Mr. Obang Metho Addresses Law students and faculty At the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan

Mr. Obang Metho / March 25, 2008

I would like to thank the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan and especially the faculty and students for inviting me to speak tonight. I would also like to thank Scales of Social Justice League (SOS Justice League): for giving me the honor of being your keynote speaker at Access to Justice Week.
When I first received the invitation a month ago to speak about justice, I was asked to speak on the topic, International Law: Does it Create Barriers in Access to Justice? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention, the Rome statutes—what do these mean to the world, especially to those suffering the worst Anuak violations of these principles, laws and codes around the world?
I was told that I should speak in reference to my testimony of the case of my own ethnic group, the , before the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 2004 and because of my human rights work, including the two legal cases I have been working on with two different law firms, one who submitted our case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and another who submitted our case to the African Union’s Commission on Peoples’ and Human Rights. I am very pleased to share these experiences with you today.
For most of you who do not know me, I am resident of Saskatchewan and graduated with a degree in political science from this university. I have lived in Saskatchewan for a long time since coming from Gambella, Ethiopia. It is interesting that when I was doing development work in Africa and was asked where I was from, I said I was from Saskatoon, Canada, but when I was here in Saskatoon, people would ask me the same question and I would answer, Africa. I guess I have one foot in both places and I call both, home!
It is good to be back at this great campus which has meant a lot to me, not only because I graduated from this university, but also because of the great support and friendships I have with so many wonderful faculty and staff in the University’s Colleges and Departments such as in the Department of Political Science, the Department of Division of Media and Technology, Department of International Studies, Department of Sociology, the College of Arts & Science, the College of Medicine, the College of Education as well as with students!
It is no wonder why last month during the International Week Workshop at this University, there was a presentation on Ethiopia at the College of Agriculture and the Ethiopian Minister of Foreign Affairs Office made a big deal out of it. The government of Ethiopia wrote on their websites that they were working with the University of Saskatchewan and Canadian government on such things as good governance, democracy and development because the Ethiopian government knows it very well that this university is my home.

I and others knew that this was another campaign to fool the people, especially because of my link to this university. They may have thought they were invading “Obang’s territory!” However, we both know the truth of what is going on in Ethiopia and to the best of my ability, I will continue to speak publicly, whenever and wherever I can do so, about the broken government and gross human rights abuses in Ethiopia until real justice, democracy, good governance, the rule of law and development is established in Ethiopia.
What I am going to talk about tonight is the experience that I have gained since I became involved in human rights work in late 2003 following the three-day long massacre of 424 from my own ethnic group, the Anuak, by the Ethiopian military.
Some of what I have learned about human rights work has been very disillusioning. As I speak of my own experience, you may learn that I am very disappointed with many in the international community, despite the good intentions of the creators of our human rights laws. The reason for is that not far underneath this system that is supposed to uphold the human rights of all people, is a system that resists the carrying out of those laws at most every level.
It is a common struggle—between the higher and lower natures within every person—between what one knows is right and what one wants for one’s own reasons. Our problem is not about knowing the difference. It is about having the moral strength to choose the right way to live. In order to face this crisis affecting millions throughout the world, we must first have the courage to face the dark side of our own flawed humanity. The problem is not the law; it is within us, individually, especially with many of those who wield the power!

International Human Rights laws are, without question, laws based on noble, God-given principles, many of which were enshrined in the non-binding Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt of United States of America chaired the committee responsible for formulating these principles and a renowned Canadian law professor, John Humphrey, heavily contributed to the content.
By declaring the inalienable rights and dignity of each human being, regardless of any differences, it also declared the need to protect each human being—particularly the vulnerable—from the worst actions of others. These universal values and principles were proclaimed and later ratified by the majority of countries around the world.
Other international human rights laws from the past, like the Geneva Convention, which basically set rules for the treatment of prisoners of war, were updated at this time as well. Other human rights laws also followed in an attempt to make binding, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the purpose of protecting human kind from such crimes as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Continuing implementation of other human rights treaties, dealt with additional areas such as racial discrimination, torture, the rights of the child, among others. The most recent human rights laws, the Rome Statutes, established the International Criminal Court, the ICC.
The original intent of these laws was to intervene to protect the vulnerable and see to it that the worst violators would be held accountable. The impetus for most of the laws came out of the horrible atrocities of World War I and World War II. The shock waves among people in the world to the barbaric acts of the Holocaust during which six million Jews, along with others, were exterminated, provided the rationale for a multi-lateral mechanism for intervening in the national affairs of another sovereign country.
It was in 1945 that the League of Nations formally was changed into the United Nations. The United Nations is the only organization in the international community with the mandate and worldwide legal jurisdiction to oversee and enforce these international human rights laws. The High Commissioner of Human Rights oversees the Human Rights Council who has the mandate to investigate violations of human rights.

The Human Rights Council has 47 members, elected by the full assembly by secret ballot. When I was there before the Council in 2004, a Sudanese representative sat on that council, despite the genocide going on in Darfur. This gives you an idea of who is hearing your case. Since that time, member states, who have committed gross human rights crimes, are excluded from membership.
The Council has the authority to appoint special investigators, rapporteurs, to do further investigation and report back to them. If force is to be used, including military intervention and sanctions, it is the United Nations Security Council who must authorize it. The current UN Security Council members are from the US, Russia, the UK, France and China.
However, regional organizations, such as the African Union, have been created to deal on a regional basis with many of these same issues and advise governments of their findings and recommendations. An African Judicial Court is in the development stage, but not yet operating. Cases from the African Union can be referred to the ICC.
The question is—have they achieved the well-intentioned objectives for which these laws were created? Have they made easier the path to justice or have they created their own barriers that have blocked the accomplishment of their intent?
I would contend that the problem is largely not with the content enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or in the numerous human rights laws and mandates, but is more about the lack of moral will to enforce them as well as due to the suppression of information that surrounds the commission of human rights violations.
These laws were meant to prevent genocide like the Holocaust from ever happening again. However, the evidence of the failure of these laws to be enforced is tragically clear when one looks at the millions of lives lost in Cambodia, Chile, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Darfur, Yugoslavia and numerous others places around the globe, including the case of the Anuak.
Yet, because the law regarding genocide was written in such a way to demand intervention in cases of genocide, the superpowers are reluctant to call cases that meet that definition because it requires action. Instead, most cases are defined as “crimes against humanity” as a way to skirt the obligation to do something. For instance, the United States has called Darfur a genocide while the European Union has not.

There are several reasons for this. For one, inherent in the laws is a tension between international intervention and national sovereignty. The case must be strong to cross international borders, intervening in an independent sovereign state. However, when the government of one’s own country is committing atrocities against its own citizens, like what happened in Rwanda, the intent of the law is that the need to protect the vulnerable trumps the rights of that nation.
Yet, unfortunately, many different factors influence whether or not the United Nations and the international community will take any action. At the same time, many in the world are under the illusion that the United Nations will act when and where appropriate. Because of this, most feel that they can settle back and not get involved.

I was under this illusion when I presented the case of the Anuak to the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights in April of 2004 after Ethiopian Defense Forces massacred 424 people from my ethnic group in Gambella, Ethiopia. Let me start by explaining what happened. Oil exploration in the Gambella area in southwestern Ethiopia, on the border of Sudan, revealed promising oil reserves on indigenous Anuak land.
The Anuak leaders spoke out regarding wanting to be involved in the decision making, as spelled out in the Ethiopian Constitution, but they were seen as trouble-makers. When the killing of Anuak leaders began on December 13 through 15 of 2003, the Chinese were visiting the country and the oil rights had been given to Petronas of Malaysia and their subsidiary, the Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau (ZPEB), of China to begin their work in the area immediately.
The Ethiopian military had a list of Anuak names, each allegedly picked due to their leadership, educational background or overall influence in the community. For instance, one of the first ones on the list was my sister-in-law’s father who was a beloved pastor. Others included many of those I was working closely with in the development work.
A number of doctors from Saskatoon had accompanied me to Gambella and we had plans to develop a full-scale medical project between the two cities that had to be temporarily suspended for safety reasons. We had received a large CIDA grant for the project that instead, had to be returned due to continuing security concerns for Canadian students, who as part of the project, would have been spending time in Gambella.
The massacre began on December 13, 2003 when the Ethiopian military, accompanied by some local militia groups from a different ethnic background, went door to door, pulling out the Anuak from their homes. If they refused to come out, their homes were set on fire until they had to run for safety. The militias then hacked them with machetes and clubs. If they ran, they were shot by the defense troops in Ethiopian uniform.
They marched through the town chanting, “Today is the day for killing Anuak.” As they raped the women and young girls, they chanted, “Now you will have no more Anuak babies!” The Ethiopian National Defense troops did not stop there, but destroyed homes, water wells, granaries, crops, health clinics and schools. They continued to wreak havoc in the rural areas in the following weeks and months, killing, injuring, raping, torturing and detaining many more Anuak. About 10,000 fled the country for refuge in south Sudan. It is unknown today how many Anuak were killed as many were buried in mass graves and in remote areas, but some believe over 1500 were killed.
The tragedy was a tremendous loss for the Anuak who were already considered an endangered people group, totaling only about .01% of the total population of 80 million Ethiopians. Additionally, most of those killed were the leaders and most educated in the community of a very marginalized people.
These human rights abuses are all well-documented in a co-sponsored investigation by two US-based organizations, Genocide Watch and Survivors’ Rights, organizations created to prevent genocide. That report, “Today Is the Day for Killing Anuak,” and a subsequent one, “Operation Sunny Mountain,” are available on their websites as well as on ours. Another report by Human Rights Watch, which came out on March 24, 2005, “Targeting the Anuak,” is also available on their website.
The question is—does the Anuak massacre meet the definition of genocide? To answer it, we need to review the law itself. Genocide was addressed at the Genocide Convention and the laws regarding it were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. More than 130 nations have ratified the Genocide Convention since that time. Ethiopia is one of these.
Now, according to the definition of genocide in Article II of the Convention, what happened to the Anuak does meet the criteria for being classified as a genocide as it meets the overall definition as well as it meets one or more of the criteria. In fact, it meets all but the last—forcibly transferring children of the group to another.
In the definition, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (including inflicting trauma on members of the group through widespread torture, rape, sexual violence, forced or coerced use of drugs, and mutilation rape)
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; includes the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for the group’s physical survival, such as clean water, food, clothing, shelter or medical services. Deprivation of the means to sustain life can be imposed through confiscation of harvests, blockade of foodstuffs, detention in camps, forcible relocation or expulsion into deserts.
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; includes the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for the group’s physical survival, such as clean water, food, clothing, shelter or medical services. Deprivation of the means to sustain life can be imposed through confiscation of harvests, blockade of foodstuffs, detention in camps, forcible relocation or expulsion into deserts.
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III strongly states that the acts of (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide and (e) Complicity in genocide shall be punished.
The Anuak case meets the stringent criteria of genocide under the law as the intent to destroy part of a specific ethnic group could be proven. The Anuak was the only ethnic group targeted in a region of at least eight other ethnic groups. The presence of the list, the slogans, the recruiting, arming and incitement of the militias all proved the intent to destroy the Anuak, in this case the educated leaders, and the intent to incite others to do so as well.
The maiming, injury, burning down of homes with inhabitants in them and the widespread raping of the women and girls accompanied by the slogan that the result would be to prevent or limit the birth of “Anuak” babies met another definition. The only definition that was not met was the forcible transfer of children from one group to another. However, one does not need to meet all these criteria to meet the overall definition.

Additionally, information was later documented in another investigation by Genocide Watch and Survivors’ Rights that gave evidence that the plan had an actual name, “Operation Sunny Mountain,” which alleged that those in the highest offices in the country had knowledge of the plan, if not direct involvement. No one still has been found accountable for the crimes despite the mandate in Article III to punish perpetrators. What went wrong?
Most of us in the world live under a number of illusions that are propped up by false beliefs about the international community, the United Nations and the presence of international human rights laws.

We in the Anuak Justice Council were no different. I will use our own experience, along with others, where relevant, to further explain the obstacles to securing justice through the international community.