A U.S. financed para-military force known as the Liyu police are terrorizing the civilian population in the eastern Ethiopian Somali region without impunity. According to Somali news sources, three weeks ago, out of the gaze of the international media, the Liyu police slaughtered more than 40 villagers including women and children in Jama Dubad, a remote hamlet in the eastern Ethiopian Somali region. With the motive believed to be linked with retaliation, after a group of armed men attacked customs police for confiscating a vehicle transporting Khat belonging to a local dealer.

Several villages in the town were burnt down and the residents have been forced to flee their houses by the invading Liyu police, who have in the past carried out similar attacks in Mudug. The Liyu police have no formal training or discipline, yet it has the full support of the Tigrean people’s liberation front (TPLF) government in Addis Ababa. The TPLF initially set up the Liyu police as a counter insurgency force against the Ogaden national Liberation Front (ONLF), a group fighting for self determination for the Somali region.

International organizations have called on the leaders of the United States, Britain and EU, who provide billions of aid to Ethiopia, to publicly condemn the actions of  the Ethiopian government’s security forces. They have called on the west to use all means necessary including aid cuts, travel restriction, and asset freezes to punish countries that perpetrate crimes against humanity not only in Ethiopia but throughout Africa.

To know more, read:

http://www.shabellenews.com/2016/06/40-killed-as-ethiopias-liyu-police-commit-mass-murder-in-somalia/
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/285060-ethiopia-it-is-time-to-stop-the-reign-of-terror-of-the
http://allafrica.com/stories/201607040435.html