“Land Grabbing” in Ethiopia: Soldiers Poisoning Water Sources, Forcing Thousands off Ancestral Lands and Killing Wildlife

By Cultural Survival Press Release Posted to the web on April 20, 2012

April 18, 2012 (CAMBRIDGE, MA) – On-the-ground reports from Ethiopia reveal the government is stepping up its violence against Indigenous Anuak people. In the past week, sources say the military has attacked civilians in the Gambella region and poisoned water sources, forcing thousands of Indigenous people to leave their homelands. Wild animals are dying as they drink the poisoned water.

The Ethiopian government is forcibly removing some 200,000 Anuak people from their ancestral lands and then leasing their forests and farms to foreign agro-industrial companies. Human rights organizations, including Cultural Survival, charge that Ethiopia’s “land grabbing” from its own people increases poverty and hunger, even as the country continues to receive more U.S. and foreign relief aid than any other African nation.

Cultural Survival, a nonprofit organization that defends the rights of Indigenous people, is asking citizens of donor nations—the United States, the United Kingdom and countries of the European Union—to take action today to urge their governments to persuade Ethiopia to halt this forced relocation program. Concerned U.S. citizens can send letters to the U.S. State Department via Cultural Survival’s website, www.culturalsurvival.org/take-action/

The Ethiopian government’s programs of land grabbing and forced relocation of Indigenous people in the Gambella region violate Ethiopia’s constitution and international human rights laws, according to Cultural Survival Executive Director, Suzanne Benally. Driven from their forests, fertile river valleys, and farmlands with no compensation, Anuak families are forced into government-built villages where they have no means of survival; the promised jobs, farmland, healthcare and schools have not appeared. The relocated Anuak families must depend on the government for food aid, most of which comes from Western governments. Foreign companies’ bulldozers are not only destroying Indigenous people’s farms, they are also destroying Gambella’s last remaining forests and wetlands, even inside Gambella National Park.

Now, new reports indicate that the government has deployed more than 20,000 troops to Gambella. Cultural Survival has received reports of extra-judicial killings of unarmed Anuak youth. Hundreds of young people are fleeing to neighboring South Sudan and Kenya, fearing that another genocide like the one that occurred in 2003 may be coming. Obang Metho, an Anuak refugee who directs the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia, based in Canada, says the Anuak people are subjected to increased military harassment, reminding them of a similar escalation of violence that culminated in the 2003 massacre of more than 400 Anuak men.

“We are very alarmed by these reports of increasing state repression in the context of land-grabbing and forced relocation of Indigenous people,” says Paula Palmer, director of Cultural Survival’s Ethiopia campaign. “It is shameful that U.S. tax dollars could be directly or indirectly supporting such devastating human rights violations,” she says.

Cultural Survival is monitoring the situation in Ethiopia. For updates or to send letters to governments of the U.S., the U.K., and the E.U, visit www.culturalsurvival.org/take-action. Cultural Survival is a nonprofit organization that has partnered with Indigenous Peoples for 40 years to defend their lands, languages and cultures.  

Contact: 
Paula Palmer, Director, Global Response Program, culturalsurvival.org paula@culturalsurvival.org; 303.444.0306 and 303.335.8629 (cell)

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Ethiopia to charge more on commercial farm leases | Top News | Reuters

Thu Apr 5, 2012 1:09pm GMT

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By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia, which leases large tracts of land at cheap rates for commercial farming, plans to improve infrastructure and access to farmland and charge a premium to investors, an official said on Thursday.

The Horn of Africa country has allocated some 3.6 million hectares of land for firms seeking to invest in agriculture, often around remote and sparsely-populated regions in its west.

Indian-listed Karuturi Global, which is farming rice and palm cereals on its 10,000 hectares plot in the Gambella province, is among the 32 companies that have snapped up land.

Data on the Ministry of Agriculture website showed annual land rental rates for foreign firms ranging from $12.8 per hectare to just $1.15.

"We plan to build infrastructure by investing in roads, phone lines and electricity in these designated areas to add value," said Esayas Kebede, head of the Ministry of Agriculture's Agricultural Investment Agency.

"Companies often leased land for 20 to 40 years on certain prices per hectare, but the times will be reduced and the prices will increase upon completion (of infrastructure projects)," he told Reuters.

Around 400 companies submit applications for licenses each month, Esayas said, with a growing number of them from Europe.

"We have not issued a single license since November. We will resume once we have evaluated the performance of existing companies and have set up the infrastructure," he added.

He declined to comment on when Ethiopia might finish the infrastructure projects and hence resume issuing licenses.

Apart from Karuturi, others investors include Indian firms Shapoorji with 50,000 hectares and BHO with 27,000 hectares, Saudi Star Agricultural Development with 10,000 hectares and China's Huana Dafengyuan Agriculture with 25,000 hectares.

A majority of them grow rice and cereals primarily for export, but the aim now was to increase plots for cotton plantations and for palm oil, Esayas said.

HUGE POTENTIAL

Ethiopia says its primary goal is to boost agricultural production with the introduction of modern farming methods and technology.

Yet the massive give-away of land in one of the world's poorest nations, and in other countries across Africa including Sudan and Madagascar - has attracted intense scrutiny and criticism from rights groups.

The Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based research group, says land deals in Ethiopia lack transparency, adversely impact the environment, and have led to the forceful resettlement of thousands.

"A vast majority of people in the targeted regions do not want to relocate, but have been threatened by local police," said the group's Nickolas Johnson.

"There is a disturbing parallel between land being vacated and the land being sold to investors for large-scale commercial agriculture."  

Ethiopia resettlement plan falls short on development AFP:

Thwol and his family were moved off government-owned land under the east African nation's two-year-old commune programme, which pools scattered rural residents into new communities, ostensibly to provide them better access to services.

By Jenny Vaughan (AFP) – 1 day ago  
GAMBELLA, Ethiopia — When the Ethiopian government asked Thwol Othoy if he wanted to be resettled, he agreed, attracted by promises of a better life - a clinic, school for his children and land to farm.
But he now struggles to feed his family. After moving from western Ethiopia to the tiny town of Abobo in the Gambella region, he was allocated less than half his previous two acres on which he used to grow maize.
"The food is not enough," said Thwol, 35, sitting by his thatched hut, barefoot and in tattered shorts with an open shirt exposing his bony chest.
But some rights groups and observers fear the programme has another goal: to shove farmers aside for eager -- and often foreign -- investors who cultivate land for crops that will be exported to fuel rocketing food demand in China and other developing nations.
"Livelihoods and food security in Gambella are precarious, and the policy is disrupting a delicate balance of survival for many," Human Rights Watch said in a January report.
The government aims to resettle 1.5 million of its approximately 82 million people by next year. Officials say there is nothing sinister about the plan.
"Any society that's scattered, there's no way you can hear their voice or ensure social and economic services," Federal Affairs Minister Shiferaw Teklemariam said. "It is better to (create) organised set-ups."
Ethiopian land is wholly owned by the socialist-leaning government, which leases it out to companies and individuals for farming or livestock grazing.
In the Gambella region -- dense with vegetation and blessed with regular rain and a large river -- 200,000 people, or just over half the region's entire population, are due to be resettled over the next three years. Close to 90,000 people -- or 20,000 households -- have already been moved.
The fields along the river in Gambella are vibrant green and brim with rice husks, but in Kir, a nearby resettlement village, resident Obuk Ojulu said the land was not as fertile and that he had to rely partly on state grain handouts.
"Where we were before, there was good land," said Obuk, 25. "Here it is not good."
Kir has a small clinic, though its supplies are usually low and a nearby school has no teachers, just rows of kids flipping idly through tattered and outdated textbooks.
Regional agricultural department head Ahmoud Oto denied food shortages and insisted villagers are better off.
"Previously, where they were living, they were not benefiting from services," he said. "Now they are beneficiaries of clean water, health and education."
Human Rights Watch has accused the government of pushing communities off the land to make way for investors, who already occupy 500,000 hectares (2,000 square miles) of land in the region.
As incentives, the government offers tax breaks, pools of cheap labour and long-term leases of fertile land at affordable rates.
An additional 1.2 million hectares (4,600 square miles) is earmarked for agricultural investors in Gambella over the next three years.
Authorities insist investment boosts development by creating jobs and spurring economic growth, but Human Rights Watch senior researcher Ben Rawlence said residents' needs are being overlooked.
"Everybody wants better access to services, the problem is how it happens," he told AFP by phone from London.
"The right of development is not just the right of the state to bulldoze land. It's also the right of the people to choose how they want to develop."
Human Rights Watch warns the resettlement programme is reminiscent of the "collectivisation" drive by the authoritarian military regime in the 1970s that forcibly relocated 13 million people -- often violently -- but ultimately failed because no services were provided. Thousands died as a result.
Milkesa Wakjira, processing coordinator for the Ethiopian-owned Saudi Star company, which rents a 10,000-hectare (40-square-mile) plot near Abobo, defended the leasing of land.
"This is not a question of land grabbing," he said, standing before a sprawling green rice paddy as tractors trundled by. "If the land belongs to the government, no one is in a position to grab it because if the government wants the land, they can take it back."
Wakjira said the community welcomes the new jobs and the company's efforts to pave the area's jumbled dirt tracks. Saudi Star has also given two cars to the local district and donated 200 beehives to local farmers.
But more than 50 percent of the rice Saudi Star grows here is exported, mainly to Saudi Arabia, Wakjira said.
Opening its doors to foreign investors is part of the government's ambitious Growth and Transformation Plan, which aims to boost Ethiopia's economic growth and reach middle-income status by 2015.
The International Monetary Fund says Ethiopia's economy is growing at a rate of 7.5 percent, though the government pegs growth at 11 percent. The country's main exports are livestock, coffee and agriculture.
Despite the scarcity of food and land, Thwol says he will tough it out in Abobo for now.
"School is here, clinic is here and small water is here," he said.
Even though his plot of land has shrunk, he prefers to be near these services, no matter how under-resourced they are.
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