Mr. Obang Metho Addressing Women’s National Democratic Club
Ethiopia’s Strategic Importance in Africa: Will Its Influence Be Used for Good or for Ill?
Good evening! I want to thank Women’s National Democratic Club for inviting me to this very important discussion today. It is an honor to be here at this very historic meeting place, established only two years after the women of America were given the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment.
At the time, Eleanor Roosevelt affirmed the God-given right for women to choose who they wanted to represent them in their government. Since that time, the seeds she, the founder’s of this club and others have planted, have grown; giving women a voice in public issues as well as the opportunity to assume positions of leadership, both previously denied to half of the population.
It is really a privilege for me stand in the same room where Eleanor spoke many years ago, especially as someone whose own mentor, my grandmother, empowered me to be who I am. She was deeply concerned about human rights and the suffering of others and passed that concern on to me. Unfortunately, the objectives of this club are far from being achieved in my own country. It does not need to be so. The topic of today will point to some of the reasons.
Today I am here to speak on the topic: “Ethiopia’s Strategic Importance in Africa: Will Its Influence Be Used for Good or for Ill?” I will be speaking on behalf of theSolidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), of which I am the executive director. The SMNE is a non-political and non-violent social justice movement of diverse people that advocates for truth, freedom, justice, good governance and upholding the civil, human and economic rights of the people of Ethiopia without regard to ethnicity, religion, gender, political affiliation, socio-economic status or other differences.
The reason I am with you today began on December 13, 2003[i] when Ethiopian National Defense Forces, accompanied by militia groups they had armed, began a massacre of leaders of my own ethnicity, the Anuak, in the resource-rich Gambella region of southwestern Ethiopia. Within three days, 424 of the leaders and most educated within a marginalized community were brutally killed, countless women were raped and nearly 10,000 fled to neighboring South Sudan for safety. Many still remain.
Human rights violations continued along with the widespread destruction of schools, clinics, crops, homes and granaries. Over the next few years, nearly two thousand Anuak were killed. Why? The government contracted with a Chinese company to begin drilling for oil on indigenous Anuak land. Now, in the last few years, Human Rights Watch has reported that over 70,000 people from the Gambella region have been evicted from their prime agricultural land in order to lease it to regime, foreign and crony investors. The same story is repeated in other parts of Ethiopia.
Since that day, just over ten years ago, my life has changed. The goal of helping to build an Ethiopia where its people can live and flourish, has become a driving force of my thoughts and efforts every day. As a result, today’s topic is very relevant for when the Anuak were massacred, Ethiopia enjoyed high standing internationally and few seemed willing to consider its darker side.
I have four questions I would like you to consider today. They are: 1) what makes Ethiopia so strategic, 2) will Ethiopia’s strategic influence in Africa be used for good or for ill; 3) is Ethiopia’s increasing repression within the country becoming the source of its own instability; and 4) will the international/ donor community heed the warnings and support efforts of Ethiopians for reforms before it is too late?
