Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 6, 2021
As the war in Ethiopia enters its fifth month, millions of displaced people in the northern region of Tigray are now facing a further crisis – hunger.
Violence has interrupted the main food supply routes and farms have been destroyed.
Many have lost their income and prices have increased for the little food still available to buy.
Pressure is now mounting on the country’s Nobel peace prize-winning Prime Minister to supply aid to the starving.
🔥 Tigray Is Being Deliberately Starved to Death – Starvation is Being Used as a Weapon of War – Relentlessly & Systematically.
Millions of people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are facing starvation. Until now, it’s been a crisis without pictures. Those wrenching images of emaciated children and mothers with dull-eyed gazes, so sadly familiar from famine zones, have yet to emerge. But that’s because journalists aren’t permitted to travel to the worst-hit areas of Tigray, where hunger is deepening by the day. When the media can finally get access, or when starving villagers abandon their homes and flee to towns, the pictures will surely remind viewers of drought victims from Ethiopia’s 1984 famine, which prompted the famous LiveAid benefit concert and a vast outpouring of charity.
Now, though, there is no drought and no harvest failure. Tigrayans are hungry today because starvation is being used as a weapon of war—relentlessly and systematically. ..
Dear Women of Tigray, Women around the world are watching in horror as Ethiopian and Eritrean forces take away everything you love. We are watching in horror, but also in awe. In awe of your strength, resilience, kindness and rebellion. We will always stand with you.
“Sexual Violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region: there is emerging evidence that sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war and humiliation, with one doctor describing the attacks as effectively a form of genocide.„
On 4 November 2020 the Ethiopian army began a military offensive against the Tigray region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Four months later the ongoing conflict has killed thousands of civilians, displaced over two million, forced thousands of refugees to flee to Sudan, and caused widespread destruction.
Communication blackouts and restrictions on journalists’ access to the region made it difficult to verify survivors’ accounts; however, as more journalists are allowed in, horrific stories of sexual violence have begun to emerge.
Some women have described how while they were being raped the rapists said that they were “cleansing the blood lines’’ of the women they were raping and that these women needed to change their Tigrayan identity. Another woman recalls Eritrean soldiers saying while raping her that they were ordered “to come after the women”, while another woman recalls Eritrean soldiers saying that their actions were revenge against Tigray.
This document analysis a sample of 36 reported incidents of sexual violence that occurred in Tigray region between November 2020 and March 2021. Among this sample, 106 women and girls were affected by sexual violence and at least 144 different perpetrators were involved. Get this data on HDX.
This sample was selected because the descriptions of the incidents contained sufficient details to allow the nature and patterns of the violence that occurred to be described in this document. It is not known to what extent these examples are unique or similar to the hundreds of other incidents of sexual violence that have been reported by various hospitals around the region and by UN and other humanitarian organisations.
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