Ethiopia
is regularly cited by donor nations as an African success story. Its economy is
growing, they cry, more children are attending school and health care is
improving.
Well,
GDP figures and millennium development statistics reveal only a tiny fraction
of what is in fact a corrupt and violent picture.
What
development there is depends, the Oakland Institute says,
on “state force and the denial of human and civil rights”. The country still
ranks 173rd out of 187 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index,
and around 40 per cent of the population live below the extremely low poverty
line of USD1.25 a day – the World Bank worldwide poverty line is USD2 a day.
The
ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF),
uses violence and fear to suppress the people and governs in a highly
centralised manner. Human rights are ignored and a methodology of murder, false
imprisonment, torture and rape is followed.
The
ethnic Somali population of the Ogaden, in the southeastern part of the
country, has been the victim of extreme government brutality since 1992. It is
a familiar story of a region with a strong identity seeking autonomy from
central government, and the regime denying them that democratic right.
In
2013 and again in 2014 I visited Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya and met a number
of people who had fled state persecution in the Ogaden. Men and women told of
false imprisonment, murder and torture. All the women I spoke to relayed
accounts of multiple rape and sexual abuse; defected military men confessed to
carrying out such appalling crimes.
We
filmed the meetings and put together a short documentary, Ogaden: Ethiopia’s
Hidden Shame. Most people have never heard of the region and know nothing of
what is happening there.
The
purpose of the film is to raise awareness, of what human rights groups describe
as a genocidal campaign, and to put pressure on the primary donors – America,
Britain and the European Union, countries that collectively give around half of
Ethiopia’s federal budget in various aid packages, and whose neglect and
indifference amounts to complicity.
The
film records the distressing stories of three extraordinary young women, Anab,
Maryama and Fatuma
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