Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 10, 2021
The United States ambassador to Ethiopia on Monday hosted the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church after he warned of “genocide” in the Tigray region in his first public comments on the war.
In a Facebook post, the U.S. Embassy said Ambassador Geeta Pasi discussed the humanitarian situation in Tigray with the patriarch, Abune Mathias, as well as his video message released last week and first reported by The Associated Press.
In the message, filmed by an American friend on a mobile phone and taken out of Ethiopia, the church leader said that “they want to destroy the people of Tigray” and said his previous attempts to speak out on the six-month conflict had been blocked.
The patriarch, an ethnic Tigrayan, also said that “many barbarisms have been conducted” these days all over Ethiopia, but “what is happening in Tigray is of the highest brutality and cruelty.” Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting between Ethiopian and allied forces and Tigray ones, the result of a political struggle that turned deadly in November.
The ambassador hosted the patriarch at her residence in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and invited him to attend future interfaith community meetings at the embassy to “further explore and continue their conversation,” the Facebook post said.
It was not clear whether the patriarch requested protection from the U.S. and the embassy did not comment on that. While the U.S. government has been outspoken on the Tigray conflict, notably urging soldiers from neighboring Eritrea to leave immediately, the embassy has been publicly quiet.
The spokeswoman for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, did not respond to questions about the patriarch’s comments. The prime minister, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been under growing international pressure as atrocities in Tigray come to light, especially those committed by Eritrean forces, whose presence Abiy denied for months before admitting they were there.
Ethiopia’s government says it is “deeply dismayed” by the deaths of civilians, blames the former Tigray leaders and claims normality is returning in the region of some 6 million people. It has denied widespread profiling and targeting of Tigrayans.
But witnesses have told the AP about seeing bodies strewn on the ground on communities, Tigrayans rounded up and expelled and women raped by Ethiopian, Eritrean and allied forces. Others have described family members and colleagues including priests being swept up and detained, often without charge.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 8, 2021
The United Nations is warning aid convoys to the Tigray region in Ethiopia are being blocked, leaving thousands without humanitarian relief and hundreds malnourished.
Now, after six months of conflict, one of the country’s top religious leaders has spoken out against what he describes as “genocide” in Tigray.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 8, 2021
The head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in his first public comments on the war in the country’s Tigray region is sharply criticizing Ethiopia’s actions, saying he believes it’s genocide: “They want to destroy the people of Tigray.”
In a video shot last month on a mobile phone and carried out of Ethiopia, the elderly Patriarch Abune Mathias addresses the church’s scores of millions of followers and the international community, saying his previous attempts to speak out were blocked. He is ethnic Tigrayan.
The video comes as the conflict in Tigray marks six months. Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting between Ethiopian and allied forces and Tigray ones, the result of a political struggle that turned deadly in November. Dozens of witnesses have told the AP that civilians are targeted.
“I am not clear why they want to declare genocide on the people of Tigray,” Abune Mathias says, speaking in Amharic and listing alleged atrocities including the destruction of churches, massacres, forced starvation and looting. “It is not the fault of the Tigray people. The whole world should know it.”
He calls for strength, adding that “this bad season might pass away.” And he urges the world to act.
The comments are a striking denunciation from someone so senior inside Ethiopia, where state media reflect the government’s narrative and both independent journalists and Tigrayans have been intimidated and harassed. The video also comes as Ethiopia, facing multiple crises of sometimes deadly ethnic tensions, faces a national election on June 5.
Dennis Wadley, who runs the U.S.-based Bridges of Hope organization and has been a friend of the church leader for several years, told the AP he shot the video in an impulsive moment while visiting him last month in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
“I just pulled out my iPhone and said if you want to get the word out, let’s do it,” Wadley said on Friday after arriving in the U.S. “He just poured out his heart. … It’s so sad. I actually hugged him; I never did that before.”
A church official reached on Friday confirmed the video and the interest of Abune Mathias in making it public. The church patriarch serves alongside a recently returned exile, Abune Merkorios.
“I have said a lot of things but no one allows the message to be shared. Rather, it is being stifled and censored,” Abune Mathias says in the video.
“Many barbarisms have been conducted” these days all over Ethiopia, he says, but “what is happening in Tigray is of the highest brutality and cruelty.”
God will judge everything, he adds.
Ethiopia’s government says it is “deeply dismayed” by the deaths of civilians, blames the former Tigray leaders and claims normality is returning in the region of some 6 million people. It has denied widespread profiling and targeting of Tigrayans.
But witnesses have told the AP about seeing bodies strewn on the ground on communities, Tigrayans rounded up and expelled and women raped by Ethiopian and allied forces including those from neighboring Eritrea. Others have described family members and colleagues including priests being swept up and detained, often without charge.
Churches have been the scenes of massacres — one deacon in Axum has told the AP he believes some 800 people were killed in a November weekend at the church and around the city — and of mass graves.
“People were dropped over the ground like leaves,” the patriarch says of Axum, Ethiopia’s holiest city.
Abune Mathias, born in 1942, has been outspoken in the past. In 1980, he became the first leader of the church to denounce the rule of Ethiopia’s communist regime “and was forced to live abroad for more than thirty years,” according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on February 9, 2021
“ሳዲዝም/ጭካኔው በጣም የሚረብሽ ነው” – በትግራይ ለሁለት ወራት ያህል ሽሽት
I fled Mekelle just days before the Ethiopian and Eritrean defense forces were to take the capital. Many residents fled the city in fear of fighting and threats of indiscriminate shelling that had occurred as the occupying forces took hold of other cities.
I went west towards Tembien, then to Adet, going from village to village on foot for two months. Initially, the soldiers were primarily on the main roads, so we stayed in the most rural areas, as far away as possible. But soon enough, no village, no matter how remote or difficult to reach would escape the wrath of the occupying forces.
Eritrean and Ethiopian forces engaged in the widespread killing of civilians; they would randomly shot and loot, mainly livestock such as chickens, cows, and animal products such as honey.
After Eritrean and Ethiopian forces controlled a small town, nearby I met one farmer who told me that he was coming back to town after moving his livestock deep in the bushes to save them from being slaughtered by the soldiers. He explained that farmers that didn’t manage to escape the small city and its surroundings when it fell to the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces were doomed to have all their livestock (cows, oxen, goats, sheep, and chickens) slaughtered, emphasizing his good fortune.
It was not just food that they took. They stole the clothes of farmers, their mattresses, and even cooking utensils. I also witnessed Eritrean soldiers taking jerrycans, plastic containers that people use to store water. Perhaps to deprive farmers of accessing water.
The soldiers used big trucks with Eritrea license plates to load looted goods. I saw many empty trucks with ER plates being driven towards central Tigray, and loaded trucks leaving towards Eritrea via the direction of Adwa and Axum.
The fact that many Tigray forces left all the towns and villages made it easy for the Eritrean soldiers to come in and loot.
As far as I witnessed, it seemed like Eritrean soldiers came fully prepared to loot from the offset. The looting was not something of an afterthought on their behalf. Rather, they came equipped with strategies and tools.
They brought car mechanics with them to help them unlock cars, Sino trucks, and dozers. They took away some vehicles and burned others after taking out all the valuable items inside. I saw Eritrean soldiers doing this countless times across central Tigray.
Sadly, Ethiopian soldiers were idly watching the Eritrean soldiers as they did all this. Worse, some were praising them.
Cities in Central Tigray have now become ghost towns as residents run off to villages trying to escape occupying forces. It had been over a month since the end of the surgical ‘law enforcement operation’ to capture currently active leaders of the state as well as their predecessor—but the cities and town of Tigray are still as deserted as ever.
Once the center of trade, exchange and hope they are now the scene of war crimes that can never be fully articulated or persecuted, but live on through the deep scars they have left on the survivors.
In one town I visited, businesses were either closed or looted. I didn’t see a single soul on the streets during my stay. Ethiopian soldiers were camped inside the towns, but Eritrean soldiers were more discreet, based in camps with trenches a few kilometers away on the outskirts. Sometimes, both are seen together. At times, you see Eritrean soldiers busy stealing cars and inside people’s houses, while the Ethiopian soldiers just watch.
I have seen Ethiopian soldiers trying to sell the smartphones they stole from residents of the town to other soldiers. You can easily identify the Eritrean soldiers by their uniforms and their ‘Congo’‘Shida’ shoes.
Destruction of property—as with looting and murder—was widespread.
The soldiers would kill or ruin basic possessions such as animals, food, and other items. In Wuqro, for instance, a relative of mine told me that Ethiopian soldiers put Omo detergent inside her food and her stored wheat so that they spoiled. Her case was not an exception. After entering people’s houses, it was typical of the occupying forces to take what they can and ruin the rest.
The relative told me her store was completely looted. Ethiopian soldiers stayed in her house for days, drinking. All her food was spoiled, her belongings taken, and she is currently struggling to survive along with her children. In another village, residents told me that the soldiers would squash chicks under their feet. It was and continues to be a mission of spite and destruction intended to break the people of Tigray physically and spiritually.
Both Ethiopian and Eritrean troops routinely killed civilians.
In Wuqro, around 50 kilometers north of Maeqelle, the relative told me that six people from one household were killed. They spared one person. In what appears to be an attempt to create terror; sparing one member of the family after killing others so they can tell the harrowing stories of their assault.
In the towns of central Tigray, they mostly killed men, going house-to-house. In villages, they would kill both men and women. In one village near Wuqro, they tied a grandfather and grandmother together and then killed their grandson right in front of them.
My relative in Wuqro told me that they killed 16 people near her house. Furthermore, she shared with me a story of a woman whose husband was murdered and then denied the women the chance to take the body for burial. She stayed with his body for two days, mourning alone, keeping guard of her husband’s corpse.
There were so many incidents where dogs and even hyenas ate the remains of slain people. Some young men in Wuqro put the bodies in carts and took them to a nearby church to bury them in open spots. This was a risk to their lives as soldiers didn’t allow proper burial. Four people were killed by either Ethiopian or Eritrean soldiers in Wuqro for attempting to bury the bodies.
The Eritrean soldiers said they were ordered to kill any male over the age of 14. According to a soldier, the order they received from their superiors was to kill those who “pee against the wall”—a reference to men.
I learned the above through a dad of my relative’s friend who, along with his daughter, was hiding in a village. His Tigrinya had an Eritrean accent as a result of living in Eritrea, which helped him befriend an Eritrean soldier in the town engaged in looting.
Over tea, the Eritrean soldier said that people in Tigray should be grateful as they were being kind by not killing children. He also said, “we will make you eat each other.”
In Axum, Eritrean soldiers killed people by going house-to-house. A priest at Maryam Zion Church told my friend when he visited him that they buried 243 people that day alone. The bodies were ordered not to be picked up and, again, people were shot for trying to collect them.
The sadism is very disturbing. I don’t know how humans—let alone trained, professional soldiers—can become this barbaric.
Regardless of political affiliation, almost everyone in Tigray is against these atrocities. The anger and resistance from Tigrayans is not a result of supporting TPLF, nor does it stem from holding some political position. When a group is killing families, raping women, and threatening people’s livelihood, that group is an enemy, and the victims are not left with any other option but to resist. This is what many Tigrayans feel about the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces.
Most atrocities in rural areas, which are probably worse than in the towns, have not been reported yet. Due in part to the media and access blockage, I don’t think humanitarian workers understand the gravity of the situation. I also don’t think anyone except the Tigrayans going through it know enough about what appears to be a genocide in the making.
I was reading a book on the Rwandan experience entitled “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust” I can’t help but relate it with all that’s currently happening in Tigray. But, as Rwanda rebuilt, so will Tigray.
