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Collectivization on the Soviet model—nationalisation, forced labor on state farms, starvation, punitive killings, deportation (aka “resettlement”) and death. Press reports 1984–85. From Clay and Holcomb.
“Opponents of the regime of Mengistu Haile-Mariam allege that it is using the drought for ulterior political purposes to evict people from the politically dissident regions.
These allegations have been made by the relief associations of the resistance movements in Eritrea, Tigray, and Oromo. Evidence submitted to the British parliamentary Select Committee on Famine Relief and Food Aid by the Oromo Relief Assn. alleges that people are being forced into the resettlement areas against their will, that their selection is often arbitrary, and that in many cases they are dumped in new areas with no proper facilities to sustain them…
Evidence collected from these Oromo refugees indicates that most have fled from a work camp called Angolit near Nakmate in Walaga Province, where there are said to be no reception facilities or even shelter, virtually no medical supplies, and a scarcity of food, although work rations were distributed. Conditions in the labor camp were described by refugees as draconian:
In some cases, whole villages in Tigray Province were surrounded by troops at night and their inhabitants were forced onto trucks to be carted away to new places of settlement.
In other cases, agricultural workers, shepherds, and other villagers were simply taken away from where they were found and carried away without any attempt to ensure that whole families were kept intact.
Because of the haphazard policy of forcible removals, the new agricultural settlements lack balanced populations; many consist of aged and very young people, and many don’t have the family’s male head.
The settlements in Walaga are intended to be converted into state farms producing teff, the local staple crop for bread, as well as wheat. Peasant villagers were cleared from these areas to create land holdings suitable for large-scale operations on state farms. This has produced local antagonism toward the newcomers.
Thousands of hectares of forest and bush were also reported to have been cleared to provide additional land, thus opening up the prospect of further soil deterioration.
This policy of large-scale populations removals first began under the Haile Selassie regime during the last great drought in 1973. But the removals have since been continued and intensified by the Mengistu regime. According to one unsubstantiated report, over 2400 settlers in Angolit had already died from starvation, disease and neglect between 1981-82.
A further serious allegation is that many of the Tigrayans who were moved to the south came from areas that were not even afflicted by drought, and that many of them had some land of their own as well as cattle. They have been moved from the province where the armed opposition, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, claims to be in control of an estimated 80 percent of the area.”
— Christian Science Monitor, 26 December 1984
“U.S. AID Director M. Peter McPherson criticized the Ethiopian government for diverting 600 trucks to resettle hundreds of thousands of famine victims from the north to the south, while there was a backup of 100,000 tons of food in the Red Sea port of Assab and another 80,000 tons waiting to be moved out of warehouses.”
— The Washington Post, 2 May 1985
“At least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Ethiopian peasants have died this year as a direct result of their government’s resettlement programme, according to the secret evidence of international relief agencies and Western government sources in Addis Ababa. The relief agencies, however, have refused to publish this evidence because they fear that Ethiopia’s Marxist government will expel them and that such horrific news may dry up donations from the West
A secret report by the League of the Red Cross shows that conditions in the resettlement areas of southern Ethiopia have been appalling. The peasants have lacked food, housing, tools, seed and medical facilities. The sanitation of their villages has, in many cases, been non-existent. Those resettled from the Ethiopian highlands have died in the tens of thousands from malaria, in the mosquito-infested swamps of the lowlands.
Many people died in transit because they were sick and malnourished when they set out. They had hopelessly inadequate medical facilities and travelled in over-crowded conditions. There is also evidence that thousands of people were forced to move by Ethiopian militiamen.”
— The Sunday Times, 3 November 1985
“… Korem is a feeding center in the Wollo highlands… People who live in the mountains and valleys up to 30 km away come there once a month for dry rations… About 23,000 people still live in the camp.
Ten days ago, at night, trucks and buses arrived at Korem and more than 600 people were herded into them by militiamen armed with sticks and whips. It is during such enforced removals that families are split up. Word quickly spread through the camp and by next day more than 10,000 people had fled, fearing that the militiamen would return and cart them away.
Medecins Sans Frontieres and other agencies say privately that this was not an isolated incident. Such forced resettlement still occurs in feeding centers in Wollo and Tigre.
The government’s other way of forcing people to move is more subtle but hardly less brutal. Medecins Sans Frontieres says that a week ago the government banned the distribution of dry rations to 12,000 people who live near Korem camp. No reason was given. The agency has been prevented from giving intensive feeding to 5,000 children at the Kelala feeding camp in Wollo. Two thousand of these children are in desperate need, the agency says, and hundreds are dying.
Medecins Sans Frontieres can see only one reason why the government does not allow it to give humanitarian aid: the aim is to persuade people to resettle by depriving them of proper care in the areas where they live.”
— The Sunday Times, 3 November 1985
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