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Tigray conflict: Eritrean massacre in Ethiopia could be a crime against humanity, says Amnesty International

 


Eritrea troops went on a rampage and systematically killed hundreds of cold-blooded civilians, which appears to be crimes against humanity, said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s director for East and South Africa.

The United Nations defines crimes against humanity as a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.

In its report, Amnesty calls for a UN-led inquiry into the Axum violence as part of a wider international investigation into the conflict between the Ethiopian government and forces aligned with the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) that began on November 4 year

The report comes amid growing international pressure on Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who came to power in 2018, to restore peace. Ethiopia receives hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid from the United States and the European Union.

Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, for moves to end permanent military tensions with neighboring Eritrea. Both Ethiopian and Eritrean officials have denied that Eritrean forces were involved in the Tigray conflict, despite conflicting eyewitness accounts.

In an email, Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said he was unaware of the Amnesty report, but criticized the ridiculous allegations fabricated by anonymous sources and photoshopped images.

Amnesty said it shared the report with Ethiopian officials last week but had not received a response. The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, a message in a The Ethiopian government-run Twitter account said the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission was investigating crimes and incidents during the conflict.

The message also showed allegations of a massacre in the Ethiopian city of Mai-Kadra, which Amnesty also investigated, finding witnesses who said TPLF-related groups were the perpetrators.

We are deeply concerned by credible reports of human rights violations and abuses in the Tigray region and we have pressed the Ethiopian government consistently to ensure the protection of civilians, including refugees, the US State Department said on Thursday. Eritrean forces must withdraw immediately from Tigray.

The statement called on the international community to play a role in preventing human rights abuses and holding all parties accountable.

Due to ongoing restrictions on access to Tigray region, Amnesty said its report was based on telephone interviews with Axum residents and personal interviews with refugees in Sudan. Many witnesses gave first-hand accounts of seeing friends and relatives shot by Eritrean soldiers.

All we could see on the street were lifeless bodies and people crying, one man said of his return to Axum after he had fled. Like all 41 witnesses interviewed for the report, he was not named.

Amnesty confirmed several details on account of the use of satellite imagery, including damage in line with reports of looting by soldiers and the possible location of mass graves.

The conflict in Tigray began in early November after Abiy accused the TPLF, the governing party of the provinces, of attacking a military base and attempting to steal military equipment.

The TPLF had been a major political force in Ethiopia for 27 years after overthrowing a communist government in 1991, dominating the ruling political coalition and allowing a small cable of former Tigray fighters to control key parts of the military and economy.

But after Abiy won the 2018 election, TPLF leaders refused to join the Prosperity Party, a newly formed group that opposed nations ‘previous system of ethnic federalism, and became increasingly angry at Abiys’ reform efforts.

The ensuing conflict was bloody, with war crimes charges on both sides. The region was already full of weapons because of its place on the Ethiopian war front 1998-2000 with neighboring Eritrea.

Opposition groups have said the death toll from the Tigray conflict has risen to at least 52,000. More than 61,000 Ethiopians fled to Sudan, according to the UN Although the Ethiopian government has said that the conflict in Tigray is largely over, accounts of the violence continue to emerge.

Prior to the release of the Amnesty report on Thursday, after a British security research organization released satellite images that said it showed hundreds of buildings deliberately burning around the city of Gijet, the Ethiopian government vowed to investigate.

Before the conflict, Axum was known for its rich history as the former capital of the ancient Aksumite Empire and as a tourist destination because of its archeological ruins and Ethiopian Orthodox religious sites.

But as refugees escaped from the closed borders of Tigray, reports of a massacre in the city quickly spread. In a recent report published by the Associated Press, a deacon in an Orthodox Church said at least 800 were killed over the weekend of Nov. 28-29 and that thousands likely died overall.

Amnesty’s account supports accounts by the Associated Press and others, with reports of house – to – house searches, indiscriminate killings of civilians, and mass graves. Witnesses told Amnesty researchers that the massacre began after TPLF-linked fighters attacked an Eritrean position near the city.

Although Eritrea has not confirmed the presence of its bodies, witnesses said they were easily identifiable by their dialects and the vehicles that Eritrea wrote on them. Some of them told us that they are Eritrean soldiers, a woman told Amnesty.

In a statement earlier this month, the EU said the presence of Eritrean troops was exacerbating ethnic violence in Tigray. The bloc suspended $ 109 million in aid to Ethiopia over the December conflict.

Eritrean President Isaiah Afwerki, who took control of the country in 1992, runs the country as a military dictatorship. Eritrean dissidents say the peace deal has led to some positive developments for the country, which remains oppressive.



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