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Venture of Merchants of Death and Tyranny. PETRONAS & Ethiopian regime.
Subject: A statement of protest. PETRONAS oil and gas exploration in the Ogaden basin owned by the native indigenous and persecuted Ogadeni native tribes.
by Girma Gizaw
Saturday, January 10, 2009
As a concerned Ethiopian national, I was active in the Horn of Africa for over 25 years with non-political and non-religious humanitarian organizations that specifically protects the rights the indigenous non-Muslim minority communities in the Horn of Africa. I have promoted peace, national unity of the nations of the Horn and in helping neutralize community concerns in injustices and human rights violations. And repeatedly denounced violence based on acts of national disunity, state and religious terrorism as well as aggression against civilians and violation of the rules of law, and acts of destabilization. I am an advent believer of Ethiopian unity.
This statement of protest is a response to Petronas’s decision to participate and promote the violence in the Ogaden and further aggravate the volatile and precarious human rights state of affairs of the Ogaden basin inhabitants who endure brutal and barbaric human rights violations perpetuated by the present day rulers of Ethiopia lead by the worst African tyrant of the century, dictator and self appointed Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Mr. Meles Zenawi.
Natural resource exploration is vital but only when it contributes to social development of the impact community and does not cause pain and suffering to the local community. When such efforts become a contributing factor to an ongoing barbaric war crimes of a regime against it’s own citizens, your company becomes, by association, a partner in the war crimes inflicted on innocent indigenous civilians who endure well documented state terror of murder by strangulation, throat slitting and beheading, gang rape, massive and forced displacement, depopulation, extrajudicial executions, poisoning of water wells, mass killing of livestock, intentional genocide and many other grossly inhumane acts perpetuated against innocent Ethiopian nomadic civilians and those who rightly resist such violations for the same and defending their Ethiopian rights.
Such excessive human rights violations do leads to unusual victim responses from desperation. These include reactive terrorism, suicide bombings, radicalization, religious (in this case Islamic) extremism and serious national instability. PETRONAS is now fully responsible for the instigation and propagation of these acts of brutality that breed all these negative consequences in the Ogaden and that will surely spread into the rest of Ethiopia.
Through these oil exploration agreements PETRONAS directly paid millions of dollars to the brutal regime of Meles Zenawi. The process empowers the regimes brutality buy using the funds to buy arms against the Ogadeni natives. Such is but an ingredient for laying the seeds of terrorism and extremism in the Horn of Africa. Unfortunately, it is naïve not to expect the local community to consider PETRONAS’s interest in the Ogaden as an enemy accessory as well as a legitimate target in self defense and see PETRONAS an obstacle to their basic Ethiopian rights and legitimate livelihoods therefore take desperate measures to defend their resources.
Unless PETRONAS management is ignorant of the realities of the conflict in the Ogaden basin, it is not about fanaticism or Islamic extremism nor terrorism as such as portrayed by the Meles Zenawi’s regime’s resource grabbing of present day Ethiopia. The conflict is basically about the oil and gas resources of the Ogaden basin. It is about the struggle of the Ogadeni natives constitutional right for true self governance as a legitimate federal right inscribed in the Ethiopian federal constitution, a right completely and blatantly denied to the Ogadeni indigenous community whose oil and gas resources PETRONAS has entered into an agreement to exploit for self enrichment at the expense of wholesale serious human sufferings of these natives.
There are allegations and well documented concern that the Meles Zenawi regime has been paid by PETRONAS and many other oil exploration companies with extensive bribes for the oil exploration concessions. Some of the oil exploration companies tried to assist the local community but again there is official evidence that the Meles Zenawi officially and formally refused and denied such assistance to the local community.
Common wisdom and acceptable business ethics as well as civil standards of gaining opportunities exclude the trade of becoming merchants of death in war crimes. Exploration of resources in the Ogaden basin is not an opportunity but a serious liability to PETRONAS standing and integrity as well as exposes it international crimes.
Violation of international humanitarian laws and the act of extermination of natives is a genocide that PETRONAS is willingly and knowingly exposing it’s loyal and trusting investors into. Implicating PETRONAS investors and the government of Malaysia to the risks of such liabilities that even the Chinese companies refused to participate any longer is not what we expect PETRONAS to openly participate in the tyranny of extermination of the rightful owners of these oil and gas resources in the Ogaden where the current Ethiopian government’s regime is committing horrendous human rights violations.
We take this opportunity to remind PETRONAS management that these crimes will not be taken lightly and all international legal avenues will be engaged against PETRONAS management including criminal complaints in Malaysia, at the International Criminal Court, with the United Nations, with the EU and wherever justice takes us to protect the rights of the Ogadeni indigenous inhabitants rights to the protection of their own natural resources.
We also take this opportunity to remind PETRONAS that the current Ethiopian regime is the only African nation whose parliament unanimously approved laws that criminalize assistance to children, the disabled, the elderly, assistance for community reconciliations, assisting the disabled and various laws that seriously criminalize humanitarian assistance in addition to criminalizing assistance to human rights activities and the rights of equal humans as men and women. All international diplomats and human rights organizations in Ethiopia criticized this measure.
These are not only barbaric businesses deals but what surprises many is how PETRONAS, which just made net income of $20 billion dollars and has a combined equality of over $70 billion, profits probably squeezed out of the blood of millions of hungry children and indigenous people globally just as the Ogadeni natives lives are sacrificed for such corporate greed has decided to ad injury to insult on innocent Ethiopian nomadic civilians who are punished by this tyrant regime.
PETRONAS will not escape prosecution, criminal and civil charges against it’s management and accountability for the hundreds of thousands of innocent Ogadenis victims killed, raped, villages destroyed, thousands of grazing lands for the nomads taken by PETRONAS for self-enrichment and grand corporate greed.
PETRONAS needs to stop becoming a convenient accessory to the tyrant Ethiopian regime as surely these crimes will catch-up with these crimes, corruption and serious human rights violations in which PETRONAS is taking part in Ethiopia and in particular in the Ogaden.
By partnering with such criminal leadership, PETRONAS is also taking part in the obstruction of justice of the Ogadeni indigenous community. A crime that will end up at the ICC.
In light of these criminal knowledge of PETRONAS management’s partnership with the atrocities of the Ethiopian government, and with PETRONAS deciding to participate in the aggravation of these crimes as investors and profiteers of such serious human tragedy and atrocities of crime, the following immediate action are recommended in the part of PETRONAS senior management:
1. That PETRONAS management immediately disclose these dealings to it’s global investors and acknowledge the crime and confirm to the investors and shareholders that it has ceased dealing with the current Ethiopian regime.
2. We believe PETRONAS can and has the legal right to terminate the agreement with this criminal regime and by all means, either request the funds you paid to this government be frozen in an escrow account or refunded to the rightful owners of PETRONAS investors until and when a human rights respecting regime takes charge during next years election in Ethiopia.
3. That PETRONAS disassociates itself, extracts and terminates any business deals with such criminal tyrants as that of Meles Zenawi and his barbaric and corrupt cronies including the Minister of foreign Affairs, Minister of Energy and other corrupt Ethiopian leaders who are selling Ethiopian citizens blood to PETRONAS for profit.
4. That PETRONAS waits the upcoming 2010 Ethiopian elections and if a new just and democratic government is elected, then resume in entering an ethnical, community benefit centered resource exploration contract maximizing the local community’s socioeconomic interest in the business.
This document is free for redistribution by and to the media and has been formally submitted to the following international institutions:
The United Nations office of Indigenous Affairs. The Malaysian Bar Association and Criminal lawyers Union. The EU Human rights Commission. The Asian Institute of Human Rights and Better Business Institute The AU Office of Human Rights. The International Criminal Court . The Malaysian Prosecutors Office. The Malaysian news media. Offices of the Prime Minister, Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Energy, Ethiopia and Malaysia.
Respectfully.
Girma Gizaw
[email protected]