Ethiopia — Rape, Torture, Jail

Sunday, 28 July 2013

Ethiopia — Rape, Torture, Jail

Africa: A Continent for Sale

Ethiopia — Rape, Torture, Jail



Saudi Star’s 60-year, 10,000-ha lease came free of land rent. This cost incentive fueled the company’s planned acquisition of 500,000 ha of land in Gambella and other states to grow a projected one million tons of rice, as well as maize, teff, sugarcane and oilseed. Marred in conflict and human rights abuses after documented cases of arbitrary arrests, beatings, rape and torture, Saudi Star remains one of the most watched land deals. As locals tell of no prior consent about the land deal as well as of being forced off their land by the government, conflict has escalated and a shooting took place on the Saudi Star compound which left five Saudi Star employees dead in June 2012. In retaliation, the Ethiopian government has been indulging in arbitrary arrests, beatings, rape and torture. 






Who is investing?

Indian firms, including Karuturi Globa and Ruchi Soya, among others, claim to have acquired over 600,000 ha of fertile land to grow edible oils, crops and cotton for export in Ethiopia, the fifth ‘hungriest’ nation in the world.

News coverage to date has emphasized the role of countries like China and Gulf States in the acceleration of land acquisitions in Africa. Our research showed that Indian firms are extremely active in countries like Ethiopia; it highlighted the major role of western firms, wealthy US and European individuals, and investment funds with ties to major banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.



Your land is my land

Those promoting land investments as the new development paradigm claim that their initiatives target unused and unproductive land while providing employment and growth opportunities to local populations. In Ethiopia, the current ‘villagization’ process, impacting nearly 1.5 million indigenous people, is taking place in the very same areas targeted for land investment by large-scale investors.

Major African rivers — the Nile, Zambezi and Niger — are tapped by these land grabs. As an investor said, ‘Internally, we call our land fund — water fund’

Water and food — unlimited buffet

Foreign corporations are treating Africa’s water like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Many of the deals give developers free rein to take as much water as they want, dams and irrigation schemes are built, and groundwater is used with no analysis of the devastating impacts this will cause. As a result, local residents, especially women, have to travel much farther than before to find water, try to get into plantations to access their old water sources, or purchase it at inflated prices.

African rivers are lifelines for the people who depend on them for water and irrigation, but, now, major rivers are being drained so fast that they could be facing extinction. For example, the Niger river is decreasing by 10 per cent every decade and the problem is getting worse as more and more water-intensive agrofuel plantations emerge. In Ethiopia, the construction of a large dam on the Omo River and the irrigation of adjacent sugar plantations will result in Kenya’s Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake, to drop by two metres in the first year, increasing salinity levels, adversely impacting fish stocksand invaluable grazing areas on the banks and condemning the lake to a not-so-slow death.



The Oakland Institute research found little assurance that large-scale agricultural investments can improve food security, despite claims made by governments and investors. In many cases, local food farms are sold off in order to make room for export commodities, including biofuels and export crops.

read more.... http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2013/04/5880?page=show