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Category: War Crimes

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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France24: Ethiopian Red Cross says 80 percent of Tigray cut off from aid

Posted on by Tech Support

The Ethiopian Red Cross said Wednesday that 80 percent of the country’s conflict-hit Tigray region was cut off from humanitarian assistance and warned tens of thousands could starve to death.

The grim assessment underscores fears of a humanitarian catastrophe three months after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the 2019 Nobel Peace laureate, announced military operations aimed at toppling the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

“Eighty percent of the Tigray is unreachable at this particular time,” the president of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, Abera Tola, told a press conference.

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Human Rights Watch concludes Abiy Ahmed’s soldiers bombed civilians to death, schools, hospitals and markets in Tigray region

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 on Wednesday. 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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Reuters: ‘People die at home’: Tigray medical services struggle after turmoil of war

Posted on by Eyasu Berhe

A diabetic mother died as her daughter searched the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region for insulin. Women gave birth unattended in the dark because their hospital had no electricity or staff at night.

“The health system in Tigray is reportedly nearly collapsing,” the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a Feb. 4 report, noting that only three of the region’s 11 hospitals were working properly.

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Statement by the Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, on the situation in Ethiopia.

Posted on by Eyasu Berhe

The United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Ms. Alice Wairimu Nderitu, is alarmed by the continued escalation of ethnic violence in Ethiopia and allegations of serious violations of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in the Tigray region.

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