In June 10, 2010 Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) issued a press release about a massacre that has taken place in a place called Malqaqa in Ogaden. We listed the names of 40 victims and gave details of how the innocent civilians were hunted down, rounded up, and summarily executed by the Ethiopian army and the Liyuu Police militias. We appealed to the international community to intervene, in particular “the Secretary General and the UN Security Council to act immediately and take concrete steps to halt this unfolding genocide and offer immediate support to the community that had been decimated by the Ethiopian regime.”

Unfortunately the UN did not respond to our pleas and the Ethiopian regime, no doubt encouraged by the international community’s ‘conspiracy of silence,’ continued its genocidal campaign against the innocent civilians in Ogaden. In fact the regime intensified its killing spree throughout Ogaden and in the last few months alone, it carried-out massacres in Gunagado (February 2012), Gaashaamo (March 2012), Qoriile (September 6, 2012), and now Harshin (September 10,2012).

In almost of all of these massacres we issued press releases and gave tallies of the dead, the wounded, and the missing victims, and appealed to the international community to do something about it – to no avail. It is as if the Ogaden is not part of the world and the UN has no responsibility or obligation to the people of Ogaden, giving the Ethiopian regime a carte blanches to do whatever it likes in Ogaden.

The Ethiopian regime denies media and international NGOs access to Ogaden in a desperate bid to hide from the outside world the crimes it’s committing in Ogaden. However lately people who use to work for the regime have started to defect, taking with them a treasure throve of crucial and incriminating video-graphed evidences showing the extent of the Ethiopian army’s killing spree in Ogaden. One such evidence is a large collection of video material which was smuggled out ofEthiopiaby Abdullahi Hussien, a young man who worked for the regime and who is now hiding in exile. In the first installment of the video material, which was aired in Swedish TV, Abdullahi showed and explained how the video evidence used against the Swedish journalists, Marin Shibbye and Johan Persson, when they were convicted in December last year in Ethiopian court was staged and how the journalists were forced to take part in the video to frame them. In the second part, a group of torturers presided over by the deputy President of the Somali Region, Abdullahi Yuusuf Weerar ‘Abdullahi Ethiopia’, are shown extolling the effectiveness of their methods of torture, praising each other and even admitting to murdering innocent prisoners.

The third part shows Abdi Mohamud Omar ‘Abdi Iley,’ together with a group of Liyuu Police men, touring the vacated Malqaqa town shortly after the massacre and harassing the remaining civilians. There is horrific scene of a murdered civilian lying in the centre of the town being stepped on, kicked around, and a stick poked on his lifeless face. Abdullahi Hussien, the man who smuggled the video, is seen next to Abdi Iley in the film. “The world must know. I did what every person would have done after seeing what I have seen,” says Abdullahi in the interview.

These are hard facts that cannot denied and we are grateful to Abdullahi Hussien for bringing them out and showing the world the evidence, in video, of the massacre of Malqaqa.

Now that the world knows about it, and our reported massacre in June2010 inMalqaqa is vindicated, it is time to take action and bring the perpetrators to book.

Ogaden National Liberation Front / Foreign Relations Bureau