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Posts Tagged ‘Clifftop’
CNN Finds Evidence of Atrocities, Executions, Bodies Dumped Over a Cliff in Central Tigray
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 29, 2021
Posted in Ethiopia, Infos, News/ዜና, War & Crisis | Tagged: Abiy Ahmed, Aksum, Amnesty International, Axum, ሽብር, ሽብርተኝነት, ትግራይ, አብይ አህመድ, አክሱም, ዘር ማጥፋት, የጦር ወንጀል, ጀነሳይድ, ጠላት, ጥላቻ, ጦርነት, ጭፍጨፋ, ጽዮን, ፀረ-ተዋሕዶ, ፀረ-ኢትዮጵያ ሤራ, ፍርድ, Clifftop, CNN, Crime, Ethoipian Army, Genocide, Mahebere Dego, Massacre, Tigray, War Crime | Leave a Comment »
New Video of Ethiopia Massacre Shows Soldiers Passing Phone Around to Document Their Executions of Unarmed Men
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 27, 2021
A few scattered human bones lay on the rocky ground, along with a broken skull and several half-burned identification cards.
That is all the villagers could find, six months after Ethiopian troops rounded up their loved ones and shot them at point-blank range, throwing the bodies off a rocky hillside deep in the mountains of central Tigray in Ethiopia.
An April 2021 CNN investigation, in collaboration with Amnesty International, examined video clips of the January massacre and used geolocation techniques to verify the video was filmed on a ridge near Mahibere Dego in January 2021. The investigation revealed at the time that at least 11 unarmed men were executed, and 39 others were unaccounted for.
CNN was sent the gruesome footage in March this year by a pro-Tigray media organization, the Tigrai Media House (TMH). TMH told CNN at the time that the video was filmed on a mobile phone by an Ethiopian army soldier turned whistleblower involved in the mass killing.
An additional longer video clip of the massacre has now been shared with CNN by TMH, revealing new details about the atrocity and the soldiers behind it.
CNN used geolocation techniques to determine the extended footage was also filmed at the ridge near Mahibere Dego. A voice at the end of the new clip identifies the Ethiopian soldier filming the video as “Fafi.” He also reveals his military brigade and division.
In the extended video seen by CNN, Fafi swaps the phone with another soldier, takes the gun and shoots. The phone is then swapped back as others clamor to be filmed executing the captives, brazenly documenting their crimes.
This extended footage has all the hallmarks of a trophy video and yet — despite the evidence — the Ethiopian Prime Minister’s Office dismissed the findings of CNN’s original investigation saying, “social media posts and claims cannot be taken as evidence.”
Six months after the attack, two people in Mahibere Dego told CNN they had collected the national identification cards of 36 people who were killed, but another 37 people remain missing, indicating the toll of the massacre could have been more than double what was initially reported.
CNN reached out to the Ethiopian government but it did not respond.
Ethiopia is under growing international pressure over a number of reported atrocities in its war-torn northern Tigray region that could amount to war crimes.
Thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed since early November, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a major military operation against the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), sending in national troops and militia fighters from Ethiopia’s Amhara region.
CNN has previously compiled extensive eyewitness testimony that Ethiopian soldiers and soldiers from neighboring Eritrea were perpetrating massacres, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and other abuses in the region.
Since January, families of the victims in Mahibere Dego say they have been unable to access the ridge due to the continued presence of Ethiopian troops in the area — leaving them without a way to bury their loved ones.
They thought they’d be safe at a church
But last Friday, the soldiers departed for nearby Axum, giving locals a long-awaited opportunity to search for any remains, according to nine people CNN interviewed who had visited the massacre site.
Over a period of days, family members of the victims filmed the church burials, documented evidence of bullet casings at the massacre site and took photographs of skeletal remains which they sent to CNN. We are not naming the family members who fear for their safety.
One family member told CNN that even while villagers were gathering up the remains of their loved ones, the area came under attack. Violence in Tigray has once again intensified in recent weeks after Tigrayan forces launched a renewed offensive last week.
Even after Ethiopian soldiers withdrew, the massacre site remained under attack.
“The soldiers from Axum started to bomb the area with artillery [fire] around 9-10 p.m. Everyone scattered and ran back home,” the family member said.
But the villagers refused to stay away, he said, waiting a few days to come back at night to finish what they had started.
In images too graphic to publish, it’s clear the remains were too decomposed to allow for identification of the victims — for some there were only metal belt buckles. Families said they instead relied on items of clothing and ID cards to identify their relatives.
Villagers told CNN the continued presence of soldiers in the area was an attempt to hide evidence of the killings.
Images of bullet casings found by villagers as they scoured the area for their relatives’ remains, were shared with CNN. An arms expert told CNN these would normally be used in light machine guns and assault rifles like those seen in the massacre video.
“The village couldn’t wait any longer, [they were] saying ‘we can’t get peace unless we bury them'”
CNN used geolocation to verify that the video of the bullet casings was from the same massacre site.
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Posted in Faith, News/ዜና, War & Crisis | Tagged: Abiy Ahmed, Ackssum, Amnesty International, Axum, ሽብር, ሽብርተኝነት, ትግራይ, አብይ አህመድ, አክሱም, ዘር ማጥፋት, የጦር ወንጀል, ጀነሳይድ, ጠላት, ጥላቻ, ጦርነት, ጭፍጨፋ, ጽዮን, ፀረ-ተዋሕዶ, ፀረ-ኢትዮጵያ ሤራ, ፍርድ, Clifftop, CNN, Crime, Ethoipian Army, Genocide, Mahebere Dego, Massacre, Tigray, War Crime | Leave a Comment »
U.S. Looking into Reports of Massacres in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region -State Dept Spokesman
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 5, 2021
U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Monday the United States was “gravely concerned” about violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and was looking into reports of massacres there.
Price welcomed statements that Eritrean troops would withdraw from Tigray and said a withdrawal would be an important step forward in de-escalation in the region.
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Posted in Ethiopia, Infos, Media & Journalism | Tagged: Abiy Ahmed, Aksum, Axum, ሽብር, ሽብርተኝነት, ባይድን, ትግራይ, አብይ አህመድ, አክሱም, ዘር ማጥፋት, የጦር ወንጀል, ጀነሳይድ, ጠላት, ጥላቻ, ጦርነት, ጭፍጨፋ, ጽዮን, ፀረ-ተዋሕዶ, ፀረ-ኢትዮጵያ ሤራ, ፍርድ, Biden, Clifftop, Crime, Ethoipian Army, Genocide, Mahebere Dego, Massacre, Ned Price, State Department, Tigray, War Crime | Leave a Comment »
#TigrayGenocide | It’s a Humanitarian Crisis of Biblical Proportions | መጽሐፍ ቅዱሳዊ የሆነ መልክ ያለው ሰብአዊ ቀውስ ነው
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 3, 2021
Courtesy: WION (India)
👉 በትግራይ ስላለው አሳዛኝ ሁኔታ ኃይለኛ ቃላት ፣ ትክክለኛ ምልከታ እና መግለጫ። ሕንድን በጣም እናመሰግናለን!
🔥 “ጠቅላይ ሚኒስትር ዐብይ አህመድ በጭፍጨፋ የሚነግድ የሰላም ነጋዴ የኢትዮጵያን ማኅበራዊ ገጽታ/ አደረጃጀት ያበላሸ/ የሸረሸረ ሰው ሆኖ ለዘላለም ይታወሳል።”
👉 Powerful words, precise observation & description of the tragic situation in Tigray. Thank you so much!
🔥 ከአምስት ወራት በፊት የኢትዮጵያ ወታደሮች ወደ ትግራይ ገቡ። ጠቅላይ ሚኒስትር ዐብይ አህመድ ቀሪውን የሰሜን አውራጃን ለመጠቅለል ፈለገ። “ፈጣን እና ወሳኝ ድል ፣ በፍጥነት ወደ መደበኛ እና ብልፅግና” እንደሚመለስ ቃል ገባ። ይልቁንም የእሱ ወታደሮች ክልሉን በደም አጠበው ፣ ሙሉ መንደሮችንና ከተሞችን በመውረር የትግራይ ወጣቶችን ጨፈጨፋቸው።
🔥 ይህ መጽሐፍ ቅዱሳዊ የሆነ መልክ ያለው ሰብአዊ ቀውስ ነው።
🔥 እኛ አሁን ቪዲዮ ለእናንተ ልናጫውትላችህ ነው፤ ጥሬ እና በጣም ግልፅ በሆነ መልኩ አጥንት የሚሰብር ሊታዩአቸው የሚገባ ነገር በካሜራ ላይ የተፈጸመ እልቂት ነው። ምስሎቹ ይረብሻሉ ፡፡ የእኛን ትዕይንት ከተመለከቱ የተመልካቾችን ጥንቃቅ እንዲያደርጉ እንመክራለን ፣ ብዙውን ጊዜ እንደዚህ ያሉ ምስሎችን እንደማናሰራጭ ያውቃሉ ነገር ግን አንዳንድ ጊዜ እነዚህ ምስሎች ዓለምን ስለ ድርጊቱ በጣም አስከፊነት እስከሚያነቃው ድረስ ለታሪኩ ማዕከላዊ ናቸው።
🔥 ይህ ቪዲዮ እጅግ የከፋውን የሰውን ልጅ ማንነት ያሳያል! ግን የበለጠ አስደንጋጭ ምን እንደሆነ ያውቃሉ አዎ በዚህ ጦርነት ውስጥ በሺዎች የሚቆጠሩ ሲቪሎች የተገደሉ ሲሆን ገና ያልታወቁ ብዙዎች እንደዚህ ዓይነት ጽንፈኛ የጭፍጨፋ ተግባራት መኖራቸው ነው፤ ተቃዋሚ ፓርቲዎች እንደገለጹት እስከ ፶ሺ/ 50 000 ሰዎች እንደሞቱ ይናገራሉ።
🔥 የተባበሩት መንግስታት ከሺዎች በላይ የአስገድዶ መድፈር ጉዳዮች ሪፖርት የደረሱት ሲሆን እነዚህ በአምስት ክሊኒኮች ውስጥ ብቻ ያካተቱት ሪፖርት የተደረጉት ብቻ ናቸው ብሏል። ትክክለኞቹ ቁጥሮች እጅግ ከፍ ያሉ ሊሆኑ ይችላሉ።
🔥 ይህ ከዘር ማጥፋት ዘመቻ የዘለለ አይደለም።
🔥 በዋሽንግተን እና በለንደን የሚገኙት የንግግር ጸሐፊዎች ለመሪዎቹ ጠንካራ የውግዘት ቃላትን ከመጻፍ ውጭ ሌላ ምንም ተጨማሪ ሥራ አልሰሩም።
🔥 ጠቅላይ ሚኒስትሩ እራሱ ከፀጋው ወድቋል እናም ገና ዝቅታውን አልመታም ፥ የኖቤል የሰላም ሽልማት አሸናፊ አሁን በገዛ ወገኖቹ ላይ አስከፊውን ጦርነት እየመራ ነው።
🔥 Five months back Ethiopian troops entered Tigray. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wanted to bring the rest of northern province to heal. He promised a swift and decisive victory, a quick return to normalcy and prosperity. Instead his troops have bathed the province in blood, raved entire villages and massacred Tigrayan youth.
🔥 It’s a Humanitarian Crisis of Biblical Proportions
🔥 we’re now going to play out a video for you it is raw and quite frankly bone chilling what you’re about to see is a massacre caught on camera a mass execution by bullets carried out by the Ethiopian army. The images are disturbing. We advise viewer discretionary if you watch our show you would know we do not broadcast such images usually but sometimes these pictures are central to the story to wake the world up to the horror playing out.
🔥 This video is humanity at its worst! But you know what’s even more horrifying yes there’s more thousands of civilians have been killed in this war many of them in massacres like this one some opposition parties claim as many as 50 000 people have died.
🔥 The United Nations says more than thousand rape cases have been reported, and these are only the reported ones they covered in just five clinics. The actual numbers are likely to be far higher.
🔥 This is nothing short of a campaign of extermination.
🔥 The speechwriters in Washington and London prepared excellent drafts for the leaders strong words of condemnation but nothing more.
🔥 As for the prime minister himself it’s a fall from grace and he’s yet to hit the bottom – a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is now leading a war on his own people.
🔥 Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed will forever be remembered as a man who shredded the social fabric of Ethiopia a merchant of peace who traded in massacres.
Tigray Massacre Caught on Camera
Five months back Ethiopian troops entered Tigray. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wanted to bring the rest of northern province to heal. He promised a swift and decisive victory, a quick return to normalcy and prosperity. Instead his troops have bathed the province in blood, raved entire villages and massacred Tigrayan youth.
It’s a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions. There is a long list of allegations against Ethiopia but they have been difficult to prove because the government has cut off the internet, foreign media have been barred from entering Tigray.
Inside this dome of radio static Ethiopian troops have committed untold horrors. We do get reports of their ruthless tactics but until now there was no visual evidence well now we have it, we’re now going to play out a video for you it is raw and quite frankly bone chilling what you’re about to see is a massacre caught on camera a mass execution by bullets carried out by the Ethiopian army. The images are disturbing. We advise viewer discretionary if you watch our show you would know we do not broadcast such images usually but sometimes these pictures are central to the story to wake the world up to the horror playing out.
More than a dozen young Tigrayans were shot dead here the manner of their execution speaks volumes of the army’s conduct there is no dignity even in death the victims bodies are flung off the cliff side the soldiers are mouthing abusers at the dead bodies one of them can be heard saying don’t waste bullets use minimum shots to kill the captives.
This video is humanity at its worst! But you know what’s even more horrifying yes there’s more thousands of civilians have been killed in this war many of them in massacres like this one some opposition parties claim as many as 50 000 people have died. But as we said at the start with no internet these reports cannot be confirmed. Informants have compiled a list of casualties for a university in Belgium it talks about massacres each of them with at least five victims the United Nations says more than thousand rape cases have been reported, and these are only the reported ones they covered in just five clinics. The actual numbers are likely to be far higher.
The details of these cases are even more gruesome. In some instances men were forced to rape their own family members at gunpoint.
The army has abandoned its commitment to protect the people and the government has forsaken justice.
This is nothing short of a campaign of extermination, and Ethiopia is not alone in doing this for months now troops from neighboring Eritrea have also been involved. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed kept denying this until last month. He promised that foreign soldiers would withdraw under a new agreement but what about his own army’s abuses? What does Prime Minister Abiy have to say about that? He says the government will hold the troops accountable. To do that he will have to win the war and he’s no closer to doing that than he was five months back.
The atrocities have galvanized the Tigrayan people. The rebel army is swelling. It’s a collective feeling. The ethnic cleansing is the collective failure of the world community not just these governments. The united nations failed to mediate, the African union failed to dissuade Abiy Ahmed.
The speechwriters in Washington and London prepared excellent drafts for the leaders strong words of condemnation but nothing more.
As for the prime minister himself it’s a fall from grace and he’s yet to hit the bottom – a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is now leading a war on his own people.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed will forever be remembered as a man who shredded the social fabric of Ethiopia a merchant of peace who traded in massacres.
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Posted in Ethiopia, Infos, Life | Tagged: Abiy Ahmed, Aksum, Axum, ሕንድ, ሽብር, ሽብርተኝነት, ትግራይ, አብይ አህመድ, አክሱም, ዘር ማጥፋት, የጦር ወንጀል, ጀነሳይድ, ጠላት, ጥላቻ, ጦርነት, ጭፍጨፋ, ጽዮን, ፀረ-ተዋሕዶ, ፀረ-ኢትዮጵያ ሤራ, ፍርድ, Clifftop, Crime, Ethoipian Army, Genocide, India, Mahebere Dego, Massacre, Tigray, War Crime, WOIN | Leave a Comment »
Guardian: 1,900 People Killed in Massacres in Tigray Identified | ፩ሺህ ፱መቶ የተገደሉ ትግራዋያን ተለይተው ታወቁ
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.
Eritrean officials have described allegations of atrocities by their soldiers as “outrageous lies”.
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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Posted in Ethiopia, Infos, Life | Tagged: Abiy Ahmed, Aksum, Axum, ሽብር, ሽብርተኝነት, ባይድን, ትግራይ, አብይ አህመድ, አክሱም, ዘር ማጥፋት, የጦር ወንጀል, ጀነሳይድ, ጋርዲያን, ጠላት, ጥላቻ, ጦርነት, ጭፍጨፋ, ጽዮን, ፀረ-ተዋሕዶ, ፀረ-ኢትዮጵያ ሤራ, ፍርድ, Biden, Clifftop, Crime, Ethoipian Army, Genocide, Guardian, Mahebere Dego, Massacre, Tigray, War Crime | Leave a Comment »
Aid Organization Calls on President Biden to Hold Ethiopian Prime Minister Ahmed Accountable for Mass Killings in Tigray
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 2, 2021
On April 1, 2021, the B.B.C. published a video showing Ethiopian military forces carrying out a massacre in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. The video is one of the many confirmations that Ethiopian troops are committing mass atrocities against civilians in Tigray. The shocking video showing Ethiopian military personnel executing civilians and throwing their bodies off a cliff has been republished by CNN and other news outlets worldwide. The shocking video comes as no surprise for reports of mass killings and other human rights abuses being committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean military forces against civilians in Tigray have been widely reported.
While the United States Senate has taken action by putting forward Senate Resolution 97, the Biden Administration has taken no concrete action to protect civilians in Tigray or hold the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments accountable for the crimes committed by their armed forces and militia. Senate Resolution 97 condemns the atrocities taking place in Tigray, calls for independent investigations into the killings, and demands that the perpetrators of these crimes be held accountable.
The Tigray Center for Information and Communication (T.C.I.C) calls on President Biden to follow the Senate’s lead and take action to stop the crimes being committed in Tigray. The T.C.I.C calls on the Biden Administration to push for Global Magnitsky Act sanctions against senior members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments. The T.C.I.C also calls upon President Biden to work with Congress to institute a safe zone in Tigray for civilians seeking safety and for the U.S. to work with the United Nations to stop the flow of weapons and drones being used to kill civilians in Tigray.
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Posted in Ethiopia, Infos, Life | Tagged: Abiy Ahmed, Aksum, Amnesty International, Axum, ሽብር, ሽብርተኝነት, ባይድን, ትግራይ, አብይ አህመድ, አክሱም, ዘር ማጥፋት, የጦር ወንጀል, ጀነሳይድ, ጠላት, ጥላቻ, ጦርነት, ጭፍጨፋ, ጽዮን, ፀረ-ተዋሕዶ, ፀረ-ኢትዮጵያ ሤራ, ፍርድ, Biden, Clifftop, CNN, Crime, Ethoipian Army, Genocide, Mahebere Dego, Massacre, Tigray, War Crime | Leave a Comment »
CNN: ‘Two Bullets is Enough’ Analysis of Tigray Massacre Video Raises Questions For Ethiopian Army
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 2, 2021
CNN + Amnesty International | Shedding Light on a Clifftop Massacre in Ethiopia | የአክሱም ማኅበረ ደጎ ገደል ጫፍ እልቂት ሲገለጥ
My Note: The war criminal unEthiopian government which is thriving on hate and genocide wants to hide the truth by silencing some of us who are trying to share openly available informations about the ongoing genocide in Tigray. The goevenment just contactd Google with content removal requests on some of our YouTube channels. So, they seek to continue the genocide in Tigray.
Dawit was watching television at a relative’s one-room apartment in Axum, a historic city in Ethiopia’s war-torn, northern Tigray region, in early March when a news bulletin flashed up on the screen.
Graphic, unverified footage had surfaced of a mass killing near Dawit’s hometown of Mahibere Dego, in a mountainous area of central Tigray. In the shaky video Ethiopian soldiers appeared to round up a group of young, unarmed men on a wind-swept, dusty ledge before shooting them at point-blank range — picking them up by an arm or a leg and flinging or kicking their bodies off a rocky hillside like ragdolls.
The soldiers can be heard in the footage urging one another not to waste bullets, to use the minimum amount needed to kill and to make sure none of the group were left alive. They also appear to cheer each other on, praising the killings as heroic and hurling insults at the men in their captivity.
Dawit said he believes one of the men in the video, broadcast on a diaspora television station Tigrai Media House (TMH), was his younger brother, Alula. CNN has changed the names of both brothers for Dawit’s safety.
The mass killing near Mahibere Dego is one of several to have been reported over the course of Ethiopia’s five-month-old conflict during which thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed, raped and abused. But with independent access to journalists severely restricted until recently and telephone and internet services often blocked, it has been challenging to verify accounts of atrocities in Tigray. Amid the effective communications blackout, few videos have emerged from the fighting and those that have are difficult to authenticate.
Through a forensic frame-by-frame investigation of the video footage — corroborated by analysis from Amnesty International’s digital verification and modeling experts — as well as interviews with 10 family members and local residents, CNN has established that men wearing Ethiopian army uniforms executed a group of at least 11 unarmed men before disposing of their bodies near Mahibere Dego.
Footage obtained by CNN shows soldiers rounding up dozens of young men on a clifftop and checking if they’re armed. Credit: Tigrai Media House
Dawit said he last saw his 23-year-old brother — in the same clothes he is seen wearing in the video — at their mother’s house in Mahibere Dego on January 15. The video is not timestamped and CNN does not have the original, raw footage to examine the file’s metadata but it is likely the video was filmed that same day.
Dawit was out in the fields looking after his cattle when he said Ethiopian soldiers arrived in the town and went door-to-door dragging young men, including his brother, from their homes.
The troops shot at him, Dawit said, and he ran into the bush to escape, breaking his leg as he scrambled down a rocky path. Later, he said he could hear gunfire in the distance, and then silence.
Until he watched the video, he said he had no idea what had happened to his brother. But even after watching the footage countless times, Dawit said he is still holding out hope Alula is alive.
CNN is not able to independently verify that Alula is pictured in the footage, and the man that Dawit identifies as his brother is not identifiable among the dead.
“Since we didn’t see his body with our own eyes and bury our brother ourselves, it’s hard for us to believe he’s dead. It feels like he’s still alive, we can’t accept his death,” Dawit said.
“We will always remember him.”
After the attack, Dawit fled Mahibere Dego with two of his teenage siblings, limping 12 miles to their eldest brother’s home in Axum; hundreds of other residents displaced from the town and surrounding area are now sleeping rough in the city’s streets.
Dawit said the only people left in the town are those too elderly to make the trek — including his own mother. She doesn’t have internet access or satellite TV, so she hasn’t seen the gruesome video. Dawit has spoken to her over the phone — telephone networks in Mahibere Dego have been intermittent — but he hasn’t mentioned the footage. For now, he said, it is easier that way.
Ethiopia is facing a raft of intense scrutiny over human rights violations that may amount to war crimes in its Tigray region. Thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed since November, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a major military operation against Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), sending in national troops and militia fighters from Ethiopia’s Amhara region.
CNN has previously compiled extensive eyewitness testimony that soldiers from neighboring Eritrea had crossed into Tigray and were perpetrating massacres, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and other abuses.
The state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission last week said its investigations found preliminary evidence that more than 100 people in Axum were killed by Eritrean soldiers in November, confirming earlier reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
In late March, Medecins Sans Frontieres said its staffers had witnessed Ethiopian soldiers drag several men off public buses and execute them near the Tigray capital, Mekelle.
Abiy said last week his government would hold accountable any soldier found responsible for committing atrocities in Tigray — acknowledging for the first time that Eritrean troops were fighting alongside Ethiopian forces and that they would withdraw from border areas. It is not clear whether Eritrean forces have pulled out of Tigray.
The Eritrean embassy of the UK and Ireland responded to CNN’s repeated requests for comment on March 22, denying allegations of wrongdoing by Eritrean soldiers and denying that Eritrean troops were in Ethiopia.
For months, both countries denied that Eritrean troops were in the war-torn region, and insisted no civilians have been killed in the conflict, contradicting accounts from residents, refugees, aid agencies, diplomats and Ethiopian civilian officials.
If the soldiers in the Mahibere Dego video are indeed Ethiopian National Defense Forces then it may be the first visual evidence of Ethiopia’s involvement in war crimes.
The Ethiopian government and its interim administration in Tigray did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment on the video and accusations that its forces abducted scores of men from the Mahibere Dego area.
On Friday, after CNN’s investigation published, Abiy’s office said in a statement that “social media posts and claims cannot be taken as evidence, regardless of whether Western media report it or not.” The statement added that the government “has indicated its open will for independent investigations to be undertaken in the Tigray region.”
“Since we didn’t see his body with our own eyes and bury our brother ourselves, it’s hard for us to believe he’s dead. It feels like he’s still alive, we can’t accept his death. We will always remember him.”
The footage was initially broadcast in early March by Tigrai Media House (TMH), a pro-Tigray subscription satellite TV and YouTube channel based in the United States, and has widely circulated on social media in the weeks since.
Stalin Gebreselassie, a TMH journalist and presenter based in Washington, DC, told CNN he was sent the gruesome footage via a source in Tigray. The source told him that the video was filmed on a mobile phone by an Ethiopian army soldier turned whistleblower involved in the mass killing.
TMH paid the whistleblower directly for the footage, Gebreselassie said, so that he could leave Ethiopia and go into hiding. As part of the agreement, TMH waited until they had received word that he was safely outside the country before broadcasting the video.
“I managed to talk to him only for three minutes. The words he uttered to me were: ‘I’m so sorry brother … I am really sorry for what I did in Tigray, the Tigrayan people don’t deserve this,'” Gebreselassie said, describing his call with the whistleblower. Gebreselassie said that the whistleblower appeared to regret his involvement in the killing, and told him that he was sharing the video with TMH “to heal” and “expose what the Ethiopian government was doing to its own people.”
CNN was unsuccessful in its attempts to reach the soldier directly, and does not know the extent of the soldier’s involvement in the atrocities.
Gebreselassie said the footage was sent to him on WhatsApp in five compressed video clips, due to persistent internet bandwidth issues in Tigray, but maintains it was all filmed by the soldier on one device.
Without the raw footage and associated metadata, CNN cannot confirm the original device the five videos were filmed on, who filmed them, the date they were filmed or whether they were selectively edited.
Still, CNN was able to geolocate the video to a rugged clifftop three miles south of Mahibere Dego, identifying the terrain, tree line, vegetation and shape of the mountains on Google Earth.
Separately, Amnesty International said it confirmed the location in all five video clips using 3D modeling software that overlaid the footage on top of satellite imagery of the location.
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Posted in Ethiopia, Infos, Life | Tagged: Abiy Ahmed, Aksum, Amnesty International, Axum, ሽብር, ሽብርተኝነት, ትግራይ, አብይ አህመድ, አክሱም, ዘር ማጥፋት, የጦር ወንጀል, ጀነሳይድ, ጠላት, ጥላቻ, ጦርነት, ጭፍጨፋ, ጽዮን, ፀረ-ተዋሕዶ, ፀረ-ኢትዮጵያ ሤራ, ፍርድ, Clifftop, CNN, Crime, Ethoipian Army, Genocide, Mahebere Dego, Massacre, Tigray, War Crime | 1 Comment »
#TigrayGenocide | Shedding Light On A Clifftop Massacre In Ethiopia | የአክሱም ማኅበረ ደጎ ገደል ጫፍ እልቂት ሲገለጥ
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 2, 2021
On an arid plateau somewhere in Ethiopia, a man in uniform pushes a dead body which goes tumbling head over heels off the edge of a cliff. More corpses are strewn around nearby rocks and boulders.
The scene comes from one of five graphic videos which started appearing from 9 March, 2021, on the EthiopiaMap Telegram channel. Viewed together, they show Amharic-speaking soldiers, one of whose uniforms bears the markings of the Ethiopian national flag on its sleeve, rounding up a group of around 25 to 30 people in civilian clothing. The captives file towards a precipice at gunpoint, where they are executed.
These videos were taken by the soldiers (mostly male and some female) themselves.
Since last November, a war has raged between Ethiopia’s federal government and rebel forces in the Tigray Region in the country’s North. Tens of thousands of civilians have fled across the border to neighbouring Sudan.
In recent months, credible reports of massacres, looting and rape have emerged from the region. As one UN official remarked to Britain’s Sky News this month “We don’t know what the situation is in rural parts of Tigray and what we don’t know really worries us”.
Bellingcat and colleagues from Newsy and BBC Africa Eye have located the execution videos from the EthiopiaMap Telegram channel to a cliff approximately 15 kilometres South of Aksum, a city in the wartorn Tigray Region. The closest town is Mahbere Dego, which may be the last place these men were seen alive.
Audible Clues
The language used by the soldiers can establish their likely origin. According to Gubae Gundarta Beyene, a translator and communications scholar at the University of Oregon who hails from Ethiopia, the soldiers in the videos are not speaking in Tigrinya or Arabic, the primary languages of Eritrea. Tigrinya is also the native language of the vast majority of the Tigray Region’s inhabitants and of TPLF supporters.
Instead, they are speaking Amharic — Ethiopia’s administrative language and the native tongue of the Amhara people. Gundarta, who produced a translation of the speech in the videos, stated that the soldiers’ accents indicate that they are mostly native Amharic speakers from the Amhara Region, though some may be second language speakers from the Oromia Region.
On several occasions in Video One and Video Two, the armed men describe their victims as “Woyane” (Amharic: ወያኔ, Tigrinya: ወያነ). This word is a particularly important indicator of the armed men’s allegiance.
The scene described at the beginning of this article comes from Video One. “We learned brutality from the Woyane. There isn’t much we can do about it. This is what you become in the end”, asks the man filming the corpses, who, according to Gundarta, speaks Amharic with an Amhara Region accent. A voice in the background recommends dousing the bodies with kerosene to burn them. The speaker regrets that he has none.
In Video Two, a man speaking in Amharic with an Amhara Region accent films three dead bodies by the cliff edge. “As you can see, these are Woyane corpses. We have put them all out here,” he explains. Gunshots ring out in the distance, leading him to turn around and cry “Attaboy! You’re a hero! Such a hero! This is the end for Woyane. We have no mercy left”. Another corpse can be seen on the ground as a group of uniformed men walk away.
Who are the “Woyane”?
This epithet, which roughly translates as “insurgent”, is used derisively for rebels or people believed to be affiliated with the TPLF. However, some Tigrayans use it as a term of pride, referring to the Woyane Rebellion of the 1940s, when their ancestors rose up against the rule of Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie.
“It was a rallying cry for the Tigrayan struggle, which was also along the lines of demanding autonomy or at least against marginalisation against the central state,” explained the International Crisis Group’s Davison.
“It looks very much like they are accusing those people in the video of being members of the TPLF. The fact that these people are suspected of being Woyane is almost seen as justification for the violence being exacted upon them,” Davison added.
Audible Clues
While the five videos do not contain enough information to determine when exactly they were recorded, other clues may offer further avenues of inquiry.
For example, a satellite image taken on 20 January 2021 shows approximately 16 vehicles just 150 metres from the cliff where the executions took place. The image also shows the presence of an artillery battery on the plateau by the trucks:
This satellite image taken on 20 January 2021 shows military vehicles and artillery approximately 150 meters north of the cliff where the massacre took place (Source: Includes material © CNES 2021, Distribution Airbus DS all rights reserved / PLEIADES satellite imagery Acquired through ShadowBreak Intl via BBC Africa)
The Missing Clue
What can we say about the executions at the clifftop that day?
Our geolocation confirms that a massacre took place in Mahbere Dego.
There is some evidence to suggest the allegiance of the soldiers, from an Ethiopian flag on one soldier’s uniform to their use of the Amharic language and the word “Woyane” to describe their victims. These clues point towards the presence of the Ethiopian military or its allies at Mahbere Dego. Beyond these hints, however, the identities of the executioners cannot be conclusively established by open source methods alone at the time of publication.
The final clue may lie in on the ground reporting in Tigray, something which remains particularly dangerous.
Until that changes, open source material continues to be a key resource for documenting the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Tigray, some of which is being provided by perpetrators of the crimes themselves.
“Why don’t you get closer and record?” one armed man exclaims to the camera in Video Four. “How could we not record the way they die?”
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Posted in Ethiopia, Infos | Tagged: Abiy Ahmed, Aksum, Axum, ሽብር, ሽብርተኝነት, ቢቢሲ, ትግራይ, አብይ አህመድ, አክሱም, ዘር ማጥፋት, የጦር ወንጀል, ጀነሳይድ, ጠላት, ጥላቻ, ጦርነት, ጭፍጨፋ, ጽዮን, ፀረ-ተዋሕዶ, ፀረ-ኢትዮጵያ ሤራ, ፍርድ, Clifftop, Crime, Ethoipian Army, Genocide, Mahebere Dego, Massacre, Tigray, War Crime | Leave a Comment »
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