Washington :DC (galbeed.com, Editorial) This paper examines Ethiopia's human rights record with a particular focus on the human rights situation in the Somali region. Attention is paid to the atrocities committed against civilians, specifically community and political leaders as well as members of Somali religious and pastoral population in the name of false notion of terrorism and mitigating the rebel groups such ONLF, WSLF and others Ethiopian Somali Movements.
The brief paper also reviews human rights violations inflicted upon the Somali region's population following the discovery of natural gas and the livestock marketing business and the denial of benefits thereof to the local community. Somali region is the second largest area in Ethiopia and it is also the second region that produces hard currency for Federal government whether it is through khat, narcotic leaf, livestock or vegetables that are exported to the neighboring countries. In conclusion some future scenarios are examined to ascertain to what extent they might possibly change the prospects for the people in the Somali region. The discourse will be in three parts.
First, we begin briefly at the genesis of our modern notion of international human rights, articulated in the face and immediate aftermath of an existential threat to the values and civilization of world community. In other words, part one deals with human rights generally, its concept, origin, history thereof and theories, surrounding thereat.
Recently, many people watching TV and reading newspapers are baffled with the human rights violations by the dictator regime of Ethiopia, led by minority party of Meles Zenawi, TPLF. Ethiopian soldiers in the name of fighting rebels and terrorism are raping innocent Somali women, lynching Somali pastoral and elderly and burning villages in the remote Somali region of Ethiopia. The same could be said in Oromia, Amhara , Gambela and Afar regions.
Meles’s regime has to kill the population so that he manages to rule without opposition. The only language that Meles government knows is to kill not to dialogue and not to rule through consensus in this era of globalization. TPLF and its gang should be held accountable to the violation of Human Rights that they are inflicting on the Ethiopian people at large. They rigged election, filled all key positions of federal government by the minority Tigrayan and looting the resources of other Ethiopian regions to develop Tigray, the homeland of Meles Zenawi. Today Somali region is ruled by a simple cadre of Tigrayan origin.
Behind this example lies a point of substance. The history of rights has been typified by the search for a balance of principle and practicality: what they represent and how they can be effectively applied under the law. Human rights are our birthright as human beings: they are not the gift of governments but part of our common humanity. However, they have to be seen in the context of their time. Before we go further, let us define the concept of human rights that are the core ideas in the context of international law, culture and history.
To be able to do this, we would first have to decipher the concept of the Rights and the history generally thereof, before we could meaningfully go into their existence or their effect in Ethiopia. Although Meles and his gang will not understand this language since they are brought up in the rule of jungle and killing while they were in the bush, the international community should hold them responsible and bring them to the book so that they can meet the norms and values of international human law.
While on the concept, it may be convenient at this stage, to appreciate the attempts which are being made to extend human rights to lower animals. There is now the concept of lower animals, particularly, in some Western Societies, possessing 'animal rights' and are, a-fortiori, entitled to a modicum of rights and decent treatment. Sadly however, whilst this exists, some aspects of human rights, such as women's rights and children's rights, are still being held in contempt and their validity contested, in some places, including our society.
One might not be mistaken to say that Ethiopia is a good example to violating human rights while animals living in the Western world have better rights than Ethiopians in Oromo, Somali, Gambelas and Afar regions to name a few.
Historically, the American Independence of 1776 and similarly, the French Declarations of the Rights of Man and the Citizen 13 years later, in 1789, drew great inspiration from the British historical documents of the 13th and 17th centuries. Following their revolt against the English Crown for lack of recognition of human rights - oppressive acts and excessive taxation, the American colonies declared their independence of the British Empire and formed them into a Republic, a new Order. Rejecting the notion that all authority derived from the King, they asserted that the people, rather than the King, were the fountain of authority. The Declaration of the thirteen American colonies on July 4, 1776, valid even today, reads.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government became destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government. As result of these fundamental rights, the time has come that Ethiopians have the right to change the minority regime of Meles Zenawi violating the rule of the land, Ethiopian constitution.
On Human Rights, the Declaration was - ... a self-evident principle that ... the Creator has endowed man with certain inalienable rights - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.
The struggle against slavery, colonialism, apartheid, military dictatorship and other forms of oppression, all over the world, have obviously drawn significantly from these revolutionary ideals, canvassed with so much remarkable erudition in these documents of great antiquity.
In Ethiopia, these inalienable rights have been abridged by the minority regime of TPLF. They are killing whoever opposes their dictatorial regime. The last seventeen years, thousands of Oromo, Amharas, Somalis, Gambelas and Afars are rounded up and executed in broad daylight by the trigger happy soldiers of Meles Zenawi; however, the international community is silent and consent indirectly with the atrocity in Ethiopia. In other words, the Nazi style of atrocity is in making in Ethiopia and we do not know when the world community will wake up and stop these egregious acts. The UN and Western World have condemned Mugade of Zimbabwe and Bashir of Sudan. Is there double standard on the notion of human rights? The answer is yes.
Look at the brouhaha on a pigeon’s right in England. The leading newspaper, Independent, wrote a lengthy article entitled, Wimbledon ‘breaking law by killing pigeons’ there were ruffled feathers and no small amount of flapping at the world’s most genteel tennis tournament yesterday after a threat of legal action from animal rights lobbyists over the culling of pigeons that had the temerity to bother some players. But mothers were raped, elders were killed and thousands were forcfefully displacaed in Somali Region, and one does not see a single line of action against Meles regime to be responsible to these killings, and maiming poor Ethiopia Somalis.
Secondly, we narrate Human Rights violations in Ethiopia particularly in Somali region and will put in the contest of the position before, during and after the 1945 Declaration by the United Nations. I will argue that today Ethiopia faces a new set of challenges, both internationally and at home, which requires us to look again at their mechanisms of rights and will deal with the main subject of the discourse.
When it was adopted and proclaimed at the UN on the 10th December 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not intended to create legal rights – it was an aspiration gesture, offering a normative counterpoint to the evil that had so recently gone before. It was the expression of a global desire and drove to establish common standards applicable to all humankind. The European Convention of Human Rights was borne from this, taking this non-enforceable Universal Declaration as its base but developing the principles which underpinned it through the protection and framework of the law and with a means, ultimately, to enforce that law through the Court.
According to great historians, a correct perspective of history is a reliable compass for navigating the future. The theories of the origin of human rights have agitated mankind throughout the ages.
It has been argued by anthropologists that Man descended from the Ape. It was in consequence further argued that it was in the exercise of freedom of choice, that is, animal rights, that the ape, which has developed from the four legged animal to the two legged man, reserves the right, to entertain or not, man, from its cage in the zoo. No matter how much it far-fetched; the theory remains extant.
It seems that the observations of anthropologist are nicely fitting the description of Tigrayan happy trigger soldiers and security forces that are not different from four legged ape. In other words, when one looks at the human right abuses and tortures imposed on the Ethiopian Somali, one does not hesitate to put minority TPLF regime in the category of two or four legged ape.
Despite the dispatch of United Nations officials and international agencies to Somali Region to examine the Human rights and the crying of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issuing reports after reports describing the inhuman atrocities and genocide, the killing goes on. So does the burning of villages, the bombing of schools and the systematic rape of women and girls. And it will continue until the Security Council shows the will to stop it.
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The Council needs to get more fact finding officials, and independent officials in the field, enforce the mitigation of killing and increase diplomatic and financial pressure to get Ethiopia to stop obstructing the work of NGO and international Human right organizations to talk to Ethiopian Somalis and to report the veracity of atrocities that Meles regime is hiding and inflicting on mothers, elders and children. But the Council and International community have shown little urgency in doing any of that.
World leaders fight terrorism all the time, with summit meetings and sound bites and security initiatives. But they have studiously ignored one of the most common and brutal varieties of terrorism in Somali region and they are financing minority Tigayan regime that is killing left and right Ethiopians.
Recently, Human Rights Watch has issued a report entitled, “Ethiopia: Army commits Executions, Torture, and Rape in Ogaden.” For example, Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch says, “These widespread and systematic atrocities amount to crimes against humanity. Yet Ethiopia’s major donors, Washington, London and Brussels, seem to be maintaining a conspiracy of silence around the crimes.”
The report of Human right Watch released on June in Kenya states that in its battle against rebels in eastern Ethiopia’s Somali Region, Ethiopia's army has subjected civilians to executions, torture, and rape. The widespread violence, part of a vicious counterinsurgency campaign that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity, has contributed to a looming humanitarian crisis, threatening the survival of thousands of ethnic Somali nomads.
The 130-page report “Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Ogaden Area of Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State,” documents a dramatic rise in unchecked violence against civilians since June 2007, when the Ethiopian army launched a counterinsurgency campaign against rebels who attacked a Chinese-run oil installation.
Human Rights Watch researchers located and interviewed more than 100 victims and eyewitnesses to abuses, as well as traders, business leaders, and regional government officials located in neighboring Kenya, the semi-autonomous region of Somaliland in northern Somalia and in Ethiopia. The research, largely carried out between September and December 2007, was further supplemented with satellite imagery that confirmed the burning of some villages. In chilling accounts, witnesses and victims described to Human Rights Watch nightly beatings with the barrel of a gun, public executions, and the burning of entire villages.
TPLF regime was thinking to get away with the facts, but at this age of technology, evidences are abundant. Satellite images confirm reports that the Ethiopian military has burned towns and villages in the remote Somali 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 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.
The key questions is whether the international community is attaching an importance to the human rights than oil, raw material and the false geopolitical interested aka US new-conservative ideology fighting terrorism in Horn of Africa (by the way Ethiopia is getting 100 millions dollars a year from US to maim and kill innocent Somalis in the name of fighting terrorism in Somalia). Now we insert the testimonies of Human Rights Watch that they have compiled from Ethiopian Somali refugees fleeing the horror of Meles Zenawi.
Witness accounts from the report:
“The soldiers came to Aleen, after they burned down Lahelow. Then they burned Aleen. We were there at the time. The soldiers arrived and ordered the people out of their homes. They gathered all of the people together. Then the commander ordered the village burned. The commander told us, ‘I have told you already to leave these small villages,’ and then they forced us out. Then they burned down all the homes. The houses are just huts, so it is easy to burn them.”
– Villager, September 23, 2007
“I was taken away with two men, Hassan Abdi Abdullahi and Ahmed Gani Guled. First, they pulled ropes around the necks of the two men and pulled in opposite directions, and both fell down. They put me in a ditch while they were strangling the other two. One soldier tried to strangle me with the metal stick used for cleaning the gun [by pushing it down on my throat], but I twisted his finger until he released me. Then two other soldiers came and they put a rope around my neck and started pulling. That is the last thing I remember, until I woke up, still in the ditch. A naked body was on top of me, it was Ahmed Gani Guled, who was dead. I couldn’t move out of the ditch until I was found by some women who came to the waterhole.”
– Ridwan Hassan-rage Sahid, October 30, 2007
“They started beating me with the backs of their AK-47 guns. They hit me once with the gun in my face, and then started beating me. They also hit me with the gun barrel in my teeth, and broke one of my teeth. Then they started beating me with a fan belt on my back and my feet. It lasted for more than one hour. Then they tied both my legs and lifted me upside down to the ceiling with a rope, and kept beating me more, saying I had to confess. For two months, we underwent this same ordeal, being taken from our rooms at night and being beaten and tortured.”
– Thirty-one-year-old shopkeeper, September 20, 2007
“They wanted to intimidate the rest of us, so they brought the two girls who they said were the strongest rebel supporters. They made the rest of us watch while they killed the two girls. First they tried to get them to confess, saying they would kill them otherwise. Then they shot both of them with their guns. Their names were Faduma Hassan, 17, and Samsam Yusuf, 18. Both were students.”
– Student, September 23, 2007
“We have a well in Qoriley which is surrounded by wire. The army has prohibited us from using it, so you have to sneak in at night. All these things have been imposed on us this year. At nighttime, we will try and get some water to store in our houses. But if the soldiers see you are fetching water, they can kill you.”
– Villager, September 22, 2007
“If [the federal government] followed the law, it would be good, but even the law they’ve created is not being followed.”
– Former regional court judge, December 5, 2007
And finally, we want to discuss our plans to constitute an outlook for the future. We will also recommend the best approach to uphold Ethiopian Constitution and Responsibilities of leaders that will need to build on the development of rights so that Ethiopian system meets the needs and expectations of this century as well as the last human conventions. This is not a new concept; it goes back to Tom Paine. He declared that:
“A Declaration of Rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of Duties also. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another, and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess”.
We need to set the stage for examining future prospects for human rights as part of good governance in Ethiopia. At the heart of Western citizenship is the idea of a society based on laws which are made in a way that reflects the rights of citizens regardless of ethnicity, gender, class or religion. We should extend this concept to Ethiopian people.
Ethiopia should be held accountable to meet the minimum requirement of human rights so that its citizens participate fully in its society; the idea that all citizens are equal before the law and entitled to justice and the protection of the law, the right to free expression of opinion, the right to live without fear of oppression and discrimination.
Recommendations
We, Ethiopian Somali Advocacy Human Rights Watch called on major donors and international community particularly UN, EU, Arab League and other institutions to press Ethiopia to end the violence and recommended that:
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The US government should investigate reports of abuses by Ethiopian forces, identify the specific units involved, and ensure that they receive no assistance or training from the United States until the Ethiopian government takes effective measures to bring those responsible to justice, as required under the "Leahy law," which prohibits US military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity.
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The UK government and the European Union should condemn the abuses, publicly call on the Ethiopian government to investigate the crimes in Somali Region, demand that civilian and military officials are held accountable, and monitor development funding to ensure it is not being used for security operations.
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Responsibility for the Somali region horrors lies squarely with the government of Ethiopia. Its army, air force and intelligence agencies have directly participated in the attacks. Ministers have coordinated the genocidal campaign.
Baraket Simon, Meles Zenawi and Abay Zehay should be sought by the International Criminal Court for planning atrocities while the deputy interior minister, has been promoted to minister of humanitarian affairs. Abay Zehay used that position to block the delivery of aid to Ethiopian Somali displaced population and to thwart the effective deployment of United Nations official to do assessment.
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If the west was better informed about the war crimes and human rights abuses committed by Meles' military forces in Somalia and Somali region, western taxpayers might balk at the thought that their governments are providing Ethiopia with hundreds of millions of dollars of military and economic aid. And if western governments were more consistent and less selective in their reaction to human rights abuses around the world, they might be less inclined to turn a blind eye to Ethiopia's failure to abide by international norms in pursuit of its military objectives in Somalia and Somali region.
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The Ethiopian government did not respond to Human Rights Watch’s requests for access to the conflict-affected area, and has tried to stem the flow of information from the region. Some foreign journalists who have attempted to conduct independent investigations have been arrested and residents and witnesses have been threatened and detained in order to prevent them from speaking out. In July 2007, the government expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross from Somali Region, although it has since permitted some UN and nongovernmental humanitarian organizations to operate, albeit under tight controls.
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Western governments and institutions alone, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, give at least US$2 billion in aid to Ethiopia annually, but have remained silent on the widespread abuses being committed in the Somali region. The US government, which views Ethiopia as a key partner in regional counterterrorism efforts, has failed to use its significant leverage, including military aid, to press for an end to the crimes.
Thank you
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