💭 Abuses “amount to crimes against humanity as well as war crimes,” according to a report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Widespread abuses against civilians in the western part of Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have charged in a new report.
The crimes were perpetrated by security officials and civilian authorities from the neighboring Amhara region, sometimes “with the acquiescence and possible participation of Ethiopian federal forces,” the rights groups say in the report released Wednesday.
The abuses are “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Tigrayan civilian population that amount to crimes against humanity as well as war crimes,” the report says.
Two human rights groups have accused armed forces from Ethiopia’s Amhara region of waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused Amhara officials and regional special forces and militias fighting in western Tigray of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. They also accuse Ethiopia’s military of complicity in those acts. For more on the report we are now joined via Zoom by Laetitia Bader, Expert and Senior Researcher in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch.
💭 Abuses “amount to crimes against humanity as well as war crimes,” according to a report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Widespread abuses against civilians in the western part of Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have charged in a new report.
The crimes were perpetrated by security officials and civilian authorities from the neighboring Amhara region, sometimes “with the acquiescence and possible participation of Ethiopian federal forces,” the rights groups say in the report released Wednesday.
The abuses are “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Tigrayan civilian population that amount to crimes against humanity as well as war crimes,” the report says.
Ethiopian federal authorities strongly refute allegations they have deliberately targeted Tigrayans for violent attacks. They said at the outbreak of the war in Nov. 2020 that their objective was to disarm the rebellious leaders of Tigray.
Ethiopian officials in Addis Ababa, the federal capital, and in Amhara didn’t respond to requests for comment on the allegations in the rights groups’ report.
The report, the result of a months-long investigation including more than 400 interviews, charges that hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans have been forced to leave their homes in a violent campaign of unlawful killings, sexual assaults, mass arbitrary detentions, livestock pillaging, and the denial of humanitarian assistance.
Fighters loyal to the party of Tigray’s leaders — the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF — also have been accused of committing abuses as the war spread into neighboring regions. Fighters affiliated with the TPLF deliberately killed dozens of people, gang-raped dozens of women and pillaged property for a period of several weeks last year in Amhara region, Amnesty said in a report released in February.
The new report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International focuses on attacks targeting Tigrayans in western Tigray and describes them as “ethnic cleansing,” a term that refers to forcing a population from a region through expulsions and other violence, often including killings and rapes.
Publicly displayed signs in several towns across western Tigray urged Tigrayans to leave, and local officials in meetings discussed plans to remove Tigrayans, according to the report. Pamphlets appeared to give Tigrayans urgent ultimatums to leave or be killed, the report says.
“They kept saying every night, ‘We will kill you . Go out of the area,’” said one woman from the town of Baeker, speaking of threats she faced from an Amhara militia group, according to the report.
Western Tigray has long been contested territory. Amhara authorities say the area was under their control until the 1990s when the TPLF-led federal government redrew internal boundaries that put the territory within Tigray’s borders. Amhara officials moved swiftly to take over the region when the war broke out.
The outbreak of the war “brought these longstanding and unaddressed grievances to the fore: Amhara regional forces, along with Ethiopian federal forces, seized these territories and displaced Tigrayan civilians in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign,” the report says.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted in March 2021 that ethnic cleansing had taken place in western Tigray, marking the first time a top official in the international community openly described the situation as such. That allegation was dismissed by Ethiopian authorities as “a completely unfounded and spurious verdict against the Ethiopian government.”
The new report corroborates reporting by The Associated Press on atrocities in the war, which affects 6 million people in Tigray alone.
In June Ethiopia’s government cut off almost all access to food aid, medical supplies, cash and fuel in Tigray. The war has spilled into Amhara and Afar regions, with Tigrayan leaders saying they are fighting to ease the blockade and to protect themselves from further attacks.
Facing growing international pressure, Ethiopian authorities on March 24 announced a humanitarian truce for Tigray, saying the action was necessary to allow unimpeded relief supplies into the area. Trucks bearing food supplies have since arrived in the region.
The AP last year confirmed the first starvation deaths under the blockade along with the government’s ban on humanitarian workers bringing medicines into Tigray.
Estimated tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war. But there is little hope for peace talks as Ethiopian authorities have outlawed the TPLF, effectively making its leaders fugitives on the run.
Among their recommendations, the rights groups call for a “neutral protection force” in western Tigray, possibly with the deployment of an African Union-backed peacekeeping mission, “with a robust civilian protection mandate.”
😈 United by their Illuminist-Luciferian-Masonic-Satanist agendas The following Edomite-Ishmaelite entities and bodies are helping the genocidal fascist Oromo regime of evil Abiy Ahmed Ali:
☆ The United Nations
☆ The European Union
☆ The African Union
☆ The United States, Canada & Cuba
☆ Russia
☆ Ukraine
☆ China
☆ Israel
☆ Arab States
☆ Southern Ethiopians
☆ Amharas
☆ Eritrea
☆ Djibouti
☆ Kenya
☆ Sudan
☆ Somalia
☆ Egypt
☆ Iran
☆ Pakistan
☆ India
☆ Azerbaijan
☆ Amnesty International
☆ Human Rights Watch
☆ World Food Program (2020 Nobel Peace Laureate)
☆ The Nobel Prize Committee
☆ The Atheists and Animists
☆ The Muslims
☆ The Protestants
☆ The Sodomites
☆ TPLF?
💭 Even those nations that are one another enemies, like: ‘Israel vs Iran’, ‘Russia + China vs Ukraine + The West’, ‘Egypt + Sudan vs Iran + Turkey’, ‘India vs Pakistan’ have now become friends – as they are all united in the anti-Christian, anti-Zionist-Ethiopia-Conspiracy. This has never ever happened before it is a very curios phenomenon – a strange unique appearance in world history.
😈 United by their Illuminist-Luciferian-Masonic-Satanist agendas The following Edomite-Ishmaelite entities and bodies are helping the genocidal fascist Oromo regime of evil Abiy Ahmed Ali:
☆ The United Nations
☆ The European Union
☆ The African Union
☆ The United States, Canada & Cuba
☆ Russia
☆ Ukraine
☆ China
☆ Israel
☆ Arab States
☆ Southern Ethiopians
☆ Amharas
☆ Eritrea
☆ Djibouti
☆ Kenya
☆ Sudan
☆ Somalia
☆ Egypt
☆ Iran
☆ Pakistan
☆ India
☆ Azerbaijan
☆ Amnesty International
☆ Human Rights Watch
☆ World Food Program (2020 Nobel Peace Laureate)
☆ The Nobel Prize Committee
☆ The Atheists and Animists
☆ The Muslims
☆ The Protestants
☆ The Sodomites
☆ TPLF?
💭 Even those nations that are one another enemies, like: ‘Israel vs Iran’, ‘Russia + China vs Ukraine + The West’, ‘Egypt + Sudan vs Iran + Turkey’, ‘India vs Pakistan’ have now become friends – as they are all united in the anti-Christian, anti-Zionist-Ethiopia-Conspiracy. This has never ever happened before it is a very curios phenomenon – a strange unique appearance in world history.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 6, 2022
💭 George Soros helped Zelensky of Ukraine and Abiy Ahmed Ali of Ethiopia become president and Prime Minster.Both leaders and their babysitter, George Soros are there to conducted a policy of Genocide of the Orthodox Christians of the EASTERN world.
It’s the same as always: If you just think about who these pictures are useful for and who they harm, then there is a high probability that you have the person who really did it.
The Neo-Nazi Ukrainian regime has its false flag massacre at BUTSCHA – and the Neo-fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia orchestrated false flag massacres at MYKADRA and other places to instigate hatred among the brotherly ethnics of Tigrayans and Amharas.
Now, we have a single False Flag massacre in Ukraine and we have a continuios outpouring of empathy and solidarity from Western Nations. A 24/7 media attention and calls for the elimination of President Putin. Even president Joe Biden calls to put Putin on trial for war crimes
I think this Ukraine war is designed to divert attention from the #TigrayGenocide.
The world is supposed to be exceptinally shocked at what is taking place in Tigray — manmade famine, in which half of the population in Tigray is in danger of dying of starvation by the end of this year.
“The fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia has blocked virtually all food and medical shipments into Tigray for 18 months, using food as a weapon of war.”. The humanitarian situation in Tigray is abysmal, with atrocities similar to ghenocide and war crimes displacing at least 2.5 million Christians.
Nowhere in the world you will see a crisis like the one in the northern part of Ethiopia, especially in Tigray. Actually, the clash between Russia and Ukraine is a divine retribution for the crimes of supporting the genocidal regime of evil Abiy Ahmed Ali who is waging the #TigrayGenocide
What good did the UN do to deal with this crisis? 18 months have passed — and nothing!
💭 The Mind Boggling Hypocrisy of The West
These days, multiple warning signs of potential genocide against the Tigray people of Ethiopia are present, yet, no Russian military operation in the invasion of Ukraine goes by without a torrent of denunciations from Western governments and the corporate media in the most strident of terms, portraying Putin as the new Hitler and the Russian military as a modern version of the hordes of Genghis Khan. But when the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia massacres Tigrayan Christians, puts them in concentrations camps. Western governments do not make even the mildest protest. To the contrary, they send special envoys to Addis Ababa to ‘beg’ their evil monster send twenty trucks carrying GMO foods to Tigray. They even told the UAE – that was allowed to carry out drone massacres against Tigryans by the US – to send 30 tonnes of unknown nature “food aid” to Tigray.
💭 Tigray, Ethiopia has seen over one hundred massacres crueler, bloodier, and deadlier than Butscha, Ukraine.
👉 Tigray War Has Seen Up To Half A Million Dead From Violence And Starvation, Say Researchers
As many as 500,000 people have died from war and famine in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia over the past 16 months, researchers say.
The estimate, by experts who have closely monitored the Tigray conflict since its beginning, is a rare attempt to calculate the war-related death toll in a region that has been largely cut off from the outside world.
The estimate includes 50,000 to 100,000 victims of direct killings, 150,000 to 200,000 starvation deaths, and more than 100,000 additional deaths caused by a lack of health care, according to researchers led by Jan Nyssen of Ghent University in Belgium.
The war began when Ethiopia sent its military into Tigray in an attempt to subdue the rebellious regional government in November, 2020. The neighbouring country of Eritrea also sent troops into Tigray, and the war has led to massacres of civilians, destruction of hospitals and clinics, an exodus of refugees and the emergence of famine. Ethiopia has blocked most food aid to the region for months.
Despite the huge death toll, there are growing fears that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will overshadow the Tigray war and other long-running conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, reducing global attention and humanitarian aid for those crises.
Amnesty International reports widespread rapes ‘with impunity’ in Ethiopian Tigray conflict
Many of the most horrific crises, from Mozambique to Yemen, are in remote regions or countries where access is difficult. The war in Ukraine could further damage the flow of assistance by diverting humanitarian funds and increasing the cost of food and fuel. Some relief agencies are already reporting a decline in funding for their Africa operations as donors switch to Ukraine.
“We are seeing clear evidence of this war draining resources and attention from other trouble spots in desperate need,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told journalists on Monday.
In Ethiopia, authorities have blocked communications and flights into Tigray since the war began, while heavily restricting media access. “The Ethiopian government has been very efficient in shielding Tigray from outside eyes,” Prof. Nyssen said in an interview.
The death toll in Tigray is poorly documented because humanitarian workers were banned from bringing cameras into the region and continue to be threatened with expulsion if they speak out, he said.
Prof. Nyssen and his team have maintained a database of confirmed deaths in Tigray since the war began, in which they recorded 289 incidents causing the deaths of up to 12,478 civilians. But the true number of deaths from violence is far higher, they believe.
Starvation is an even bigger threat. The vast majority of Tigray is considered “hard to reach” or “highly restricted” in the latest UN humanitarian report. Malnutrition is increasing, and humanitarian agencies say their supplies of food and fuel are almost exhausted. Most have been forced to suspend or drastically reduce their operations.
Because of the lack of food aid, lack of income and dysfunctional markets, the majority of Tigray’s families have resorted to begging, cutting meals or selling their harvest to pay off their debts, the UN report said.
Unlike the Ukraine war, however, the Tigray conflict has not led to any international sanctions or votes of condemnation in the UN General Assembly, analysts have noted.
Mr. Guterres described the war in Ukraine as an “assault” on the world’s most vulnerable people and countries. “We must do everything possible to avert a hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system,” he said.
The War on Tigray in Numbers: Initial Analysis of Civilian Massacres
Tigray, Ethiopia has seen over one hundred massacres crueler, bloodier, and deadlier than Butscha, Ukraine.
The following is a report from August 11, 2021 – many additional massacres like in Butscha, Ukraine took place/are still taking place since then. Yes, as we read above, Tigray War Has Seen up To Half A Million Dead From Violence And Starvation!
A research project at the University of Ghent has identified the sites of over one hundred massacres in Tigray. The level of cruelty exhibited during the mass killings, gang rapes, property looting and destruction, and torture is unspeakable.
A joint press release by three Tigrayan political parties on 02 February 2021, however, revealed that an estimated 52, 000 Tigrayan civilians had been killed from November 2020 to January 2021. Since then several well-researched and exceedingly credible reports by the international media and human rights organizations have detailed atrocity crimes committed in Tigray by the invading forces including dozens of documented massacres of unarmed civilians. Some of the most notable reports that came out of Tigray include the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports on the Axum massacres; the CNN international report on Dengelat massacres; BBC and CNN reports on the Mahbere Dego massacres; The Telegraph report on Adigrat massacres; The Telegraph reports on Idaga Hamus massacres and Abi Addi massacres; Sky News report about the Cheli massacres; the coverage of the massacre of 9 civilians, mostly women and children, near Abuna Yemata church on 08 May 2021 by the The Guardian. Other credible sources have also reported about the killings of civilians in other places of Tigray. These reports include a preliminary report on Adi Hageray massacres, Goda massacre in Adigrat, Adigrat Addis Pharmaceuticals Factory massacre, Debre Abay massacres, Zalambessa massacres, Irob massacres, Samre massacres, Mekelle massacres, etc.
Other war crimes were also documented by many outlets including the ground coverage by Channel 4 News which recorded testimonies of alleged war crimes. Alleged war crimes include shelling and airstrikes conducted by the air force against civilian areas. The most widely publicized of this has been the bombing of the market town of Togoga in Degua Tembien on market day on 22 June 2021. More than 64 people have been reported killed among them women and children of ages from 2 to 65 according to eyewitnesses and local health officers. The airstrike has also left more than 180 civilians injured.
Massacres and indiscriminate killings of Tigrayan civilians were persistent elements in all parts of Tigray occupied by Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amhara forces. For example, on 23 March 2021, staff members of the MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders) witnessed the extrajudicial killings of four civilians who were dragged off public buses and executed by Ethiopian government soldiers on the road from Mekelle to Adigrat. According to the witnesses, the MSF team’s driver was also pulled out from the car, beaten with the back of a gun, and threatened to be killed by the soldiers. On the same day, the Ethiopian soldiers stopped two public transport minibusses and shot dead 21 civilians (a graphic video can be found here). The Danish Refugee Council (DRC), International Rescue Committee (IRC), and MSF humanitarian aid workers who were helping the communities affected in Tigray are also victims of the war on Tigray.
This analysis of data collected on 3000 civilian victims identified so far looks at what the numbers and demographics tell us about the massacres in Tigray.
Figure 1 shows districts with the most civilians killed. The identified number of victims ranked by the districts with the most people killed where the number of victims is more than 30 is shown in Table 1. As shown in Figure 1, 7.6% of the identified victims so far are from the city of Axum and the surrounding areas. Other districts hit by the massacre are for example Gulomakeda, Hawzen, Samre, Degua Tembien, Wukro, Embaseneyti, Adigrat, Kola Tembien, Adet, Dengelat, Bora-Selewa, Adi Hageray, Humera, Wukro Maray, Irob, Debre Abay, Shire, Mai Kadra, Tahtay Koraro, Mahbere Dego, Egela, Chilla, Sheraro, Hintalo Wajirat, Mai Kinetal, and Selekhlekha. For more detailed information, refer to Figure 1 and Table 1.
Figure 1. Districts-based distribution of the massacred civilian victims.
Place of Killing
Total Number of Victims
Remark
Axum
1000
Civilian victims from the city of Axum and the surrounding areas.
Gulomakeda
194
Civilian victims from the district of Gulomakeda across different areas.
Hawzen
189
Civilian victims from the districts of Hawzen across different areas.
Samre
154
Civilian victims from the districts of Samre and Saharti-Samre.
Degua Tembien
152
Civilian victims from the district of Degua Tembien across different areas.
Wukro
125
Civilian victims in the city of Wukro and the surrounding areas.
Embaseneyti
121
Civilian victims from the districts of Embaseneyti across different areas.
Adigrat
108
Civilian victims from the city of Adigrat and the surrounding areas.
Kola Tembien
106
Civilian victims from Kola Tembien across different areas.
Adet
90
Civilian victims from the district of Adet across different areas.
Dengelat
80
Civilian victims from Dengelat.
Bora-Selewa
77
Civilian victims from the district of Bora-Selewa across different areas.
Adi Hageray
74
Civilian victims from Adi-Hageray.
Humera
74
Civilian victims from Humera.
Wukro Maray
71
Civilian victims from Wukro Maray across different areas.
Irob
70
Civilian victims from the district of Irob across different areas.
Debre Abay
61
Civilian victims from Debre Abay.
Shire
60
Civilian victims from Shire and the surrounding areas.
Mai Kadra
57
Civilian victims from Mai Kadra.
Tahtay Koraro
55
Civilian victims from the district of Tahtay Koraro across different areas.
Mahbere Dego
54
Civilian victims from Mahbere Dego
Egela
53
Civilian victims from the district of Egela across different areas.
Chilla
48
Civilian victims from the district of Chilla across different areas.
Sheraro
46
Civilian victims from Sheraro across different areas.
Hintalo Wajirat
44
Civilian victims from Hintalo Wajirat.
Mai Kinetal
43
Civilian victims from the district of Mai Kinetal across different areas.
Selekhlekha
37
Civilian victims from Selekhlekha.
Figure 2. Gender statistics of the massacred civilian victims.
The chart in Figure 2 shows that 91.8% of the victims were males, 7.6% of them were females while the gender of the remaining 0.6% has not been identified so far. At first glance, this may give the impression that women and girls were not targeted as much as men were, but the truth is that the invading soldiers used rape and sexual violence to break the spirit and bodies of the Tigrayan women and bullets to kill the bodies of the Tigrayan men. The weaponized rape in Tigray has been widely reported by many international media organizations. These include credible reports from CNN, Channel 4 News, DW, Al Jazeera, and France24.
Figure 3. Availability of age information about the civilian victims of the massacres in Tigray.
Despite the communications blackout that lasted for months in the entire Tigray region, which made it difficult to collect accurate and detailed information, we have managed to identify the ages of the victims as shown in Figure 3. As we can see from Figure 3, the ages of 55.6% of the victims are known, and our team is continuously updating the data to fill in the missing information about the ages of the remaining 44.4%.
Figure 4. Age distribution of the massacred civilian victims whose age has been identified.
The chart in Figure 43 shows the age statistics of massacred civilians. The age distribution of the victims whose age has been identified illustrates a clear and shocking pattern. More than two-thirds of the victims are between the ages of 18 and 49, the most productive age bracket in the society. The pattern reveals the intent of the perpetrators. Some of them have clearly stated what they were up to.
We also found out that the median age statistics of the victims is 38. Children and the elderly were not, however, spared. We found out that the youngest victims are of age 2 and the oldest unarmed civilian victims are in their 90s. The massacres are beyond the loss of lives of the victims. The targeting of men of the most productive age will have ramifications that will last for generations in the Tigrayan society.
There is still another round of massacres and extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians in Tigray. We document the continuous massacres of civilians, and the verified list of victims we compiled so far from different sources can be found here.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 