Walking From the Ogaden–Seeking Peace in Dadaab by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
July 11, 2013

Many people living outside Africa, most perhaps, have never heard of the Ogaden (or Somali) region of Ethiopia, they know nothing of the murders, rapes and destruction that the ethnic Somali’s allege are taking place there. We all have our problems and what can I do anyway, these governments are corrupt, we – meaning western governments shouldn’t be sending them money, especially now with all the public sector cuts taking place. So runs the uninformed, albeit understandable response.

Commercial Colonisation of Africa–The New Wild West by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
June 27, 2013

Image by UN / B. Wolff on Africa Renewal via Flickr

Dancing to the tune of their corporate benefactors, governments of the ruling G8 countries are enacting complex agriculture agreements delivering large tracts of prime cut African soil into the portfolios of their multinational bedmates.

Desperate for foreign investment, countries throughout Africa are at the mercy of their new colonial masters – national and international agrochemical corporations, fighting for land, water and control of the world’s food supplies.

Seeds of Change in Ethiopia by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
June 13, 2013

Image by Oxfam East Africa via Flickr

Thousands march in the capital

The people of Ethiopia have been suppressed and controlled for generations. Under the current EPRDF government, freedom of expression has been curtailed and an atmosphere of fear and intimidation fostered. Peaceful assembly has not been allowed, contrary to the constitution, and all political dissent stamped on.

In 2005, after parliamentary elections that many, including the European observers, deemed to be unfair, students took to the streets in the capital Addis Ababa to demonstrate against what they saw as electoral fraud.

State Terrorism–Arbitrary Killings, Rape, Torture, and Destruction of Property by Graham Peebles

Warning

This article may contain language depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be read by a mature audience.

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
June 6, 2013

Image by macalin via Flickr

The Ethiopian military and paramilitary forces, operating in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, are, it is alleged, carrying out extra judicial killings and gang rapes; falsely arresting and torturing innocent civilians; looting and destroying villages and crops in a systematic attempt to terrify the people. This is the consistent message coming out of the region and from those who have fled persecution and are now in the world’s largest refugee camp, in Dadaab, Kenya.

The Struggle For Justice In Manipur by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
May 3, 2013

The primary colours of any civil democracy are we would agree, social justice, freedom of expression, freedom to protest and participation. India, with a population of 1.3 billion people is regularly hailed as the largest democracy in the world. At first glance the governments pretentions to democracy would appear to be justified, after all there is, on paper at least, an independent judiciary, a free press – freely owned from top to toe by corporations – a thriving civil society and, of course, the cornerstone of any democratic state: the haloed parliamentary elections, totally funded and (therefore) fully owned, top to toe, by the same corporations that count the national and regional newspapers, radio and television networks as their own, as well as growing portfolios of natural assets; rivers, forests, water supplies, mountains (full of bauxite), and other mineral resources.

Under Darkness in the Somali Region of Ethiopia by Graham Peebles

Warning

This article may contain language depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be read by a mature audience.

Image by CharlesFred via Flickr

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
April 18, 2013

State criminality

No matter how tightly truth is tied down, confined and suffocated, she slowly escapes. Seeping out through cracks and openings large and small, illuminating all, revealing the grime and shame, that cowers in the shadows.

Corporate India–Violence in the Name of Development by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
April 4, 2013

Image by lecercle via Flickr

Consistent with the unjust, decaying economic model of our deficit times, the commodification of everything and everyone proceeds apace in India. The commercialisation of the land is shattering the lives of millions of India’s poorest, hungriest most malnourished people, who are being murdered and raped, violently displaced and falsely arrested as huge multi-nationals, financially favoured and militarily armed by the Indian government, ravage the land.

Rape and Torture as a Weapon of Control by Graham Peebles

Warning

This article may contain language depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be read by a mature audience.

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
March 7, 2013

The Pain of the Ogaden Somali People

Image by CharlesFred via Flickr

Hiding from the truth

“Every night, they took all of us girls to [interrogations]. They would separate us and beat us. The second time they took me, they raped me… All three of the men raped me, consecutively”. Along with 15 other female students, Human Rights Watch (HRW)[i] report in Collective Punishment, this innocent 17 year-old Ogaden Somali girl, was held captive for three months in a “dark hole in the ground” and raped 13 times.

The Green Green Gold of Ethiopia by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
March 7, 2013

Indian multi-nationals in clover

Ancestral land that for generations has served as home and livelihood for hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Ethiopia is being leased out, on 99-year renewable contracts at nominal sums to foreign corporations. The land giveaway or agrarian reforms as the government would prefer to present them began in 2008 when the Ethiopian government, under the brutal suppressive Premiership of Meles Zenawi invited foreign countries/corporation to take up highly attractive deals and turn large areas of land over to industrial farming for the export of crops.

Displacement, Intimidation and Abuse–Land Loyalties in Ethiopia by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
February 27, 2013

With the coming of industrial-size farms in Ethiopia, local people, villagers and pastoralists (deemed irrelevant to the Government’s, economically-driven development plans) are being threatened, and intimidated by the military; forcibly displaced and herded into camps, their homes destroyed. Along with vast agricultural complexes, dams are planned and constructed, water supplies re-directed to irrigate crops, forests burnt, natural habitats destroyed. Dissenting voices are brutally silenced – men beaten, children frightened, women raped, so too the land.

India: Growing Inequality and Destructive Development by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
February 15, 2013

Image by dietmut via Flickr

Upon a foundation of deep spirituality and philosophical treasures, proclaiming unity, justice and service, New India, horns honking in violation of the good; is racing, no time to spare towards the Alter of Materiality and Market Fundamentalism.

Under the careful guidance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the Indian government has for the last twenty years or so, (during which time the BBC 7/12/11[i] found “inequality has doubled”), embraced market liberalization and the global market; garlanded corporations with all manner of subsidies and damned the poor to greater poverty, destitution, suffering and, suicide in the case of farmers:

Ethiopian Annihilation of the Ogaden People, by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
February 6, 2013

Besieged, abused, ignored

In the harsh Ogaden region of Ethiopia, impoverished ethnic Somali people are being murdered and tortured, raped, persecuted and displaced by government paramilitary forces. Illegal actions carried out with the knowledge and tacit support of donor countries, seemingly content to turn a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by their brutal, repressive ally in the region; and a deaf ear to the pain and suffering of the Ogaden Somali people.

Indian Farmers Trapped and Desperate by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
January 24, 2013

Image by coquetboy via Flickr

India has the largest number of smallholder farmers in the World, 600 million by some estimates. From this army of workers one impoverished desperate man, or indeed woman, with a noose of debt around their neck takes his or her own life on average every thirty minutes, A statistic barely comprehensible, representing the tidal wave of suicides that has swept through the farming community in the last 15 years.

Daughters of India Violated and Abused, by Graham Peebles + The ‘Genocide’ of India’s Daughters

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
January 6, 2013

Image by Imagens Evangélicas via Flickr

A woman’s lot

In the ancient land of India, where female deities deeply revered, Kali and Lakshmi, Sarasvati and Parvati, are held high upon the alter of Hinduism, where each day thousands of Hindu’s ritually bathe in the Holy waters of the Ganges, cleansed within and without by the Goddess Ganga, women and girls; in the forests, cities, villages and towns, on buses and trains, in the street, the office, at school and in the home are being violated, abused, raped and trafficked into prostitution and domestic slavery.

Ethiopian migrants abused and unwelcome in Yemen by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
December 17, 2012

Desperately seeking a future

Year on year the numbers of men, women and children leaving Ethiopia in search of work and freedom from repression in one of the Gulf States and beyond is increasing. Lured by the often hollow prospect of earning enough money to support their family, United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)[i] estimate around 85,000 men women and children, desperate and naïve, have this year, no matter the severe risks, made their way to Yemen, the hub of migration out of the Horn of Africa. In the last six years around 250,000 Ethiopians have made the dangerous journey into this very poor, deeply divided country besieged with internal problems, which has limited resources, the second highest rate of chronic child malnutrition in the world and where 45% of the population live in poverty.