On April 28, 2012, unidentified armed men attacked the compound of
Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc., a company that has leased
thousands of hectares of land for rice farming in Gambella region. The
gunmen killed at least one Pakistani and four Ethiopian employees.
Gambella residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that in the
following days and weeks, Ethiopian soldiers went house to house looking
for the gunmen in villages near the Saudi Star camp, arbitrarily
arresting and beating young men and raping female relatives of suspects.
“The attack on Saudi Star was a criminal act but it does not justify reprisals against Gambella’s population,” said
Leslie Lefkow,
deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The Ethiopian government
should put an immediate end to abuses by the military in the region and
investigate and prosecute soldiers found responsible for these heinous
acts, regardless of rank.”
Human Rights Watch has previously reported on the Ethiopian
government’s policy of “villagization” or resettlement of Gambella
residents from their traditional lands to clear the way for the
commercial farms. The government has used threats, intimidation, and
violence against those who resist moving.
Hundreds of villagers from Abobo woreda (district) fled the
military operation and crossed into neighboring South Sudan in the
months since the attack on Saudi Star. In June Human Rights Watch
interviewed more than 80 recent arrivals from Gambella in South Sudan.
Witnesses described to Human Rights Watch the military’s human rights
abuses against people in the vicinity of Saudi Star. The day after the
Saudi Star attack, Ethiopian soldiers shot and killed four of the
company’s Anuak guards, accusing them of complicity in the attack. In
April and May Ethiopian security forces entered the five villages
closest to the Saudi Star compound in Abobo woreda, rounded up scores of young men and detained them in military barracks in Gambella. Many alleged that they were tortured.
One former detainee told Human Rights Watch: “They said we were to go
into the bush and show them where the rebels are – with whom they
claimed we had a relationship. They beat me after I said I didn’t know
where the rebels are. After they beat me they took me to the barracks. I
was in custody for three days. At night they took me out and asked me
to show them where the rebels are. I said I don’t know. So they beat me
and took off their sock and put it in my mouth to stop the screams.”
Human Rights Watch heard six accounts from women and girls of rape by
soldiers either in their homes or in detention, when the soldiers could
not find the male relatives they were seeking.
Numerous credible sources in Gambella believe the April attack is
linked to the government’s villagization program and the leases of land.
The attack followed a March 12 attack by armed men on a bus in Gambella
in which 19 people were killed. It is not clear whether the two
incidents are linked.
The gunmen who carried out the attacks have not publicly identified
themselves or their motives, but one man interviewed by Human Rights
Watch claimed to have been among the group who attacked the Saudi Star
compound. He said that the April attack was in retaliation for the land
leasing by Saudi Star and other foreign investors in Gambella region.
Most of the attackers were reportedly captured in May by the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in Pochalla, South Sudan following a gun
battle that left four of the attackers and two SPLA soldiers dead.
Tensions have remained high in Gambella since.
“The military’s abusive response to the Saudi Star attack is only
making an already turbulent situation in Gambella worse,” Lefkow said.
“After what the people in the region have suffered at the government’s
hands, the only thing that will begin to clear the air is a
comprehensive and independent inquiry into the situation.”
Villagers who recently fled Gambella to South Sudan reported new abuses
by the security forces under the villagization program. They reported a
persistent lack of services in the sites to which they had been moved,
despite government pledges to provide them. And existing villages from
where people were moved are being destroyed to prevent people from
returning to their original homes.
Human Rights Watch urged the Ethiopian government to stop the arbitrary
arrests, beatings, and intimidation of Gambella residents and to
release those who have been arbitrarily detained. The government should
investigate and prosecute military personnel and officials implicated in
human rights violations associated with the villagization process.
Many of those forcibly displaced by the villagization program are
indigenous people. Under Ethiopian and international law the Ethiopian
government needs to obtain the free, informed, and prior consent of
indigenous people it wishes to move and compensate them for their loss
of assets and land.
“The abuses we found in the government’s relocation program in Gambella
a year ago are still happening today,” Lefkow said. “Whatever the
government’s rationale for ‘villagization,’ it doesn’t justify beatings
and torture.”
Details about arbitrary arrests, beatings, and torture; rape and sexual
violence; and attacks and “villagization” in Gambella follow.
Arbitrary Arrests, Beatings, and Torture
Between June 23 and June 29, Human Rights Watch conducted a research
mission to Gorom refugee settlement, South Sudan, and interviewed 80
people who had fled the crackdown and villagization in Gambella.
Several dozen Gambella residents described to Human Rights Watch the
Ethiopian military’s mass detention of scores of villagers, primarily
young men, in Abobo woreda in late April and May, accusing the
villagers of supporting what the soldiers referred to as “the
rebels.”They said that men, women, and children were forced to march
through the bush looking for so-called rebels and were beaten if they
did not find any, or if they did not provide any names of suspects to
the soldiers.
One man described being stopped by soldiers while carrying food, and
then being forced to help them search for firearms in Perbong village
near the Saudi Star farm. “The [soldiers] asked me ‘Where are you taking
this food? To the rebels?’” he told Human Rights Watch. “They checked
the food, told me to lie down, and beat me all over my back. [They
said]: ‘We will take you to Perbong to check houses one by one. If we
find a gun, we will kill you.’ So we went to the community leader’s
house, my house, and others’ houses and they found nothing, so they
released me.”
A dozen villagers said they were detained, then beaten and tortured in
military barracks by soldiers until they revealed a name of an alleged
rebel. Most victims described frequent beatings with sticks and rifle
butts. Some also saw or experienced other forms of torture.
An 18-year-old named Omot told Human Rights Watch that in April he was
arrested by soldiers in his home village and accused of being a rebel.
He was taken with his arms tied behind his back to the military barracks
in Pugnido where he was detained for two months. He said he was beaten
daily on his back and legs with truncheons. After his release soldiers
came to his home and threatened him again, causing him to flee to South
Sudan.
A local police officer described being arrested by soldiers and accused
of supporting the rebels. Soldiers detained him in Gambella’s military
barracks where they tied him up and beat him repeatedly, often at the
urging of a federal government security official who told them, “Beat
him, he has something to say.” After his release the soldiers came to
his home and beat him unconscious in front of his wife. His wife said
the soldiers beat their four year old son in front of them. The family
fled to South Sudan.
Ethiopian soldiers detained and tortured people in locations in
addition to the military barracks. One witness said he was detained in a
makeshift prison within a school in Chobo-Mender and witnessed soldiers
torturing a young man by making him walk on hot coals. He told Human
Rights Watch:“I saw a young guy who was forced to stand barefoot on fire
coals for 15 minutes. Soldiers would push him back on whenever he would
try to get off. He was blistered half way up his calves. ‘I am going to
die,’ he would say. ‘Then show us where the rebels are,’ said the
soldiers.”
Another local police officer described being beaten and tortured inside
Saudi Star’s compound by Ethiopian soldiers shortly after the attack:
“They said to us, ‘As people are being killed, yet you have not died,
you must know who was behind this.’ So they took me to the Saudi Star
farm and beat me there, inside the compound. There were many of us
there: two police and others who had been picked up in the sweep. When
they saw that I was not ready to talk, to say what they wanted me to
say, they started removing my toenails. They were asking a lot of
questions about the others who died: ‘Don’t you know who did the
killing?’”
All youth appear to be at risk from the soldiers. An 18-year-old
student at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia’s capital said that
soldiers beat him and his friends when he returned to Gambella for a
vacation shortly after the Saudi Star attacks. After showing his student
ID card he was told by soldiers: “You are educated, you know all the
political issues and things about governments so you are the ones
encouraging the rebels.” They beat him unconscious.
Rape and Sexual Violence
Ethiopian soldiers frequently arrested and abused the female
family members of young men they were seeking. Three women and a girl
told Human Rights Watch that soldiers arrested, detained, beat, and then
raped them to pressure them to disclose their male relatives’
whereabouts. Two additional women said that they witnessed other women
being raped in detention.
One woman said her husband had been arrested after the attacks because
“the soldiers said he knew where the rebels were.” When she went to the
prisons to try and find him, soldiers followed her back to her home and
raped her, she said. Her husband’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Another woman described what happened after soldiers arrested her in
Wancarmie and took her to the military barracks in Gambella: “One night
they took me out of the cell and said, ‘Show us where your husband is or
else we will rape you.’ I persisted saying that I didn’t know where he
was. Then finally they raped me. After that they released me and I
decided to leave the country.”
Attacks and “Villagization” in Gambella
After the attack on the Saudi Star compound the Ethiopian
military targeted five villages, all within a 16-kilometer radius of the
area leased by the company. These villages had been affected by
Ethiopia’s controversial “villagization” program, a three-year plan to
relocate 225,000 people in Gambella – and over 1.5 million people across
four states nationally – from their existing villages into new
settlements purportedly to better provide them with basic services.
Human Rights Watch documented serious human rights violations
associated with the first year of the villagization program in Gambella
in 2011. The January 2012 report
“Waiting Here for Death”: Displacement and “Villagization” in Ethiopia’s Gambella Regiondescribed
how the Ethiopian government and military forced reluctant villagers to
leave their homes and build new villages in arid, infertile areas,
often intimidating, arresting, and beating people who refused to move.
The most abuses were recorded in Abobo
woreda, the location of the Saudi Star concession.
Many of the recently arrived villagers in South Sudan interviewed by
Human Rights Watch in June said they had fled Gambella because of abuses
experienced in connection with the villagization program, as well as
the recent military operations following the Saudi Star attack.
They described new abuses in the second year of the government’s
villagization program, including forced displacement, arbitrary arrests,
and torture in detention. The new settlements are located far from
water sources and the land is typically dry and arid. More than a year
after people were forced to move to these villages virtually none of the
promised basic services such as schools and clinics have been provided.
To prevent resettled villagers from returning to their original homes
soldiers have allegedly been destroying infrastructure in the old
locations.
All of the Gambella residents interviewed by Human Rights Watch and who
fled to South Sudan told Human Rights Watch that their resettlement was
involuntary.
A 17-year-old girl from Abobo woreda who had recently arrived
in South Sudan said that soldiers killed her father when he refused to
move from their farm near Tegne to the new village: “We were sitting at
our farm and soldiers came up to us: ‘Do you accept to be relocated or
not?’ ‘No.’ So they grabbed some of us. ‘Do you want to go now?’ ‘No.’
Then they shot my father and killed him. We all fled into the bush. I
still do not know where my sister or husband is.”
Human Rights Watch found that regional and state government officials
appear to have a role in the forcible relocation of villagers. The
former committee head responsible for villagization in Gog woreda
told Human Rights Watch: “I was told [by regional officials] to make
the community aware of the need to move. All the responses from the
people were rejections, they did not like it. We went back and did our
report [to the regional parliament] that they did not want to go.
Parliament blamed me and said, ‘Why do you tell us this? Go do it by
force.’ [A senior state official] said this to me directly. We then went
with the military and did it by force.”
Villagers who have been unwilling to move or refuse to mobilize others
to do so have been arrested and mistreated by the soldiers. An elder
from Batpul village said he was ordered by woreda officials to
organize the villagers and persuade them to relocate. “There were many
trees and food in the old place and nothing in the new place so I
refused to get them to agree,” he said. “Government officials told me,
‘Since you do not accept what government says, we jail you.’” The elder
was jailed in Abobo for 17 days. “They turned me upside down, tied my
legs to a pole, and beat me every day for 17 days until I was released.”
Soldiers burned down tukuls (huts) and broke water pumps in
the original villages as soon as villagers were moved to their new
locations, the displaced villagers told Human Rights Watch.
One man from the Majangere ethnic group, who lived in Gooshini village in Godere woreda,
described the forced relocation in his village: “Those that resisted
the second time were forced by soldiers to roll around in the mud in a
stagnant water pool then beaten.” He said he returned to his old village
after dark for seven nights before deciding to flee to South Sudan.
Each night he saw that more and more of his village’s farmland had been
cleared by the bulldozers of an Ethiopian investor who had been awarded
the land by the government.
