Ethiopia's government has committed extensive war crimes and crimes against humanity during a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in the remote Ogaden region, a report says today.

Human Rights Watch accuses the Ethiopian military of extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, forcibly displacing thousands of civilians and using food as a weapon of war in its attempts to defeat the Ogaden National Liberation Front over the past year. Satellite images in the report show how villages have been razed to deny the rebels a support base. The images have been corroborated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The international community is accused of largely ignoring the abuses. "We don't like to rank abuses in the world, but what is happening in the Ogaden is up there with the worst," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

A small-scale rebellion in the Ogaden region, populated mainly by ethnic Somalis, has been simmering for decades. It rose to the boil again in April 2007, when the ONLF, which claims to seek self-determination for the region, attacked an oil installation, killing more than 70 Chinese and Ethiopian workers.

The government invoked a military crackdown with civilians forced to join local militias to fight the ONLF. While denying abuses were taking place - a stance prime minister Meles Zenawi maintains - several aid groups were expelled and journalists were denied access. Human Rights Watch researchers conducted more than 100 interviews over several months with victims or eyewitnesses from the Ogaden who had fled to Somalia or Kenya.

The worst of the abuses appear to have taken place between June and September last year, although arbitrary detention and severe restrictions on trade and movement are ongoing. Civilians got just days notice to leave small villages and pastoralist settlements for designated towns.

"To secure compliance with the evacuation orders the Ethiopian army repeatedly implemented a phased system of terror involving the confiscation and killing of livestock, public executions, and the destruction of villages by burning," according to the report.

Human Rights Watch says it received accounts of 87 villages burnt or forcibly evacuated and heard of the execution of more than 150 people, many of them in demonstration killings, as well as reports of rape. A 22-year-old refugee in Kenya recounted what had happened to her after being detained by an army patrol. "They beat me until I fell to the ground ... I was raped. I don't know how many men raped me. Other women were raped too."

Ethiopia military accused of rape and torture in fight against rebels | World news | The Guardian

The ethiopian scum will pay for their crimes, Once the US stops bankrolling zenawi and he's murderous regime. The tigre will pay .

Indeed in a few years addis ababa will be a killing ground.

boss ya'll don't get tired?

Ahh, give an African president a little of stability, money and the ulision of grandeur and he thinks he is beyond reproach. For some weird reasons, i always knew Meles's rule would expose some nasty shit. Ethiopia is where the seat of the AU is, so it should behave and set an example. There is NO excuse for ANY of this atrocities. I don't care how many times Ethiopians moan and whinge about Somalians, this is simply unaceptable! You can hunt down militias without the cost of such instability. And, there NO excuse for the raping of women...NO excuse! Quite frankly, MAJORITY of African leaders deserve to be paraded around with their bits choped off for the amount of sexual abuse that results in ANY amount of instability. If Mbemba is gone rot in jail, so should Meles, not just for this but also for targeting the Gambelas. Pure nastiness.....useless men.

well said mezmirized, i'm starting to like you.

Zenawi is being bankrolled by the americans, while Ethiopia is still one of the poorest countries in the world, zenawi the dictator spends all the money given to him by the west on he's army.

Come 2009, when US policy on the horn shifts I suspect zenawi's days will be numbered. Oromo liberation front, ONLF and many others are fighting against this murderous regime.

I have done some reading into the Horn situation, turns out that between the months of July 2006 until December 2006 Somalia was under Islamic rule. This would give the United states a chance to strike revenge against Black Hawk down fiasco in 1992.

Somalia is homogeneous society, the white supremacist masters are aware of Somalia strategic location to the oil field in Arabia. Using Ethiopia to destroy Somali's chance for peace is by no accident. This chaos is by design, much like, Mark Thatcher, the coup deta attempt in the Goban.