Reports emerge of ethnic-cleansing in Ethiopia
In early February, the crash of shells and bullets in the remote Jawmaro mountains in northern Ethiopia seemed to have stopped. Civilians in Abi Addi, a town in the Temben region of Central Tigray, were relieved. At last, a small measure of peace.
Then, on February 10, all the terrors of the Ethiopian civil war descended on the town and at least a dozen surrounding villages. In exclusive testimony shared with the Daily Telegraph, 18 witnesses told how Ethiopian federal soldiers and Eritrean troops surrounded the area and went from house to house killing 182 people.
“I saw dead bodies scattered, bodies half-eaten by dogs. The soldiers did not allow anyone to get close to the corpses,” said Tesfay Gebremedhin, a 26-year-old from the village of Semret who fled into the mountains along with other terrified young men. “But later, they started to feel disturbed by the terrible smell of the dead bodies. So they covered the bodies with dust.” One of those who survived the massacre in Wetelako village was 5-year-old Merhawit Weldegebreal. She was shot in her leg. Her uncle, Abrha Zenebe, died trying to shield her from the bullets.
“The soldiers came and shouted at my uncle. They also shouted at my father. But dad ran away,” the little girl said on the phone from her hospital bed in the Ayder hospital in Mekele, the regional capital.
“The soldiers hit my uncle in his leg with their guns. And then they shot him in his belly. They also shot me in my knee.”
Since Abiy Ahmed, the Nobel peace prize-winning Ethiopian Prime Minister, sent the most powerful military in Africa into the northern Tigray region to oust its ruling party in November, all hell has been unleashed on the ethnic Tigrayan people. Abiy sided with forces from Eritrea and ethnic militias from Tigray’s neighbouring Amhara region to crush forces loyal to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in a three-pronged attack.
Now a deluge of credible reports pointing towards a systematic campaign of ethnic-cleansing, rape and man-made starvation are emerging.
This is one of the biggest massacres reported so far. In February, AP and Amnesty published accounts of several hundred people being killed by Eritrean soldiers in Tigray’s holy city of Axum. The European Union has suspended €88 million ($149m) of development aid to Ethiopia and imposed sanctions on Eritrea, but attempts to rally broader condemnation at the UN have failed because of objections from China, India and Russia.
Survivors said that civilians, mainly farmers, had been massacred in Abi Addi and the villages of Adi Asmiean, Bega Sheka, Adichilo, Amberswa, Wetlaqo, Semret, Guya, Zelakme, Arena, Mitsawerki, Yeqyer and Shilum Emni, all about 95km from the regional capital.
When asked for comment about the massacre, Yemane Gebremeskel, the Eritrean Information Minister, could not address the events in Abi Addi specifically. “The government of Eritrea has zero tolerance for and never targets civilians in war. But in the past four months, we have seen a barrage of fabricated accusations mainly from TPLF remnants,” he said.
The office of the Ethiopian prime minister did not respond to requests for comment.