💭 The genocidal war in northern Ethiopia ranks among the deadliest conflicts in recent times. UN investigators have said rape was also used as a weapon of war. With a cease-fire agreed, more and more accounts of atrocities are emerging.
Sexual attacks on women and girls have continued since last year’s peace deal between Ethiopia’s government and Tigray leadership, witnesses told DW.
On the day that Ethiopian government forces reached a truce with rebel Tigrayan forces, 16-year-old Hadas was at home with her mother in a village near the Tigrayan town of Adwa. She heard someone banging on the door and then an Ethiopian soldier demanded to be let in.her name in this report.
Hadas, whose name has been changed to protect her from stigmatization and reprisals, described to DW how her ordeal unfolded on that day, November 2, 2022. It was a day which was supposed to bring peace after two years of conflict that killed approximately 600,000 people, displaced millions and left millions more hungry due to a de facto blockade of the Tigray region.
“He entered the house alone. He carried a stick with him,” Hadas told DW. “There was another soldier with a gun waiting outside. He tried to take me to the bush, but I refused. He told me that he had a knife and a handgun. Then he beat me with the stick.”
She started screaming. Neighbors came and tried to save her, but the soldiers threatened them, Hadas said. So they went back to their houses.
Hadas recalled how she started then to cry.
Nightmares
“He asked me for my age,” she said. “I told him I was 14, but he said ‘You are a liar. Don’t you have breasts?’ Then, my mother started crying.”
He raped her multiple times over the course of several hours. The attack left Hadas bleeding heavily. After he left, she sought treatment at a nearby hospital but because of a lack of supplies, they could only provide basic care, Hadas said.
Hadas still has nightmares about what happened to her that day and needs psychological help. She also wants the man who did this to her brought to justice.
“He should be held accountable,” she insisted. “They should be held accountable not only for me, but for all the other victims of rape.”
Human rights organizations have documented sexual assaults, rape, gang rape and other forms of sexual violence committed by Ethiopian soldiers and their allies, like the Eritrean army and local militia throughout the war.
Doctors told DW that many cases went unreported. And health workers confirmed to DW that rapes and other forms of sexual violence have continued well after the peace deal was signed.
A request for comment sent to Ethiopian government spokesperson Legesse Tulu went unanswered.
Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Meskel denied any wrongdoings by Eritrean soldiers in Tigray in a response to DW.
Medicine shortage
Despite the peace agreement, the hospital can only provide a fraction of the medication required by its patients.
Doctor and director of General Hospital Mekelle, Dr. Filimon Mesfin, told DW that he and his colleagues struggled to provide care during the conflict.
“We don’t have any emergency medication or medication for chronic diseases, like hypertension, diabetes, HIV and psychiatric medications — we are out of all this. We can only provide 10% or 20% of the medication these patients need,” he said.
He described having to turn away most patients. The most he and his colleagues could do was to write a prescription in the hope that the patients could somehow find the necessary medication somewhere else.
Mesfin told DW that medication is urgently needed. “These patients cannot wait. They are dying every day,” he said.
Preventable Deaths
He had hoped that things would change for the better after the peace deal was inked in November, but the aid and deliveries of medical supplies that are reaching his hospital is not enough.
“It’s been almost four months since the agreement has been signed. I would have expected these things to be provided by now,” Mesfin said. “These patients, they cannot wait. They are dying every day, they are having so many complications every day.”
And those who make it to the hospital are just the tip of the iceberg, Dr. Mesfin said, because few can afford the transport costs.
Clinic for rape victims
At the start of the Tigray war, Dr. Mesfin established a unit especially for survivors of sexual violence at his hospital.
Over the two years of the conflict, he and his colleagues treated more than 500 victims.
“There were so many gang rapes, so many foreign materials inserted into their genitalia,” Mesfin said.
Dr Mesfin wrote down accounts of rape to apply for NGO funding, he said, adding that especially those committed by Eritrean forces were particularly agonizing to hear.
“These were not ‘normal’ rapes,” he said. “Without exaggeration, I have literally cried writing some of the stories.”
He said that, as a medical doctor, it was very difficult to see what these people have been through, let alone as a human being.
💭 While it is obvious that a horrendous crime was committed against these women, the west is still beautifying the ugly fascist regime. If a tiny bit of humanity is still prevailing on this planet, one should observe how they reacted to the Ukraine and Ethiopia cases. The hypocrisy is jaw-dropping. But, they will pay dearly for that soon. Actually they are, look at France – it’s burning!
War criminal US secretary of state Antony Blinken was there in Ethiopia two days ago:
💭 To Rehabilitate The Genocider Black Hitler Ahmed, SoS Antony Blinken Departs For Ethiopia
💭 Jill Biden and Antony Blinken Awarded a Transgender & an Ethiopian Muslim with International Women of Courage Award
♀️ Cold and Empathyless Female European Ministers Meet Black Hitler – whose Oromo soldiers brutally raped up to 200.000 Christian Women – and Massacred Over a Million Orthodox Christians.
👉 The Franco-German visit, 12 and 13 January 2023
Mme Catherine Colonna, French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs pay a joint visit to Ethiopia with Mme Annalena Baerbock, the German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs.
☆ Yesterday Nazi Ukraine – 🐺 Today Fascist Oromo of Ethiopia
😲 Just Unbelievable – Reel Mockery! What a wicked world!
“The Eritreans and Tigrayan forces had been fighting for days in the surrounding area. The Tigrayan troops had taken territory and inflicted heavy losses on their foes before abruptly pulling back, leaving civilians exposed to Eritrean troops
Just days before a deal to end the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, soldiers from neighboring Eritrea last fall massacred more than 300 villagers over the course of a week, according to witnesses and victims’ relatives.
Eritrean forces, allied with Ethiopian government troops, had been angered by a recent battlefield defeat and took their revenge in at least 10 villages east of the town of Adwa during the week before the Nov. 2 peace deal, witnesses said, providing accounts horrifying even by the standards of a conflict defined by mass killings of civilians.
The massacres, which have not been previously reported outside the Tigray region, were described in interviews with 22 relatives of the dead, including 15 who witnessed the killings or their immediate aftermath. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The survivors are only now willing to talk: As long as Eritrean troops remained close by, villagers were cowed into silence. Once the soldiers finally pulled back in late January from much of Tigray, witnesses and relatives began to give accounts like the following: A toddler killed with his 7-year-old brother and their mother. Elderly priests shot in their homes. A nursing mother shot dead in front of her young sons. Family members beaten back as they clung to fathers and sons being taken to their deaths.
Residents of the village of Mariam Shewitto who had fled the violence said they returned from the bush to find the doors of their homes swinging open, the floors inside black with blood and the air heavy with the stench of death. Others searched for brothers and husbands among half-eaten corpses on a mountain where scores were executed and left to wild animals.
Satellite images first provided by Planet Labs and reviewed by The Washington Post show that at least 67 structures in the area, mostly in household compounds, were severely damaged during the time that witnesses said the killings happened. Additional imagery provided to The Post by Maxar Technologies shows military vehicles matching witness descriptions of Eritrean vehicles, less than three miles from where the massacres took place.
The agreement between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan rebels brought about a cease fire in a two-year war that had made northern Ethiopia one of the deadliest places in the world. But the deal did not address the status of Eritrean troops. Neither the Ethiopian nor Eritrean government has made any public statement on how Eritrean soldiers who perpetrated mass killings like the most recent one near Adwa could be brought to justice.
Joint investigations by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, whose head is appointed by parliament, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have documented crimes against humanity and war crimes carried out by all sides up until June 2021. The head of the EHRC, Daniel Bekele, said they had identified many other incidents requiring investigation and they would be dealt with under a transitional justice mechanism.
The U.N. International Commission of Human Rights Experts, a separate body, also documented war crimes by all sides, and said the government and its allies may have committed crimes against humanity. In January, the Ethiopian government asked the United States to support its bid to terminate the commission, calling its work “highly politicized.”
Eritrea, a heavily militarized one-party state often dubbed “the North Korea of Africa,” has consistently denied committing war crimes. On Feb. 9, President Isaias Afwerki told a news conference that such allegations were “fantasy … lies and fabrication.” Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel did not respond to requests for comment on the killings near Adwa.
A senior official working with Ethiopia’s Justice Ministry did not specifically address the killings but said it would be seeking public input around the country, including in six places in Tigray, on issues such as accountability and redress for abuses during the war.
War arrives on their doorstep
The civil war erupted in November 2020 when Tigrayan fighters seized federal military bases across Ethiopia’s northern region, claiming an attack by government forces was imminent. The Eritrean military entered the conflict almost immediately to help fight against its longtime enemy, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF had dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades, but its power was curtailed after Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in 2018.
During two brutal years of fighting, the conflict largely passed by many of the tiny villages outside of the northern town of Adwa.
But on the morning of Oct. 25, the war arrived on the doorstep of 92-year-old Gebremariam Niguse in the village of Mariam Shewitto. The Eritreans and Tigrayan forces had been fighting for days in the surrounding area. The Tigrayan troops had taken territory and inflicted heavy losses on their foes before abruptly pulling back, leaving civilians exposed to Eritrean troops, villagers said.
“We were too close to the road,” one of Gebremariam’s relatives recounted bleakly. “We were the first house they came to.”
The Eritreans shot Gebremariam dead in the compound of his home. They also killed his son, two daughters, a son-in-law, daughter-in-law and 15-year-old granddaughter, relatives and witnesses said. The daughter-in-law, Tsige, had her 5-month-old baby on her back when the soldiers arrived, one relative said. The soldiers told her to untie the baby and set it down, then shot her dead in front of her 10-year-old son and his four younger brothers, according to the relative. The boys stayed with the bodies of their parents, too terrified to leave, for a night and a day, the relative said.
The soldiers continued their slaughter deeper into the village, gunning down many people in or near their homes, witnesses and relatives said. The victims included 15-year-old Samson Gebreyohannes Legesse, who sold eggs to save up for the university; an elderly priest who was shot in the chest and discovered in his living room by his son clutching a cross; and another priest killed along with his son and grandson.
The killing in Mariam Shewitto continued for three days as soldiers went house to house, witnesses said. At least 140 people were killed, according to a tally of names provided by survivors. While some men were killed with their families, others were taken, tied up and marched to a mountain called Gobo Soboria, where they were shot dead. When the soldiers came for a man named Hagos Gebrekidan, his 10-year-old son clung to him, crying, until the Eritreans pulled him off and took Hagos away, a witness said.
One man said he was hiding on the mountain, but a group of soldiers found him. He was marched past groups of bodies with their hands bound behind their backs before he broke free and ran. He was shot but survived by tumbling into a ravine and hiding under some bushes, he said. He tried to stanch his bleeding for hours with his shirt while listening to the Eritrean soldiers just above looking for signs he was still alive.
Another man from Mariam Shewitto, in his 60s, said that eight soldiers came into his house and demanded to know where his children were. When he said they were not home, they shot him and looted the house, down to the bedsheets.
“They came to check if I was dead twice, but when they kicked me, I just played dead,” he said. Eventually, he crawled into the forest and met a small girl, begging her for help. Neighbors tore up some women’s clothes to bandage his wound and, lacking medicine, smeared honey on it. For four days, they took him into their house late at night but returned him to the forest before dawn, fearing soldiers would discover him in their home and kill them all, he said.
Satellite imagery collected by Maxar Technologies on Oct. 27 shows at least 25 vehicles — identified by three analysts as military vehicles — either stopped or moving very slowly less than three miles east of Mariam Shewitto. Survivors said Eritrean vehicles were in the area at the time.
Less than two miles farther to the east, largely confined to an area just south of Mariam Shewitto Church, more than 60 structures were severely damaged by Nov. 1, according to a review of satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs.
When the Eritreans finally left Mariam Shewitto on Nov. 1, the villagers emerged from hiding and searched for their loved ones. Survivors found that many of the bodies had been partially eaten by animals. Some bodies still had faces; others had identity cards in their pockets. Others were just limbs. Yohanis Yibalh, a taekwondo enthusiast who drove a motorcycle taxi, was seen being marched away; only part of his body was found, a relative said.
One woman said she lost her husband and 11 other relatives. When she discovered her husband in his distinctive white and gray shirt and coffee-colored trousers it was so late in the afternoon that there wasn’t enough time for a proper burial. She and two other women scraped soil over his body to protect it from hyenas, she said.
She recalled her husband was a kind man who always brought home treats for their three children. When asked for her fondest memory of him, she hesitated, then offered, “Every day was special.”
Horrors on all sides
As Tigray emerges from the war, few places have been left unscathed, and no side is blameless.
Peace deal ending Ethiopia’s Tigray war yet to dispel fear of more atrocities
Residents, rights groups and journalists have documented frequent mass killings of civilians, systematic gang rapes and sexual slavery by Eritrean soldiers.
Ethiopian government troops have also been blamed for repeated war crimes and other atrocities. The Ethiopian government has said it has arrested more than 50 of its own soldiers for crimes that included rape and killing civilians, but the trial records and identities of the soldiers have never been made public. Ethiopian prison guards also killed scores of Tigrayan detainees at a camp near Mirab Abaya in November 2021, and at least seven other locations, according to an exclusive report in The Post, citing witness accounts.
Ethiopian guards massacred scores of Tigrayan prisoners, witnesses say
Tigrayan fighters have also been credibly accused of war crimes, including the rape and murder of Eritrean refugees living in their region and the forcible recruitment of young people into their ranks by jailing relatives if they refused. When Tigrayan forces pushed into the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara, residents reported hundreds of rapes, looting and the killing of civilians. Early in the war, a Tigrayan youth militia in a town called Mai Kadra killed hundreds of mostly Amhara laborers. The TPLF leaders have denied these allegations, saying in particular their group did not carry out killings in Mai Kadra.
While the Ethiopian government has extensively documented crimes committed by Tigrayan fighters, it has not yet conducted such detailed investigations into crimes against Tigrayan civilians.
Hundreds of civilians killed in Tigray, Ethiopia’s rights commission says
Many of those left behind are glad for the November cease fire. But survivors are living surrounded by the dead.
“We want the world to hear what happened,” said a woman who reported losing seven close relatives in the massacre near Adwa. “We want people to know what happened to our families.”
Too many to mourn properly
The week of slaughter by Eritrean soldiers extended well beyond Mariam Shewitto to villages including Geria, Adi Bechi, Adi Chiwa, Mindibdib, Kifdimet and Kumro, according to lists of victims shared with The Post and cross-checked by reporters. Some of the lists were neatly typed; others were scrawled on notepaper or recited over the telephone.
In Kumro, between 35 and 40 villagers were killed, one woman said. “They were hiding, but the old ones stayed in their houses. They thought they would be safe,” she said. Her 11-year-old son found his grandfather’s body, she said. The soldiers had burned the thatch that covered the stone houses, the fodder for their livestock, even the beehives, she said.
In Rahiya, Eritrean troops killed a teacher named Letemichael Fisseha Abebe with her 7-year-old son and another aged 20 months, a relative said. Her husband Dawit Weldu, also a teacher, was killed four days later in nearby Endabagerima along with his brother, a construction worker, the relative said.
A local official in Endabagerima said at least 80 people were killed there. Residents said many were buried at a famous monastery nearby. Some of the dead were families from outside the area that had come to take nearby holy waters, said a resident. No one knew their names.
At least 48 people were killed in the village of Geria, according to lists provided by two survivors. The victims included seven Muslims, many farmers, a 65-year-old mentally ill woman and a priest.
At least 34 of the victims were buried in Abune Libanose Church near Kumro, said a woman who attended a mass ceremony for the dead at the end of November. “The mourning was bitter for us. Some people didn’t come because they were afraid,” she said, her words tumbling out. “We didn’t know who to cry for. Your father, sister, mother, brother?”
Families gathered in groups to exchange condolences, she said. Some mourners had lost so many relatives they weren’t sure which group to stand with.
Individual condolences would have taken hours, even days, so representatives from each group would murmur “Tsinat Yihabkum” — “may God give you strength” — to another family’s group, then move onto the next one.
There were no priests to wave incense or perform the traditional ceremony of fithat on the bodies. She said they were all among the dead or mourning.
– Excellent reporting on a woefully underreported war.
– Important reporting, makes for horrific reading that shocks me to my core. Utterly barbaric.
– Important reporting to recognize the horror of war and invasion across the world and not just in the Steppes at the Black Sea. All of these atrocities are crimes against humanity. The International community must respond with commensurate outrage against an attack on Ethiopia as it does against an attack on Ukraine.
– We only care about the white Christians of Ukraine.
– There certainly is bias in the relatively sparse reporting of wars in Africa between the native peoples there, and the war in Ukraine. So I appreciate this reporting.
– Maybe if WP and other media made mention of this war and atrocities as much as they do what’s happening in Ukraine some of the violence could have been prevented. It’s so obvious to see what others deny exists. Our prayers to those left behind.
– My heart goes out to these victims. Can’t their killers be tried?
– Very heartbreaking. Children who had nothing to do with the conflict being killed. There has been almost no reporting on the war there last year. The loss there is great yet nobody without a connection to the people seem to care.
– And the Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed Ali still has his Nobel Peace Prize? Jesus Wept!
– For two years I have followed the sparse reporting here on the civil war in Ethiopia. Nearly every article has comments from people purporting to be Ethiopian and calling for the genocide of ethnic minorities like those in Tigray.
It’s disgusting. I understand this is humanity at its worst, but the moderation needs to be stepped up. These articles do not attract thousands of comments.
– This is why no one pays attentions to wars in Africa. Ethiopia used to be a great place, one of the founders of the Christian Church, and with one of the world’s oldest alphabets. Now it’s just Rwanda. Even Russians are not going door-to-door killing Ukrainians.
– What the press is not saying…Ethiopia was historically a Christian nation.
The Muslims eventually took over, militarily supported by Muslim nations like Turkey. I’m really not sure the two faiths will ever peacefully get along.
– I visited Ethiopia more than twelve years ago. A fascinating country with a lot of youth and not enough employment possibilities. The northwestern, mountainous region of the Tigrayans had for centuries prevailed politically and culturally. It holds the lion’s share of the holy sites of Ethiopian Christianity that dates from the earliest centuries of the faith, even earlier than the Christianization of Germanic Europe and of Scandinavia. The numerical growth of other sectors of Ethiopia have ultimately eroded the political near monopoly of the Tigrayan, who are Semitic, whilst the rest of the huge country is racially ‘negro’, though everybody is coloured. The Tigrayan refused to fully accept the rule of national leaders not of their sort, the loss of their region’s prestige. There is a lot of politics, and financial reasons for the civil war, also the Christian and Moslem divide. Wonderful the cuisine of Ethiopia, wonderful people I met there.
– Showing that “never again” was forgotten before the ink dried. shame on all our governments for ignoring human rights to make a buck.
– There but for the Grace of God. May the victims rest in peace and may these nations/groups stop the horrors.
🔥 World War III | For the past 500 years, Anti-Christ Turkey is Bombing The World’s Most Ancient Christian Nations: Armenia & Ethiopia
How The Fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia used a Turkish drone ina strike that killed nearly 60 civilians
On 7 January 2022 (Orthodox Christmas), shortly after midnight,Turkish Drones carried out an airstrike on a camp for internally displaced people in the town of Dedebit, in the Tieggrai Region of Ethiopia. Hundreds of hungry people made homeless by the war in Ethiopia — mostly women, children and elderly men — slept on a cramped floor in an empty school with a tin roof.
With a flash in the dark, the building and the grounds around it were struck by drone-delivered bombs, killing at least 59 people and gravely injuring dozens more, according to an aid worker whose organization worked at the camp for internally displaced people in Dedebit and analyses of satellite images of the impact sites. He and other aid workers at the camp, located in the northern Ethiopian region of Tieggrai, were adamant: The people killed and wounded were civilians fleeing the war, not combatants in it.
The Washington Post analyzed photos of shrapnel and satellite imagery and cross-referenced video of the aftermath to confirm that Turkish-made precision-guided munitions were used in the strike, which took place in the early hours of Jan. 7. The Ethiopian military is the only party in the conflict known to have access to armed drones.
The use of a precision-guided weapon in the strike in Dedebit raises questions about the Ethiopian government’s targets, which internal documents at aid organizations say have hit not just this camp, but also other locations far from the battlefield, including a flour mill, a public bus, farms, hotels and busy markets.
Those documents, which were shared with The Washington Post, say more than 300 civilians have been killed by drone and airstrikes since last September, including more than 100 since the start of this year. Those deaths represent a fraction of the thousands who are estimated to have died in the conflict and more than 4 million others, in Tieggrai and neighboring regions, who face a humanitarian crisis.
Expert witnesses
Wim Zwijnenburg, project leader of humanitarian disarmament at PAX, which identified the MAM-L weapon, said Turkey could not wash its hands of the matter.
“There is a very strong case to make that these drones should never have been exported at all,” he said, noting that Turkey is a signatory to the U.N.’s arms trade treaty, which stipulates a risk assessment should be done on the potential of human harm before a sale is carried out. (While Turkey signed the pact in 2013, it has not ratified it.)
Zwijnenburg also stressed the need for information on the potential involvement of Turkish personnel in the deployment of the weapons.
“Because this is technology that requires a lot of maintenance and piloting, Turkey could be made directly responsible if there is a consistent pattern of drone strikes used against civilians and Turkish crew is on the ground doing maintenance on the drones,” he said.
🔥 Ottoman-Portuguese War in Africa – Ethiopian–Adal /Turkish War
😈 The evil Oromo regime of Ethiopia and its TPLF makers + Amharas (Oromaras) are attempting to steal the attention of the public from the Tigray genocide – and Shrug off Responsibility and pin poor Performance and Decision Making on other issues like the Orthodox Church row.
During the two-year conflict in northern Ethiopia the systematic rape of Tigrayan women by Ethiopian soldiers, as well as their allies from neighbouring Eritrea and militia groups, has been documented by the United Nations, human rights organisations and journalists.
The Fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia warned on Wednesday that efforts by UN-backed investigators to probe abuses committed during the war in the country’s north could “undermine” the progress of a peace agreement signed last year.
The Fascist oromo regime of Ethiopia and its evil makers, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, TPLF inked a peace deal in South Africa in November to end the two-year Tigray war, which has killed untold numbers of people and unleashed a humanitarian crisis.
In its first report published in September last year, the UN-backed International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia said it had found evidence of violations by all sides that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ethiopia’s government rejected the report and has embarked on a diplomatic offensive to win international support for its bid to stop the commission from continuing its work.
On Wednesday, Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen said the commission “could undermine the AU-led peace process & the implementation of the Pretoria Peace Agreement with inflammatory rhetoric”, referring to the African Union, which mediated the negotiations.
“It could also undermine the efforts of national institutions,” he told an AU ministerial session ahead of the pan-African bloc’s summit in Addis Ababa this weekend, the foreign ministry said on Twitter.
The three-member commission, which was created by the UN Human Rights Council, has urged the Ethiopian government, its ally Eritrea and the TPLF to investigate and bring all perpetrators of abuses to justice.
Atrocities
At a rare press conference last week, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said allegations of rights abuses by his forces in Ethiopia’s Tigray region amounted to “fantasy”.
“This is a fantasy in the minds of those who are… in this factory I call a factory of fabricating misinformation,” Isaias said during a visit to Kenya, deflecting questions about the presence of Eritrean troops in Ethiopia.
Eritrea’s army supported Ethiopian forces during the war and has been accused by the United States and rights groups of some of the conflict’s worst atrocities.
Asmara was not a party to the peace agreement and its troops remain in parts of Tigray, according to residents who accuse the soldiers of murder, rape and looting.
Under the terms of the peace deal, the TPLF agreed to disarm in return for the restoration of access to Tigray, which was largely cut off from the outside world during the war.
During the two-year conflict in northern Ethiopia the systematic rape of Tigrayan women by Ethiopian soldiers, as well as their allies from neighbouring Eritrea and militia groups, has been documented by the United Nations, human rights organisations and journalists.
There was hope that after the peace agreement was signed in November, the assaults on civilians would stop.
Women, health workers and aid organisations have told the BBC that they did not.
I spoke to Letay on a crackly phone line – journalists are not being given government permission to travel to Tigray.
“It happened to me twice. What have I done wrong? It seemed like I wished for it.”
Letay says she had been raped before, in January 2021, by two Eritrean soldiers – a third one refused.
“The two of them did what they wanted before asking the third one to do the same, except he said no. He said: ‘What will I do with her? She is already a corpse lying around.'”
After the first time she was raped, Letay sought medical and psychological help, joining a women’s support group for survivors. On the day of the peace deal Letay had rushed out to help a young girl who had also been raped before she was assaulted too.
It is difficult to know the true number of sexual assaults committed during the war.
Victims are often scared to speak out while telecommunications had been cut off during the fighting.
According to data from the official Tigray Health Bureau in November and December 2022 – after the peace deal was signed – 852 cases were reported in centres set up to help survivors.
Human rights workers and aid organisations operating in Tigray have also continued to document cases of sexual violence.
“Sexual violence is a violation of the agreement,” says Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. “One of the issues we have been raising is the importance of the backers of the agreement to ensure that they are speaking out when there are violations”.
The organisation continues to call for independent investigators and journalists to gain access to northern Ethiopia.
“We are very concerned by the efforts of the Ethiopian government to try to end and undermine the work of the international commission of human rights experts of Ethiopia, which was established by the Human Rights Commission in Geneva,” she adds.
Ms Bader says investigations will be crucial if survivors are to get justice and for any reconciliation process.
“I never expected to be assaulted after the peace agreement,” says Hilina.
The mother of three had already fled her home in Humera to the town of Shirao where she worked as a street vendor selling maize.
She says on 16 November, she was late going home when two Eritrean troops stopped her for breaking the curfew. She told them she had no ID, and they took her to an empty house.
Hilina says she was raped the whole night before they let her go in the morning. She has since had an abortion, saying she would rather die than give birth to a child from rape.
According to aid workers the BBC spoke to there are Eritrean troops close to Shiraro.
The peace deal requires them to leave Tigray and though they have pulled out of major cities and towns, they maintain a presence in areas close to their border with Tigray.
Shashu, an 80-year-old woman, cannot hold back her tears as we speak to her – again on a crackly phone line. We ask if she wants to continue with the interview and she agrees.
Like Letay, Shashu says she has been raped twice in this war – before and after the peace deal.
She says men assaulted her so badly in November that she now cannot control her urine and stool.
“Two, three people on one human, I was completely traumatised. It’s as if there is nothing good on my body any more.”
Access to the region of six million people remains restricted, and it is impossible to verify independently the situation on the ground.
The genocidal war erupted in on November 4th , 2020 after war criminal Oromo Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, sent his Oromo Eritrean, Amhara, Somali, Emirati, Irani and Turkish Armies into Tigray.
💭 After they’ve accomplished their evil plan to exterminate over a million Axumite Christians, the genociders congratulate each other with a celebratory hug.
☪ Islamic Jihadists in ✞ Christian Axum
🛑 Population Engineering, Ethnic Cleansing, & Mass Deportations
Where are all the hundreds of thousands of Muslim-Oromo „Prisoners of war„ who were kept in Mekelle? Did they send them to the countryside of Tigray to replace the massacred Christians?
🔥 787 Days of #TigrayGenocide
⚠️800,000+ Killed
⚠️120,000+ Raped
⚠️5.6+ Mil. Starved
⚠️2.2+ Mil. Uprooted
After the so-called “Pretoria Peace agreement” between the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia and TPLF had been signed two months ago, evils Abiy Ahmed Ali and Debretsion Gebremikael had allowed the barbaric soldiers of Isaias Afewerki’s Eritrea to massacre more than 3000 Tigrayan civilians in a single week in the neighborhoods of Enda Mariam Shewito and Endabagerima, Adwa.
Here are some of the civilian victim names, who were identified so far, let’s pay attention to their names, let’s remember them; all CHRISTIANS:
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 