The capital of Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region was hit by at least two airstrikes on Monday, an eyewitness and a spokesman for forces fighting the country’s central government told CNN.
The eyewitness in Mekelle told CNN she heard an explosion and saw smoke in the vicinity of Adi Haki Market, describing a scene of panic with people running around when she left her office following the blast.
One resident of the city told Reuters one strike hit close to a market, behind a hotel. An aid worker and a doctor in the region also said there had been an attack and a diplomat shared pictures with Reuters of what they said was the aftermath, including pools of blood and smashed windows.
A spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front accused Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of targeting civilians in an attack on a busy market day. Ethiopia’s federal government launched a military offensive to oust the TPLF last November and fighting has been ongoing since.
One of the targets of the airstrikes was the Planet Hotel where a “dozen or so humanitarian agencies used to have their employees,” TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda claimed. “Our people won’t be cowed into submission by a desperate move by a desperate regime teetering on the brink of collapse.”
Ethiopia’s head of government communications vehemently denied that it had carried out the airstrikes. The “government doesn’t have any plan to terrorize its own people. Why should it? It’s not true,” Leggese Tulu told CNN. “Those terrorists want to confuse the world by falsely claiming we are being attacked both by air and land to turn the world against Ethiopia.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 20, 2021
Who has stood trial, or will stand trial, for the appalling abuses committed against the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Yazidi in Iraq, or the people of Tigray in Ethiopia? How many mass murderers are walking free in Rwanda, or Syria?
As the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials approaches, Ilse Cohn’s grandson calls for international law to ensure those committing atrocities today face retribution.
The man who ordered the murder of my grandmother never stood trial for the crime. Nor did he stand trial for any of the other 137,000 murders he ordered during five short months in 1941.
I know who he was. His name was Karl Jäger, and he was the commander of a Nazi execution squad in Lithuania, where my 44-year-old grandmother had been deported from her home town in Germany. He is just one of several hundred thousand men and women who were never brought to justice for the part they played in the Nazi holocaust. It’s estimated that up to a million people were directly or indirectly involved in holocaust atrocities, yet only a tiny fraction – perhaps no more than 1% – were ever prosecuted.
Next month marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal at which 24 of the most senior Nazi leaders stood trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was the first such trial in history, described at the time as “a shining light for justice”.
A dozen other trials followed – of bankers, lawyers, doctors and others – but according to Mary Fulbrook, professor of German history at University College London, once the Nuremberg process was over, the West Germans prosecuted only 6,000 people for their part in Nazi crimes, of whom some 4,000 were convicted.
Most holocaust perpetrators, such as Jäger, a music-loving SS colonel who ordered the murder of my grandmother and so many others, simply melted back into their community. Jäger, for example, led a quiet, inconspicuous life as a farmer in the German town of Waldkirch, not far from the borders with France and Switzerland, until he was finally arrested in 1959. He hanged himself in his prison cell with a length of electric cable before he could be brought to trial.
So why was Nuremberg, and the handful of other war crimes trials that followed, the exception rather than the rule?
First, because by 1945, large parts of Germany were a smouldering ruin. Millions of people were homeless, so the emphasis was primarily on reconstruction. And who was available to take charge in the “new Germany” if not the very same officials (supposedly de-Nazified) who had served under the Nazis?
Second, because with the start of the cold war and fears of Soviet domination in Europe, both the US and Britain believed that confronting the Soviet threat was more important than hunting down thousands of Nazis. Justice would have to take a back seat.
None of which excuses why, even today, so few perpetrators of the most egregious crimes against humanity are pursued and convicted. It’s true that Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić are both serving long prison sentences for their role in the atrocities of the war in Bosnia. The former Liberian president Charles Taylor is incarcerated after being convicted of what the judge at his trial in The Hague called ‘some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded human history’, and the former president of Chad, Hissène Habré, died of Covid-19 last month while serving a life sentence for human rights abuses.
But, like Nuremberg, they are the exceptions. Who has stood trial, or will stand trial, for the appalling abuses committed against the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Yazidi in Iraq, or the people of Tigray in Ethiopia? How many mass murderers are walking free in Rwanda, or Syria?
The anniversary of the Nuremberg verdicts offers an opportunity to revisit the debate over war crimes prosecutions, both past and future. It also marks the October release of a major new documentary film called Getting Away With Murder(s) which shines a spotlight on some of the thousands of unpunished Nazi war criminals who escaped after 1945 and lived the rest of their lives undisturbed, some of them in Britain.
Full disclosure: after the film’s director, David Wilkinson, read an article I wrote in the Observer three years ago, he invited me to appear in the film, visiting the site of my grandmother’s death.)
Seventy-five years after Nuremberg, at a time when war crimes are still being committed with shameful alacrity, it is more important than ever to re-emphasise the need to collect evidence when such crimes are committed, and to reaffirm the principle that they should never go unpunished.
History matters. We can learn from past mistakes, which is why in Germany, under the doctrine of “universal jurisdiction”, a Syrian doctor is now on trial charged with crimes against humanity for torturing people in military hospitals. In the Netherlands, another Syrian was sentenced last July to 20 years in prison, accused of being a member of the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate. In Sweden, a former Iranian deputy public prosecutor is currently on trial over the mass execution and torture of prisoners in the 1980s.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 13, 2021
✞✞✞[Psalm 94:1]✞✞✞
O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth!
✞✞✞[መዝሙረ ዳዊት ምዕራፍ ፺፬፥፩]✞✞✞
እግዚአብሔር የበቀል አምላክ ነው። የበቀል አምላክ ተገለጠ።
An estimated 2.2 million people have been forced from their homes and thousands have been killed in the civil war that broke out in Ethiopia last November when government troops entered Mekelle, capital of the Tigray region. Witnessed by photographer Sergio Ramazzotti, the city was retaken by the Tigray Defence Forces in June, but peace in the region seems a long way off.
The market at Togoga (or Togogwa), a small town of 1,000 people 20 miles (35km) from Mekelle, was hit on 22 June in an airstrike by the Ethiopian air force. The attack left at least 64 dead and wounded almost 200. The Ethiopian army finally allowed ambulances to get to the casualties 29 hours after the attack
The village of Melazat bears the signs of the Ethiopian army’s sudden retreat from Mekelle, 15 miles to the east, on 28 June, as Tigrayan forces were fighting their way into the regional capital.
People collect cereals and cooking oil at a food aid distribution centre in Mekelle. The conflict has isolated the region of Tigray and food supplies are becoming scarce. Humanitarian convoys struggle to bring aid to the thousands of people at risk of starving, with electricity and communications infrastructure badly damaged.
About 8,500 people of the millions displaced by the war have sought shelter in Hadnet secondary school in Mekelle. Food and water are in short supply, and there are countless reports of women and children having been raped by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers.
On 23 June the Ayder hospital in Mekelle, one of the three still operational in Tigray, was suddenly flooded with wounded civilians after the Ethiopian airstrike on Togoga.
Casualties from the Ethiopian airstrike on Togoga were finally allowed out of the town to be treated by medics in Mekelle.
Staff at Mekelle’s Ayder hospital look on as the casualties arrive from the Togoga airstrike.
Casualties are assessed at Ayder hospital. In the background, doctors treat Genet Tsegay, 12, who had her right arm severely damaged by shrapnel, while her mother, Tsigabu Gebreterisae, 45, is overcome with emotion. Genet’s arm eventually had to be amputated.
Genet Tsegay with her mother, Tsigabu Gebreterisae, in the recovery unit of Ayder hospital. Genet’s brother was killed and she lost her right arm in the Ethiopian forces’ airstrike on Togoga.
On 29 June, and during the following days, Ayder hospital was flooded with wounded Tigrayan militiamen, who had entered the city that morning.
Residents of Mekelle welcome Tigrayan fighters on 29 June, the day after the Ethiopian army suddenly evacuated the regional capital.
People gather on the streets of Mekelle to celebrate the arrival of Tigrayan soldiers. Having approached the city during the night, the Tigray Defence Forces entered the city early on 29 June, a day after the Ethiopian army suddenly left.
Exhausted Tigrayan soldiers in the centre of Mekelle watch a local woman appearing to give thanks for divine intervention.
Local youths celebrate in Mekelle to welcome the liberating Tigray Defence Forces.
More than 6,000 Ethiopian prisoners of war, captured during the last days of the struggle for Mekelle, are marched to the prison between lines of local residents on 2 July.
Captured Ethiopian soldiers are taken through the city to prison by lorry, under the watchful eye of armed guards.
The Ethiopian PoWs are marched past jeering crowds on their way to prison in Mekelle.
On Mekelle’s outskirts, Tigrayan militiamen, many of whom are underage boys and girls, prepare to be deployed on active service.
Two young women with assault rifles and civilian clothes await their orders for deployment to the frontline.
On the outskirts of the city, Tigrayan militias assemble as they await orders.
Hagush Gebremedhin, 50, is one of the nurses at a Ayder hospital clinic for victims of sexual violence. There are many reports of women and children having been raped, sometimes for days, by Ethiopian or Eritrean soldiers.
Desta Gebremedhin, 32, a journalist of Tigrayan origin, was working in Nairobi, Kenya, for the BBC when the conflict broke out. He returned to Ethiopia to join the Tigray Defence Forces
#TogogaMassacre | Abiy Ahmed Repeated What His Oromo Father Mengistu Did on the Very day of June 22
💭 My Note: History repeats itself:
During the past 130 years Oromo armies of four anti-North unEthiopian regimes deployed rape and famine in their genocidal wars in Tigray and Wello regions. Now both these regions are on the brink of famine, again. No coincidence! While there is an exponential growth of the Oromo population, Tigray and Wello have permanently suffered a drastic decrease in their population due to Oromo-lead genocidal wars against them.
🔥 Amhara & Oromos bombing Tigray, Using Rape, Hunger & forced resettlement (Mengistu did it back then, Ahmed will do the same now) as a Weapon against People in Tigray for the past 130 years:-
😈 Menelik ll: Half Oromo + Half Amhara = Oromo (Crypto-Muslim / Man of the flesh)
😈 Haile Selassie: Half Oromo + Half Amhara = Oromo (Crypto-Muslim / Man of the flesh)
😈 Mengistu Hailemariam: Half Oromo + Half Amhara = Oromo (Crypto-Muslim / Man of the flesh)
😈 Abiy Ahmed Ali ´= Half Oromo + Half Amhara = Oromo (Crypto-Muslim / Man of the flesh)
[Galatians 5:19-21]
“Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
🔥 Amhara & Oromos bombing Tigray, Using Rape, Hunger & Forced Resettlement (Mengistu did it back then, Abiy Ahmed is doing the same now) as a Weapon against People in Tigray for the past 130 years:-
The great famine is estimated to have caused 3.5 million deaths. During Emperor Menelik’s Reign, Tigray was split into two regions, one of which he sold to the Italians who later named it Eritrea. Only two months after the death of Emperor Yohaness lV , Menelik signed the Wuchale treaty of 2 May 1889 conceding Eritrea to the Italians. It was not only Eritrea that Menelik gave away, he also had a hand in letting Djibouti be part of the French protectorate when he agreed the border demarcation with the French in 1887. Some huge parts of Tigray were put under Gonder. The Southern part, places like present day Alamata, Kobo etc were put under Wello Amhara administration.
👉 2. Haile Selassie (1892 – 1975)
In 1943, at the request of the Emperor Haile Selassie, the Royal British Airforce bombed two towns – Mekelle and Corbetta. Thousands of defenseless civilians lost their lives as a result of aerial bombardment. It is recorded that ‘on 14th October [1943] 54 bombs dropped in Mekelle, 6th October 14 bombs followed by another 16 bombs on 9thOctober in Hintalo, 7th/9th October 32 bombs in Corbetta’.
Between 2 and 5 million’ people died between 1958 and 1977 as a cumulative result. Haile Selassie, who was emperor at the time, refused to send any significant basic emergency food aid to the province of Tigray,
👉 3. Mengistu Hailemariam (1937 – )
1979 – 1985 + 1987
Due to organized government policies that deliberately multiplied the effects of the famine, around 1.2 million people died from this famine. Mengistu & his Children still alive & ‘well’ while Tigrayans starving again.
👉 4. Abiy Ahmed Ali (1976 – )
2018 – Until today: probably up to 500.000 already dead. 😠😠😠 😢😢😢 Unlike the past famine there is no natural or man-made drought, rather, Abiy simply uses war and hunger as a weapon. Abiy Ahmed sent his kids to America for safety, while bombing & starving Tigrayan kids!
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 3, 2021
“Esto es nada menos que una campaña de exterminio. Es una crisis humanitaria de proporciones bíblicas
El primer ministro Abiy Ahmed será recordado para siempre como un hombre que destrozó el tejido social de Etiopía, un comerciante de paz que comerciaba con masacres.”
Mis Notas: En los ultimos cinco meses se han cometido todo tipo de actos de genocidio en Tigray de odio por motivos étnicos y religiosos. Los días 28 y 29 de noviembre de 2020 Tropas eritreas que combaten en el estado etíope de Tigré mataron sistemáticamente a miles de civiles desarmados i cristianos ortodoxos en la ciudad santa de Axum. Los Tigres son un pueblo auténtico del Tigray que cuenta como la cuna del cristianismo en Etiopía – Axum tambien es la cuna de la civilización etíope. La legendaria Arca de la Alianza está en Axum, Tigray. Gracias a CNN!
La semana pasada, después de meses de desmentirlo, el primer ministro Abiy Ahmed admitió que soldados de la vecina Eritrea han estado combatiendo junto con sus fuerzas federales en la región de Tigray. ¿El blanco? Miembros del Frente de la Liberación del Pueblo de Tigray. Ahmed reconoció lo que testigos y víctimas han estado diciendo desde hace tanto tiempo: que soldados eritreos fueron responsables por las atrocidades en Tigray, a pesar de desmentirlo. Ahora, CNN en colaboración con Amnistía Internacional, ha investigado un video estremecedor que está circulando en redes sociales que muestra a soldados etíopes llevando a cabo ejecuciones extrajudiciales de hombres desarmados. Debemos advertirles que el video que está por mirar es perturbador. Este es el informe de Nima Elbagir.
👉 Opinión pública / የተመልካቾች አስተያየት፤
☆ INHUMANO ! 😔 SIENTO MUCHA TRISTEZA
☆ Atrocidad humana! Estos son crimines de guerra
☆ Siglo 21 y siguen ocurriendo estas cosas, una locura.
☆ ¿ La ONU, cascos azules? Ah verdad que Etiopía no tiene petróleo.
☆ Qué salvajada, pobres personas.
☆ Esos no son militares son asesinos cobardes🤬🤬🤬
❖ Que pena dios mío el ser humano es el más malvado del reino animal
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 2, 2021
List compiled by researchers of victims of mass killings includes infants and people in their 90s
Almost 2,000 people killed in more than 150 massacres by soldiers, paramilitaries and insurgents in Tigray have been identified by researchers studying the conflict. The oldest victims were in their 90s and the youngest were infants.
The identifications are based on reports from a network of informants in the northern Ethiopian province run by a team at the University of Ghent in Belgium. The team, which has been studying the conflict in Tigray since it broke out last year, has crosschecked reports with testimony from family members and friends, media reports and other sources.
The list is one of the most complete public records of the mass killing of civilians during the war, and will increase international pressure on Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who has claimed that many reports of atrocities are exaggerated or fabricated.
Abiy launched a military offensive in November to “restore the rule of law” in Tigray by ousting the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the political party then in power in the province, following a surprise attack on a federal army base.
The offensive was declared successful after the TPLF leadership evacuated its stronghold of Mekelle, the provincial capital, and an interim administration loyal to Addis Ababa was installed.
Mass killings and violence directed at civilians have continued since, however, as federal forces and their allies battle insurgents. There have been clashes in recent days around the town of Selekleka, on a key road in the centre of Tigray.
Twenty of the massacres the team listed – defined as incidents in which at least five people died – occurred in the last month. They include the killing of an estimated 250 civilians over three days in Humera, a town of significant economic and strategic importance in the far west of Tigray where the ethnic cleansing of local communities has been reported.
Eight days ago, Eritrean soldiers searching for suspected TPLF insurgents killed 13 people in Grizana, a village 50 miles south-west of Mekelle in an area where fierce fighting has taken place. The victims included three men in their 50s, several women, a 15-year-old and a two-year-old.
Prof Jan Nyssen, a geographer who led the investigation and who has spent decades living and working in Tigray, said the research was “like a war memorial”.
He said: “These individuals should not be forgotten and these war crimes should be investigated … The list is to show the magnitude of what is happening. We know there are many more but … we know the name and the circumstances of these 1,900.”
The list of identified victims was compiled after more than 2,000 telephone calls, including around 100 in-depth interviews with witnesses. The full list of victims the team has compiled from social media posts and other sources runs to more than 7,000. The main research findings based on the information were published on Thursday, and the names were released on Twitter.
The researchers found that only 3% of the identified victims had been killed in airstrikes or by artillery. Most had been shot dead in summary executions during searches or in organised massacres such as that at Aksum, in which 800 people are thought to have died, or at the town of Mai Kadra, where 600 died in violence blamed on militias loyal to the TPLF.
More than 90% of the victims identified were male. Among incidents where blame can be confidently determined, Ethiopian soldiers appear to have been responsible for 14% of the killings, Eritrean troops who have fought alongside federal forces 45%, and irregular paramilitaries from the neighbouring province of Amhara 5%. Witnesses blamed Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers operating together in 18% of cases.
Tim Vanden Bempt, one of the researchers, said the team’s list of massacres did not include perpetrators because information was often fragmentary.
“A lot is still unknown. There are many incidents where we can’t conclude which side is responsible for the moment. So for example, it is possible that there have been two or three massacres committed by TPLF-aligned fighters but we cannot say for sure,” he said.
Abiy publicly acknowledged the possibility of war crimes in Tigray for the first time last month. He told parliamentarians that despite the TPLF’s “propaganda of exaggeration … reports indicate that atrocities have been committed in Tigray region”.
He said war was “a nasty thing” and pledged that soldiers who had raped women or committed other war crimes would be held responsible.
Humanitarian officials have said a growing number of people could be starving to death in Tigray. Madiha Raza, of the International Rescue Committee, recently visited the province and said conditions were dire.
“The situation in rural areas is the worst. Medical centres, schools, hospitals, banks and hotels have been looted. People I interviewed had heard multiple reports of civilians being rounded up and killed. Farm animals and grain are being burned or destroyed and fear tactics are being used across the conflict,” Raza said.
There are continuing claims of widespread human rights abuses, including a wave of sexual assaults. More than 500 rape cases have been reported to five clinics in Tigray, the UN said last month. Actual numbers were likely to be much higher because of stigma and a lack of health services, it said.
Selam, a 26-year-old farmer, fled her home in the central town of Korarit with her husband and children and hundreds of others in mid-November “because the Amhara special forces were beating and killing people”. The family walked for a month to reach safety.
“We saw a lot of dead bodies during our journey … I witnessed a lot of women get raped in front of my eyes. Five or more troops would rape each woman. Some of them were left for dead because of how many men raped them,” she said.
Other witnesses described teenage girls with “broken bones after they’d been raped by 15 or 16 men each”. Metal fences have recently been installed at Mekelle University to protect hostels housing female students.
Ethiopia’s ambassador to the UN, Taye Atskeselassie Amde, said last week that his government took the allegations of sexual violence very seriously and had deployed a fact-finding mission
In a leaked recording of a meeting last month between foreign diplomats and an Ethiopian army general, Yohannes Tesfamariam, he described the conflict in Tigray as a “dirty war” and civilians as defenceless.
The lead author of the Ghent report, Dr Sofie Annys, said their maps and database would be updated on a regular basis.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 