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NGO Says Thousands Displaced in Gambela After Ethnic Clashes

Addis Tribune (Addis Ababa)
NEWS
July 16, 2004
Posted to the web July 16, 2004

Tens of thousands of people remain displaced following violent clashes in
western Ethiopia's Gambela State, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on
Wednesday, according to IRIN. In a newly launched profile on internal
displacement in Ethiopia, it said 51,000 people had not returned to their
homes.
The NRC said power struggles and ethnic violence had plagued Gambela, which
borders Sudan and is 800 km south-west of Addis Ababa, since 2003, forcing many
people to flee their homes. Its findings also come as an independent inquiry
into the violence in Gambela revealed that some "unidentified" troops from the
defence ministry had murdered 13 people.
Kemal Bedri, the chairman of the commission, said more than a dozen
eyewitnesses had provided evidence of the involvement of defence ministry
forces in the attacks. The commission, which reported its findings to
parliament last week, was set up by the government to investigate the large-
scale killings that erupted in early December. The killings continued during
the first quarter of this year.The commission stated that 65 people, almost all
of them ethnic Anyuaks, were killed in fighting over a weekend in Gambela town.
It had been sparked, the report said, by an attack by Anyuak gunmen on
government refugee workers in which eight people were killed. The bodies of the
men - who were non-indigenous highlanders - had been mutilated in the attack,
which took place a few kilometres outside town on a road leading to a planned
new refugee site.
Their bodies were taken to the town, where brutal reprisal attacks on Anyuaks
then took place. The commission said highlanders - immigrants from others parts
of Ethiopia - attacked Anyuaks with axes and iron bars. The local police were
completely overwhelmed by the violence, and several hours elapsed before the
army stepped in. But fighting also spread through the region, with attacks
claiming the lives of several hundred people, the government said at the time.
The NRC noted in its report that "incursions" by rebel groups from neighbouring
Sudan had also caused some displacement along the border. In total, some
130,000 people remained displaced in Ethiopia, the NRC said in its report,
entitled "Global IDP [internally displaced person] Project".
It stated that the main challenge to providing humanitarian assistance in
Gambela lay in ensuring security for aid workers. "By and large, sustainable
and safe reintegration of IDPs will depend on the progress made in peace and
reconciliation efforts in Gambela," it added n

   

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