The cries of innocent men echo in the mountains of Tigray, as their lifeless bodies were left unburied. The smell of death encircles over the blood stained mountains and streets. God’s heart was the first to break as the sounds of the triggers were shot in Tigray. In times like these people of faith with their wounded hearts turn to God who created us, who loves us still, and we ask, “Why?”
On 8 and 9 January (the days following Christmas in Tigray), the Ethiopian army massacred more than 100 civilians in Bora villages in southern Tigray in vengeance, after the army sustained heavy casualties in a fight with local militia.
Tghat first reported a massacre at Bora Selewa on 12 January, 2021. We reported that the massacre took place on 10 January. We have learned that the main massacre took place on 8 followed by some more massacres on 9 and 10.
First, on the Tigrayan Christmas day of 7 January, 13 military trucks full of Ethiopian soldiers arrived at the town of Bora. They started firing to the villages, terrorizing the entire area. The next day, early in the morning, local militias gathered and engaged the soldiers starting from as early as 5 AM. The fighting lasted until 19 PM. Several reinforcement trucks full with soldiers came from Adi Shihu. The Ethiopian soldiers sustained a huge number of casualties, said eyewitnesses. Some eyewitnesses estimated up to 700 Ethiopian soldiers were killed in the day-long fight.
Eyewitnesses said the Ethiopian soldiers were angry. A part of the Ethiopian troops went to Bora town around 14PM and started massacring villagers, even old people. “It was just a pure vengeance “, said eyewitnesses. One eyewitness said he saw soldiers entering an old woman’s house and killing her in her house.
The main massacre took place in the Bora town (Gra Demo area), then in the villages of Chelena, Wa’ero, Mebal, Mai LiHam and Qilma. In Gra Demo area of Bora, the soldiers killed people in their houses and outside. They killed two or three members in one household.
The Ethiopian soldiers took their soldiers in trucks via Maichew out of Tigray. In a village called Midre Wessen, the Ethiopian soldiers were moving their dead with military trucks. They came across a priest, stopped him and asked if he had seen the militia. He replied that he did not see. Then they killed him, accusing him of lying.
The militia eventually retreated to Ayi area. On 9 January 2021, the Ethiopian soldiers moved to the countrysides and killed many people. They asked people to show them the militia and when they could not, they killed them. They killed many in Chelena.
In the village of Qilma, everyone fled the area before the military entered it. Only old people and some men were there. Kahsay Qeshi Kiros’s family also fled, but he remained tending his bees and his chicken. The Ethiopian Soldiers took Kahsay Qeshi Kiros and his nephew (who was a priest) and made them haul water for them the whole day. Eyewitnesses said they heard gun shot at night at where the soldiers were keeping them. The next day, the soldiers left the area and villagers found that Kahsay Qeshi Kiros was slaughtered with a knife and his nephew was shot dead.
Eyewitnesses estimate the number of massacred people to be between 100 and 150. Massacres took places mainly in the town of Bora (especially in an area called Gra demo (ግራ ደሞ), Chamela (ጫመላ) where several houses have also been burned, Adi Shegla (ዓዲ ሸግላ), Midre Wessen, Qilma (ቅልማ), Azebo (ኣዜቦ), and Fre Weyane.
The Elderly (mostly woman) toiled to bury the dead for many days. Many are buried at Abune Aregawi church.
After about 3 days many cars with military leaders came from Mekelle and the old and weak that remained in the villages gathered. The elders asked why so much massacre was committed upon them and pleaded for an end. The military officers, with no sign of sympathy, replied “if you continue to fight us, we will finish you off; we won’t even spare your chickens”.
The military remained in the area terrorizing the villagers. At the moment, the area has been retaken by Tigray Defence Forces. There is no electricity or telephone services.
Men in uniform slaughtered dozens of people in a small village in the Tigray region of Ethiopia on January 5, 2021, right in the midst of the usually festive Orthodox Christmas season. Thirty bodies are seen on the ground in a video that has been circulating online despite the current internet blackout in the Tigray region, which has been engulfed in a bloody conflict between the army and rebels. The soldier filming the video points the camera at an injured person, saying to a comrade, “You should have finished off the survivors!” Our team was able to verify this video.
🔥 „To Humiliate & Demoralize Orthodox Christian Tigrayans, to Break Their Resolve, Identity & Spirit„
„The attack strategy is aimed at humiliating and demoralizing the population to break the community’s resolve and spirit. In its most extreme form, this is known in international law as cultural genocide. The intended effect is to erase people’s attachment to the land, uprooting them not only physically, but psychologically/Spiritually. Destroying religious sites is a powerful instrument in this approach.„
😈 This’s 100% the satanic work of the Antichrist.
In Ethiopia, it is customary for large crowds to gather on the last week of November at the country’s holiest site, the Church of St Mary of Zion in Axum. Every year, followers of the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox faith, who constitute roughly 60% of the population, join each other to celebrate the presence of the Ark of the Covenant in what is one of Ethiopia’s most important religious festivities.
This November, however, the Church of St Mary of Zion was crowded for a different reason. A week earlier, Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers had arrived in Axum as part of the federal government’s war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). By 28 November, two days before festivities would normally have begun, many people had gathered in the church to find refuge, worship, and protect what is believed to be the Ark of the Covenant from being stolen. According to a deacon at the church, soldiers burst into the church, dragging worshippers out and shooting at people as they tried to escape. The witness estimated that 800 people were massacred that weekend at the church and in the city.
An Amnesty International report based on over 60 interviews described how: “Over an approximately 24-hour period on 28-29 November, Eritrean soldiers deliberately shot civilians on the street and carried out systematic house-to-house searches, extrajudicially executing men and boys”.
As well as attacking people, there is also evidence of soldiers engaging in widespread looting, including of religious heritage sites both in Axum and more widely in Tigray. A recent report from the Europe External Programme with Africa describes how “Eritrean troops climbed onto the 6th century [Debre Damo] monastery and looted old manuscripts and treasures”. Despite the information blackout, reports and images have also emerged of soldiers damaging many other important sites, from several ancient churches to the 7th century Wukro al-Nejashi mosque, one of the world’s oldest and most important Islamic sites.
Why would the Ethiopian authorities allow for the assault on sites that are holy not just for Tigrayans but for many across the country? The first possible reason is that it is part of a scorched earth policy: everything is erased to the ground as avenging troops advance. However, this does not explain the destruction of difficult to access sites such as the Debre Damo Monastery which can only be reached by scaling 80ft cliffs. Another explanation is the economic gain of selling stolen items, but this does not explain why buildings were destroyed after the looting.
The most persuasive explanation is therefore perhaps that this strategy is aimed at humiliating and demoralizing the population to break the community’s resolve and spirit. In its most extreme form, this is known in international law as cultural genocide. The intended effect is to erase people’s attachment to the land, uprooting them not only physically, but psychologically. Destroying religious sites is a powerful instrument in this approach.
This explanation would also be consistent with claims in a leaked US report which suggests that “Ethiopian officials and allied militia fighters are leading a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray”. The document claims that Amhara militias are involved in “an apparent campaign to force out the ethnic Tigrayan population under the cover of war”.
Hope and Humanitarians
It is perfectly understandable that humanitarian actors focus their emergency responses on saving lives rather than saving heritage. There are 4.5 million people in the Tigray region who urgently need food aid. However, there needs to be a distinction between what is prioritized and what is recognized. Many of whose who were allegedly massacred in the Church of Zion were there to worship and protect their religious heritage. Simply seeing them as victims of ethnic violence is reductionist and does not help to capture the full spectrum of assaults on their multiple identities.
Moreover, in supporting survivors and holding perpetrators accountable, it is essential to recognize the many ways in which people have been assaulted. The distinction of seeing humanitarians’ jobs as saving lives and heritage experts’ jobs as saving artifacts is problematic. Eyewitness evidence about who desecrated holy sites may be critical for bringing perpetrators to justice and the restoration of holy sites can be crucial to rebuilding a community’s sense of joy, pride and belonging. It gives hope for what they will pass on to future generations.
One hopes that the armed conflict in Ethiopia comes to an end soon and that both the people and sites that are dear to them are restored. Perhaps this November, the sacred Church of Zion will commemorate the dead as well as seeing the return of one of Ethiopia’s most significant religious festivities. However, this will only be possible if we recognize the importance of heritage sites both as a target in war and as a critical part of justice and restoration after it.
U.S. President Joe Biden is deeply concerned and highly engaged on the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.
“The president is deeply concerned and highly engaged on this issue,” Psaki said.
Addis Ethiopia Weblog 