African migrants ‘left to die’ in dinghy sue Spanish and French military

Survivors of boat tragedy that left 63 migrants dead accuse Nato member states of failing to come to aid of people in danger June 21, 2013 (The Guardian) – Two survivors of a dinghy tragedy that killed 63 migrants in the Mediterranean lodged fresh legal complaints on Wednesday in Paris and Madrid, accusing the French and Spanish military of failing to come to the aid of people in danger. The harrowing case known as the boat “left-to-die” was first revealed by the Guardian in 2011 and raised serious questions about the role ofNato naval vessels and military aircraft after a tiny dinghy crammed with 72 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa ran out of fuel and drifted for two weeks along one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. The passengers died one by one, despite numerous distress calls, while Nato allies engaged in the operation against Colonel Gaddafi were in the waters nearby but did not help. An initial legal complaint was shelved by the Paris prosecutor’s office last year after the French military claimed it had no responsibility. Last year, an investigation by the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights watchdog, found that a catalogue of institutional and legal failures led to the avoidable deaths of the migrants. It called on Nato and its member states to launch separate inquiries into why so many military units – including a Spanish frigate under Nato command that was sailing in the immediate vicinity of the boat – failed to respond to the migrants’ desperate pleas for help. The new Paris legal complaint – with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and three other rights groups as civil parties – is designed to force a judicial inquiry by a French investigating judge. Another complaint is to be lodged in Belgium and official demands for information have been made in Canada and the UK. A picture of the migrant boat taken before it lost power and began to drift. Only nine of the passengers survived after it drifted for two weeks in a busy shipping lane Human rights groups denounced the lack of information from defence ministries whose forces were present. Father Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean priest in Rome, one of the last people to communicate with the migrant boat before its satellite phone battery ran out, warned against the omertà, or code of silence, among Nato states. Launching the legal case, Abu Kurke , a survivor, described what happened after the dinghy left Libya on 27 March 2011 before washing up in Libya two weeks later with only 11 people alive, two of whom died shortly after. Abu Kurke, 25, had fled his native region of Oromia in Ethiopia as a result of political violence, trekking across the Sahara to reach the north African coast. He and a friend paid for their passage on the dinghy but boarded without food or water after the Libyan military intercepted them and took their bags. Abu Kurke found the boat “very small, very dangerous”. He considered swimming back but his friend warned that Libyan forces might open fire. After one day on board, the fuel ran out, the weather turned rough and with people squeezed in, sitting and standing, it was difficult to stay onboard. The migrants called Zerai, telling him babies and adults were sick and had no water. After at least one flyover, a helicopter – “whose nationality has yet to be established” – dropped water and biscuits, and indicated that it would return. It never came back. Abu Kurke said: “We waited for help and it never came. People began to die after three days. The sea was rough, some fell overboard and couldn’t climb back in. After a week with nothing to eat or drink, some drank sea water and fell ill. “I noticed the people who drank sea water died faster than those who didn’t, so I abstained from drinking it. I kept the bottle given by the helicopter, once that water was finished, some of us kept our urine in the bottles. Each time our mouths got too dry we sipped our own urine. I also had toothpaste, which I ate. “For the first eight days, we kept the dead bodies in the boat, no one wanted to throw a body overboard. But more people were dying because of the smell. Many times we saw boats and picked up bodies to show them. Finally a week after the deaths, it was very smelly, people began throwing the bodies out. Sometimes water came over the side and swept the corpses away.” Abu Kurke’s friend was among the dead. After the boat washed up, Abu Kurke was put in prison in Libya. Then, as part of Gaddafi’s threat toEurope to allow mass emigration, the Libyan military forced Abu Kurke on to a boat to Italy. “Going back to sea, after my experience, was like a death sentence. On board, I hid, I didn’t want to look at the sea. I thought I was going to die.” He now lives in the Netherlands with his wife and child, and needs ear surgery after injuries from sun exposure. “I have constant nightmares,” he said. “To see 63 people die is something that you can’t easily forget.” Gonzalo Boye, the lawyer heading the Spanish case, said that naval ships on a military operation that did not assist civilians in danger was equivalent to a “war crime”. • This article was amended on 19 June 2013. An earlier version referred to the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, where it should have said the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
                  The Guardian

Obang Metho’s Testimony before the Subcommittee on Africa

 

Testimony before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations. Given by: Mr. Obang O. Metho, Executive Director Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia

“Ethiopia After Meles: The Future of Democracy and Human Rights”
I would like to thank the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressman Edward Royce, and all ranking members of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations for this important opportunity to examine the Ethiopian Government’s observance of democratic and human rights principles in post-Meles Ethiopia.
I want to especially thank Congressman Christopher Smith, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa for his extraordinary leadership in bringing the case of Ethiopia to the attention of this subcommittee once again; particularly in light of the many pressing global issues. In 2006, Congressman Smith worked hard to bring this issue all the way from subcommittee to the House, where it faced obstacles and died. I hope this time, something more concrete and productive can be accomplished for the betterment of both our countries.
In 2006, I gave testimony at that previous hearing in regards to the massacre of 424 members of my own ethnic group, the Anuak, in 2003, perpetrated by members of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces. I also testified regarding the ongoing crimes against humanity and destruction of property and infrastructure in the Gambella region of Ethiopia; however, because similar abuses were being perpetrated in other places in the country, I also spoke of the 193 peaceful protestors who were shot and killed as they peacefully protested the results of the flawed 2005 national election and the repression in Oromia. This also included testimony regarding the imprisonment of opposition leaders, including Dr. Berhana Nega, who is sitting next to me today.
Now I am here once again to testify about these same kinds of issues because Ethiopians have only seen increasing restrictions to their freedom and a continuation of government-sponsored human rights violations in every region of the country. This includes the illegal eviction of great numbers of Ethiopians from their ancestral homes and land, causing great hardship to the people. It also includes egregious human rights atrocities in places like the Ogaden [Somali] region, which is blocked from the outside world by the regime. It has obstructed the media from reporting on the great suffering of the people being perpetrated by government forces, which has been described as a silent genocide. Two Swedish journalists were arrested, detained and charged as terrorists before being released last year. However, the Ogaden is not alone for every region of the country has become a victim to this regime.
Sadly, little, in terms of rights, has changed post-Meles. The only change is that he is no longer here. Although the rapid decline in freedom and rights was led by Meles, he and his cabinet and ministers established an apparatus of strong-armed control that continues to reach from the top offices of the federal government to rural villages throughout Ethiopia. That infrastructure of repression, which carries out much of the day-to-day enforcement of EPRDF control and the perpetration of human rights violations, is still in place and marks the near achievement of a secretive and chilling plan put into motion in June 1993 under the name: TPLF/EPRDF’s Strategies for Establishing its Hegemony & Perpetuating its Rule[i], which was said to have been given to all their cadres for its execution. An abridged translation of the 68-page Amharic document is now available online.
This plan, based on Marxist ideology, was brought to our attention by one of the members of the TPLF who reported to us strict adherence to this plan by its cadres. The plan aligns closely with the nature of the TPLF when they were still fighting in the bush as well as the Ethiopia of today.
Prior to defeating the brutal Derg regime in 1991, Meles led the Marxist-Leninist based rebel group, the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), also so known for its brutality in the bush that the U.S. State Department had classified them as a terrorist group at the time. When they took over power, they formed a new coalition party made up of separate ethnic-based parties. It was called the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and was meant to appear to be a multi-ethnic government but in fact, it has been controlled from the beginning by the TPLF who have never abandoned the goal of perpetual hegemony.
The EPRDF’s structure was based around ethnically defined regions and political parties, but at the grassroots level, all regions and parties, though appearing to be led by leaders of the same ethnicity as the region, were instead pro-TPLF/ERPDF puppets, who implemented their policies. By its nature, this division of Ethiopia by ethnicity was a guise meant to dupe the public and the west by its appearance of being democratic; however, in practice, it has contributed to the prolongation of ethnic-based divisions while strengthening the power of the TPLF, assuring its control of the EPRDF even though Tigrayans are a minority, making up only 6% of the total population. However, this does not mean the TPLF speaks for many Tigrayans who have become disillusioned with the TPLF/EPRDF.
In short, the TPLF’s plan of revolutionary democracy, which is more closely aligned with the Chinese model than the liberalism of the west, was clearly designed to achieve perpetual hegemony over every aspect of Ethiopian life. In the above-stated plan, they warn that they can achieve their goals “only by winning the elections successively and holding power without let up.” They warn, “If we lose in the elections even once, we will encounter a great danger… [so] we should win in the initial elections and then create a conducive situation that will ensure the establishment of this hegemony.” In 2010, the TPLF/ERPDF successfully accomplished this goal and won their fourth election with an alleged 99.6% of the votes and all but one of the 547 seats in the Ethiopian Parliament.
This also was accomplished through gaining control every sector of society: the media, all aspects of government and civil service, all political space, elections, the judiciary, the passing and interpretation of laws to suit their goals, the financial sector, education, the military, the economic sector, religious groups, civic society, government ownership of all land and government control in the extraction of natural resources. The principles upon which America was founded are absent in Ethiopia despite all the democratic rhetoric.
The TPLF/EPRDF is more in control today than it was in 2006 and continues to hold that power despite the death of their central figure. It has become near to impossible to find any political space for the development of a viable alternative to the TPLF/EPRDF because dissenters, activists or anyone speaking for change will be put in jail. It has become a full-blown autocracy. Anyone who attempts to speak up is silenced. All has been justified by saying that Ethiopia has double digit economic growth and that they have met their millennium goals and that the people are too ignorant to understand how they will eventually benefit; however, the people know that this is not balanced growth but instead has “filled the pockets and bellies” of government supporters as laid out in the 1993 plan. Claims of economic gains also serve to minimize or cover up the reality on the