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Category: War Crimes

Geneva: Statement by the United States on the Human Rights Situation in Eritrea

Posted on by Tech Support

While we welcome the release of imprisoned members of religious groups, we are troubled that the government has prevented many religious groups from legally registering, and their members are penalized for exercising their faith.

We remain concerned by reports of indefinite and arbitrary detention, particularly of individuals arrested for exercising freedoms of expression, religion or belief, or the right to peaceful assembly.

We urge the government to reinstate the 18-month national service limit and provide alternatives for conscientious objectors.

Our question is the following: Does the Eritrean military have sufficient control over its troops to prevent them from committing human rights abuses?

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The Telegraph: ‘You should have finished off the survivors’: Ethiopian army implicated in brutal war crime video

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

The ground of the Tigrayan village is soaked with blood and dozens of bodies lie strewn in the grass.

Groans can be heard from a seriously wounded man squirming on the floor between two corpses.

Chatting as they wander through the aftermath of what appears to be a mass execution of civilians in the Tigray region, soldiers laugh and joke among themselves.

Off to one side they spot a young man who seems to have survived by pretending to be dead.

“You should have finished off the survivors,” the cameraman says in Amharic, Ethiopia’s lingua franca, in an apparent rebuke of the perpetrators of the massacre.

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CRD: Grave Human Rights Violations in Tigray Must be Investigated

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

Civil Rights Defenders is alarmed by the grave human rights violations that have occurred during the war in Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost region. The devastating number of confirmed cases of sexual and gender-based violence adds another layer of urgency to the crisis in the region. We urge the federal government of Ethiopia to immediately facilitate independent investigations that involve experts on sexual and gender-based violence to ensure proper scrutiny and accountability. Independent local and international organisations, as well as the media, must be allowed access to the conflict-affected areas.

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AP: ‘Horrible’: Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew. But they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading Eritrean soldiers.

Those memories haunt a deacon at the country’s most sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local faithful believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant is housed. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, the deacon and other witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre.

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devex: The price women and girls are paying for Ethiopia’s war

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

UM RAKUBA CAMP, Sudan — Marta’s life in the town of Shire in Ethiopia was happy. She attended school — where she loved math class the most — and afterward helped out at her parents’ clothing shop.

But then November came. The Ethiopian government launched a military campaign in the country’s northern Tigray region, and chaos ensued. Marta and her brother spent 12 days hiding in the forest. She returned to town to search for her parents, then six armed men broke into her home and one of them raped her.

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Forbes: Mass Atrocities, Including The Use Of Rape And Sexual Violence, In The Tigray Region Of Ethiopia

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

Recent reports suggest that the situation is not getting better either. At the end of January 2021, U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, reported on serious allegations of sexual violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, including a high number of alleged rapes in the capital, Mekelle. As Patten states: “There are disturbing reports of individuals allegedly forced to rape members of their own family, under threats of imminent violence. Some women have also reportedly been forced by military elements to have sex in exchange for basic commodities, while medical centers have indicated an increase in the demand for emergency contraception and testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) which is often an indicator of sexual violence in conflict. In addition, there are increasing reports of sexual violence against women and girls in a number of refugee camps.”

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BBC: Ethiopia’s Tigray crisis: ‘I lost my hand when a soldier tried to rape me’

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

An Ethiopian schoolgirl has told the BBC how she lost her right hand defending herself from a soldier who tried to rape her – and who had also tried to force her grandfather to have sex with her.

The 18-year-old, who we are not naming, has been in hospital in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region for more than two months recovering from her ordeal.

The conflict in Tigray, which erupted in early November 2020 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched an offensive to oust the region’s ruling TPLF party after its fighters captured federal military bases, has destroyed her dreams, and those of many of her classmates.

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Irish Times: Ireland must speak up for the starving in Tigray

Posted on by Sami Mulaw

The world’s newest humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. The stories of desperate human tragedy and heartless political leaders are both familiar and shockingly fresh.

For those of us old enough to remember Bob Geldof’s Band Aid in 1984, Tigray and the next-door province of Wollo were the epicentre of the famine that the generals who ruled Ethiopia at the time tried so hard to conceal from the world. As many as a million died of starvation in those years, victims of a war fought without mercy and a government too proud to beg for help.

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