Mereja.Forum

[AbyssiniaLady]

December 13th, will mark the sixteenth year anniversary of the beginning of three days of killing and destruction in Gambella, Ethiopia that was carried out by TPLF/EPRDF national security forces, backed up by Amhara and Tigrayan thugs they had armed with machetes.


The Anuak people were targeted, especially leaders and those who were against the TPLF political repression and opposed to the federal government plans to explore oil on their indigenous land without following the legal process as set up in the Ethiopian Constitution or as required in international law regarding indigenous peoples’ rights. There was also a long-term plan to exploit the abundant fertile land and untapped natural resources.

In less than three days, 424 Anuak were killed. The Anuak continued to be targeted for nearly three years. By that time, over two thousand had been killed and many more human rights atrocities committed, including being jailed, tortured and driven by the thousands to seek refuge in neighboring countries like South Sudan and Kenya. The limited infrastructure in Gambella was largely destroyed, equipment and supplies were pilfered from clinics and schools, and homes, crops and granaries were burned.

At the time, few Ethiopians heard about it. Under some international pressure, former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi opened an investigation, but the results were a whitewash, including minimizing the numbers that lost their lives. The report basically blamed eleven soldiers in the national defense forces. Subsequent investigations by Genocide Watch determined that the killing came out of an actual plan, Operation Sunny Mountain, meant “to teach the Anuak a lesson” regarding their resistance to the exploration of oil project and other government plans to exploit the region for their own, not national, interests. According to the report, the plan began in the top offices of the government. Human Rights Watch and others completed a number of additional reports.

[AbyssiniaLady]

Testimonies.

About 500 uniformed soldiers and backed up by Amhara and Tigrayan thugs they had armed with machetes marched into the town. They knocked on doors or pushed them down and pulled out all the men and the boys. Then they beat them on the street and told them to run. When they ran, they shot them. They killed my boy. He was a driver and they shot him in his car. I hid in the bush and I saw them beating people, shooting people, and burning houses. We collected 403 bodies. They are in a mass grave.

Emmanuel Okwier Oletho, a teenage agriculture student in Gambella who has a sister in Minnesota, was at home at around noon on December 13. His father, Okwier Oletho, the pastor at the Assembly of God Chuch, was one of Gambella’s most prominent figures. Here is Emmanuel’s eyewitness account of that day


A lot of Highlanders came, followed by Ethiopian government soldiers. My Pop opened the window and he said ‘I’m a pastor, why are you looking for me?’ They said ‘We are searching for you. You are the one we are looking for.’ He said ‘Okay, let me finish my prayer.’ At that time the house was starting to burn because they threw two bombs into the house. The furniture was burning

When he finished he ran out the window. They pursued after him and killed him with an axe. There were three soldiers in uniform. One guy who had come to visit my Dad, they shot him in the back. When he fell down they poured gas on him and they burned him. The guy was absolutely roasted.

“Two members of the choir were praying and the soldiers said, ‘We are going to blow up the church.’ Then when the choir members were running out of the church, the soldiers shot them in the back.

“My cousin, they shot him in the face. He was a little guy. He was really angry when he realized that his father was killed. So he came out the house really angry, and when he came out they shot him the face.

“The military used guns, the Highlanders uses machetes, spears, and axes. The Highlanders were our neighbors. We used to even share coffee together. I can’t explain it. It really hurts for me even to say it. They cut you just like a tree. A person you used to live with, they killed you like a dog. It’s unbelievable.”

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“The eyewitness Anuak accounts have been corroborated by independent investigations made by humanitarian groups including Genocide Watch in Washington, DC., and the World Organization Against Torture, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Amnesty International and the governments of the U.S., the European Union, Canada have all called on the Ethiopian government to immediately investigate the reports.

"The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Defense Front and highland Ethiopian civilians [have] initiated a campaign of massacres, repression, and mass rape deliberately targeting the indigenous Anuak minority," Genocide Watch wrote in its February 2004 report, following a research team visit to Pochalla. ‘A severe escalation of violence [has] the potential to provoke a full-scale international military confrontation if not immediately checked.’