Ethiopian resettlement plan ‘a panic movement’

Press, 4 April 1985, Page 6

Ethiopian resettlement plan ‘a panic movement’

By

MICHAEL RANK,

, of

Reuter (through NZPA) Addis Ababa

A Government plan to move 1.5 million Ethiopian peasants from their barren northern homelands to more fertile ground has run into controversy. It is alleged that some people are being resettled at gun-point. Western relief workers accuse the Ethiopian Government of denying food to large numbers of hungry people living in areas where separatist rebels are active, and of making thousands more move far from their homes against their will. Government officials deny these allegations categorically and say that peasants are begging to be resettled from areas of the north — where it has not rained for up to three years — to more fertile regions, mainly in the south-west. Equally vehemently do they reject allegations that food is being withheld from areas of Eritrea, Tigre, and Wollo that are contested or controlled by rebels. The rebels say that the Government is blocking food to

deny the rebels a popular base.

The Foreign Minister, Lieutenant-Colonel Goshu Wolde, said on a recent visit to Brussels, “Forcible migration is not the policy of the Ethiopian Government ... If people do not want to settle, then they will go back.”

Berhane Deressa, deputy head of the Government’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, described allegations of food being withheld from rebel areas as “preposterous”. The British and Canadian ambassadors told journalists after a recent visit to Eritrea and Tigre that they had seen no sign of emergency grain being denied to local inhabitants. But Western diplomats and workers for several private Western aid organisations say that there is strong evidence the Government is hindering the relief effort for political reasons.

Most aid workers say that there is little alternative to resettlement in the worsthit areas because supplies of relief food are limited

and do not represent a longterm solution. But they are deeply concerned about how the programme is being conducted.

They question official plans to move 1.5 million people this year and say that it is neither practicable nor desirable to move such large numbers in such a relatively short time. “It’s a panic movement of people which is losing far more lives than the lack of rains, in my opinion,” said one aid official.

“Priority is being given to resettlement at the direct expense of the relief effort.”

Aid workers say that pressure on peasants to resettle is immense and that many are fleeing from camps for fear of being forced to move against their will.

One Western relief official said that four people were believed to have been killed at Adigrat in Tigre province, last month after refusing to board a resettlement lorry. He said that armed soldiers had arrived at Quiha, Tigre, on February 10 and loaded 250 men

forcibly on to three trucks. Other aid workers said that those who had agreed to resettle were given 3kg (nearly 71b) of grain a day, far more than the normal ration, while others received little or nothing. Those refusing to move had been banned from receiving supplementary food from private foreign agencies, they said. Some Western relief officials said that such heavy-handed tactics reflected a Soviet-style system based on rigid quotas.

Local officials often force peasants to resettle to meet their quotas, and are deeply fearful for their jobs if they do not move the number of people set by the central authorities, the relief workers say. Problems arise from the peasants’ conservatism and their reluctance to leave land they have fanned for generations. “They fear to leave the place where their parents have been living. Their thinking remains feudal,” said Brigitte Vasset, a French doctor with the private body, Medecins sans

Frontieres. Aid officials said that food distribution was a serious problem in many areas because of a severe shortage of lorries, and that the problem was worse further north since these areas tended to be held or contested by rebels. One Western aid worker said that food had been distributed fairly generously close to a large granary at Kombolcha, in southern Wollo province. But a feeding centre catering for up to 200,000 at Korem, 200 km farther north, received only 400 tonnes of grain in February, about one-fifth of what was needed.

“There is less grain as you go north. Rebel activity is one of the possible reasons. Other reasons lose credence all the time.”

He also said that relief grain was reaching the south-western province of Illubabor in large quantities despite exceptionally bad roads and even though it was more than twice as far from the ports than areas in the north, where there were shortages.