William Davison
wdavison10
September 1, 2016 — 2:34 AM EDT
Flower plantations damaged in anti-government demonstrations
Reports of militias clashing with army in parts of Amhara
A Dutch-run flower farm in northern Ethiopia was among a series of foreign-owned plantations attacked by anti-government protesters as unrest in the country spreads.
A “large group” of people invaded Esmeralda Farms Inc.’s farm 13 kilometers (8 miles) south of Bahir Dar city in the Amhara region on Aug. 29, causing about 7 million euros ($7.8 million) of damage, country manager Haile Seifu said by phone Thursday. Flower farms in the area owned by Israeli, Italian, Indian and Belgian companies were among nine commercial properties damaged in the protests, which continued on Aug. 30, he said.
“They were so aggressive, there were also soldiers who couldn’t control them, so we just ran away, as it’s life or death,” he said from the capital, Addis Ababa. “They came actually at once through our compound, through our fence, through our main gate, so everybody left.”
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Authorities in Ethiopia have killed more than 500 people since June, according to human-rights groups, to suppress protests by the two most populous groups, the Oromo and Amhara. Analysts say the demonstrations present the biggest challenge to the government’s authority since it came to power a quarter of a century ago. The economy grew faster than any other in Africa over the past two years, International Monetary Fund data shows.
Nigusu Tilahun, a spokesman for the Amhara government, said he wasn’t immediately available to comment, while a call to Communications Minister Getachew Reda wasn’t answered.
Militias Clashing
Militias are also clashing with the army in parts of Gojam and Gondar areas of Amhara, with 10 people dying Wednesday in Metemma on the Sudan border, and four in Debark to the north of Gondar city, said Yared Hailemariam, executive director for the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, which is based in Belgium.
The military is also patrolling Bahir Dar and shooting at protesters, he said by phone from Brussels. Unless the government changes its approach, the unrest may worsen, he said.
“In both Oromia and Amhara region people are saying enough is enough,” Yared said. “They are demanding regime change.”
(Updates with report of violence in parts of Amhara starting in paragraph after Militias Clashing subheadline. An earlier version of this story corrected the spelling of the city’s name in the second paragraph.)
Ethiopia
Source Bloomberg
‘Foreign firms attacked’ as Ethiopia protests continue
Horn of Africa nation has seen months of protests during which rights groups say security forces have killed hundreds.
Oromos have long complained of marginalisation by the government [Tiksa Negeri/Reuters]
Protesters in Ethiopia have attacked foreign businesses, according to the owners of a flower firm, as demonstrations in which rights groups say hundreds of people have been killed continued.
The Dutch company said crowds of people in the Oromia and Amhara regions torched flower farms as they targeted businesses with perceived links to the government. Flowers are one of the country’s top exports.
The Esmeralda Farms statement came after weeks of escalating protests that started among the Oromo, Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group, and later spread to the Amhara, the second most populous group.
Both groups of protesters are demanding more political and economic rights, and say that a ruling coalition is dominated by the Tigrayan ethnic group, which makes up about 6 percent of the population.
According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch group, security forces have killed at least 500 people since the unrest began in November and thousands of people have been arrested.
The government has denied that violence from the security forces is “systemic” and pledged to launch an independent investigation, blaming opposition groups inside and outside of the country and what it called “anti-peace” elements for the chaos.
Esmeralda Farms said its 10 million euro ($11.1m) investment went up in smoke this week in Bahir Dar city and that several other horticulture companies were also affected.
READ MORE: The ‘Ethiopia rising’ narrative and the Oromo protests
Remco Bergkamp, assistant manager at Esmeralda Farms in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera that the company would probably leave Ethiopia, rather than rebuild the farm.
“The situation is not stable enough to run a business. You just don’t know where the country is headed,” Bergkamp told Al Jazeera.
Ethiopia has seen sustained economic growth in recent years and the government has been keen to attract foreign investors, often offering attractive incentives to firms who want to do business there.
Government opponents, though, say the country’s poorest have seen little benefit from the investment.
“The government sent security forces to protect the farm. Eventually the group of protesters grew so large that the soldiers were forced to flee and the property was torched,” Bergkamp said.
“One of our Ethiopian staff members was wounded in the attack.”
Protests in Oromia started in November last year when the government announced a plan to expand the capital – a city state – into the surrounding Oromia region.
WATCH: Prime minister tells Al Jazeera democracy is ‘not only an election’
Many Oromos saw that as a plan to remove them from fertile land. The scheme has since been dropped but the unrest spread as demonstrators called for the release of prisoners and for wider freedoms.
In the Amhara region, demonstrations began over the status of a district – Wolkait – that was once part of Amhara but was incorporated into the neighbouring Tigrayan region more than 20 years ago. Those demonstrations have also since widened.
The governing Ethiopian People’s Revolutonary Democratic Front last month rejected a United Nations request that it send in observers, saying it alone was responsible for the security of its citizens.
The government, a close security ally of the West, is often accused of silencing dissent, even blocking internet access at times. At elections last year, it won every seat in the 547-seat parliament.
Source: Al Jazeera News and agencies