Kinijit executive committee statement
The executive committee of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit) issued the following statement. Click here to read. [Amharic, PDF]
Ethiopia
Hailu Shawel’s henchmen blocked Kinijit leaders from entering office
The shame and disgrace Ato Hailu Shawel has brought on the opposition camp and to himself reached a newer low yesterday when his henchmen, Ato Abayneh Berhanu and Shaleqa Getachew Mengistie, ordered security guards to block Kinijit Vice President Bertukan Mideksa and all of her colleagues from entering the party’s main office in Addis Ababa… Read more in Amharic here.
Mortars rain down on Mogadishu, Governor escapes blast
(Garowe Online) – Somali rebels waging war on the country’s interim government and its foreign backers have managed to intensify their violent campaign, despite a heavy-handed crackdown last month by allied Somali and Ethiopian Woyanne armed forces.
Heavy fighting erupted in parts of the capital Mogadishu Wednesday evening after armed groups launched a guerrilla attack on an Ethiopian Woyanne army base at the former ministry of defense, witnesses said.
Insurgents used machineguns and rockets in the 30-minute battle. Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers fought back and eventually chased the attackers into surrounding neighborhoods.
Casualty reports could not be confirmed, but the evening attack happened hours after more than 20 mortars rammed into different parts of Mogadishu, including Shirkole and Yaaqshiid neighborhoods.
Ethiopian Woyanne troops based at the Shirkale military compound vacated the premises today, leaving the compound under the control of 1,500 Somali soldiers who recently completed military training in Ethiopia.
Unconfirmed reports said a police station in north Mogadishu’s Kaaraan area was attacked, although police sources at the station contacted by Garowe Online said they cannot talk “due to current circumstances.”
Earlier Wednesday, two suspects detained in connection with the November assassination of a district commissioner escaped a jail in Mogadishu.
Inside sources said the suspects’ escape came after insurgent groups fighting the government gave an undisclosed amount of cash to jail officials, who accepted and secretly released the prisoners.
In Somalia’s central Hiran region, Governor Yusuf Daboged narrowly escaped a roadside bomb in the provincial capital Beletwein midday Wednesday, officials said.
Governor Daboged refused to speak to the media afterwards, but police officials said the bomb was intended to target the governor’s convoy as it drove through town.
The governor was inspecting city offices and local jails when the explosion occurred, regional officials said.
The Somali government and its Ethiopian Woyanne backers have struggled to maintain order in Mogadishu and other parts of the country, due to armed opposition from clan factions and Islamist guerrillas.
China calls for oil worker safety in Sudan, Ethiopia
By Eric Watkins
PennEnergy Senior Correspondent
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 13 — The Chinese government has called for the safety of its oil workers in two African countries, citing the dangers to operations posed by antigovernment rebels in Sudan and Ethiopia.
On Dec. 12, China called for the safety of its citizens in Sudan to be guaranteed just a day after rebels there attacked for the second time an oil field being run by a Chinese company.
“Any threats or attacks on Chinese organizations or people in Sudan are unacceptable,” said the Chinese foreign ministry in a statement. “The safety of Chinese personnel in Sudan must be effectively guaranteed,” it said.
The Sudanese government acknowledged that about 20 rebels attacked an army camp near an oil facility, but it said that the attack had been repelled.
On Dec. 11, rebels in Darfur said they had seized control of the 35,000 b/d Rahaw oil field operated by China’s Great Wall Co., killing and wounding several government protection forces there.
Abdel Aziz Nur al-Ashr, commander of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said his group had neutralized the site’s military protection force, taken possession of the facilities, and halted production.
Al-Ashr said JEM’s attack represented a second attempt at forcing Chinese companies to leave the country. He said the attacks would continue until China ended its operations altogether.
JEM’s earlier attack was on a field in Kordofan run by Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co. (GNOPC), a consortium comprised of China National Petroleum Corp., India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp., Malaysia’s Petronas, and Sudan’s Sudapet.
In October, the Sudanese government dismissed threats to attack oil fields made by JEM rebels who claimed to have carried out the assault (OGJ Online, Oct. 29, 2007).
Ethiopia trouble
Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, China’s Zhoungyan Petroleum Exploration Bureau (ZPEB), has refused to resume work on oil exploration projects in the Ogaden basin in the southwestern region of that country.
Contracted by Petronas and South-West Energy, a company licensed in Hong Kong, ZPEB had been conducting seismic surveys in the Ogaden region of the Somali regional state.
ZPEB, however, suspended operations in April after an attack by the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) on the Abole exploration site in the Degeh Bur zone. Seventy-four people, including nine Chinese workers, were killed in the attack.
The Ethiopian Ministry of Mines and Energy has demanded that Petronas and South-West Energy resume work on the exploration projects, but the ministry also has acknowledged that ZPEB’s parent company, Sino Tech, will not allow operations to continue until the security of its workers can be assured.
In April, China said it was taking steps to improve the safety of its overseas workers following an Apr. 24 attack on the oil exploration site in Ethiopia in which the nine Chinese workers were killed and seven taken hostage (OGJ Online, Apr. 26, 2007).
Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].
Somali Islamists Said to Be Regrouping
By SALAD DUHUL – 21 hours ago
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Somalia’s government is not in control of most of this war-ravaged country, and a radical Islamic group that was driven out last year is regrouping, a Somali official said Thursday.
“About 80 percent of Somalia is not safe and is not under control of the government,” Sheik Qasim Ibrahim Nur, director of security at the National Security Ministry, told The Associated Press. “Islamists are planning to launch a massive attack against (the government) and its allied troops.”
“Islamists are now regrouping vast areas in southern and central Somalia,” he added.
Somalia’s government, with the crucial military assistance of Ethiopia, managed to drive out a radical group called the Council of Islamic Courts last year, ending the group’s six months in power. But the Islamists have launched an Iraq-style insurgency, throwing this already beleaguered nation into bloody chaos.
The United Nations says Somalia is facing Africa’s biggest humanitarian crisis.
Letter to US Secretary of Defense on Woyanne in Somalia – HRW
Letter to US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates on Somalia
The Department of Defense should send a clear message to Ethiopia and other parties to the region’s conflicts
December 12, 2007
Robert M. Gates
Secretary of Defense
US Department of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
Via Facsimile
Dear Secretary Gates,
During your recent visit to Djibouti, a senior Pentagon official accompanying you was quoted by the Washington Post on December 4 as saying “I am unaware of specific allegations regarding the conduct of the Ethiopian Woyanne troops” in Somalia. We were surprised by this comment, given the extensive public reporting on the Ethiopian Woyanne military’s abusive conduct. Nevertheless, we write to bring to your attention specific information about serious human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war by Ethiopian Woyanne troops operating in Somalia. Given the close relationship between the United States and the Ethiopian Woyanne government, we believe that the United States can do more to curb the abusive behavior of the Ethiopian Woyanne military and to assist Somalia’s beleaguered population.
Human Rights Watch has been closely monitoring and regularly reporting on our concerns over widespread human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law in Somalia. The conflict in Mogadishu has steadily intensified since January 2007, after Ethiopian Woyanne forces supporting the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) ousted the Islamic Courts Union from the city. To date, hundreds of civilians have been killed and up to 600,000 people are estimated to have fled the city, particularly following surges in violence in March, April and November.
Neither the insurgent forces nor the Ethiopian Woyanne troops have made any apparent effort to distinguish between civilians and military targets. Indeed, civilians in Mogadishu have repeatedly been the victims of indiscriminate and deliberate attacks by all of the warring parties, some of which amount to war crimes. In Shell-Shocked, Human Rights Watch’s August 2007 report of our investigation of the March-April hostilities, we documented many of the most serious patterns of abuse by Ethiopian Woyanne troops, such as indiscriminate attacks on civilians, summary executions and repeated targeting of hospitals.
In that report we also called for the Ethiopian Woyanne government to investigate specific incidents, such as the June 19 summary execution of five men and a boy by Ethiopian troops in the Damanyo neighborhood in Mogadishu. To date, we are unaware of any investigations into this or subsequent incidents.
Since November, renewed clashes in Mogadishu have been marked by increasing brutality toward civilians, including further summary executions and enforced disappearances of individuals by Ethiopian and TFG forces conducting counterinsurgency operations.
Alarmingly, there are multiple credible reports that such abuses by Ethiopian Woyanne and TFG forces have increased in the aftermath of the fighting on November 8, when Ethiopian Woyanne troops and insurgents clashed near the Livestock Market and crowds dragged an Ethiopian Woyanne soldier’s body through the streets.
Human Rights Watch has gathered eyewitness accounts of Ethiopian Woyanne troops summarily executing civilians, including a two-year-old child, in the weeks since the November fighting. Some of the incidents occurred during house-to-house searches by Ethiopian Woyanne and TFG forces. Four civilians, including a twelve-year-old boy, were shot dead by Ethiopian Woyanne sniper fire in the Bar Ubah and Huriwa neighborhoods in mid-November. The bodies of a dozen civilians were found near the Livestock Market on November 9 after they had been detained by Ethiopian troops.
Ethiopian Woyanne troops also continue to fire heavy weaponry indiscriminately, often wounding or killing civilians. For example, on the evening of November 8, an artillery shell reportedly fired by an Ethiopian Woyanne tank hit Mogadishu’s largest market, Bakara, killing six people. The next morning, residents of the Livestock Market found the bodies of a dozen civilians. According to medical staff at Mogadishu’s hospitals, dozens of people were admitted with shrapnel and other injuries, most of them civilians and half of them women and children.
Tens of thousands of civilians continue to flee Mogadishu, especially the Huriwa, Hamar Jadid, and Gubta neighborhoods, which have been pounded with heavy weaponry, mostly by Ethiopian Woyanne troops.
The armed conflict in Mogadishu is fuelling regional instability and contributing to fighting in Ethiopia’s own eastern Somali Regional State, where a longstanding rebel movement, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, seized the opportunity of the military being stretched next door to increase attacks, including on a Chinese oil site. Ethiopian Woyanne troops responded with a brutal counterinsurgency campaign that has targeted the civilian population.
Ethiopia Woyanne faces difficult challenges at home, in Somalia and in the region. But human rights abuses and war crimes are the wrong way to deal with them. The US Army’s new Counterinsurgency Manual recognizes the importance of abiding by the rule of law in providing security for the populace and conducting counterinsurgency operations. Ethiopia Woyanne is doing precisely the opposite. Its conduct is creating a mounting toll of civilian victims and risks sending more young people into the arms of the insurgents.
We ask that the US government, and the Department of Defense in particular, send a very clear message to Addis Ababa to put an end to abuses by its forces and ensure accountability when abuses occur. The US should press the government to provide access to the United Nations, human rights groups and journalists to investigate abuses by all sides both in Somalia and in Ethiopia’s Somali region. It should demand that Ethiopia and the TFG end deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid to displaced people and other populations at risk. Consistent with the Leahy Law, the US should deny assistance to any unit of the Ethiopian Woyanne armed forces that has engaged in human rights abuses. In sum, the US government, and all its agencies and representatives, must send the message – privately, publicly and consistently – that Ethiopia Woyanne and other parties to the region’s conflicts, will never achieve sustainable peace and security by flouting international human rights and humanitarian law.
We thank you for your attention to this important matter, and look forward to learning of the steps the Defense Department is taking to address these concerns.
Yours sincerely,
Tom Malinowski
Washington Advocacy Director
CC: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice