“What we you do if your son was burned alive and your wife taken away, never to be seen again?”

This shocking revelation in the form of question was posed to the audience of a documentary film titled “Silent Cry” by Abdishugri (co-founder of the Silent Cry documentary film project) at the screening of the documentary in Stockholm, Sweden on 13th of November 2009.

It all starts when group of adventure seeking British-Somali students take a holiday trip to Kenya to have fun and enjoy the exotic tourist destinations of that country. While in Nairobi they encounter a taxi driver called Omar –the father of the burned child and husband of the missing wife - who tells them the horrific ordeal of his family in the Ogaden and how he fled to Kenya.
Omar also informs the students about the existence and plight of many other refugees from Ogaden – survivors of Ethiopian state sponsored campaign of rape, torture, displacement and genocide- who are miserably languishing, virtually unknown to the outside world, in the refugee camps of North-Eastern Kenya.

Shocked and in disbelief, the students set out to discover for themselves this hidden tragedy. What they uncovered in the process would both shock and transform them from being bunch of adventurous, carefree, and unserious folks, to determined human rights campaigners and speakers for the voiceless Somalis in Ogaden.

At IFO refugee camp the students meet and interview Khayra (a depressed grandmother who traveled 18 arduous days on foot from her village in Ogaden to IFO). Like other survivors, Khayra recounts the harrowing experience of her life at the hands of Ethiopian troops. To this day she doesn’t know the fate of the remaining members of her family back in Ogaden. They meet Sofia, a mother who delivered two kids while in prison and whose husband was summarily hanged; and Faadumo, a severely distressed young lady who was gang-raped by 9 soldiers –savages whom the title soldiers or even men do not fit. Faadumo sobs and cries, biting her lower lip in agony as she recounts the heart-wrenching terror she went through. The documentary also features an elderly man whose teeth were pulled out in a torture session, and young men bearing the painful scars of torture. These young men show the film crew their chopped fingers, disfigured limbs, broken bones, bullet wounds and signs of severe beatings. The film also depicts neglected Children roaming aimlessly the dusty streets of the camp at night and sleeping on pavements, children whose parents are not known.

Finally the documentary ends with an appeal for assistance:

“..We need your VOICE
We need your Knowledge
We need Your friends
We need your Hearts
We need your Minds
Your Ideas
Your Commitments”.

Although I’ve followed events in occupied Ogaden with keen interest over the years and read about many horrifying details of death, destruction and massacres, still this documentary film fundamentally shook my conscience and tremendous impact on me. As a result, I feel no longer at ease. However, it’s important to note the horror that is featured in the film is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many undocumented victims who did not live to tell the horrific tales of their survival.

Sexual violence, rape, torture, displacement, massacres and genocide against civilians constitute war crimes and crime against humanity. States are obligated by laws to protect civilians even at times of war. Ethiopia is signatory to most of these laws, but as usual on only paper.
Wide spread Rape and other related Sexual Violence against women in Ogaden appear to be a strategy adopted by the Ethiopian army in order to break the social fabric that binds our society. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was unequivocal in her condemnation of these acts when she visited Eastern DRC in August 2009, describing them as “a crime against Humanity”.
"The US condemns the perpetrators of sexual violence, and all those who abet such violence and permit impunity to continue," said Clinton. "These individuals are guilty of crimes against humanity. These individuals harm not only individuals, families, villages and regions, but shred the very fabric that weaves us together as human beings." (Hillary Clinton condemns impunity in eastern Congo: UNHCR, 11 August 2009.)

The problem is, when a client regime of the US- such as the present Ethiopian government -is committing these crimes, its all too different. Uncle Sam, looks the other way.
How Did We Get Here?

Since the ONLF attacked Chinese-run Obole oil installation in April 2007, the brutality of the Ethiopian occupation troops in Ogaden has reached unprecedented levels. According to a Human Rights Watch report on 11 June, 2OO8, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi “announced on June 9, 2007, that the Ethiopian government had commenced a large-scale counteroffensive to suppress the ONLF rebellion, and brought large numbers of military reinforcements into the region.” The report adds: “From June to September 2007, the counterinsurgency campaign appears to have been at its peak. This period was characterized by systematic and intensive efforts by Ethiopian forces to relocate, terrorize, and punish communities in areas of ONLF operation or perceived to support the insurgency, using various abusive strategies” (HRW Collective Punishment, June 11 2009).

Zenawi’s strategy is understandable. To him, ONLF is a fish in water. The only way to get to them is to drain the water out of the reservoir. However this crude counterinsurgency strategy has miserably failed. What it produced instead is an angry and embittered populace who, to rephrase Jean-Paul Sartre’s remarkable phrase (child of violence), sought and found their humanity through counterviolence and resistance. In other words the Manichaeism of the colonizer produces a Manichaeism of the colonized.

Undoubtedly this conflict cannot be resolved by violent and coercive means. And the people of Ogaden will never be massacred to submission. It’s about time the ruling despots in Addis Ababa realize putting old wines in new bottles will never deliver them on a silver plate the victory they seek in Ogaden.

To return to Sartre once more, those who wish to continue to ‘sow the wind of violence’ (devising and announcing new military plans every other six months in order to suppress peoples’ quest for freedom) are advised to cease their fruitless efforts before its too tale and the ‘whirlwind’ reaches their shores.

Nuradin Jilani
Stockholm, Sweden.
Nuradinjilani@gmail.com