By The Star Staff Writer
ADDIS ABAB, Ethiopia — Suspected forces from Ethiopia’s Tigrayan region armed with machetes, knives and axes “stabbed or hacked to death” scores — “likely hundreds” — of fellow citizens, mostly laborers from the Amhara ethnic group four days ago, leaving bodies strewn across a town in the rebellious region’s southwest, Amnesty International said in a new report.
The rights group said on Thursday it had confirmed through satellite imagery and geolocation that the gruesome photographs and video it had examined were recently taken and occurred in Mai-Kadra town in the Tigrayan region’s South West Zone on the night of Nov. 9.
Three people told Amnesty International that survivors of the massacre told them that members of the Tigrayan special police force and other members from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front had attacked them, apparently after suffering defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian federal forces a day earlier.
“We have confirmed the massacre of a very large number of civilians, who appear to have been day labourers in no way involved in the ongoing military offensive. This is a horrific tragedy whose true extent only time will tell as communication in Tigray remains shut down,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa.
Muchena urged the federal government to restore all communication to the Tigrayan region “as an act of accountability and transparency for its military operations in the region, as well as ensure unfettered access to humanitarian organizations and human rights monitors.”
Addis Ababa has cut off the Tigrayan region from the rest of the country after it launched a military operation on Nov. 4 in response to an attack by TPLF forces on an army base to steal artillery and military equipment.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Friday called for an “independent investigation and full accountability for what has happened” in Mai-Kadra town, expressing alarm at the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Tigrayan region.
“If confirmed as having been deliberately carried out by a party to the current fighting, these killings of civilians would of course amount to war crimes,” Bachelet said.
The massacre in the Tigrayn region underscores fears that the war between the federal government and the Tigrayan region could worsen rising ethnic tensions in the country, whose citizens are made up of dozens of ethnicities who shared almost nothing when they were cobbled together, by force, by their overambitious founders, Menelik II and Haile Selassie.
For almost two years, the federal government has been locked in a political dispute with the leaders of the northern Tigrayan region, but Addis Ababa only resorted to force on Nov. 4 to clip the wings of the recalcitrant region.
Tigranyans have ruled Ethiopia — a nation of 110 million population, the second largest in Africa — with an iron hand for nearly three decades until three years of uprising uprooted their administration and brought current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to power.
Abiy has dubbed the Tigrayan-dominated rule a “dark era” and accused the minority group of committing human rights abuses and massive corruption during their time in power. Tigrayans counter that by saying the national government is scapegoating their people.
Ethiopia’s upper house of parliament has over the weekend disbanded the Tigrayan regional government and set up a provisional administration whose mandate would be to run the region’s affairs until nationwide elections are held. The vote, scheduled for last August, was postponed in March 31 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Tigrayan region, however, rejected the delay and organized its own elections on Sept. 9, a move that has birthed the ongoing, bloody military confrontation that so far killed hundreds of combatants on both sides and sent thousands of Ethiopians, including combatants, over the border to Sudan.
Since Nov. 4, more than 14,500 people, majority of them “exhausted and scared” children, have fled into Sudan in search of safety, overwhelming the UNHCR’s capacity to provide aid, said UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch in a press briefing in Geneva on Friday.
“Services for 96,000 Eritrean refugees inside Tigray have been seriously disrupted, with reports of growing number of Ethiopians becoming displaced internally,” Baloch said.
The Ethiopian Air Force has carried out multiple air strikes against TPLF military installations since the operation began, and on Thursday Abiy said that the airstrikes had neutralized heavy and long-range weaponry “the criminal elements within the TPLF” acquired before the war. He said the army liberated the western part of the region from the rebel group, calling it a “victory for the Ethiopian soldiers,” especially for the Northern Command that endured “gruesome and fatal” attacks by TPLF forces.
The Ethiopian government has not commented on the report by Amnesty, but the Amhara region’s media agency reported that there were around 500 victims, primarily non-Tigrayan residents.
A man, who said he helped in the efforts to collect the bodies from Mai-Kadra streets, told Amnesty International that he had checked some victims’ state-issued identification cards and found that most of them were from the Amhara ethnic group.
The news of the massacre came the same day Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy defended his government’s decision to use force to bring the Tigranyan region to heel.
“The federal government has every right to deploy federal security forces and use force in order to apprehend those implicated in massive corruption and gross human rights violation,” Abiy said on Thursday in a speech posted on his Facebook page.
He also reiterated his earlier promise to wrap up the operation soon.
“We are confident that in a relatively short period of time we will accomplish our objectives and create a conducive environment for life to return to normalcy for our citizens in Tigray” region, he said.
“We will exercise due care to protect law abiding and peaceful citizens from being harmed by the operation we’re undertaking,” he said. “Ultimately, this rule of law enforcement operation will enable sustainable peace and stability throughout the country.’
The prime minister said the operation was launched “due to the persistent and dangerous illegality of the criminal clique within TPLF,” noting that investigations into the statements, decisions and acts of TPLF key figures are ongoing, and that “there is an ample ground to believe” that they had violated provisions of Ethiopia’s criminal code.
He said TPLF forces last week massacred soldiers from the Northern Command, “while they were at their most vulnerable (condition): In their pajamas and among those who they thought were their peers.”
He said the government has achieved three “key milestones”: Disbanding Tigrayan regional government, foiling TPLF attempts to control some military bases and depots of the Northern Command and launching several criminal investigations against TPLF leaders.
On Thursday, lawmakers stripped 39 TPLF members, including the president of the Tigranyan region, Debretsion Gebremichael, and TPLF Spokesman Getachew Red of immunity from prosecution, another strong indication from Addis Ababa that it’s not going back on its plan to dismantle and delegitimize Tigrayan officials opposed to the national government in Addis Ababa.
On Friday, Prime Minister Abiy appointed Mulu Nega, former Addis Ababa University assistant professor, as the new president for the Tigrayan region, to replace the current leader, Debretsion. The premier said Nega would form his government from “political parties legally operating in the region.”
A civilian told Amnesty that the Nov. 9 massacre happened after Ethiopian federal forces and a special paramilitary force from the Amhara region defeated Tigrayan forces during the day in a place called Lugdi. But the Ethiopian army decided to spend the night outside Mai-Kadra town and when they entered they found “a lot of dead bodies, soaked in blood, on the streets and rental dormitories frequented by seasonal workers.”
“The view was really debasing, and I am still in shock struggling to cope with the experience,” a civilian who entered the town after it was retaken by Ethiopian federal forces told Amnesty International.
Most of the dead bodies were found strewn in the center of the town, near the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, and along a road that exits to the neighboring Humera town, Amnesty said, citing verified images and witnesses, who were providing food and other supplies to the Ethiopian Defense Forces and visited the town immediately after the deadly attack.
“People who saw the dead bodies told Amnesty International that they had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes, reports which have been confirmed by an independent pathologist commissioned by Amnesty International,” said the group’s report. “Witnesses said there were no signs of gunshot wounds.”
The witnesses told Amnesty that they and Ethiopian soldiers found some wounded people among the dead and took them to nearby hospitals in Abreha-Jira and Gondar before removing dead bodies from the streets.
“Those wounded told me they were attacked with machetes, axes and knives. You can also tell from the wounds that those who died were attacked by sharp objects. It is horrible and I am really sad that I witnessed this in my life,” one distraught witness said, according to the report.
A civilian, who witnessed the aftermath of the massacre, corroborated details of the massacre, saying the federal army and the Amhara special force entered Mai-Kadra town on Nov. 10 around 10:a.m. local time.
“When we entered the town, what we saw was devastating. The roads were strewn with dead bodies especially in the centre of the town, and on the road that connects the town to Humera,” said the civilian, cited by Amnesty.