Do not waste a single moment in reading all sorts of boring descriptions of the European immoral dwarfs’ deliberations about an eventual European Constitution; let the dead bury their own dead.
Do not spend time reading articles on Zimbabwe, as they concern a limited number of white people who saw their riches reduced.
Do not go through the endless and boring narrations about climate disasters and avian flu that some mysterious force wants recently to have them exceedingly highlighted. Che sera sera! Remember the old song? Whatever will be, will be; the future’s not ours to see…..
If you still have some human feelings left within your heart, read more about Ogaden.
Tyrannical Abyssinia’s frontier province, Ogaden was never asked to join the dysfunctional Abyssinian tyranny that turned to become an anachronistic Communist regime that lasted for almost two decades, before the rise of Africa’s Hitler, Meles Zenawi, in 1991.
Due to its propinquity with Somalia, and because of the irrevocable, millennia long, historical, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious bonds that link Ogaden with Somalia, tyrant Zenawi’s Abyssinia, fallaciously re-baptized as ‘Ethiopia’, faces an existential threat.
That’s why what is happening now in Ogaden goes beyond the limits of the most dreadful imagination, and tops the most horrid nightmares the Mankind has ever encountered.
The unbelievable crimes that are daily taking place in Ogaden, the hidden province of ‘Ethiopia’, must be known to every one, and every human being must react, and pressurize governments and international bodies to put an end to the most abominable tyranny of Africa.
That’s why the veil of mystery must fall, and every one in the free and democratic countries of the West must demand from the supposedly informative mass media adequate, constant and true information about the region that puts our Humanism in test.
If we accept what happens today in Ogaden, all the earth will probably very soon become a vast Ogaden.
If we accept not to know what happens in Ogaden, probably soon we will be dead, without even knowing it.
If we have a heart, today it definitely beats in one place: Ogaden.
To partly illuminate the dramatic conditions in which our African brethren live in Ogaden, I publish here integrally the Call that the Ogaden Communities outside Abyssinia addressed to various governments and NGOs, international bodies and associations last week.
Ongoing Hidden Human Rights Abuses in Ogaden
We the Ogaden Community Association of the greater Diaspora express our deep concern over the hidden horrors of the Ethiopian government’s abuse of innocent civilians in the Ogaden which is under Ethiopian occupation.
We are asking the world community to take notice of the Ethiopian regime’s actions that have unleashed a reign of terror throughout the Ogaden. The targets of these indiscriminate attacks are mainly non-combatant women and children.
Ethiopian military rule in the Ogaden that has been in existence for over a hundred years has brought with it horrors for many generations. Yet, these new offensives on civilians, with the governmental malicious tactics, are terrorizing an already demoralized and helpless population. The resulting multitude of human suffering in this unimaginable crisis is building up to be another Darfur in the making.
This military campaign the Ethiopian regime is employing includes forced mobilization of population out of their homes; they instill mass fear by using physical and verbal abuse in the open. There are numerous reports of soldiers beating up elderly men in front of their wives and children. To put it bluntly, they are raping the people of their right to live in peace. This strategy of terror is aimed at an entire people simply because of their minority status.
Over the few past weeks, the Ethiopian military increased their customary abuses, and carried out unnecessary brutal systematic offenses against defenseless Ogaden civilians. The following are documented and detailed:
- Arbitrary Arrests
- Open-ended intimidation of Community and Business leaders
- Extra-Judicial Killings
- Gang Rape of women
- Burning of entire Villages
- Severe physical and emotional torture
- Random indiscriminate open air shooting at groups of people
Even school children have not been able to escape this new. Mutilated bodies of school children have been put on display in city and town centers to instill fear in the public. Schoolteachers are also being targeted in broad daylight inside these town centers. As reported just last week, Hassan Mohamed, a well-respected teacher, was killed in an extra-judicial action without ever a reason being given. The reason behind these killings is not known, but it’s typical of the Ethiopian soldiers to summon civilians in the town centers, and use intimidation and even carryout extra-judicial killings in open-air for the public to see. This has been the case for many reported incidents happening in province of Dhagaxbuur and its environs.
Similarly, the jails in some of major cities and areas, such as Jigjiga, Dhagahbur, Qabridahare, Godey and Fiiq, are full of victims of unlawful arrests, and the resulting overcrowding in un-kept below human standards jails is further causing a health risk.
Eyewitnesses report the Ethiopian Air force carpet-bombing Abaaqaroow in Godey province, and the towns of Cayuun and Dara-salaam in Nabob Province. The reported casualties from these bombings so far number more than fifty.
Similar to Darfur, the Ogaden region is much neglected and forgotten by the Ethiopian government; there are no schools, no hospitals, no court systems, and because the area is under military rule, military justice (which is neither fair nor just) is the code of conduct. But what makes this case even more troubling is that the killings, rapes and outright terror is being conducted by the State of Ethiopia against citizens living within its sovereign borders.
For several years now, the Military leaders have not allowed journalists to go to the area and report on what is happening on the ground, a practice that is indicative of someone hiding something. On June 18, 2007, New York Time’s reporter Jeffery Gentlemen wrote an article, which has exposed the hideous barbarism of Ethiopian military actions in the Ogaden. Mr. Gentlemen himself and his news crew became victims of the very regime they were reporting on! They were arrested and detained for five days in Dhagaxbur, and were refused contact with the American Embassy.
A breathtakingly alarming new development indicates that there is now a military force of approximately over twenty thousand (20,000) soldiers enforcing a blockage on all travel in and out of villages, towns and cities. This will strain the already meager food and medicine supplies, and will restrict aid that civilians desperately need. This action puts the entire population on a fast track to starvation.
As documented in the U.S. State Departments Human Rights Report on March 2007, these abuses are evidence of concerted effort to completely disregard Human Rights.
“Human rights abuses reported during the year included: limitation on citizens' right to change their government during the most recent elections; unlawful killings, and beating, abuse, poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention, violence and societal discrimination against women and abuse of children; societal discrimination against persons with disabilities and religious and ethnic minorities.”
By its own action targeting civilians, the Ethiopian government has ceded its legitimacy to the people of Ogaden.
What is taking place in Ogaden fits to the letter both the moral and legal definition of genocide. The world needs to act now with determination to help the helpless.
You are encouraged to
research the issue
yourself.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=32376