NEW YORK (Halbeeg News) – Human Rights Watch on Monday has urged the government of Ethiopia to commit to an in-depth, independent fact-finding mission into many years of rights abuses and violations of the laws of war in eastern Ethiopia’s Somali region.
In statement, the agency urged Ethiopia comduct investigations into the responsibility of senior Somali region officials, including the former regional president, Abdi Mohamoud Omar, and the current head of the region’s paramilitary Liyu police force, Abdirahman Abdillahi Burale.
The agency accused a youth loyal to the former leader of the region Abdi Mohamoud Omar and Liyu police of carrying out attacks and burning properties in Jigjiga town early this month.
“To break with the past, Ethiopia’s government needs to ensure justice for more than a decade of horrific abuses in the Somali region,” said Maria Burnett, East and Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s reform agenda should include that those responsible for serious human rights violations, however powerful, no longer avoid justice.”
The Somali region, a strategically important border area between Somalia and Ethiopia, has been the site of over a decade of widespread abuses against civilians, both by the Ethiopian army and by the Liyu police force, according to Human Rights Watch.
Scrutiny of developments in the region has been severely limited since 2007. Access for journalists, aid organizations, human rights groups, and other independent monitors is restricted.
The abuses have been particularly egregious since 2007, when armed conflict between the insurgent Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and Ethiopia’s Defense Force escalated.
Ethiopian authorities created the Liyu (“special” in Amharic) police, which by 2008 had become a prominent counterinsurgency force reporting to Abdi Illey, the regional security chief at that time, who went on to serve as the regional president for eight years.
In a 2008 report, Human Rights Watch found that Ethiopian security forces and the insurgent group had committed war crimes between mid-2007 and early 2008, and that the Ethiopian armed forces were responsible for crimes against humanity based on the patterns of executions, torture, rape, and forced displacement documented.
Human Rights Watch found that Ethiopian troops forcibly displaced entire rural communities, destroyed and burned dozens of villages, and summarily executed more than 150 people, some publicly to terrorize the local community.
Security forces also unlawfully detained hundreds of civilians, many of whom were tortured, beaten, raped, or otherwise sexually abused.
In 2008, Ethiopia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry initiated an inquiry in response to the Human Rights Watch report, but that exercise lacked both credibility and independence and primarily whitewashed the truth about the government’s role.
While the military has in recent years taken a less active role in the region, the agency said the Liyu Police force, under Abdi’s control, has pursued an abusive counter-insurgency campaign against suspected ONLF sympathizers.
The force has over the last decade frequently been implicated in extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and violence against people in the Somali region, as well as in retaliatory attacks against local communities.
In a July 2018 report, Human Rights Watch documented brutal torture of prisoners in the region’s central prison – known as Jail Ogaden – which is largely controlled by the Liyu police.
Former prisoners described unending abuse and torture, with no access to adequate medical care, family, lawyers, or even, at times, food. Officials credibly implicated in serious violations against prisoners, regardless of rank, should be investigated and those responsible should face criminal charges, Human Rights Watch said.
The government has also carried out reprisals against those speaking out about abuses in the region. In 2016, in one example, the Ethiopian government arrested and detained dozens of relatives of Ethiopians who participated in a Melbourne, Australia protest and held some for months as punishment.
“An in-depth, independent fact-finding mission into rights abuses and violations of the laws of war in eastern Ethiopia’s Somali region would be an important part of Abiy’s ongoing reform agenda,” Human Rights Watch said.
Ethiopia’s international partners, looking to support the many ongoing reforms, should offer technical assistance to such an effort. To help ensure its credibility, the investigation should publish detailed findings and draw on international expertise.
“The federal government should not sweep abuses of such a scale and nature under the carpet in the name of political expediency,” Burnett said. “Now is the time for the federal government’s long involvement and complicity in widespread abuses in the Somali region to end and for accountability to begin.”
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