- Amnesty International says 5,000 people tortured, raped and ‘disappeared’
- Over the last three years the UK Government has given Ethiopia £1 billion
- It pocketed £261.5 million in 2012 and £284.4 million in 2013
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More than £1billion from taxpayers was given in aid to Ethiopia while its security forces tortured, killed and raped, campaigners claimed yesterday.
Amnesty International has documented thousands of shockingly brutal abuses against citizens suspected of political opposition.
The human rights group’s report follows calls for greater scrutiny by Britain and other donors to ensure their money does not support state-sanctioned killings and brutality.
Amnesty warned that thousands have faced repeated torture while unlawful state killings have been carried out in a ‘relentless crackdown on real or imagined dissent’.
Horrors inflicted on ordinary Ethiopians include women being gang-raped and tortured by prison guards. Amnesty’s report also tells how a teacher was stabbed in the eye with a bayonet after refusing to teach pro-government propaganda to his students.
Entire families were arrested with parents and siblings ‘disappearing’ after they were taken to army camps, said Amnesty.
Britain has donated more than £1billion to Ethiopia in the last five years alone. The Government has denied funding security forces in the autocratic one-party state.
But Britain’s relationship with the East African country is likely to come under scrutiny in a judicial review into claims made by a Ethiopian farmer.
He has been given legal aid in this country to pursue allegations that UK aid supported the regime while it forced thousands of villagers like him from their land using murder, torture and rape.