By GRAHAM PEEBLES
Men drive animals through heavily deforested region, SNNPR, Ethiopia. Demotix/Joshua Hergesheimer. All rights reserved.
March 26, 2013 (Open Democracy)
–Industrialized farming in Ethiopia, serving business, political and
foreign multi-national elites, is far removed from the concerns of local
small-scale farmers and traditional pastoralists. Impoverishment of
hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians and their intense suffering has been
the inevitable outcome of military and corporate ‘development’ plans.
Land loyalties in Ethiopia
With the coming of industrial-size farms in Ethiopia, local people,
villagers and pastoralists (deemed irrelevant to the Government’s
economically-driven development plans) are being threatened, and
intimidated by the military; forcibly displaced and herded into camps,
their homes destroyed. Along with vast agricultural complexes, dams are
planned and constructed, water supplies re-directed to irrigate crops,
forests burnt, natural habitats destroyed. Dissenting voices are
brutally silenced – men beaten, children frightened, women raped, so too the land.
Over 80% of the 85 million population of Ethiopia live in rural areas,
in settlements and villages, and work in agriculture. Many are
small-scale farmers who, according to government figures,
farm “eight percent (about 10,000,000 ha) of the national land area”,
and traditional pastoralists who have, for generations, lived simple
lives with their culture, nature and livelihood closely entwined.
Huge tracts of agricultural land with water supplies are being leased to foreign companies for food export. The Oakland Institute (OI),
a US- based policy think-tank and leader in the field, have produced
in-depth reports on worldwide land sales stating that, between 2008 and
2011, “3,619,509 hectares (ha) were transferred to domestic investors,
state-owned enterprises and foreign companies”. This amounts to a third,
if government figures are correct, of the land farmed by Ethiopians
themselves – an area the size of a small country such as Holland.
Government genocide
Land grab (and associated water appropriation), Oxfam states,
occurs when “governments, banks or private investors buy up huge plots
of land to make equally huge profits”. Since 2008 such speculation has
vastly expanded: in 2009 alone the OI recorded that “foreign investors
acquired 60 million ha of land [worldwide] – the size of France –
through purchases or leases of land for commercial farming,” up from an
annual average, pre-2008, of 4 million ha. Three quarters of all land
deals take place in sub-Saharan Africa, in some of the most
food-insecure, economically vulnerable, politically repressive countries
in the world; precisely, some say, because of such advantageous
commercial factors.
In Ethiopia, land sales are occurring in six key areas. Oromia and
Gambella in the south, Amhara, Beneshangul, Gumuz, the Sidaama zone, or
SNNP and the Lower Omo Valley – an area of outstanding natural beauty
with acclaimed UNESCO World heritage status. The Ethiopian government’s conduct in Omo and Oromia, Genocide Watch (GW)
considers “to have already reached stage 7 [of 8], genocidal
massacres”. A statement that shocks us all, and casts shame upon the
government and indeed slumbering donor nations, who act not, who speak
not, but know well the cruel methods, which violate a plethora of human
rights laws, employed by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)
– a regime whose loyalties, it seems, rest firmly with investors,
corporations, multi-nationals and the like, and which cares little for
the people living upon the land, or indeed in the cities.
Forced from home
Conditional within land lease agreements is the requirement that the
government will clear the area of “encumbrances”, meaning indigenous
people – families, children and pastoralists, as well as cattle,
wildlife, forests, anything in fact that will interfere with the
levelling of the land, building of [foreign] workers’ accommodation,
roads and the eventual sowing of crops.
The national three-year Villagisation program, initiated in 1985, aims
to move 1.5 million people from their ancestral homes, over four states,
into large settlements. The process is well underway. As 2010 figures from Cultural Survival show,
“by February 1987, 5.7 million people (15 percent of the rural
population) had been moved into 11,000 new villages. By the end of this
year, 10 million rural inhabitants (25 percent of the population) are
expected to be villagized in 12 of Ethiopia’s 13 provinces.” Government
propaganda justifying the policy states these new village centres will,
“facilitate the provision of human social services by concentrating
scattered homesteaders into central communities”, and facilitate
“agrarian socialism” – hence the leasing of mega chunks of land to
multi-national corporations, without the participation of local people,
whose land is being taken from them: a totalitarian version of socialism
then.
Contrary to federal and international law, which requires the free,
informed and prior consent of the people, this mass movement is being
carried on without consultation or compensation, despite official claims
contradicting this reality.Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports (28/08/12) how
“Villagers who have been unwilling to move, or who refuse to mobilise
others to do so, have been arrested and mistreated by the soldiers.” The
OI have warned that once forcibly emptied, villages are destroyed and
cattle killed or confiscated by government troops. Along with
pastoralists, who number around 300,000 in Gambella alone, villagers are
herded, sometimes literally, always metaphorically, at the end of a
rifle, into Villagisation camps. Despite Government promises to “provide
basic resources and infrastructure, the new villages”, HRW found “have
inadequate food, agricultural support, and health and education
facilities”.
Resistance to moving is met with abuse and violence. HRW’s detailed report “Waiting here for Death”,
found that in Gambella, where the government plans to ‘relocate’
225,000 people, “soldiers frequently beat or arrested individuals who
questioned the motives of the program or refuse to move to the new
villages [Villagizations]. Community leaders and young men are targeted
[scores are arrested without due process]. There have also been credible
allegations of rape and sexual assault by government soldiers. Fear and
intimidation was widespread.” In a disturbing account of life within
and without the Villagization centres, the OI discovered, most
disturbingly, that pastoralists (whose lifestyle and nature is to
wander) if “encountered [by the military] outside of villages are told
to relocate to the villages immediately”. Such restrictions conjure
images of prison life rather than a peaceful, communal village, and
contradict the government’s message of willing relocation, good
community relations, participation and social harmony.
A culture of fear
Such abuse is not limited to Gambella – in the Lower Omo region, where huge, state-owned sugar plantations and the massive Gibe III Dam project are
being developed, dissenting voices are, the OI report, subjected to
“beatings, abuse and general intimidation”, in addition to
extra-judicial prison sentencing.
Children run out to the road, SNNPR, Ethiopia. Demotix/Joshua Hergesheimer. All rights reserved.
“Fear and intimidation” is endemic, not just in areas associated with
land sales, but throughout the country; suppression is common and
freedom of expression greatly restricted. The media – TV, radio, press
as well as print companies, are state-owned, as is the sole
telecommunication company, restricting access to the internet, which is
monitored. The judiciary is simply an extension of government, lacking
credible independence, the political opposition marginalised and
completely ineffective.
International media are frowned upon and, in
some areas (e.g. Ogaden) completely banned, such are the paranoid
actions of the ruling EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic
Front), which, it would seem, has much to hide.
Resentment and anger simmers among many displaced and oppressed
villagers. In April 2012 a group of men attacked the Saudi Star compound
in Gambella and killed four employees. The men were quickly labelled
‘rebels’ and a military manhunt was instigated. The criminal act should
be treated as such and the men brought to justice, however government
forces have reacted with unwarranted, unjustifiable violence and
aggression towards innocent civilians, as reported by HRW (28/08/12):
“Ethiopian soldiers went house to house… arbitrarily arresting and
beating young men and raping female relatives of suspects”. Any excuse,
it seems, to unleash state violence, perpetrated by a regime that
mistrusts even its own people. After the attack on Saudi Star, a company
that has leased some 10,000 ha of prime Gambella land, the Ethiopian
military accused four Anuak guards on duty at the time, of involvement
in the attack and carried out extra-judicial killings (murder) on them
all. Local villagers “alleged they were tortured”, and “women and girls
raped either in their homes or in detention” (ibid). Such illegal acts
perpetrated by the Ethiopian State fall well within the definition of
terrorism declared by the US military to be “the calculated use of
unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear;
intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the
pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or
ideological.”
Terrifying tactics employed by the military in the search for
information about ‘”the rebels” – a meaningless term evoking negative
stereotypes, used alongside the ‘T’ word (terrorist) to demonise anyone
who disagrees with inequitable government policies and justify all
violent measures by the benevolent regime – such is the perverse and
dangerous use of language, facilitated by the international mainstream
media that has infiltrated our imaginations.
The myth of development
Traditional ‘cow jumping’ event, a pre-marriage rite of passage,
Hamar territory, Turmi, Ethiopia. Demotix/Frank Janssens. All rights
reserved.</>
The government proclaims land sales are part of a strategic, long-term
approach to agricultural reforms and economic development, that foreign
investment will fund infrastructure projects, create employment
opportunities, help to eradicate hunger and poverty and benefit the
community, local and national. The term “development” is itself an
interesting one: distorted, linked and commonly limited almost
exclusively to economic targets, meaning growth of GDP, established
principally by the World Bank, whose policies and practices in relation
to land sales, the OI discovered, “have glossed over critical issues
such as human rights, food security and human dignity for local
populations”, and its philanthropic sister, the International Monetary
Fund. Meanwhile market fundamentalism drives the exported (one size fits
all) policies, of both ideologically entrenched organisations, that
promote models of development seeking to fulfill corporate interests
first, last and at every stage in between.
Defined in such limited ways, Ethiopia, having somehow achieved
impressive GDP growth figures since 2004 (with a dizzy 9.8%, average,
similar to that of India), would seem to be in the premiership of
development. Inflation, though, sits at 30% and, whilst unemployment in
urban areas has dropped to around 20%, over a quarter of young people
aged 18-24 remain out of work; high unemployment in urban areas means
young women are often forced into commercial sex work or domestic
servitude.
Statistics compiled
by The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), provide a broader,
less GDP-rosy picture of the country. They place Ethiopia 174th (from
187 nations) on the Human development index (HDI), with average life
expectancy of 59 years and 40% of people living in poverty (on less than
$1.25 a day). The 2012 Global Hunger Index makes Ethiopia the 5th hungriest country in the world (IFPRI),
with between 12 and 15 million people a year relying on food aid to
keep them alive. What growth there is benefits the rich, privileged
minority. There is a growing divide between the 99.9% and the small
number of wealthy Ethiopians – who, coincidentally, are mainly members
of the ruling party – engendering a concentration of wealth converging
with political elitism; as the Inter Press Service (IPS) 22/08/12 reports,
“development has yet to reach the vast majority of the country’s
population. Instead, much of this wealth – and political power – has
been retained by the ruling party and, particularly, by the tiny
Tigrayan minority community to which [former Prime Minister] Meles
belonged.”
What’s needed: “protect, respect and remedy”
Protagonists laying claim to the all-inclusive healing powers of
agriculture and agro-industrial projects, contradict, the OI states,
“the basic facts and evidence showing growing impoverishment experienced
on the ground”. What about the bumper benefits promised, particularly
the numerous employment opportunities? It turns out industrialised
farming is highly mechanised and offers few jobs; overseas companies are
not concerned with providing employment for local people and care
little for their well-being, making good bed mates for the ruling party.
They bring the workers they need, and are allowed to do so by the
Ethiopian government, which places no constraints on their operations.
Such shameful indifference contravenes the letter and spirit of the
United Nations (UN) “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework. Endorsed by
the UN Human Rights Council on
June 16, 2011, the guiding principles outlined, “provide an
authoritative global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of
adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity.”
Corporations have a duty under the framework to “prevent or mitigate
adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their
operations…even if they have not contributed to their impacts.” Although
not legally enforceable, these principles of decency offer recourse to
human rights organisations and community groups, and should be morally
binding for multinationals, whose profit-driven activities in Ethiopia,
facilitated by a brutal regime that ignores fundamental human rights,
are causing intense suffering to hundreds of thousands of indigenous
people.
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