Abdi Mohamud Omar (known as “Abdi Iley”), the current president of Somali Regional State also heads the Liyu police which became an instrumental part of his tribal and counterinsurgency force.
While the world is too preoccupied in Syria and al-Assad regime, mass violations against civilians continue else where in the world, many often going unreported. Ethiopia is one such place that has failed to protect civilians from gross human rights violations.
Human Rights Watch reported last week that Ethiopian government-backed Liyu police force have committed mass atrocities and “summarily executed at least 10 men who were in their custody.”
An organisation called Force Change is running a petition to change your world by collecting the signatures in an effort to get the Ethiopian federal government to launch a public inquiry into the carnage carried out by the Liyu Police in Gashamo district, in Ethiopia’s Somali regional state, on the 16th and 17th March 2012.
According to Human Right Watch report, on March 16, 2012, a police member from Liyu, a group created by the Ethiopian government, shot and killed a resident of Raqda village. This incident was not an isolated one. The isaq clan members who inhabit many districts along the Ethio-Somaliland border have been subjected to series of harassment including torture, arbitrary arrest, detention, imprisonment, rape, looting and extrajudicial killings often based on ethnicity by the main Ogaden clan that controls much of the state’s structure.
As a consequence of immediate indignation and retaliation, men from Raqda and surrounding area organised and followed the police forces that committed this heinous criminal activities and in ensuing clash they killed seven Liyu police. This spiraled into attacks and murders in multiple villages by Liyu police. Sign this petition, demanding the government of Ethiopia investigate this incident and prosecute police and villagers who committed crimes.
After a Liyu police fatally shot a man protecting a fellow villager, men from Raqda retaliated the same day and killed seven Liyu policemen. The next day, Liyu police members raided villages, killed men, and looted homes. In Raqda, 23 men were taken in trucks from the village and five were shot dead on the road. The Liyu police also looted homes in another village, Adaada, killing four villagers returning hours later and killing five more in fights and executing four men. Liyu police also took over and looted other villages.
The endless fighting and killing needs to stop. Everyone involved in this incident who committed crimes needs to be punished. Sign this petition, asking the Ethiopian government to investigate and prosecute police and villagers who killed and assaulted innocent people.
Many locals report that the Ethiopian federal military is far more human and polite than the tribal Liyu force of regional leader Abdi Mohamud Omar (Abdi Ilay). Along with tribal motives, Abdi Ilay’s other strategy for the collective punishment against Isaq nomads is largely due to their refused to join his militia his other Ogaden rival militia called Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). In another words, Isaq along with other Somali nomads, are caught between unholy war between two Ogaden rival clans where one uses the Ethiopian shirt to suppress the other and the other plays the liberation card.
The local Isaq population have always said they are not interested in neither and just want to live peacefully among the Somali and Ethiopian tribes in the region.
follow this link and please sign: http://forcechange.com/22240/demand-justice-for-police-and-villagers-killed-in-ethiopia/#gf_1E
It is imperative we sign this petition so that those who committed injustice are brought to the justice. By remaining silent when this brutal forces commit human right violation, we are tacitly encouraging further human rights violation to be committed through out the regional state against any Somali ethnic group.
To view Human Right report click here.
By Ali Yare, he can be reached at: oladguled@hotmail.com
June 6, 2012
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ETHIOPIA: Stop abuses by the Liyu Police in Somali region Petition
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