Sudan MP: ‘Ethiopian farmers occupy land in El Gedaref’

Ethiopian farmers have reportedly seized a part of an agricultural project in El Fashaga locality in El Gedaref.

Mubarak El Nour, independent MP for El Fashaga, told Radio Dabanga that Ethiopian farmers occupied 300 acres of a project owned by farmer Salman El Awad in the area of El Fashaga El Kubra.

“They began to clear the agricultural land under the protection of Ethiopian militiamen, and burned the fodder and agricultural residues left at the project,” he said.

El Nour noted that the owner of the land filed a complaint “but the authorities remained silent so far”.

During the past few years, violence in El Gedaref's border areas increased, with many reports of Ethiopian gunmen attacking Sudanese farmers, extorting money and goods from them, and occupying their lands.

In July 2016, the Sudanese Minister of Interior acknowledged the incursion of the Ethiopian gangs into the western areas of El Gedaref. Yet the authorities did not intervene. 

A farmer in El Fashaga told this station in May 2017 that Ethiopians were controlling more than 500,000 acres in El Fashaga. He said they had constructed five residential areas in the area under the protection of Ethiopian forces. The Governor of El Gedaref reported a month later that about 200 Ethiopian farmers were illegally cultivating Sudanese farms in the eastern part of the state.