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| Africa: East | |
| Ethiopian Genocide: Details of Alleged Military massacres of Anuak | |
| 2004-01-20 | |
| EFL - I have been confused by much of what seems like random killing in the Sudan. This article helped sort a piece of it out in my mind. On Saturday, December 13, in a single bloody burst of targeted mass murder, Ethiopia became the worldâs latest sovereignty to attempt genocide as a way to solve its problems with a troublesome minority. The United States, which gave Ethiopia $32 million in foreign aid last year, is investigating the massacre, in which eyewitnesses say uniformed Ethiopian soldiers were aided in the murder of more than 400 members of the Anuak tribe. The charge is being made by dozens of refugees who live in the United States who spoke by telephone to surviving relatives. During the last decade more than 2,000 Anuak have settled in the United States after fleeing ethnic cleansingâsaid to be carried out by rival tribes backed by the Ethiopian government. Decemberâs massacre, by far the worst single-day killing of Anuak, was the first time Ethiopian soldiers were widely witnessed leading such an attack. It took place in Gambella, the capital of the state of Gambella in remote western Ethiopia, which shares a long border with Sudan. According to eyewitnesses, the soldiers were joined by dozens of members of the Amara, Oromo and Tigray tribes who were seen chopping and stabbing Anuak with machetes... The Anuak have lived for centuries in a verdant western region of Ethiopia. There are active gold pits and oil reserves on the Anuakâs ancestral land, resources the Ethiopian government covets. Over the past decade the Anuak have pressed the factional government in Addis Ababa for a share in the projected development of these resources and have been answered in political subjugation, physical beatings and now the government-led pogrom. It is a small genocide compared to those of the Turks, Jews, Cambodians, Tutsis and Bosnian Muslims, but it has all the markings of a state-sponsored attempt to extinguish an entire race. Over the past decade some 20,000 Anuak have fled into refugee camps in northern Kenya (primarily the Ifo camp), and into southern Sudan. Until December 13, most of the killings of Anuak were by their ancient tribal enemies, the Nuer, many of whom have resettled on Anuak land as civil war refugees from Sudan. The United Nations runs three refugee camps in western Ethiopia for these refugees, most of whom are Nuer. Anthropologists and missionaries say the Anuak and the Nuer in previous decades evolved ritualistic peaceful ways to solve grazing rights disputes that arose between their tribes. The displacement of more than 100,000 Sudanese civil war refugees onto Anuak land upset those traditional ways. The Anuak for years have claimed that the Ethiopian government was using the Anuak-Nuer rivalry as its main tool for Anuak extermination, arming Nuers and de-arming Anuak and then standing by when the inevitable occurred. According to witnesses and United Nations accounts, the massacre began when a van containing eight U.N. and Ethiopian government refugee camp officials was ambushed on a road connecting the towns of Itang and Gambella. All eight occupants of the van were killed. At 1 p.m. that afternoon, Ethiopian soldiers brought the van and the corpses to Gambella, attracting crowds of angry onlookers. A spokesman with the Ethiopian embassy in Washington said eyewitness accounts of uniformed Ethiopian soldiers killing Anuak were âcompletely false and unfounded. The defense forces are doing their level best to look for those people who were involved in this sad event.â When asked why 2,000 Anuak had fled Ethiopia as refugees, the spokesman said they had not fled ethnic cleansing. Rather, âthey are enjoying the right of movement to live anywhere they like and to enjoy their own pursuit of life.â A spokesman for the U.S. State Department, which has advised Americans not to travel to Gambella, said it had confirmed 113 dead and has sent a security team to the area to investigate the massacre.
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| Posted by:Super Hose |