Oromia region gripped by kidnapping ‘pandemic’

 

Man holds a flag of the Oromo Liberation Army in Oromia, Waliso, Ethiopia. Until recently, kidnappings rarely happened outside OLA strongholds in western Oromia. Photograph: Eric Lafforgue/Alamy

Initially, rebel organizations used abduction for political purposes, but in a broken economy, collecting ransoms is perceived as easy money, and anyone might be a target.

The gunmen targeted Alemetu while she was sleeping. They marched her out of her home in Ethiopia's Oromia region and transported her to a deserted school in the countryside, where she was held captive for four weeks.

 

She was finally released after her family paid a ransom of 110,000 birr (£1,530), a substantial sum in rural Ethiopia, which they collected by selling cattle and borrowing from friends.

 

She was released only after her family paid a ransom of 110,000 birr (£1,530), a huge sum in rural Ethiopia, which they raised by selling livestock and borrowing from friends.

 

When Alemetu was kidnapped, the family was already struggling to pay a 90,000 birr ransom for her uncle, a farmer, who was held for 15 days in a separate abduction. The family is now destitute.

 

“It is very rare to find a family in our area who has not been affected by kidnapping,” says Alemetu. “The government has no control.”

 

Alemetu identified her kidnappers as insurgents from the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), a rebel group that has been fighting Ethiopia’s government since 2018. The OLA styles itself as the champion of the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, who claim a long history of marginalisation, but it has been accused of massacres and other abuses.

 

Ethiopia’s federal parliament classifies the OLA as a terrorist organisation.

 

After Alemetu was released, the fighters destroyed her home. She feels she was targeted because her husband worked at a local government office. "Even if you just pay taxes, the fighters will attack you," she goes on to add.

 

Kidnapping has been a continuous problem in Oromia, a region in Ethiopia's heartland that surrounds the city, Addis Abeba. Until recently, kidnappings were uncommon beyond the OLA's strongholds in western Oromia. When they occurred, they were specifically targeted. The main victims, like Alemetu, were police personnel, government officials, or their relatives, with political rather than financial motivations.

 

Now, kidnapping for ransom has become commonplace. Abductions take place not far from Addis Ababa, as the OLA’s insurgency spreads to new areas, and target anyone.

 

On December 28, gunmen killed eight people and kidnapped ten more near Metehara, 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Addis Abeba, as they returned from a religious event. In October, agricultural researchers were kidnapped while conducting fieldwork near the village of Alem Tena, 60 kilometers south of the city. In July, extremists abducted 63 bus passengers 100 kilometers from Addis Ababa.

 

Foreign-owned businesses are also targeted: in October, seven Chinese citizens working for a cement firm were kidnapped in Oromia's North Shewa region, while in January of last year, gunmen kidnapped 20 workers at another cement factory owned by Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote.

 

The road linking Addis Ababa to Djibouti’s port, Ethiopia’s main trade artery, has become a kidnapping hotspot in the past 18 months.

 

The manager of a foreign-owned farm in Oromia, who declined to be named, said the surge in kidnappings was putting off international investors. Local business people who had recently sold their crops and were known to have significant amounts of cash in their bank accounts were initially targeted, he says.

 

“But it has escalated into something much more widespread, affecting a much wider range of individuals, to the point where all our senior staff are targets,” the farm manager says. “We can’t get any of them to our site, it’s too risky.”

He alleged that several foreign corporations have paid ransoms to release employees.

The British embassy advises UK nationals to “avoid regular patterns of travel or movement” in large parts of Oromia because of the risk of kidnapping, warning that “people engaged in humanitarian aid work, journalism or business sectors are viewed as legitimate targets”.

 

In November, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council stated that "abductees frequently endure torture, cruel treatment, and detention under inhumane conditions, constituting serious crimes against human dignity."

 

AbiyAhmed, Ethiopia's prime minister, was elected in 2018 on the back of a wave of anti-authoritarian protests. He promised a new era of openness and democracy, but his administration has supervised a slew of regional crises, including the catastrophic war in Tigray, which killed hundreds of thousands.

 

The most recent rebellion erupted in Amhara, Ethiopia’s second-largest region, in August, over a plan to disband regional armed forces. As well as hitting the economy, these conflicts have fed into a growing feeling of lawlessness across the country.

 

"I'm too nervous to leave Addis Ababa," says a lecturer at the city's university, whose cousin and brother-in-law were kidnapped for ransom in separate events in Oromia. "I inherited some acreage in the countryside, but I haven't gone because you never know whether someone will kidnap you. I don't go see my parents. I don't even go there for weddings or funerals.

 

The Guardian interviewed four people who recently paid ransoms to release family. All declined to be identified for fear of punishment from the kidnappers. Because of this fear, most abductions go unreported; however, civil society groups think thousands of people have been kidnapped in recent years.

 

The interviewees paid ransoms of between 20,000 birr (£280) to 500,000 birr (£7,000) to free their relatives and often managed to negotiate the price. “They ask according to your wealth,” says one man. He paid 125,000 birr to free his father, who was abducted from his home in North Shewa.

 

Another man says abductors demanded “a staggering 2 million birr” (£28,000) after kidnapping his brother and other passengers from a bus travelling through Oromia’s West Shewa in June. After lengthy negotiations, the family paid 100,000 birr.

 

“This is a pandemic,” says the man. “Kidnapping is happening everywhere. The rebels have made it a way of life because it’s easy money for them.”

 

The OLA rebels deny employing kidnapping to fund their insurgency, but the group is loosely organised, with local groups frequently acting independently of their commanders.

 

According to Jonah Wedekind, an independent researcher, there is considerable evidence that some OLA factions have turned to kidnapping as a means of obtaining funds, but bandits motivated only by financial gain may also be involved.

 

“Some armed actors perceive the OLA to be efficiently raising capital through these attacks and might be copying them,” says Wedekind. “And this is part of the wider problem: the conflict reflects the economy breaking down, and people don’t have jobs, so this is what they turn to.”

 

Peace talks between the OLA and the government failed in November. A spike in rebel attacks across Oromia followed.

 

The government’s response to the insurgency has been ham-fisted, characterised by arbitrary arrests and unlawful killings, according to the state-appointed human rights commission.

 

Alemetu did not go to the police after she was released, fearful they would accuse her of funding terrorists because her family paid a ransom. Instead, she simply packed up her remaining belongings and left her village. “I am afraid of both sides,” she says.

Source: The Guardian