The war in Tigray has turned into an ethnic cleansing campaign
Rights — di Luigi Mastrodonato
As fighting continues in Tigray, several reports are denouncing crimes against humanity committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the region.
The war in Tigray has turned into an ethnic cleansing campaign
As fighting continues in Tigray, several reports are denouncing crimes against humanity committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the region.
A new report by Amnesty International has revealed that the Eritrean army is responsible for a massacre of more than 200 civilians that took place in November in the Ethiopian city of Axum, in Tigray. The news confirms reports that Asmara's soldiers are fighting alongside those of Addis Ababa in the civil war that has been raging for three months between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the region. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis is registering increasingly alarming figures, with more than 60,000 people having fled to neighbouring Sudan and two million internally displaced. And the international community is now speaking of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
The terrible months of Tigray
The war in Tigray is a recent development, having broken out last November. But its origins lie further back and are bound up with the enormous heterogeneity of Ethiopia, which is made up of 80 different ethnic groups. Until recently, these differences were reflected in political representation, but in 2019 the new president Abiy Ahmed Ali created the Prosperity Party, a merger of the various parties that had characterised the coalition of the Ethiopian executive. The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) is the only group to have opposed this change, on the grounds that it would lead to a loss of Tigrayan power and representation. Relations with the government have deteriorated since then.
In 2020 Ethiopia was due to hold elections, but President Ahmed Ali postponed them indefinitely due to coronavirus. The TPLF did not accept the decision and independently organised the vote in the region under its control, provoking the fury of Addis Ababa. Then in autumn some regional forces linked to the TPLF attacked a military base in a region controlled by the central government. This was the spark that ignited the war, with the president ordering a military offensive that on paper lasted only a few weeks, but in reality has not yet come to an end.
On 4 November, Ethiopian army fighter jets bombed Tigray while troops advanced into the region. There were violent clashes and in the days that followed, the forces of the TPLF — a paramilitary political organisation — launched rockets against positions in the neighbouring Amhara region, whose forces are fighting alongside the central army, and against Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, accused of providing military assistance to the Ethiopian army. President Ahmed Ali declared that no civilians were killed during the November attacks, but testimonies from the ground — made more difficult by the fact that the government cut off internet and all telecommunications services in the region and obstructed the work of journalists — tell a different story. At the end of the month the government announced the liberation of Tigray and the end of the conflict, but in many remote areas fighting is still ongoing.
The testimony of a young Tigrayan
"Many citizens have died; jets came to bomb even the Tigray regional capital, Mekelle, while hundreds of bodies were found in other parts of the region. I myself lost two uncles, but only found out recently because of the telecommunications blackout." Yonas (a fictitious name) is a 19-year-old who arrived in Italy last summer to study at university. He comes from the Tigray regional capital and is not going through a peaceful time, as his entire family is in the conflict-affected region. A few days ago he managed to reach them again, after calls to Mekelle were once again permitted. But, as he recounts, in other more remote areas of the region the internet and broader communications blackout imposed by the central government has still not been lifted.
"The Ethiopian state has always rested on a precarious balance owing to its high ethnic heterogeneity. The new president, after taking office in 2018, pursued the idea of a reunification that was initially welcomed by everyone, including the Tigrayans, with whom relations were good. Over time, however, it became clear that his actual objective was to impose the traditions of the Amhara ethnic group on the entire country and to limit the representation of all others. Hence the opposition to the Tplf alliance, but also from other political forces, such as the Oromo", explains Yonas, who regards the elections organised autonomously by Tigray as the pretext used by Addis Ababa for an attack that had been premeditated for some time.
Eritrean troops fighting in #Ethiopia’s Tigray state systematically killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in Axum on 28-29 Nov 2020, opening fire in the streets and conducting house-to-house raids in a massacre that may amount to a crime against humanity. amnesty.org/en/latest/news…
President Ahmed Ali spent weeks continuing to deny the involvement of civilians in the war, but testimonies then began to emerge that contradict this version. "The situation in Tigray is very critical; from what my family in the regional capital has told me, an apparent calm has returned, but in the countryside fighting continues", Yonas goes on. Several reports do indeed confirm that we are facing a tragedy. African Union envoys spoke from the outset of thousands of Tigrayan victims, including civilians; more than 60,000 people have fled to neighbouring Sudan and there are two and a half million internally displaced persons. The majority of the region's population is also in need of food supplies, in what appears to be a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe, as noted by the UNHCR as well. Meanwhile, episodes of ethnic cleansing are being reported, such as the 750 people killed in the holy city of Axum, or the massacre denounced in recent days by Amnesty International, with civilians killed in the street and house-to-house raids. And the UNHCR itself, in the past few hours, for the first time spoke of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers.
International involvement
"Today the main problem is Eritrea, which is fighting with its army alongside the Ethiopian forces and is driven by a spirit of revenge against the Tigrayans", Yonas denounces — a version also confirmed by videos and by Amnesty International itself, but denied by Addis Ababa. "My two uncles were also killed at the hands of the Asmara army. When the soldiers arrived in their village they fled into the hills along with other men, but once they made their way back towards their homes they were executed in the street. Many women, meanwhile, were raped."
Eritrea and Ethiopia experienced a decades-long conflict, but in 2019 the Ethiopian president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the peace process he had set in motion. Today they are fighting side by side in Tigray, moreover with Italian weapons given the recent trade agreements signed by Rome with Ethiopia. Thousands of Eritreans who had fled to Tigray from the Asmara dictatorship are meanwhile being forcibly deported to their country of origin, with entire refugee camps destroyed. In the past few hours, journalists and translators from several international outlets were arrested while documenting the conflict. These numerous and horrifying testimonies have led the international community to raise its voice against both countries in recent weeks. The United States has called for an end to ethnic cleansing and ordered government forces to withdraw from Tigray, provoking the anger of Addis Ababa. The European Union has appealed for Eritrea and Ethiopia to withdraw their respective troops and has suspended a development funding package.
"There is some light of hope at the end of the tunnel, given that the Tigray conflict is beginning to gain media resonance and that the international community is mobilising", Yonas concludes. "The conflict must be stopped as soon as possible — the price already paid has been far too high."