🛑 Travellers on an intercity train in Austria were startled on Sunday when a recording of an Adolf Hitler speech was played on board.
Instead of the normal announcements, a crowd could also be heard shouting “Heil Hitler” and “Sieg Heil” over the train’s speaker system.
The operator said there had been several such incidents in recent days.
One passenger on the Bregenz-Vienna service told the BBC that everyone on the train was “completely shocked”.
David Stoegmueller, a Green Party MP, said the speech by the Nazi German leader was played over the intercom shortly before the train, an ÖBB Railjet 661, arrived in Vienna.
“We heard two episodes,” he said. “First there was 30 seconds of a Hitler speech, and then I heard ‘Sieg Heil’.”
Mr Stoegmueller said the train staff were unable to stop the recording and were unable to make their own announcements. “One crew member was really upset,” he added.
In a statement sent to the BBC, Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) said: “We clearly distance ourselves from the content.
“We can currently assume that the announcements were made by people directly on the train via intercoms. We have reported the matter to the police,” the ÖBB said.
It is understood that complaints have been filed against two people.
Mr Stoegmueller said he had received an email from a man who was on the train with an old lady who was a concentration camp survivor. “She was crying,” he said.
He said another passenger remarked that when other countries had technical problems, it involved the air conditioning breaking down.
“In Austria, the technical problem is Hitler.”
Hitler was born in Austria and emigrated to Germany in 1913 as a young man.
Peru’s president Pedro Castillo was ousted by congress after he announced the immediate dissolution of the governing body.
Castillo was criticized for saying he would install a ‘government of exception’ to rule by decree hours before he was due to face an impeachment vote. He was accused of trying to seize power in a self-coup. MPs moved ahead with the trial, with 101 votes in favor of removing him, six against and 10 abstentions.
Protesters in Lima congregated to protest against and for Castillo.
Peru’s president dissolves congress hours before impeachment vote.
Dina Ercilia Boluarte has been sworn in as Peru’s first female president. Police arrested former President Pedro Castillo earlier after he tried to dissolve congress in an action the constitutional tribunal described as a coup. Boluarte was his vice president.
Twenty-five people have been arrested in raids across Germany on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government.
German reports say the group of far-right and ex-military figures planned to storm the parliament building, the Reichstag, and seize power.
A minor aristocrat described as Prince Heinrich XIII, 71, is alleged to have been central to their plans.
According to federal prosecutors, he is one of two alleged ringleaders among those arrested across 11 German states.
The plotters are said to include members of the extremist Reichsbürger [Citizens of the Reich] movement, which has long been in the sights of German police over violent attacks and racist conspiracy theories. They also refuse to recognise the modern German state.
An estimated 50 men and women are alleged to have been part of the group, said to have plotted to overthrow the republic and replace it with a new state modelled on the Germany of 1871 – an empire called the Second Reich.
“We don’t yet have a name for this group,” said a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office.
Three thousand officers took part in 130 raids across much of the country, with two people arrested in Austria and Italy. Those detained were due to be questioned later in the day.
Justice Minister Marco Buschmann tweeted that a major anti-terror operation was taking place and a suspected “armed attack on constitutional bodies was planned”.
The federal prosecutor’s office said the group had been plotting a violent coup since November 2021 and members of its central “Rat” (council) had since held regular meetings.
They had already established plans to rule Germany with departments covering health, justice and foreign affairs, the prosecutor said. Members understood they could only realise their goals by “military means and violence against state representatives” which included carrying out killings.
Investigators are thought to have got wind of the group when they uncovered a kidnap plot last April involving a gang who called themselves United Patriots.
The latest plot is also said to have involved a former far-right AfD member of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, who was lined up to be installed as the group’s justice minister, with Prince Heinrich as leader.
Heinrich XIII comes from an old noble family known as the House of Reuss, which ruled over parts of the modern eastern state of Thuringia until 1918. All the male members of the family were given the name Heinrich as well as a number.
As well as a shadow government, the plotters allegedly had plans for a military arm, with active and former members of the military a significant part of the coup plot, according to reports. They included ex-elite soldiers from special units. The aim of military arm was to eliminate democratic bodies at local level, prosecutors said.
One of those under investigation is a member of the Special Commando Forces, and police searched his home and his room at the Graf-Zeppelin military base in Calw, south-west of Stuttgart.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 13, 2022
💭 A year and a half ago, a soldier filmed a civilian massacre perpetrated by the Ethiopian army in the region of Tigray. Now captured by Tigrayan forces, along with many Ethiopian soldiers, the region is trying to bring those responsible to justice.
‘A military drone is flying over my city as I write’
As the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region intensifies, the BBC gets an exclusive report from its main city.
💭 ‘I don’t know if my family is alive or dead’, says campaigner on ‘forgotten’ war
The region has been cut off from the world during two-year conflict with Ethiopia
A Midland woman said she had no idea if her relatives were alive or dead in a brutal conflict described by some analysts as more bloody than that playing out in Ukraine. Leandra Gebrakedan, from Willenhall, has not heard from her relatives in Tigray for 18 months.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 13, 2021
Week after week, the Ethiopian government blockade of Tigray prevents aid agencies from moving life-saving relief of food, medicine, shelter items, fuel, and cash necessary to stop famine that continues to grow virtually uninterrupted. Today, almost a million people in northern Ethiopia are experiencing famine conditions.
Here’s what you need to know this week:
Ethiopia’s blockade of Tigray continues…
Despite protestations, the blockade put in place on June 27 continues to prevent relief assistance from entering Tigray. From September 5-7, 147 trucks of humanitarian supplies arrived in the northern Tigray region via neighboring Afar, bringing the number of humanitarian trucks that entered Tigray since July 12 to 482—a far cry from the estimated 100 trucks needed every day, or 8,700 trucks since the blockade came into effect. In addition, the blockade denies many critical supplies, including communications equipment, cash, and fuel, without which humanitarian operations cannot continue. Even personal phones, hard drives, can-openers, and multivitamins are restricted from being brought in by aid workers who manage to travel.
…and is driving and human suffering and famine.
On September 16, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a weekly humanitarian update, providing the latest information on the impact of Ethiopia’s blockade on Tigray. Virtually every sector was forced to suspend activities, as new reports of starvation deaths have emerged.
Food relief aidremains suspended for a lack of supplies, cash, and trucks. Since March 27, the UN and NGOs nearly completed a three-month distribution for 5.2 million people, and with reduced supplies reached 1.4 million people in a second round. This roughly translates to four months of food for a population denied the ability to access communications, banking, or markets to support themselves.
Access to potable watervia trucking was reduced to 25 percent coverage due to shortages in cash and fuel. Insufficient or unpotable water drive disease outbreaks, particularly for those weakened by malnutrition.
Health servicesare only partially functioning, with supplies for only 20 percent of the population at a time when disease outbreaks continue to rise. The European Union initiated Humanitarian Air Bridge arrived in Tigray with nutrition supplies, and the World Health Organization (WHO) airlifted supplies from Dubai for 150,000 people. While these massively expensive innovations are welcome, that they are necessary in the first place speaks volumes about the brutality of the blockade and the lengths to which the world is going to find solutions.
Nutrition assistancefor children under five was suspended for children in outpatient and in-patient care due to shortages in cash, fuel, and supplies. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) was quoted as saying 30 percent of children under five and 80 percent of pregnant and lactating mothers now suffer from malnutrition. This is double international emergency standards for malnutrition in children and more than 5 times emergency thresholds for nursing mothers.
Some 45 days ago, UNICEF noted, “This malnutrition crisis is taking place amid extensive, systematic damage to the food, health, nutrition, water and sanitation systems and services that children and their families depend on for their survival.” It is usually children, pregnant women, and other vulnerable groups that bear the brunt of famine. Yet, since this warning from UNICEF, it bears repeating – less than 10 percent of the needed supplies to keep people alive have been allowed entry to Tigray, months after empirical evidence proved famine conditions.
Hunger and alleged atrocities are spreading beyond Tigray.
The conflict now risks expanding into a wider civil war that threatens Ethiopia and regional stability. As the war spreads, so does hunger with the UN estimating that 1.5 million more people are food insecure in the areas where the Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) has advanced in neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar in recent weeks. Their advance includes fresh accusations of atrocities that warrant independent investigation alongside alleged crimes committed in Tigray. Active conflict has prevented UN and NGOs teams from accessing conflict-impacted areas. Historically, these areas were some of the poorest subsistence communities in the region and will require assistance in addition to the 5.5 million people FEWSNET defined as ‘in crisis’ and ‘without assistance will descend into famine’ in Tigray.
Western donors have given generously to Ethiopia for decades, pouring tens of billions of dollars into Ethiopia’s economy, heavily subsidizing Ethiopia’s budget. All told, western donors contribute at least 37 percent of Ethiopia’s budget through humanitarian, development, security, and other support. Yet their efforts to raise alarm at the avalanche of credible atrocities including war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide have been met with outright rejection by Ethiopia and at the UN Security Council—with China blocking efforts to put the crisis on the Council’s agenda. Even the role of perhaps the most destructive force in this conflict—Eritrean forces (EDF)—has not been addressed by the Council. Clearly, the status quo much change.
The Biden administration is stepping up the pressure.
In the face of continued violence that continues to spiral out of control, U.S. President Biden issued an Executive Order that paves the way for a sanctions regime that can target any party responsible for prolonging the conflict in northern Ethiopia, those that commit human rights abuses, and those obstructing humanitarian access including Ethiopia’s blockade of Tigray. Given the challenges facing the population, this is a step in the right direction but must be implemented and not an idle threat to be effective.
Famine will continue to grow as the blockade impedes food aid, medical and nutrition supplies, fuel, and cash. There needs to be an immediate ceasefire and end to the blockade to ensure assistance is possible to those affected in Tigray, and now in Amhara and Afar.
“The severity and scale of the sexual crimes committed are particularly shocking, amounting to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.”
“All of these forces from the very beginning, everywhere, and for a long period of time felt it was perfectly OK with them to perpetrate these crimes because they clearly felt they could do so with impunity, …. it is intended to humiliate both the women and their Tigrayan ethnic group but described the violence as some of the worst she had ever seen.”
Hundreds of women and girls have been gang-raped, subjected to genital mutilation and weeks of sexual slavery by Ethiopian soldiers, Amnesty International has revealed.
Drawing from interviews with 63 survivors, the report sheds new light on a scourge already being investigated by Ethiopian law enforcement officials, with at least three soldiers convicted and 25 others charged.
Some survivors said they had been gang-raped while held captive for weeks on end. Others described being raped in front of their family members.
And some reported having objects including nails and gravel inserted into their vaginas, ‘causing lasting and possibly irreparable damage’, Amnesty said.
‘It’s clear that rape and sexual violence have been used as a weapon of war to inflict lasting physical and psychological damage on women and girls in Tigray,’ said Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard.
‘Hundreds have been subjected to brutal treatment aimed at degrading and dehumanizing them.
‘The severity and scale of the sexual crimes committed are particularly shocking, amounting to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.’
The BBC has heard new reports of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia amid growing concern that the conflict is entering a dangerous new stage. Tigrayan forces are continuing to extend their control over the region, prompting the Ethiopian government to warn it may end its unilateral ceasefire and to mobilise forces from nearby Amhara and other parts of the country. The likely next flashpoint is in western Tigray, currently controlled by Amhara forces. BBC Africa correspondent Andrew Harding has this report from the border with neighbouring Sudan.
💭 One of the worst massacres of the civil war in Ethiopia took place on sacred ground: precisely in a city where Christians believe the ten commandments given by God to Moses are kept.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 