Ethiopia’s leader acknowledges atrocities were committed in Tigray war
KAMPALA, Uganda — Ethiopia’s leader Tuesday said atrocities have been committed in Tigray, his first public acknowledgment of possible war crimes in the country’s north, where fighting persists as government troops hunt down the region’s fugitive leaders.
“Reports indicate that atrocities have been committed in Tigray region,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in an address before lawmakers in the capital, Addis Ababa.
War is “a nasty thing,” Abiy said, speaking the local Amharic language. “We know the destruction this war has caused.”
He said soldiers who raped women or committed other war crimes would be held responsible, even though he cited “propaganda of exaggeration” by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the once-dominant party whose leaders challenged Abiy’s legitimacy after the postponement of elections last year.
Abiy spoke as concern continues to grow over the humanitarian situation in the embattled northern region, which is home to 6 million people.
The United States has characterized some abuses in the Tigray war as “ethnic cleansing,” charges dismissed by Ethiopian authorities as unfounded. It also has urged Eritrean troops, who are fighting on the side of Ethiopian government forces, to withdraw from Tigray.
Residents of the town of Bora, in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, tell of a horrific massacre of local men and boys by Ethiopian soldiers.
Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his efforts to make peace with Eritrea, faces pressure to end the conflict in Tigray as well as to institute an international investigation into alleged war crimes, ideally led by the United Nations. The government’s critics say an ongoing federal probe isn’t enough because the government can’t effectively investigate itself.
Rupert Colville, a spokesman in Geneva for U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, told the Associated Press last week that the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission had asked to participate with her office in “a joint investigation into allegations of serious human rights violations by all sides” in Tigray.
Accounts of atrocities by Ethiopian and allied forces against residents of Tigray have been detailed in reports by news organizations and by such groups as Amnesty International.
Abiy said in Tuesday’s address, which included answers to questions from lawmakers, that fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front had committed a massacre in the town of Mai Kadra. “But it is not getting enough attention,” he said of that massacre, describing it as “the worst” in the conflict.
An L.A. Times freelancer was assaulted and had her laptop stolen after she reported on rape in Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict.
The Tigray conflict began in November, when Abiy sent government troops into the region after an attack there on federal military facilities. The federal army is now hunting fugitive regional leaders, who have reportedly retreated into Tigray’s remote mountainous areas.
Abiy accused Tigray’s leaders of drumming up “a war narrative” while the area faced challenges such as a destructive invasion of locusts and the COVID-19 pandemic. “This was misplaced and untimely arrogance,” he said, according to a transcript of his comments posted on Twitter by the prime minister’s office.
President Biden last week dispatched Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) to Ethiopia to express the administration’s “grave concerns” about the growing humanitarian crisis and human rights abuses in Tigray, and the risk of broader instability in the Horn of Africa. Details of Coons’ weekend visit haven’t been released.
Humanitarian officials have warned that a growing number of people might be starving to death in Tigray. The fighting erupted on the brink of harvest in the largely agricultural region and sent an untold number of people fleeing their homes. Witnesses have described widespread looting by Eritrean soldiers as well as the burning of crops.
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