BBC | 15 December 2010
By Ed Butler (Reporter, Business Daily, BBC World Service, Ethiopia)
A controversial new farms policy has led to a political clampdown in a remote lowland region of Ethiopia, the BBC has been told.
Opposition activists claim that a number of arrests and the killings of 10 local farmers are as a direct result of the new policy.
“You cannot speak freely about the land issue now,” one local man told me on condition of anonymity.
“You can be arrested or even killed for this.
“This is a dark period for all indigenous people living in the south-west of the country.”
Massive land lease
The government of Meles Zenawi is pioneering the lease of some three million hectares of land over the next five years, an area the size of Belgium.
The policy is targeting massive lowland areas mostly in the west and south-west of the country.
These are regions populated by smaller minority ethnic groups.
The government denies conducting any repression, and says instead that its policy is aimed at lifting local people out of poverty.
Foreign investors in Gambella include Chinese, Indian and Saudi firms.
The Saudis alone say they are hoping to produce as much as a million tonnes of rice per year, most of it for their own domestic market.
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