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Category: Resource

WP: Ethiopia now calls Axum massacre allegations ‘credible’

Posted on by Tech Support

Ethiopia on Wednesday said it is investigating “credible allegations of atrocities and human rights abuses” in its embattled Tigray region, including in the city of Axum, where The Associated Press and Amnesty International have separately documented a massacre of several hundred people.

The statement by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office comes days after Ethiopia referred to the killings in Axum as an “alleged incident,” and the country’s ambassador to Belgium told a webinar that “we suspect it’s a very, very crazy idea.”

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WPF: The Mango Orchards of Zamra, Tigray

Posted on by Tech Support

A few days ago, Eritrean and Ethiopian troops cut down the mango orchards at Adeba and Tseada on the Zamra river in south-central Tigray. It’s not a massacre, a mass rape or torture. But chopping down those fruit trees is evidence for the war aims of the leaders in Asmara and Addis Ababa.

In a phone call from nearby on March 1, my friend and colleague Mulugeta Gebrehiwot said this.

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Aljazeera: Ethiopia releases media workers detained in Tigray

Posted on by Tech Support

Four media workers recently arrested in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit northern Tigray region have been released.

Fitsum Berhane and Alula Akalu, translators working for AFP news agency and Financial Times respectively, BBC journalist Girmay Gebru and Temrat Yemane, a local journalist, had been arrested over the weekend and earlier this week.

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Opinion: A key U.S. ally in Africa is massacring civilians. Can Biden stop it?

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

ETHIOPIA IS emerging as a major test of the Biden administration’s commitment to a foreign policy grounded in human rights. Since the federal government dispatched troops to the rebellious region of Tigray in November, there have been scattered reports of atrocities as well as warnings by aid groups of a humanitarian crisis due to the interruption of food deliveries. Then last week came disturbing new reports of massacres by troops from neighboring Eritrea of hundreds of civilians and of ethnic cleansing by militias.

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tghat: Survivors Recount the Mai Kadra Massacre

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

“We saw evil things, people whose necks were cut, limbs hanging,” Belay said. “There was no one to bury the dead. They were just lying there.” That horrific massacre in Mai Kadra on Nov. 9-10 was a defining moment in the war on Tigray launched by Abiy Ahmed and the Ethiopian government. Ahmed politicized the massacre, blaming “TPLF supporters” and a Tigrayan youth group he called “samri.”

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CNN EXCLUSIVE: Leader of Tigray’s forces accuses Ethiopian and Eritrean governments of genocide

Posted on by Tech Support

The ousted leader of Ethiopia’s Tigray region has accused the federal government and its Eritrean allies of genocide and other crimes against humanity, calling on US President Joe Biden to dial up the pressure against “invader forces.”

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AFP: A bid ‘to exterminate us’: Tigrayans recount massacre by Eritrean troops

Posted on by Tech Support

The soldiers had tied their hands with belts and ropes and shot them in the head.

“I’d rather die than have lived to see this,” Beyenesh told AFP, tears rolling down her face as she described how the annual festival of Saint Mary turned into a bloodbath.

Local church officials say 164 civilians were killed in Dengolat, with most of the deaths occurring on November 30, one day after the festival.

That makes it one of the worst known atrocities in the ongoing conflict in Tigray.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has tightly restricted humanitarian and media access to the region, and for nearly three months Dengolat residents despaired of sharing their story with the world.

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Aljazeera: Trauma, anger as Tigrayans recount Eritrea troops’ ‘grave crimes’

Posted on by Tech Support

December 4 is a date that fills Mona Lisa Abraha with horror. It was then, the 18-year-old says, that Eritrean soldiers entered her village of Tembin in Ethiopia’s embattled region of Tigray.

“They tried to rape me and I was thrown to the ground. Then, one of the soldiers fired bullets to scare me, but they hit my hand and then fired another bullet that went through my arm,” Abraha recalls from a hospital bed on the outskirts of Tigray’s capital, Mekelle.

“I was bleeding for hours. Then, I had my arm amputated,” she says, before breaking down in tears.

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