(27 Jun 1994) As the Tutsi-dominated rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) intensified its drive to take control of Kigali on Monday (27/6), the Hutu-dominated government army was training more men to combat
(27 Jun 1994) As the Tutsi-dominated rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) intensified its drive to take control of Kigali on Monday (27/6), the Hutu-dominated government army was training more men to combat.
What Happened? What Did ‘they’ Do? What Is Tigray Asking The International Community To Know And Do
106 years ago, estimated 1.5 million Armenians(more than 90% of the total Armenian population, by then) perished in the state-sponsored genocide by the Ottoman Turks.
Three decades later, between 1941 and 1945, 6 million Jews were exterminated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators across German-occupied Europe in the Holocaust. Around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population were exterminated.
And in 1994, the world saw another tragedy in Rwanda. In just 100 days between between April 7 and July 15, members of the Tutsi ethnic group and some moderate Hutus were slaughtered by armed Hutu militias. The world acted as a ‘bystander’, reluctant to act on time and stop the Genocide before its devastation plagued the nation. March 25, 1998, President Bill Clinton expressed “a deep regret” for failing to act on time and stop it.
After all these horrors, the international community renewed its “Never Again” motto. Many of us hoped that such horrors wouldn’t happen again; unfortunately, the international community continues to fail, and the horrors continue to recur.
The world is witnessing another genocide, this time in Tigray.
The Genocide in the Tigray, a genocide that I have witnessed with my own eyes, could be even worse than the tragedies the world has ever seen so far.
For close to a year, Ethiopian and Eritrean armies, Amhara forces (Amhara Special forces, Amhara militias, Amhara Fano-an armed youth squad) have been committing a well-planned campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against Tigrayans people, and yet, the international community did nothing tangible to stop it, except for the “we are deeply concerned” statements.
How did we come to this- the metamorphosis;
First, Ethiopia and Amhara blocked roads to and from Tigray, since 2018
Ethiopia blocked investment to Tigray;
Ethiopia started ethnic profiling of Tigrayans throughout Ethiopia; they fired, suspended Tigrayans from their jobs; they harassed Tigrayans for who they are; they confiscated Tigrayan properties;
Tigray conducted Regional election in defiance to the Federal government’s decision to postpone it; the tense situation then escalated;
Ethiopia cut Tigray’s share of the national budget; (AJE, Oct. 7, 2020 )
Ethiopia blocked supplies of essential drugs, food, industrial raw materials;
Ethiopia also cut Telecommunication and electric services;
Then the invasion and state-sponsored genocide came.
By September 2020, Tigray was encircled in all directions.
Ethiopia had already invited 42 Divisions of Eritrea’s soldiers (estimated 240,000-300,000); Ethiopia also invited 4000-8000 Somali(Mogadishu) Soldiers, Amhara militia, Amhara Special Forces, other Ethiopian Regional state special forces; UAE’s drones too were invited to join the campaign of genocide on Tigray.
The full-fledged war was launched on November 4- deliberately early November- a harvest time for agrarian Tigray.
The invading forces mercilessly massacred tens of thousands of innocent civilian Tigrayans. Between November 2020 and March 2021, more than 150 mass massacre sites have been identified by a team at the University of Ghent in Belgium. There have been numerous additional massacres since this study was conducted. Between70,000-150,000 innocent Tigrayans are estimated to have been exterminated in these mass murders. The most notable massacres are as follows:
The Mai-Kadra massacre which according to a report by Amnesty International, took more than 600 lives( Amnesty International; 12 November 2020)
Axum massacre tallying more than 800 civilian deaths, according to AP’s Feb 17 report of witness accounts. (AP , Feb 17, 2020)
Dengelet Massacre (a March 22nd report by the CNN put the figure at more than 100 casualties; Europe External Programme with Africa put the figure at 150; my witnesses put the figure to be 165)
Mahbere-Dego (a leaked graphic Video and witness accounts collected by CNN and BBC Africa suggest 39-73 young men to have been killed between Jan 15 and 16; my witnesses estimated 193 civilians to have been killed, including on the subsequent days)
Abi Adi- an April 7th report by The Telegraph shows that 182 civilians were killed on February 10 alone
The Zalambessa massacre, killing 56-72 civilians, according to reports by Tigray Television, Tghat.com, and Jan Naysen.
Sheraro, Humera Dansha, Maykinetal, Selekleka, Irob, Debre-Abay, Idaga-hamus, Adwa, Shire Idaga-Arbi, Adigrat, Hawzen, Edaga-Berhe, Miriena, Seglamen, Hagere-selam, Hitsats, Samre, Gijjet, Hiwane, Nebelet, Wukro,Workamba, Killele, Azeba, Bizet, Wukro, Teka Tesfay are few of the sites of worst massacres. Eritrean, Ethiopian, and Amhara armies systematically slaughtered civilians of all age groups (as young as 1 month of age, up to 93 years old) in these massacres.
Not only did they massacre civilians but they also burn their burn their bodies, or threw it off the cliffs.
They used rape as a weapon of war. Thousands of women and underage girls (as young as 6 years old) in Tigray have been gang-raped, in an intentional use of rape as a weapon of war; in some cases the rapists burn the victims genitalia and uterus with hot iron rods, and insert foreign objects in to thier genitals to make them infertile(Here)
Tens of thousands of Tigrayan members of Ethiopian Defense forces are disarmed and detained arbitrarily in various unknown concentration camps. Many among them are feared to have been executed. Likewise, Tigrayans throughout Ethiopia are profiled and indiscriminately arrested for months; Tigrayan civil servants in Federal government bureaus have been fired from their jobs; Tigrayan businesses have been shut. Tigrayans in Ethiopia are enduring all kinds of humiliation and harassment for who they are. On April 29th, the Associated Press released a report detailing this ethnic profiling, arbitrary detention, and purging of Tigrayans.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned the ethnic profiling, arbitrary detention, forced disappearance, closure of businesses of Tigrayans.
The invaders have destroyed health facilities, clean water infrastructure, and water pumps so that greater numbers of Tigrayans will die of water-borne illnesses and other communicable diseases, gun inflicted injuries, and non-communicable diseases; this is a damage maximization strategy to decimate the Tigrayan Civilian Population(MSF).
To induce mass starvation and destitution of Tigray, the invaders have burnt crops, seeds, cutting trees, destroyed agricultural tools, burnt grasses (food for the cattle), killed livestock, especially targeting oxen and donkeys, as well as destroying small dams and irrigation canals in a systematic campaign of crippling the agricultural sector. The World Peace Foundation has compiled a 58-page comprehensive report about the deliberate and systematic campaign of starving Tigray.
According to reports by UN agencies and Tigray’s interim government, currently, more than 2.3 people in Tigray are internally displaced and 5.2 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. Hundreds have already died of hunger;
For 11 months, they[Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara governments) did everything in their capacity to block humanitarian aid. The intention has always been decimating the entire Tigrayan population- using either bullets, hunger, or diseases. They clearly are utilizing starvation as a weapon of war. Due to these concerted efforts of starving Tigray, 900,000 people in Tigray are already in famine; UNICEF says 300,000 children are at imminent risk of dying of hunger. The UN has declared famine in Tigray; there is no doubt that this famine is man-made[state-sponsored].
Unfortunately, the UN boss remains reluctant to bring wouldn’t the hunger crime to the attention of the UN Security Council in accordance with UN Resolution 2417[2018].
Tigray was put in the dark when they occupied Tigray, with electricity and telecommunication services cut; banking services stopped; roads blocked; with much of these grave atrocities on humanity hidden from the world.
The criminal trio (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Amhara) looted everything in our houses; they burnt down our hidmos(traditional houses in Tigray) in our villages; they burnt down entire villages, residential districts in small towns; they erased villages and small towns; they destroyed our schools, universities, irrigation canals, micro dams; they took our machineries, household utensils; our medical equipments, our vehicles-everything that they could took; and burnt down to ashes what they couldn’t take; they destroyed every private and state owned factories, industrial installation, every micro enterprise Tigray had.
The trio destroyed Al-Nejashi, Debre-Damo and many other places of huge historical and spiritual significance; they looted 1200 churches in Tigray, overall. They even forced 900 monks from Waldeba monastery out, and killed many among them.
The trio have committed ethnic cleansing and Genocide in Western Tigray. Estimated 1 million Tigrayans who used to live in Western Tigray are literally are today either killed, forcibly displaced or kept in concentration camps. Some 700,000 among them are now sheltered in many towns in Tigray and in Sudan. Tens of thousands are feared to be dying in concentration camps there. Their prosperities, their lands, their houses are confiscated by the Amhara regional forces.
After committing 100% Ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans in Western Tigray(which US government also confirmed), the Amhara have brought hundreds of thousands of their people from Gojjam and Gonder to make the heartland of Tigray, Western Tigray a “homogeneously Amhara” land. Men are not spared no matter what; thousands of women and under 7 children are forced to take the Amhara identity in order to remain in their homes. The women must be willing to be a concubine to an Amhara militia, though. Tigrayan traces have been erased. Recently the Amhara Regional Government has started officially leasing Tigrayan farms to Amhara newcomers.
[N.B: The 1994 Housing and Population Census showed that 96.3-98.1 % of people in the various districts in Western Tigray spoke Tigrigna, so were Tigrayans; the 1978’s ‘Nationalities in Northern Ethiopia’ map also show these areas to be “Tigrigna speakers”.]
Today’s genocide against Tigray is the same as the hundred-year-old genocide against Armenia; 80 years ago against the Jews; and 27 years ago against the Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
By now, the international community shall not have any confusion about the intentions and the actions of the Ethiopian government and allies, for they are clearly genocidal, designed to completely destroy the Tigrayan population and erase Tigray altogether.
Tigrayans had bled for close to a year by the viciousness of their enemies with genocidal goals and the failure of the international mechanisms to do something tangible to avert the situation.
At this point in time, Tigrayans do not think a solution will come from the UN Security Council given China’s transactional politics and Russia’s soft heart for dictators. Over 6 million people in Tigray are in imminent danger of extinction due to a paralyzed international mechanism to deal with it.
They Rather look into you, the free world you lead, and the institutions of the free world for a decisive action to stop it.
What shall be done? What is that Tigray is asking?
The International community shall be bold enough to categorize the atrocities in Tigray “Genocide”; though there are ample evidences, enough to label the atrocities in Tigray “genocide”, an investigation commission composed of the experts that studied genocides including that of Armenia, Rwanda, Darfur may be set and deployed in Tigray
America shall mobilize the Western world to use all the leverage and the existing diplomatic, economic, and military machineries at its disposal to put palpable necessary pressure on Ethiopian and Eritrean governments to put a stop to the ongoing Genocide on Tigray.
The United States government, and western allies including the European Union, the UK government, the governments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, shall put tough military, economic, Visa sanctions on the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea for the atrocities they continue to commit.
America and other western powers shall press on the United Nations with all the leverage they have to put Tigray under a UN-mandated international interim civil and security administration (Using the Kosovo model). We know its likelihood is less.
It is time for NATO to militarily intervene (by triggering Art 5) in Tigray; this is where Tigray’s hopes are greater. The purposes:
A. To provide rapid, unconditional, unfettered, and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid and items essential to survival, including establishing a “lifeline humanitarian corridor” from Sudan to Tigray under a demilitarized route designated for safe passage of humanitarian supplies.
B. To ensure immediate and verifiable negotiated cessation of all forms of hostilities;
C. Ensure total withdrawal of all internal and external forces, including Eritrean armed forces and Amhara Forces and militia from all Tigray parts to their deployment lines before 4th November, 2020.
D. Launch a NATO-led peace-keeping mission in Tigray.
6. An immediate joint UN-USA-EU independent investigation in the war crimes and grave crimes against humanity in Tigray; and for the perpetrators to be held accountable. A Party in the crime, EHRC has to be excluded!
7. ICC shall initiate criminal investigation in to the war crimes and crimes against humanity Ethiopia’s, Eritrea’s, and Amhara’s governments committed in Tigray;
8. If ICC couldn’t do that due to UN Security Council’s paralysis, countries should independently set their own courts to conduct criminal investigations
9. America and other great powers need to force the government break the siege on Tigray, and scale up the humanitarian aid to a point that is necessary to avert the impending humanitarian catastrophe.
10. UN Secretary General shall immediately bring the hunger crime the governments of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Amhara continue to wield on Tigray to the attention of the UN Security council in accordance with UN Resolution 2417[Artile 12].
The United States on Monday condemned a recent speech by a prominent ally of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed which compared Tigrayan rebels to the devil and said they should be “the last of their kind”.
“Hateful rhetoric like this is dangerous and unacceptable,” a State Department spokesperson told AFP in response to the speech last week by Daniel Kibret, who is often described as an adviser to Abiy and was nominated to the board of the state-run Ethiopian Press Agency last year.
Since fighting broke out in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region last November, thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands forced into famine-like conditions, according to the UN, with the war spreading to the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.
The UN’s special adviser on genocide prevention and the USAID’s chief have previously voiced concern about hate speech and dehumanising rhetoric in the conflict, but Daniel’s comments were the first to draw specific criticism from Washington.
At an event in Amhara attended by high-ranking officials, Daniel called for the total erasure of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which dominated national politics for nearly three decades before Abiy took office in 2018.
“As you know, after the fall of Satan, there was nothing like Satan that was created… Satan was the last of his kind. And they (the TPLF) must also remain the last of their kind,” Daniel said.
“There should be no land in this country which can sustain this kind of weed.
“They should be erased and disappeared from historical records. A person who wants to study them should find nothing about them. Maybe he can find out about them by digging in the ground,” he said to applause.
Asked to clarify his comments, Daniel said in a text message to AFP: “‘They’ refers to the terrorist TPLF group.”
Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, told AFP that Daniel’s remarks were “truly disturbing and reckless”.
“Given the surge in deadly ethnic violence in Ethiopia it is hard to take at face value the claim that he was only talking about the TPLF rather than Tigrayans in general,” he said.
A federal government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Daniel was expressing “personal feelings” and stressed that he didn’t say explicitly that all ethnic Tigrayans should be wiped out.
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