The Bureau has spoken to many in Ethiopia who claim to have been arrested or tortured by the Ethiopian authorities.
* All names have been changed to protect identities.
The former businessman
A former businessman described how he was dragged from his home at midnight and imprisoned for three years, first in Gode then in the Jijiga region.
He was kept in a cell with 67 others. There was no sanitation. The prisoners were forced to defecate in plastic cups and he soon became very ill.
Interrogation starts with beating, they would tie your hands and feet with iron and hang you upside down. They immerse you in water, they would use electric shocks. They stuffed your mouth so no one can hear you scream.
‘Daniel’
‘Truly the treatment was very evil. They would take us out of our cells at night and start interrogating and torturing us, asking us questions that we don’t know how to answer.
‘I was badly beaten. I still have the wounds and have burning sensation in my legs’ veins and all my muscles ache.’
Sometimes they would tie him up and force him into an airless hole in the ground. They would also threaten to throw him into another hole ‘used for killing people’.
The former soldier
‘Daniel’ used to be a captain in the Ethiopian army, until he was arrested, held for 2 months in a local jail, then transferred to the country’s notorious police investigation centre at Maikelawi.
He described how torture was routinely used in the institution to get forced confessions. Often the men weren’t even told of what crime they stood accused.
‘Interrogation starts with beating, they would tie your hands and feet with iron and hang you upside down. They immerse you in water, they would use electric shocks. They stuffed your mouth so no one can hear you scream.’
‘In general there were about 50 people at the prison. Each person suffered horrific injuries as a result of the torture. Some had lost the use of their hand, some had lost their nails. There was a man who was hanged by his hand for over 19 hours.’
The grandmother
A 55-year-old grandmother said she was among more than 100 civilians seized from her village by government forces. Some were killed, including her son, others were taken to jail.
She described how she was still deep in shock over the death of her son when she was pulled from among the other prisoners and thrown into a pit full of snakes.
‘They raped me in a room, one of them was standing on my mouth, and one tied my hand, they were taking turns, I fainted during this.‘
‘Desta’
She was left there over night and by the morning had been bitten. Her condition was so bad that when her captors saw her, they thought she was dead and took her out to be buried. When they realised she was still alive they threw her back into the pit.
But, she says, ‘the snake was the easy part because I was raped’ by ‘a queue’ of soldiers.
‘They raped me in a room, one of them was standing on my mouth, and one tied my hand, they were taking turns, I fainted during this.’
As she was being raped she was beaten with a piece of metal. But the soldiers didn’t think the metal was doing enough damage, so they began to use a bayonet.
The 40-year-old man
One man said he was arrested from his home at one o’clock in the morning and taken to a military camp in Gode. The arrest happened four years ago, but he can still point to the scars from what happened to him in custody.
‘I was tied with an electric wire around my chest and leg and beaten until I became unconscious. I regained conscious in the morning at 10am.’
He was held for seven months, during which time he was kept outside, threatened with dogs and tortured. He said he was given sewage water to drink and was forced to compete with the dogs for food.
‘In the beginning I use to bleed during torture but after a while I had no blood left to bleed only saliva was pouring out of my wounds. When the tied my hands so badly my fingers was swollen.’
‘Hakim’
‘They would rape the women. I am a man, I was tortured.
‘They used to beat me with a metal stick similar to the once used for buildings, they also used the back of the gun to hit me, also kicking me with their boots on.
‘I became so weak, one kick was enough to send me flying like a football.
‘In the beginning I use to bleed during torture but after a while I had no blood left to bleed only saliva was pouring out of my wounds. When they tied my hands so badly my fingers were swollen.’
‘One night it started raining heavily and all the security guards started running for shelter and I then found a hole in the security fence and gone through it, the fence surrounded the outdoor camp, I then started running, I was not released, I escaped.’
He was never told why he was arrested.
The pregnant woman
A woman described how she was eight months pregnant when government forces arrested her, then raped and beat her until she lost her baby.
She described being taken to a shack, usually used as a resting place for a senior soldier, where she was brutally attacked.
A man jumped on her stomach and she was hit with the butt of a rifle until they killed her unborn child. She was raped until she lost consciousness.
The woman described seeing a man who was also being held by the government forces who had been tortured so badly ‘his tongue and eyes were out’.
‘And also a girl was in with me I think she was about 16 years old, she was also beaten, raped and sliced and she was in a coma and could not talk.
‘Why is the world keeping quiet about what is happening in Ogaden? Why is the world giving more money to the Ethiopian government. Is it to kill us?
A man jumped on her stomach and she was hit with the butt of a rifle until they killed her unborn child. She was raped until she lost consciousness.
The young mother
A 30-year-old woman was sleeping in the same room as her mother, brother and two-day old child, when government forces raided their home.
They killed her brother, dragged her from her new-born baby and took her to jail. She was held for two-and-a-half years, during which time she was repeatedly raped.
‘It didn’t make no difference if it was day or night they did what they want to us without fear of anyone.
‘How could I fight back? I was very weak and surrounded by hundreds of men all armed.
‘I gave up on living, I thought they were going to kill me, you worry about rape when you have hope to live on, but I didn’t have that hope.’
The woman told the Bureau she was held alongside some 50 other women. They were all subjected to the same brutality, some of them are still in captivity.
Eventually, after she became desperately ill and convinced her captors to bring her to get medicine, she managed to escape.
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August 5th, 2011 at 12:57 am (#)
only the lucky ones can reach the refugee camps in Kenya all others are still in their locked land and suffering with everything eval from the Ethiopian army and their allied militia.
August 5th, 2011 at 11:24 am (#)
does anybody know why the western nations care about the regimes in Ethiopia( help) and not the the poor people?
August 5th, 2011 at 3:17 pm (#)
The leaders of the donor countries are giving deaf ear and turning blind eyes to the horrible crime committed by Meles Zenawi. Mr. Zenawi who authorized the killing of peaceful protestors and civil organization leaders like Asefa Maru will have his day in court as his contemporary Mubark had.
History will judge those accomplices to this heinous criminal.
The donor countries please stop supporting criminals and do not use your hard-earned tax payers’ money to suppress democracy and kill innocent civilians.
August 5th, 2011 at 4:45 pm (#)
I worked as an NGO in Ethiopia and I was regularly told to keep my mouth shut about the appalling and heartbreaking human rights abuses taken place within Ethiopia. I mean kids were being shot and killed by Zenawi’s forces and I was told by my own employers to stay silent and not voice my opinion, nor go to the media to report on what I had seen. I recall in December of 2010, one particular village had a flood of refugees fleeing, after Zenawi ordered his troops to systematically rape women and children of that village because they were accused of being rebel supporters. The men of that village who didn’t escape shot and hanged from trees. Some men were even defecated on and were ordered to eat human feces before being executed by Zenawi forces. In that village alone, survivors said 85 men and women were killed, including 7 children. When I tried to sneak in to document what had taken place with my video camera, I was captured and kicked out of the country within 24 hours.
The food crises/famine in Ethiopia is largely man-made. Zenawi is playing politics with food aid and is using European aid to tighten his grip on the masses. Zenawi is one of the most ruthless and vicious leaders and what’s currently going on in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region is nothing short of a genocide. At least with Darfur, the international community spoke up, but in Ethiopia, reporters, NGOs, and diplomats are being told to look the other way.
Just recently, I was devastated to hear my friend named Abdi Hassen Abdallah from Ethiopia was tortured and killed for attempting to leak pictures of torture victims via the internet.
Thank you Angus Stickler for shedding some light into what really is, a secret genocide. I just hope more reporters start bringing more attention to this, so Zenawi’s diplomatic cover can melt away and hopefully, can be taken to the International Criminal Courts for his crimes against humanity.
August 5th, 2011 at 5:22 pm (#)
Hi, thank you for your comments. Please could you get in touch with us on info@thebureauinvestigates.com
Many thanks
August 5th, 2011 at 6:20 pm (#)
Last night’s programe by the BBC Newsnight on Ethiopia’s misuse of the aid given is just a tip of iceberg. Apart from
systematic rape, extra-judicial killings of civilians, mass starvation of the Ogaden people and blockade to world media to have access to that region, I hope the investigative journalists will expose the ethics of the few remaining NGO in Ethiopia of which the WFP is the biggest and their relationship with the genocidal regime in Addis Abeba. The WFP is the biggest collaborator with the tyranical dictator of Ethiopia. Equally important is how much
of the money donated by the taxpayers of the western countries, in good faith, are sent back to the politicians of their countries to lobby for Meles Zinawe and his barbaric junta.
August 6th, 2011 at 3:42 am (#)
Thank you for exposing the hidden genocide in the Ogaden. It is unfortunate that the international community continues to found oppressive regimes. The injustice in the Ogaden must end
August 8th, 2011 at 8:03 pm (#)
I have lived to see three governments in Ethiopia. I have not seen a more deciplined law enforcement implementation than what we have currently. No, this does not mean that it is perfect. However, with the emense, if not total, power it has, one sees very little abuse of the power. The article above wants us to beleive that abuse is the norm. Not so my friends.
I would add that unlike the western countries that woke up on September 11, 2001 to fight terrorisim, with centuries worth of experience in this field, the west is better by taking notes on how Ethiopia fights extreemists than look for abuse cases. Ethiopia is one of the most hospitable places on earth. However, our hands are not tied up by some idiotic civil rights text books, as we battle extreemists. We terrorize terrorists.
August 21st, 2011 at 8:56 am (#)
Some claim that this is normal or limited occurances. When you have people from different backgrounds producing the same story, it is not normal but savagery. It is similar to NAZI hiding concentration camps claiming they were non-existent. When you have pshyco pathes as leaders, all they do is claim peace and stability while killing men, women and children. In the end, they face justice too but how many will die until then?