Search HOME ABOUT EVENT S GALLERY PUBLISH SUBSCRIBE HELP English/all The refugee who took on the British government Who's involved? Published: 12 Jan 2016 Select Category Short URL: http://farmlandgrab.org/25666 Posted in: Ethiopia | UK | World Bank Comments (0) Print Email this Events Guardian | 12 January 2016 26 Jan 2016 - Université de T he ref ugee who took on the British government Bordeaux Les Afriques - by Ben Rawlence L’accaparement des terres agricoles en Afrique. One day in late 2010, a farmer – I will call him Opik – woke up in his village in the remote Ethiopian province of Gambella. In this lush lowland area of savanna bordering Employees of Saudi Star rice farm work South Sudan, the semi-nomadic Anuak people have lived in a paddy in Gambella. The Ethiopian for centuries, cultivating sorghum and maize, swimming in government has built massive road, rail, the river and gathering nuts, berries and fruits from the agribusiness and hydropower schemes trees and wild honey from the forest. “It was paradise,” without pausing to conduct the Opik recalled. necessary social and environmental impact assessments (Photo: AFP/Getty The Anuak have an intimate relationship with their Images) landscape. Their highest traditional authority is a spiritual leader called the wat-ngomi, who must sanction any human intervention in nature. Some trees are deemed sacred and cannot be cut down. Spirits live in certain sites and even the boundaries of their territory are inscribed with religious meaning. Everyone knows where the land of one community ends Posts Comments and that of another begins. This intimacy is reflected in their language: “How are you?” in the Anuak language is piny bede nidi, which literally translates as “how is the earth?” The reply is piny ber jak Recent posts (“the earth is fine”) or piny rac (“the earth is bad”). Réussir la réf orme f oncière : le That morning, the earth was bad. Officials from the regional government in Gambella, accompanied Code f oncier du Béninr by soldiers from the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) had come to tell Opik and the other 13 Jan 2016 | No Comments inhabitants of the village to leave. It was not the first time they had come. Earlier in the year there had been several meetings. The government had arrived with police and militias and informed the Análise preliminar dos residents that they were to be moved to a new location. There was a national plan called documentos primários da JICA “villagisation” and Gambella was in the first phase. sobre os contratos da JICA com os consultores para “estratégia de The officials had explained that the purpose of the relocations was to cluster communities together comunicação” e os relatórios dos in places where the government promised to provide a new school, a clinic, a borehole and a consultores Japoneses do PD grinding mill. In time, the new settlements would be better-connected to the rest of the country via 13 Jan 2016 | No Comments new roads, they said. The officials also promised to provide a grader to clear the land at the new Siaya investment bonanza site and make it ready for planting. 13 Jan 2016 | No Comments In a detailed document outlining the villagisation plan, the regional government had written that the T he ref ugee who took on the relocations aimed to “bring socioeconomic and cultural transformation of the people”. The timeframe British government was ambitious: in three years, starting in 2010, 225,000 people (or 60% of the population) would be 12 Jan 2016 | No Comments relocated in Gambella. Nationwide, across Ethiopia’s fertile lowlands, the government aimed to Depois de desperdiçados mais de relocate up to four million people in five years. 560 milhões de Ienes para Elaboração do Plano Director do Ethiopia is in a race to develop. In a similar fashion to Rwanda, the authoritarian government, lacking Prosavana, os governos optam a democratic mandate, has staked its claims to legitimacy on its ability to deliver economic growth, pela cooptação da Sociedade Civil and it is in a terrible hurry. During the past decade, Ethiopia has pursued a Chinese-style rush to 12 Jan 2016 | No Comments develop its economy: locking up dissenters, crushing the opposition with a succession of 99% electoral victories, and building massive road, rail, agribusiness and hydropower schemes without Ativistas da UNAC escapam de pausing to conduct the necessary social and environmental impact assessments. tentativa de espancamento protagonizada por um dos Nonetheless, despite still knocking along the bottom of every poverty index, Ethiopia has earned a consultores da JICA durante a reputation as a development success story, and donors, including the UK, are very keen to help, sessão de consulta às praising Ethiopia’s apparent strong progress towards the UN’s millennium development goals: organizações sobre ProSavana increasing primary school enrolment and improving statistics on access to healthcare, water and so 12 Jan 2016 | No Comments on. But donors are steadfastly silent on human rights abuses. Ethiopia receives more aid than any Karuturi challenges Ethiopia other African country – close to $3bn per year, or about half the national government budget. For the decision to cancel f arm project donors, Ethiopia is a priority, a linchpin of their development efforts, research and policy; especially 11 Jan 2016 | 1 comment(s) so for the UK, where rising aid budgets have propelled Ethiopia into second place, behind Pakistan, as the recipient of the most British aid. Saudi dairy company Almarai buys land in Calif ornia to grow f odder Until 2015, the main vehicle for aid spending in the country was a huge multi-donor fund managed by 10 Jan 2016 | No Comments the World Bank called the promotion of basic services (PBS), the largest of its kind in the world, to Philippines islanders unite to which the British Department for International Development (DfID) was the largest single contributor. Over 10 years since 2006, the PBS scheme has invested around $12bn (including around $3bn from resist "land grab" palm oil companies DfID) in five sectors: roads, water, health, education and agriculture. 10 Jan 2016 | No Comments In Gambella, the government’s plans for delivering these things took the form of villagisation. The Sénégal : Rapport du 2e atelier inhabitants of Opik’s village, though, were mistrustful of the government’s intentions. There had been national sur la mise en œuvre des no dialogue, no consultation. If the government had done little for them before, why would they Directives Volontaires pour une suddenly start caring now? They suspected a plot to steal their land. They had heard of investors gouvernance responsable des coming to test soil in certain areas. régimes f onciers 08 Jan 2016 | No Comments Their suspicions were well founded. In Opik’s district, the allocation of land for agribusiness was well more under way. Information was patchy, but a study by the Oakland Institute, a US-based thinktank, estimated that in Gambella, at that time, the government had leased or marketed 42% of the region to investors. Speaking to investors in India, government officials referred to the land on offer as Languages “unused,” “under-utilised” or “completely uninhabited”. Amharic Bahasa Indonesia After that first visit, the elders of Opik’s village held a meeting and agreed that the next time the Català Catala Dansk government came, they would inform the officials that they did not agree with the plan. They did not Deutsch English Español want to leave their ancestral home. At the next meeting, they duly spoke up. Government officials français Italiano Kurdish called them “inciters” and arrested them. They were still being held in the town jail on the day the Malagasy Nederlands soldiers came back to carry out the evictions. So this time, Opik knew not to argue. Português Suomi اﻟﻌﺮﺑﻲ Svenska Türkçe * * * All along the riverbank in Opik’s village the maize was standing tall, ready for harvest. Someone protested that they could not leave the crops: the monkeys and termites would have a feast. “Don’t worry about your crops,” one of the soldiers said. “You can come and get them after you have built your houses.” Special content Opik, his wife and their six children walked with the rest of the village in sombre silence for several audio contracts hours through the hot bush, escorted by the soldiers. He reckoned the new location was about three off-topic video water or four miles away from their old village. When the soldiers finally halted, he was dismayed. The wikileaks women ground was poor, not fertile. The scrub was dense; it had not been cleared. There was a road nearby, but otherwise, there was nothing: no school, no clinic, no well, no grinding mill, and most ominous of all, no food. Archives That first night, they slept under trees. The soldiers camped nearby. The next day, under supervision Select month of the soldiers, they began the arduous job of clearing the land and then constructing tukuls, traditional huts made of sticks and straw. Schoolchildren from a nearby town arrived in trucks to help with the cutting; they had been told there was a “national campaign”, and that normal lessons were suspended; each week they went to a different village to help. This was what the government meant by a “participatory approach” in its villagisation plan. Opik’s own children helped, too. Their old school was too far for them to return to – a three-mile walk in the other direction from their old village. No one was paid. Opik resented the work. He did it slowly. And people who were slow with their work or who asked questions of the soldiers were beaten.