\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The Times, October 10, 1985 <\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Paul Vallely reports from Damazin in Sudan on the broken Ethiopian families fleeing the tyranny of government resettlement camps<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For two weeks the middle-aged man and his fragile little daughter hid, naked, in the forest. At first they ate berries to keep themselves alive, but eventually hunger overcame their fear. Moving at night to avoid the government soldiers they set off on the six-week walk towards safety. \u00a0They were still naked when they arrived.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0His name was Gesesaw Hailu, a peasant from the province of Tigre in northern Ethiopia. \u00a0He was 55 and too old for a journey which would have tested the stamina of a young man. \u00a0His daughter, Azenegash, was at seven hardly better equipped; old enough, however, to sense that she would probably never see her mother again.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0It was a year ago that Gesesaw and his wife Aweshu finally surrendered the belief that the growing season would produce anything from the land that had supported their people for 5,000 years. \u00a0There was nothing left to eat in their bare grass tukul, \u00a0nothing to borrow or beg in their village of Enderta.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Then came the word that food had been brought in sacks and drums to Mekele, the capital of their remote and mountainous province, oneand-a-half days walk away. \u00a0The couple prepared their six children and set out.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n There was indeed food at the Red Cross camp in Mekele, but before the family got to it they met the soldiers of the governing Dergue, not men of Tigr\u00e9 but from the Shoan plateau around Addis Ababa. \u00a0They cornered Gesesaw, told him about a new place, where crops and peace prospered. \u00a0Then they seized him and took him \u2013 with Azenegash, who had been beside him, clinging to his robe \u2013 and forced them into a lorry, then an aircraft, on a journey 1,000 miles to the south. \u00a0Behind him Gesesaw left his wife and five children.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0On the aircraft the girl became ill with a fever. \u00a0It worsened on a further two-day lorry ride from Addis Ababa to a resettlement camp near Jimma into which Gesesaw was consigned with 800 other unwilling northerners. \u00a0There was no doctor there and the cadres from the Ethiopian Workers Party refused permission for Azenegash to be taken to hospital. \u00a0Her father nursed her as best he could between long hours of coffee-picking for which he was paid about 20 pence a day and a cup of grain. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Mercifully, the child began to recover. \u00a0When she was well, her father began to save a little each day of their ration. \u00a0After three weeks they left the camp in evening darkness. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The pair walked for four days before they were captured by soldiers who were so \u00a0angry that they did not return the fugitives to Jimma but threw them in prison. \u00a0As an added disincentive to escape they removed all their clothes. \u00a0After two weeks, however, their captors guard slipped and Gesesaw and his daughter sneaked out of the jail and off into the nearby forest. \u00a0There they lay low, hoping that the soldiers would expect them to be on the move. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Two months ater they crossed the border intoSudan and arrived at the camp in Damazin where their skeletal nakedness shocked even the paramedics of the Relief Society of Tigr\u00e9 who run a refuge for about 1,400 people who have escaped from Colonel. Mengistus “voluntary” resettlement scheme. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0But Gesesawus tale is only one from a shameful catalogue. \u00a0Under the thorn trees, in whose spikes lengths of cloth have been entangled to provide some flimsy shelter from the noon-time temperatures of more than 120 degrees, the members of this dispirited congregation sat and told their stories. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0There were two merchant priests (the occupations are not exclusive within Abbysinian Christianity) who had been taken for resettlement on their way to market. \u00a0So old are Keshi Teklehaymanot and Abba Taddese that the only motive in selecting them for farming in the resettlement areas could have been to purloin their cargo of onions and gayshu leaf (from which a local beer is made). \u00a0They escaped from Asosa resettlement after getting permission to visit the local hospital and once out of the gates asking the way to Sudan. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Aragay Garamadheen escaped from the same camp, with its meagre cup of grain a day and no doctor, in December with 170 others. \u00a0The Dergue soldiers discovered them hiding in a forest and tried to smoke them out. \u00a0In the fire 20 died but the rest made it across the border.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Beli Hailu was betrayed to the resettlement soldiers in church by the leader of his local community. \u00a0At the transit camp in Mekele he shouted to a group of foreign visitors who then crossed to askhim his grievance; when they had gone he was beaten with sticks and thrown in prison. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Ala Musefa arrived in Dama-zin with an axe. \u00a0He had escaped by running away from a tree-felling party sent to clear the forest for cultivation around Anibasi. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The details differed but always the plot was the same: tricked away from rebel controlled areas into the government held towns with the lure of food; separated from wives and children; thrust upon an arduous journey south. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0One group who had arrived that day had set out to walk 1,000 miles back to Tigre from Illubabor. \u00a0In Wollega they were set upon by soldiers; some 45 were recaptured, 50 disappeared and have not been seen since. \u00a0Three made it to Damazin. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0One of them was Yahansu Nevay, a young woman of 20, who had carried her two-yearold son on her back for five weeks. \u00a0She was listless, bereft of hope. \u00a0The boy had diarrhoea and the disease of the scabs, she said. \u00a0But now he would be well. \u00a0I could not believe her. \u00a0Soon she would take him back to Tigre to find his father, she said, without a smile. \u00a0This time it was she who could not believe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 The Times, October 10, 1985 \u00a0 Paul Vallely reports from Damazin in Sudan on the broken Ethiopian families fleeing the tyranny of government resettlement camps \u00a0 For two weeks the middle-aged man and his fragile little daughter hid, naked, in the forest. At first they ate berries to keep themselves alive, but eventually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8641"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8644,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8641\/revisions\/8644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}