September 14/2007

 THE REPRESSION IN THE OGADEN MUST STOP

 The atrocity that is being perpetrated by the Meles regime against the people in the Ogaden cannot be hidden though the regime has banned reporters, the Red Cross and the MSF from the area. Villages have been burnt, innocent civilians killed or tortured, cattle and camels killed in big numbers, thousands displaced as the brutal so called counter insurgency rages.

 The denunciation of the crime being committed in the Ogaden has been, sad to observe, very weak. Governments and media that are quick to cry "genocide" in other areas shun from mentioning the grim reality in the Ogaden. The official claim that the regime is waging war against the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) cannot justify the terror unleashed against the common people and the non combatants. The people in the Ogaden are now facing hunger and a serious humanitarian crisis is in place though it has yet to be acknowledged as such. People in Ethiopia sympathize with their kin in the Ogaden as they are also, to varying degrees, suffering under the brutal reign of the same regime.

 SOCEPP has, from the outset, condemned the violent repression unleashed by the Meles Zenawi regime in the Ogaden. Whatever maybe the judgment on the actions of the ONLF there is absolutely no justification for the terror on the part of the regime, a terror and violence that is indiscriminate, condemnable and affecting the region's population as a whole. The action is linked evidently to the invasion of Somalia by the Meles Zenawi and the general policy of repressing people under the flimsy pretext of waging what is called the anti terror war. The repression and terrro in the Ogaden must stop.

SOCEPP