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By Abdullahi Hassan
Sept. 25th 2007
‘The struggle of the Somali
people against Ethiopian garrison rule is
better understood as an anti-colonial war –
no less intense and no less justified than
the struggle of Mozambique and Angola
against Portugal or the struggle of the
people of Namibia against South Africa.’
Editorial, New Internationalist, No 62
(Oxford & Toronto) April 1978
The shocking
and repressive Ogaden situation has reached
astounding level finally compelling the
United Nations (U.N.) to hastily dispatch a
fact-finding mission to the region to
inquire and determine the gravity of the
situation.
The long-running Ogaden conflict has lately
taken a more sinister turn following the
TPLF led Ethiopian regime’s recent military
campaign against the Ogaden National
Liberation Forces (ONLF), an indigenous
freedom movement fighting for national
independence from Ethiopia. But the regimes
brutal military drill had instead cost
hundreds of civilian lives, drawing an
outrage from the international community.
The truth that was revealed about what is
happening in Ogaden is indeed very shocking.
The Human Rights Watch, foreign media
correspondents and other international aid
agencies who visited the area had all
reported egregious human rights violations
committed by Meles Zenawi’s military forces.
This was also confirmed by the local human
rights Organizations; and the residents who
bear the full brunt of the military
onslaught.
Massive killings, torture, sexual
humiliation and unprecedented mayhem of
blowing up entire villages, mainly in the
rural areas where 2/3 of the population are
living, had been widely reported. Diseases
and hunger now stalks these internally
displaced civilians who lost most, if not
all of their livelihoods. They are living as
refugees in their own Country and are crying
out for help.
But it is really sad that despite being in a
dire situation the international community
can hardly reach them with any help because
of the TPLF regime’s refusal to allow in the
humanitarian aid agencies in the region. Out
of humanity, the agencies had responded to
avert a man-made humanitarian disaster which
they saw it taking place before their own
eyes, but found out that they can do little
about it due to the Addis Ababa regime’s
intransigence.
Even those who were present in the region
for years like the (ICRC) and the Ogaden
Welfare and Development Association (OWDA),
who both contributed in an extraordinary
measure to the relief efforts of the area,
were forced to leave and close down
respectively. And they did so, with a heavy
heart, lest they become easy target for the
marauding TPLF militia. Unfortunately,
within few days, OWDA had fallen victim in
the cause of its humanitarian duty. Its head
together with two of his senior staffs were
assassinated in a humiliating manner while
on their way with medical kits to a cholera
hit area. Their crime: may be being
sympathetic to their starving and dying
people who were not only put between a rock
and hard place but deprived of any outside
assistance.
The entire region is now completely
battered. Hundreds of villages were
devastated and thousands of civilians had
fled to Somalia and other neighboring
countries due to the brutal and repressive
policies of Ethiopia.
Ogaden is now closed to the outside world.
All the media were banned from the region
plunging it into a total news blackout while
the silent persecution is still continuing.
“I think we are missing a big thing that is
happening under our eyes,” said Mr. Loris De
Filippi, of the Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF)
operational coordinator in Ethiopia in a
press conference in Nairobi.
“We found a very precarious situation in a
very hash environment … We asked, as a
desperation measure, for a humanitarian
corridor for 24 hours. They (Ethiopian
authorities) said they needed to finish
operations first. But we said humanitarian
aid is not bringing flowers to graves.”
This eyewitness account stands as efficient
evidence of war crimes being committed by
Meles Zenawi’s regime.
-
Starving, terrorizing and massacring a
whole population and not even sparing
society’s vulnerable ones such as the
women, children and the elderly because
of their ethnicity is a war crime
punishable by international law;
-
Burning one village after the other and
uprooting its dwellers into the wild of
the wildness is a war crime too;
- Taking
the milk out of baby’s mouth by blocking
from them any outside help to strangled
them to death is equally war crime
punishable by the law.
It is,
however, not surprising to see that the TPLF
regime being in denial as usual even when
caught having its hands full of innocent
blood, but is further touting its habitual
lies and demonizing propaganda against those
who exposed the atrocities and war crimes
that it has been conducting in Ogaden and
many other parts of the country for nearly
two decades below the radar of the
international communities’ awareness, by
calling them as western spies. It’s utterly
rubbish and risible?!
However, in spite of Meles Zenawi’s wishful
thinking and propaganda, the fact is that
the Ogaden reality has now become clearer to
the freedom loving people in the world who
already decried and raised their voice
against the TPLF regime’s inhumanly cruel
policies in Ogaden.
The human rights outrages that Meles
Zenawi’s dictatorial regime has been
perpetrating against the Ogaden citizenry
are too enormous to be covered with both
hands.
Meles Zenawi has already committed enough
crimes that could have put him right in the
dock at The Hague. No country/people in the
region had escaped from his despoiling hands
and that is why he has more enemies than
friends in the region.
But unfortunately, despite all these heinous
crimes reported against him, the ruthless
dictator seems somehow to be getting away
with his war crimes. This is may be due to
lack of effective universal censorship
against despotic rulers and human rights
violators, no matter how one may stumble.
The Ogaden reality is inescapable and the
U.N. has unavoidable moral obligation to
actively get involved in it and find a
‘just solution’ for the issue, a
solution which is predicated on the wishes
of the Somali people.
Ogaden is the longest lingering conflict in
the continent and it’s indeed the heart of
the brewing crises in the Horn of Africa
region. Therefore, it is time the
international community looks at it with new
eyes. The region cannot afford to carry the
Ogaden baggage for ever neither does it
afford to remain indefinitely mired in
poverty, afflictions and conflict.
Our people have been a people without
freedom and the imperial Ethiopian regimes
had never been able to reconcile themselves
to their genuine demands, but used the force
of the bullet to subdue their aspirations;
holding them in chains for centuries.
Let us give a chance to freedom, peace and
prosperity and end the colonial injustices
which had ruined the political, economic and
the social fabric of the region.
Abdullahi Hassan
abdullahihasan@yahoo.com
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