Ethiopia iyo Human Rights Watch
Wasaaradda Arrimaha Dibadda Ethiopia ayaa jawaab kulul ka bixisay Warbixin ay soo saartay Hay'ada xaquuqul insaanka ee Human Rigths Watch taasoo ay ugaga hadashay tacadiyadda ay Xukumadda Ethiopia ku kacday ee ka baxsan Bini-aadamnimadda.
Warsaxaafadeed ka soo baxay Wasaaradda Arrimaha dibadda Ethiopia oo Warbaahinta Waagacusub loo soo diray ayaa u qornaa sidaan:-
Press Statement
Human Rights Watch: Persisting With its Flawed Methodology and Unsubstantiated Allegations
The Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia must again express its dismay that Human Rights Watch has issued another deeply flawed report on Somalia ("So Much to Fear" – War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia ).
This is not just because it is published after the decision of Ethiopia to withdraw its troops from Somalia, a fact Human Rights Watch completely ignores; nor just because it has been published so soon after Ethiopia made public a devastating and critical investigation of a Human Rights Watch report on Somali National Regional State of Ethiopia.
This exposed extensive flaws in Human Rights Watch’s methodology and conclusions. It is therefore extremely disappointing to find that this report has continued an extensive use of journalistic reports, drawn virtually all of its evidence from hearsay and second-hand information gathered outside Somalia, and from the propaganda of terrorist groups, and involves nothing more first-hand than a few telephone conversations with anonymous informants.
Misrepresentation on Events in Somalia
The Government of Ethiopia is deeply saddened that the people of Somalia have had to endure such interminable conflicts for so long. Ethiopia shares in the grief of the Somali people over this unacceptable situation.
This is not just because Ethiopia has a legitimate security interest in what has been happening in Somalia. Ethiopia deplores the lack of interest by the international community in what has been happening in there.
Ethiopia has persistently tried to facilitate peaceful resolution of the problems among the people of Somalia, not least by sponsoring a whole series of peace conferences since 1992. In such effort, Ethiopia has worked with all members of IGAD in the convening of the peace and reconciliation conference held in Kenya leading to the establishment of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia.
It was natural for Ethiopia to lend whatever assistance it could when called upon by the Government of Somalia to assist it to resist attacks against Transitional Federal Institutions.
Ethiopia’s involvement in Somalia in support of the TFG, as an internationally recognized Government of Somalia, has been supported by Africa and the African Union as opening a window of opportunity for peace in the country.
However, as Foreign Minister Seyoum noted in his recent letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and to the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Ethiopia had expected that it would be able to withdraw in a matter of weeks after Ethiopian forces had entered Somalia in December 2006. It had anticipated that either an AMISOM force might be fully deployed to replace it, or an international stabilization or peace-keeping force would be deployed.
Two years later neither has happened, except an AMISOM deployment of Ugandan and Burundi contingents of 3450 troops, nor has the TFG managed to create a credible ongoing peace process despite some success with the Djibouti Agreement. In these circumstances, as the Minister made clear, Ethiopia felt it appropriate to withdraw its forces by the end of the year. Surprisingly, in consideration of the relevance of this to the situation in Somalia, Human Rights Watch chooses to ignore it totally.
Unsubstantiated allegations
One of the very few allegations that Human Rights Watch bothered to put to the Government in sufficient detail to permit a response was the roadside bomb on August 15, 2008. This hit a small Ethiopian military convoy. Human Rights Watch claimed Ethiopian forces opened fire wildly and at least 40 Somali civilians including the passengers of two minibuses were killed. As the Government pointed out in its response a thorough investigation revealed that there were four minibuses hit by the roadside bomb, and many passengers killed and wounded. The Ethiopian troops in the convoy also suffered significant injuries.
In the aftermath of the explosion, some of the troops assisted the casualties in the minibuses, others deployed to try and find those responsible. A small Al-Shabab unit in the area and presumably responsible for the explosion, opened fire on the troops using small arms and RPGs. The troops returned the fire, killing six Al-Shabab fighters; the rest, estimated at ten or eleven, fled. The investigation into the incident, as always, assessed the length of the engagement, the quantity of ammunition used and the accuracy of fire as demonstrated by the death of the Al-Shabab fighters. It also found that the majority of civilian casualties were caused by the explosion, and another eight or nine by Al-Shabab fire. The exact figures are unclear because it is believed some subsequently died in hospital.
Human Rights Watch did note in a line or two that the Government had responded to its claim but added that there was no evidence to support this version of events which was contrary to what it called all other "credible eyewitnesses". Once again, it has to be noted that Human Rights Watch fails to provide any details of these allegedly "credible eyewitnesses" in Mogadishu, none of whom can have been seen by Human Rights Watch researchers who failed to visit Mogadishu or any part of southern Somalia at all.
With respect to another allegation, of civilians killed by indiscriminate firing in late March on the Afgoyee road, Human Rights Watch does not even bother to mention the Government’s investigation whose details it was given. An explosion killed three Ethiopian troops and injured three others.. Three Al-Shabab fighters attempting to flee after the explosion were killed. They were found to have the remote control device and the electric wires in their possession. No other casualties occurred, and there were no civilian deaths or injuries of any kind; no civilians were present at the scene of the ambush.
A third claim referred to killings in a Mosque, widely publicised by Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch claims that the ENDF raided a mosque, and that ENDF troops operating jointly with TFG forces, killed 21 people, seven of whom were found with their throats cut. Human Rights Watch claims that the only Ethiopian Government response was to issue a statement denying the allegations and claiming the weekend operation had been successful.. The implication of that is disgraceful and is simply not true. The Government did in fact make public of some details of the military report on the operations and of the investigation into what happened in the mosque in the latter stages of the operation.
The operation was to clear areas of Heliwa and Yaqshid districts in Mogadishu, following a number of roadside bomb attempts against Ethiopian trucks travelling between the Pasta Factory and the Mogadishu Stadium, attacks which had caused a number of civilian casualties.
A platoon searching an area near Mogadishu University ran into heavy Al-Shabab resistance. It called for assistance and some armour was deployed. The fighting spread into the Livestock Market and continued into a second day before the surviving Al-Shabab fighters fled. By then they had lost well over a hundred killed and wounded, including several senior commanders, and leaving behind a considerable amount of arms and ammunition including vehicles as well as explosive containers. The fighting took place in and around a major Al-Shabab hideout in a nearly deserted area of the city, and all the casualties were Al-Shabab.
As regards the events in the Al Hidaya Mosque, a specific investigation was carried out into this when it was discovered that a number of bodies were found there. Information was gathered from people living in the vicinity of the Mosque as well as some of those who were in the Mosque at the time of the killings.
As some of the Al-Shabaab fighters fled from the earlier fighting, two tried to take refuge in the nearby Mosque, a Tabliq mosque. The Sheikh at the Mosque refused because of the threat this might pose to the forty or so students studying in the Mosque at the time. He was immediately shot and killed.
Other Al-Shabaab fighters then arrived and ordered local people to collect bodies from the area, including several Al-Shabaab fighters, as well as two or three civilian casualties, a total of thirteen in all, and dump them into the Mosque. Others were then killed to make a total of 20. These bodies were mutilated in various ways, some indeed having their throats cut. Eye-witnesses who observed this were unable to confirm whether or not all were dead before their throats were severed. None of these were members of the Mosque apart from the Sheikh who had been killed originally by Al-Shabaab.
The remaining Al-Shabaab fighters then fled the scene as Ethiopian forces arrived and discovered the bodies. They questioned the people living around the Mosque to find out what had happened, and the students who had been studying in the Mosque and who had subsequently taken refuge in the basement on the arrival of Al-Shabaab, were also briefly detained and questioned on what had happened.
One further point should be made. Amnesty International claimed that Ethiopian troops had been responsible for the cutting of throats, describing this as a form of extra-judicial execution practiced by the Ethiopian forces. As Amnesty is fully aware, Ethiopian troops have never carried out this sort of activity or the kind of mutilations Amnesty claimed took place at the Mosque. It is simply not credible on cultural grounds if nothing else. It might also be noted that Al-Shabab is well known for such activities, killing and mutilating its enemies in this way as a matter of policy, and makes no secret of it.
With respect to another allegation, should be obvious that the Ethiopian military would not deploy under-trained troops in a combat zone like Mogadishu. We have also pointed out to HRW before, a fact that HRW conveniently ignores, that the Ethiopian Ministry of Defense has made extensive efforts to promote education in human rights and humanitarian law in the Ethiopian National Defence Forces.
Training in human rights and humanitarian law is part of the core curricula of all the country’s military training institutions at all levels. Topics covered include the laws of war, international humanitarian law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, civilian supremacy over the military, patriotism and loyalty to the Constitution, rights and freedoms of citizens under the Ethiopian constitution, equality of religions and of nations and nationalities.
All soldiers receive copies of the constitution; informal discussions are regularly held on a variety of constitutional topics. A wide array of workshops on specific topics in human rights and humanitarian law are routinely made available for senior military officers, members of the military legal profession, those participating in international peacekeeping operations, and military media professionals. Human rights conferences and seminars, organized in collaboration with the ICRC, are regularly convened throughout the country’s different military training centers.
The Ministry of Defense transmits a regular radio program for the armed forces dedicated to raising awareness of the military's role in the protection of human rights and in the implementation of the laws of war. The Ministry’s bi-weekly paper 'The Dawn" (Wugagen) regularly features a column prepared in collaboration with the ICRC on humanitarian law.
This is certainly not to deny, however well trained troops might be, that civilians might not be harmed in cross-fire when conflict is going on in urban areas, or when Al-Shabaab routinely opens fire from populated areas, from houses in the middle of crowded streets. In this context, however, one might note that many of the claimed casualties have in fact been of fighters not civilians.
In Mogadishu, fighters are not in uniform. They can be identified by the fact they are armed, but any fighter who is wounded or dies in these circumstances is immediately stripped of his weapons. By the time they reach a hospital or are buried, they have become civilians, a point HRW has clearly not even considered, and which its informants certainly minimize.
It should be repeated that all cases of civilian casualties, of which the military are aware, are immediately investigated. In every case, appropriate legal action has been taken against anyone found guilty of such action. At no time have Ethiopian troops arbitrarily or deliberately flattened whole blocks of Mogadishu with artillery fire. Response to attacks has always been as precise as possible.
HRW claims there have been no reported instances when ENDF soldiers have been investigated or held accountable for possible war crimes. This, as HRW knows perfectly well, ignores the investigation into the killings in the Mosque in April, and other examples mentioned above.
No troops have been held accountable for possible war crimes because no credible evidence has been produced. We would repeat: anonymous accusations from extremist or opposition supporters from outside Somalia, even if repeated by HRW, cannot be considered to constitute credible evidence.
Flawed Methodology
HRW’s methodology is worthy of comment, as is the way it employs its supposed evidence. It admits that it carried out all its research outside Mogadishu and it is clear from the footnotes that most of its interviews were carried out in Nairobi or in Kenyan refugee camps.
Nowhere in the report does HRW indicate any serious effort to carry out investigations on the ground in Somalia. Indeed, it makes no secret of the fact that this is a report compiled in the absence of any field visits to the places where abuses allegedly occurred.
HRW gives no names of its informants and no addresses, though it does claim to have interviewed some people over the telephone in Mogadishu. It is, of course, simply not possible to evaluate testimony over the telephone nor is it at all plausible to come to any serious conclusion of people’s political persuasion.
To claim that on-the-ground research can be replaced by telephone interviews is nonsense as HRW well knows. It must be emphasized that all these telephone interviews, like all HRW’s other interviews, were anonymous.
There is no indication that HRW made any effort to discover the political affiliations of their informants, or indeed that it was in any way concerned about this. This means its whole report suffers from one very basic, indeed fundamental flaw: it is entirely based on hearsay, as indeed is all too often apparent in the claims made.
The other major source used by HRW is the media, as the footnotes in this report make clear. And, in fact, queries have often been raised over HRW’s frequent use of media reports as if these were, necessarily, reliable sources. Any media reports raise certain questions: Who were they written by and who or what were the sources? Were these independent media reports from both sides or reports based on sources from only one side, as is clearly often the case? There is no doubt that the media reports on Somalia over the last two or three years, often emanating in Nairobi, have normally provided an exceptionally one-sided version of events in Somalia. HRW appears to have no concern about this, any more than it does about the political affiliation, or possible affiliation of many of the sources that it uses.
This report is not entirely confined to allegations against Ethiopia or the TFG. It should be made clear that Human Rights Watch’s first time effort to expose abuses committed by Al-Shabab and other extremist forces in Mogadishu does not make its unsubstantiated allegations against Ethiopia any more credible.
Human Rights Watch has still failed to make any effort to improve its methodology or make any serious effort to evaluate the accuracy of allegations against the Ethiopian National Defence Forces or obtain response to such allegations from the Government of Ethiopia.
On this occasion, Human Rights Watch did belatedly contact the Government of Ethiopia asking for comments on some of its allegations. With deep misgivings, the Government responded despite the fact that the deadline given for response was far too brief and the allegations, as outlined, were almost entirely vague and sweeping. Our misgivings have been confirmed by the way Human Rights Watch has used our response, dismissing some evidence supplied as "unconfirmed", and merely footnoting reference to details of other investigations carried out or otherwise ignoring it.
It has to be noted that none of Human Rights Watch’s allegations have been "confirmed" by anyone apart from less than credible anonymous informants. It should hardly be necessary to point out once again that claims made by a single person over the telephone can hardly constitute acceptable impartial evidence. Merely to assert "credible eyewitnesses" begs the question of who these people are and how they are evaluated. Some of so-called interviewees appear to have been visibly coached to fit into what the interviewer wanted to report.
All this, at the least, raises very serious issues of credibility, particularly since HRW could certainly have conducted its investigations in Mogadishu before reaching its conclusions and making such serious unsubstantiated claims. As we have said before, we would certainly expect that professional ethics would have required any human rights organizations to have conducted investigations on-the-ground, and to have at least made a serious effort to get comment and response from the countries concerned, before making unsupported accusations of war crimes. As our recent investigation of HRW’s claims over the Somali National Regional State of Ethiopia have conclusively demonstrated, HRW’s reports are prone to unsubstantiated claims and gross exaggerations. Its June report on the Somali National Regional State of Ethiopia was seriously flawed. Its latest report on Somalia suffers from identical problems.
HRW’s technique is simple. It never suggests the allegations it is making are claims or allegations. It merely assumes, without producing any evidence at all, that the stories of its, always anonymous, sources are completely true. It then sums up with statements to the effect that "there is no justification for the numerous violations of the laws of war and human rights abuses committed by the Ethiopian forces", hoping that repetition will conceal the fact that it has actually produced no credible, or identifiable, eyewitness evidence that Ethiopian force have in fact committed any such human rights abuses.
HRW attempts to conceal these lacunae by claiming that Ethiopian government officials have refused to investigate or respond "in any meaningful’ way to its allegations. This, as we have noted above, is simply not true.On the Political Motivations and recommendations of the Report What should be singled out in this Human Rights Watch Report is its singular and overt political undertones against the Government of Ethiopia. It goes to the extent of implying that the training that Ethiopia has provided to the security forces of Somalia was deliberately intended to encourage human rights abuses. In many ways, Ethiopia is blamed in a number of ways for the unambiguous faults of other actors, including extremist groups or external forces.
HRW makes a number of recommendations to the Government of Ethiopia. Almost all of these are already in operation in Ethiopia. We would note that Ethiopian troops have always been under strict orders to operate in compliance with international humanitarian law.
All troops and their commanders have received relevant and appropriate training in international humanitarian law for several years. Anybody who is found to have been responsible for any violations of these laws is immediately subject to legal sanctions.
The Government has clearly demonstrated in a recent report of an independent investigation it established, it is prepared to undertake a detailed inquiry into any credible allegation.
It has also made it clear that it is willing to work with Human Rights Watch if the organization is prepared to make a meaningful effort, in good faith, to conduct objective work on the ground.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Addis Ababa,
09 December 2008
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