70,000 forcibly resettled

ADDIS ABABA, (AP):

Ethiopia has forcibly moved tens of thousands of semi-nomadic people in the country's west to barren villages and threatened, assaulted and arrested those who resisted, an international rights group said in a report yesterday.

The Human Rights Watch report said that Ethiopia last year resettled about 70,000 people in its western Gambella region after the first of a three-year "villagisation" program.

The rights group said it suspects people have been moved to lease out farmland to investors, and not just to lift them out of poverty. It said that security forces "repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and arrested villagers" who resisted relocation. The watchdog also reported rape, killing of cattle and burning of houses among rights violations.

Instead of the promised improved life with "access to basic socio-economic infrastructures," locals found new villages that lacked food, farmland, schools and health clinics, the New York-based watchdog said.

Human Rights Watch said its report is based on 100 interviews in 2011 with residents in Gambella and in a refugee camp in Kenya. The report also relied on visits to 16 affected villages.