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Mechanisms Used by the Ethiopian Government to Control Rural Communities in Oromia

Over 85 percent of Oromia’s population lives in the countryside, scattered for the most part among small farming communities that are often far removed from any urban center.  With elections approaching in May 2005, the regional government has taken drastic new steps to tighten its control over the rural population.  New quasi-governmental structures have been set up throughout the region and are being used to monitor and control the rural population down to the level of individual households.  These structures have been employed to gather information, monitor and harass outspoken individuals, control and restrict the movement of the rural population and disseminate political propaganda on behalf of the ruling OPDO.

The Kebele System

The formal structure of local government in Ethiopia has remained largely unchanged since the overthrow of the Derg dictatorship in 1991.  The Derg organized the households in every community throughout the country into groupings called kebeles.95  The kebeles generally corresponded roughly to neighborhoods in urban centers and to larger geographic areas in more sparsely populated rural areas.  While originally intended to help implement the Derg’s ambitious rural development agenda and land reform program, the kebele system quickly evolved into a highly effective mechanism of control and repression.  Kebeleofficials were expected to keep their communities under perpetual surveillance and to report any subversive activities to higher authorities.  The kebeles were also used to disseminate government propaganda, implement government policies and maintain general order and discipline.96  When the EPRDF came to power it retained the kebele as the smallest unit of local government throughout Ethiopia and has continued to use the system to consolidate and extend the power of the ruling party.97 

In Oromia’s rural areas, kebele officials wield a great deal of power over the populations they govern.  Most of the region’s rural population consists of subsistence farmers who depend upon kebeleofficials to provide them with a range of essential services and agricultural inputs.  Perhaps most significantly, kebeleofficials distribute fertilizer to farmers throughout Oromia on credit and are responsible for collecting those debts when they come due.  Farmers must also obtain letters from kebele officials verifying their identity and place of residence when they wish to access government services outside of their communities.  Such letters are usually required, for example, in order to visit a doctor or send one’s children to secondary school in town. 

In addition, most kebeles have their own tribunals as well as small prison houses.  The kebele tribunals have the power to issue binding decisions in local disputes and mete out fines and brief periods of imprisonment as punishment for various minor infractions.  Most significantly, farmers who fail to repay their fertilizer debts on time are regularly imprisoned, sometimes for more than a month at a time.  Regional government agricultural extension workers and civil society leaders interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that in many of the villages they worked in, a very large proportion of the population had served some time in prison in 2004 for failing to repay their fertilizer debts.98  In many cases, such debtors were released only after being forced to sell off their livestock and other personal property to raise enough money to pay what they owe.  Human Rights Watch interviewed one farmer who had fled his village the day before because he was facing imprisonment over an unpaid fertilizer debt of 250 birr, or roughly thirty U.S. dollars.99  While such farmers often serve out their terms of imprisonment in woreda prisons, primary responsibility for reporting and apprehending them generally falls to the kebele administration.100

This authority gives kebele administrations an enormous amount of power over their constituents, and many Oromo opposition politicians and civil society figures have long alleged that kebele officials employ that leverage to discourage and punish dissent.  Most commonly, kebele authorities have been accused of unevenly enforcing fertilizer debt repayment obligations, briefly imprisoning “troublemakers” on the basis of trumped-up charges of minor criminal infractions and wrongly evicting outspoken dissidents from their land.101 

Many of the farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch also said that such abuses take place in their communities.  Many alleged that people who had good relations with kebele officials were allowed to carry massive amounts of fertilizer debt from year to year while for others repayment obligations were strictly enforced.  One farmer from East Wollega said that “the men they send to take us to prison [for failing to meet repayment obligations] have also not paid for their fertilizer.”102

In several communities around Ambo, kebele officials have recently imprisoned people for campaigning for or providing support to the opposition Oromo National Congress (ONC).  In mid-February 2005, a farmer in a village called Wedessa, roughly twenty-six kilometers from Ambo, was imprisoned overnight by kebele authorities after loaning two of his mules to ONC supporters so that they could travel further into the countryside to campaign.103  Kebele officials in the same village also reportedly expelled four students from school indefinitely because they attended an ONC rally that was held during school hours; other students had missed class to attend meetings held by the OPDO without being disciplined at all.104  Another ONC supporter was arrested and imprisoned for several days in February 2005 by kebele officials in a nearby village called Kotaba after he attempted to speak before the people who had assembled for the village’s large Saturday market.105

Human Rights Watch interviewed many other farmers who spoke of similar abuses by kebele officials in their communities.  Most, however, were far more eager to discuss an entirely new set of administrative structures that had been imposed on their communities in recent months.

The Gott and Garee System

The Oromia regional government has created an entirely new set of quasi-governmental structures below the kebele level in rural communities throughout Oromia.  Every rural kebele is now divided into groups of households called gott.  The gott vary in size but usually encompass between sixty and ninety households.  Each gott is divided into smaller groups of roughly thirty households called garee, which means “group” in Afan Oromo.106  The gott supervise the activities of the garee and report to kebeleauthorities. The garee are the more active of the two structures and have the most day-to-day contact with the households they oversee. 

Oromia’s gott and garee are not entirely new innovations.  The gott are reportedly modeled on rural administrative structures that were put in place in rural Tigray by the TPLF during the war against the Derg.107  In addition, a similar set of structures has existed for some time in the Amhara and Southern Peoples, Nations and Nationalities Regional States, although it is not clear whether they are being used for the same purposes.  In most of Oromia, however, the gott and garee are very new.  According to some regional officials, the gott and garee have been in place for over a year in some parts of the region108, but in all of the areas visited by Human Rights Watch the structures have been in place only since roughly September 2004.

Officials placed in charge of the gott and garee have been implicated in numerous violations of human rights.  These include imposing fines and even imprisonment without due process, forced or compulsory labor, and restrictions on the rights to freedom of association, movement and expression.

The Imposition of Gott and Garee on Rural Communities

High-level regional government officials claim that the gott and garee are nothing more than voluntary associations of farmers who are interested in promoting development in their communities.  Ultimate responsibility for organizing and supervising the gott and garee lies with the Oromia regional government’s Bureau of Mass Organization, Culture, Sports and Social Affairs.  The head of that Bureau, Getachew Bedane, told Human Rights Watch that the new structures had been created in response to widespread popular demand that the government organize farmers into small groups for the purpose of facilitating development activities.  According to him, no farmer is forced to participate in either structure or any of its activities.  “The farmer who does not want to be organized into this garee does not,” he said.  “He can simply go and work his own land.”  He also insisted that the gott and garee had “no other purpose” beyond facilitating the design and implementation of development projects selected by the communities themselves.109

Human Rights Watch interviewed farmers from twenty-one different rural kebeles in western Oromia,110 and all of them said that the gott and garee structures had been imposed on them from above without any kind of consultation.  When one farmer from a village near Nekemte was asked whether the people in his village had been asked whether they wished to participate in these structures, he replied “it just came from the government.  What do the people know about such things?  An order came from above.”111  All of the other farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch responded similarly.  Even gott and garee committee members and local officials who expressed considerable enthusiasm for the new institutions did not claim that they were voluntary.  One gott committee member claimed that everyone in his village was extremely pleased with the newsystem except for a few people who were “lazy or do not want to work,” but he acknowledged that the institutions were imposed on the village pursuant to an order from the woreda administration.112  One local government official in Dembi Dollo said that the gott and garee had been imposed on local communities by the woreda administration but argued that this was justified because “this form of discipline is a very good thing.  The people must get ready to work!”113 

Theoretically, the gott and garee committees are freely elected by all of their members.  Many of the farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that there were elections.  Most, however, said that the “elections” were actually a simple show of hands for or against a slate of candidates chosen by the kebele.  “There was no voting,” said one farmer from West Wollega.  “They just brought their people and said ‘this is the gott and this is the garee.  Do you agree?’  People didn’t say anything and then they all clapped and it was finished.”114  Many farmers said that all of the people kebele officials chose as candidates were very young men who had no real stature within the community but who were malleable and staunchly pro-OPDO.  “There are no serious people among them,” one farmer lamented.  “There are no elders.  The elders are considered too wild [independent].”115  Another man sighed when asked who had been chosen to serve on his garee’s committee and said of the committee head that “He is a twenty-year-old student.  If you have good relations with him you have no problems; otherwise it is the opposite.  I try to avoid him as much as possible.”116

Forced Labor under the Garee

The garee have undertaken a range of often highly visible development-related projects in rural communities throughout Oromia.  These projects include construction of irrigation systems, road repair and digging of wells and latrines.  Participation in these projects, however, is in no way voluntary.  Every rural household is assigned to a gott and a garee and is regularly required to contribute unpaid labor towards whatever development projects its garee chooses to implement.  The amount of labor required by the garee varies somewhat from week to week and between communities.  Most of the farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that one or two members of every household are generally expected to dedicate one entire day per week to work assigned by the garee.117  Forced labor violates both Ethiopia’s constitution118 and its obligations under international law.119

The garee have the power to impose punishment without due process on farmers who fail to carry out the tasks assigned to them, and their use of that power provides a useful illustration of how much coercive power over individuals the garee have at their disposal.  This punishment generally takes the form of monetary fines that grow in severity with each successive transgression.  In most of the communities surveyed by Human Rights Watch, farmers said that the first time a person missed a day of required work, they were fined between two and fifteen birr120, depending on the community.  Fifteen birr is more than most people could hope to make in a single day working as a day laborer in town.  In most communities these fines have been imposed quite strictly.  One sixty-five-year-old farmer from a rural kebele in Guto Gida woreda said that in his community, “There is almost no one who has not paid [a] ten birr [fine], even if he is the poorest of all with no clothes on his buttocks.… They say that if you do not pay you will be put in prison until you [do] pay.”121  In some communities, kebele authorities and garee heads had said that farmers who missed work more than three times would be imprisoned for between one and three days in addition to being fined, but it is not clear whether such punishments have been meted out in practice.122

Many farmers expressed anger and distress at being forced to dedicate so much time to the garees’ development schemes.  “The only result we see from these garee is being fined for not doing things,” one farmer said.  “So now we just do whatever they tell us; there is no way you can refuse to obey.”123  Most farmers, however, were less concerned with the required labor than with the ways their garee were being employed to control and monitor them in ways that were not related to their development-related goals.  Expressing a sentiment common to most interviewees, a protestant minister from a rural kebele near Nekemte told Human Rights Watch that he thought the real reason the garee were created was “to follow up what people do in their houses, where they get their money from, who they eat with, what politics they talk.”124  In many areas, the garee have been employed to achieve a level of control and surveillance that was not possible under the kebele system alone.

Forced Attendance at Political Meetings

The gott and garee, as well as the kebele,have the power to call meetings of all of their member households at any time and to enforce attendance at those meetings.  In most of the communities surveyed by Human Rights Watch, the garee usually called meetings at least once per week and in some communities around Ambo they were more frequent.  In almost all communities, failure to attend any meeting of the garee without obtaining permission beforehand is punished with a monetary fine that grows in severity with each successive offense.125  In some communities in Ambo woreda, garee committees had told farmers that people who had missed more than two or three garee meetings would be imprisoned overnight in addition to being fined.126  By coercing attendance at garee meetings, the government is violating the right to freedom of association under the ICCPR.127

The ostensible purpose of the gott and garee meetings is to discuss progress on whatever development projects the community is undertaking.  Since early 2005, however, these compulsory meetings have been used as thinly-disguised OPDO political rallies.  Most of the farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they were regularly required to attend gott or garee meetings devoted primarily to disseminating election-related propaganda in favor of the OPDO.128   

Many farmers said that they did not want to attend such meetings but were compelled to do so because of the penalties they faced if they failed to attend.  One man, who had been arrested three times since 1991 on suspicion of involvement with the OLF, said that he would vote for any candidate who was not affiliated with the OPDO in the May elections.  Nonetheless, he found himself spending part of almost every week listening to OPDO propaganda because he could not afford to pay the fine the garee would impose on him if he were absent from the “meetings.”129 

Many other farmers expressed similar concerns, but almost all said that they had continued to attend the garee meetings whenever they were called.  The sole exception was a story related by several different farmers in Tokke, a large village situated roughly thirty-five kilometers west of Ambo along the road to Nekemte.  Tokke is situated in one of the only parts of Oromia where the opposition Oromo National Congress has had consistently strong support over the past several years.130  People in Tokke quickly began to rebel against being coerced into attending frequent gott and garee meetings where woreda and kebele officials subjected them to pro-OPDO propaganda.  The number of people who consistently refused to attend such meetings was so large that the problem proved difficult to control.  In mid-February 2005, the entire village was summoned to attend a meeting to hear zonal officials from Ambo “discuss the elections,” but almost the entire village stayed away.  That evening, kebele authorities made an announcement that the meeting would be held again the next afternoon and immediately cut off running water to the entire town.  The next afternoon, the water was still cut off, and attendance at the meeting was considerably better.  After sitting through nearly two hours of pro-OPDO and anti-ONC propaganda, people returned to their homes and the water was turned back on.131

Using the Garee to Monitor Speech 

Almost all of the farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that their garee officials were gathering information about individuals who they or kebele-level officials had labeled as critics of the government.  While this is perhaps more subtle than overt restrictions on movement or required attendance at political propaganda sessions, farmers repeatedly described the garee’sability to monitor their words and actions as the most insidious and onerous aspect of the system.  One farmer said that his garee “creates a problem for anyone who talks,”132 while another complained that “anyone who expresses their opinion is called a troublemaker.”133  While kebeleofficials engaged in similar kinds of surveillance before the garee were introduced, the much smaller size of the garee has made it possible for the government to follow individuals more closely and consistently.  In addition to being much smaller than the kebele, in many communities each member of the five-member committee that governs the garee is personally responsible for following up on five or six of the garee’s households.134  In some areas these smaller groups are referred to as shanee (“the five” in Afan Oromo).  As one seventy-year-old farmer from just outside of Dembi Dollo put it, “The government has its hands and the garee are like the fingertips.… The garee is very near to you.  The kebele was not.”135 

Garee officials in many communities have been instructed by gott, kebele and woreda officials to gather information about individuals who make comments they believe to be critical of or hostile towards the government in public meetings or even during private conversations.  In addition to farmers from communities throughout western Oromia, Human Rights Watch interviewed several current and former gott and garee officials from several rural kebeles who confirmed that they gathered such information about the households under their supervision.  Most claimed that they were deeply reluctant to do so but felt they had no choice.136  One garee committee member from East Wollega said, “They said that these garee were for development work, but the actual thing is for watching each other.  They tell us to report whatever we observe, but I avoid doing that.  I try to solve problems myself and avoid reporting because [the information] is usually used for other purposes.… People who speak their minds are noted.  We report what people said and who said it.”137 

This heightened level of surveillance was felt acutely by most of the farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch.  One farmer from a rural kebele near Ambo complained, “If you pass information upwards you are seen with sympathy by the OPDO.  But what they need is not information that is helpful to the country but information like, what does this man think and what does that man think.… They [garee officials] are always asking us, ‘What does this man say? What does he talk about? With whom does he pass the day?’”138  Another man from East Wollega said, “They watch your mouth, what you say.  If you talk about the kebele administration, the woreda, about [party] cadres, it becomes a problem.”139  A third farmer, asked to explain what his experience living under the garee was like, said, “You can almost say that the people [in a garee] are tied to one another because we are so closely watched.  It is as though they have us in their fist.”140 

Several farmers said that some people in their communities had tried to question the garee’s need for the information it was trying to gather but were rebuffed without any real explanation.  One teacher from a rural primary school said, “we are very suspicious about why they want to know these things.  We think there must be a reason for this.  But when we asked why they want to know these things, there is no answer.  They [kebeleofficials] say only that they have their own structure and we should be administered according to what they tell us.”141  One farmer said that the people in his community had given up questioning the garee’s actions because “when we ask [them], ‘why are you doing this to us,’ they accuse us of being ‘anti-development.’”142

The Chilling Effect of the Gott and Garee System on Speech

Many farmers said that because their words were so closely scrutinized for subversive undertones they generally avoided questioning local officials or government policies in public.  One man said that he no longer spoke in garee or kebele meetings because, since the garee were introduced in his community in September 2004, “If you speak your thoughts out loud now it is given some dangerous meaning.  They suspect you of being OLF.”143  Another farmer from just outside of Dembi Dollo said that, “If in a [garee] meeting someone says, ‘why is this being done, this is not correct,’ they tell him that this is not his thought but the thought of OLF which is speaking through his mouth.”144 One garee committee member from a rural kebele in West Wollega said that he disliked participating in the committee but was afraid of being labeled a dissident himself if he resigned his position.  Since the garee were created, he said:

Our people do not speak.  They have become mute because they are afraid.  If two or three people are standing they avoid going to speak with them because those people may listen to what you say and give it a different meaning.  If they [local officials] hate someone they say, ‘You are an OLF.’  If you say something they don’t like, they say the OLF is behind you and telling you what to do…. When this thing started we cooperated because we thought it was actually for development, but things were better before…. Since the garee came you cannot even have a visitor in your home without being asked to report on him.145

In some communities, the garee have subjected people labeled as opponents of the government to unrelenting harassment and public denunciations.  One young man from just outside of Dembi Dollo said that both he and his mother were arrested on charges of providing support to the OLF in March 2004.  Both were released without charge within three months of their arrest, but since then their garee committee had subjected them to a sustained campaign of harassment that had destroyed the family’s already precarious ability to make a living:

They organized the gott and garee against our house.  My mother was selling shiro146 to earn a living and they said, ‘this is an OLF house and no one should buy here.’  Accidentally [without knowing who he was], a relative of ours had come from his village and the garee told him, ‘you are a new person here and you should know that because that is an OLF house you should not go in there.’  But because he was our relative he came and told us this…. No one comes to buy from my mother now, and whenever they meet me they ask me where I am going and why.147

Another man from a rural kebele near Nekemte said that garee officials in his community had labeled him a supporter of the OLF and regularly denounced him during the course of garee meetings as a “thug” who is promoting an “anti-peace” agenda.  “I raise my hand to talk [in response] and they say ‘you have no right to speak,’” he said. “How can someone accuse me and then say I do not have the right to speak?”148 

Restrictions on the Freedom of Movement 

Ethiopian and international law guarantees respect for citizens’ freedom of movement.149  However, local authorities in much of Oromia have used the garee to enforce drastic new restrictions limiting the rural population’s ability to travel outside of their communities.  These limitations on movement vary considerably between different woredas and between different kebeles within a single woreda as to their strictness and the zeal with which they are enforced.  In almost all of the communities surveyed by Human Rights Watch, however, interviewees said that new regulations had been put in place through the garee to prevent them from traveling outside of their villages without permission unless they returned the same day.  “You have to go and tell them if you are leaving, and you need to have a good reason for this,” said one farmer from East Wollega.  “If you only want to go and drink some tella [local beer] in Nekemte, they will not allow that.”150  In most communities, farmers said that they asked orally for permission to travel from their garee, but in some places the garee have implemented a more formal set of procedures.  In some communities in Ambo woreda, farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that garee officials required them to obtain a signed paper authorizing their travel whenever they spent a night away from home.151  A group of farmers from Wedessa told Human Rights Watch that their garee had threatened that anyone who passed the night in Ambo without obtaining written permission would spend their first night back home in the kebeleprison.152

Generally, villagers who travel away from home without first obtaining permission from the garee are interrogated as to their whereabouts upon their return and are often chastised or punished as well.  One garee committee member from a community in East Wollega said that people who left his village without permission “will be interrogated—why did he go, what did he do and why does he think he has more rights than what the law gives him.”153  Many of the farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they complied with the garee’s reporting requirements because villagers who did not were often accused of involvement in OLF-related or other illegal activities.  One farmer from a rural kebele ninety-three kilometers from Nekemte said, “If we just leave without saying anything they will accuse us of going somewhere illegal.  Even when we go to nearby markets [for the day] we try to inform them.  Otherwise we might be accused of belonging to a certain organization [the OLF].”154 

Around Dembi Dollo in West Wollega zone the garee’s new restrictions on movement have been taken to unusual extremes and provide an illustrative example of the coercive power at the garees’ disposal.  Towards the end of 2004 woreda officials in Dembi Dollo instructed all of the gott and garee within the woreda’s jurisdiction to inform farmers in their communities that they would no longer be able to travel to nearby markets on any day of the week other than Saturday.155  Farmers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that their garee told them this measure had been taken because their travel to various local markets throughout the week was “jeopardizing development” by keeping them from their fields.156

Unfortunately, the local rural economy is in large measure driven by precisely the markets the woreda had set out to abolish and many people depend on them as outlets for their produce.157  This fact meant that the new restrictions were quite onerous, and farmers in much of the woreda’s countryside simply refused to comply with them.158  The garee reacted by imposing fines on people who participated in non-Saturday markets.  When this failed to curb farmers’ disobedience in some areas, several garee gathered together groups of young men who were authorized to use force to prevent people from traveling to “illegal” markets.159  Local garee and government officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that the men were posted along several secondary roads, arrested several dozen farmers they caught traveling to unauthorized markets and imprisoned them overnight in kebelejailhouses.  Before they were released, kebele officials either fined them or confiscated the goods they had been traveling to market to sell.160  In some cases, the men who arrested the farmers reportedly beat them with sticks before imprisoning them.161

Despite such draconian measures, popular resistance to the new restrictions proved so widespread that woreda officials ordered the garee to relax them around the beginning of 2005.  While this has led to the reemergence of weekday markets in large towns and villages, many smaller communities continued to be prohibited from holding them at the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit to the area in March 2005.162

These drastic restrictions of the freedom of movement take on added significance in the context of the current electoral process.  The garees’ controls make it more difficult for villagers to exercise the rights to assembly and freedom of association, rights which are an essential prerequisite of any democratic election and which are guaranteed by both Ethiopian and international law.163  Most obviously, villagers cannot travel to neighboring towns to participate in the political discussions or rallies that are more commonly held in urban areas without obtaining permission or, at the very least, expecting that they will have to answer for their whereabouts to local officials.



[95] Technically, urban communities were organized into kebeles while rural areas were organized into Peasant Associations (PAs).  Here, the term “kebele” is used to refer to both.

[96] See, e.g., John Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, 1975-1991 (Cambridge: University Press, 1997).

[97] See, e.g., Desalegn Rahmato, Land Policy in Ethiopia at the Crossroads, in Desalegn Rahmato, Land Tenure and Land Policy in Ethiopia After the Derg (Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 1994), arguing as early as 1994 that “all indications are that the rural institutions are once again being turned into pliant tools of the state…the new power structure at the local level closely resembles that of the Derg.”  A Norwegian-led team that observed Ethiopia’s national elections in 1995 and 2000, as well as local elections in 2001, reported that the kebele system was used to mobilize support for the EPRDF and to discourage support for the opposition.  See Siegfried Pausewang, et. al., Ethiopia Since the Derg: A Decade of Democratic Pretension and Performance (London: Zed Books, 2002).

[98] Human Rights Watch interviews, Addis Ababa, Nekemte, Jimma and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[99] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Abdefa kebele, Guto Wayu woreda, East Wollega zone; Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[100] Human Rights Watch interviews, Addis Ababa, Ambo, Nekemte and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[101] Human Rights Watch interviews with Oromo opposition and civil society leaders, Addis Ababa, Ambo, Nekemte, Jimma and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[102] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Ebba kebele, Guto Gida woreda, East Wollega zone; Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[103] Human Rights Watch interviews with ONC representatives and farmers from Wedessa, Ambo, March 6-7, 2005.

[104] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Wedessa, Ambo, March 7, 2005.

[105] Human Rights Watch interview, Ambo, March 7, 2005.

[106] These structures are actually called garee misoma, which means “groups for development.”  Most people simply refer to them as garee, however.

[107] The highly efficient system of rural governance put in place by the TPLF is widely credited with helping it win the war against the Derg.  For a discussion of rural administration in Tigray during the war, see John Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, 1975-1991 (Cambridge:University Press, 1997).

[108] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Getachew Bedane, head of Oromia Regional Government Bureau of Mass Organization, Culture, Sports and Social Affairs, April 11, 2005.

[109] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Getachew Bedane, head of Oromia Regional Government Bureau of Mass Organization, Culture, Sports and Social Affairs, April 11, 2005.

[110] These kebeles are located in East Shewa, West Shewa, East Wollega, West Wollega and Jimma zones.

[111] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Wolkituna kebele, Sasiga woreda, East Wollega zone; Wolkituna kebele, March 11, 2005.

[112] Human Rights Watch interview with gott committee member, Dune Kani kebele, East Wollega zone, March 13, 2005.

[113] Human Rights Watch interview with advisor to the mayor of Dembi Dollo, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[114] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Dembi Dollo area, Dembi Dollo, March 17, 2005.

[115] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Shoso kebele, West Wollega zone; Dembi Dollo, March 17, 2005.

[116] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Ambo area, Ambo, March 8, 2005.

[117] Human Rights Watch interviews, March 2005.

[118] Article 18 of the Ethiopian constitution states in part:

3. No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.

4. For the purpose of this article, the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall not include: …:

c) Any service exacted in cases of emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community.

d) Any voluntary economic or social developmental activity undertaken by the people of the community concerned.  [Emphasis added.]

[119] Forced or compulsory labor violates ICCPR article 8(3) on the prohibition of slavery, involuntary servitude and forced labor. International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 29 (June 28, 1930) defines forced or compulsory labor as “all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”  ICCPR article 8(3) makes certain exceptions to the prohibition on forced labor, including “service exacted in cases of emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community,” and any service that forms part of “normal civil obligations.”  Government officials in Oromia have made no showing that the development projects on which residents are forced to work is part of a local emergency that threatens the community; such emergencies have been defined in ILO Convention No. 29 to including events such as war, fire and flood.  Nor can this work be considered “normal civic obligations,” which have been defined as forced labor “absolutely necessary in democratic communities in order to fulfill State functions and that cannot be accomplished in any other manner than by force.”  Such obligations have included physicians having to render medical care or lawyers acting as defense counsel.  Manfred Nowak, UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: CCPR Commentary (Arlington, Engle: 1993) pp. 155-56.

[120] This translates into roughly U.S. $0.20-2.00.

[121] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Gemechis Sorga Alemi kebele, Guto Gida woreda, East Wollega zone; Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[122] Human Rights Watch interviewed two farmers, from communities near Ambo, who said that they knew of people who had been imprisoned for repeatedly failing to turn up for work.  Most interviewees said that no one in their communities had missed more than one or two days of work because they could not afford to pay the fines.  Human Rights Watch interviews, March 2005.

[123] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Lomecha kebele, Abay Dungoro woreda, East Wollega zone; Nekemte, March 10, 2005.

[124] Human Rights Watch interview, Wolkiutna kebele, Sasiga woreda, East Wollega zone, March 11, 2005.

[125] Human Rights Watch interviews, March 2005.  In most communities farmers said that fines ranged from 3-10 birr for a first offense and ranged as high as 20-60 birr for individuals who missed several meetings.

[126] Human Rights Watch interviews with farmers from Omecho, Tokke and Wedessa, March 6-7, 2005.

[127] ICCPR article 22 provides that everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others.  As Manfred Nowak in his authoritative commentary on the ICCPR notes, “[T]he freedom to join and form association implies a second aspect: the freedom to choose the organizations to which one wishes to belong.”  Novak, UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, p. 388 (emphasis in original).  The Human Rights Committee, which monitors state compliance with the ICCPR, has stated that “The right to freedom of association implies that in general no one may be forced by the State to join an association.… [W]hen sanctions exist on the failure to be a member of an association, the State party should be called on to show that compulsory membership is necessary in a democratic society in pursuit of an interest authorized by the Covenant.”  Gauthier v Canada, Human Rights Committee, case no. 633 (1995).

[128] Human Rights Watch interviews, March 2005.

[129] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Dembi Dollo area, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[130] The leader of the Oromo National Congress, Dr. Merera Gudina, was born not far from Tokke and has strong support throughout Ambo woreda.

[131] Human Rights Watch interviews with farmers and ONC supporters, Tokke and Ambo, March 7-8, 2005.

[132] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Abdeta kebele, Guto Wayu woreda, East Wollega zone; Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[133] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Dandi kebele, Ambo woreda, West Shewa zone; Ambo, March 7, 2005.

[134] Human Rights Watch interviews with farmers, gott and garee committee members, former local security official and civil society representatives, March 2005.

[135] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Dembi Dollo area, Dembi Dollo, March 17, 2005.

[136] Human Rights Watch interviews with current and former gott and garee committee members, Nekemte, Dune Kani kebele (East Wollega), Jimma and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[137] Human Rights Watch interview with garee committee member from East Wollega, Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[138] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Omecho area, West Shewa zone; Ambo, March 8, 2005.

[139] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Haro Gudina kebele, Sasiga woreda, East Wollega zone; Wolkituna kebele, March 11, 2005.

[140] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Dembi Dollo area, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[141] Human Rights Watch interview with teacher from Sasiga woreda, East Wollega zone; Wolkituna kebele, March 11, 2005.

[142] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Abdeta kebele, Guto Wayu woreda, East Wollega; Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[143] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Gamene kebele, Sasiga woreda, East Wollega zone; Wolkituna kebele, March 11, 2005.

[144] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Abichu Shogo kebele, West Wollega zone; Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[145] Human Rights Watch interview with garee committee member, Dembi Dollo, March 17, 2005.

[146] Shiro is an inexpensive kind of wot, or stew, made from chickpeas that is commonly eaten throughout Ethiopia.

[147] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[148] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[149] Article 32 of the Ethiopian Constitution states that “Every Ethiopian…shall have the freedom to freely move and establish his residence within Ethiopia as well as to travel abroad.”  Article 12 of the ICCPR guarantees that everyone shall have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose their residence.

[150] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Gamene kebele, Sasiga woreda, East Wollega zone; Nekemte, March 11, 2005.

[151] Human Rights Watch interviews, Ambo, March 7-8, 2005.

[152] Human Rights Watch interview with farmers from Wedessa, Ambo, March 7, 2005.

[153] Human Rights Watch interview with garee committee member from Gemechis Sorga Alemi kebele, Guto Gida woreda, East Wollega zone; Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[154] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Lomecha kebele, Abay Dunforo woreda, East Wollega zone; Nekemte, March 10, 2005.

[155] Human Rights Watch interviews with current and former regional and local government officials, Dembi Dollo, March 17-18, 2005; Human Rights Watch interview with Dr. Negaso Gidada, Addis Ababa, March 3, 2005.

[156] Human Rights Watch interviews, Dembi Dollo, March 16-18, 2005.

[157] Human Rights Watch interviews with farmers, former government officials, academics and civil society representatives, Dembi Dollo and Addis Ababa, March 2005.

[158] Human Rights Watch interviews, Dembi Dollo, March 16-18, 2005.

[159] Ibid.

[160] Human Rights Watch interviews, Dembi Dollo, March 17.

[161] Human Rights Watch interviews, Dembi Dollo, March 16-18, 2005.

[162] Human Rights Watch interviews with farmers and civil society representatives, Dembi Dollo, March 16-18, 2005.

[163] Articles 30 and 31 of the Ethiopian Constitution, respectively, guarantee the rights to assembly and association.  Articles 21 and 22 of the ICCPR similarly guarantee these rights.


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