Ethiopians in the Ogaden Need Our Help—Let Us Stand United Against the Terrorism of Our People!

By Mr. Obang O. Metho / July 10, 2007 As most Ethiopians come out with outrage to the guilty verdict against the Opposition leaders and other political prisoners, we should come out with outrage to the killing going on in the Ogaden against our fellow Ethiopians living there.

Human Rights Watch and a few others in the international media, like Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times, have reported on the numbers of women and children being killed daily by the EPRDF-controlled military. Although the EPRDF Minister of Foreign Affairs, Seyoum Mesfin, used the website Ethio-media—blocked within Ethiopia by his own administration—to berate Gettleman’s report as being outrageously false, we know differently! Lies, in the company of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, are nothing new for this regime!

In that article that appeared on the front page of the Times, Gettleman reported that in addition to women, children and elders being killed, any men—even elders and the young—are seen as a threat. As a result, numbers of them are being killed or arrested for only “looking suspicious.” Villages and homes are being burned and property is being destroyed. Their cattle—the main life support of these nomadic people—are being killed, creating certain suffering and hardship that has led to a humanitarian crisis where many other innocent Ethiopians will die. Now, many thousands are displaced, without food and basic necessities, and the Ethiopian National Defense Forces are preventing humanitarian supplies from reaching them.

Justifying their actions because of the recent attack on the Chinese oil workers by the ONLF, the EPRDF-controlled military, with all their weapons and equipment, are now intensifying their attacks on helpless, unarmed and vulnerable people. They seem not to care that they are merely targeting proxy victims rather than those in the ONLF. Do not think that such killing of innocent civilians was not going on preceding the attack on the Chinese. Instead, this aggression against the Ogadenis by the EPRDF has been going on for 17 years, but with much greater intensity in the last months and year since the invasion of Somalia and the discovery of oil and petroleum in their region.

It is not surprising that the ONLF resistance movement has taken more serious steps in an attempt to stop the destruction of their people. In fact, some might make the case that the ONLF is acting in self-defense against government forces that are destroying them in order to gain access to their natural resources. They are not alone. During the Meles regime, many insurgency and separatist groups have arisen in response to the brutal oppression by the current regime of the EPRDF.

We strongly condemn this widespread killing, rape, torture, arbitrary detention and destruction of property that the EPRDF-led military troops are perpetrating against Ethiopians in the Ogaden region of our country. It is beginning to look like an ethnic cleansing. We condemn any violence against civilians by any groups, but what is shocking is the hypocrisy of the EPRDF who condemns the ONLF while committing worse atrocities itself! They have asked the US State Department to add the ONLF to the list of terrorist international organizations. Does the same apply to them?
Some day they may be standing in International Criminal Court for charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Therefore, we ask, on what moral authority can the EPRDF stand in accusation of others over the same terrorism that they are ruthlessly perpetrating against Ethiopian citizens?

Remembering back to 2003 in the Gambella region, the situation is nearly identical to what happened to the Anuak. At that time, the human rights abuses against the Anuak started simultaneously with the oil drilling activities of the Chinese oil company, Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau (ZPEB). In a well-calculated plan, EPRDF-controlled military troops and militia groups massacred Anuak leaders who had spoken against being excluded from the oil development plans in their region. This followed many years of federal control over the affairs of the Gambella region.