A CNN investigation has uncovered evidence of the torture, mass detention and execution of residents in the the town of Humera in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. CNN’s Nima Elbagir reports.
💭 Selected Comments from CNN Channel:
➡ This is horrible. I can’t wrap my brain around the amount of violence human beings are willing to inflict on each other.
➡ The people who did this are nothing at all but rabid, cruel and most reprehensible monsters on the planet. They deserve the same fate and THEN some.
➡ People are capable of such horrific evil …. I don’t understand why, 😓, I hope there will be some justice. These people need help. International pressure must be placed on the Ethiopian govt. I have so much respect for those people in the Tigray region trying to help bury the dead and act as witnesses to the atrocities happening to their people. Such anguish and misery for these poor people.
➡ I am ashamed by the callously apathetic attitude of the comments below. These are our fellow human beings! Maybe we cannot save all of them but the absolute minimum owed them, as people, is to speak respectfully of them and their experiences until independent investigation finds evidence that torture and murder is NOT at work. You always assume the victim is telling the truth until evidence to the contrary is found.
➡ This is surely the tip of the iceberg! The world is just watching it with bare eyes…
➡ I worked in Atlanta at a Whole Foods about 15 years ago, and we had a huge population of east africans there. Ethiopians, Somalis and Yemenis. There was a huge amount of tension between one of our Ethiopian workers and the two Tigrayans, and one of the Tigrayan women told me about all sorts of hideous things she witnessed at the hands of the Ethiopian military. The oppression has been there for years, but it seems like it’s escalating
➡ The meek shall inherit the earth. May God rest their souls.
ሁውማን ራይትስ ዋች / Human Rights Watch (HRW ) እ.አ.አ በ1991 ዓ.ም ላይ ባወጣውና ብዙ ጠቃሚ መረጃዎችን በያዘው ዘገባው ፤ “EVIL DAYS 30 YEARS OF WAR AND FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA” ላለፉት ፻፴/ 130 ዓመታት የኢትዮጵያ ፈላጭ ቆራጮች የነበሩት ዲቃላዎቹ ኦሮማራዎች መሆናቸውን እንዲህ ሲል ጠቁሞናል፦
“At the end of the 19th century, the center of power in Ethiopia decisively shifted from the north to Shewa, with the assumption of the title of Emperor by Menelik, King of Shewa. The majority of the inhabitants of the rest of Shewa were Oromo – as is the case today. In terms of descent, the group that became politically dominant in Shewa (and subsequently in Ethiopia) was a mixture of Amhara and Oromo; in terms of language, religion.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on August 6, 2021
After Ethiopia Trip, USAID Administrator Samantha Power Shares View Of Conflict.
Abiy Ahmed’s Brutal Campaign Against the People of Tigray Pushes Ethiopia to the brink.
Samantha Power Has Long Championed Humanitarian Intervention. Ethiopia’s Crisis Is Putting Her to The Test.
On the day Samantha Power landed in Ethiopia this week, its civil war — now escalating and spreading beyond the northern region of Tigray — entered its 10th month.
Amid allegations that Ethiopian troops and their allies have committed war crimes and ethnic cleansing and have driven parts of Tigray into famine, the United States has already withheld security assistance and effectively banned travel for top officials.
But Power, who is in charge of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, holds the biggest American lever of influence over Addis Ababa: more than $1 billion in annual aid ranging from health and education support to food and emergency humanitarian response, which makes the United States the largest aid donor to Ethiopia.
It’s a moment seemingly made for Power, the former U.N. ambassador under President Barack Obama who came to prominence in 2002 with her book “A Problem From Hell,” which excoriated American inaction during mass killings in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s, Europe during World War II and the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
“Samantha Power is a world-renowned voice of conscience and moral clarity — challenging and rallying the international community to stand up for the dignity and humanity of all people,” President Biden said in a statement when he appointed her.
Her work inspired a generation of humanitarian activists and helped popularize the notion that Washington bore a unique responsibility to protect the world’s most vulnerable populations, including with military force if necessary.
Power’s one-day trip Wednesday to Ethiopia, which didn’t include a meeting with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, was a test of whether she can restore faith in America’s role in preventing mass atrocities beyond its borders. So far, the U.S. measures curtailing security assistance and sanctioning officials have had little effect beyond turning Ethiopian sentiment against Washington.
“The United States has been working in Ethiopia for 60 years. USAID has spent a billion dollars in the last year in this country, including several hundred million dollars in development assistance. We’re delivering tomorrow 1.4 million vaccines,” Power said in a phone interview from the airport in Addis Ababa as she wrapped up her visit.
“There is so much we want to do together, but this is an own-goal,” she added, referring to the government’s increasingly antagonistic attitude to humanitarian aid groups, journalists and allies in the West.
Unable to control Tigray, Ethiopia isolates region already beset by famine and war
Ethiopia’s government accuses those allies of failing to back its military offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a group the government has designated as terrorists but whom the West dealt with over three decades when the TPLF controlled the country before Abiy’s rise.
Top Ethiopian officials have also accused some international aid groups of not just siding with the TPLF but also helping smuggle arms to it, and they have alleged that Western governments and media have overplayed atrocities linked to Ethiopian government forces while overlooking those allegedly committed by the TPLF.
Addis Ababa has responded defensively to allegations that it has committed crimes against civilians and hindered aid. The government puts nearly all the blame on the TPLF.
Inside the Biden administration, the option of using military force to stop the bloodshed in Tigray is seen as a non-starter. But withdrawing substantial amounts of aid is also seen as a poor option, because it is unlikely to change the Ethiopian government’s war strategy and instead deepen what is already one of the world’s most dire humanitarian crises.
Pressed on how and when punitive measures on aid might come into play, Power said she was still in wait-and-see mode. As for what she achieved at her meetings in Addis Ababa, she said she only got more commitments.
“It’s not the kind of track record that would give one confidence yet that those commitments are imminently to be met,” she said. Her requests were in line with the State Department’s recent public statements: that humanitarian aid be unhindered in delivery and that government-aligned troops from neighboring Eritrea as well as militias from the country’s Amhara region withdraw beyond Tigray’s prewar borders.
The State Department has also called on Tigrayan forces to withdraw from the Amhara and Afar regions, where they have recently gone on the offensive, displacing around a quarter of a million civilians.
“If we do not see progress in these domains, I think the administration made clear that we will not be left with much of a choice,” she said. The European Union has already withdrawn most of its financial support for aid programs in Ethiopia.
The outlook in Ethiopia is decidedly grim. The government initially pushed the TPLF out of Tigray’s main towns, but the TPLF retook most of the region last month in an offensive that analysts say resulted in a large portion of the Ethiopian army being killed or captured.
The TPLF has since moved into neighboring regions with the stated objective of obliterating what’s left of the government and its allies’ military capacity. On Thursday, Reuters reported that the TPLF had taken control of Lalibela, a sizable town within the Amhara region and home to Ethiopia’s famed 12th-century rock-hewed churches.
The Ethiopian government has in turn sought to recruit widely from regional militias, drawing in fighters from parts of the country previously uninvolved in the conflict.
Asked at a news conference in Addis Ababa about Abiy’s recent use of words like “weeds,” “cancer” and “disease” to refer to the TPLF, Power cautioned that “there are many, many people out there who hear rhetoric, hateful rhetoric or dehumanizing rhetoric and take measures into their own hands.”
Power’s past advocacy for humanitarian intervention, including with U.S. military force, has fallen out of favor in recent years as public confidence in Washington’s ability to reshape distant lands wanes. U.S. forces will conclude a 20-year occupation in Afghanistan in September, and the military will formally end combat operations in Iraq by the end of the year, Biden said last week. The two missions have cost thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and fallen far short of U.S. ambitions to bring about stability, democracy or prosperity. The protracted chaos and bloodshed in Libya following the ouster of Moammar Gaddafi in a NATO-led military operation in 2011 also dampened the appeal of humanitarian interventions.
Defenders of the administration say its lack of bold action in confronting the Ethiopian crisis does not indicate a lack of concern.
“There is a false narrative that the Biden administration does not care about mass atrocities, fueled by its decision to risk mass violence in Afghanistan,” said Richard Gowan, a U.N. analyst at the International Crisis Group. “But if you look at Washington’s approach to Ethiopia in particular, you see that the new administration does still have strong humanitarian instincts.”
Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield and the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, “have all thrown themselves into efforts to halt the Tigrayan war, which hardly seemed to register with the outgoing Trump team,” Gowan said.
Thomas-Greenfield took to Twitter on Wednesday to denounce the Ethiopian government’s decision this week to revoke the operating licenses of Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council, two humanitarian organizations known for their work in war zones.
“This suspension is unacceptable. I know the work of MSF and NRC well, and they are internationally respected,” she wrote, using the French abbreviation for Doctors Without Borders. “Ethiopia must reconsider this decision.”
At least a dozen aid workers have been killed since November, when Abiy sent troops to Tigray to fight the TPLF after the group allegedly staged an attack on a military base.
The United Nations says the war has left 400,000 people facing famine, while UNICEF estimated last week that more than 100,000 children in Tigray could suffer from life-threatening acute malnutrition in the next 12 months — 10 times the annual average.
Meanwhile, “supplies are just running out,” Power said.
When Mulu fled conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with her family, she used a jerry-can as a boat to cross the river to Sudan. They arrived at Gedaref refugee camp with almost no possessions.
Conflict and violence has forced more than 60,000 refugees like Mulu to seek safety in Sudan.
The IRC is working with the European Commission to provide support and healthcare to families in the area.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 14, 2021
U.S. Department of State: The Atrocities Being Perpetrated in TigrayAnd The Scale of The Humanitarian Emergency are Unacceptable.
U.S. Concerned About Increasing Political, Ethnic Polarization in Ethiopia
Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman has just completed his first visit to the region as U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, traveling to Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan, and Ethiopia from May 4 to 13, 2021.
The Horn of Africa is at an inflection point, and the decisions that are made in the weeks and months ahead will have significant implications for the people of the region as well as for U.S. interests. The United States is committed to addressing the interlinked regional crises and to supporting a prosperous and stable Horn of Africa in which its citizens have a voice in their governance and governments are accountable to their citizens.
A sovereign and united Ethiopia is integral to this vision. Yet we are deeply concerned about increasing political and ethnic polarization throughout the country. The atrocities being perpetrated in Tigray and the scale of the humanitarian emergency are unacceptable. The United States will work with our international allies and partners to secure a ceasefire, end this brutal conflict, provide the life-saving assistance that is so urgently needed, and hold those responsible for human rights abuses and violations accountable. The crisis in Tigray is also symptomatic of a broader set of national challenges that have imperiled meaningful reforms. As Special Envoy Feltman discussed with Prime Minister Abiy and other Ethiopian leaders, these challenges can most effectively be addressed through an inclusive effort to build national consensus on the country’s future that is based on respect for the human and political rights of all Ethiopians. The presence of Eritrean forces in Ethiopia is antithetical to these goals. In Asmara, Special Envoy Feltman underscored to President Isaias Afwerki the imperative that Eritrean troops withdraw from Ethiopia immediately.
The Special Envoy will return to the region in short order to continue an intensive diplomatic effort on behalf of President Biden and Secretary Blinken.
The army of dictator Esayas Eritrea & that of Fascist Abiy Ahmed intentionally destroyed Samre Health Center, Tigray. Here is the situation of the pharmacy of the center at the moment. All medical supplies were taken by those evil forces.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 6, 2021
Biden’s Brewing Problem in Ethiopia
War broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in November. Five months later, the scale of the carnage, destruction, and destabilisation is becoming evident.
The spark for the fighting was an attack on army bases by soldiers loyal to the region’s ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front which was at odds with the federal government headed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. But wars don’t happen overnight: the European Union, International Crisis Group, and many others issued warnings. Most worryingly, Eritrea — with whom Prime Minister Abiy had made a much-heralded peace agreement in 2018 — had a scarcely-hidden war plan.
Abiy’s initial goal was cutting the TPLF down to size. But his coalition partners’ war aims appear to go much further. For Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki, the aim is nothing less than the extermination of any Tigrayan political or economic capability. For the militia from the neighboring Amhara region it is a land grab — described by the U.S. State Department as “ethnic cleansing.”
For the first month, the Trump administration endorsed the war, backing up Abiy’s depiction of it as a domestic “law enforcement operation” and praising Eritrea for ‘restraint’ — at a time when divisions of the Eritrean army had poured over the border and reports of their atrocities were already filtering out.
The Biden administration is building a sensible policy — but is hampered by the slow process of putting its senior team in place. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made reasonable demands. President Biden dispatched Senator Chris Coons to convey how seriously Washington is taking the crisis. A special envoy for the Horn of Africa — reported to be the senior diplomat Jeffrey Feldman — is due to be appointed, short-cutting the process of confirming an Assistant Secretary of State for Africa. The new USAID Director Samantha Power, a passionate advocate of action against mass atrocity, is awaiting confirmation.
The Ethiopian government is providing just enough of a plausible impression of compliance to postpone or dilute effective action
But Biden’s approach is not working. To be precise, the Ethiopian government is providing just enough of a plausible impression of compliance to postpone or dilute effective action.
Blinken’s first demand was that Eritrean forces should withdraw. This pushed Abiy — after months of dissembling — to admit that the Eritrean army was actually present and that he would request Pres. Isaias to pull them back. Abiy’s problem is that if Eritrea withdraws, he loses Tigray: the Tigrayan resistance would overwhelm his depleted army. Isaias is a veteran operator and he has prepared for this: his security agents and special forces are now so strategically placed inside Ethiopia that Abiy’s fragile government would be endangered if he withdrew.
Second, the U.S. insisted on a ceasefire and political negotiations. This is essential to stop the battlefield slaughter — thousands were killed in combat in March—and the ongoing scorched earth campaign that is reducing Tigray’s economy to the stone age. But Abiy rejected this. He and Isaias appear determined to try one more offensive to vanquish the Tigrayan Defense Forces. What they fail to see is that inflicting atrocities only stiffens the resolve of the Tigrayans to fight back. Speaking on April 3 Abiy belatedly conceded that a “difficult and tiresome” guerrilla war is in prospect — but he has made no mention of peace talks.
Third, Blinken demanded unfettered humanitarian access for international relief agencies to provide food and medicine for to the starving. He might have added, without a pause in the fighting, farmers cannot prepare their lands for cultivation. The agricultural cycle brooks no delay: ploughing needs to begin soon, before the rains come in June. If there’s no harvest this year, hunger will deepen.
The World Food Program and international agencies are reaching about 1.2 million of the 4.5 million people estimated to need emergency relief. But there are reports that as soon as food is distributed, soldiers sweep through and take it from civilians at gunpoint. The aid effort is, at the moment, too little and too late.
Last, there should be an independent investigation into reports of atrocities, which the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has begun, but in partnership with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. This has the drawback that it’s unrealistic to expect the staff of an Ethiopian government body—whatever their personal integrity—to withstand the personal pressure that the authorities will put on them. And many Tigrayans will automatically reject their findings as biased.
The United States has other policies in this complicated mix too. Last year, the Treasury took on the task of trying to mediate in the Nile Waters dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt. Abiy inherited a huge dam, under construction on the Blue Nile, from his predecessors. It’s a point of national pride, the centrepiece of Ethiopia’s development. Egypt sees any upstream state controlling the Nile waters as an existential threat.
To protect the “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” project, Ethiopia’s ministry of foreign affairs had constructed a coalition of African riparian states, which isolated Egypt and minimised the danger of direct confrontation.
Abiy upended this: 18 months ago he went into direct talks with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who invited the United States to mediate — confident that the Trump administration would lean his way. Sudan, the other party to the talks, had no option but to line up with Cairo and Washington. By the time he had realised his error, Abiy was stuck, and the scenario foreseen by his diplomats was unfolding: Ethiopia was the one isolated as Egypt pressed home its advantage and the United States suspended some aid. Since then the talks have repeatedly broken down, with each side escalating its rhetoric.
The African peace and security order lies wrecked
To compound the error, in preparing for his assault on Tigray, Abiy antagonised Sudan. A few days before the war, he asked Sudanese leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to seal the Sudanese border. He hadn’t anticipated that this would trample over a delicate live-and-let-live border agreement, whereby the Sudanese allowed Ethiopian farmers to cultivate land inside their territory. They were ethnic Amharas. In sealing the frontier, the Sudanese troops drove those villagers out — enraging the powerful Amhara regional government and igniting a needless border conflict.
To complicate the picture still further, Isaias’s planned axis of autocracy extends through Ethiopia to Somalia. A painstaking process of stabilising and reconstructing Somalia is imperiled by President Mohamed Farmajo’s failure to agree an electoral timetable with the opposition, and refusal to step down when his term of office expired in February. Farmajo’s special presidential forces have been trained in Eritrea and many Somalis believe that he plans to use them to impose a military solution on his rivals.
The African peace and security order lies wrecked. The African Union has failed to act. Ethiopian diplomacy and pressure (the organisation’s headquarters are in Addis Ababa) has kept Ethiopia’s war and Eritrea’s destabilisation of the wider region off the AU agenda. Abiy rebuffed African mediators and convinced enough of his fellow African leaders that it was a purely domestic affair to prevent an African consensus position against the war.
At the centre of the chaos is Abiy, at every turn he has blundered
In turn, Africa’s inaction gave a green light to Russia and China to threaten to veto any resolution at the UN Security Council. Last month, the U.S. tried and failed this route. This passes the baton to the U.S. and Europe acting alone — at the G7 last week and next week at the Spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF.
At the centre of this chaos is Abiy. At every turn he has blundered. He has overpromised, mistaken image for reality, made needless enemies and locked himself into dangerous alliances. Those who once embraced his rhetoric of reform and peacemaking are looking naïve at best. He’s not a consensus-builder, rather an agent of polarisation. Perhaps most significantly for the incoming U.S. diplomatic team, the Ethiopian leader has demonstrated an explosive combination of hubris and poor judgement that make him an unreliable interlocutor — sitting atop a fragile country of 110 million people in a volatile region.
There’s no obvious solution: it’s a problem from hell.
