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Category: Resource

UN: ‘Incomplete but troubling picture’ reveals impact of Tigray crisis on children

Posted on by Eyasu Berhe

Shire has a population of approximately 170,000, and now hosts at least 52,000 internally displaced people (IDPs).  UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are trucking water to the town, where there was no drinking water as the water treatment plant is not functioning.  The mobile network, Internet and banking services are still not working. 

Many IDPs are sheltering in schools, none of which are operational, and conditions at displacement sites are dire. 

“Many families were separated as they fled, and there were many unaccompanied or separated children among the IDPs”, said UNICEF.  “Many families reported deep psychosocial distress and said they did not feel it was safe to return home, speaking of a persistent and pervasive fear of present and future harm.”  

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Reuters: Ethiopia closes camps housing Eritrean refugees in Tigray after reports of attacks

Posted on by Tech Support

Two camps in Ethiopia’s Tigray region housing Eritrean refugees have been shut and the occupants relocated, authorities said on Thursday, after the United Nations said residents had reported attacks, including by suspected Eritrean troops. The UNHCR refugee agency has called for protection for the residents of the Shimelba and Hitsats camps, which it says were attacked by armed men who killed and abducted refugees. On Feb. 1, it said residents had reported that Eritrean troops had forced some refugees back into Eritrea.

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HRW: Ethiopia – Unlawful Shelling of Tigray Urban Areas

Posted on by Tech Support

Ethiopian federal forces carried out apparently indiscriminate shelling of urban areas in the Tigray region in November 2020 in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today. Artillery attacks at the start of the armed conflict struck homes, hospitals, schools, and markets in the city of Mekelle, and the towns of Humera and Shire, killing at least 83 civilians, including children, and wounding over 300.

“At the war’s start, Ethiopian federal forces fired artillery into Tigray’s urban areas in an apparently indiscriminate manner that was bound to cause civilian casualties and property damage,” said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These attacks have shattered civilian lives in Tigray and displaced thousands of people, underscoring the urgency for ending unlawful attacks and holding those responsible to account.”

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Bloomberg: Ethiopia Will Approach Private Creditors Only as Last Resort

Posted on by Tech Support

Yields on the Horn of African country’s $1 billion of Eurobonds due in December 2024 fell for the first time in four days, sending prices higher. Rates dropped 65 basis points to 8.49% by 12:47 p.m. in London. Yields on the notes soared to nine-month highs after the government’s announcement on Jan. 29 that it wants to restructure external debt under a Group of 20 program.

While the Finance Ministry said earlier this month it may seek talks with private lenders such as bondholders or commercial banks after negotiations with government and public-sector agencies are completed, many investors have continued to offload the securities amid the uncertainty of the potential outcome.

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LA Times: A rape survivor’s story emerges from a remote African war

Posted on by Tech Support

Mehrawit, 27, was separated from her sister and locked in a room with only a thin, dirty mattress. For two weeks, she said, the Eritrean soldiers gang-raped her repeatedly, fracturing her spine and pelvis and leaving her crumpled on the floor. One day, she counted 15 soldiers who took turns sexually assaulting her over eight hours, her cries of agony punctuated by their laughter.

“I was numb,” she recalled from a hospital bed in the regional capital, Mekele, days after she escaped. “I could see their faces. I could hear them giggle. But after a while, I was no longer feeling the pain.”

Her account is one of few emerging from the murky conflict in Tigray, where human rights groups say pro-government forces are sexually abusing civilians in a remote highland region far from the world’s gaze.

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HRW: Unlawful Shelling of Tigray Urban Areas

Posted on by Eyasu Berhe

Ethiopian federal forces carried out apparently indiscriminate shelling of urban areas in the Tigray region in November 2020 in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today. Artillery attacks at the start of the armed conflict struck homes, hospitals, schools, and markets in the city of Mekelle, and the towns of Humera and Shire, killing at least 83 civilians, including children, and wounding over 300.

In the western border town of Humera, residents said that on November 9, artillery fired from Eritrea terrified unsuspecting civilians, striking them in their homes and as they fled. The shelling damaged residential areas in the Kebele 02 neighborhood, and struck near a church and a school, near a mosque in Kebele 01, and hit areas near the town’s main hospital.

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LA Times: I reported on Ethiopia’s secretive war. Then came a knock at my door

Posted on by Tech Support

A few days earlier, a therapist who has been treating the rape survivor I wrote about told me that the woman had also received a threatening phone call, warning her not to identify Eritreans as her assailants. The therapist told me to take as much care as possible with the woman’s safety, and pleaded with me to reveal little of her identity in the article.

Before the men left, they warned that things would be harder for me the next time. On Thursday the Ethiopian government issued a statement saying I was not a “legally registered” journalist, an attempt to discredit my work.

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IBTimes: In Shadow Of Tigray War, Ethnic Massacres Roil Western Ethiopia

Posted on by Tech Support

On the night before Orthodox Christmas last month, Ethiopian priest Girmay Getahun donned a white robe and, Bible in hand, walked down the dirt road to his church to prepare for services.

Around midnight, heavily-armed fighters arrived in his village, in Ethiopia’s western Benishangul-Gumuz region, sending Girmay fleeing into the forest to hide for two days.

He returned to a horrifying sight: the corpses of his eight housemates, all day-labourers on teff and peanut farms, who had become the latest victims in a gruesome, perplexing string of attacks.

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ABC News: ‘We’ll be left without families’: Fear in Ethiopia’s Tigray

Posted on by Tech Support

Soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, a secretive nation and enemy of the former Tigray leaders, are deeply involved, though Ethiopia and Eritrea deny their presence. The European Union this week joined the United States in urging Eritrea to withdraw its forces, asserting they are “reportedly committing atrocities and exacerbating ethnic violence.”

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FT: The tragedy of Ethiopia’s conflict in Tigray

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

Reports trickling out of Tigray point to gruesome violence. There have been all-too-credible accounts of civilian massacres on all sides. One in the town of Mai-Kadra, in which hundreds are thought to have died, may well have been carried out by TPLF loyalists, as the government says. But other massacres were almost certainly enacted by militiamen from the neighbouring Amhara region, which has been encouraged by Abiy’s government to become involved. Witnesses report house-to-house killings, rapes and the looting of commercial buildings and churches.

The government has insisted its fight is with the TPLF and not the Tigrayan people. But many Tigrayans have been targeted, prevented from travelling or suspended from government jobs. And there is strong evidence that troops from Eritrea, a neighbouring country with decades of loathing for the TPLF, are involved in the fighting — even if both Addis Ababa and Asmara deny it. Some Tigrayans smell a plot to divide their region between Eritrea and Amhara.

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