Ethiopia’s Hodgepodge Response Unacceptable

Ogaden Online Editorial
Nov 22, 2005

It is not strange to hear that the Addis Ababa regime has finally concocted a plausible response to provide their version of the extrajudicial massacres that recently took place in the town of Qabri Dahar (Kebri Dehar). Instead of blatantly denying, as is usual for the militia led EPRDF regime in Addis Ababa, that the massacres took place as reported by several media outlets including Reuters, BBC and Ogaden Online, it, the ministry of information, attempted to portray these extrajudicial killings as non-events by describing them, the killings, as an attempted jail break which also happens throughout the world. It is true that jail break attempts do take place in many parts of the world. However none ends up in a bloodbath of an entire town such as what happened in Qabri Dahar. What took place there as recounted by plethora of eye witnesses is nothing short of a massacre of innocent civilians and we find Ethiopia’s hodgepodge response to these extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians unacceptable.

The response from the information ministry raises more questions than it answers. It, the response, did not address the number of people killed and the manner and reasons as to why they were killed. It did not even try to give a figure of how many innocent civilians were harmed by this so-called ‘escape bid’. It is interesting that the death of two wardens were mentioned yet there was no count as to the number of people killed by the marauding militias that went to the town center and started shooting people on sight regardless of whether they were civilians or ‘prisoners’. The misinformation spouted by Ethiopia’s ministry of information should have provided details and specifics as to what happened to the ‘prisoners’. Were they all killed or recaptured???

It not knew for Tigray militias who control Ogadenia to kill innocent civilians for no reason. Countless such killings have been documented throughout Ogadenia. The most prominent and brutal of such killings is the recent Shilabo massacre of innocent civilians whose crime was to listen to the BBC Somali radio in public. Is it not an irony that a militia that claims to stand for the ideals of democracy and the respect of the rule of law, justifies mass murder as ‘[an] incident [that] is simply one that can happen any time and at any place and it has nothing to do with either the prevailing current situation or any issue of security in general…’?

Since Ethiopia did acknowledge that an ‘escape bid’ took place in Qabri Dahar but did not deny or confirm the fatalities caused by this incident, it is plausible to argue that the reported massacres took place in Qabri Dahar. Since many of the dead prisoners were prisoners of war and the Geneva Convention applies, we ask the world community led by the International Community of the Red Cross to investigate this further. It is reported that the victims of the massacre have been buried in a mass grave outside the town and as such this mass grave will not be difficult to find. The hodgepodge response given by Ethiopia’s ministry of information should be considered as the propaganda it is and the world community should bring to justice those behind these extrajudicial killings.


editorial@ogaden.com
Nov 22, 2005

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