Ogaden Human Rights Committee Appeals to the United Nations Against Terrorist State ´Ethiopia´

Following the publication of the devastating Report on the Ogaden by the Human Rights Watch, the Ogaden Human Rights Committee (OHRC) issued a Press Release and Appeal to the International Community, urging the UN and the donor countries to take action against the Terrorist State of Abyssinia (fallaciously re-baptized ´Ethiopia´) the immediately.

In their momentous Appeal, OHRC places the international body and governments of several major countries in front of their historical responsibility to put an end to a most appalling – and extensively documented and reconfirmed – genocide.

OHRC demands – amongst others – the UN Security Council to designate a safe heaven in Ogaden for the civilian population fleeing from Ethiopian armed forces´ onslaught and atrocities, to freeze all foreign bank accounts belonging to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his entourage, and to impose visa and travel restrictions on Ethiopian government officials. Finally, an independent inquiry commission should be set up to investigate recent massacres and atrocities in the Ogaden.

Appealing to the UN High Commission for Refugees, OHRC asks the provision of the necessary shelter protection and maintenance to the Somali refugees from the Ogaden in the neighboring countries. In addition, OHRC demands of the international community to refrain from aiding and supporting the Ethiopian government.

I will republish integrally the OHRC Appeal that, following the Recommendations, provides us with a historical background of the Ogaden Tragedy, and an overview of the ongoing crisis. Further parts of the OHRC Appeal will be published in a forthcoming article.

Ogaden : the Dire Human Rights and Humanitarian Situation and the Role of the United Nations

http://www.ogadenrights.org/the_dire.htm

Recommendations and Appeals

Although prestigious international and national human rights organizations, have issued several reports about well-documented human rights violations in the Ogaden and elsewhere in Ethiopia by the current Ethiopian government, the international community has remained tight lipped about those violations for the last sixteen years. Nevertheless, the Ogaden Human Rights Committee has not given up hope of the international community's help to force Ethiopia to honour its commitments to internationally accepted human rights principles. Hence, the OHRC requests and recommends the following:

To: the International Community, Donor Countries, United Nations, Ethiopian Government and Ogaden National Liberation Front

United Nations Security Council designates a safe heaven for the civilian population fleeing from Ethiopian armed forces´ onslaught and atrocities.

United Nations High Commission for Refugees provides necessary shelter protection and maintenance to the Somali refugees from the Ogaden in the neighboring countries.

The United Nations appoint a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Ogaden.

United Nations Security Council form an independent inquiry commission to investigate recent massacres and atrocities in the Ogaden.

The international donor community help the Somali people in the Ogaden generously and directly through international NGOs in order to assure the reach of the food and medical aid to the victims of the famine.

The international donor countries and World Food Programme put in place an effective and verifiable monitoring mechanism to assure the reach of the emergency aid to its intended beneficiaries in the Ogaden.

The Ethiopian government and the Ogaden National Liberation Front, declare immediate, comprehensive and unconditional cease-fire in the Ogaden in order to aid famine and war victims in the Ogaden.

The international community exert more pressure on the Ethiopian government to allow ICRC and MSF to operate freely in the Ogaden as well as respecting ICRC´s mandate and the Geneva Conventions regarding to the civilian population.

The Ethiopian government allow all humanitarian and relief organizations to operate in the Ogaden without restrictions, regardless of nationality or religion as well as national and international human rights organizations and international press.

The Ethiopian government should be held responsible for infamous mass killings; disappearances, rape, arbitrary arrests, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and perpetrators of those atrocities should be brought before the International Criminal Court.

United Nations Security Council freeze all foreign bank accounts belonging to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his entourage.

United Nations Security Council impose visa and travel restrictions on Ethiopian government officials.

The international community intervene to stop the forcible repatriation of Somalis from the Ogaden to Ethiopia.

The international community refrain from aiding and supporting the Ethiopian government as long as it violates human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Somali people in the Ogaden and elsewhere in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government and Ogaden National Liberation Front give ICRC free access to all detainees in their custodies.

The Ogaden Human Rights Committee asks for all political prisoners in Ethiopia to be immediately and unconditionally released or charged with recognized criminal offences, and given fair trials; and be given unrestricted and regular access to their family members and to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Background

The Somali people in the Ogaden have never accepted the Ethiopian occupation of their country. Therefore, the national resistance against the foreign occupation has never ceased for more than a century. But its intensity varied from time to time, according to local, regional and international circumstances. And the situation became tenser when the present regime entirely destroyed the traditional local structures and clan systems and disrupted all the sources of income of the local population of which more than 75% are rural people who herd only livestock.

All successive Ethiopian governments´ military campaigns to quell the insurgence in the Ogaden had caused enormous human suffering including the current government´s military campaign, which is going on vigorously as this writing.

In the past Ethiopian governments transferred thousands of Ethiopian settlers into the Ogaden in an attempt to change the demographic nature of the region, eliminate the Somali national identity and to transform the Ogaden into a region of Ethiopia, in which indigenous Somalis will be an insignificant minority.

When the transformation and assimilation policies failed the Ethiopian governments adopted a policy of intimidation and physical elimination, which resulted in enormous human suffering which has no parallel in the world.

Razing entire towns to the ground, extrajudicial killings, mass arrests, enforced disappearances, rape of women, confiscating private property, dusk to dawn curfew and martial law were and are the order of the day.

Since the current Ethiopian government came to power in 1991, hundreds of Ogadenis, including women, children, elderly people, politicians and religious scholars, have been killed, disappeared, tortured or remain under incommunicado detention without charges or trial.

The Ethiopian administration in the Ogaden treats the Somalis in the Ogaden as second class citizens in their own country, exploits the country for Ethiopian gains, and deprives the Ogaden people of their fundamental human rights, including their inalienable right to independence and self -determination.

Discrimination and segregation against Somalis, in terms of education, health care, employment and economic development is the corner stone of the current Ethiopian government ' s policy.

Government offices in the Ogaden have been purged of anyone whose views were judged hostile to the state, and replaced by Tigreans or those who support the government policies.

Such an overt policy of targeting one group for their political orientation, and preferring others for their pro-government views, has obviously caused widespread and deep resentment throughout the region. A particular target of this policy appears to be suspected supporters of the ONLF or other opposition parties.

For the last sixteen years the Ogaden was a country ravaged by war, haunted by drought and widespread human rights violations and in the meantime the regime gives the world a different picture of Ogaden.

The Ogaden has been a virtually closed military zone since early 1992, where bloody battles were being fought between Ethiopian armed forces and combatants of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).

The Human Rights Situation

As has been repeatedly documented by the Ogaden Human Rights Committee and international human rights organizations as well as international humanitarian organizations the state of human rights in the Ogaden has gone from bad to worse in the recent past. The abysmal track record of the EPRDF/TPLF regime has been recently aggravated by natural calamities-mostly man-made and senseless wars, which had primarily been caused by the ill-devised policies of the current Ethiopian government.

The Ethiopian government has acceded to several international human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, International Convention on the S suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, Convention on the Prevention and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Convention on the Right of the Child, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Convention on the Political Rights of Women, Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Slavery Convention of 1926 as amended, Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery ...etc

The Ogaden Human Rights Committee (OHRC), which monitored closely the human rights situation in the Ogaden for the last thirteen years, confirms the deterioration of the human rights situation in the region on a daily basis.

Therefore, the OHRC believes that the Ethiopian government's accession to the treaties was merely intended to mislead the international community, in order to avoid international public censure over its human rights record, and also to get more aid from donor countries, which demand the improvement of human rights situation in the Third World Countries which receive their aid.

In the Ogaden, summary executions, torture of detainees to death, gang raping of women, child molestation, arbitrary detentions without charges or trial, looting and illegal confiscation of property are commonplace, and are daily practiced by the Ethiopian army and security forces with impunity.

For enquiries contact: 41 79 468 2342

E-mail: ohrc@ogadenrights.org / samsulub@hotmail.com

www.ogadenrights.org

Note

Picture: From Ogadeni Manifestations in Europe