Tuesday, 23 December 2008
By Simegnish Yekoye
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia- The Ethiopian government on Wednesday produced a report saying no evidence was found to support Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) allegations that Ethiopia’s military engaged in collective punishment during a campaign against rebels in the eastern Ogaden region.
The report was made by a committee set up by the government to look into the allegations made by HRW in its report of June 2008 entitled ‘Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Ogaden Area of Ethiopia’s Somali Region.’
HRW made serious allegations against the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, claiming it has committed a brutal counter-insurgency campaign in the Ogaden region of the Somali Region.
However, the government has said, according to the investigation carried out by what it calls an independent government funded team, all of the HRW report is factually baseless.
“They found villages untouched that HRW alleged were burnt,” said Minilik Alemu, acting director general for international law and consular affairs.
“People alleged seen tortured and killed were found alive and well. Villagers and elders alike denied allegations of extra-judicial killings, rape or torture by the security forces,” he added.
The Ethiopian government launched the offensive in April 2007 after Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels attacked Chinese-run oil fields in the Somali region, killing more than 70 people.
According to Lesan Yohannes, head of the seven-man team set up to investigate the HRW report, the study group was composed of three consultants on democracy and governance and the rest are camera men from Ethiopian Television.
“The on the ground investigation found no trace of serious human rights violations, let alone war crimes, during the security measures taken against the ONLF following the slaughter of over seventy workers in April last year,” read the report, “it did however find a mass of evidence of further systematic abuses committed by the ONLF.”
Minilik says the investigation demonstrated that HRW, perhaps unwittingly, had allowed itself to be used as a propaganda tool by the ONLF, a terrorist organization which it has clearly romanticized.
“The government believes all this could have been avoided if HRW made any serious effort to understand the realities of the situation in the region, and if it had been prepared to work in good faith with the government,” he said.
When asked about the actual independence of the government funded team, Minilik responded that the government believes the team is experienced enough and it had not found any reason to include a foreigner
December 02, 2008
