Open Letter to World Bank, Stop Financing Displacement and Killing

by Tedla Asfaw

I am from Ethiopia and worked in Ethiopia from 1980 to 1985 in the lower Awash Valley irrigation project. In fact I did my masters on how to grow Maize in that part of Ethiopia where people can feed themselves. The cash crop cotton the communist regime cultivated never improved the life of the Afar people.

In the same token the dictatorship in Ethiopia is displacing indigenous people in Western part of Ethiopia in Gambella and Beni Shanguel and sold more than 3 million hectares of land for foreigners to produce food for their own people. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Nations claim securing land to feed their people for future. More than 70,000 Annuaks have already been forced from their land and another 150,000 will be displaced in the coming few years.

All this displacement is financed by World Bank. The Ethiopian tribal junta can not do this displacement without the support of USA/UK financing it at all levels including paying salary for those who are chasing the people from their traditional land. Annuaks are now an endangered species. Unfortunately, those who went to visit their homeland did not escape death.

The killing of Omot Ojulu Odol a 33 year old Ethiopian American from Gambella on March 2, 2013 with other five people including 11 year old child is to silence the Annuak people. The USA Ambassador in Ethiopia might try to buy the claim made by the tribal regime of Ethiopia that Omot Ojulu Odol is a “terrorist” and ignore his death as such. The USA forensic team will surely will do its job to tell us the circumstance of his death. It was Search to Kill to terrorize the people of Gambella and “guarantee security” and “safety” for foreign land buyers and tribal Land Lords from the Diaspora!

The regime propagandists are putting the driver license of Omot on their websites to celebrate his death. The Annuaks have been killed and terrorized for more than a decade now. Thousands were killed to clear their land to make money for the tribal regime in Ethiopia. For that mission it bought few Annuaks from the region. The good thing is many brave Annuaks abandon the regime to tell the true story of what has been happening in Gambella.

The Police Chief of Gambella is now in jail for condemning the killing of six Innocent people. If world bank has a courage it should send its representative and talk to the police chief jailed in Gambella. The young Annuaks are targeted for saying No to Taking Away of their land. If World bank denied loan for Cambodia in Summer of 2011 for displacing its people why should it be different for Ethiopia in 2013 ?

The Human Rights Watch is just asking that for the Bank to do its internal investigation. People are displaced and are dying, the World Bank is responsible for all that because it is paying for those who are doing this dirty job. The Annuaks have no choice but fight to defend their livelihood from homegrown and foreign vultures.