UK foreign aid, the final insult
▻http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22117
This is why the friendly man I met insists on only being known as Mr O; he is terrified taking this case could lead to fatal reprisals against his family. ‘I am very angry about this aid,’ he said. ‘Why is the West, especially the UK, giving so much money to the Ethiopian government when it is committing atrocities on my people?
‘The donations have not gone on development but on supporting the government and the army. We would be happy if it really went on development; instead, the very opposite has happened with your money.’
At the centre of the case is Ethiopia’s ‘villagisation’ of four million people in the west and south of the country, areas that have opposed a government dominated by northern Tigrayans. Among them are 225,000 Gambellans, Protestants living in a former British enclave the size of Belgium.
They are being forced from their farms and homes into new villages, just as Stalin did with such disastrous consequences in the Ukraine.
The lucrative land they lived on for generations is being sold off to foreign investors or given to well- connected Ethiopians.
#Ethiopie #terres #villagisation #déplacements_forcés #violences_policières #réfugiés #aides #agrobusiness