“It’s engaging in and supporting the process as the panel, whether it’s President Obasanjo or President Kenyatta or Dr. Phumzile, might need in terms of assistance where the United States might have influence or be able to provide reassurance to either party on any particular issue. It has involved logistical support. I’m sure you’re aware that we have been flying the Tigrayan delegation on military aircraft out and into Mekelle in support of this mission, at the request of the African Union, and of course with the full consent of the Ethiopian Government. So there’s some logistical support that comes along with our observation partnership, but also we remain open to other requests that may come.”
“We are very realistic in understanding that these are the early stages, that implementation will require continued effort on the part of not only the African Union, the panel, the governments that are supporting it – specifically South Africa and Kenya – but also the observers, which include the United Nations, IGAD, and the United States. And we will continue to provide our diplomatic support, provide logistic support, and if there are other requests for assistance to make sure that this process endures, we are prepared and very ready to do so.”
Satellite Images Support Survivors’ Accounts: Ethiopian Forces Held Thousands, Including Children, in Brutal Camps
In the Tigray region of Ethiopia, beginning in November 2020, children who should have been laughing with friends and studying in school were instead locked up, crying, starving and abused in concentration camps, according to multiple eyewitness reports that have been corroborated by satellite imagery and analysis, as well as cell phone video footage smuggled out by an escapee.
Ethiopian federal forces, abetted by special forces, paramilitary groups, militia and police acting under the authority of the Amharan regional government, locked up in multiple locations hundreds of children of all ages — and even pregnant women, infants and toddlers — along with thousands of Tigrayan adults and senior citizens. These people appear to have been held in harsh conditions, systematically starved and beaten because of their ethnicity and with no judicial process or valid legal pretext. That is the definition of a concentration camp. This is a previously unreported part of an ongoinggenocidal campaign led by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — ironically enough, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate — against various ethnic groups, including Tigrayans, Kimant, Gumuz, Ogaden (Somalis), Agew, Irob, Afar and Sidama.
This report is based on eyewitness accounts by dozens of people from five ethnic groups, including 11 former prisoners who were interviewed in four different refugee camps in eastern Sudan. Doctors have recounted their treatment of another seven former prisoners, including young children. Satellite imagery from Maxar (a space technology company based in Westminster, Colorado) and Planet Labs (an Earth imaging company based in San Francisco) corroborates these eyewitness reports. So does video footage which one former prisoner shot on his cell phone before he escaped a previously unreported concentration camp in western Tigray, located in the notorious Abbadi warehouse compound in Mai Kadra.
The cell phone footage admittedly does not conform to classic notions of what a concentration camp looks like, as in World War II films.There are no bars, guard towers, German Shepherds, barracks, searchlights or coils of razor wire. In the videos, prisoners can be seen eating popcorn, drinking coffee, teasing each other and making jokes in Tigrigna, the language of the Tigray people.
“Young children who were imprisoned and abused”
“We are seeing a generation of Tigrayan refugee children, many of whom are growing up with a sense of hopelessness,” said Dr. Mebrahtom Yehdago, 37, from Humera. He is a Tigrayan doctor and refugee in Tenedba refugee camp in eastern Sudan. “As a doctor, I feel so disturbed, sad, and angry to see these kinds of situations. These children are innocent. These are young children who were imprisoned and abused. How can we get the world to pay attention and do more to help the children?”
Dr. Mebrahtom outlines the cases of former child prisoners in concentration camps whom he has treated: four boys, ages 2, 9, 13 and 15. The two-year-old was imprisoned with his mother in the Mai Kadra concentration camp – which satellite imagery shows is in the Abbadi warehouse compound, a bit north and across the street from the police station, just as eyewitnesses reported. They were imprisoned from Nov. 14 to Nov. 27, 2020, until the mother paid their captors — the Fanu, the Amhara militia and the Amharan Regional Police — a ransom of 50,000 Ethiopian birr (about USD $1,086) for their release.
The toddler presented with physical complications, Dr. Mebrahtom said, including recurrent diarrhea, dehydration, malnutrition and pneumonia, as well as psychological issues. For example, when the boy sees a large group of people, he starts shouting and crying. His mother says he is remembering their hardship in captivity.
Their captors provided no food or water. About twice a week, according to former prisoners who escaped, Doctors Without Borders (or MSF, its French acronym) workers from Abdelrafe would distribute packets of digestive biscuits and fill two large water tanks. MSF repaired one water tank and installed another, without which the prisoners would have had only a few sinks in the bathrooms, where toilets and floors were overflowing with feces. MSF also built a new bathroom. The prisoners in Mai Kadra, like those in other concentration camps in western Tigray, survived by pilfering and roasting sesame seeds stored in the warehouses where they were held captive. This meager sustenance came from bags of seeds that the Amharan forces had looted from Tigrayan farmers and hauled to the warehouses on trailers pulled by tractors. The tractors in Mai Kadra were stolen from the Abbadis, a wealthy Tigrayan family who had owned the warehouse compound.
Satellite imagery shows tractors hooked to trailers near the compound garage. Some prisoners who had Amharan relatives or friends, and who could get money brought to them, paid bribes to Amharan militia guards. In exchange, the guards would allow two or three small boys, around eight years old, to run to the market and return with a kind of flat bread called injera, which the prisoners would distribute.
“We are here to kill you”
Dr. Mebrahtom described the case of a 15-year-old boy, imprisoned in the same place in Mai Kadra. He is an insulin-dependent diabetic. When he asked for permission to buy insulin from a local pharmacy, his captors said, “We are not here to treat you; we are here to kill you. We are gathering the Tigrayan refugees here to kill them.” …..
Dr. Mebrahtom explains that the abuse of Tigrayan children in Mai Kadra was not unique. It was part of a pattern which the doctor has seen, and which other eyewitnesses confirmed in interviews, which also involved children locked up in various sites in the regional capital of western Tigray, Humera. For example, the doctor has treated a 9-year-old boy who had been imprisoned for four days in the old police station in Humera.
Eyewitnesses who had been incarcerated in the old police station, and who were subsequently transferred to the Yitbarak warehouse in Humera, from which they escaped, reported that the only food and water available in the station (administered by the Amhara Regional Police) was whatever the prisoners could buy and have brought in from outside. And in the Yitbarak warehouse (sometimes called the Tabarak warehouse), prisoners subsisted by pilfering sesame seeds from bags looted by the Amhara and stored in the warehouse. So this young child, like hundreds of other children and adults imprisoned in multiple locations, had to survive on handfuls of seeds and a little water, with an occasional supplement of a piece of injera or a few digestive biscuits. I asked the doctor who had arrested the 9-year-old boy, and why.
💭 Five paths to freedom
There were five paths to freedom from the Mai Kadra concentration camp:
the Amharan regional government released some who paid a ransom — an illegal act of extortion which confirms that there was no valid legal purpose for holding the prisoners;
they released some who claimed Amharan ancestry, which confirms that the Ethiopian government was arresting Tigrayans because of their ethnicity;
after several weeks, they released some old people, sick people, pregnant women and women with young children, although one witness among the released prisoners — a woman who returned to Mai Kadra — reported that the Amharans released these Tigrayans into a deadly ambush by Eritrean soldiers allied with Ethiopia’s federal government;
more than 150 Tigrayans escaped Mai Kadra over a four-day period; and
some died of starvation and disease due to lack of adequate nutrition or sufficient medical care in captivity.
Tigrayans Being Sent to Concentration Camps in Addis Ababa | ትግራዋዮች በአዲስ አበባ ወደ ማጎሪያ ካምፖች ሲወሰዱ
💭 My Note: They say, there is war in Oromia too – so, why don’t they do the same to the Oromos in Addis? The Answer is because it’s the Oromos who are the perpetrators. It’s all lies, there is no war in Oromia – there ain’t no such thing as “Eritrean soldiers in Oromia” – Evil Abiy Ahmed’s fascist regime is an Oromo one – and it’s the Oromos + the Amharas who are responsible for the #TigrayGenocide. Will the Addis Ababa residents now have a desire to show solidarity with Tigrayans against this sort of barbarity? No, they won’t! Unless the T.D.F advance towards Addis Ababa, I smell Auschwitz!
Thousands of Ethnic-Tigrayan Residents of Addis Ababa Being Marched to Mass Detention Centers.
Turning Point in Tigray | Bring This Uniquely Monstrous War Criminal to Justice
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on July 14, 2021
After months of fear in a city occupied by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers who pursued the Tigray regional leaders, crowds of Mekele residents rushed to see thousands of Ethiopian government soldiers paraded by their captors. (July 14)
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on July 7, 2021
💭 Allan Rock is President Emeritus of the University of Ottawa, and a Professor in its Faculty of Law, where he teaches International Humanitarian Law and Armed Conflict in International Law.
He practised in civil, administrative and commercial litigation for 20 years (1973-93) with a national law firm in Toronto, appearing as counsel in a wide variety of cases before courts at all levels, including the Supreme Court of Canada. He was inducted in 1988 as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is a former Treasurer (President) of the Law Society of Ontario.
Allan Rock was elected to the Canadian Parliament in 1993, and re-elected in 1997 and 2000. He served for that decade as a senior minister in the government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, in both social and economic portfolios. He was Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada (1993-97), Minister of Health (1997-2002) and Minister of Industry and Infrastructure (2002-03).
He was appointed in 2003 as Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations in New York during a period that involved responding to several complex regional conflicts, including those in Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur. He led the successful Canadian effort in New York to secure, at the 2005 World Summit, the unanimous adoption by UN member states of The Responsibility to Protect populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing and other mass atrocities. He participated in the negotiation (in Abuja, Nigeria) of the Darfur Peace Agreement in May, 2006. He later served as a Special Envoy for the United Nations investigating the unlawful use of child soldiers in Sri Lanka during its civil war.
In 2008, Allan Rock became the 29th President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, a comprehensive university of 50,000 students, faculty and staff. uOttawa is ranked among the Top Ten in Canada for research intensity, and is the largest bilingual university (French-English) in the world. He completed two terms as uOttawa President in 2016.
Allan Rock was subsequently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, associated with the Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.