"Soldiers came and asked
me why I refused to be relocated," a 20-year-old Ethiopian told me in
September at a refugee camp in Kenya. "Ojod," not his real name, was
still visibly shaken from the horror he had left behind: "They started
beating me until my hands were broken... I ran to tell [my father] what had
happened, but the soldiers followed me. My father and I ran away... I heard the
sound of gunfire." Ojod heard his father cry out, but he kept running and
hid from the soldiers in the bushes as he was "full of fear." When he
returned the next day he learned that the soldiers had killed his father.
Abuses such as this in Ethiopia,
including arbitrary arrests, beatings and killings, have been occurring not in
an armed conflict or political uprising, but as part of a government program
billed as improving life for indigenous people and other ethnic minorities in
designated rural areas. Donor governments supporting World
Bank programs in Ethiopia, including the United States, are indirectly
funding these atrocities.
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