Ethiopia: Army Commits Executions, Torture, and Rape in Ogaden
In its battle against rebels in eastern Ethiopia's Somali Region, Ethiopia's army has subjected civilians to executions, torture, and rape, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. 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. The Human Rights Watch report provides the first in-depth look at the patterns of abuse in a conflict that remains virtually unknown because of severe restrictions imposed by the Ethiopian government.
"The Ethiopian army's answer to the rebels has been to viciously attack civilians in the Ogaden," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "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."
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.
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