was
also involved in carrying out the orders.
At the time of the 2003 Anuak massacres, the obvious motivation for displacement of the Anuak was
exploration for oil by Chinese petroleum companies. There is now evidence that the Ethiopian
government’s plan for expropriation of Anuak and other groups’ land is much larger.
Since the 1974 takeover of Ethiopia by the Marxist-Leninist Mengistu regime, all land has been the
property of the state. Land ownership has never been returned to the people who have farmed it for many
generations.
In the past month, contracts have been signed granting 99-year leases to huge tracts of Anuak land to
Chinese, Indian, and Japanese companies for agricultural production. The leases are being granted for as
little as one dollar per hectare, with all the money going directly to officials of the Meles Zenawi
government. Signing ceremonies for these leases have included no Anuak. Meles Zenawi has become one
of the richest dictators in the world.
Gambella province, the Anuak peoples’ homeland, has very fertile soil and abundant rainfall. The Anuak
are being moved off their land. Similar “land-grabs” are also being executed in many other areas of the
Ethiopia.
Deportation or forcible transfer of a population and persecution of any group on political, racial, ethnic,
cultural, or religious grounds are crimes against humanity outlawed by Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court. We call on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to take
action to protect Ethiopians from a government which has not only violated its responsibility to protect, but
is terrorizing its own people.
As one Anuak woman concluded in her testimony regarding the brutal murder of her husband by Ethiopian
defense forces:
Gambellan Voice,
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