Health official alleges ‘sexual slavery’ in Tigray
ADIGRAT, Ethiopia –– The young mother was trying to get home with food for her two children when she says soldiers pulled her off a minibus in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, claiming it was overloaded.
It was the beginning of an 11day ordeal in February, during which she says she was repeatedly raped by 23 soldiers who forced nails, a rock and other items into her vagina, and threatened her with a knife.
Doctors showed Reuters the bloodstained stone and two 3-inch nails they said they had removed from her body.
The woman, 27, is among hundreds who have reported that they were subjected to horrific sexual violence by Ethiopian and allied Eritrean soldiers after fighting broke out in November in the mountainous northern region of Ethiopia, doctors said.
Some women were held captive for extended periods, days or weeks at a time, said Dr Fasika Amdeselassie, the top public health official for the governmentappointed interim administration in Tigray.
“Women are being kept in sexual slavery,” Dr Fasika told Reuters.
“The perpetrators have to be investigated.”
Reports of rape have been circulating for months. But Fasika’s assertion, based on women’s accounts, marks the first time an
Ethiopian official –– in this case, a top regional health officer –– has made a sexual slavery accusation in connection with the conflict in Tigray.
In addition, eight other doctors at five public hospitals told Reuters that most of the rape victims described their attackers as either Ethiopian government soldiers or Eritrean troops.
It was more common for women to report sexual violence by Eritrean soldiers, the doctors said.
The Eritreans have been helping Ethiopia’s central government fight the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), in the conflict plaguing the Horn of Africa nation.