farms.
In 2012, one farm was attacked by insurgents resulting in the deaths of a number of employees as some believe the only way to deter land leasing is to attack investors. What the government has not explained is how they are pitting the people against the investors rather than helping to create mutually-beneficial partnerships between investors and the local people. It can be done, but not in this way.
Currently, there are legal processes underway in the UK and the US to deal with the very repressive program of moving smallholder farmers and pastoralists into concentrated villages, devoid of services, fertile land and water, in order to free up the land for foreign investors. Human rights organizations have exposed the widespread human rights abuses associated with this resettlement process. It may be that those who support and collude with such programs will be found complicit.
Foreign investors cannot close their eyes to these risks. Nor can anyone count on the current government for protection as this regime has always looked after its own self-interests first, which may be self-preservation as it suffers internal power struggles that could unpredictably change its direction or cause it to implode, a greater risk now that the mastermind dictator, the former prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has died after ruling the country for twenty-one years.
Foreign investors should instead align with the interests of the people against what has become not just a “land grab” but a “life grab” because the land which has sustained them is no longer there. Their voices have been silenced by their own government. If this is wrong in India it should be wrong in Ethiopia.
When people are pushed to the edge, the people will fight back. No group knows this better than the Indian. When it happened in India, Ghandi led the people as they fought for justice. The same thing will happen in Ethiopia or in other parts of Africa.
Working with African dictators who are stealing from the people for their own benefit is not only risky, unsustainable and wrong, it is unconscionable. When decisions are made without morality, honesty and integrity, the consequences to human life are devastating and long-lasting. An example of this is the Berlin Conference in the late 1800’s when Africa was divvied up among colonialist powers without an African being included at the table.That decision is still affecting Africa, enflaming conflict on the continent that has enveloped others throughout the world.
The same thing could happen with land grabs that now threaten food security and water resources on the continent. This time, the decision may not be made at the table in Berlin, but it could be in Addis Ababa or in New Delhi. The one thing of which you can be sure is that there are no indigenous people at this table. Instead some Ethiopian officials are making these decisions with Indian investors without considering the impact on the people or the country in the long term. Ethiopia and Africa need investment and welcome Indian investment but what we stand against is the daylight robbery of the people. If it is not allowed in New Delhi or other parts of India, it should never be allowed in Gambella, the Omo Valley or anywhere else in Ethiopia.
Let us follow our consciences, respecting the value of the human life of others rather than exploitive investment that breaks all the values Ghandi revered to the point of losing his life. Those who have experienced colonialism should not trade places with the colonialists either at home or in a foreign land.
Only when we see the God-given value in our global brothers and sisters, putting our shared humanity before our ethnicity, nationality, or other identity distinctions will we truly be free. Only then will we be building a more peaceful, respectful and harmonious global society. Let our conscience give us the guidance we need at such a time as this.
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For media enquiries, including interview requests, contact Mr. Obang Metho, Executive Director of the SMNE. Phone 202 725-1616 or Email: [email protected]
The SMNE is a non-violent, non-political, grassroots social justice movement of diverse Ethiopians; committed to bringing truth, justice, freedom, equality, reconciliation, accountability and respect for human and civil rights to the people of Ethiopia and beyond. The SMNE has branches in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom and chapters in various cities and countries throughout the world, including within Ethiopia.
An exhibit at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York
Ethiopian were warriors and traders, trading directly with ports in the Indian Ocean, as far away as Malacca in Malaysia
Over the centuries, East Africans have greatly distinguished themselves in India as generals, commanders, admirals, architects, prime ministers, and rulers. They have written a story unparalleled in the rest of the world: that of enslaved Africans attaining the pinnacle of military and political authority.
Known as Habshis (Abyssinians) and Sidis, they have left an impressive historical and architectural legacy that attest to their determination, skills, and intellectual, cultural, military and political savvy.
Open to the pubic, Monday through Saturday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM; through July 6, 2013
Curated by Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf and Dr. Kenneth X. Robbins.
Those of you who can’t make it to New York, please go to url below to see online exhibit.
Muslim demonstrators gather outside Addis Ababa’s Anwar Mosque
Ethiopian security forces have detained for two weeks without charge the editor of a newsmagazine and accused him of incitement to terrorism, according to local journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities to release Solomon Kebede immediately and halt their harassment of journalists affiliated with the weekly Ye Muslimoch Guday.
Police in Addis Ababa, the capital, on January 17 arrested Kebede, managing editor of the now-defunct paper Ye Muslimoch Guday(“Muslim Affairs”), and took him to the Maekelawi federal detention center. Solomon’s health is in poor condition and he has been held without access to a lawyer, the journalists said. A court date has been set for February 13.
Local journalists told CPJ they believed the arrest was linked to Solomon’s columns that had criticized perceived government intrusion in religious affairs. Solomon had covered demonstrations staged last year by Muslims protesting alleged interference in Islamic Council elections. The protests were a highly sensitive issue for the government, which feared a hardline Islamist influence within the predominantly Christian country, news reports said.
In an effort to suppress coverage of the protests, authorities began to crack down on Muslim-oriented publications. At least three papers, including Ye Muslimoch Guday, were forced to stop publishing, and police detained at least two reporters of the U.S. government-funded Voice of America. Authorities also arrested Yusuf Getachew, editor-in-chief of Ye Muslimoch Guday,in July, news reports said. Yusuf is awaiting trial in Kality Prison on vague anti-state and terrorism charges. In June, police raided the Addis Ababa offices of the private Horizon printing press and ordered the publisher to stop printing Ye Muslimoch Guday. The paper has not published since July 2012.
Local journalists also told CPJ that they suspected police may have arrested Solomon so they could question him on the whereabouts of two of his colleagues from Ye Muslimoch Guday. Senior Editor Akemel Negash and Copy Editor Isaac Eshetu fled into hiding in August after police kept their homes under surveillance for weeks, local journalists said.
“We are troubled by the arrest of Solomon Kebede and the government’s ongoing crackdown against the staff of Ye Muslimoch Guday,” said CPJ East Africa Consultant, Tom Rhodes. “We are also concerned about Solomon’s well-being in the Maekelawi federal detention center, where numerous detainees have reported being tortured. Authorities should release Solomon immediately.”
A ‘villagisation’ programme has left many people from Ethiopia’s Gambella region bereft of land and loved ones, casting donor support in an unflattering light
A family in Kir, Gambella. Ethiopia’s controversial resettlement programme has forced people to leave their villages.
The accounts are broadly similar, but the details reveal the individual tragedies that have shattered their lives: they say they were forced to leave their villages, beaten by soldiers, and sent to remote areas lacking all basic services under a controversial “villagisation” programme.
Eventually, they fled to Kenya, joining nearly half a million displaced people living in the world’s biggest refugee complex, a sprawling expanse of tents and rudimentary houses set in the sun-hammered scrub and sand outside Dadaab.
“We don’t have any means of retrieving our land. We decided to find an organisation that could be our lawyer and stand up for us so that those who are funding these organisations to displace us will be stopped,” Mr O said. He spoke through a translator in the language of the Anuak, an indigenous people who live in Ethiopia’s western Gambella region.
“Britain is a very big power in the world. Britain is Ethiopia’s top donor,” says Mr O, whose identity is being protected for his safety. The 32-year-old wears a stained white shirt, white trousers and a blue-beaded bracelet on his left hand.
Ethiopia is one of the biggest recipients of UK aid and Britain, alongside other international donors, contributes significant funding for the Protection of Basic Services (PBS) programme. Lawyers for Mr O say that, by contributing to this programme, DfID contributes to villagisation, be it by financing infrastructure in new settlements or paying the salaries of officials overseeing the relocations.
DfID says it does not fund any commune projects in Ethiopia. A spokesman said the agency was aware of allegations of abuses and would raise any concerns at the highest levels of the Ethiopian government. Leigh Day is waiting for a response to its letter to the UK government in December.
The three-year villagisation programme aims to move 1.5 million rural families to new “model” villages in four regions, including approximately 45,000 households in Gambella. Official plans say the movements are voluntary, and infrastructure and alternative livelihoods will be provided in the new villages.
In January 2012, a Human Rights Watch report said the Ethiopian government was forcibly relocating thousands of people in Gambella, with villagers being told the resettlement was linked to the leasing of large tracts of land for commercial agriculture.
For the four Anuak in Dadaab, relocation has been a catastrophe: Mr O has not seen his wife and six children since he left, Peter’s wife was raped by soldiers, widow Chan and her eldest son were beaten, and Ongew was detained 11 times on charges of inciting villagers. The four did not want to give their full names for fear of retribution.
There is a desperate sense of powerlessness among the refugees, who link the recent abuses to years of alleged targeting of their ethnic group, including a 2003 massacre of Anuak in the town of Gambella. “I feel so very bad because I have been separated from my family, which shows we do not have the power to protect ourselves … Unless you decide to leave that area there will not be hope for you,” Mr O says.
Powerlessness
Peter, a 40-year-old who lost his sight 20 years ago, bows his head as he tells how he was beaten when he asked the soldiers to take his disability into account before moving him in October 2011. Then, his wife was taken away and raped.
“I’m powerless. There was nothing I could do to stop that. Also, my cousin was taken by the soldiers and is still missing today,” Peter says. He left through South Sudan and arrived in Kenya with his wife and five children in March last year.
When soldiers came almost two years ago to move Chan, a 37-year-old farmer and mother of four, they beat her on the arm and face with a stick. The skin on the right side of her face, just below her ear, is uneven and marked. The soldiers also beat her then 18-year-old son on the head with a gun. Nobody could fight back.
“Because we don’t have power,” she says, her hands upturned helplessly on her lap. “Whenever these soldiers come to a village, there are very many. How will you fight? If you try to beat even one soldier, they will attack the whole village.”
Chan, whose husband was killed during the 2003 massacre, moved to the new village. “There was no water, no school, no clinic, not even good farm land because it is dry land,” she says. People were still being abused, so she decided to leave with her children. She arrived in Kenya last February. Despite the creeping insecurity in the Dadaab refugee camps, she says life is better “because nobody is coming to beat you in your home”.
Mr O, then a farmer and student at agricultural college, was forced from his village in November 2011. At first he would not leave, so soldiers from the Ethiopian National Defence Force beat him with guns. He lifts the faded black baseball hat he is wearing, marked with the words “Stop violence against women”, and shows a thin, long scar on his head. Strong men were forced to lie down and then beaten while women were also beaten, and those who resisted were taken and raped in a military camp, he says.
He was forced to a “new place” which did not have water, food or productive land. He was told to build a house for his family, but when work didn’t progress as quickly as expected, he was taken to a military camp and beaten again. After one month he left, sneaking past village leaders and “local militias” who controlled the area, refusing to let people leave. He arrived in Kenya in mid-December 2011.
Ongew, a 35-year-old wearing a red baseball cap and blue jeans, believes the international community can stop the alleged abuses. “There are powerful countries that control the world. So we are requesting those international communities … to stand firm and force Ethiopia to leave our land and stop this villagisation,” he says.
Ongew used to distribute food to the new villages for the government but when villagers began to complain about the absence of services, he was blamed for inciting them. The father of four was beaten many times. He gets news of his family sometimes from a relative in Britain. He has heard that police have repeatedly questioned his wife about his whereabouts.
Mr O’s wife and children are now in a new village. He has not seen them since he left but news of them reaches him through new arrivals.
The four Anuak say the relocations are continuing, with new refugees still arriving in Kenya.
Mr O says he is not taking legal action in order to get money. “Money will not bring any change for me and my family … What we want from the court is our land back. We will go there, produce what we like, and we will support our lives as before.”
By Jeffrey Gettleman | New York Times
January 22, 2013
GARSEN, Kenya — Eritrea, a sliver of a nation in the Horn of Africa that is one of the most secretive and repressive countries in the world, was cast into confusion on Monday after mutinous soldiers stormed the Ministry of Information and took over the state-run television service, apparently in a coup attempt.
President Isaias Afewerki
According to several people with close contacts inside Eritrea, the coup attempt failed, with government troops quelling the would-be rebellion and no one rising up in the streets. But many analysts said it was only a matter of time before President Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s brash and steely leader for the past 20 years, is confronted again — and most likely from within.
“There’s a lot of dissatisfaction within the armed forces,” said Dan Connell, a professor at Simmons College in Boston and the author of several books on Eritrea. “If this is suppressed, it won’t be the end.”
Eritrea is often called the North Korea of Africa because it is so isolated and authoritarian, with few friends and thousands of defectors in recent years as Mr. Isaias tightens his grip and the economy teeters on the brink of ruin.
In the early 1990s, when Mr. Isaias first took power, Eritrea was hailed as a beacon of hope in Africa, a country of low crime, ethnic harmony and can-do spirit along the Red Sea. The Eritreans fought for years in trenches and from craggy mountaintops to defeat a Soviet-backed Ethiopian government and win their independence.
But the euphoria did not last. In the late 1990s, Eritrea and Ethiopia waged a costly war over their shared border, in which tens of thousands of people died. Shortly afterward, Mr. Isaias rounded up political dissidents and journalists, dooming them to years in prison, often in sweltering, underground shipping containers.
Thousands of young Eritreans have been drafted into the army and then required to work indefinitely for the government for pittance wages in what is called “national service.” Each year, many young people risk their lives to escape. Eritrea has waged war with just about all of its neighbors, and the United Nations has imposed sanctions on Eritrea over what is suspected to be its support of Somali militants.
By nightfall on Monday, it seemed that the government had beaten back the mutineers, with some analysts saying that the government broadcaster, Eri-TV, was back on the air.
The rebel soldiers, believed to number around 100, made it as far as the director’s office in the Ministry of Information, forcing him to read a statement on air calling for the release of political prisoners. Then the broadcast abruptly cut out. They also may have briefly taken hostage Mr. Isaias’s daughter, Elsa, who is said to work in the ministry.
It was not clear what happened to the renegade soldiers; analysts said that troops loyal to the government had surrounded the Ministry of Information and that the mutineers would most likely be captured and imprisoned.
The State Department said that the situation remained fluid, and the small embassy in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, sent out a warning on Monday to the few American citizens living there. “The U.S. Embassy has been made aware of increased military presence in some sections of Asmara,” the warning said. “Employees of the U.S. government have been advised to limit their movements within the city, avoid large gatherings and exercise caution. We strongly recommend that private U.S. citizens do likewise.”
