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Hundreds of Ethiopians Massacred in Tigray Towns of Mai-Kadra, Humera, Dansha, and Mekele, Refugees Returned Back to Eritrea

December 12, 2020 

Tigray refugee children sing and dance inside a tent run by UNICEF in Umm Rakouba refugee camp in eastern Sudan, December 10, 2020 AP	A Tigray family

 

Shadowy Ethiopian massacre could be ‘tip of the iceberg’
Hiiraan, Saturday December 12, 2020
 
UMM RAKOUBA, Sudan (AP) —

The only thing the survivors can agree on is that hundreds of people were slaughtered in a single Ethiopian town.

Witnesses say security forces and their allies attacked civilians in Mai-Kadra with machetes and knives or strangled them with ropes. The stench of bodies lingered for days during the early chaos of the Ethiopian government’s offensive in the defiant Tigray region last month. Several mass graves have been reported.

What happened beginning Nov. 9 in the agricultural town near the Sudanese border has become the most visible atrocity in a war largely conducted in the shadows. But even here, much remains unclear, including who killed whom.

Witnesses in Mai-Kadra told the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International that ethnic Tigrayan forces and allies attacked Amhara — one of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic groups but a minority in Tigray. In Sudan, where nearly 50,000 people have fled, one ethnic Amhara refugee gave The Associated Press a similar account.

But more than a dozen Tigrayan refugees told the AP it was the other way around: In strikingly similar stories, they said they and others were targeted by Ethiopian federal forces and allied Amhara regional troops.

It’s possible that civilians from both ethnicities were targeted in Mai-Kadra, Amnesty now says.

“Anyone they found, they would kill,” Tesfaalem Germay, an ethnic Tigrayan who fled to Sudan with his family, said of Ethiopian and Amhara forces. He said he saw hundreds of bodies, making a slicing gesture at his neck and head as he remembered the gashes.

But another refugee, Abebete Refe, told the AP that many ethnic Amhara like him who stayed behind were massacred by Tigrayan forces.

“Even the government doesn’t think we’re alive, they thought we all died,” he said.

The conflicting accounts are emblematic of a war about which little is truly known since Ethiopian forces entered Tigray on Nov. 4 and sealed off the region from the world, restricting access to journalists and aid workers alike. For weeks, food and other supplies have run alarmingly low. This week Ethiopia’s security forces shot at and briefly detained U.N. staffers making the first assessment of how to deliver aid, a senior Ethiopian official said.

Ethiopia’s government and the Tigray one have filled the vacuum with propaganda. Each side has seized on the killings in Mai-Kadra to support its cause.

The conflict began after months of friction between the governments, which now regard each other as illegitimate. The Tigray leaders once dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition, but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sidelined them when when he came to power in 2018.

Long-held tensions over land in western Tigray, where Mai-Kadra is located, between Tigrayans and Amhara have added fuel to the fire.

Amnesty International said it confirmed that at least scores, and likely hundreds, of people were killed in Mai-Kadra, using geolocation to verify video and photographs of the bodies. It also remotely conducted “a limited set of interviews.”

But Mai-Kadra “is just the tip of the iceberg,” Amnesty researcher Fisseha Tekle told an event on Tuesday as fears grow about atrocities elsewhere in Tigray. “Other credible allegations are emerging ... not only in Mai-Kadra but also” in the nearby town of Humera, the town of Dansha and the Tigray capital, Mekele.

In Mai-Kadra, witnesses told the visiting Ethiopian rights commission they saw police, militia and members of a Tigray youth group attack Amhara.

“The streets were still lined with bodies yet to be buried” days later, the commission said. One man who looked at identity cards of the dead as he cleared away the bodies told Amnesty International that many of them said Amhara.

But several ethnic Tigrayans who have fled blamed Ethiopian and allied Amhara regional forces for killings in the same town at the same time, saying some asked to see identity cards before attacking.

In some cases, they said they recognized the killers as their neighbors.

Samir Beyen, a mechanic, said he was stopped and asked if he was Tigrayan, then beaten and robbed. He said he saw people being slaughtered with knives, and dozens of rotting corpses.

“It was like the end of the world,” he recalled. “We could not bury them because the soldiers were near.”

Cut off from their homes, refugees now wait in Sudan in bare concrete houses or under shelters lashed together from plastic and branches, playing checkers with Coca-Cola bottle caps or stretching out on mats to sleep, seeking a brief escape from ghastly memories.

The AP has been unable to obtain permission to travel to the Tigray region and has been unable to independently verify the reports of the massacre. Neither Amnesty International nor the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission agreed to requests to speak with witnesses they interviewed.

The Ethiopian commission, an entity created under the country’s constitution, called its findings preliminary. Its researchers were allowed by the federal government to visit Mai-Kadra, but when asked whether it was being allowed to also investigate other alleged atrocities, spokesman Aaron Maasho replied, “We’re working on it.”

The U.N. human rights office this week called for independent investigations into the conflict, but Ethiopian officials have rejected what they call interference, saying this week the government doesn’t need a “babysitter.”

To assume the government can’t do such work itself “is belittling,” senior Ethiopian official Redwan Hussein told reporters on Tuesday.

The prime minister has called the killings in Mai-Kadra “the epitome of moral degeneration” and even expressed suspicion that the perpetrators may have fled to Sudan and be hiding among the refugees. Abiy offered no evidence, only pointing to the number of young men among the refugees — though roughly half are women.

The prime minister also has rejected allegations of abuses by the Ethiopian defense force, saying it “has not killed a single person in any city” during the conflict.

But the Tigray leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, blamed the “invading” federal forces for the killings, telling the AP that “we’re not people who can commit this crime, ever.”

The ethnic frictions and profiling must stop, the U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet warned this week, saying they are “fostering divisiveness and sowing the seeds for further instability and conflict” — in a region already rife with both.

Shadowy Ethiopian massacre could be ‘tip of the iceberg’ (hiiraan.com)

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Alarm as Ethiopia returns refugees who fled Tigray fighting

Hiiraan, December 12, 2020

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) —

In a development the United Nations called “disturbing,” Ethiopia on Friday said it is returning thousands of refugees who ran from camps in its Tigray region as war swept through, putting them on buses back to the border area with Eritrea, the country the refugees originally fled.

The news came as the United States said it believes Eritrean troops are active in Ethiopia, a “grave development.” A State Department spokesperson in an email cited credible reports and said “we urge that any such troops be withdrawn immediately.”

The U.N. refugee chief, Filippo Grandi, said that “over the last month we have received an overwhelming number of disturbing reports of Eritrean refugees in Tigray being killed, abducted and forcibly returned to Eritrea. If confirmed, these actions would constitute a major violation of international law.” He said his agency has met with some refugees in the capital, Addis Ababa, and he again urged unhindered humanitarian access to Tigray.

Ethiopia said its recently completed military offensive against the now-fugitive Tigray regional government “was not a direct threat” to the 96,000 “misinformed” Eritrean refugees — even as aid groups said four staffers had been killed in the fighting, at least one in a refugee camp.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this week said Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, “guaranteed to me that (Eritrean forces) have not entered Tigrayan territory.” But Tigray residents have asserted that gunfire came from the direction of Eritrea as the conflict began.

Eritrea, described by rights groups as one of the world’s most repressive countries, is a bitter enemy of the fugitive Tigray government.

The U.N, refugee agency said it hadn’t been informed in advance of the Eritrean refugees’ return. “We received alarming messages from Eritreans living abroad and when we looked into them, ascertained that several hundred refugees had been put on buses this morning to be returned to the Tigray region,” it said.

Any forced return, it said, “would be absolutely unacceptable.”

Given the trauma that refugees say they witnessed in Tigray, they should be protected elsewhere, the agency said. It said the refugee camps have had no access to food or other supplies for more than a month.

The International Organization for Migration said it was “extremely concerned” about the refugees’ “forced” return and denied it was involved, saying Ethiopia took over one of its transit centers in the capital, Addis Ababa, on Dec. 3.

Aid groups say thousands of Eritrean refugees had fled to Addis Ababa and the Tigray capital, Mekele. Ethiopia said their “unregulated movement” makes it difficult to ensure their security.

Their camps are now stable and under “full control,” Ethiopia said, adding that food delivery there “is under way.”

But communication and transport links to Tigray remain so challenging that the International Rescue Committee said it was still trying to confirm details around the killing of a colleague in the Hitsats refugee camp in Shire town, the base of aid operations.

Separately, the Danish Refugee Council said three staffers who worked as guards at a project site were killed last month. It was not clear where, but the group also supports the Eritrean refugees.

“Sadly, due to the lack of communications and ongoing insecurity in the region, it has not yet been possible to reach their families,” the group said.

“Now, more than ever, it is a matter of urgency to cease all hostilities,” the European Union’s commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, said while condemning the killings.

Tigray remains largely sealed off from the world five weeks after fighting erupted between Ethiopia’s government and the Tigray one following a months-long power struggle. The governments regard each other as illegitimate, the result of months of friction since Abiy took office in 2018 and sidelined the once-dominant Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

Thousands of people are thought to have been killed in the fighting that began Nov. 4 and has threatened to destabilize the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia rejects “interference” as fighting reportedly continues, while the U.N. has pleaded for neutral, unfettered access. “Food rations for displaced people in Tigray have run out,” the U.N. humanitarian office tweeted.

“Every day that we don’t have access is a day lost. Every day that we don’t have access is a day that increases the suffering of civilians,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters, and he referred questions to Ethiopia’s side.

Ethiopia says it is responsible for ensuring the security of aid efforts — though the conflict and related ethnic tensions have left many Tigrayans wary of government forces.

On Friday, Ethiopia said it had begun delivering aid to areas in Tigray under its control, including Shire and Mekele, a city of a half-million people.

“Suggestions that humanitarian assistance is impeded due to active military combat in several cities and surrounding areas within the Tigray region is untrue and undermines the critical work undertaken by the National Defense Forces to stabilize the region,” the prime minister’s office said, noting only “sporadic gunfire” remained.

Some 6 million people live in Tigray. About 1 million are now thought to be displaced. The impact on civilians has been “appalling,” the U.N. human rights chief said this week.

This week, Ethiopia said its forces shot at and briefly detained U.N. staffers conducting their first security assessment in Tigray, a crucial step in delivering aid. Ethiopia said they were trying to go where they weren’t allowed.

Meanwhile, nearly 50,000 Ethiopians have fled to Sudan and more are still arriving.

“The recent groups coming from areas deeper inside Tigray are arriving weak and exhausted, some reporting they spent two weeks on the run inside Ethiopia as they made their way to the border,” U.N. refugee spokesman Babar Baloch told reporters. “They have told us harrowing accounts of being stopped by armed groups and robbed of their possessions.”

Without access in Ethiopia, he said, “we are unable to verify these disturbing reports.”

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Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

Alarm as Ethiopia returns refugees who fled Tigray fighting (hiiraan.com) 

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