Aljazeera:Ogaden Somalis file Ethiopia ICC complaint

[EEGA9]

Ogaden Somalis file Ethiopia ICC complaint



Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The Ogaden Somali Community in South Africa has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC), urging an investigation into the actions of the Ethiopian government against the Ogaden people.

In a statement released on Tuesday on behalf of the community, a South African media advocacy group, Media Review Network, called on ICC authorities to probe complaints of alleged crimes in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.

The crimes include extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, rape, torture, disappearances, the destruction of livelihood, the burning of villages and the destroying of life stock, the statement said.

"South Africa is the best place in Africa to file this complaint, especially in terms of law and and human respect; we believe that South Africans still remember what they underwent during Apartheid, just as how we are under minority rule in our region," Mohamed Fadel Abdullahi, a Somali Ogaden activist based in Johannesburg, told Al Jazeera.

The complaint, comprising 700 pages of evidence, was also lodged with the director of public prosecutions.

'Open justice system'



Abdullahi said that the Somali Ogaden community would "not only bring more awareness of the injustice taking place in the region, but bring those offenders to justice, and help us stop the genocide and crimes against humanity in Ogaden".

"South Africa has an open justice system which allows us to exercise our right to search for international justice," he said.

The Somali-speaking Ogaden region in eastern Ethiopia, bordering Kenya, Djibouti and Somalia, is considered the principle source of tension between Ethiopia and Somalia.

While the region legally belongs to Ethiopia, the inhabitants are primarily ethnic Somali. The Ogaden region has been a site of struggle and separatist activity ever since Ethiopia gained the territory in 1954.

Somalia's descent into civil war in 1991 gave birth to a second wave of armed resistance from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which was formed in 1984.

Since 2007, thousands have been been killed, many of whom have been civilians, as Ethiopian armed forces battled the ONLF.

With the discovery of oil, the region's strategic and economic value has only increased.

'Enormously appalling'

The Ogaden community alleges that the Ethiopian army forcefully displaced Ogaden civilians, cleared large swathes of land and discouraged civilians from returning to the area by confiscating their livestock as they embarked on oil expeditions.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Somali journalist based in Nairobi told Al Jazeera that the people in the region had "been living under oppression and a bloody regime".

"Many of Ogadenian descent are in prison, tortured and even sentenced to death. Their plight is enormously appalling.

"There is a semi-autonomous government in place that is fully backed by the Ethiopian government. But, sadly, the vast majority of Ogadens - mainly diasporas - regard this government as a puppet to the regime and [is] quite unpopular," he said.

The press statement, released on Tuesday, alleges that around 20,000 Ogaden citizens are now languishing in 200 different jails, most of them in unknown Ethiopian military detention camps.

The group further claims that the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been allowed access to prisons holding Ogaden prisoners.

"The Ethiopian authorities use torture, rape and disappearances as a weapon of war. Women are routinely raped while in custody or at home, even sometimes in front of their husbands or relatives. Rape and torture are used simultaneously in prisons and pregnancies are very common," the statement read.

Human rights groups have raised concerns about alleged abuses in Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch reported last month that hundreds in the country had been arbitrarily arrested and detained during 2011 and remained at risk of torture and ill-treatment.

"Human Rights Watch continues to receive credible reports of arbitrary detention and serious abuses of civilians alleged to be members or supporters of ONLF. These civilians were being held in detention facilities in Ethiopia’s Somali region," it said in its 2012 world report.

Journalists sentenced

According to the human rights group Amnesty International, reports of severe human rights violations being committed by the Ethiopian government troops and allied armed groups continue to emerge from the Somali region. Access to the region is also significantly restricted by the Ethiopian government.


Ogaden Somalis accuse Ethiopian forces of torture and disappearances [Courtesy Mohamed Fadel Abdullahi]
In December 2011, two Swedish journalists were found guilty and handed two 11-year-jail terms for charges of "supporting terrorism" and violating Ethiopian territorial and political sovereignty after they entered the Ogaden region clandestinely and met with the ONLF rebel group.

An Ethiopian court ruled that Swedish journalists Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye should serve "rigorous imprisonment", and said the verdict "should satisfy the goal of peace and security", the AFP news agency reported.

"There is nothing to suggest that the two men entered Ethiopia with any intention other than conducting their legitimate work as journalists. The government chooses to interpret meeting with the ONLF as support of that group and therefore a terrorist act," Claire Beston, Amnesty International’s Ethiopia researcher, said.

"Amnesty International believes there is no evidence that the men were supporting the objectives of the ONLF, or were guilty of any criminal wrongdoing. We believe that these men are prisoners of conscience, prosecuted because of their legitimate work," she added.

Three Ethiopian journalists are also currently facing trial on terrorism offences, and the human rights group believes that they are also being prosecuted for their legitimate work.

"This wave of arrests and prosecutions constitutes an assault on freedom of expression by a government determined to gag the reporting of stories it doesn’t want told," Beston said.

Source: Al Jazeera

[EEGA9]

“Ogaden refugees’ legal claims may put SA on the spot”




South Africa’s Ogaden refugees have requested the police, the prosecuting authority and the International Criminal Court to investigate damning allegations of human rights abuses against the Ethiopian government. The allegations are not new, but the legal action may force South African officials to take a more proactive stance against human rights abuses in Africa. By KHADIJA PATEL

Caught in the crossfire between rebels of the outlawed Ogaden National Liberation Front and Ethiopian troops, the Ogaden community in western Ethiopia live in constant fear for their lives, their livelihoods and their homes. Those lucky enough to have made it out of the Ogaden list extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, rape, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of livelihoods and the obliteration of entire villages among the litany of crimes, they say, the Ethiopian armed forces commit with impunity.

The Ethiopian government, a great beneficiary of international aid is also alleged to have diverted food aid from intended beneficiaries suffering from a severe drought in the Ogaden in 2009. Researchers say people in the region live a virtual stone-age existence, eking out what life and living they are allowed in one of the most poorly developed territories in Ethiopia.

For over 100 years, the Ogaden, Ethiopia’s Somali region, has been a locus of conflict. Although geographically within Ethiopia, the Ogaden’s ethnic Somali population remains culturally and economically intertwined with neighbouring Somalia. Conflicts outside of Ethiopia itself have invariably spilt over into the Ogaden, but it was only in April 2007 that international attention was apportioned to the conflict after a low-intensity skirmish between the Ethiopian government and an insurgency movement called the Ogaden National Liberation Front made international news. The rebels attacked an oil site in Somali regional state, in southeast Ethiopia, capturing and killing more than 70 Chinese and Ethiopian oil workers as well as scores of Ethiopian soldiers. The response from the Ethiopian government was brutal.

Shukri Husen Abdi, an Ogaden refugee in Johannesburg says, “I cannot find the words to explain what happened to me.” Minutes earlier, tears streamed down Abdi’s face as she listened to her compatriot Ardo Abdulahi Mahomed tell a harrowing tale of displacement, detention and torture at the hands of the Ethiopian armed forces. Mahomed remains cold, unmoved by her own harrowing words.

She betrays none of the raw emotion that has overtaken Abdi. Instead, I sense exhaustion within her. It is as though she has tired of feeling.

As she recounts the rapes she suffered during military detention, I struggle to keep eye contact with her. My body is still fumbling for an adequate response. As I scribble in my notebook, she goes on to speak about the other forms of torture meted out to her. After months in detention she escaped the prison, the Ogaden and the cruel life she once knew. She had long ago lost track of her family, her children were all missing, or dead, her village was no more. She travelled through six countries until she arrived in South Africa. Now, she says, she hopes the legal action taken against the Ethiopian government by her community will help her find her children.

Later on, a Somali journalist would ask the assembled members of the Ogaden community and their legal representation if they thought it was realistic to charge senior Ethiopian officials with a litany of crimes, all the way from South Africa. Afzal Abba, attorney for the Ogaden community in South Africa, offered a sobering response, “The purpose of this is to stop the atrocities”.

There is scant hope left for victims like these women, but the international legal system has offered them an avenue of redress.
Abba lodged a whopping 700-page complaint against the Ethiopian government with the commissioner of police, the head of the directorate of priority crimes investigation unit and the director of public prosecutions. Abba says the complaint details “incontrovertible evidence” of human rights abuses and war crimes on the part of the Ethiopian government. It is unclear if Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has been implicated in the complaint as names of alleged perpetrators have been withheld while the investigation continues.

In legalese the complaint has five principal aims:

1. Inform the South African police services and the prosecuting authority, as well as the International Criminal Court that an international crime has been committed in Ogaden including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and that these crimes continue to be committed.

2. Request the South African authorities to exercise jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute the offenders under the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Act 27 of 2002 if the offender is found within South Africa.

3. Request the South African authorities to seek to obtain the presence of an offender by extradition.

4. Inform and request the South African prosecuting authority that if they are unable to exercise jurisdiction because of absence of an offender, as party to the Rome Statute they are legally obliged to refer the complaint to the ICC.

5. To request the ICC prosecutor to initiate an investigation proprio motu- under Article 15 of the Rome Statute of the ICC into war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Hennie Strydom, an international law expert at the University of Johannesburg, says the legal action brought against the Ethiopian government will force the South African government to confront allegations of Ethiopian human rights abuses more stringently. Spokesman for South Africa’s department of international relations and co-operation (Dirco), Clayson Monyela, however, declined to comment on the complaint, saying it amounted to an internal dispute among Ethiopians.

The press statement, released on Tuesday, alleges that about 20,000 Ogaden citizens are now languishing in 200 different jails, most of them in unknown Ethiopian military detention camps. While civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces, there were numerous instances in which elements within those forces acted independently of government authority. And, while serious allegations of human rights abuses and indeed even war crimes certainly do exist, the Ogaden rebel insurgency, the ONLF, has been similarly culpable.

Leslie Lefkow, deputy director of the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch told Daily Maverick, “In 2008 Human Rights Watch published a major report describing serious abuses by both sides – the Ethiopian government and the ONLF – in the region. Unfortunately, since the publication of the report, the government has effectively closed access to the region for any independent investigators, including the media. While there has been a general clampdown on the independent media, the political opposition and civil society in Ethiopia, the restrictions on access to the Ogaden area have been particularly harsh.”

Lisa Thomas, programme coordinator at the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation that has also taken up the plight of the Ogaden people says, “It is a very tragic situation. Abuse is ongoing and crucially the afflicted people are cut off from the international community and assistance.
“The region is cut off,” Thomas stresses. “Aid agencies and independent human rights organisations have no access to the Ogaden.”

When I first met a refugee from the Ogaden in South Africa, a young, aspiring journalist at the University of Johannesburg, I was astounded at the fierceness of his resolve to return to the Ogaden to tell the stories of the Ogaden. “If I have to die telling the story, then I will die. I am ready to,” he said. The Ogaden has been cut off from the outside world, its stories have been contained in the tales of those who make it out of the Ogaden. There is the drive to break those barriers to show the world the uglier face of Meles Zenawi’s legacy in Ethiopia.

Several attempts to reach Ethiopian government spokesman Bereket Simon for comment were unsuccessful, but Mursan Oumer, another Ethiopian government communication affairs officer, told Al Jazeera he was not aware of the complaints lodged in South Africa.

The Ethiopian government’s has denied reports of abuses in 2007, disparage sources and actively restrict or control access to the region by journalists, human rights groups and aid organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Medecins sans Frontiers.

When confronted with the tales of horror from the Ogaden, the Ethiopian government has been dismissive. Instead, it has claimed, particularly to an international audience, that insecurity in the region is the work of Eritrean-backed ‘terrorists’ who seek to destabilise Ethiopia. There is little doubt that the political dynamics within the Ogaden are inextricably entwined with regional dynamics. They are certainly influenced by the continuing hostility between Eritrea and Ethiopia as well as the ever-unfolding failure of Somalia. Human Rights Watch believes, “The application of terrorist rhetoric to the internal conflict with the ONLF, however, appears designed mainly to attract support from the US as part of the ‘war on terror’.”

It is in the name of fighting terror that Ethiopia enacted the restrictive Anti-Terrorism Proclamation in 2009. So far, it has been used to justify arrests of both journalists and members of the political opposition. In June 2011 the Ethiopian House of Federations officially proscribed two armed groups – the ONLF and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and one opposition party, Ginbot 7 – labeling them terrorist organisations. The ONLF is certainly not blameless, but invoking this discourse of national defence against terror offers sham accountability from the Ethiopian armed forces operating in the Ogaden.

Last Wednesday Zenawi lashed out at human rights and press freedom groups which had criticised implementation of Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law. He insisted the law was not being misused to further political ends. He cited the example of two Swedish journalists who were arrested in the company of ONLF rebels late last year in the Ogaden. The journalists had sneaked into the region to investigate reports of human rights abuses. They were found guilty of supporting terrorism and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

“The government gave a small statement that such people have been put [in] prison,” Zenawi said. “The next day the campaign was launched, ‘Free press, innocent people with no issue at all!’. They just give pronouncements before the case has gone to court, before evidence has been heard. The pronouncement was there; the government is the criminal and the people are innocent.”

This time as legal action against Zenawi’s government is pursued in South Africa and The Hague, Zenawi may well find himself and his government criminalised by a hapless people caught in an unrelenting crossfire. DM

[eliteSomali]

Like usual this will fall on deaf ears. I think the only chance we have at freedom lies with ONLF. They need to start getting more aggressive. All in or all out.

[udun]

Good move. It is part of the pressure that should be kept on Ethiopian savages. They can't confront the OLNF, so they are taking their desperations on the innocent civilian population. The countries that fund the Ethiopian military also share part of the blame.

[Faranacab]

Like usual this will fall on deaf ears. I think the only chance we have at freedom lies with ONLF. They need to start getting more aggressive. All in or all out.

I second on that!

[EEGA9]

Political, diplomatic and military pressure should all be applied accordingly in-order to maintain pressure on the Ethiopians.This has already caused a stir between South Africa and the Meles regime, Similar complaints which have been lodged against the Ethiopian regime have even lead to visa rejections in the case of the former Kilil leader Daud Axmaar.

[Adali]

Al Jazeera is not doing enough in my opinion, there is much need for coverage by big news outlets, CNN, BBC, Euronews, RT, Al-Jazeera all these are for the most part ignoring the Ogaden issue, but they will come around one by one, the important thing for ONLF is to keep up the pressure, Melez will mess up and simple small things like reporters and NGO workers being held in custody can bring much needed media attention to the whole Ogaden region.