What do Tigrayans Expect from the UN Human Rights Council?

Isaac M. 12.16.21

Following the request made by over 50 countries, including EU states, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), will convene a special session on the situation in Ethiopia this Friday. What do Tigrayans expect from this Council’s session?

They expect an explicit denunciation of the mass arrests, searches, abuses and terrorising Tigrayans in Addis Ababa and elsewhere in Ethiopia. Why? In the last three weeks alone The HRC must demand an immediate release of all these civilians, including vulnerable members of the group that need medication and family care, and prominent scholars, medical doctors and the likes. It has to be mentioned that the Ethiopian regime and its extremist diaspora backers are attempting to execute their collective punishment and ethnic cleansing outside the territory of Ethiopia by targeting prominent Tigrayans such as the renowned world servant, Dr Tedros Adhanom of WHO.  Who on earth campaigns against the appointment of their own citizen in an international organisation? Only genocidal forces and ethnic cleansers do. Tigrayans further expect the Council to unequivocally denounce the politically motivated siege imposed on Tigray by the Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amhara officials and their foreign backers. For the last 13 months, Tigray, with over six million people, is fully encircled and blocked from getting the basic necessities such as electricity, water, banking, telephone and internet services, and most crucially humanitarian aid.  The HRC must call upon the Ethiopian regime and its backers to lift the siege without any pre-condition. They expect the Council to condemn the mass atrocity crimes committed in Tigray and elsewhere against Tigrayans by the federal, Eritrean and regional forces, including the mass extrajudicial killings, widespread and systematic rape and sexual violence and wanton destruction of private and public property.  The use of sexual violence as a weapon must be firmly acknowledged in Tigray and denounced accordingly. The Council must establish an independent fact-finding commission to prob the international crimes perpetrated by the allied forces in Tigray and in central Ethiopia, including the mass detention of Tigrayans in Addis Ababa; a city where the AU, the EU and UN agencies seat witnessing such a horror of the 21 ^st century. The heinous crimes committed, and continue to be committed, in the Amhara region and in Western Tigray against Tigrayan must get peculiar attention in any inquiry of the crimes. Conducting credible and impartial inquiry requires abandoning the unfair and unacceptable so-called join inquiry conducted by an Ethiopian institution and the UN Human Rights body. Tigrayans and many reputable human rights organizations oppose and question the involvement of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission in investigating state-sponsored crimes for a reason. This very Commission is used to cover up the scale of the crimes committed by the Abiy regime. The Commission’s statement on the mass arrest of Tigrayan a few weeks ago is sufficient example of this kind. It expressed concern over the ‘arrest of a few hundreds of Tigrayans’ and did not say anything since. The Office of the UN Human Rights Commissioner (OHRC) has also been complicit in such cover up when it said that ‘up to a thousand civilians have been detained’. For these reasons Tigrayans inside and outside Ethiopia have no confidence in OHRC. Appointing a special Rapporteur on Tigray and the Ethnic-based attacks against Tigrayans across Ethiopia and triggering all avenues of investigation and human rights protection in the UN human rights system should also be taken seriously. The Council must denounce foreign assistance, in particular the provision of drones and other weaponry to the genocidal regime of Abiy Ahmed, the dictatorial Eritrean regime and their partners-in-crime.  Third states have the duty not to be complicit in international crimes. Hence, Turkey, UAE, Iran and China must be told to halt their military, technical and financial assistance to the criminal regimes. Tigrayans also expect Western powers to come clean on their sale of technological products that are sold to Turkey, UAE and others which are supplying weapons to the Ethiopian and Eritrean regimes. The Council must also condemn the constant drone attacks of cities and towns of Tigray by the Abiy regime. The allied forces have a well-established track record of targeting civilian objects, as shown in Humera, Shire, Axum Mekelle, Adi-Grat, you a name it. They continue to do so until today. The Council must call upon the Addis Ababa regime to stop targeting the civilian population in the name of targeting those who are fighting it. And The Council should also condemn one of its current members, Eritrea, for being directly implicated in grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Tigray and other parts of Ethiopia.  A call upon the Eritrean regime to withdraw its forces must be reaffirmed by the Council.

Tigrayans would strongly reject, and would continue to feel betrayed by the international community, if the Council:

Attempts to share blame between the aggressors and the victims who are fighting for their survival. The Tigrayans fight is not a TPLF fight, rather it is a popular resistance against the criminal forces who perpetrated countless atrocities and destruction on Tigray.  The mischievous assertion that serious crimes have been committed ‘by all parties to the conflict’ is extremely offending to victims, survivors and to Tigrayans as a whole.  The Council must take this point very seriously. Tigrayans understand that some incidents and allegations made against Tigrayan forces may well require proper prob. Such cases, however, require independent investigation free from the state orchestrated claims and propaganda campaign by the extremists inside and outside Ethiopia. Merely expresses concerns, as some powers have been doing so far, without any follow-up action against the criminal regimes and their partners.  Establishing a fact-finding commission on Tigray and Ethiopia, recommending sanctions and even intervention to spare the civilians who are kept in concentration camps must be considered. And Giving up to those who have been backing up the aggressors be it in the Security Council, the HRC or in other global and regional forums would amount to a historic failure and repeat of the mistakes made in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Syria and Yemen. The defence of many African despotic regimes called ‘African solution for African problems’ should also be strongly rejected as an excuse for tolerating mass atrocity crimes in the African continent. Thus far, the AU has shut its mouth while thousands of Tigrayan civilians are languishing in several concentration camps close to its headquarters in Addis Ababa.