ADIGRAT, Ethiopia (Reuters) – The young mother was trying to get home with food for her two children when she says soldiers pulled her off a minibus in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, claiming it was overloaded.
It was the beginning of an 11-day ordeal in February, during which she says she was repeatedly raped by 23 soldiers who forced nails, a rock and other items into her vagina, and threatened her with a knife.
The top public health official for the interim administration in Tigray Dr. Fasika Amdeselassie told Reuters that 829 rape cases have been reported at five hospitals since the fighting began in November.https://5910ffc374826a4162020c05eb3cf756.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html#xpc=sf-gdn-exp-4&p=https%3A//thehill.com
“Nearly a quarter of reports received by one agency involve gang rape, with multiple men assaulting the victim; in some cases, women have been repeatedly raped over a period of days. Girls as young as eight are being targeted,” Lowcock said.
After the Ethiopian government announced the withdrawal of Eritrean troops from its borders, Eritrean forces opened fire on civilians in the border town of Adwa, reportedly leaving at least nine dead and dozens injured. In late March, Ethiopian forces executed four men in front of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) staff. Health officials and the UN continue to report on horrific sexual violence by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. Millions remain in need of food assistance.
The U.N. humanitarian chief is warning that the grave humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region is deteriorating, with no sign of Eritrean troops withdrawing and alarmingly widespread reports of systematic rape and other sexual violence mainly by men in uniform.
“Cases reported have involved Ethiopian National Defense Forces, Eritrean Defense Forces, Amhara Special Forces and other irregular armed groups or aligned militia,”
The 27-year-old mother said uniformed soldiers from Eritrea pulled her off a minibus on the road from Mekelle to the city of Adigrat on Feb. 6. They tied her up and marched her through fields to a bush camp, she said. After 11 days of rapes and beatings, she said, the soldiers forced nails, cotton, plastic bags and a rock into her vagina and left her alone in the bush.
Fasika, the health official, said at least 829 cases of sexual assault have been reported at the five hospitals since the conflict in Tigray began. Those cases were likely “the tip of the iceberg,” Fasika said
Eleven women tell Reuters they had been raped by soldiers as a top Ethiopian official has made a sexual slavery accusation.
“Women are being kept in sexual slavery,” Fasika told Reuters. “The perpetrators have to be investigated.”
4.5 MILLION People in Tigray Requiring Humanitarian Assistance UN – March 2021
4 MILLION Estimated Number of People in Urgent Need of Food Assistance Food Security Cluster – January 2021
62,383 Ethiopian Refugees Arriving in Eastern Sudan Since November UNHCR – April 2021
The 15 Security Council members will hear from UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock, who will talk about the continued difficulties in getting aid to refugees, according to the UN.
In early March Lowcock called for Eritrea to withdraw its troops from Tigray, in the first recognition by a UN official of Eritrea’s involvement in the fighting there.
“Starving Tigray: How armed conflict and mass atrocities have destroyed an Ethiopian region’s economy and food systems and are threatening famine”
Regardless of who is responsible for the outbreak of hostilities, the sole reason for the scale of the humanitarian emergency is that the coalition of Ethiopian Federal forces, Amhara regional forces, and Eritrean troops are committing starvation crimes on large scale.
“I only have the clothes you see here,” she says. “I can’t even cook for myself as I don’t have any utensils. I don’t even own a blanket. At one point I was given four bedsheets by local people, but I gave them to the pregnant women. We feel forgotten by the international community and the Ethiopian government. Nobody reaches us. Even after such a long time, we have nothing.”
