🔥 Three years into the 21st Century’s most brutal genocidal war in Ethiopia, but the ICC remained silent on the tragic and devastating situation in Ethiopia.
😈 The evil monsters Abiy Ahmed Ali and Isaias Afewerki (Abdullah Hassan) have massacred over a million Orthodox Christians, and have allowed up to 200.000 Women to be raped.
The response to the situation in Ukraine has shown what the ICC is capable of.
It shows that the ICC’s budgetary excuses for inaction on Ethiopia, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Nigeria and others can no longer be maintained.
We now call on the Office of the Prosecutor, and on states parties, to ensure that all investigations receive the same standard of treatment, so that all victims of international crimes have equal access to justice.
Criminal complaints against high-profile Western politicians: CIA agents involved in the rendition of terror suspects as well as former US Presidents, evils like Henry Alfred Kissinger, Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński etc. should be filed by African and Asian countries.
💭 I Expect a Charge Posthumously For:
– Ronald Reagen over the raid on Grenada (1983)
– George Bush sen. for the raid on Liberia (1990)
– Bill Clinton for the invasion and bombing of Serbia (1999)
– George W. Bush for the raid on Afghanistan (2001)
– George W. Bush for the invasion of Iraq (2003)
– Tony Blair for Iraq war crimes (1 million dead) (2003)
– Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy for committing war crimes in Libya (2011)
– Donald Trump for giving a green light to the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia, to the brutal regime of Eritrea, to the United Arab Emirates, to Turkey to open a genocidal war against Orthodox Christians of Northern Ethiopia. (US Presidential election day, 4 November 2020 till today)
– Abiy Ahmed Ali of Ethiopia & Isa Afewerki (Abdullah Hassan) of Eritrea and Debretsion of TPLF for massacring and starving to death over a million Orthodox Christians of Northern Ethiopia.
😈 Evil Debretsion of TPLF was replaced this week with another criminal called Getachew Reda by the CIA / Blinken, who were there in Addis Ababa this week to give the usual orderes. They have been doing it since they killed the great ChristianEmperor Yohaness lV of Ethiopia in 1889 and replaced with an evil Anti-Christian Oromo Emperor Menelik II, who also massacred over a million Christians of Ethiopia. The next evil Oromo leaders like Emperor Haile Selasie and Mengistu Hailemariam did the evil.
So, Menelik II , Haile Selassie, Mengistu and Abiy Ahmed have massacred and starved to death altogether over 60 million Orthodox Christians of Northern Ethiopia. This is a fact now!
But now, no cheap replacement will deceive The Almighty Egziabher God. No, more! No One Escapes God’s Judgment.
❖❖❖[Proverbs 22:8]❖❖❖
Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail.
👉 Egypt 9 June 2018
The traitor in-chief in front of Egypt president Abdiaziz Sisi and international media, just three months after he assumed the power, that he will work for the interest of Ethiopia’s historical enemies (Arab Muslims), Egypt, Arabia and Turkey.
How on earth have Ethiopians allowed the evvvil Oromo warlord Abiy Ahmed Ali responsible for countless horrendous crimes and atrocities happen to remain in power to this day.?
😈 But they will never think of issuing an arrest warrant against the brutal fascist Oromo Abiy Ahmed Ali and Eritrea’s Isa Afqorki (Abdullah Hasan) who together with their Western, Arab, Turkish and Iranian brothers massacred more than a million Orthodox Christians of Northern Ethiopia. The reason is that the two servants of Waqeyo-Allah-Lucifer are their brothers in arms who will finish off ancient orthodox Christians and reduce the number of Africans for them.
Note that the court only issues arrest warrants against ex-Yugoslav/Serbian Orthodox Christians and Africans who are not members of their luciferian club. This world is unjust, evil and dark!
😈 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 Genocider Oromo-Jihadist PM of Ethiopia Who Masscared Over a Million Orthodox Christians is Now in the USA
⚖ The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in the abduction of children from Ukraine.
Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation,” the court said in a statement.
It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation on similar allegations.
😈 But they will never think of issuing an arrest warrant against the brutal fascist Oromo Abiy Ahmed Ali and Eritrea’s Isa Afqorki (Abdullah Hasan) who together with their Western, Arab, Turkish and Iranian brothers massacred more than a million Orthodox Christians of Northern Ethiopia. The reason is that the two servants of Waqeyo-Allah-Lucifer are their brothers in arms who will finish off ancient orthodox Christians and reduce the number of Africans for them.
Note that the court only issues arrest warrants against ex-Yugoslav/Serbian Orthodox Christians and Africans who are not members of their luciferian club. This world is unjust, evil and dark!
❖❖❖[Proverbs 22:8]❖❖❖
Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail.
😈 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 Genocider Oromo-Jihadist PM of Ethiopia Who Masscared Over a Million Orthodox Christians is Now in the USA
💭 My Note: Please get rid of that Luciferian/ Chinese Flag immediately / እባካችሁ ያን የሉሲፈራሪያኑን / የቻይናን ባንዲራ ባፋጣኝ አስወግዱት!
💭 Professor Jan Nyssen’s Speech at the “Save Tigray” demonstration in Brussels, 14 November 2022
👉 Prof. Jan Nyssen, Ghent University, Belgium
Good day to all!
All of us are very sad. We haven’t heard from our friends and relatives in Tigray for one or two years. We all know people who have died before their age. And we are alone: besides some smaller countries, NGOs and individuals, the international community has let Tigray down. Among the smaller countries that have understood the suffering of Tigray, there is Ireland. Ethiopia has direly punished them for that. But why is Ireland taking such a principled attitude? In my understanding, that is because, just like Tigray, Ireland knows what famine is. Just like Tigray, Ireland knows what it is to have an imperial neighbor. Ireland was living on the side of imperial Britain, Tigray is living on the side of imperial Ethiopia.
We are two weeks after the Pretoria agreements, and the humanitarian aid has not arrived – humanitarian aid should be there in any case, it should not even have been part of the peace negotiations.
We have calculated that 5 to 10% of the Tigray civilians have died due to massacres and starvation; to that you may add the numerous young fighters who took up weapons not to defend a party but to defend their families, their mothers and sisters from the killer armies.
Yesterday (13 November 2022), the Ethiopian chief of staff, Berhanu Jula said that “Tigray has been sufficiently punished”. What does that mean “Tigray has been sufficiently punished”? Let it sink in: “Tigray has been sufficiently punished”! So this was indeed a war against Tigray and not a war against TPLF! We have proven since the beginning that this is a war against Tigray, and not just a war to capture 128 individuals, or so, as Abiy claimed.
Abiy Ahmed is the main responsible, he has invited the Amhara fanos and Isayas. I listed their programme on my poster boards. But then, so many people have been killed, so many war crimes. The whole diplomatic world knows it, they express concerns after concerns but they do not take action. Are our governments really that naïve?
I think that they are more concerned with big business than with nitty gritty things like humanity and war crimes. At global scale we have the IMF which was just waiting for the Pretoria paperwork to give new loans to the Ethiopian government. But even here at the scale of Belgium: one of our Belgian MPs, Samuel Cogolati, has proposed to sanction the Ethiopian regime by curtailing the landing rights for Ethiopian Airlines. It would be a sanction that does not hurt the poorest of the poor in Ethiopia, because they cannot afford international air travel anyway. But what do we hear then as feedback from our government circles? “Oh, but we should not be tough on Ethiopia, otherwise they will shift their cargo flights from Liège in Belgium to Maastricht in The Netherlands; and we’ll lose income”… That’s how far the complicity is going, that is Realpolitik.
Regardless of complicity, from a moral point of view, we are convinced that Abiy should go to the ICC. If Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan has been sent to the ICC for the Darfur genocide -rightly so- then why should Abiy not go to the ICC for the Tigray genocide? We have to continue insisting on that. We are working now to prepare a comparative table between the Darfur genocide and the Tigray genocide. Both from the point of view of the theoretical aspects, and the numbers of victims.
Now, back to Berhanu Jula’s “Tigray has been sufficiently punished”. The second message that we hear would then be “OK now we are going to stop punishing Tigray”. Can we believe that? Can we believe that now, all of a sudden, they are going to stop punishing Tigray, like they say? You don’t trust them. I don’t trust them. The people in Tigray don’t trust them. We have seen the imagery of the Mehabere Dego massacre. That massacre was filmed, but for instance I know three sites around my town of Hagere Selam where similar massacres took place, but that were not filmed, yet the massacres took place in the same way. So the people know very well what ENDF is, they cannot trust it. There are no international observers; it should be full with UN people to see what is going on.
I have discussed with colleagues about the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Did you know that in 1993, there were the Arusha accords between both warring parties. But the main wave of the [Rwandan] genocide came after the agreement. So, better to be aware, it is not because there is an agreement that the genocide will stop. If something goes wrong, it can all run bad again. There are no mechanisms to enforce this agreement.
So, we are here, we feel like we are left alone. But we must continue to raise awareness, to talk to politicians. I am also urging you very much to reach out to the general public. You would be surprised by the number of people in Belgium, but also in the surrounding countries who still don’t know that there is a war in Tigray. We have to integrate with the fellow students, with the community where you are living and to bring them to events like this.
I also want to say: forget about party politics. It is Tigray as a whole that is being martyred. You and I should act in defense of Tigray. Last but not least, I wish to thank you for being the advocates of your people, and, let’s continue the struggle.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 20, 2021
Who has stood trial, or will stand trial, for the appalling abuses committed against the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Yazidi in Iraq, or the people of Tigray in Ethiopia? How many mass murderers are walking free in Rwanda, or Syria?
As the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials approaches, Ilse Cohn’s grandson calls for international law to ensure those committing atrocities today face retribution.
The man who ordered the murder of my grandmother never stood trial for the crime. Nor did he stand trial for any of the other 137,000 murders he ordered during five short months in 1941.
I know who he was. His name was Karl Jäger, and he was the commander of a Nazi execution squad in Lithuania, where my 44-year-old grandmother had been deported from her home town in Germany. He is just one of several hundred thousand men and women who were never brought to justice for the part they played in the Nazi holocaust. It’s estimated that up to a million people were directly or indirectly involved in holocaust atrocities, yet only a tiny fraction – perhaps no more than 1% – were ever prosecuted.
Next month marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal at which 24 of the most senior Nazi leaders stood trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was the first such trial in history, described at the time as “a shining light for justice”.
A dozen other trials followed – of bankers, lawyers, doctors and others – but according to Mary Fulbrook, professor of German history at University College London, once the Nuremberg process was over, the West Germans prosecuted only 6,000 people for their part in Nazi crimes, of whom some 4,000 were convicted.
Most holocaust perpetrators, such as Jäger, a music-loving SS colonel who ordered the murder of my grandmother and so many others, simply melted back into their community. Jäger, for example, led a quiet, inconspicuous life as a farmer in the German town of Waldkirch, not far from the borders with France and Switzerland, until he was finally arrested in 1959. He hanged himself in his prison cell with a length of electric cable before he could be brought to trial.
So why was Nuremberg, and the handful of other war crimes trials that followed, the exception rather than the rule?
First, because by 1945, large parts of Germany were a smouldering ruin. Millions of people were homeless, so the emphasis was primarily on reconstruction. And who was available to take charge in the “new Germany” if not the very same officials (supposedly de-Nazified) who had served under the Nazis?
Second, because with the start of the cold war and fears of Soviet domination in Europe, both the US and Britain believed that confronting the Soviet threat was more important than hunting down thousands of Nazis. Justice would have to take a back seat.
None of which excuses why, even today, so few perpetrators of the most egregious crimes against humanity are pursued and convicted. It’s true that Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić are both serving long prison sentences for their role in the atrocities of the war in Bosnia. The former Liberian president Charles Taylor is incarcerated after being convicted of what the judge at his trial in The Hague called ‘some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded human history’, and the former president of Chad, Hissène Habré, died of Covid-19 last month while serving a life sentence for human rights abuses.
But, like Nuremberg, they are the exceptions. Who has stood trial, or will stand trial, for the appalling abuses committed against the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Yazidi in Iraq, or the people of Tigray in Ethiopia? How many mass murderers are walking free in Rwanda, or Syria?
The anniversary of the Nuremberg verdicts offers an opportunity to revisit the debate over war crimes prosecutions, both past and future. It also marks the October release of a major new documentary film called Getting Away With Murder(s) which shines a spotlight on some of the thousands of unpunished Nazi war criminals who escaped after 1945 and lived the rest of their lives undisturbed, some of them in Britain.
Full disclosure: after the film’s director, David Wilkinson, read an article I wrote in the Observer three years ago, he invited me to appear in the film, visiting the site of my grandmother’s death.)
Seventy-five years after Nuremberg, at a time when war crimes are still being committed with shameful alacrity, it is more important than ever to re-emphasise the need to collect evidence when such crimes are committed, and to reaffirm the principle that they should never go unpunished.
History matters. We can learn from past mistakes, which is why in Germany, under the doctrine of “universal jurisdiction”, a Syrian doctor is now on trial charged with crimes against humanity for torturing people in military hospitals. In the Netherlands, another Syrian was sentenced last July to 20 years in prison, accused of being a member of the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate. In Sweden, a former Iranian deputy public prosecutor is currently on trial over the mass execution and torture of prisoners in the 1980s.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 1, 2021
“I never saw hell before, but now I have.”
The only roads open in besieged Tigray, a semi-autonomous federal state in northern Ethiopia, lead to endless tales of darkness. Most roads north and south from Tigray’s capital of Mekele have been closed to journalists and humanitarian aid. Burnt-out tanks and looted ambulances stripped of engines and wheels line the road west. Patches of towering eucalyptus trees give way to rocky, untilled fields—and checkpoint after checkpoint manned by Ethiopian troops. Soldiers from neighboring Eritrea saunter casually through villages, marking their presence.
Almost everyone in the region has a story to share, but few will show their faces on camera. Fear is everywhere.
Araya Gebretekle had six sons. Four of them were executed while harvesting millet in their fields on the outskirts of the town of Abiy Addi in west Tigray. Araya says Ethiopian soldiers approached five of his sons with their guns raised; as his children begged for their lives in the fields—explaining they were simply farmers—a female soldier ordered them dead. They pleaded for the troops to spare one of the brothers in order to help their elderly father work the fields. The soldiers let the youngest—a 15-year-old—go free. He lived to recount the story to his parents. Now, says Araya, “my wife is staying at home always crying. I haven’t left the house until today, and every night I dream of them.… There were six sons. I asked the oldest one to be there, too, but thank God he refused.”
Kesanet Gebremichael wails as nurses try to change the bandages and clean the wounds on her charred flesh at Ayder Hospital in the regional capital Mekele. The 13-year-old was inside her home in the village of Ahferom, near Aksum, when it was hit by long-range artillery. “My house was destroyed in the fire,” says her mother, Genet Asmelash. “My child was inside.” The girl suffered burns on more than 40 percent of her body.
Senayit was raped by soldiers on two separate occasions—in her home in Edagahamus, and as she tried to flee to Mekele with her 12-year-old son. (The names of the rape victims mentioned in this story are pseudonyms.) The second time, she was pulled from a minibus, drugged, and brought to a military base, where she was tied to a tree and sexually assaulted repeatedly over the course of 10 days. She fell in and out of consciousness from the pain, exhaustion, and trauma. At one point, she awoke to a horrifying sight: Her son, along with a woman and her new baby, were all dead at her feet. “I saw my son with blood from his neck,” she says. “I saw only his neck was bleeding. He was dead.” Senayit crumpled into her tears, her fists clenched against her face, and howled a visceral cry of pain and sadness, unable to stop weeping. “I never buried him,” she screamed, between sobs. “I never buried him.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 29, 2021
The Tigrayan people should not, must not, wait for one century, one year or even one more day for the world to acknowledge their plight and rescue them from obliteration.
On 26 May 2021, US President Joe Biden issued a bold statement on the raging crisis in Ethiopia, warning of escalating violence and the hardening of regional and ethnic divisions, including the “large-scale human rights abuses” and “widespread sexual violence” taking place in Tigray. But he stopped short of calling the appalling atrocities in Tigray by their true name: genocide.
Just one month earlier, Biden had righted an historic wrong by pronouncing the attempted extermination of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 to have been a “genocide.” The Armenians had waited 106 years for this rhetorical symbol of justice. The Nazis’ attempt to eradicate the Jewish people was not recognised until it was too late to do anything about it. Rwandans had to wait four full years to hear President Bill Clinton express “deep regret” that he had not declared the massacre in 1994 of a million of their compatriots a genocide. Biden’s condemnation sends a message of solidarity to Ethiopians everywhere and to the people of Tigray in particular. But it also risks igniting false hopes that the international community will now take decisive action to prevent the erasure of an entire nation.
For almost seven months now, the armies of Ethiopia and Eritrea, aided and abetted by extremist militias from the neighbouring Amhara ethnic group, have been engaged in a well-planned, deliberate and systematic genocide of the Tigrayan people. The government in Addis Ababa claims that the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) started the fighting with a surprise attack on a military garrison and that they must be brought to justice. The TPLF claims that a pre-emptive strike was necessary to disrupt the government’s pre-meditated war plans. But it no longer matters who fired the first shot or whether the ossified TPLF leadership should have anticipated that armed conflict could be used to justify their people’s extermination. Between November 2020 and March 2021, the University of Ghent, in Belgium, documented more than 150 massacres across Tigray, including victims as young as two years old and as old as 93; the killing has continued unabated.
Despite systematic government attempts to restrict humanitarian access and impose a media blackout, some courageous journalists, aid workers and activists have succeeded in reporting these atrocities. But most of Tigray remains inaccessible to outsiders and communications are severely restricted, so the vast majority of these crimes remain unknown and undocumented. As a medical doctor from Tigray who served in the regional capital of Mekelle during the first four months of the genocide before fleeing my country one month ago, I have watched this violence unfolding with my own eyes and I bear both personal and professional witness.
Mass murder is not enough for the masterminds of the atrocities in Tigray, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. Their armed forces and allied militias seek to exterminate the Tigrayan people by inducing mass starvation; they are burning crops and seeds, cutting trees, destroying agricultural implements, killing animals, and destroying small dams and irrigation canals, to cripple the agricultural sector. The troops grind any remaining foodstuff they find into the dirt or manure with their boots to make it inedible. In late May, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock estimated that “over 90% of the harvest was lost due to looting, burning, or other destruction, and that 80% of the livestock in the region were looted or slaughtered.”
I have watched this violence unfolding with my own eyes and I bear both personal and professional witness.
Reports by UN agencies and Tigray’s interim administration assert that more than 2.3 million people in the region are internally displaced, and 5.2 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. According to UNICEF, the number of severely malnourished children in Tigray has gone up nearly 90 per cent in the past week. Uncounted numbers of people have already died of hunger. But the Ethiopian government, the Eritrean Army, and Amhara forces are determined to block humanitarian efforts, impeding and obstructing access by aid agencies. At least eight aid workers have been killed in the last six months.
The coordinated ethnic cleansing by Ethiopia and Eritrean troops in collaboration with Amhara militias also involves erasing all traces of Tigrayan identity, a heritage that dates back to the Axumite kingdom of the 2nd Century CE. To this end, they have decreed the unrestricted use of mass rape, sexual slavery, and the traumatic sterilisation of Tigrayan women as instruments of war. As a doctor I have seen the unspeakable suffering of the victims of such sexual violence, including gratuitous mutilation and torture.
But these war crimes have a much broader and equally sinister strategic purpose: the total annihilation of Tigrayans as a people. According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, some 1.2 million inhabitants of Western Tigray have been driven from their homes, many of them killed or incarcerated in concentration camps. The occupying authorities have officially annexed these territories and encouraged ethnic Amharas from Gojjam and Gonder regions to claim the lands, properties and assets abandoned by their rightful Tigrayan owners. While men are killed or interned, Tigrayan women and children under seven are forced to take Amhara identity if they wish to remain in their homes. Women are also forced to serve as concubines for Amhara militia so that they no longer bear children of Tigrayan descent. National census exercises in 1978 and 1994 indicated that the inhabitants of these zones were overwhelmingly Tigrigna speakers. If ethnic cleansing continues at this rate, Tigrayans could become a minority in their homeland before the end of this year.
The coordinated ethnic cleansing by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops in collaboration with Amhara militias also involves erasing all traces of Tigrayan identity.
Tigray’s unique contribution to Ethiopia’s national heritage is also being methodically obliterated. The ancient monasteries of Debredamo, Dengolat St Mary, and the Al Nejashi Mosque – possibly the oldest in Africa – have all been vandalised. Aksum, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been razed and pillaged by Eritrean and Ethiopian troops.
The progress of this genocidal campaign beyond Tigray is hard to assess, but – as the Associated Press reported on 29 April – there is no question that Tigrayans throughout Ethiopia, and even beyond its borders, have been subjected to profiling, arbitrary arrest and detention, travel restrictions, dismissal from government posts and transfer to concentration camps. Tens of thousands of Tigrayan members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force have also been disarmed and detained on the grounds that they might pose some undefined security threat. Some have refused orders to return to Ethiopia from peacekeeping missions abroad for fear of persecution.
In addition to President Biden’s statement, the United States government and the European Union have both called for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Eritrean and Amhara forces from Tigray, and have announced plans to impose travel restrictions on Ethiopian and Eritrean officials responsible for these atrocities, with the possibility of further sanctions to follow.
These are welcome measures, but they are in no way commensurate with the scale of the crimes being committed against the people of Tigray, the depth of human suffering or the depravity of men who seek to exterminate a nation of more than 6 million people.
If ethnic cleansing continues at this rate, Tigrayans could become a minority in their homeland before the end of this year.
Genocides, like other core international crimes, do not simply “happen” or “unfold”: they are premeditated, prepared, and perpetrated by individual leaders and their followers. The killers seek to dehumanise and displace the blame onto their victims, not only to make it easier for their forces to kill, but also to confound the international community, create confusion and buy time for the long, laborious work of mass murder.
As a medical professional, as a witness, and as a husband, father, brother, and son, I cannot accept that the dead, the maimed and the destitute survivors in Tigray be stripped of their humanity. I have tended to their horrifying wounds, shared their suffering, and buried their dead. Some sympathetic observers have encouraged me to publicly describe their injuries in detail so as to elicit global revulsion, but I believe that to do so would be a second desecration of these victims. No people, whatever the alleged sins of their erstwhile political masters, should ever have to face extermination like vermin or pests at the hands of their own government.
The Tigrayan people should not, must not, wait for one century, one year or even one more day for the world to acknowledge their plight and rescue them from obliteration. President Biden and other world leaders have a moral and legal duty to call this evil in Tigray by its true name, genocide, and to identify and prosecute those ultimately responsible for this most heinous of crimes – Abiy Ahmed and Isaias Afwerki. And then to act with ruthless efficiency and determination to end the genocide.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 29, 2021
Although gender-based violence is largely underreported, at least 22,500 survivors of sexual violence in Tigray are estimated to seek clinical management of rape services. (UNFPA, 2021).
The perpetrators allegedly are Eritrean troops (33%), Ethiopian ENDF (44%), both Eritrean and ENDF (6%), and Amhara militia (6%). (Insecurity Insight, 30 March 2021)
This presentation was made at the Conference “Voices From Tigray: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Against Women In Tigray”, organized by European External Programme With Africa (EEPA) on May 25th, 2021.
By Reinhard Jacobsen
The scale and brutality of crimes of conflict-related sexual violence against women committed in Tigray have drawn widespread condemnation from around the world.
It was no surprise that the Europe External Programme with Africa (EEPA) focussed on that theme in the Webinar organised on May 25. EEPA is a Belgium-based centre of expertise with in-depth knowledge, publications, and networks, specialised in issues of peacebuilding, refugee protection, and resilience in the Horn of Africa.
The importance of the Webinar also lies in the fact that there is massive underreporting of sexual violence against women. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimated in April that 22,500 women would require support as a consequence of conflict-related sexual violence.
The shame and fear associated with the violence and perpetrators acting with impunity and the destruction of local administration and hospitals compound the problem of underreporting. In fact, whatever little is being reported is only the tip of the iceberg.
Many have described conflict-related sexual violence as a weapon of war used against the civilian population, and committed, in part, with genocidal intent.
The perpetrators are said to be the Eritrean troops with a heavy presence in Tigray under the so-called National Service, a form of nation-wide indefinite slavery, which the UN Special Commission of Inquiry has defined as crimes against humanity.
The Commission has recommended the practice to be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. The other perpetrators mentioned are the Amhara and Ethiopian National Defence.
After months of denial, Nobel laureate Prime Minister Abiy has meanwhile admitted that Eritrean troops as present and identified these as potential perpetrators of sexual violence against Tigrayan women and girls.
The Webinar meeting was chaired by Julia Duncan-Cassell, former Minister of Gender in Liberia. In her concluding remarks, she asked all African women in leadership to step up their voice to stop the harrowing perpetration of rape as a weapon of war in Tigray.
Duncan-Cassell told the Tigray women who gave their testimony in the webinar that African women were sharing their pain and asked Africa and the world to end the violence against women.
She said that former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, now African Union Envoy to the Horn, is following the situation closely and closely working with US UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to address it.
Duncan-Cassell closed the webinar by stating that “The perpetration of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence has not diminished and is spreading across the Horn. There must be concerted and coordinated international pressure and targeted sanctions. These atrocities must come to an end, and soldiers and their commanders must be prosecuted.”
She called for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Tigray, particularly those from Eritrea, the referral of the deployment by Eritrea of National Service in a foreign jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court, and all parties in Tigray to end with immediate effect the impunity of the use of Rape as a Weapon of War.
In an opening keynote address, a Member of the European Parliament said that girls and women being raped in the Tigray region are reportedly aged between 8 and 72. The rapes are being carried out in front of family, husbands, and children. The rapes can last for days, and often inflict life-threatening injuries.
She referred to Sir Mark Andrew Lowcock, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, describing the attacks in Eritrea, “as a means to humiliate, terrorize, and traumatize an entire population today and into the next generation.”
“I have said many times, it is beyond comprehension that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has overseen such destruction, tyranny and deprivation,” she added.
Sometimes the world views war as the theatre of men. But it is often women that pay an equal or greater price behind the scenes: Loss of economic empowerment, rape, forced prostitution, starvation, backsteps in social equality, she added.
“Sexual violence against women and girls has been used as a weapon of war for centuries. The lasting damage clear to see. We saw it with the women of Rwanda, South Korea, Yugoslavia; and these are just the examples of the last century.
“But the inaction of the international community makes it seem as though we have learned nothing. President Biden, the G7, the UN, and the EU have all condemned and expressed concern over what is happening.
“But words are not enough to make the suffering of women stop. Condemnation is important, but it’s not enough to make families sleep soundly tonight in Tigray.
“There must be concerted and coordinated international pressure and targeted sanctions. These atrocities must come to an end, and soldiers and their commanders must be prosecuted.”
In the Webinar, women from Tigray presented their harrowing ordeal, a third of rapes executed as gang rapes, over multiple days, in public, in front of family members including their children, their genitals burned or filled with foreign objects including burning sticks and relatives forced to perpetrate rape on Tigray women. The testimonies said that witnesses of the crimes committed and the children including babies of the rape victims were killed in the violence.
Selam Kidane, an Eritrean human rights advocate, told the conference that Eritrea is committing troops in Tigray that have suffered under the plight of National Service, a form of slavery, which has been qualified as a Crime against Humanity and she begged the international community to refer Eritrea to the ICC for the crimes committed by Eritrea on foreign soil in Tigray.
Mariam Basajja presented the Africa Women for Peace in the Horn Initiative expressing those young women from the entire continent stood by the women in Tigray
Tigray Human Rights advocate, Meaza Gidey, called the rape against women in Tigray a genocide: “Women are raped because they are Tigrayan, to cleanse the bloodline. The world has all the facts. I call on all relevant actors to listen to the cries of the innocent women of Tigray. They are not only being raped but they are also starved to death.”
Malgorzata Tarasiewicz, Director from East-West Women Network based in Poland, said the international community had all the tools it needed to respond to the situation in Tigray where rape is used as a weapon of war and that it should respond without delay.
And the relatives of those Ethiopian peacemakers from Tigray are massacred in Tigray. It’s unbelievable, peacemakers are persecuted, while war criminals tolerated, applauded and awarded. What’s the UN doing? What is the Organization standing for?
TWO MONTHS AGO, secretary general, António Guterres, bluntly asked Mr. Abiy Ahmed if Eritrean troops were fighting in his war. “He guaranteed to me that they have not entered Tigrayan territory,” said Mr. Guterres. Now, it has been proven by all sides, it was a lie, an unhonorable lie, a deadly lie — as they have entered in many divisions, and still are barbarically massacring civilians.
Today Massacre, Destruction, Famine and Ethnic Cleansing reign.
Today Abiy and Isaias are heading to destroy the Tekeze Hydro Electric Dam .
Nobel laureate PM of Ethiopia lied to you, Mr. Guterres about the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray – what now Mr. Secretary-General? Abiy and Isaias continue massacring Christian Tigrayans, ethnically profiling them, and even arresting and attacking UN peacekeepers as we speak.
Abiy Ahmed LIED to you, Mr Guterres, and now The first secretary-general of the UN, Trygve LIE is watching from above – not to mention The ALMIGHTY EGZIABHER.
Clashes Erupt At Juba Airport As Ethiopian Peacekeepers Are Forced To Return Home
Forced return to Ethiopia where most peacekeepers fears government brutality was met with resistance sparking fist fight, well-informed South Sudan government security sources with direct knowledge said.
Fist fighting has erupted among Ethiopian troops serving in South Sudan as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world’s youngest country after a forced return to Ethiopia where most peacekeepers fears government brutality was met with resistance, several well-informed South Sudan government sources with direct knowledge have told Sudans Post this evening.
“There was a fist fight this afternoon. A good number of the Ethiopian forces working at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan as peacekeepers are being forced to return home. They are mainly from the Tyggray region and they resisted and this has caused fist fight because those who refused were beaten,” the government security source at Juba International Airport said.
Another senior Juba airport staffer confirmed the fist fight and said there were no danger as all of the peacekeepers were not carrying their guns when the fist fight broke out saying heavily mounted security vehicles have been deployed at the airport.
“As I speak to you, there is a heavy presence of National Security Service and police forces at Juba airport,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “They were being forced to return home because most of the peacekeepers have concerns to their safety once they arrive in Ethiopia and I am talking about those from the Tyggray region.”
Phone calls to South Sudan government spokesman Michael Makuei and the army spokesman were not responded. Police spokesman Major-General Daniel Justin said he won’t comment “until I find out what is being said to have taken place while I haven’t heard anything about it.”
“Otherwise I can direct you to the Ethiopian embassy because it is their business,” he said.
🔥 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.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 