The Tigray Genocide: concrete action required to defend humanity.

Isaac M. (from Mekelle) 15.04.21

Eritrea’s letter to the Security Council

Despite Eritrea’s overdue ‘admission’ of its illegal intervention in the Ethiopian civil war, it has denied the well-documented mass atrocities, systemic sexual abuses and wanton destruction and looting of property by its savage army in Tigray. This contradicts the many reports and accounts of gross human rights abuses by international bodies and the limited admission of bloodsheds and sexual abuses by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and Mr. Ahmed himself.

In its ‘admission’ of military intervention, Eritrea also made a bogus promise to withdraw its forces from Tigray. This is not a new promise. Isaias Afewerki’s partner in crime, Abiy Ahmed, told the world on 26 March that Eritrea has agreed to withdraw from the Ethiopian ‘border’. The UN Humanitarian Affairs chief, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield of the US

Clearly, Eritrea’s ‘admission’ is just a diplomatic tactic, and therefore should not be trusted. A recently leaked 27 pages long Eritrean presidential order signed by Yemane Gebremeskel, advisor to dictator Isaias Afewerki, instructs Eritrean commanders fighting in Tigray to intensify their eradication of the Tigray youth and the total obliteration of Tigray’s remaining infrastructure and property without mercy.

The renewed wave of mass atrocities in western, central, northern and southern Tigray in the last couple of days and weeks appear to align with such a tripartite criminal plan by the Eritrean, federal and Amhara forces.

Credible reports are continuing to emerge, following human rights and media groups’ reports of atrocities and abuses, confirming the extrajudicial killings, the use of rape and starvation as weapons and systemic looting and destruction of property in the Tigray conflict, by the Eritrean, federal and Amhara forces, in their trilateral mass atrocity operations in Tigray and against Tigrayans.

A UK based independent media outlet namely Tortoise reported that 150,000 and over 10, 000 Tigrayan civilians have been murdered and raped respectively in the Tigray hidden conflict. The Belgian Ghent University’s preliminary study documented the names of 1900 Tigrayan civilians that have been killed in 150 massacres by the three genocidal forces. Tigray opposition parties has estimated that over 50,000 civilians have been massacred in Tigray. behind these estimates there are human-beings, families and loved ones; these numbers also tell the magnitude of the crimes committed by the tripartite criminal operation.

Mr Lowcock’s recent report to the UN Security Council expressly refers the fact that humanitarian workers have reported new atrocities, rapes and gang rapes against civilians; these are committed by Eritrean and Ethiopian armies, Amhara special forces and affiliated militia.

The use of rape and starvation as methods of warfare by the three forces in the conflict are well-documented, including by the UN. Mr Lowcock has also reported to the Council that he received a report of the death of 151 people as a result of hunger in the Ofla district, close to the capital of Tigray, Mekelle. The Ethiopian government was quick to deny this, despite the fact that the Tigray interim administration and local sources tell similar stories.

0ver 91% of the Tigray population require relief—yet the Ethiopian regime and the Eritrean and Amhara forces are hindering and denying humanitarian assistance in Tigray. This will make the human toll from hunger most likely to be catastrophic.

Terrorising and ill-treating civilians

It has to be recalled that the Tigray population leaving under the control of federal, Eritrean and Amhara forces in Tigray is constantly terrorised and abused by the forces –this includes sexual assaults, random and terrifying searches and arrests, shooting and kidnapping the youth. The same thing is happening against Tigrayans in central Ethiopia, including in Addis Ababa. Hundreds of Tigrayan youth and peaceful media workers have been rounded up in Addis Ababa in the last few days alone. Civil servants of Tigrayan origin are continuing to suffer ethnic profiling, harassment and forced indoctrination and political training with the purpose of humiliating and terrorising them.

International responses

The responses of the international community to the mass atrocity crimes against Tigrayans range from siding with the genocidal forces, in particular with the Ethiopian regime, to not doing anything more than expressing concerns and demanding the withdrawal of Eritrean and Amhara forces.

Sadly, some Superpowers appear to have sided with the criminal regime of Ethiopia in the name of sovereignty but for geopolitical and economic reasons. They are doing their best to hinder any collective and meaningful action against Isaias Afewerki, Abiy Ahmed and the Amhara criminal elite to investigate and stop their crimes. Despite the breach of Ethiopia’s sovereignty by Eritrea’s intervention in the conflict, they are using the non-interference rule undermining the mass atrocity crimes continued to be committed against the people of Tigray.