What has this to do with socialism you may well ask? Below is a post mirrored from Countercurrents which more than adequately explains how the capitalist system and its captive governments heartily encourage the acts described as part of their ongoing accumulation programme. Accumulation of anything that can be converted to money, wealth or power - whatever and wherever the consequences.
So why should anyone living thousands of miles away feel any connection with what's happening anywhere else on the planet? Are we not citizens of the same planet, workers with the same hopes, desires and aims and with the very same enemy - capitalism? For it is the workings of the capitalist system that are without doubt the guilty party here.
Ethiopia: Lives For Land In Gambella
By Graham Peebles
To many people land is
much more than a resource or corporate commodity to be bought, developed
and sold for a profit. Identity, cultural history and livelihood are
all connected to ‘place'. The erosion of traditional values and morality
(which include the observation of human rights and environmental
responsibility) are some of the many negative effects of the global
neo-liberal economic model, with its focus on short-term gain and
material benefit. The commercialisation of everything and everybody has
become the destructive goal of multi-nationals, and their corporate
governments manically driven by the desire for perpetual growth as the
elixir to life's problems.
Land for profit
Since the ‘ food crisis in 2008' agricultural land in
developing countries has been in high demand. Seen as a sound financial
investment by foreign brokers and agrochemical firms, and as a way to
create food security for their home market by corporations from Asia and
the Middle East in particular.
Three quarters of worldwide land acquisitions have
taken place in Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty ridden and economically
vulnerable countries (many run by governments with poor human rights
records) are ‘encouraged' to attract foreign investment by donor
partners and their international guides. The World Bank, International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and donor partners, powerful institutions that by
“supporting the creation of investment-friendly climates and land
markets in developing countries” have been a driving force behind the
global rush for agricultural land, the Oakland Institute (OI) report in
Unheard Voices (UV) (1) .
Poor countries make easy pickings for multi-nationals
negotiating deals for prime land at giveaway prices and with all manner
of government sweeteners. Contracts sealed without consultation with
local people, which lack transparency and accountability, have virtually
no benefit for the ‘host' country (certainly none for indigenous
groups), and as Oxfam (2) make clear “have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and destruction of livelihoods”.
Ethiopia is a prime target for investors looking to
acquire agricultural land. Since 2008 The Ethiopian People's
Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government has leased almost 4
million hectares, for commercial farm ventures. Land is cheap – they are
virtually giving it away, tax is non-existent and profits (like the
food grown) are smoothly repatriated. Local people are swept aside by a
government unconcerned with human rights and the observation of federal,
or international, law. A perfect environment then, where shady deals
can be done and large corporate profits made. In their desperation to be
seen as one of the ‘growth gang' and “ to make way for agricultural
land investments” , the Ethiopian government has “ committed egregious
human rights abuses, in direct violation of international law,” OI
state.
Forced from home
Bordering South Sudan the fertile Gambella region
(where 42% of land is available), with its lush vegetation and flowing
rivers, is where the majority of land sales in the country have taken
place. Deals in the region are made possible by the EPRDF's
‘villagisation programme'. This is forcibly clearing indigenous people
off ancestral land and herding them into State created villages. The
plan has been intensely criticised by human rights groups, and rightly
so - 1.5 million people nationwide are destined to be re-settled,
225,000 (over three years) from Gambella.
More concerned to be seen as corporate buddy than
guardian of the people, the Ethiopian government guarantees investors
that it will clear land leased of everything and everyone. It has an
obligation, OI says, to “deliver and hand over the vacant possession of
leased land free of impediments”, swept clear of people, villages,
forests and wildlife, and fully plumbed into local water supplies.
Bulldozers are destroying the “farms, and grazing lands that have
sustained Anuak, Mezenger, Nuer, Opo, and Komo peoples for centuries”,
Cultural Survival (CS) (3)
records: and dissent, should it occur, is brutally dealt with by the
government, that promises to “provide free security against any riot,
disturbance or any turbulent time”. (OI) ‘Since you do not accept what
government says, we jail you.'” The elder from Batpul village told
Human Rights Watch (HRW) (4) .
He was jailed without charge in Abobo, and held for more than two
weeks, during which time “they turned me upside down, tied my legs to a
pole, and beat me every day for 17 days until I was released”.
Hundreds of thousands of villagers, including
pastoralists and indigenous people are being forcibly moved by the
regime, HRW reports, they are “relocating them through violence and
intimidation, and often without essential services,” such as education
(denying children ‘the right to education'), water, and health care
facilities - public services promised to the people and championed to
donor countries by the government in their programme rhetoric.
Murder, rape, false imprisonment and torture are
(reportedly) being committed by the Ethiopian military as they implement
the federal governments policy of land clearance and re-settlement in
accordance with its villagisation programme. ” My village was forced by
the government to move to the new location against our will. I refused
and was beaten and lost my two upper teeth”. This Anuak man told the NGO
Inclusive Development International (IDI) (5),
His brother “ was beaten to death by the soldiers for refusing to go to
the new village. My second brother was detained and I don't know where
he was taken by the soldiers”.
To the Anuak People, who are the majority tribal group
in the affected areas, their land is who they are. It's where the
material to build their homes is found it's their source of traditional
medicines and food. It's where their ancestors are buried and where
their history rests. By driving these people off their land and into
large settlements or camps, the government is not only destroying their
homes, in which they have lived for generations, it is stealing their
identity. Indigenous people tell of violent intimidation, beatings,
arbitrary arrest and detention, torture in military custody, rape and
extra-judicial killing. State criminality breaching a range of
international and indeed federal laws, that Genocide Watch (GW) (6)
consider “to have already reached Stage 7 (of 8), genocide massacres”,
against the Anuak, as well as the people of Oromia, Omo and the Ogaden
region.
The Ethiopian government is legally bound to obtain
the ‘free, informed and prior consent' of the indigenous people it plans
to move. Far from obtaining consent, Niykaw Ochalla in Unheard Voices,
states that, “when [the government] comes to take their land, it is
without their knowledge, and in fact [the government] says that they no
longer belonged to this land, [even though] the Anuak have owned it for
generations”. Consultation, consent and compensation the ‘three c's
required by federal and international law. Constitutional duties and
legal requirements, which like a raft of other human rights obligations
the regime dutifully ignores. Nyikaw Ochalla confirms that “there is “no
consultation at all”, sometimes people are warned they have to move,
but just as often OI found the military “instruct people to get up and
move the same day”. And individuals receive no compensation “for their
loss of livelihood and land”. In extensive research The Oakland
Institute “did not find any instances of government compensation being
paid to indigenous populations evicted from their lands”, this despite
binding legal requirements to do so.
‘Waiting here for death'
The picture of state intimidation in Gambella is a
familiar one. Refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, from the Ogaden region of
Ethiopia, recount stories of the same type of abuse, indeed as do people
from Oromia and the Lower Omo valley. Tried and tested Government
methodology used to enforce repressive measures and create fear amongst
the people. “The first mission for all the military and the Liyuu is to
make the people of the Ogaden region afraid of us”, a former commander
of the Liyuu police told me. And to achieve this crushing end, they are
told “to rape and kill, to loot, to burn their homes, and capture their
animals”. From a wealth of information collated by HRW and the OI, it is
clear that the Ethiopian military in Gambella is following the same
criminal script as their compatriots in the Ogaden region.
We were at home on our farm, a 17-year-old girl from Abobo in Gambella (whose story echoes many), told HRW (7)
“when 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”; a villager from Gooshini, now in
exile in South Sudan, described how those in his settlement “that
resisted…. were forced by soldiers to roll around in the mud in a
stagnant water pool then beaten”.
The new settlements that make up the villagisation
programme, are built on land that is “typically dry and arid”,
completely unsuitable for farming and miles from water supplies, which
are reserved for the industrial farms being constructed on fertile
ancestral land. The result is increased food insecurity leading in some
cases to starvation. HRW documented cases of people being forced off
their land during the “harvest season, preventing them from harvesting
their crops”. With such levels of cruelty and inhumanity the people feel
desperate as one displaced individual told Human Rights Watch, “The
government is killing our people through starvation and hunger . . . we
are just waiting here for death”.
And should families try to leave the new settlement
(something they are discouraged from doing) and return to their village
homes, the government destroys them totally, burning houses and
bulldozing the land. “ The government brought the Anuak people here to
die. They brought us no food, they gave away our land to the foreigners
so we can't even move back,” HRW record in ‘Waiting Here for Death' (8) .
People forced into the new villages are fearful of government assault,
parents “are afraid to send their children to school because of the
increased army presence. Parents worry that their children will be
assaulted”. (UV)
In the face of such government atrocities the people
feel powerless; but like many suffering injustice throughout the world,
they are awakening demanding justice and the observation of fundamental
human rights. “We don't have any means of retrieving our land” Mr.O from
the village of Pinykew in Gambella, told The Guardian (22/01/2013) (9) .
“Villagers have been butchered, falsely arrested and tortured, the
women subjected to mass rape”. Enraged by such atrocities, he is
bringing what could be a landmark legal case against Britain's
Department for International Development (DfiD). Leigh Day & Co,
solicitors based in London, have taken the case, “arguing that money
from DfiD is funding the villagisation programme”, that “breaches the
department's own human rights policies.” DfiD administer the £324
million given by the British government to Ethiopia, making it the
biggest recipient of aid from the country. They deny supporting forced
re-location, but their own documents reveal British funds are paying the
salaries “of officials implementing the programme and for
infrastructure in new villages”, The Daily Mail 25/05/2013 (10)
reports. Allegations reinforced by HRW, who state that “British aid is
having an enormous, negative side effect – and that is the forcible
ending of these indigenous people's way of life.” (Ibid)
In an account that rings with familiarity, Mr.O, now
in Dadaab refugee camp, says he was forced from his village at gunpoint
by the military. At first he refused to leave, so “soldiers from the
Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) beat me with guns.” He was
arrested, imprisoned in military barracks and tortured for three days,
after which time he was taken to the new village, which “did not have
water, food or productive fields”, where he was forced to build his
house.
Government duplicity donor complicity
The government unsurprisingly denies all allegations
of widespread human rights abuse connected with land deals and the
‘villagisation programme' specifically. They continue to espouse the
‘promised public service and infrastructure benefits' of the scheme that
“by and large” OI assert, “have failed to materialise”. The regime is
content to ignore documentation provided by human rights groups and NGOs
and until recently had refused to cooperate with an investigation by
the World Bank into allegations of abuse raised by indigenous Anuak
people. The Bank incidentally that gives Ethiopia more financial aid
than any other developing country, $920 million last year alone. Former
regional president Omod Obang Olum oversaw the plan in Gambella and
assures us resettlement is “voluntary” and “the programme successful”.
Predictable duplicitous comments that IDI said “are laughable.”
An independent non-profit group working to advance
human rights in development, IDI, has helped the Anuak people from
Gambella “submit a complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel
implicating the Bank in grave human rights abuses perpetrated by the
Ethiopian Government“. The complaint alleges, “that the Anuak people
have been severely harmed by the World Bank-financed and administered
Providing Basic Services Project (PBS)”. A major development porgramme
which is described as “expanding access and improving the quality of
basic services in education, health, agriculture, water supply and
sanitation”, OI report (11) .
However IDI make clear that “villagisation is the principle vehicle
through which PBS is being implemented in Gambella”, and claim “there is
"credible evidence" of "gross human rights violations" being committed
in the region by the Ethiopian military. Human Rights Watch (HRW) found
that donors are “paying for the construction of schools, health clinics,
roads, and water facilities in the new [resettlement] villages. They
are also funding agricultural programs directed towards resettled
populations and the salaries of the local government officials who are
implementing the policy”. (Ibid)
IDI's serious allegations further support those made
by many people from the region and Mr.O in his legal action against the
DfID. The Banks inspection panel have said the “two programmes (PBS and
villagisation) depend one each other, and may mutually influence the
results of the other.” The panel found “there is a plausible link
between the two programmes but needs to engage in further fact-finding”.
It is imperative the bank's Inspection Panel have unrestricted access
to Gambella and people feel safe to speak openly about the governments
brutality.
All groups involved in land sales have both a moral
duty - a civil responsibility - and a legal obligation to the people
whose land is being leased. The Ethiopian government, the foreign
corporations leasing the land and the donors – the World Bank and DfID,
who, through PBS are funding the villagisation programme.
The Ethiopian government is in violation of a long
list of international treaties that, in keeping with their democratic
pretentions, they are happy to sign up to, but less enthusiastic to
observe. From the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR), to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and all
points legal in between. Investors if not legally obliged, are certainly
morally bound by the United Nations (UN) "Protect, Respect and Remedy"
Framework, (12)
which, amongst other things, makes clear their duty to respect and work
within human rights. Donor's responsibility first and last is, to the
people of Ethiopia, to ensure any so-called ‘development' programmes
(that commonly focus on economic targets), support their needs, ensures
their wellbeing and observes their fundamental human rights.
To continue to turn a blind eye to widespread
government abuse, and to support schemes, whether directly or
indirectly, that violate human rights and cause suffering to the people
is to be complicit to State criminality that is shattering the lives of
hundreds of thousands of indigenous people, in Gambella and indeed
elsewhere in the country.
Graham PeeblesFor end note list and more information see link at top.
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