Ethiopia’s government is violating the rights of indigenous people by relocating them to new towns that lack adequate water, food, medical supplies, and schools, says Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch said around 70,000 people from the Gambella region in western Ethiopia have been forcibly uprooted from their land, with security forces issuing threats, committing assault, and arbitrarily arresting villagers who refuse.
“Many of the areas from which people are being moved are slated for leasing by the government for commercial agricultural development,” the New York-based rights group said in a statement on Monday, referring to the government’s “villagization” program that started a year ago.
Human Rights Watch said they interviewed more than a 100 people in Ethiopia last year as well as people living in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, where many Gambellan refugees have fled.
“My father was beaten for refusing to go along [to the new village] with some other elders,” an ex-villager from the region told the rights watchdog, adding that his father eventually died from injuries sustained when he was attacked.
In other resettlement programs, Ethiopia is planning on moving approximately 1.5 million people by 2013 in three other regions outside of Gambella, including Afar, Somali, and Benishangul-Gumu, according to the rights group.
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