Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Wednesday accused forces from Ethiopia’s Amhara region, backed by federal troops, of carrying out systematic, ethnically-targeted attacks on Tigrayans that amounted to humanitarian and war crimes, reported Bloomberg Quint.
In a 240-page report titled, ‘We Will Erase You From This Land’: Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing in Ethiopia’s Western Tigray Zone’, released on Wednesday, the two rights groups said Tigrayans were brutally murdered, tortured, and raped. They were forced to go through sexual violence, mass arbitrary detention, pillage, forcible transfer, and the denial of humanitarian assistance.
The findings are based on interviews conducted between December 2020 and March this year with more than 400 survivors, family members, and witnesses.
“Since November 2020, Amhara officials and security forces have engaged in a relentless campaign of ethnic cleansing to force Tigrayans in western Tigray from their homes,” said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.
Roth said Ethiopian authorities have steadfastly denied the shocking breadth of the crimes that have unfolded and have egregiously failed to address them.
Amnesty and HRW said Tigrayan forces also committed abuses during the 17-month war which pitted Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and its allies from the Amhara region against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF dominated Ethiopia’s government before Abiy’s rise to power in 2018.
The Amnesty and HRW report, which is based on 427 interviews, is the most comprehensive assessment to date of abuses during the war in western Tigray. Notably, Western Tigray has witnessed some of the worst violence in the war. Both Amhara and Tigray claim the area, which is controlled by Amhara forces and the Ethiopian military.
Besides repeated massacres, the report cited meetings in which Amhara officials discussed plans to remove Tigrayans and restrictions they imposed on the Tigrayan language as evidence of ethnic cleansing.
