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Subscribe to RSSThe Ethiopian government is forcing tens of thousands of people off their land so it can be leased to foreign investors, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Tuesday.
The Horn of Africa state has already leased 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) to foreign farm businesses and the U.S.-based rights group said that the government had plans to lease another 2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres), Reuters reported.
Courtesy Human Rights Watch
The new village of Bildak in Ethiopia's Gambella region, which the semi-nomadic
Nuer who were forcibly transferred there quickly abandoned in May 2011 because
there was no water source for their cattle, according to Human Rights Watch.
HRW said that 1.5 million Ethiopians would eventually be forced from their land and highlighted what it said was the latest case of forced relocation in its report "Ethiopia: Forced Relocations Bring Hunger, Hardship."
"My father was beaten for refusing to go along [to the new village] with some other elders," HRW quoted a former villager as saying. "He said, 'I was born here -- my children were born here -- I am too old to move so I will stay.' He was beaten by the army with sticks and the butt of a gun. He had to be taken to hospital. He died because of the beating -- he just became weaker and weaker."
The United Nations has increasingly voiced concern that countries such as China and Gulf Arab states are buying swathes of land in Africa and Asia to secure their own food supplies, often at the expense of local people.
"The Ethiopian government under its "villagization" program is forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages that lack adequate food, farmland, health care, and educational facilities," HRW said, adding it had interviewed more than 100 people for the report.
"The first round of forced relocations occurred at the worst possible time of year -- the beginning of the harvest. Government failure to provide food assistance for relocated people has caused endemic hunger and cases of starvation," it said.
Government denial
Government officials deny the charge and say the affected plots of land are largely uninhabited and under-used, while it has also launched a program to settle tens of thousands from the remote province in more fertile areas of the country.
"Human Rights Watch has wrongly alleged the villagization program to be unpopular and problematic," government spokesman Bereket Simon told Reuters.
"There is no evidence to back the claim. This program is taking place with the full preparation and participation of regional authorities, the government and residents," he said.
Ethiopia says its prime intention in leasing large chunks of land is technology transfer and to boost production in a country that has been ravaged by droughts over the past few decades.
Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
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Please find another place for these displaced folks......in Ethiopia
What is the biggest joke? The UN is voicing its concerns to the Ethiopian government. What the hell is that supposed to meam? The same way the UN voiced its concerns in R'wanda? The same way it voiced its concerns in North Korea? This is a joke. So the world will watch as millions of Africans are abused.
All the UN can do is voice concerns and sternly waggle fingers.
All the member nations are terrified of the UN having real power. They don't want other nations to have authority over their own internal affairs.
Which means the UN is less than useless.
Nobody knows how to abuse africans like other africans.
The UN is one of the most corrupt organizations around, and Moon is in it up to his neck. He refused to prosecute multiple embezzlers who stole milliond of dollars. When confronted with the evidence, he changed the rule so that embezzlers who were caught were allowed to keep the money and avoid criminal charges provided they resigned. That's our US tax dollars they are stealing, since the US provides over 85% of all UN funding.
http://www.iowatch.org/corruptionun1.pdf
We did the same thing - and worse! - to Indians, remember?
Oh for the love of... I guess that means we shouldn't think it's wrong?
No, it means we were no better than those awful brown people in Ethiopia we now despise.
Which brown people, the Ethiopians, or the Arabs and Chinese (who I think get called yellow).
I had in mind the government and power brokers in Ethiopia who are forcing their own people off the land.
Hey Max. That may be, but remember, the Indians were on our land!!
Max - I had the same exact thought. I would hope if it happened today, the UN would sternly condem the actions against American Indians, but... alas. We can't go back and change history. It's just ironic (and more than a little hypocritical) when America condemns other countries for behavior they have swept under the rug here. *sigh*
Daisy your comment is completelly off base. I am an American and I condemn what is happening in Ethiopia, as you and I should. However, I had nothing to do with massacreing thousands of American Indians and neither did my ancestors. They were suffering at the hands of the British at the time. The Indians were killing each other for centuries before Colombus and Company ever made it ashore. So by your logic, they should not be able to complain when American Govt waged a war against their civilization.
and Max ole boy, you stated, "we were no better than those awful brown people in Ethiopia we now despise". Speak for yourself about the fact that you despise Ethiopians
http://www.fgvincompany.com.br/conhecimento-corporativo/servicos-e-credito-e-servicos-financeiros-no-varejo/
No, it is NOT the same thing. The 'we' you are talking about were descendants of Europeans, people from an entirely different continent. Not saying it's any more or less excusable, but not the same thing.
The Native americans usually got the land in war themselves, battling with other tribes. We won the last one, right or wrong.
If the farms would actually help feed the local population and they wouldn't starve during drought season it might be good. But it feels more like China and Arab states doing a power grab and buying up parts of the globe! To get even more powerful than they are already becoming.
We Americans make it possible by buying all this Made in China stuff that fills every store in US, and by consuming so much oil from Arab states.
I agree with you there, but it is almost impossible not to. Everything you pick up is made in China. You'd have to go home with nothing every time. Try going out to get something you need.
That is the ugly truth about the so called free trade: the consumer has no choice but to buy what the stores makes available. Stores make higher profit on the cheap Chinese products so this is all they stock. Free trade is only good for international capital holders, the Traders. The consumers and and producers are ultimately exploited by the traders. I buy a lot of used stuff on flea markets and Goodwill or Salvation Army stores.
So the Ethiopian government is committing genocide of its own people for Chinese ag money.
Damn, why didn't we think of doing that to our folks here in the U.S. How could we have let Ethopia beat us to this new facet of outsourcing one's own homeland to China!
We're really slipping as a nation when a country as jacked up as Ethopia beats us to the punch!
Stealing land from peasants to aid the wealthy get more wealth is an old thing in the USA...it started with the natives, and continues even now.
It sounds as though history repeating itself.When the pilgrims landed at plymouth rock there were close to 50 million native americans In so called America. By 1930 there were only about 100 thousand native people left, All land taken from them with the exception Of set up Indian prison camps. As long there is greed among capitalists people will lose what was theirs .
And I guess communists and all the nations before capitalists and communists, going back to and before the Roman empire, weren't trying to gobble up all the land?
As long as one HUMAN wants what another has and isn't willing to curb that desire and find or create an alternative, there will never be an end to the strong / sly of this world stealing from or killing the weak in order to satisy that lust.
Wow Bruce who was your history teacher? Somebody needs to find them a new subject to teach fast. It was originally estimated 10 million Native Americans when Columbus landed, later revised to 30 million, and the common belief by historians now is 50 million. When I say Native Americans, I mean Native to the Americas, not what is now the United States. Columbus(who despite common belief wasn't an USA settler, and who’s name isn’t even Columbus) brought with him diseases that in numbers of fatalities dwarfed any Natives killed by warfare. Well, once the cat was out of the bag along came Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, French, British, among others, all to do their worst and inadvertently carry new diseases with them. By the time the Pilgrims came to settle, there was nothing near 50 million Natives in the now USA. Again historians believe disease killed 80-95% of the Native Americans who perished after the arrival of pilgrims. You may also recall something called the French and Indian War, the Seven Years’ War, or the War of Conquest, which accounts for more at the hands of British and French militaries, even some Native Americans allied with these militaries, but you can look up the lengthy details of that one yourself. I would like to stress that those militaries were not the pilgrim colonists. Anyways there’s one thing you’re right about, after all that the US Military began its systematic killing, imprisonment, relocation of Native Americans, just nowhere near 49.9 million though. Historians debate whether it was a genocide or not, but the bottom line is that it was a foul and heinous time in US History.
Can one justify evil done and overlook our past. Adolf Hitler studied American History to find out how you can eliminate an entire race and justify it in the end.I think we can do better than what has taken place in history. Can we as citizens of planet earth not change our consciousness to not repeat the past
The real shock's going to be when people read how China and the Arab countries have been buying up farmland right here in the USA. For decades.
don't forget forclosed homes
If they don't buy, whose will buy?
there have been previous articles written how AIG and the rest of WALL STREET have beeen buying up land in AFRICA!
Take a good look at mainstreet, USA, home forclosures and joblessness amoung the middle class, it's happening right here in America. Occupy Wallstreet is full of displaced Americans. Voter's rights are next. Casinos take the place of homes rather than farms. Keep your eye on your own neighborhoods and see what is going on right here , no difference. Power grabs everyday.
Fertility rates per the United Nations 2005-2010:
Ethiopia #22 5.29
China (mainland) #154 1.73
Tell me, when, in history has this ever ended well? It's like the ethiopian govt is begging for a popular uprising.
Because urbanites with zero agricultural experience ALWAYS make the best farmers. How could they possibly not be better than people who have spent a lifetime of effort at it? They went to college once!
Investors and govt officials remain clueless about the fact that there is no technology in existence which is a solution to drought and that not all dirt is created equal. Nor do they care, their govt sees free $, investors see the ground floor of a land rush in the making.
Sounds like another government selling out its people. It's an epidemic.
99% of the people who become politicians (worldwide) do so to further some nefarious criminal enterprise. The criminal justice system is only here to protect the white collar criminals from retaliation by the woking class people they rob.
We fell alseep in 1980 and woke up SLAVES!
Monster corporations like Monsanto and The Dominion group are taking over all the farm land to grow genetically modified industrial (not fit for human consumption), corn and soy, for use as pig feed and fuel. The people who use to own the land are forced to work it at gun point and are given just enough rice to have just enough energy to pick the developed nations PIG FOOD. Welcome to the globalization of the free market or as I like to call it "THE OUTSOURCING OF SLAVERY"!! We install dictators, pay them off, then plunder thye country's resources using their indigenous population as slave labor, been doing it since 1837 when the Marines were sent to Nicaragua for the United Fruit Company. Dont it make you proud to be an American? And now it seems the Chinese want in on the game, poor Africa just cant catch a break, if it isnt one evil super power enslaving their people it's another. Yes I know it takes the cooperation of greedy local governments, but we are suppose to be the adult in the room, we should lead by example.
I think we found a place to relocate a former Itallian cruise line captain !
We can sell them guns, or send them union organizers. The third option, waterboard torture, is reserved for our closest friends.
If the cult of the greedy wants to swindle Ethopians out of the entire value of their interest in Ethopia, who are the U.S. People to stop our Federal Government from their power-mad bacchanal?
This is so so wrong.. being a native, this is just horrendous to me !!! These are villages of families that have lived on their land for decades just to have their own government sell their land right out from underneath their feet.
"Yeah Man.... dis sucks Bro' I tink its like....called IMMINENT DOMAIN in the USA"
....DUDE....DUDE.... NO WAY BRO' (Sucks to be an Indian in Virginia in 1830)
Jasmine most american don't realize this is also happening in the US as the government
makes more regulations and takes over people's land without a choice!
AS HEARD IN MILLIONS OF HOMES THROUGHOUT THE MIDWEST UNITED STATES
'
"Hey Hun.... remember when you and I were talking about how great it would be to open a BASKIN ROBBINS ICE CREAM PARLOR in Ethiopia? Well..... I got great news ! ! !"
I am not liberal but unless these people wanna move and they are going to be better
off and sent to a place with FOOD and Housing and Doctors then leave them alone!
Please ladies and gentlemen do not, I repeat DO NOT say anything, anything bad about what is happening in Ethiopia. There is supposed to be nothing BAD happening in Ethiopia. It is paradise for tourists. Its people are the best fed in the world. Their cities especially the capital are full of sky scrapers, they have wide and extremely clean streets. They have the best hospitals where all the citizenry have access to them. Their schools are full of well fed and happy children. What can I say... I could go on and on. All the above was made possible by the billions of US $ received from the Western donors since the fifties. If you have the siltiest doubt, please contact "SNOW WHITE" at the UN Security Council!
AS HEARD IN MILLIONS OF HOMES THROUGHOUT THE MIDWEST UNITED STATES
'
"Hey Hun.... remember when you and I were talking about how great it would be to open a BASKIN ROBBINS ICE CREAM PARLOR in Ethiopia? Well..... I got great news ! ! !"