SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE Land grabs in Ethiopia leave tribes hungry on World Food day Violent land grabs in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley are displacing tribes and preventing them from cultivating their land, leaving thousands of people hungry and ‘waiting to die’. As the world prepares to raise awareness of the issues behind poverty and hunger on October 16 (World Food Day), Ethiopia continues to jeopardize the food security and livelihoods of 200,000 of its self-sufficient tribal people. Tribes such as the Suri, Mursi, Bodi and Kwegu are being violently evicted from their villages as Ethiopia’s government pursues its lucrative plantations project in the Valley. Depriving tribes of their most valuable agricultural and grazing land, security forces are being used brutally to clear the area to make way for vast cotton, palm oil and sugar cane fields. Cattle are being confiscated, food stores destroyed, and communities ordered to abandon their homes and move into designated resettlement areas. One Mursi man told Survival International how the process of villagization is destroying his family. ‘The government is throwing our sorghum in the river. It has cleaned up the crops and put them in the river. I only have a few sacks left…We [...]
↧
