Ogaden Human Rights Committee - Historically, Somali people in the Ogaden have never accepted the Ethiopian occupation of their country. Therefore, the national resistance against the foreign occupation has never ceased for more than a century. But its intensity varied from time to time, according to local, regional and international circumstances. And the situation became tenser when the present regime entirely destroyed the traditional local structures and clan systems and disrupted all the sources of income of the local people of which more than 75% are rural people who herd only livestock.
Successive Ethiopian governments’ military campaigns to quell the insurgence in the Ogaden had caused enormous human suffering in the region.
Haile Selassie and Dergue governments as well as current EPRDF government considered the Ogaden as a rebellious region, which must be pacified by military means. The region has been turned into a military garrison with no infrastructure whatsoever.
Razing entire towns to the ground, extrajudicial killings, mass arrests, disappearances, rape of women, confiscating private property, dusk to dawn curfew and martial law were and are the order of the day.
For the last fifteen years the Ogaden was a country ravaged by war, haunted by drought and widespread human rights violations and in the meantime the regime gives the world a different picture of Ogaden.
The ONLF has called since early 1992 for referendum on self-determination and independence for the Ogaden.
RECOMMEENDATIONS AND APPEALS:
To: international community, United Nations, Ehiopian Government and Ogaden National Liberation Front:
* The Ethiopian government and the Ogaden National Liberation Front, declare immediate, comprehensive and unconditional cease-fire in the Ogaden.
* The international community exert more pressure on all the parties to the conflict in the Ogaden in order to reach a peaceful negotiated settlement, which guarantees the Ogaden people’s inalienable right to self-determination through a fair and free referendum.
* Since there is no confidence between the warring sides the Ogaden Human Rights Committee urges the United States and European Union to act as mediators and facilitators in order to put an end the senseless carnage in the Ogaden.
* The Ogaden Human Rights Committee reiterates its condemnation and disapproval of imposing restrictions on humanitarian organisations’ movements, intimidation and abduction of aid workers as well as targeting civilian population in the Ogaden.
* The Ogaden Human Rights Committee urges the Ethiopian government, the Ogaden National Liberation Front and other parties to the conflict to allow all humanitarian and relief organisations to operate freely in the Ogaden as well as international and local human rights organisations and the international press.
* The international community publicly censure Ethiopia over its human rights record in the Ogaden, its illegal occupation of Somalia and massacring many defenceless civilians in Mogadishu and elsewhere.
* Perpetrators of war crimes and other atrocities in the Ogaden and in Somalia should be brought before an international tribunal.
* The Ethiopian government should be held responsible for infamous mass killings, disappearances, arbitrary arrests, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
* The United Nations appoint a Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Ogaden.
* The Ethiopian government and Ogaden National Liberation Front give ICRC free access to all detainees in their custodies.
* The Ogaden Human Rights Committee asks for all political prisoners in Ethiopia immediately and unconditionally released or charged with recognized criminal offences, and given fair trials; and be given unrestricted and regular access to their family members and to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
* The international community refrain from aiding and supporting the Ethiopian government as long as it violates human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Ogaden as well as other parts of the empire-state of Ethiopia.