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TesfaNews
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Re: 1985 forced resettlement & the ongoing ethinic cleansing in West Ethiopia!

Post by TesfaNews » 26 Jun 2022, 22:11

This explains why Welegas are revenging Wolloyes based on what happened during Derg Era, 1980s Qey Shibir giving birth to the Shibirs and Savagery of Welega in 2020s

I wonder where is Misrak Atela

According to President Mengistu in a speech to the Central Committee in March 1987, production of cash crops and agricultural "surpluses" in the settlement sites are now "contributing to the enhancement of the country's economic development." He went on to note that the unprecedented volume of grain stockpiled last year (5 million quintals) was creating a shortage of storage space; at the same time the price of grain in Addis Ababa dropped by 32 percent.

Ethiopia diverts nearly half of its GNP to the military sector, using cash crops to pay for armaments, so it is clear that the agricultural production of the resettlement sites is effectively strengthening the Dergue's military power. Low food prices in urban areas - government strongholds - suppress potential unrest, and large grain surpluses ensure that large numbers of army conscripts, most of whom are farmers taken out of production, can be fed. In this way, the resettlement communities are directly fueling the militarization of rural Ethiopia.

At the same time, the militarized societies created by the resettlement program have allowed the government to attain complete control over the settlers' diets - and therefore their lives. All the refugees I spoke with said they were more hungry in the resettlement camps than they had ever been during the drought and famine in their homelands. They were offered no way out of this life of hunger and hard labor except by taking up arms for the government.

Settlers as Militia

According to my respondents, two types of militia are recruited from among the settlers: those who work inside the camp and those who are sent out into the surrounding communities.

The camp militia's main duty is to prevent settlers from leaving the camp. Additionally, they guard machine shops and storage areas where food is kept before being transported out of the camp. Three Wollo refugees who had served in these functions said they were armed only with sticks. However, testimony from other refugees indicates that at least some of the militia guarding the camp perimeter are equipped with rifles.

The cadres select recruits. Two respondents said that a meeting was called in their camp during which the cadres chose 60 young and able-bodied men from among the residents; some were taken for the army, and some for the militia. One ex-militia member said that people who had served in militias back at home were preferentially chosen: "I had served in the militia in Wollo, so when I came to Wollega the cadres said, 'Since you have been in the militia before, you can serve here also.'"

Militiamen work closely with the cadres and are given special privileges. Besides receiving more rations, they also sleep in a special place - though not inside the cadres' sleeping quarters.

The OLF has long alleged that highland settlers organized as militia groups are used by the Dergue as a tool to control and terrorize Oromo communities whose loyalty to the government is suspect. In 1985, Oromo refugees in Yabuus told Bonnie Holcomb that groups of armed settlers, brought from Wollo in the early 1980s, were ordered to locate and punish local farmers identified as OLF supporters.

According to the refugees I interviewed in Yabuus in 1987, these practices continue. In addition, Wollo settlers now appear to be used for at least two other purposes: to torture and execute political prisoners and, organized as armed security forces, to carry out villagization.

In Oromo communities that have not yet been villagized and are located near OLF operational areas, armed Wollo militia harass the families of farmers who have disappeared and are presumed to have joined the rebels. One woman from Begi whose husband fled after being pinpointed as a collaborator reported that the whole family was being attacked and harassed because the government thought my husband was secretly returning to the farm. Once my child's hands were tied behind his back for a whole day. This was done by armed Wollo settlers [from a nearby camp]. They didn't speak our language. They came with the government administrators. They were the same people we had built houses for.

Rape of Oromo and Komo women by armed Wollo settlers was commonly reported. Several women I spoke with said they had been raped but were too ashamed to discuss the circumstances. They did say that the threat of assault has created hardships for the whole community. Women feel they can no longer fetch water or firewood or travel alone to the market. Gangs of armed Wollo, they told me, would sometimes come into their homes under the pretext of wanting a drink of water and then proceed to rape the women after killing or beating the husbands. In other cases, men have been taken from their homes by Wollo militia on the pretext that they are OLF supporters. While they are being detained, other members of the militia rape their wives.

According to the testimony of three different respondents, militia forces made up of Wollo settlers participate in the execution and torture of political prisoners. I spoke at length with one Oromo farmer who had been a peasant association chairman in Gidami. In 1986 he was captured in a mass arrest and imprisoned for seven months. During this time he was periodically tortured to extract a confession that he was an OLF collaborator. He said the torture included beating the soles of his feet and his testicles, plunging his head into water and putting wax plugs into his mouth which contained needles. During the beatings he suffered broken ribs (still visible through his skin) and burst testicles. This torture was carried out by both party cadres and militiamen recruited from the resettlement camps. He emphasized that the settlers were forced to participate in this - they wore uniforms with short pants so that when it appeared they were not beating the victims severely enough, the cadres beat them on the legs. Other stronger prisoners were also recruited to continue the beatings.

Also in 1986, in a community in Begi which has since been villagized, Wollo militia were used to execute 18 prisoners suspected of supporting the OLF. I spoke with two women who witnessed the execution. This is the account of one:

They imprisoned 18 people and moved them to Nekempte. Then they brought them back and gathered all the kebeles [peasant associations] together and shot each man. I saw this with my own eyes. These people were merchants. They had been traveling to Kirmuk to sell coffee because their wives had no clothes and were naked. Many wives were told that their husbands were cooperating with the rebels. They used the husband and wife to inform on each other. They also used the conflicts between two wives to make them spy on each other.

The women were gathered in a place where we couldn't run away and were told to sit. They brought in the 18 people in a truck. They brought in the armed Wollo people also to shoot them. They forced them from behind to shoot these people. Slogans were shouted: "Anyone who feeds reactionaries and rebels will be shot."

Before they gathered us here, they completely disarmed us - even took away our sewing needles in a thorough security search so we couldn't react. The relatives of these people were forced to keep their eyes open and no one was allowed to cry or show any sorrow. After this, they dragged them into a single ditch like dead dogs. And the relatives had to watch.

Villagization is proceeding rapidly in the Asosa, Ghimbi and Kellem districts of Wollega. Militia forces from the resettlement camps seem to be involved in the process of villagization in three ways. First, they serve as a security force for government officials orchestrating and overseeing the move. Respondents from many different areas mentioned that the party representatives, district administrators and members of the Ministry of Agriculture arrived in their villages surrounded by armed guards "who did not speak our language." Some recognized these guards as settlers from nearby camps.

Second, in some cases, the militia oversee the seizure and collectivization of crops and animals which accompanies villagization. In one village in Gidami, armed men guarded the fields - which were ready for harvest - while the villagers moved their houses. People from other villages were brought in to harvest the crop which was then taken to a place unknown to the villagers. Third, the militia oversee the actual move, including the dismantling and rebuilding of houses.

In one Berta (Fedhashi) community in Begi, Wollo militia were involved in all aspects of collectivization and villagization. A spokesperson in Yabuus said that harassment by Wollo settlers was one of the central reasons his whole village (800 people) decided to flee in March 1987:

[The army] brought the Wollo and settled them all over the country. They came three years ago. Then they armed them and told them to kill us and beat us. [The settlers] told us not to work, not to use money. They said to build our villages together and then sit idly. They told us our harvest would be taken away by the government and government people would eat it. We never ate what we produced. So we ran away because they took everything from us.

The Villagization of Communities in Ghimbi, Kellem and Asosa

In January 1986, soon after villagization was initiated in the province, communities of people from Wollega's three western districts began arriving in the Yabuus refugee camp operated by the Oromo Relief Association. According to the OLF, which operates in all three of these districts, villagization has also produced many internal refugees who are now living in OLF-controlled zones or remote unoccupied areas.

Those people I spoke with in Yabuus had fled before they were actually transferred to their new village but after they had constructed much of it. Many had witnessed and participated in the villagization of neighboring communities. Some had actually been OLF supporters and sympathizers in their communities; others contacted the opposition forces for assistance only after fleeing their homes. All respondents reported frequent guerrilla activity in and around their communities and had experienced some form of harassment by government forces suspecting them of aiding the rebels. The order to begin villagization often came shortly after an intimidation campaign carried out by government forces, which could include executions, mass arrests, lootings and search and seizures.

Most of these refugees described villagization as the last in a series of repressive measures designed to weaken their resistance to government control. Some believed the specific purpose of villagization was to isolate them from the rebels - this rationale was openly admitted to some of the villagers by the cadres implementing the program. ("Anyone who does not want to move into the new village only desires to feed the rebels.")

In all cases, the houses of the new villages were constructed close together on either side of a road with all the doors racing the same direction. Indeed, the communities created through villagization appear to be similar to those created by resettlement, according to the refugees' descriptions. Residents are organized into brigades to work in collective fields and subsist on rations doled out by officials. My respondents said they saw no evidence of social services in the new villages, although some noted that prison compounds were often a central feature.

Villagization in these regions is completely militarized, as the role of the resettler militia, described above, attests. In all cases, the dismantling and reconstruction of homes took place under the eyes of armed soldiers. Stiff fines were levied against anyone absent from this work. Refugees said they had seen people become sick and die under the heavy labor; one man from Begi who was unable to pay his fine for missing a day's work hanged himself.

In one strange variation, a village of Komo people were also put to work constructing underground bunkers for the Ethiopian army:

Then the Dergue [soldiers] told us to dig holes for them into the earth and put down big pieces of wood and savanna grasses on top and then earth on top of that, and just to leave a hole for them to come in and out.

Integrated Settlements in Gambella: Armed Uprisings and Government Reprisals

The dense rainforests in the Gambella lowlands of Illubabor Province form what is undoubtedly the largest remaining tract of forest in Ethiopia. This area is also the homeland of the Anuak, a Nilotic people whose villages are distributed along the banks of the many rivers that water the region. Traditionally, the Anuak fish from the rivers, hunt in the surrounding forests and practice a form of shifting horticulture in the alluvial soils along the river banks.

By 1979, the Gambella rainforests had become the target of one of the Dergue's early resettlement schemes. Anuak farmers were violently evicted from their villages when Amhara settlers were brought from Wollo to serve as unpaid workers in a large-scale irrigation project along the Baro River. The clearance of Anuaks away from the rivers coincided with a mass conscription campaign as Ethiopian troops swept through Anuak villages. The uprisings that followed resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Anuaks.

Resettlement resumed again in 1984 under the new program. By 1985, 70,000 highland peasants had been resettled into three large areas of virgin forest in Gambella, the traditional hunting and fishing grounds of the indigenous Anuak people. In the same year, villagization was initiated in Illubabor Province and by March 1987 had affected 7 percent of the rural population (62,000 people). By September 1988, the government plans to have villagized a quarter million peasants (25 percent of the rural population).

In the last year the distinction between villagization and resettlement in Gambella has blurred. Local Anuak, who had been used as unpaid laborers in the construction of the resettlement camps, are being villagized into these same camps as a part of a program of "integrated settlement." Some of their original villages and surrounding gardens have been destroyed to make way for collective agricultural schemes. At the same time, some of the highland settlers have been organized into armed militia and security forces to control the Anuak population and squelch resistance.

In Khartoum, I spoke with Anuak refugees who had fled Gambella within the last year and who had witnessed or participated in the formation of two of these integrated settlements near the Baro River. According to their testimony, Anuaks were evicted from three adjacent villages between December 1985 and January 1986. These residents were moved by militia units - some members were highland settlers - into the settlement sites. Those who refused to go were bound and beaten with sticks.

In some cases, the militia confiscated the Anuak's gardens along the Baro River and destroyed the crops. In other cases, the crops were left to wither or be consumed by wild animals. All respondents indicated that in no way were villagized Anuaks allowed to return to their old fields. In one village, these riverbank lands were transformed into an irrigated state farm and planted in rice. Some of the villagized Anuaks were forced to work as laborers in the scheme; the rice harvests were trucked away to government storage areas.

Most of the Anuaks villagized into the integrated settlements, according to the refugees, work with the highland settlers on collective farms that were planted in sorghum and maize and cultivated with tractors. In addition, brigades of Anuak and highland settlers were put to work clearing forests and constructing police stations, houses for the militia, meeting houses and clinics. One respondent, who had lived in one of these settlements, said that work began at 6 AM and continued until 6 PM with a two-hour break at noon. Refusal to work brings lashings or imprisonments. Another respondent said he saw one Anuak lashed until he died after protesting that he was too tired to work.

Abere
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Re: 1985 forced resettlement & the ongoing ethinic cleansing in West Ethiopia!

Post by Abere » 27 Jun 2022, 10:34


Looking at this idiot Western propagandist report, I could not give it a pass as it is full of lies out. Here is where the falsehood begun, we all know as Derg was a socialist regime there had been complete an all-out anti-Derg sometimes hiding the truth or some of the success of the regime, although it was brutal and dictator. When we see now in a lesser degree than was the Tigre -TPLF Meles Zenawi and the Orommuma genocidal thug Abiy Ahmed. Two the success stories of Degr were
1) illiteracy Eradication Campaign - which empowered millions of Ethiopians to read and write
2) Resettlement program, although it was painful on the part of those who left their birthplace, coupled with the inhabitability of their place of destination which vacant, inhabited, with no market, school/clinic, yet infested with tropical diseases such as malaria. When these people in the areas such the none-inhabited/vacant land of Wollega and other places, they never had contact with anyone - the place was deserted. In areas the most western Sudan border, the areas were too non-inhabited, yet came across rare encounters from hunters and gatherer people who some alleged them to be cannibalistic hunting any living creature for food - including human beings. The arrival of people from North Ethiopia actually created a role model people who gave life to the area - built school, market, road network, introduced sedentary life, introduced framing, food and dietary, social life, etc. The now hunted people of Wollo modernized the area discovered those naked, hunter and gather tribes and taught them what modern day society look like. As much as several Wolloye people died throughout the long forceful journey and later at the resettlement camp because of tropical disease many improved their lives and modernize the lives of the area. It was a success. That did not sit well with propagandists by then they were inciting the Northern people telling them the project was forceful and later on when they sponsored anti-Ethiopian forces of TPLF and OLF, they changed the narrative the resettlement evicted other while there was no any native settler in the area, which vacancy, filled with malaria, and there was no people to even find contacts. This was part of making Amhara the enemy of all - to invigorate the TPLF's propaganda of Amhara is enemy of Tigre and should be eliminate as written in its Tigray Manifesto.

Here is where this Western propagandist writer lie started "somewhere between 33 and 37 million people - by the 1990s. As part of the Dergue's 10-year development plan, these relocations are labeled as two distinct but related programs: resettlement and villagization." This was a false propaganda to tell that 33-37 million Amhara were settled in Wollega, etc . According to o the 1984 CSA population census, including Eritrea, the population of Ethiopia was 42 million. And this census was a year before the 1977 ርሃብ (1985). Thus, how come one believe this story when it narrates all the people of the country mobilized to Wellega, etc. Was he saying all Ethiopians would move to another planet? This how they make up stuffs and give us a headache. This guy አክሱምኢዛና(Axumezana) is posting sh!t stuf forgetting what his/her genocidal TPLF thug did to Humera Welqait Amhara. The real eviction, ethnic cleansing was done by TPLF in North Gondar where the entire Amhara villages were killed , massacred and truck load of Tigres transported from all over Adowa, Axum, Shire, etc to Amhara lands of Humera and Welqait. This the most heinous 21st century broad daylight and textbook example of ethnic cleansing and settlement.

One other thing to liken this western propagandist in the pretext of hating Derg regime was his 33-37 million resettlement project figure is those other idiot OLF who have been preaching Emperor Menelik II massacred 20 million Oromos in the 1889. This the most stupid lie one could possibly make. According to the first most trusted 1984 population census the Oromo population was 12 million which is the same 12 million as the Amhara population, a slightly higher than Amhara; in clear terms Oromo population( 12,387,664) vs. Amhara population (12,055,250) --- refer the following link and see figures on page 44.

https://international.ipums.org/interna ... t1984a.pdf

The point here is how could Menelik II killed 20 million Oromo where the country did not have? As conventional statistics proved population of developing countries such Ethiopia doubles every 27 years. If one goes in time how many 27 years were between 1899 and 1984 (1st Census) and how many Oromos lived during Menelik II, one will find that number to be in a single digit. Thus, the illusion of OLF as instructed by Western propagandist was to massacre illusionary people inhabited Mars or Jupiter etc. :mrgreen:


አክሱምኢዛና(Axumezana) who does not have principle as its thug TPLF just posts cr@p in the belief some naive could be trapped. Yes, Derg was dictator, but Derg built significant infrastructure, road, universities, factories, national mass education, clinics, eradicated tribalism ( until Tigre thugs came in spread it in its worst form which is now raining all types of hell right on the very Tigre people that sponsored TPLF). Simply we did not like the system does not mean it did not mean all was terrible. Many peasants kid went to college/universities - TPLF simply hijacked the Derg kebele system, road, town master plan, universities etc.

Axumezana
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Re: 1985 forced resettlement & the ongoing ethinic cleansing in West Ethiopia!

Post by Axumezana » 27 Jun 2022, 10:56

Abere it is good to know the root cause of the problems that are happening in Western Ethiopia and that is why I posted that article. My position is very clear and I have condemned the killings and ethinic cleansing of Ethiopians in Wellega . More than any body the Ethiopian government is responsible and accountable for failing to safe guard the security of it's citizens.

https://mereja.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=298551

https://mereja.com/forum/viewtopic.php? ... 8#p1305078

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