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Ethiopian American Civic Advocacy (EACA)
Ban Ki-Moon United Nations Secretary General The United Nations New York, NY 10017
Dear Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon,
We write you to express our sincere appreciation for your decision to send a fact-finding mission to the Ogaden Region in Ethiopia, and ask you to extend this mission to other parts of the country to gain a more complete view on various atrocities committed by the Ethiopian Government against innocent civilians.
As reported by the international media and human rights organisations, government forces have been conducting gross human rights violations, including the killing of civilians, torture, rape, and destruction of the livelihoods of poor pastoralists in the Ogaden region in Eastern Ethiopia. Many of these actions amount to crimes under international law. Unfortunately, the troubling recent developments in the Ogaden do not stand alone. As reported over the last several years by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Genocide Watch, and the human rights reports of the U.S. Department of State, there have been many similar circumstances in which the government of Ethiopia was involved in the massacre of civilians in other parts of the country, such as Gambella, Awassa, Jimma, Wollega, to name a few.
We therefore urge you to demand the immediate halt to the atrocious and gross human rights abuses currently taking place against civilians in Eastern Ethiopia, but also extend the fact-finding mission to investigate similar massacres in other regions of Ethiopia which have been well documented by established institutions.
We also urge you to indict the members of the Ethiopian government who will be found responsible for committing widespread atrocities against civilians in the country.
We thank you in advance for your careful and diligent consideration of this serious matter. We also look forward to further information regarding the measures taken and the findings made by the UN fact-finding mission.
Sincerely,
Kassa Ayalew, M.D., M.P.H., Chair Ethiopian American Civic Advocacy (EACA) Phone: (703) 665-4042 PO.Box 1292 Lorton, Virginia 22199-1292, USA
The Ethiopian American Civic Advocacy (EACA) is a US based, non-profit, non-partisan civic organization striving to empower Ethiopian-Americans and Ethiopians to fight for the respect of human rights, promote democratic governance, and demand donor accountability in Ethiopia. For more information about EACA, please visit the website: www.eacamoveon.org.
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