Alemayehu G Mariam
People of Omo River Basin sold down the river
Exactly two years ago to the month, I wrote a commentary entitled, “
The Dam and the Damned: Gilgel Gibe III Ethiopia”
focusing on the impact of “development” in the Omo River Basin (ORB)
in southern Ethiopia. In that commentary, I echoed the deep concerns
voiced by various international human rights and environmental
organizations over the ecological impact and cost of that dam on the
lives of indigenous populations.
I also made it a special point to express gratitude and appreciation
to “the great international human rights organization that have created
so much international awareness on the precarious environmental
situation in the Omo River Basin.” I am even more profoundly grateful
to
International Rivers, Human Rights Watch, the Oakland Institute, Survival International and the Africa Resources Working Group two
years later for the extraordinary work they continue to do to save the
environment and the indigenous people in the ORB. For years, these
organizations have been in the forefront of the race to save Ethiopians
damned by the Gilgel Gibe III hydroelectric dam.
The
various international organizations have done invaluable work by
raising public awareness and undertaking advocacy campaigns to bring
international attention to the ecological disaster taking place in the
ORB. Over the years, they have all issued meticulously prepared field
reports, research and policy analyses and other scientific and
statistical reports documenting the effect of the “development programs”
of the regime in power in Ethiopia on the lives and livelihoods of the
people of the ORB. They have all sought to advocate and mobilize
international public opinion to bring sanity to the madness of Gibe III
dam, the flagitious leasing of tribal lands in the Basin for sugar and
rice plantations for the export sector and to stop the forced
resettlement (“villagization”) of indigenous communities.
In my 2012 commentary, I also publicly lamented the fact that
Ethiopians, particularly those of us in the Diaspora, have been standing
on the sidelines with arms folded as the various international human
rights and environmental organizations groups were running a steep
uphill race to save Ethiopians in the ORB. We have been silently
watching them doing all of the heavy lifting for us. At the time, I
pleaded with all Ethiopians to “join and help international human and
environmental rights organizations help us, and engage in vigorous
environmental activism of our own.” I appealed for the “creation of our
own environmental civil society organizations, particularly in the
Diaspora, to ensure that Ethiopia’s rich and diverse ecosystem is
preserved and protected today and for future generations.” I also
warned, “If we fail to do that, we will all find ourselves in the same
position as the people of the Omo River Basin who are damned by the
dam.”
It is painful for me (frankly, I am ashamed) to admit that two years
after I wrote that commentary, we are still on the sidelines watching
while the international human rights and environmental organizations are
still doing all of the heavy lifting for us and keeping up the race to
save our people. I find myself asking the same questions over and over,
without answers: Is it fair to have the international human rights and
environmental organizations do all of the heavy lifting for us in the
ORB? When these organizations show so much care and concern for our
people and our country, why are we so manifestly unconcerned? Why is
that we do not join and support the organizations speaking up for our
people? Why is it that we do not come to the aid of these organizations
and defend them against the slings and arrows of a vicious regime which
slanders them and scandalizes their good works? Would we be as passive
and silent if the same environmental crimes and crimes against humanity
were being committed in the name of “development” in other parts of
Ethiopia? Are we manifestly unconcerned about the people of the ORB
because they are marginalized ethnic minorities? Could it be that we are
ashamed of the people of the ORB because they do not look “modern” like
the rest of us, or are a “backward civilization” as the late Meles
Zenawi once called them? How can we justify to future generations that
they owe their legacy of environmental conservation and protection of
the indigenous peoples of the ORB to the tireless efforts of
international organizations?
I ask my readers to think about these questions.
I
think it is only fair that we should at least financially help those
organizations who are helping us. There is no reason why we cannot
demonstrate our support to them as they fight for the rights of our
people in the ORB. We should be standing with them and not standing on
the sidelines watching them.
The clear and present danger posed by the Gilgel Gibe III dam to the people of the ORB
The Gibe III dam poses a clear and present danger to the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians in the ORB including the Bodi, Karo,
Muguji, Mursi, Nyangatom and Dasanech , among others, who have survived
for millennia practicing what is called “flood retreat agriculture”. At
the end of the rainy season, the flooded land near the river banks
provides rich silt for raising a variety of crops including sorghum,
maize and beans. The very existence of these Ethiopians depends on the
cyclical flooding season. The Gibe III dam will fundamentally disrupt
the natural downstream flow by damming the river upstream for
electricity production for export. Experts have convincingly argued that
the water volume on the Omo River will be permanently reduced as a
result of diversion of water for the dam reservoir and irrigation of
sugar plantations. This will make flood retreat agriculture virtually
impossible for the people living in the Basin. In August 2012, the world
renowned conservationist and paleoanthropologist Dr. Richard Leakey
challenged the self-serving Gibe III “scientific” studies minimizing the
ecological effects of the dam and predicted, “the dam will produce a
broad range of negative effects, some of which would be catastrophic to
both the environment and the indigenous communities living downstream.”
“Developing” the Omo River Basin
In late January 2011, Meles Zenawi gave a speech in Jinka, South Omo.
It was vintage Meles– bombastic, bitter and full of bluster. He
promised the sun and moon to the people trapped in the “backward
civilization” of the ORB. He pledged to take them out of the stone age
and into the modern age by making the region “an example of rapid
development.” He assured them that the “dam on the Omo River [will]
eliminate flood, create a huge irrigation system and give pastoralists a
sustainable income and a modern life.”
With a vengeance, Meles demonized and lashed out at the environmental
and human rights organizations urging care and caution in the
construction of the Gibe III dam and protection of the way of life of
the indigenous people. He characterized them as naysayers and doomsayers
“who want to block our freedom to use our rivers, and to save our
people from poverty.” He called them malicious obstructionists. “They
are creating huge propaganda… They are blocking us from getting
financial loans from abroad to finish the project.” He ridiculed them as
“best friends of backwardness and poverty… who don’t actually do
anything tangible.” He virtually called them self-absorbed racists
because “all they want is keep the pastoralists as a tourist attraction”
and keep the people of the ORB “a case study of ancient living for
scientists and researchers.”
Meles and his henchmen have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal
the environmental devastation that has occurred and continues to occur
in the construction of the Gibe III dam and the “development” of the
Basin. In July 2008, two years after construction began on the dam and
international human rights and environmental organizations began
sounding the alarm, Meles directed his “Environmental Protection
Authority” to issue the
Gibe III Environmental Social Impact Assessment.
That report was a shameless whitewash which rubber-stamped Meles’
pigheaded decision to forge ahead with the project. It was full of
boldfaced lies. It unabashedly concluded that the reservoir area for
Gibe III is unfit for human habitation because it is infested by deadly
mosquitoes and tsetse flies (which cause “sleeping sickness”). It
claimed, “There is no settlement in the future reservoir area and
settlements are concentrated on the highland in areas outside the
valley… There is very little farming activity around the Omo valley
bottom lands. … The population living within the proposed dam and the
reservoir areas are not in close proximity to the UNESCO designated
heritage site. No visible archaeological remains, which have scientific,
cultural, public, economic, ethnic and historic significances, have
been observed in the area and dam sites.”
Meles’ way of “modernizing” the “backward” people of the ORB was to
turn over the Basin to Saudi Arabian and other foreign investors and his
buddies. Meles announced in his speech that his “government is
planning, and working hard to establish, a 150,000 hectare sugarcane
development in this area starting this year.” Sure enough,
according to IC Magazine,
“A Saudi Arabian tycoon Al-Moudi, with close links to the top-level
Ethiopian leadership [was] allotted 10,000 hectares for a rice
plantation. His massive project has done considerable damage to the
local environment, which includes a national park and wildlife habitat,
and local communities that have lived in their homelands for many
generations.”
Meles announced that five sugar factories will be built in the ORB by the Omo Kuraz Sugar Development project.
According to “Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency”,
“Mesfin Industrial Engineering (MIE) signed ETB 3 billion ($162.2
million) worth contracts with state-owned enterprises to deliver
machineries for the Tana Beles Integrated Sugar Development Project and
the Kuraz Sugar development projects in the Amhara region and the Omo
Valley…” MIE is “also producing railroad tracks for the Dire Dawa-Addis
Ababa railway project and finalizing preparations to deliver the same
for the Djibouti through Afar to Northern Ethiopia railway line.”
In June 2011, UNESCO concluded that “GIBE III dam is likely to
significantly alter Lake Turkana’s fragile hydrological regime, and
threaten its aquatic species and associated biological systems” and
“urged the State Party of Ethiopia to immediately halt all construction
on the GIBE III dam [and not] damage directly or indirectly the cultural
and natural heritage located on the territory of another State Party.”
In Meles “development” plans, the impoverished and defenseless people
of the ORB get the shaft while his filthy rich friends became
super-filthy rich.
According to one environmental study published
in January 2014, “Construction of the Kuraz Sugar plantations
(projected to cover 161,285 hectares) and accompanying infrastructure,
including sugar processing factories and resettlement villages, has
started in advance of completion of the Gibe III. The Kuraz Sugar
plantations, plus additional area identified as suitable for cultivation
(47,370 hectares), could eventually require over 50% of the Omo River
inflow, depending on irrigation efficiency.”
Meles Zenawi’s “modernization” of the ORB was a windfall for his
buddies, but it literally left the people of the Omo River Basin high
and dry. Meles’ vision for the ORB and its people was, “
what’s good
for the ‘Saudi Arabian tycoon Al-Moudi’ and ‘Mesfin Industrial
Engineering’ is good enough for the people of the Omo River Basin.” That is how Ethiopians in the Omo River Basin got sold down the river!
The continuing race to save the Omo River and indigenous people
Last week,
International Rivers released a video on
the environmental risks to the Omo River valley and severe and
irreversible damage that could result to the people and ecosystem of the
valley if the dam and thoughtless “development” projects concocted by
the regime in power in Ethiopia continue unrestrained. It is a video
worth watching as it clearly explains the clear and present danger
facing the ORB.
There is little scientific doubt that Gibe III dam and the irrigation
diverting water on the Omo River poses a clear and present danger to
the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in
Southern Ethiopia and Northern Kenya. Studies have shown that by ending
the river’s natural flood cycle, harvests, grazing lands, river banks
and fisheries extending to Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert
lake, would be destroyed. The dam will devastate the unique culture and
ecosystems of the Lower Omo Valley and Lake Turkana, both recognized as
UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Experts fear that “Gibe III could destroy
the fragile ecosystem for an additional 300,000 people downstream in
Lake Turkana, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which gets up to 90% of its
water from the Omo River.”
It is particularly important for Ethiopians to understand the scope
of the environmental damage and the human cost of the dam in the ORB. I
specially urge my Ethiopian readers to view the Amharic version of the
International Rivers video by clicking
HERE or on the picture below.
USAID
and Donors Assistance Group in Ethiopia (a/k/a those who “see no evil,
hear no evil and speak no evil” in the race to save the people of the
Omo River Basin)
The official position of the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) and the Development Assistance Group’s (DAG) (a
consortium of 26 donors) in Ethiopia has been to stonewall any questions
of human rights abuses in the ORB. Stated bluntly, their official
response could best be characterized as: “We see no evil, hear no evil
and say no evil about human rights violations in the Omo River Basin.”
In October 2010, a few days after Human Right Watch released its
report on the abuses of aid in Ethiopia, USAID and DAG issued a
statement denying the “widespread, systematic abuse of development aid
in Ethiopia. Our study did not generate any evidence of systematic or
widespread distortion.” In 2012, USAID reported that it “did not find
evidence to support claims [of human right violations] during its visit
to South Omo.”
In a letter dated January 17, 2014, Dennis Weller USAID, current Mission Director in Ethiopia stated that
his agency and “other donors have been monitoring the situation in
South Omo” and that “the main finding from these trips is that there are
no reports of widespread or systematic human rights abuses. Our
observations do not support assertions… that the resettlement processes
are accompanied by systematic and widespread human rights abuses.”
Interestingly, Weller’s comments brushing off human rights abuses in
the ORB are in stark contrast to his predecessor Thomas Staal’s. In an
interview Stall gave before his reassignment to Bagdad in October 2010,
he made the stunning admission that “with respect to political
participation, we have not done a good job. Specifically, with respect
to the election that took place two years ago, we have not done much to
promote democracy… This is a hard situation that causes us to despair.”
No reason for Weller to “despair” over human rights abuses in the ORB!
The official position of USAID and DAG with respect to human rights
abuses in the ORB could be reduced to two basic propositions: 1) The
reports by international human rights and environmental organizations
concerning forced evictions, villagization, resettlement, denial of
access to subsistence land, beatings, killings, rapes, imprisonment,
intimidation, political coercion, and the denial of government
assistance are all fabrications and lies. 2) Even if the reports are
accurate, they document anecdotal and isolated incidents which do amount
to “systematic and widespread human rights abuses”.
USAID’s denial of “systematic and widespread human rights abuses” in
Ethiopia should not surprise anyone. For years, USAID has taken shelter
behind the empty phrase “systematic and widespread human rights abuses”.
When Meles Zenawi declared in 2010 that his party had won the
parliamentary elections by 99.6 percent, USAID found no “systematic and
widespread human rights abuses”. When the Meles regime was committing
crimes against humanity in Gambella and Ogaden regions, USAID
transformed itself into
USA In Denial. When hundreds of top
opposition political figures, activists, civil society leaders,
journalists, dissidents, bloggers, human rights advocates were jailed,
USAID’s response was, “No systematic and widespread human rights
abuses”. Nope! Nyet! Nien! Pray tell, what exactly is “massive and
systematic human rights violations”?
Does USAID mean, “A single
death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”? Perhaps for USAID a
single human rights violation in the ORB is a tragedy but the wholesale
violation of the human rights of the people in the Omo River Basin is a
statistic?!
The fact of the matter is that USAID and others who visited the Omo region in January 2012 were provided compelling
“audio recordings of the interviews conducted in several Lower Omo
communities.” These recording “leave no room for doubt that the donor
agencies were given highly credible first-hand accounts of serious human
rights violations during the field investigation [undertaken by USAID
and the Development Assessment Group] and that they have chosen to
steadfastly ignore these accounts.”
U.S. Congress joins the race to save the people of the Omo River Basin
In July 2013, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) included language in
Senate Bill 1372 imposing certain certification requirements in the
administration of U.S. aid in Ethiopia. The Leahy language was adopted
in the “
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014” which
passed both houses on January 3, 2014. Section 7042(d) of the Act
requires the U.S. Secretary of State to “certify to the Committees on
Appropriations that the Government of Ethiopia is implementing policies
to — (i) protect judicial independence; freedom of expression,
association, assembly, and religion; the right of political opposition
parties, civil society organizations, and journalists to operate without
harassment or interference; and due process of law; and (ii) permit
access to human rights and humanitarian organizations to the Somali
region of Ethiopia.” It further requires that U.S. ‘‘Development
Assistance’ and ‘Economic Support Fund’ that are available for
assistance in the lower Omo and Gambella regions of Ethiopia shall— (A)
not be used to support activities that directly or indirectly involve
forced evictions; (B) support initiatives of local communities to
improve their livelihoods; and (C) be subject to prior consultation with
affected populations.” The law requires the “Secretary of the Treasury
to instruct the United States executive director of each international
financial institution to oppose financing for any activities that
directly or indirectly involve forced evictions in Ethiopia.”
It
seems the international human rights and environmental organizations
that have been campaigning to protect the ORB and Gambella ecosystems
and indigenous peoples have been right all along!!
Where are Ethiopians in the race to save the ORB and the indigenous people?
The titular prime minister of Ethiopia, Hailemariam Desalegn, is said
to be knowledgeable about water development and sanitation. He
reportedly held a “graduate assistantship” at Arba Minch Water
Technology Institute. He is also said to come from “an Omotic community
which forms the principal population group in Ethiopia’s Southern
Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region.” It is reasonable to
suppose that Hailemariam would take both personal and professional
interest in the environmental destruction and human cost of
“development” in the ORB. Unfortunately, Hailemariam has repeatedly
declared the he “will strive to carry on Meles’ vision to transform the
country”, and by the same token oversee the destruction of the ORB
ecosystem and the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of
people in the Basin.
I admit it is a complete exercise in futility, but I urge Hailemariam and his regime to
learn from the tragedy of Lake Oroumieh in Iran.
That lake has shrunk by 80 percent in 10 years as a result of damning
rivers and irrigation projects. The response of the Iran’s new
president, Hassan Rouhani, to the environmental disaster was “to form a
team and to invite scholars to help find solutions.”
I have no reason to believe that Hailemariam and his crew care much
about Lake Turkana in which the Omo River empties or the environmental
damage in the ORB. I know that a regime afflicted by the arrogance of
ignorance will not invite scholars and experts in the field to seek
long-term solutions. I expect the regime leaders will repeat like a
broken record their Pollyannish rhetoric about the ORB and demonizing
condemnation of all who urge caution and care. Regardless, I find it a
historical imperative to register the fact that Hailemariam and Co.,
have a legal duty to mitigate the environmental disaster and human
catastrophe in the ORB.
After all, they must understand that “Truth will not remain forever on the scaffold, nor wrong forever remain on the throne.”
What about Diaspora Ethiopians? Will they join the race to save their
fellow Ethiopians damned by the Gibe III dam? Will they stand up and
speak up for the voiceless, defenseless, powerless and helpless people
of the ORB? Will they stand up and be counted with the people of the ORB
or abandon them because they are a “backward civilization” as Meles
Zenawi called them? Will they join International River, Human Rights
Watch, Survival International and the Africa Resources Working Group in
the heavy lifting and uphill fighting to save the Omo River Basin and
its indigenous people?
I do not know the answer to these questions,
but I will be doing what I always do: Carry water (though not from the
Omo River) for those doing the heavy lifting and uphill fighting!
