Rights Groups Accuse Ethiopian Forces of War Crimes in Tigray

(Bloomberg) -- Forces from Ethiopia’s Amhara region, backed by federal troops, carried out systematic, ethnically-targeted attacks on neighboring Tigray that amounted to humanitarian and war crimes, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said.

Abuses inflicted on the Tigrayans included murder, torture, rape and sexual slavery, the two rights groups in a 240-page report released on Wednesday. The findings are based on interviews conducted between December 2020 and March this year with more than 400 survivors.

“Amhara regional officials and regional special forces and militias, with federal forces’ complicity, are responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans from Western Tigray,” the document states.

Ethiopia’s government is looking into the report and isn’t able to comment immediately, said Selamawit Kassa, state minister at the communications ministry. Gizachew Muluneh, a spokesman for the Amhara region, didn’t respond to questions. 

The Amhara and Tigray ethnic groups have for decades vied for control of Western Tigray, a fertile swathe of land which borders Sudan to the west and Eritrea to the north. Power has changed hands in the region several times and while many of its residents have lived together peacefully, a number of conflicts over land have broken out. 

Fighting erupted in the area immediately after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered an invasion of Tigray in November 2020 after forces loyal to the state’s ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front attacked a federal army base. 

The showdown followed months of tension stemming from Abiy’s sidelining of the TPLF, which had been the nation’s preeminent power broker for decades, and degenerated into a civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and left millions in need of food aid. The United Nations estimates that more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from Western Tigray alone since the war began.  

The two sides agreed to a conditional truce last month to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Other revelations in the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch report include:

• Fierce fighting in the village of Mai Kadra erupted in the early days of the conflict, with Tigrayan militia and residents targeting Amhara civilians. Amhara attackers retaliated later the same day and at least 229 people died in total.
• Ethiopian federal troops and Amhara security forces deliberately killed Tigrayan residents in at least 11 towns across Western Tigray in the first month of conflict alone.
• Newly appointed authorities in Western Tigray restricted and often blocked access to critical aid.
• Militia armies from Amhara and Eritrea, which backed Abiy, pillaged crops and livestock.
• In one incident on Jan. 17 2021,  militia members rounded up about 60 Tigrayan residents of the town of Adi Goshu and summarily executed them at the Tekeze River.
• When TPLF forces recaptured large parts of Tigray in June, the Amhara authorities escalated arbitrary arrests and killings.

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