Abiy Ahmed should hand back his Nobel peace prize over his actions in the breakaway region that have raised the spectre of famine again
Ethiopian refugee children who fled the Tigray conflict wait in a line for a food distribution by Muslim Aid at the Um Raquba refugee camp in Sudan. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Sun 24 Jan 2021
Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s long-serving former foreign minister, was one of the foremost African diplomats of his generation. He was gunned down this month in Tigray by the armed forces of a lesser man – Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel peace prize winner. Some suggest it was the Eritrean military, Abiy’s allies, who killed Seyoum, although their presence in Tigray is officially denied. The circumstances of his death remain murky.
It is reported that Eritrean troops in Tigray are enforcing Eritrean citizenship on the Tigray Irob community, which is a minority group. Reportedly, Eritrean forces are appointing their own administration, have the Eritrean flag installed in parts of Irob, and occupy local government facilities.
Report that “Escapees from Irob arrived in Mekelle last week, reported an ongoing heavy fighting all over Irobland. Widespread indiscriminate civilian mass killings and burning of houses by Eritrean forces are reported from Giitello, Gammadaa, Alitena, Awo, Harrade, Sabaya, Magaauma, Mosigade, Dawhan, Kimbiro, Agaralekoma, Maibinno, Maadia villages in Irob district. Just in the last two weeks at least 50 civilians are killed in those villages including 10 family members from Gammadaa village.”
It is reported that “about 21 to 30 civilians at church in Giitello village where they were gathered to celebrate Ethiopian Christmas at local church” were killed by Eritrean forces.
FILE – An Ethiopian woman who fled the fighting in the Tigray region carries her child near the Setit river on the Sudan-Ethiopia border in Hamdayet village in eastern Kassala state, Sudan, Nov. 22, 2020.
GENEVA – The World Health Organization is warning that conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray province and the consequent disruption of health services could lead to the spread of deadly diseases there.
Ethiopia’s November military assault on Tigray has caused a major break in the humanitarian pipeline there. The United Nations estimates that over 4.5 million people, about half of them children, need assistance.
In Ethiopia’s Tigray, allegations of sexual abuse by soldiers are widespread, putting health services under strain for beds, contraception and STI tests
By Michael Georgy
HAMDAYET, Sudan, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The young coffee seller said she was split from family and friends by an Ethiopian soldier at the Tekeze river, taken down a path, and given a harrowing choice.
“He said: ‘Choose, either I kill you or rape you’,” the 25-year-old told Reuters at the Hamdayet refugee camp in Sudan where she had fled from conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
The doctor who treated her when she arrived at the camp in December, Tewadrous Tefera Limeuh, confirmed to Reuters that he provided pills to stop pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases, and guided her to a psychotherapist
Ethiopian Bishop Tesfaselassie Medhin of Adigrat. (Photo: Amecea News Blog)
Massive damage and looting has occurred in Adigrat, a diocese in Ethiopia’s semi-autonomous region of Tigray, where the government launched a military offensive nearly two months ago, reported a delegation from the Ethiopian bishops’ conference.
Louisville’s Ethiopian community called on the Biden Administration to ramp up pressure to stop the conflict in their nation’s Tigray region, which they said has caused a humanitarian disaster.
It comes as minutes seen by VICE World News reveal NGOs fear hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of starvation unless aid agencies are given access to the region.
SG
By Samuel Gebre
January 22, 2021, 12:25pm
A SATELLITE IMAGE SHOWS FIRES THAT BROKE OUT AFTER A SUSPECTED ATTACK UPON THE HITSATS REFUGEE CAMP IN
New satellite images shared with VICE World News shed new light on the extent of the damage caused by the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia, adding to fears from international aid agencies of a looming humanitarian crisis.
A female refugee and her child wait to receive aid at the Um Rakuba camp in Sudan, not far from the Ethiopia-Sudan border, on December 1, 2020. File Photo by Ala Kheir/EPA-EFE
Jan. 22 (UPI) — A top United Nations official is demanding an end to sexual violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia that has resulted from fighting between government forces and local factions.Pramila Patten, U.N. special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, called on all people in the conflict to end hostilities and stop using sexual violence as a weapon.
The UN called on all parties involved in the hostilities to commit to a zero-tolerance policy for sex crimes.
Ethiopians who fled the continuing fighting in Tigray region, queue to receive food aid in the Hamdayet village in eastern Kassala state, Sudan [File: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters]
22 Jan 2021
The United Nations has received “disturbing” reports of sexual violence and abuse in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit Tigray region, including of individuals forced to rape members of their own family.
Pramila Patten, the UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said she was greatly concerned by serious allegations from the northern region, including “a high number of alleged rapes” in the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle.
HAMDAYET, Sudan (Reuters) – The young coffee seller said she was split from family and friends by an Ethiopian soldier at the Tekeze river, taken down a path, and given a harrowing choice.
“He said: ‘Choose, either I kill you or rape you’,” the 25-year-old told Reuters at the Hamdayet refugee camp in Sudan where she had fled from conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
The doctor who treated her when she arrived at the camp in December, Tewadrous Tefera Limeuh, confirmed to Reuters that he provided pills to stop pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases, and guided her to a psychotherapist.
In Irobland of northeastern Tigray, starvation and deaths, executions of innocent civilians, distributions of forced Eritrean citizenship papers, as well as abductions of Irobs are reported in the above news video!
Bombs recently opened a hole in one of the oldest mosques in the world. It is located in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, where a terrible war has been going on for more than two months. There are testimonies about possible war crimes, but also about the destruction and theft of important world heritage.
On Tuesday December 15, soldiers approached Maryam Tsion Church in Aksum, Tigray’s cultural capital. They were Ethiopian federal troops and Amharic militias. The church was packed. There were possibly a thousand people in and around the building.
Europe External Programme with Africais a Belgium-based Centre of Expertise with in-depth knowledge, publications, and networks, specialised in issues of peace building, refugee protection and resilience in the Horn of Africa. EEPA has published extensively on issues related to movement and/or human trafficking of refugees in the Horn of Africa and on the Central Mediterranean Route. It cooperates with a wide network of Universities, research organisations, civil society and experts from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and across Africa. The situation reports can be foundhere.
Eritrean soldiers occupying the Irobland in northeastern Tigray have massacred over 50 innocent civilians in the Alitena areas.
IRROB.org is desperately appealing to the United Nations, the United States of America, the European Union, the African Union, and other Asian Countries, and the Canadian Government to intervene as soon as possible before the Irob minority people and other Tigrayans are decimated through the ongoing genocidal war and ethnic cleansing!!!
The Eritrean Nazi’s Hitler-like dictator, Isaias Afeworki, and a new Ethiopian Hitler, Abiy Ahmed Ali must be stopped by the World Community from committing another Holocaust in Tigray!!!
The two dictators, Isaias and Abiy, are purposely and systematically making starve the the people of Tigray to die of starvation over the top of the ongoing massacres committed by both Eritrean and Ethiopian troops’using artillery shelling, airstrikes and drone bombings; property lootings; factories, schools and churches destructions; livestock slaughtering; harvest-burnings in farm fields; garden destructions; executions’of children and youth, etc., etc., so that the Tigray people could be exterminated through systematic holocaust!
Ethiopian Bishop Tesfaselassie Medhin of Adigrat. (Photo: Amecea News Blog)
A female refugee and her child wait to receive aid at the Um Rakuba camp in Sudan, not far from the Ethiopia-Sudan border, on December 1, 2020. File Photo by Ala Kheir/EPA-EFE![Ethiopians who fled the continuing fighting in Tigray region, queue to receive food aid in the Hamdayet village in eastern Kassala state, Sudan [File: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters]](https://i2.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2020-12-16T191032Z_799462804_RC2JOK9EYN2W_RTRMADP_3_ETHIOPIA-CONFLICT.jpg?w=960&ssl=1)
