In recent weeks the government has interned more than 30,000 ethnic Tigrayan civilians in Addis Ababa
The country has been scarred by violence on all sides, but there may be much worse to come as Tigrayan civilians are targeted.
enocide happens when warning signs are not heeded. The world looks away, refusing to believe that mass ethnic killing is possible. We hope that the worst will be avoided. But to prevent genocide, we must sound the alarm before we arrive at certainty.
Rarely before has the danger of genocide been so clearly signalled in advance than in Ethiopia.
No side to this conflict is angelic. All sides in Ethiopia’s conflict have committed violations. But only one side has committed violations on a scale and nature that could credibly qualify as genocide – and that, we regret to say, is the coalition of the Ethiopian government, under the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed; the Amhara regional government; and the state of Eritrea.
Twice in the past year, the world has stood by while this coalition has perpetrated international crimes against civilians of Tigrayan identity – including murder, rape, torture and starvation.
We may now be facing a third atrocity, even larger and bloodier than what has gone before: a possible mass killing of interned civilians in Addis Ababa and elsewhere.
Five warning signs for mass, ethnically targeted violence are flashing red.
First, figures in the Ethiopian government and their allies have promoted hate speech against Tigrayan people as an ethnic group. They have stoked violence in language that identifies all Tigrayans as enemies. This hate speech is escalating – Tigrayans have been referred to as “cancer”, “weeds”, “rats” and “terrorists”.
Second, the government has mobilised the instruments for mass atrocity, in the form of militias and vigilante groups, organised on an ethnic basis and with an ethnic agenda. It has armed them and granted them impunity.
Third, the government is eliminating any middle ground. It has silenced independent and critical voices. It has prevented media access to Tigray, closed down or censored independent national journalists, and intimidated foreign reporters and their local counterparts. Individuals who try to protect Tigrayans are also attacked. People who try to remain out of politics are condemned as “fence-sitters”.
Fourth, the government has begun large-scale detention of Tigrayan civilians in areas it controls. One year ago it interned at least 15,000 ethnic Tigrayan members of the armed forces, whom, we understand, it continues to keep in detention camps. It has interned Tigrayan civilians in western Tigray. In recent weeks it has interned more than 30,000 ethnic Tigrayan civilians in Addis Ababa and unknown numbers elsewhere.
Fifth, the international community is divided, confused and indecisive. The government has protectors at the UN security council. The African Union listened deferentially to the government’s denials and obfuscations. The main European powers have dithered. The US has toned down its condemnations, perhaps for fear of being diplomatically isolated. It also has conflicting priorities, including trying to facilitate humanitarian assistance and initiate negotiations for a ceasefire and political settlement – an agenda that can preclude calling out one party to the conflict for atrocity crimes or genocide.
In the 1990s, after mass atrocities in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, there was renewed interest in the obligation to prevent genocide enshrined in the 1948 genocide convention. There have now been more than two decades of policy and institutional reforms on atrocities prevention and response. There has been a litany of mea culpas, of enjoinders to greater political will, and calls for “never again”.
Crucial reports were written in the decades after Rwanda and the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution that shaped the debate and policy over the use of coercive measures in pursuit of peace, humanitarian action and the prevention of atrocities. At the United Nations, the African Union, international expert commissions, and under the leadership of powerful countries – reams of paper were dedicated to analysing the past and pledging to heed warning signs and prevent genocide.
Those reports all stressed that genocide is preventable – if the political will is there to act on warnings.
Today in Ethiopia, these warnings could not be more clear. The time to act is now – to call out what is happening and for the UN security council to use every measure at its disposal to give meaning to the cry of “never again” and prevent catastrophe.
💭Interpol elects UAE official as president despite rights groups concerns
Global #police agency Interpol elected #Emirati Inspector General Ahmed Nasser #AlRaisi as its president on Thursday, despite accusations from rights groups that he failed to act on allegations of #torture of detainees in the United Arab Emirates.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 6, 2021
💭 My Note: Today fascist Abiy Ahmed Ali has named a new defense minister, traitor Tigrayan Abraham Belay. It is “symbolically interesting” to see a Tigrayan appointed as defense minister. I’ve stated in the past there are very cynic and satanic motives behind the appointment of all these Tigrayan technocrats.
Preparing for The #TigrayGenocide evil Abiy Ahmed and his Luciferian overlords brought Tigrayans to occupy key positions nationally and internationally:
👉 His Holiness Abune Mathias, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
👉 Dr. Lia Tadesse Gebremedhin, Minister of Health of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
👉 Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Director-General of the World Health Organization.
💥 Wow! Let’s connect the dots…this is how monster war criminal Abiy Ahmed Ali and his Luciferian babysitters are literally working hard to destroy Ethiopia, instantly, before our very eyes – with the help of the Amharas — and how they are preparing themselves to blame those Tigrayan appointees for all the evil deeds of the fascist Oromo regime in Addis Ababa.
(CNN) Ethiopia’s government has used the country’s flagship commercial airline to shuttle weapons to and from neighboring Eritrea during the civil war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, a CNN investigation has found.
Cargo documents and manifests seen by CNN, as well as eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence, confirm that arms were transported between Addis Ababa’s international airport and airports in the Eritrean cities of Asmara and Massawa on board multiple Ethiopian Airlines planes in November 2020 during the first few weeks of the Tigray conflict.
It’s the first time this weapons trade between the former foes has been documented during the war. Experts said the flights would constitute a violation of international aviation law, which forbids the smuggling of arms for military use on civil aircraft.
Atrocities committed during the conflict also appear to violate the terms of a trade program that provides lucrative access to the United States market and which Ethiopian Airlines has benefited greatly from.
Ethiopian Airlines is a state-owned economic powerhouse that generates billions of dollars a year carrying passengers to hubs across the African continent and all over the world, and it is also a member of the Star Alliance, a group of some of the world’s top aviation companies.
The airline previously issued two denials about transporting weapons.
Responding to CNN’s latest investigation, Ethiopian Airlines said it “strictly complies with all National, regional and International aviation related regulations” and that “to the best of its knowledge and its records, it has not transported any war armament in any of its routes by any of its Aircraft.”
The governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Military refills
Long-simmering tensions between Ethiopia’s government and the ruling party in the Tigray region exploded on November 4, when Ethiopia accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front of attacking a federal army base.
Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, ordered a military offensive to oust the TPLF from power. Government forces and regional militias poured into Tigray, joined on the front lines by troops from Eritrea.
Thousands of people are estimated to have died in the conflict, which by many accounts bears the hallmarks of genocide and ethnic cleansing. While all sides have been accused of committing grave human rights abuses during Tigray’s war, previous CNN investigations established that Eritrean soldiers have been behind some of the worst atrocities, including sexual violence and mass killings. Eritrea has denied wrongdoing by its soldiers and only admitted to having troops in Tigray this spring.
Documents obtained by CNN indicate that flights carrying weapons between Ethiopia and Eritrea began at least as early as a few days after the outset of the Tigray conflict.
On at least six occasions — from November 9 to November 28 — Ethiopian Airlines billed Ethiopia’s ministry of defense tens of thousands of dollars for military items including guns and ammunition to be shipped to Eritrea, records seen by CNN show.
The documents, known as air waybills, detail the contents of each shipment. In one document, the “nature and quantity of goods” is listed as “Military refill” and “Dry food stuff.” Other entries included the description “Consolidated.” The records also had abbreviations and spelling mistakes such as “AM” for ammunition and “RIFFLES” for rifles, according to airline employees. They told CNN the spelling errors were introduced when the contents were manually entered by employees into the cargo database.
Benno Baksteen, chairman of DEGAS, the Dutch Expert Group Aviation Safety, told CNN that these waybills were required for all commercial flights as the crew on board need to know the contents of the cargo to ensure they are transported safely.
On November 9, five days after Abiy ordered a military offensive in Tigray, records show an Ethiopian Airlines flight transported guns and ammunitions from Addis Ababa to Asmara, Eritrea’s capital.
An air waybill and a cargo manifest from that date show that Ethiopian Airlines charged Ethiopia $166,398.32 for about 2,643 pieces of “DFS & RIFFLE WITH AM (sic)” on that flight. DFS is a reference to “dry food stuff,” according to airline sources.
Another air waybill from a few days later, November 13, has the same shipper and consignee. The content of that shipment was “military refill and dry food stuff,” according to the document. The shipments came at a time of increased military activity; security sources in the region told CNN the Eritreans needed re-supply for the fight in Tigray.
As planes went back and forth between the two countries, massacres of Tigrayans in the city of Axum and the village of Dengelat by Eritrean troops took place on November 19 and November 30 respectively.
Cargo documents show that the series of flights between Ethiopia and Eritrea continued until at least November 28, 2020.
Some current and former Ethiopian Airlines employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, said the flights continued past this date but that the majority of arms trips to Eritrea were in November.
Both cargo and passenger planes were used in the operation, though CNN has no evidence that commercial passengers were on any of the flights carrying weapons. Many of these flights do not appear on popular online flight tracking platforms such as Flightradar24. When they do, the destination in Eritrea is often not visible and the flight path vanishes once the plane crosses the border from Ethiopia.
The employees told CNN the staff could manually turn off the ADS-B signal on board to prevent the flights being publicly tracked.
The flights were often assigned the same flight numbers, primarily ET3312, ET3313 and ET3314, with ‘ET’ being the code for Ethiopian Airlines. All the planes mentioned in the cargo files seen by CNN are American-made Boeing aircraft. The airline has been in a long relationship with the US aviation giant.
A Boeing representative declined to comment.
Ethiopian Airlines workers described witnessing other airline employees loading and unloading arms and military vehicles on flights directed to Asmara. A few even claimed they helped load the weapons on the planes themselves. All spoke of being ethnically profiled for being Tigrayan.
CNN has seen the Ethiopian Airlines’ ID cards of these employees and confirmed their identities.
One former employee told CNN they were instructed at Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport to load guns and four military vehicles onto an Ethiopian Airlines cargo plane that was due to fly to Belgium but was sent instead to Eritrea.
“The cars were Toyota pickups which have a stand for snipers,” the employee said. “I got a call from the managing director late at night informing me to handle the cargo. Soldiers came at 5 a.m. to start loading two big trucks loaded with weapons and the pickups.”
“I had to stop a flight to Brussels, a 777 cargo plane, which was loaded with flowers, then we unloaded half of the perishable goods to make space for the armaments.”
The former employee warned soldiers that the vehicles were carrying far more gas than was allowed under international air transport rules, but said they were overruled after a direct call from an army commander.
“He [the commander] said we are going to war and we need the fuel to be loaded,” the employee said. “Then I referred the issue to my manager and my manager took responsibility and allowed them to load it.”
The flight, loaded with both weapons and flowers, traveled to Eritrea, then returned to Addis before flying on to Brussels the following day, the employee said. CNN cross-referenced this testimony with Flightradar24 and found the record of an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft returning from the direction of Eritrea and flying to Brussels the next day, but could not independently verify it was the same flight referred to by the employee.
Days later, the employee said they were temporarily suspended from work. They believe they were suspended for being Tigrayan but also for the incident with the soldiers. The employee fled Ethiopia in March.
Ethiopian Airlines told CNN in its statement that no employees had been suspended or terminated due to their ethnic background.
It appears to be not the only long-distance international flight with unplanned stops. A flight from Addis Ababa to Shanghai on November 9, 2020, took a long detour via Eritrea according to the ADS-B signal that tracks the route on Flightradar24.
Several employees at the Addis Ababa airport said they saw multiple weapons flights leave for Eritrea each day at the outset of the conflict. They also spoke about flights carrying weapons from Eritrea back to Ethiopia. It’s unclear why armaments were being transferred back to Ethiopia.
One said they saw tanks and heavy artillery loaded onto planes coming to Addis Ababa, while small arms — mortars, launchers — were dispatched to Asmara. Employees told CNN they believed the smaller weaponry were being sent to Asmara to arm Eritrean troops.
All the employees said they were instructed by the airline to delete photos of the weapons from their phones. Not all of them did.
In June, photos circulated on social media platforms showing crates containing mortars on board an Ethiopian Airlines flight and the same crates being loaded on the plane in Massawa, Eritrea.
The company released a statement strongly denying the allegation that its planes were transporting weapons and claimed the photos were photoshopped.
However, CNN has corroborated the photos using visual analysis techniques, interviews and documentary evidence, dating them to a 777 Freighter cargo flight that flew from Ethiopia to Eritrea and back between November 8 and 9.
More details are emerging the day after a 21-year-old identified as the alleged suspect killed 10 people, including a police officer, during a mass shooting at a Boulder, Colorado, grocery store this week.
The suspect allegedly bought the firearm used in the attack six days earlier, and was known by former classmates to be short-tempered and paranoid, according to reports and an arrest affidavit released Tuesday.
The document did not disclose where Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, from the Denver suburb of Arvada, bought the Ruger AR-556 but stated he did so on March 16. Just six days later, he allegedly shot multiple people outside the King Soopers on Table Mesa before entering the store and continuing the killing spree inside.
“In December 1997, Silk Air Flight 185 crashed in Indonesia, killing 104 people on board. Indonesian authorities weren’t sure exactly what had happened, though US investigators suggested the captain may have switched off the flight recorders and caused the plane to dive — possibly after his co-pilot had left the cockpit. At the time of the crash, investigators noted, the pilot had been experiencing significant financial difficulties and had work-related problems.“
“The Investigation determined that the crash was caused deliberately by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies and declared “unfit to work” by his doctor.”
“In December 1997, Silk Air Flight 185 crashed in Indonesia, killing 104 people on board. Indonesian authorities weren’t sure exactly what had happened, though US investigators suggested the captain may have switched off the flight recorders and caused the plane to dive — possibly after his co-pilot had left the cockpit. At the time of the crash, investigators noted, the pilot had been experiencing significant financial difficulties and had work-related problems.“
“The Investigation determined that the crash was caused deliberately by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies and declared “unfit to work” by his doctor.”
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