Charu Kasturi,
Hindustan Times
New Delhi,
February 05, 2013
Indian
investors eying Ethiopia should ensure that the local population is consulted
before they are displaced for projects that involve the transfer of vast tracts
of land, activists on Tuesday said, citing what they alleged were multiple
instances of land grab in the east African country.
The
Ethiopian government had committed "egregious violations of human
rights" in leasing over 600,000 hectares of land to Indian companies,
Anuradha Mittal of the US-based Oakland Institute said in New Delhi on Tuesday
- charges that country's government has consistently denied.
Speaking to
reporters in New Delhi, Obang Metho, the exiled head of the Solidarity Movement
for a New Ethiopia (SMNE) said that India must choose whether to support
globally established human rights, as the world's largest democracy. "I
call this daylight robbery," Metho said.
Several
thousand members of the Anywaa tribe have been displaced, and are being denied
access to their farm lands, Nyikaw Ochalla, the director of the Anywaa
Suirvival Organization - a group supporting the community - said.
The Ethiopian
government under the late former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi started attracting
large scale investment from foreign countries, including India, China, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey. Zenawi and current Ethiopian officials have insisted that
the investment will help develop Ethiopia, ranked near the bottom of the United
Nations Human Development Index. They have
also asserted that displacement of locals in land deals with Indian companies
has been minimal.
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