💭 A truce declared last week by Ethiopia to allow the delivery of aid to the northern Tigray region has offered some hope that the 17-month civil war there could be coming to an end.
The region has been totally cut off for many months, leaving millions in desperate need of food and essential supplies. A resident of Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, which is under the control of the TPLF rebels, has managed to tell the BBC what life is like.
Getting hold of the basics needed to survive every day is a source of anxiety.
As a father with two small children, it breaks my heart that I am not able to provide for my family. This is in part because I am unable to use the money I have because all the banks are shut.
Many of us are facing this problem and cash is scarce.
I have not had access to my account since June last year and instead I have been borrowing money from friends and relatives here to buy food for the family.
Relatives abroad have also wanted to help but because all phones lines and the internet have both been cut off it is impossible to arrange this.
On top of this food prices have skyrocketed.
The local staple grain, teff, as well as wheat flour, pepper and cooking oil are becoming harder to afford.
A year ago, 100kg (220lbs) of teff would cost about $80 (£60) but now it will set you back $146.
Those who can afford it are buying a smaller quantity of teff and mixing it with cheaper sorghum and wheat in order to make injera (flat bread), which is an essential part of every meal.
But many others cannot buy teff at all.
We have been told to plant vegetables in our compound and we are working on it. The problem though is that we have to get hold of water.
We used to buy a 200-litre barrel of water to get us through the week, but now we can’t afford it and instead we’re getting water from shallow wells.
New shoes or clothes for the children and eating meat have become luxuries.
Running water and electric power are limited and they come on and off throughout the day – sometimes days can go by without either.
Many people are out of work and the majority of shops and business centres in Mekelle are closed as they are either unable to pay rent for their shops or lack supplies to sell.
As a result, people have started selling off their assets such as cars, furniture and jewellery to buy food. And they are forced to sell at a huge discount.
A 21-carat gold ring, which once cost $64 can be sold for as little as $12. A car can go for $7,000 even though it used to cost $16,000.
Once people have run out of things to sell they have turned to begging and there are so many beggars on streets – the majority are mothers with children.
Medical services have also run out of drugs.
Those with chronic health conditions are dying because of a lack of medicine.
People living with HIV are receiving their antiretroviral tablets intermittently.
Celebrations such as religious feasts and weddings that used to be such a vital part of the social fabric have become a distant memory.
As for what I do every day – before the schools re-opened I used to sleep in late.
This was because I was up at night watching and listening to all the news clips that I had managed to gather.
The latest news is hard to come by.
I don’t have access to the internet. Instead, I go to road-side vendors to record video and audio clips about current events which are sold for about $0.20 each.
At other times I either read books, chat with neighbours or walk.
Unaffordable petrol
Now that my son is back at school I have done a lot of walking. My phone tells me that I normally take 9,000 to 12,000 steps in a day.
I make the 2km (1.2-mile) journey to drop him off on foot most mornings. My wife then picks him up, again on foot, at lunchtime.
I used to go by car, but it has been parked outside my home for more than 18 months because I cannot afford fuel.
You can still buy it but only on the black market. A litre of petrol now costs about $10 when, before the war, it used to cost $0.42 at a petrol station.
Taking a taxi or bejaj (three-wheeled motorised rickshaw) is also out of the question, as a single journey in a bejaj costs $2.
Horse-drawn carriages are now being used for public transport.
More people have started to cycle but even bicycles have become more expensive.
The people here want the conflict to be resolved peacefully and were very happy when news came through of the cessation of hostilities last week.
They had been waiting to see if it was more than an empty promise and after the arrival of the first aid convoy in months on Friday, it seems as though things could be changing.
I am grateful that I am surviving and can share my story but I know there are many in a worse situation than me and some may be dying.
There is perhaps a silver lining to all this: people are still supporting each other.
“Those who eat alone, will die alone” is a saying in our Tigrinya language and people follow that.
They share what they have with others even if it means they will starve tomorrow. There is so much solidarity to surviving together.
“Day by day, the chances for in-depth investigations that could lead to criminal prosecutions are receding.”
💭 My Note: Are all parts trying to conceal the magnitude of these atrocities by continuing and spreading the war to other regions of Ethiopia? Alongside reducing the population of the young and Christian– to deflect attention away – and to buy more time? Why are TPLF start permitting “special envoys” like Mr. Obasanjo and British diplomats to enter Mekelle but not independent observers and investigators yet?
💭 What happened on a 24 hour killing spree in Tigray last year remains unclear.
On 28th November 2020 Eritrean soldiers went on the rampage in Axum, a holy city in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, whose main church is believed by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians to hold the Ark of Covenant. Over the course of 24 hours, they went door to door summarily shooting unarmed young men and boys.
Some of the victims were as young as 13. The Eritrean soldiers forbade residents from burying slain relatives and neighbours so the bodies lay rotting in the streets for days. Witnesses later described hearing hyenas come at night to feed on the dead.
Eritrean soldiers had shelled and then occupied Axum around a week earlier, having invaded Tigray in early November in support of an offensive by Ethiopia’s federal government against the region’s rebellious leaders. The killings were carried out in apparent retaliation for an attack by local Tigrayan militia and residents on Eritrean soldiers, who had been pillaging the town for days.
Amid a total communications blackout that plunged the region of 6 million into darkness, it took weeks for the news to seep to the outside world. On 9th December 2020, less than two weeks after the massacre, UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres told a New York press conference that Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, had personally assured him that Eritrean soldiers had not even entered Tigray. Abiy, who less than a year before the Axum massacre received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for reconciling with Eritrea, would not admit the presence of Eritrean troops until April.
The contrast to other recent conflicts is stark. When war erupted in Gaza earlier this year, for instance, the internet was quickly flooded with images of bomb damage and explosions. Viewers of Al Jazeera could watch live as the owner of a block housing the Associated Press and other media negotiated over the phone with the Israeli military, who were poised to blow the building up.
“It is incredible that – in this emblematic town – such horror could happen without the international community responding,” said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. “The reports only really started coming out three months later. Where else in the world can you have a massacre on this scale that is completely kept in darkness for that long?”
Barred from Ethiopia, researchers from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International resorted to piecing together what happened in Axum through phone calls and interviews with refugees who had fled over the border to Sudan. Between March and June international journalists were briefly allowed into Tigray, but checkpoints and fighting in the region meant few were able to reach the city.
The fighting also prevented a joint team from the United Nations and the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHCR) from travelling there. When they released their much-anticipated report into human rights abuses committed in Tigray earlier this month it contained no testimony gathered in Axum. This was, remember, the site of one of the worst atrocities in a now year-long conflict that has been characterised by reports of summary executions, torture, starvation, gang rapes and rampant looting.
As a result, much of what happened there remains unclear. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International believe several hundred civilians were massacred, whereas the joint UN-EHRC investigation vaguely concluded that “more than 100” were killed. A senior Ethiopian diplomat dismissed initial reports of the massacre as “very, very crazy” but later the attorney general’s office concluded Eritrean troops had in fact killed civilians in reprisal shootings, giving the figure of 110.
These patterns of contestation run through the whole conflict in Northern Ethiopia. Meanwhile communities caught on both sides of the fighting are living with immense trauma. When I visited the eastern Tigray village of Dengelat in April, residents had buried dozens of loved ones in graves topped with stones and bloodstained pieces of clothing. They had been killed by Eritrean soldiers during a religious festival six months before, but people there had received little outside help, except for some food supplies from aid agencies. Investigators have still not visited the site, and the whole of Tigray has once again been cut off from the outside world.
Unlike Dengelat, researchers from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission did manage to visit Axum on a “fact-finding mission” in late February and early March, which was separate to the joint report with the UN, but they did not do a full investigation. Laetitia Bader from Human Rights Watch believes the story of what happened there during those 24 hours last year may never be fully uncovered: “Day by day, the chances for in-depth investigations that could lead to criminal prosecutions are receding.”
Sixty-four civil society organisations (CSOs) and personalities at the weekend asked the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Antonio Guterres to urgently take measures to prevent imminent genocide in Ethiopia.
“If Addis Ababa should come under threat of falling to TDF, the Tigrayan internees – wherever they are held – would, under current conditions, be liable to be exterminated.”
“A cease fire doesn’t mean cutting a region off power or destroying critical infrastructure.
A credible cease fire means doing everything possible so that aid reaches the millions of children, women and men who urgently need it. Saving lives should be a priority for all. #Tigray.” Josep Borrell