One Year of Genocide

Tigrayans have been counting the days since the autocratic Ethiopian Prime Minister declared war on Tigray on November 4, 2020, hoping each day would be the last. For Tigrayans inside Tigray, who struggle to survive every minute, the time since November 2020 has felt like an eternity. People in Tigray are dying due to a lack of basic necessities, such as food and medicine, with each passing day and survival has become a race against the clock.

For the last year in Tigray, the Ethiopian federal government has orchestrated an electricity and telecommunications blackout, banks have not been fully functional, and humanitarian aid has been restricted into and within the region. The healthcare system has collapsed due to systematic destruction and looting of facilities by the Ethiopian military, Eritrean troops, and Amhara militia. Furthermore, massacres, extrajudicial killings, rampant sexual and gender-based violence, and torturous executions by these forces have contributed to the genocidal campaign against Tigrayans. The over 7 million residents of Tigray have been suffering in unlivable conditions over the last year, and Tigrayans throughout the rest of the country have been forcibly disappeared, mass arrested, and harassed due to their ethnicity.

Prior to the Tigray genocide, the quality of life in the region was steadily improving. The education system had made significant progress. With support from the diaspora, digital learning had become more accessible, and Tigray’s education bureau was preparing to incorporate the ancient Ge’ez language from which Tigrigna originates into the region’s education curriculum to preserve Tigray’s culture, language, and history. The ethnic cleansing and genocidal campaign against the Tigrayan people by Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces has compromised this educational and cultural preservation effort. Further, children have been unable to attend school due to attacks and occupation of schools by the genocidal invading forces. This intentional violation of the international human right to education is a deliberate attack on life itself and an attack on the future of Tigray — schools must be  preserved as a safe-zone in armed conflict. Unsurprisingly, Ethiopia has not endorsed the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) Safe School Declaration, a commitment to protect education rights during armed conflict.

In addition to the improving education system in Tigray preceding the genocide, the healthcare system was rather efficient. Health facilities and services were increasingly available, including in rural areas. Around 90% of pregnant women in Tigray were receiving prenatal care, an impressive number, especially when compared to the national average of about 62%. Furthermore, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tigray implemented several measures to prevent and mitigate the spread of the virus. On March 26, 2020, Tigray declared a region-wide state of emergency which included travel restrictions, mask mandates, and social distancing. Public health efforts and information campaigns were carried out to ensure the public was well-informed about the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

However, in the last year, Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara genocidal forces have systematically destroyed Tigray’s health system. In a recent interview, Dr. Hagos Godefay, head of Tigray’s Health Bureau, details the destruction of the health system in Tigray. “It is unacceptable by any moral standard,” he states. Due to restricted access to medicine and healthcare, people in Tigray are dying from minor, easily treatable diseases and infections such as diabetes and urinary tract infections due to restricted access to medicine. Women are giving birth alone in the dark, and people are dying preventable deaths at home. In addition, survivors of sexual and gender-based violence are not receiving adequate medical or psychosociological care. They are left to deal with the trauma and aftereffects of rape on their own — that includes not having access to abortion services or medicine for sexually transmitted infections, let alone receive psychological support. These services would have been readily available in Tigray before November 2020.

Out of all the atrocities Tigray and Tigrayans have faced, the man-made famine in Tigray is the most imminent threat to survival.  An increasing number of people die from starvation-related deaths in the region each day. The Ethiopian government, along with its military forces and Eritrean troops, has deliberately starved Tigray over the last year. “They set our crops on fire, then they started burning the homes,” said Gebru Habtom, a farmer from Debre Harmaz. “Then they said they’d burn me next, so I fled for my life.” Another farmer said his crops, enough to feed his family of 7 for nearly a year, were also burned by military forces. The systematic destruction of the agricultural system by means of burning farms, looting tools, stealing seeds, and killing livestock has contributed to the grave food insecurity status in Tigray over the last year.

In an extensive account of the dire need for food aid in Tigray, one humanitarian group wrote, “People’s skin color was beginning to change due to hunger; they looked emaciated with protruding skeletal bones.” For many Tigrayans, this is reminiscent of the 1984 famine, when people would collect the bodies of their starved neighbors and family members who died the night before and conduct a mass burial the next day. Decades after one of the worst famine occurrences in the world, Tigray is being starved once again. The death toll of the Tigray famine is increasing exponentially, and food experts predict the worst for the future unless unfettered humanitarian aid is allowed immediately.

In just one year, the Ethiopian government and its allies have made sure to stagnate and reverse the progress Tigray had made in the last 30 years.

In Tigray and among the Tigrayan diaspora, the gift of time has become a curse, as a year of genocide has passed with disappointing, minimal action from the international community. Seventy years ago, the United Nations drafted and enacted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to ensure that people would “never again” face the horror of genocide; however, “never again” has been happening in Tigray over the last year under the watch of the United Nations and other actors. The Ethiopian government has failed to protect its citizens by conducting a genocide fueled by hate speech categorizing Tigrayans as cancers, weeds, and hyenas. Furthermore, the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments have not fulfilled their false promise to the international community to withdraw Eritrean troops from Tigray in March 2021. War crimes against Tigrayans continue to take place one year into the genocide, as recent airstrikes are indiscriminately dropped on civilians once again in Tigray’s capital city, Mekelle. Actions against the Ethiopian government and its allies must be taken swiftly to mitigate further damages from the Tigray genocide.

Lastly, life for Tigrayans in Tigray and the diaspora has completely transformed since November 2020. In one year of genocide, entire identities have shifted, and Tigrayan communities worldwide have become galvanized once again. The pain and trauma of the last year have become a fortifying catalyst for the mobilization of Tigrayan communities committed to ensuring Tigray will prevail for thousands of more years, as it did for the preceding thousands of years.

As Major General Teklebrhan Woldearegay stated, “We Tigrayans are like a phoenix bird. Resurrection is on its way.”