🔥 We are Calling International Warrant of Arrest for the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrea President Isaias Afwerki
Please sign petition calling international criminal court must issue Warrant of Arrest for the Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali of Ethiopia and Eritrea president Isaias Afwerki and Alleged Amhara Militant ring leaders for committing crimes Crimes Against Humanity ethnic cleansing and genocide, committed this crimes Under the direction administration of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali , Ethiopian Federal defence forces and President of Eritrea Isaias Afwerki , as International media reported Eritrea involvements carried out numerous unlawful attacks, including aerial bombing and artillery weapons used against civilians populated cities in Tigray followed by systematic acts of pillage, on towns and villages, mainly inhabited by civilians belonging to the Tigray and Oromo Benishangul-Gumuz groups; subjected thousands of civilians – belonging primarily
👉 to the Tigray and Oromo Benishangul-Gumuz , Welayta groups;
subjected to acts of murder, as well as to acts of extermination;
subjected thousands of civilian women – belonging primarily to the said groups
👉 to acts of rape; subjected hundreds of thousands of civilians – belonging primarilyto the said groups
👉 to acts of forcible transfer; subjected civilians – belonging primarily to the said groups
👉 to acts of torture; and contaminated the wells and water pumps of the towns and villages primarily inhabited by members of the Tigray and Oromo Benishangul-Gumuz, Welayta.
Ethiopia military groups attacked; and encouraged members of other Amhara ethnic group which were allied with the Ethiopia Defense Force to resettle in the villages and lands previously mainly inhabited by Tigray and Oromo Benishangul-Gumuz , Welayta ethnic groups.
It’s apparent that is resulting thousands of civilians deaths of Tigray and Oromo Benishangul-Gumuz , Welayta People’s and displaced millions of Tigray and Oromo Benishangul-Gumuz , Welayta People’s where Abiy Ahmed Ali government refused international humanitarian assistance and closed Internet electricity and media to this war turned regions
Rights groups have been concerned that an assault on the cities could lead to significant civilian casualties.
Prime minister Abiy Ahmed Ali , as the de jure and de facto Prime Minister of the federal State of Ethiopia and Commander-in-Chief of the Ethiopia defence Armed Forces and the President of Eritrea Isaias Afwerki with the Amhara militants armed groups at all times played a role that went beyond coordinating the implementation of the said EDF, Eritrea military forces and the Amhara militants group’s counter- Military campaigns operations against Tigray and Oromo Benishangul-Gumuz , Welayta Military campaign;
Is in full control of all branches of the “apparatus” of the Ethiopia defence forces including the Ethiopia regional Armed Forces and their allied Amhara militants the Regional Liyu Police Forces, the Federal Regional intelligence
used such control to secure the implementation of the said EDF ethnic cleansing counter-I military invasions campaign against Tigray.
Ethiopia’s prime minister may want to coast on the laurels of the Nobel Prize but, realistically, he may very quickly become the first Nobel laureate to face war crimes charges.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on October 11, 2019, that Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed had won that year’s Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation.” The committee wanted to highlight Abiy’s initiative to end Ethiopia’s border conflict with Eritrea and “to recognize all the stakeholders working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and in the East and Northeast African regions.” But they picked the wrong man.
In June 2020, Abiy extra-constitutionally postponed elections. When Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region refused and, on Sept. 9, 2020, held its own parliamentary elections marked by long lines and high participation that the opposition Tigray People’s Liberation Front won. Abiy responded two months later by cutting Tigray’s internet access and phone lines and sending in the Ethiopian Army to oust the elected government from Mekelle, the provincial capital. Multiple reports confirm that Eritrea’s military also entered the region, operating side-by-side with Ethiopian troops as they sacked and looted towns and villages in the region. On Jan. 13, 2021, Ethiopia announced that its forces had killed Seyoum Mesfin, the country’s long-serving former foreign minister, while fighting. Subsequent photos suggest that Abiy’s men had summarily executed Mesfin.
While Ethiopia repeatedly said that the situation in Tigray was calm, reports continued to circulate alleging that Ethiopian forces had engaged in widespread human-rights violations. With the restoration of communication to the region, it now appears these reports were legitimate. Ethiopians now circulate videos of summary executions. This video circulated today purports to show the summary execution of two men in the Tigrayan market town of Adwa. The greatest war crime, however, appears to be a massacre of more than eight hundred Tigrayans at the Church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, reputed to be the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, shortly after Ethiopian forces entered the area. Reached by phone by the Associated Press, a church deacon recounted the massacre:
The deacon recalled soldiers bursting into the church, cornering and dragging out worshippers and shooting at those who fled. “I escaped by chance with a priest,” he said. “As we entered the street, we could hear gunfire all over.” They kept running, stumbling over the dead and wounded along with others trying to find places to hide. Most of the hundreds of victims were killed that day, he said, but the shooting and looting continued the following day. “They started to kill people who were moving from church to home or home to home, simply because they were on the street,” another witness, visiting university lecturer Getu Mak, told the Associated Press. “It was a horrible act to see.”
The deacon confirmed that he had counted the bodies of those killed in the massacre, and alleged that Ethiopian forces left bodies in the streets for days where they were feasted upon by hyenas. With growing witness accounts, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry has now tweeted that “Rape, plunder, callous & intentional mass killings, as observed & verified in #Mikadra, & every other imaginable crime might happen in #Tigray” although it continued to deny both the regime’s own culpability and ignore eyewitness accounts of Eritrean forces participating in human-rights abuses.
Just as the Norwegian Nobel Committee once honored Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi only to learn she was an apologist to genocide, so too must it confront Abiy’s increasingly murderous record. Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager made famous in “Hotel Rwanda” and lionized by Western politicians is likewise now facing accountability for his support of armed groups and designated terrorists.
Abiy’s apologists criticize Ethiopia’s constitutional federalism and still describe Abiy as a reformer. Suspending elections and unilaterally changing the law without regard to any constitutional process, however, is the mark of dictatorship rather than reform. Engaging in ethnic cleansing, rape, and murder against regional opposition puts Abiy in the class of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s former president who was indicted while still in office for his genocidal campaign against Darfur.
Abiy and his forces still ban journalists from traveling to Tigray and other provinces where locals allege Ethiopian and/or Eritrean forces have massacred civilians. Abiy may deny such events, but innocent parties seldom ban journalists who could confirm the truth of their statements. Rather, the travel bans and communication cut-offs are likely meant to help Abiy to escape accountability for his actions. Filibustering the outside world will not work, however, nor will the truth fade from the memory of surviving victims or the family members of those killed in Tigray. Abiy may want to coast on the laurels of the Nobel Prize but, realistically, he may very quickly become the first Nobel laureate to face war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Cameraman tells soldiers to ‘finish off survivors’ in exclusive video seen by Telegraph that appears to be evidence of slaughtered civilians
These are scenes from a video clip obtained exclusively by The Telegraph showing the first evidence of what appears to be a war crime carried out by the Ethiopian army. Around 40 bodies in civilian clothes can be seen in the four-minute clip.
The video footage seen by The Telegraph, which is too graphic to publish, has circulated online in shorter form among local journalists and bloggers – deemed rare proof of the alleged brutality of Addis Ababa’s forces.
The Telegraph was able to geolocate the video to Debre Abay monastery in central Tigray – about 175 miles west of Tigray’s capital, Mekelle. It has also confirmed that the clip has not been doctored.
From The Telegraph
Cameraman tells soldiers to ‘finish off survivors’ in exclusive video seen by Telegraph that appears to be evidence of slaughtered civilians
The ground of the Tigrayan village is soaked with blood and dozens of bodies lie strewn in the grass.
Groans can be heard from a seriously wounded man squirming on the floor between two corpses.
Chatting as they wander through the aftermath of what appears to be a mass execution of civilians in the Tigray region, soldiers laugh and joke among themselves.
Off to one side they spot a young man who seems to have survived by pretending to be dead.
“You should have finished off the survivors,” the cameraman says in Amharic, Ethiopia’s lingua franca, in an apparent rebuke of the perpetrators of the massacre.
These are scenes from a video clip obtained exclusively by The Telegraph showing the first evidence of what appears to be a war crime carried out by the Ethiopian army. Around 40 bodies in civilian clothes can be seen in the four-minute clip.
Ethiopian and Eritrean forces have for months been battling troops loyal to the former Tigrayan regional government in a war that has left thousands dead and millions on the brink of starvation.
The Ethiopian federal government has imposed a mass communications black-out in Tigray, meaning little is known about the conflict and making it hard to verify a flood of accounts of war crimes from survivors.
The video footage seen by The Telegraph, which is too graphic to publish, has circulated online in shorter form among local journalists and bloggers – deemed rare proof of the alleged brutality of Addis Ababa’s forces.
The Telegraph was able to geolocate the video to Debre Abay monastery in central Tigray – about 175 miles west of Tigray’s capital, Mekelle. It has also confirmed that the clip has not been doctored.
Although the timing of the apparent massacre was not possible to ascertain, a pro-Tigrayan blog reported Ethiopian soldiers had killed 100 civilians at the same monastery on Jan 5.
Ethiopian and Eritrean forces are fighting troops loyal to the former Tigrayan regional government
Experts who were sent the footage called on the Ethiopian government to launch an immediate investigation.
“This is disturbing footage to watch and I would expect the Federal Government to allow the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission full access to establish the facts and to ensure that there is proper accountability for these killings” said Dr Alex Vines, Africa Director at Chatham House.
“It is time to move beyond warnings and statements of concern to investigations and legal proceedings to hold perpetrators accountable for mass atrocities,” added Judd Devermont, Africa Director at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington DC.
Ethiopia’s state-run Human Rights Commission (EHRC) confirmed to The Telegraph that they were examining the shorter clip of the massacre that has circulated online.
“The E H R C is aware of the purported video and is working to verify its authenticity,” said the organisation’s spokesman, Aaron Maasho. “We have a team on the ground and will investigate the incident should we confirm its veracity.”
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s press secretary, Billene Seyoum, did not respond to requests for comment.
At one point, he interrogates a survivor of the carnage, who is lying on the floor covered in dirt from head to toe.
“Why were you here in the first place?” the cameraman barks.
“I live in the home over there,” the young man – barely audible – replies in Tigray’s local Tigrigna language, gesturing towards nearby homes. The cameraman responds with a barrage of curses.
At one point, off-screen civilians plead for mercy as soldiers weigh up whether to kill another survivor seen trying to limp away to safety.
Eventually, they agree to leave him.
The video emerged after The Telegraph published dozens of Tigrayan refugees’ accounts of killings, artillery bombardment and looting in Tigray in November.
In recent weeks, human rights organisations and aid workers have issued reports that many in Tigray are now facing starvation, with people already eating leaves to survive or dying in their sleep.
The United Nations Special Adviser on Genocide Prevention said that it has received multiple reports of extra-judicial killings, mass executions, sexual violence, looting and impeded humanitarian access. Earlier this month the body warned that the atrocities in Tigray were likely to get worse.
Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Ethiopian federal forces carried out apparently indiscriminate shelling of urban areas in the Tigray region, including Mekelle, a city of half a million people, in November 2020 in violation of the laws of war.
The Telegraph was sent about two dozen photos, also too graphic to publish, showing the bodies of children blown to pieces by the Ethiopian federal government’s artillery barrage of the city.
In addition to Tigray’s internet and phone services being shut down for the entirety of the war, journalists and aid workers have been barred from the region.
The resulting humanitarian disaster has left 4.5 million people in need of emergency assistance. A coalition of Tigray’s political opposition recently stated that more than 50,000 people might have died since fighting began on November 4th.
In November last year, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, declared victory after his troops’ capture of Mekelle – but sporadic fighting continues.
Despite the lack of communication, journalists and rights groups have been able to confirm that forces on both sides of the war have committed atrocities against civilians.
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