File photo: An African Union commander addresses Ugandan soldiers serving with the AU operation in Somalia in 2012.
CNN) -- African Union soldiers stationed in Somalia have raped and sexually exploited women and girls on their military bases, Human Rights Watch says in a new report.
The report released Monday accuses soldiers of working through Somali go-betweens to use a variety of ploys, such as humanitarian aid, to force women and girls to have sex as well as to sexually assault women who came to the bases seeking medical help or water.
"Some African Union soldiers have misused their positions of power to exploit Somalia's most vulnerable women and girls," said Liesl Gerntholtz, executive director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch.
The rights group said it interviewed 21 women and girls who recounted being raped or sexually exploited by Ugandan or Burundian troops serving with the African Union Mission in Somalia since 2013.
Among the cases described in the report is a 15-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a Burundian soldier after she went to a military base to try to get medicine for her sick mother.
African Union challenges report
The African Union said it was "concerned" by the report and would "thoroughly" investigate the allegations. But it took issue with much of the content of the document, accusing it of "imbalance, inaccuracies and partial view."
The regional body said the portrayal of the AU mission and the broad conclusions in the report "constitute a misrepresentation of the sacrifices, achievements and genuine commitment" of the mission.
AU troops are in Somalia to support Somali forces cracking down on Al-Shabaab, a group fighting the government in hopes of turning the country into a fundamentalist Islamic state.
The mission's mandate includes helping with humanitarian assistance in Somalia, which is plagued by war, poverty and famine.
Scale of problem unclear
The AU said the Human Rights Watch report "uses a small number of cases to arrive at a generalized conclusion."
The rights group said it didn't "assess the scale or prevalence of the abuse" because of the sensitivity of the subject and the "profound reluctance" of victims and witnesses to speak out.
"Nonetheless, the findings raise serious concerns about abuses by AMISOM soldiers against Somali women and girls that suggest a much larger problem," the report said.
It called on the countries who contribute troops, the AU and donors to the mission to "urgently address these abuses and strengthen procedures inside Somalia to seek justice."
The AU said in its statement it had developed mechanisms "to prevent and respond to issues of misconduct and abuse in peace support operations, in accordance with the AU's zero-tolerance policy on this matter."
Contacted for comment, a spokesman for the mission referred CNN to the AU statement.
Somali government to launch investigation
The Somali Prime Minister's office issued a statement Tuesday expressing concern over the "grave allegations" in the Human Rights Watch report.
"The government condemns all forms of abuse against the Somali people and remains committed to ensuring perpetrators of any crime against its civilians are brought to justice," the office said.
"The government will lead a rigorous and prompt investigation into the allegations with all stakeholders and necessary action will be taken as required."
Awol K. Allo is a Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Ethiopia's long-term Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died on August 20, 2012 [EPA]
August 20 marked the second anniversary of the death of Ethiopia's long-time leader, Meles Zenawi. Two years on, the Zenawi phenomenon is still as divisive as it is unsettling. For his supporters, Zenawi is a statesman and a visionary leader that represents not only the hopes and aspirations of "the new Ethiopia" but also "the African renaissance". For those who were excluded and marginalised under his rule, Zenawi is the symbolic personification of a tyrannical system that violently quashed their desire for freedom and justice. Still for others, he is a complex figure that condenses within himself the qualities of a political genius and a seasoned dictator. In the words of The Economist: "the man who tried to make dictatorship acceptable."
Two years on, the spectre of Zenawi hangs over the Ethiopian state. His name, his policies, and his visions still provide the cement that keeps together the ideological edifices of the Ethiopian state. His successors elevate him to a pure symbol, take pride in and identify with his legacies. The constant invocation of Zenawi by regime officials gives the impression that the entire social and political order of the state is predicated on the image and imagery of a single man. The "Meles Legacy" has become a grand memory work - an archive that condenses within it a great many different things for a great many different people. Legacy and the politics of archives
Zenawi now belongs to the archives. But archives are pivotal - "great historical watchtowers" or "observation posts" from which we can access and observe the past. In archives, we see the random elements and the minute details of our identity. Archives are not just about remembering and understanding the past. In fact, at stake in every recounting of the past is not the past as such; it is the future. In his seminal essay, "Archive Fever", French philosopher Jacques Derrida observes , the question of the archive is "a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to know what that will have meant, we will only know in times to come." To speak about Zenawi's archives, then, is not to speak about the past: It is about the future.
But archives are contested spaces: They not only conserve but also produce and reproduce. Far from being neutral voids in which facts and events are placed, archives are active agents that participate in the production and reproduction of meaning. For every archive, there are counter-archives. For every narrative, there are counter-narratives. It is precisely for this reason that Zenawi's legacy has become such an important site of political struggle in Ethiopia today. Zenawi's archives
As a man who played the single most important role in Ethiopia's history of the last two decades, Zenawi is a giant in that archive. When asked by Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons about the legacy he leaves behind, Zenawi said, "I would like to be remembered as someone who got Ethiopia off to a good track, democratic one, […] where Ethiopia's proverbial poverty begins to be tackled in an effective way; I would like to be remembered as someone who has started the process."
During his funeral ceremony two years ago, his successor, Hailemariam Desalegn called him a "visionary", an "intellectual", and a "technocrat" who has been " working for the renaissance Ethiopia and Africa". Jacob Zuma of South Africa called him " one of the greatest sons of the continent" while Paul Kagame of Rwanda recognised his unreserved support in the fight to end the Rwandan genocide and praised his "humble", "simple" but "meaningful life " . The most notable eulogy was delivered by then US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, who depicted a rather erudite and progressive image of Zenawi. Rice spoke of "his world-class mind" : " he wasn't just brilliant. He wasn't just a relentless negotiator and a formidable debater. He wasn't just a thirsty consumer of knowledge. He was uncommonly wise." In many ways, he has built international reputation for himself as "the voice of Africa", and the West's key ally on "the war on terror".
Whatever the truth of these eulogies, Zenawi's domestic credentials are absolutely dismal . For the last two decades, Ethiopia consistently ranked as one of the most repressive states in the world. Susan Rice's ownState Department chronicled a consistent pattern of grave violations of human rights including torture, arbitrary killings, restrictions on freedom of the press and expression, denial of religious freedoms, and the politicised use of its notorious anti-terrorism legislation. Contradicting her own government's documented practices of torture and other grave human rights violations, Rice's eulogies slips into an agonising denial that flies in the face of the facts .
Rice exploits the grandeur of US power and its enunciating force to rework the history of repression and torture. This reworking, as the Philosopher Michel Foucault says , functions to "ensure that the greatness of the events or men of the past could guarantee the value of the present". However, history cannot remain reworked. As Walter Benjamin's messianic but sublime insight reveals: " The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth." Zenawi's counter-archives
Zenawi was a paradoxical figure who embodied the traits of a brutal dictator and a politico-economic genius, both unified in one. Just before the 2010 election in which Zenawi won 99.6 percent of the seats, Andrew Simmons sought an explanation for these two faces: "There are . . . those who say that you have two faces, you have a face for Davos, charming, a progressive and you have another face, which is totalitarian and repressive; how do you respond to that?" Zenawi's answer was misleadingly simple: "As far as I am concerned, what you see is what you get. No two faces, just one."
Those who are deprived of the means of narrative production by Zenawi see him as a man who used his omnipotent power and his knowledge of the politico-military complex toeliminate the very conditions under which alternative ideas and competent political operators could emerge. It is not simply that he built a system around himself, but deliberately established himself as the only leader able to supply the cement necessary to hold together the nation's internal ruptures. He might have helped Ethiopia achieve rocketing economic progress but this progress came at a cost of two decades of terror and repression.
The relentless memorialisation of Zenawi's legacy conceals, misrecognises, misrepresents, de-historicises, and ultimately erases the fundamental relationships of domination and inequality instituted by the order minted by Zenawi. Theses obsessive commemorative practices , i.e. events, parks, monuments, and institutions built up to remember and commemorate Zenawi have the purpose and effect of transforming everything about Zenawi into "a dazzling action" that can be appropriated by the order he founded and the sovereignty he left behind. It has the goal of transcribing his deeds into a discourse that ensures the sedimentation of these utterances into common-sense knowledge, into that which remains when everything is forgotten. This, then, is what is at stake in the struggle over the legacy of Meles Zenawi.
No doubt the darling of the West who outmanoeuvred his adversaries, Zenawi's domestic reputation is radically at odds with his international stature. In the eyes of his people, Zenawi was irredeemably authoritarian. Awol Kassim Allo is Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Follow him on Twitter: @awol_allo =>aljazeera
Scotland will vote next week on a referendum to become an independent country. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/Guardian
It is obvious that both supporters and opponents of Oromian independence in Ethiopia are watching carefully what is going on in the UK. Both political entities have their own reasons for their respective wishes. Some Abyssinian elites could ridiculously try to resemble their cause to that of English elites, who were in the forefront of building the great nation, UK. However, there is no factual resemblance between the savage invaders from Abyssinia and the most civilized, prosperous and the leading democratic nation in the world. In spite of the fact that the British were once the brutal colonialist rulers in the world history, I don’t judge them by their history of yesterday in this context, but by who they are and what they are contributing for the betterment of our world today.
Therefore, our comparison should not be based on the past history, but on what is going on today. I am happy to see a historical test that is happening in a leading democratic nation, UK, but I will not have a cause to rejoice if I see the Scottish independence or to be sad by their possible defeat simply because of I am from a fellow suppressed nation in Africa. The encouraging event for the colonized peoples like the Oromo is just to witness such kind of referendums around the world and grabbing some experiences for their own future. Feelings that could spark from any result of the referendum should be left for the stakeholders.
