(By David Gollust, VOA) — The United States said Thursday it has “persistently” expressed concern about human rights in Ethiopia with top officials in Addis Ababa, including alleged abuses in the Ogaden region. The comments follow an assertion by the monitoring group Human Rights Watch that the United States and key European countries have been silent on Ogaden rights violations. VOA’s David Gollust reports from the State Department.
The State Department says it is giving the Human Rights Watch report on the Ogaden careful study but it is rejecting out-of-hand the report’s assertion of U.S. silence on Ethiopian human rights.
The New York based monitoring group said in a report issued Thursday in Nairobi that in its battle with rebels in the eastern Ogaden region, the Ethiopian army has subjected civilians to executions torture and rape, and that the violence has added to a humanitarian crisis in the region.
The report, which also accuses the rebels of the ONLF, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, of serious violations, charges key aid donors to Ethiopia – the United States, Britain and the European Union – with remaining silent on Ogaden abuses.
It says the United States, viewing Ethiopia as a key anti-terrorism partner, has failed to use its leverage with Addis Ababa including military aid, to press for an end to the crimes.
At a news briefing, acting State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said the United States takes all allegations of human rights violations seriously and “strongly rejects” the Human Rights Watch contention that it has minimized or ignored Ethiopian abuses.
In the Ogaden, he said non-governmental groups have reported that both the government and ONLF have been responsible for abuses and “harsh techniques” to intimidate the civilian population.
The spokesman said that since the resurgence of Ogaden violence a year ago, the United States – both independently and in concert with others – has pushed for an end to rights abuses:
“Since May 2007, the U.S. government has collaborated closely with international organizations, NGOs and other donors, to develop a concerted approach to the Ethiopian government, urging it to mitigate the humanitarian and human rights impact of its counter-insurgency operations in the Ogaden region. Our ambassador in Ethiopia has persistently raised concerns over human rights abuses at the highest level of the Ethiopian government, as have senior U.S. government visitors to Addis Ababa,” he said.
At the roll-out of the report in the Kenyan capital, Human Rights Watch investigator Peter Bouchard said U.S. military and aid personnel have been active in the Ogaden region and should have first-hand human rights information, not just accounts gleaned from humanitarian groups:
“There certainly is a presence. As far as we know U.S. forces were not directly involved or implicated in the abuses documented in our report. But on the other hand, we also know that the U.S. government has sent assessment teams, including from the USAID, to the region, that they have the information available to them about the seriousness of some of the abuses committed in the Ogaden,” he said.
Ogaden fighting has been under way for two decades but intensified last year, when the government launched an offensive to pursue rebels who attacked a Chinese-run oil field there and killed more than 70 people.
A Human Rights Watch official said in Nairobi the renewed conflict has been largely hidden by a “a conspiracy of silence” by Ethiopia’s main international backers.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Please note that ONLF doesn’t refer the Woyanne army as “Ethiopian Army” as some of the international media, and even some fools in the Ethiopian opposition camp shamelessly do. We thank ONLF for not associating the horrible crimes of the Woyanne army with the name Ethiopia.
(ONLF Military Communiqué) — The Ogaden National Liberation Army today has launched major operations in the Ogaden after rebuffing the late May offensive by the “Ethiopian” [Woyanne] Army.
The Units from the Gorgor Command (Eagle Command) have launched two pronged offensive in Dhagah-Madow district west of Dhagahbur and the Dudumo-Ad Garrison near Baabili district. In Dhagah-Madow districts there were three Woyanne battalions and their support units and in Dudumo- Ad Garrison there were two battalions and their support Units. Both Garrisons were captured and enemy troops destroyed.
Hundreds of soldiers were captured and causalities were very high. Reinforcement forces from Harar, Fiq and Dhagah bur were also repelled, degraded and dispersed and ONLA is in hot pursuit of the remnants. In total more than 1800 Woyane troops were either killed, captured or had dispersed in the Ogaden wilderness. Heavy weaponry, ammunition and military vehicles were also captured. These two garrisons are strategic locations for the control of the area south and North West of the Jarar Valley.
The Battle is escalating and may spread into other cities in the Ogaden. Further details will be provided when the full report reaches ONLF information Bureau.
LONDON — The partner of a failed suicide bomber was jailed for 15 years Thursday for not telling police about his plans to carry out an attack on the London subway system.
Judge Paul Worsley told Yeshimebet (Yeshi) Girma, 32, that it was clear she knew of plans by her partner, Hussain Osman, to set off explosions on the transit system on July 21, 2005. The bombs failed to explode fully and no one was injured.
“You could have done much more to prevent the terrorist threat to the public had you revealed what you knew,” Worsley said.
A jury in London found Girma guilty Wednesday of failing to provide information of the attempted attack, which came two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 subway and bus passengers in London. She was also found guilty of assisting an offender and failing to disclose information about his involvement
Girma, who has three children with Osman, said she knew little of what he was doing and claimed they they did not live together. The Crown Prosecution Service said she was his wife.
Girma’s brother, Esayas Girma, 22, and sister, Mulu Girma, 24, were jailed for ten years each for assisting an offender and failing to disclose information.
Worsley said the sentences reflected public condemnation of their actions, and were intended to deter others.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Satellite images confirm reports that the Ethiopian Woyanne military has burned towns and villages in the remote Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia, the American Association for the Advancement of Science reported on Thursday.
Eight sites in the rocky, arid region, which borders Somalia, have clear signs of burning and other destruction, the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program said.
The commercially available images corroborate a report by Human Rights Watch, also issued on Thursday, that uses eyewitness accounts of attacks on tens of thousands of ethnic-Somali Muslims living in the area, the AAAS said.
“The Ethiopian Woyanne authorities frequently dismiss human rights reports, saying that the witnesses we interviewed are liars and rebel supporters,” Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
“But it will be much more difficult for them to dismiss the evidence presented in the satellite images, as images like that don’t lie,” he said.
Ethiopia Woyanne, a key regional ally of the United States, launched its latest offensive after the Ogaden National Liberation Front attacked a Chinese-run oil field in the region in April 2007, killing more than 70 people.
Ethiopian Woyanne government officials in Addis Ababa routinely reject allegations against their counter-insurgency operations and accuse the rebels of abusing locals.
Lars Bromley, project director for the Science and Human Rights Program at AAAS, said his team analyzed several before and after satellite images of villages identified by Human Right Watch as possible locations of human rights violations.
They found eight, mostly in villages and small towns in the Wardheer, Dhagabur and Qorrahey Zones, that appeared to have been burned or destroyed recently.
For example, in the town of Labigah, 40 structures identified in a September 2005 image were gone in images taken in February 2008. In the Human Rights Watch report an eyewitness said the Ethiopian army “went into every village and set it on fire.”
Such reports are nearly impossible to corroborate because the region “may well be the most isolated place on earth, save perhaps the densest parts of the Congolese or Amazon rain forests,” Bromley said.
It is also difficult to tell what is going on in some villages, AAAS said.
“While some towns are considered permanent, they can grow and shrink over the course of a year due to fluctuations in nomadic populations, and many smaller villages will relocate altogether,” the report reads.
“To ensure the most accurate results, AAAS for the most part sought to review only permanent towns in the Ogaden, as indicated by their location along a well-defined road and by the presence of square structures with metal-sheet or brick roofing, and most often including a mosque.”
AAAS has used satellite images to support reports of widespread abuses in Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Burma, Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan.
Reporting by Maggie Fox; editing by David Wiessler
(Xinhua) — Somali insurgents attacked the Mogadishu airport and the motorcade of Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf, for the third time in a month, as the president was to fly for Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, presidential spokesman confirmed to Xinhua on Thursday.
“They (insurgent fighter) fired a number of mortars as the president was at the airport to leave for Addis Ababa to attend the Annual AU conference there,” Mohamed Mohamoud Hubsired, presidential spokesman, told Xinhua.
“The president and his delegation were unharmed by the mortar shells and he flew safely,” Hubsired added.
Witnesses also told Xinhua that the presidential motorcade was attacked before on its way to the Mogadishu airport but there are no reports of any casualty.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Somali president but insurgent fighters twice attacked the President’s motorcade late last week as he was to fly to attend the now concluded UN sponsored peace talks between Somali government and one faction of the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia and when he returned home.
Usually insurgent fighters carry out attacks on the Mogadishu airport as Somali government or foreign officials depart or arrive in the restive coastal Somali capital Mogadishu.
The Somali transitional government and the opposition leaders signed a comprehensive cease-fire agreement Monday after weeks of indirect talks sponsored by the United Nations.
Hard-line members of the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS) and the Al-shabaab group rejected the results of the talks saying those who attended the meeting did not represent ARS and vowed to continue fighting the Somali and Ethiopian Woyanne troops.
The Asmara based faction threatened to sack the ARS chairman Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed for signing the peace deal with the government.
Britian is “complicit” in war crimes in Ethiopia because it is “turning a blind eye” to sustained human rights abuses carried out on civilians by the country’s armed forces, Human Rights Watch said today.
Women were raped until they were unconsciousness, children were tortured and tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes in a “scorched earth” campaign ordered by one of Britain’s closest allies in Africa, Ethiopia’s prime minister Meles Zenawi.
“There has been a wilful blindness and conspiracy of silence on the part of Ethiopia’s main donors, and a failure to condemn or even recognise these abuses,” Georgette Gagnon, the rights group’s Africa director, said in Nairobi today at the launch of a new report.
“Their silence amounts to complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes carried out as a deliberate policy of the Ethiopian government.” Britain gives Ethiopia more than £130 million in aid annually, part of the £1 billion the country receives from major Western donors including the US and the EU.
But at the same time, Mr Meles has overseen the intensification of a military campaign against ethnic Somali rebels operating in Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region.
The previously low-level rebellion was met with a brutal armed response after the rebels attacked a Chinese oil installation in April last year, killing 70 Chinese and Ethiopian workers.
Since then, Human Rights Watch has documented the executions of more than 150 people, mass detentions, the widespread destruction of property and theft of livestock.
Satellite images published today show before and after pictures of villages razed to the ground.
The attacks, the rights group alleges, were carried out by the Ethiopian army in a bid to break civilian support for the Ogaden National Liberation Front, rebels who have been fighting for self-determination for Ethiopia’s ethnic Somali region for more than 20 years.
“The soldiers started beating us with thick sticks,” said one woman quoted in the 130-page report, titled Collective Punishment and released today.
“They beat me until I fell to the ground… while I was lying on the ground I was raped. I don’t know how many men raped me. Other women were raped too.
“Others were strangled with a rope but they did not die. In our group we were shot. I was hit behind the left shoulder with a bullet.” Bereket Simon, special adviser to Mr Meles, denied all allegations in the report, telling the Associated Press, “It’s not true. It’s the same old fabrication.”
British diplomats and Foreign Office officials are failing to press Ethiopia to stop the abuses, one senior Human Rights Watch researcher told The Daily Telegraph today.
“We have tried to raise this many times, but each time we are met with a very unpleasant reaction from the British,” he said.
“They just don’t want to know. They have convinced themselves that Ethiopia is the key to regional stability in the Horn of Africa, and they will stick to that line no matter what the government is actually doing to its own people.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We have seen the report and are concerned by many of the statements given and the allegations of human rights abuses in Ethiopia’s Somali region.
“We have raised human rights issues with the government of Ethiopia on a number of occasions and have pressed for an independent investigation into these allegations.”
LONDON — The partner of a failed suicide bomber was jailed for 15 years Thursday for not telling police about his plans to carry out an attack on the London subway system.