The conditions are really discouraging and awful.
We haven’t got any kind of supplies. People are terribly disturbed.
Between 60 and 80 people are leaving the camp every day, in the hope of finding somewhere safer.
This morning alone 9 youths and 7 people from two families left near me.
The Amara militia are searching for the TPLF militia who hid in the area of the camp.
Last night they broke into the UNHCR office to search for hidden weapons and soldiers. Today they broke into the building at which our rations are stored.
The environment in the camp doesn’t feel safe.
Tigray: A message received today from an Eritrean refugee in Adi Harush camp
Tuesday, 01 December 2020 20:17 Written by Eritrea HubInterview on the Tigray conflict:„No chance for compromise“
Tuesday, 01 December 2020 12:01 Written by taz.deHow did Ethiopia slide from optimism to war? Tsedale Lemma, editor of the Addis Standard, dissects how Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed lost track.
Tsedale Lemma is one of Ethiopia's foremost journalistsFoto: Benjamin Breitegger
This is the English original of the interview with Tsedale Lemma published in German in the TAZ print edition of Monday 30 November 2020. For the shorter German version, click here.
taz: Ms. Lemma, phone and internet connections to Tigray are cut off. What do you know about what’s happening in Tigray?
Tsedale Lemma: Most reports are coming from rights organizations, humanitarian agencies and journalists from international media who are reporting from Sudan where more than 43,000 refugees from Tigray region are sheltering. Going by these reports, the situation is grim; the massacre in Mai-Kadra has claimed the lives of more than 600 civilians and there are two sides of stories on who perpetrated the crime. Communication in Tigray region remained cut off.
How did we get to this point? When Abiy came to power in April 2018 there was lots of optimism and happiness. The term “Abiymania“ was coined.
It was true; even us critical journalists were happy and showed optimism to a certain extent; but at the same time, we were also expressing reservations at the early signs of a turn toward a one-man authoritarianism.
You said you were cautiously optimistic when Abiy came to power. When did that change?
That only lasted the first few months. Then the critics started getting louder that the reform was losing its track. There is no roadmap to it. Abiy kept on downplaying calls for a roadmap, for calls for negotiation, settlement, compromise with all the opposition. He opened the space, the political space, but there was no rule of law. And he never had any serious conversation with the opposition and we kept calling and calling, we need to talk out even as to how the election was going to take place in this tense atmosphere, because the political space, which has been held so tight for twenty seven years, is suddenly unleashed, and you need to have order in it. That is when millions of Ethiopians started realizing that he's really going the wrong direction. He did more to beautify Addis Abeba and build public parks than tackling some of the most pressing issues for example security.
In 2019 t he Nobel Committee gave him the Nobel Peace Prize for a peace deal with Eritrea, a country Ethiopia had been in war with for two decades.
We never knew what was included in those peace agreements. We mentioned that the people of Ethiopia need to know and that the deal should be institutionalized. But that was never acted upon. The Ethiopian parliament for example never approved anything. Abiy also bypassed the foreign ministry, which normally should have been front and center of the peace deal with a foreign country. It was just personal relationship between Abiy and the Eritrea president. Us local critical journalists we were mentioning those things. We were not as blinded as Oslo.
When Abiy came to power he aimed for a more centralized state and promised unity. Was that naive?
Yes. There is Ethiopia’s multinational constitution and there is Abiy’s book “Medemer“; if you read his book you will find out that it is the antithesis of Ethiopia’s multinational federalism. There is a raging war of vision on what kind of Ethiopia we want to build. The prime minister kept on saying he's determined to the multinational federation. But what keeps happening is his vision of state building which is tilted against his rhetoric. What happened in the last two years is that there is no autonomous region whose president is not assigned one way or another by the prime minister. Except for Tigray, each and every region has its presidents maneuvered and assigned by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. I want you to imagine Angela Merkel calling the Bavarian president to her office and telling him you're going to have to make your cabinet resign overnight. Abiy Ahmed did that and it is a sign that he is in favour of a much centralized government the kind of which he has unhinged power of influence and that runs contrary to the way in which the Ethiopian state was last reconstituted after the 1995 constitution was adopted.
Ethiopia had one ruling party coalition, the EPRDF, ruling for three decades and winning with over 90-something percent. Tigrayans had huge influence although they make up only six percent of the population. Abiy in 2019 founded a new ruling party, the Prosperity Party (PP) that the TPLF has never joined. Was his aim not to create a fairer representation?
You need to understand one thing: The EPRDF was detested, it was rotten from deep inside. It was replete with cronyism, corruption, authoritarianism and cruelty. As such, there was that need of undoing that party, distancing himself from the legacy of the EPRDF. And so Abiy wanted to dismantle it. That is understandable to a certain extent but it was deeply problematic.
The problem being?
The problem is that the EPRDF itself, before Abiy Ahmed came, in December of 2017, had a closed session. The presidents of all the four major parties that make up the EPRDF sat down for 17 days and did a soul-search and they came up with a list of things they needed to change in order to redeem the party. There were major changes if they were followed through. These changes included releasing prisoners; democratizing the politics; reforming the judiciary; opening up the political space and reform the security and all. Abiy Ahmed was placed in power to conduct those reform agendas and lead the country to a democratic election but instead he opted to conduct an abrupt and disorderly break up of an authoritarian party that ruled the country with an iron fist.
What did he cause by dismantling the party?
In the process he disfigured the only political arrangement that the country had for 27 years. Deeply entrenched, it takes really a very careful unraveling of this party, but what he did was like hitting it with a brute force. That of course led the party itself to get so fractured, so fragmented, it led Abiy to lose his own closest ally, Lemma Megersa, the president of the Oromia region, for example, a man who was so instrumental in bringing Abiy himself to power, but someone who, as we speak, is placed under house arrest.
What was Abiy’s aim by founding the PP?
His overwhelming driving force is power consolidation. The PP is a structure to make it possible for few people to control ultimate power at the center. It is unfortunate because the Ethiopian people fought so hard against the consolidation and domination of power among the few elites only to have it replaced by some elites from the Oromo, Abiy’s own ethnic group. You have to be careful not to mistake the Oromo people with the few Oromo elite consolidating power. The Oromo people are still waiting to get answers for their questions for jobs, for the right to self-administration, the right of their language to become the federal working language which are not answered so far.
The PP, however, aimed for a fairer representation, didn’t it?
Of course, formerly marginalized regional states, for example, the Somali regional state, could come to the center. The Somali regional state’s president today sits in the executive of the new party, which was never the case before. That was a good development, but it ended there and the party structure was never completed. The party itself never had its founding conference. There is no executive decision that is collectively taken by the party so far. All the decisions that were taken after the Prosperity Party was formed came from Abiy’s office. So they were just being the symbolic cheerleaders.
The TPLF did not join the PP. How much backing does the TPLF have among ordinary Tigrayans?
If you had asked me this question two and a half years ago when the prime minister came into power, I would tell you it was a dwindling support that they had. The Tigrayan people were growing unhappy about the way the TPLF dominated government of the then EPRDF coalition led the federal federal and regional (governments. The government was turning into a sheer authoritarian regime and Tigrayans, along with the rest of Ethiopians, were expressing their displeasure with their own party.
That changed?
It changed when Abiy Ahmed came into power and began to sideline and prosecute TPLF officials from his circle, to press criminal and corruption investigations. Others who have been equally, if not more, criminals than the TPLF, were largely left untouched. The TPLF leaders became the target of a crusade against corruption, and against human rights violations. The TPLF leadership said they were being profiled and pushed, and that they were being becoming the scapegoat for all the ills in the country. So they left the center and stationed themselves in Mekelle, the Tigray region capital which has contributed to bring them close to the people of Tigray and continued to widen the political rift with Abiy and his government.
How did the relationship between Abiy and TP L F turn so sour?
The cascade of events that have played a role in widening the rift between Abiy and the TPLF leadership are plenty. At time one is more belligerent than the other; at time both seem determined to not give compromise a chance. But once most of the TPLF leadership were purged from the center the difference was not only a distance of the politics, it was also a physical distance. And then, of course, there were the rhetoric, you know, the media and the war of words and the exchange of these very tough accusations, one after the other; these were all contributing to the toxicity of the political environment between the federal government and the regional government. And that was, of course, going south every day, every month. The major turn of this deteriorating relationship came when Abiy dismantled the EPRDF and formed the PP which TPLF rejected joining. This was followed by another major difference when the federal government postponed the much anticipated general elections due to COVID-19. The relationship after that became irreversible when TPLF unilaterally conducted its regional election in September.
There are now reports of ethnic Tigrayians targeted elsewhere.
Yes, there is enough evidence of both state sanctioned and a horizontal ethnic profiling of Tigrayans especially in the last three weeks, not just targeting of TPLF. It added toxic to the very bad situation. There are verified reports of concerted efforts targeting ethnic Tigrayans, which is institutionalized and sanctioned by the state. We receive a lot of complaints from native Tigrayans in the capital Addis and elsewhere about incidents when the police show up in the night to search their houses without warrant papers. There are also reports of bank accounts being frozen for no apparent reason. This is despicable and very sad.
What’s left of the peace deal with Eritrea, what is the situation like today?
Right now, the area is a war zone. But until this war broke out – which the government prefers to call “law and order operation“–the border was still militarized. What we know is that all the five gates in the border between the two countries were closed a few months into the peace deal. Not so much by the Tigrayan side, but by the Eritrean government.
Is the Eritrean government involved in the current conflict?
Asmara and Addis Ababa deny it. But Ethiopians who have fled to Sudan say that bombardment was coming from the Eritrean side as well, and that there are Eritrean troops on the ground supporting the federal government. The regional government itself is reporting drone attacks, which is most likely because the UAE has a military base in Assab in Eritrea from which it launches the drone attacks against the Huthi rebels in Yemen. And it's very likely that the UAE is engaged in drone attacks against the TPLF. The TPLF has also attacked Eritrea with rockets, saying it was in response to Eritrea’s involvement.
Now the war has been going on for over three weeks. What needs to happen?
An immediate cessation of hostilities, because every passing day is complicating this conflict, opening up the Pandora's Box for regional rivalries. News of the UAE and its use of drones, if confirmed, is bad signal for regional rivalries; Sudan, which is bordering the Tigray regional state, has a state replete with mercenaries and many government people who walk around with guns, with leverage that goes beyond the Sudanese border. So every passing day is going to complicate the regional dynamics of this war, but also it's making Ethiopia itself very vulnerable internally. The social fabric is being ripped apart; polarization is at a scale never seen before and repression is rearing its ugly heads once again because that is what war does to a society.
How so?
We are receiving reports of massacres and an increased armed movements in other parts of the country such as the southern region and western regions that are not receiving media coverage.That means the federal army who are now being moved north have left a security vacuum in these places. Conflicts are flaring up with more intensity now than they already were. If this continues unabated it will unravel the federation. This war has to stop now, and cessation of hostilities must be implemented immediately. before the right to life of thousand more Ethiopians is lost unnecessarily.
BREAKING: Eritrean Refugees in UNHCR camp in Tigray being forcibly returned to Eritrea
Tuesday, 01 December 2020 11:58 Written by Eritrea HubThe following has been learned via a reliable source, but there is no further information at present.
UNHCR are checking the news, but can not presently comment on the information.
“The Eritrean military is in control of Shimelba camp and is preparing to send large numbers of its residents to Eritrea for punishment.
They have destroyed all UNHCR records, and have seized all medicines.
Some of the residents have escaped to Humera camp.”
The United Nations refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on Sunday that he is very concerned about the fate of nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees there amid reports that some have been abducted.
If confirmed, such treatment of refugees in camps close to the Tigray border with Eritrea “would be major violations of international norms,” Filippo Grandi told reporters.
“It is my strong appeal for the prime minister of Ethiopia for this situation to be addressed as a matter of urgency.”
USA tells PM Abiy – end Tigray fighting and open dialogue; concern for refugees and civilians
Tuesday, 01 December 2020 11:56 Written by Eritrea HubSource: US State Department
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo spoke with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed today regarding the conflict in Tigray.
Secretary Pompeo took note of the Government of Ethiopia’s November 28 announcement of the end of major military operations, but reiterated the United States’ grave concern regarding ongoing hostilities and the risks the conflict poses.
The Secretary called for a complete end to the fighting and constructive dialogue to resolve the crisis.
He stressed the willingness of the United States, the African Union envoys and other international partners to assist in dialogue and reconciliation.
The Secretary underscored the importance of protecting civilians from further harm, including refugees and civilians fleeing the conflict into Sudan, and allowing international humanitarian organizations access to the Tigray region to ensure the unhindered flow of humanitarian assistance to those in need.
He urged the Government of Ethiopia to ensure respect for human rights of Tigrayans and all ethnic groups.
Secretary Pompeo highlighted the United States’ strong partnership with Ethiopia, our continued support for Ethiopia’s historic reform agenda, and the importance of Ethiopia’s role in promoting prosperity and stability on the Horn of Africa.
Ethiopia's PM savours victory, Tigrayan leader says war not finished
Monday, 30 November 2020 22:51 Written by By Reuters StaffADDIS ABABA/NAIROBI (Reuters) - Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed lauded his troops on Monday for ousting a rebellious northern movement, but the leader of Tigrayan forces said they were still resisting amid fears of a protracted guerrilla conflict.
The nearly month-long war has killed hundreds and probably thousands of people, sent refugees into Sudan, enmeshed Eritrea, and stirred rivalries among Ethiopia’s myriad ethnic groups.
Federal forces captured regional capital Mekelle at the weekend and declared victory over the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a guerrilla movement-turned-political party that dominated national government for nearly three decades until 2018.
“Our constitution was attacked but it didn’t take us three years, it took us three weeks,” Abiy told parliament, comparing his offensive with the American Civil War of the 1860s.
“Our army is disciplined and victorious.”
Though the TPLF said Mekelle had been bombarded, Abiy said his troops had not used rockets and had not killed a single civilian in Tigray since starting an offensive in response to an attack on an army base on Nov. 4.
Though the highland city of 500,000 people eventually fell with little resistance, the TPLF said on Sunday it had shot down a plane and retaken one town.
The United States expressed concern about continued fighting and called for a complete end to hostilities and for dialogue. Both Washington and the United Nations urged that human rights be fully respected and that aid groups be allowed access.
Graphic: Map of region -
‘FIGHTING THE INVADERS’
“I’m close to Mekelle in Tigray fighting the invaders,” he told Reuters in a text message.
Claims from all sides are difficult to verify as phone and internet links to Tigray have largely been down and access is restricted.
The TPLF has shelled Asmara’s airport and accused Eritrea of sending troops to fight with Abiy’s forces. Both Eritrea and Ethiopia have denied that accusation.
When he took office in 2018, Abiy pledged to unite Ethiopia’s 115 million people, but ethnic bloodshed had killed hundreds and uprooted hundreds of thousands from their homes even before the latest flare-up.
In Tigray, both sides have spoken of hundreds of fatalities in air strikes and fighting. Diplomats believe the toll is in the thousands.
Abiy’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum dismissed the TPLF’s comments that fighting continued, dismissing them as the delusions of a disintegrating criminal clique”.
Redwan Hussein, head of a government taskforce on Tigray, told Reuters most casualties occurred at the start of the conflict during a TPLF attack on Ethiopian soldiers, attempts by reinforcements to reach them, and then a mass killing of about 700 civilians.
“Our orders were to leave the cities alone, and to encircle them, to cut the forces that were within the towns from their chain of commands,” he added, saying the Republican Guard captured Mekelle without shooting as TPLF conscripts deserted.
The TPLF was not immediately available to comment. On Sunday, the Red Cross said Mekelle’s hospitals were low on supplies and bodybags, but did not give casualty figures.
Graphic: Map of refugee movements -
GUERRILLA WAR?
It is not clear how many fighters the TPLF has left, but Debretsion’s defiance raises the spectre of a drawn-out insurgency. The battle-hardened TPLF helped topple Ethiopia’s Marxist dictatorship in 1991 and knows how to exploit its mountains and borders with Sudan and Eritrea.
Abiy, whose parents are from the larger Oromo and Amharic groups, said he had felt Ethiopia’s ethnic frictions even when taking office as prime minister, where he felt like a “prisoner.” He said security services dominated by Tigrayans discouraged him from travelling round Ethiopia.
There are more than 80 ethnicities in Ethiopia, which operates as a federation of 10 regions run by separate groups.
Abiy said he had directed reforms to reduce Tigrayans in senior military positions from more than 60% to a quarter of the top brass. Tigrayans make up roughly 6% of the population.
Though urging the more than 45,000 refugees in Sudan to return, Abiy said it was suspicious so many of them were young males and if any had a role in an alleged massacre of non-Tigrayans in Mai Kadra they should face justice.
The government blamed the killings on a Tigrayan youth group with the aid of local forces, but the TPLF denied any collusion.
INTERNATIONAL CONCERN
Despite the government’s claim of victory, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo voiced grave concern about the hostilities. In a telephone call with Abiy, Pompeo called for dialogue and a complete end to the fighting, a State Department spokesman said.
He stressed the importance of protecting civilians, including refugees fleeing into Sudan, and giving international humanitarian organizations access to Tigray, the State Department said.
He urged the government to respect the human rights of Tigrayans and all ethnic groups.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke with Abiy on Sunday and called for full respect for human rights and access for humanitarian aid, a U.N. spokesman said.
“The Secretary General also said that Ethiopia needed a true reconciliation, without discrimination...where every community should feel respected and be part of Ethiopia,” he said.
Reporting by Addis Ababa newsroom, and Duncan Miriri and David Lewis in Nairobi, Arshad Mohammed and Tim Ahmann in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Angus MacSwan
EU considers aid cut to Ethiopia amid violence
Monday, 30 November 2020 22:42 Written by SIMON MARKS Brussels fears that Ethiopia’s internal conflict could spiral out of control, dragging in neighbouring countries.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Widespread conflict in Ethiopia that has driven tens of thousands of refugees from their homes, killed hundreds — possibly thousands — and dragged in neighbouring countries is prompting questions in Europe about whether to hold back tens of millions of euros in aid to the country.
On Tuesday, Europe’s crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarčič will fly to Ethiopia where he hopes to convince the country’s Peace Minister, Muferiat Kamil, to end a weeks-old blockade for international aid organizations to Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. He will then fly to Sudan on Wednesday where he will meet Sudanese government officials before visiting refugees in Kassala and Gedarif states on Thursday. Sudan is a temporary home for approximately 45,000 refugees who have fled the conflict.
“I wish to urge the Ethiopian authorities one more time to enable full and unrestricted access of humanitarian workers and humanitarian aid to all areas affected by fighting,” Lenarčič told POLITICO on Monday, recalling that Ethiopia hosts the second largest refugee population in Africa. “I intend to raise this issue with the Ethiopian Minister for Peace whom I hope to meet in Addis Ababa en route to Sudan.”
For its part, Ethiopia’s government rejects any suggestion that the security crackdown was illegitimate or that it should be financially punished. “My message to friends of #Ethiopia is that we may be poor but we are not a country that will negotiate our sovereignty. Threatening Ethiopia for coins will not work,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed tweeted on Monday.
Following months of political tension, the conflict in Ethiopia began on November 4 when Abiy, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, declared war on the dissident leadership of Tigray, accusing them of attacking a military base. The eruption of violence came after roughly two years of growing tensions between the government and the country’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, who ran Ethiopia for almost three decades.
What was supposed to be a quick, clinical affair targeting what the government has described as a corrupt criminal clique has turned into a sprawling conflict with thousands of deaths, according to several foreign diplomats, and rockets fired across international borders.
Both sides have been accused of committing war crimes. Reports that scores of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia have been abducted led the U.N.’s refugee agency to raise the prospect of “major violations of international norms” in the country. And last week, two Eritrean refugees were killed and four others seriously injured when fighting broke out close to a camp in northern Tigray, according to two senior U.N. officials and a humanitarian worker briefed on the incident.
Some warn the death toll could be much higher than has been reported. One diplomat based in the capital Addis Ababa, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had received reports of “a horrific smell” in the hills behind Alamata town south of the regional capital Mekelle where truck-loads of Amhara militia have joined government forces to fight Tigrayan forces. The International Committee for the Red Cross has reported massive shortages of medical supplies in hospitals in the region.
“The situation in Tigray is analogous to the one in post-Saddam Iraq with members of the armed forces going into opposition after being purged,” said Dan Connell, a visiting researcher specializing in Ethiopia and Eritrea at Boston University. “It’s an understandable move at some levels, but extremely dangerous and it is coming back to haunt Abiy.”
The Ethiopian government says it has begun targeting aid to areas of the Tigray region it controls. “Regarding the next step of the government, it is made clear that rehabilitation and reconstruction works have already started, displaced people are being returned to their villages and administrations in all levels are being restored,” said Ayele Lire Jijamo, minister plenipotentiary at the Ethiopian embassy to Belgium.
Still, apart from the risk that violence spreads to other parts of Ethiopia, Abiy’s personal reputation as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate has taken a battering with the Nobel Committee taking the rare step of publicly expressing deep concern and calling on all parties to “end the escalating violence.”
Europe’s mediation role has been elevated due to the political void in the U.S. as a new administration prepares to take office. Last week, Commissioner Lenarčič met with Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen in Brussels, telling him the conflict in Ethiopia could no longer be considered as an internal affair as Abiy has continuously asserted, according to an EU official present in the room. The commissioner said that the risk the conflict could destabilise the entire region coupled with the risk Ethiopia could break international humanitarian law meant the conflict had taken on an international significance.
The EU has provided Ethiopia with €815 million for the 2014-2020 budgetary period, plus more than €400 million from the EU Trust Fund for Africa, and senior officials in Brussels hope to use the EU’s financial weight as leverage to de-escalate the conflict.
One EU official said a political decision would be made in the coming weeks on whether or not Addis Ababa should continue to qualify for budgetary support from Brussels. “We are keen to have a common EU position on this,” the official said. “There will be consultation between the capitals and there could be a decision to stop budgetary support.”
Last week the European Parliament raised the prospect of implementing “individual targeted measures,” including sanctions, should human rights abuses be uncovered.
Ethiopia’s international partners are unlikely to withdraw their assistance completely, but they will probably take some concrete measures to demonstrate their concerns about the government’s hard-handed response to the situation in Tigray, including its impact on civilian populations, say analysts.
For Brussels, the political transition in Washington cannot come soon enough to help share the diplomatic load. “One of the larger problems, is that, like the Middle East, the United States is not playing a helpful role,” said Connell at Boston University. “That will change in January. And perhaps the conflict will not be over until then.”
Source=EU considers aid cut to Ethiopia amid violence – POLITICO
From Eritrea’s Ona Massacre of 1970 to Mai-Kadra: Region’s Endless Story of Murder of the Innocent
Monday, 30 November 2020 16:37 Written by Woldeyesus AmmarChild-survivors, family members, relatives, Kerenites and compatriots of Eritrea’s worst single-day massacre at Ona, in the outskirts of Keren, came together this 28 November via a Zoom conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that extremely sad occurrence. On the other hand, their neighbors in Ethiopia were this weekend mourning and still counting their dead of their own Ona: Mai-Kadra, 440 kms away down in north western Tigray.
In both Ona and Mai-Kadra, estimates of the victims are put at around 800 each. Also in both places, the victims were innocent citizens who had very little to do with the big politics of their leaders - their blindfolded elite - who failed and continue to fail to resolve differences through civilized means. We cannot deny that the peoples of the entire region share a history of endless wars and their legacy of a mindset that wrongly values a meaningless bravado ‘earned’ through violence. Unfortunately, those bad legacies are not behind us. We may be condemned to live counting more and more of Onas and Mai-Kadras for decades to come unless we decide to change our ways.
For now, let us have a quick look at Eritrea’s Ona Massacre and related mass murders that Ethiopia and its army mercilessly inflicted upon so many innocent lives for so many years in Eritrea: 1961-1991.
Eritrean Massacres Were/Are Little known to Ethiopians
Today, many Eritreans join their Ethiopian neighbors in mourning the dead of Mai-Kadra and the thousands of young Ethiopians on both sides of the war in Tigray province. On the other hand, very few Ethiopians knew what went on in Eritrea during its 30-year war for self-determination and national independence. Among the few Ethiopians who knew were people like the former Ethiopian president, Negasso Gidada, who was told the massacre in Ona and Besik-Dira by his then classmate Michael Ghaber, who lost his aunt with eight family members at Ona.
The late Negasso Gidada wrote in his memoirs that it was from the story of Ona and Besik-Dira that he heard for first time about the war in Eritrea. My press colleagues at Addis Ababa’s Berhanen Selam and our daily contacts in those years would also have said the same about having heard from me on the wanton killings that raged in Eritrea in those years. Their list would include fairly well known names like Baalu Ghirma, the author of ‘Oromai; Abbe Gubegna, the author of ‘Aliweledim;’ Menghistu Ghedamu, Yacob Woldemariam, Yohannes Disasa and a few more. In other words, it was very few Ethiopians of our generation who knew about the numerous Mai-Kadras inflicted upon innocent Eritreans by the Ethiopian army. Sadly, those remain unrecognized by many Ethiopians. This is mainly because of the failure of the failed party misruling Eritrean for the past 29 years.
The Ona and Basik-Dira Massacres
These two sad incidents are usually mentions together because they occurred within 24 hours shared between 30 November and 1 December of 1970. Although killings and burning of innocent villagers was the norm in those days in Eritrea, the immediate cause for the Ona and Besik-Dira massacres is attributed to an ELF ambush and killing on 21 November of General Teshome Ergetu, the commander of Ethiopia’s second division in Asmara. He was in a convoy towards Keren to re-launch a wave of scorched-earth operations in the lowlands following intensification of guerrilla activities that year, including the de-railing of a train near Keren.
Besik-Dira: 119 dead
Within a few days of the General’s death, killing and burning contingents of the Ethiopian army were deployed in the region north of Keren. Villages were burned and scattered human corpses were to be found in every dale and hill of the region.
On 30 November, 1970, it was the turn of Besik-Dira, 8 kms north of Keren. Christians in the village were asked to stand on one side and Moslems on the other. But the villagers refused to do so saying that they were one people inseparable on religious grounds and that they were willing to die or live together. All of them, estimated at 200, were then forced to enter into the small village Mosque, one body over the other. Machine guns planted at the two windows opened fire, and continued doing so until complete silence reigned. Later on, those who died instantly were counted at 119 children, men and women. The rest, who miraculously survived death lying beneath dead body, were left with their painful wounds and life-time and disabilities.
Ona: Over 800 Dead
That Black Monday of 30 November in Besik-Dira was immediately followed by Black Tuesday, 1 December 1970, when it was decided to be the turn of Ona, a village only 4-5 kms north of Keren. It was in fact not one village by then but a huge concentration camp for peasant farmers who were earlier forced to come to Ona after their villages were burned down in the previous months. Gunning down of innocent citizens near Ona was started in the eve although the major assault with heavy weapons and machine guns started in the early morning of 1st of December 190. By late afternoon, the once big ‘village’ of Ona was not there together with about two-thirds of its inhabitants.
The corpses buried in mass graves on the second day, 2 December, numbered 713. Of about 300 souls, who did not die immediately, were left with severe wounds and many died in succeeding days and weeks.
Some of the infants who were found on the breasts of their dead mothers 50 years ago were among the Zoom conference attendants of 28 November 2020.
Eritrean Victims of Ethiopian Massacres.
Eritreans today easily list over 20 major massacres inflicted by the Ethiopian army, although the worst one-day such incident was that of Ona. Countless persons continued to die in prisons and smaller groups through the years. Unfortunately, the exact count of Eritrea’s innocent victims had not been known, as we also don’t know the victims of the past 29 years under the homegrown dictator. They all remained rough estimates.
Ethiopia’s earliest admission of killings in Eritrea was made in June 1978 by Colonel Menghistu Haile Mariam, then head of Ethiopia’s military junta, when he said that up to 50,000 civilians had been victimized in the war till that year. Major Dawit Woldegiorghis, who as a governor in Eritrea, admitted in his book, Red Tears, that up to 280,000 civilian Eritreans were killed between 1975 and 1983.
Journalist-author Michela Wrong, in her book on Eritrea entitled I Didn’t Do it for You, put the figure of 200,000 civilians killed. On its part, a known British magazine, The Economist of 20 October 1990, estimated civilian victims of the 30-year war and related consequences at about 500,000.
Yet, all those war crimes and genocidal acts of the Ethiopian army in Eritrea remain widely unknown, unrecognized, let alone to be compensated or apologized for. This is one of the inexcusable failures of independent Eritrea. But let us hope the day will come when justice will be served and all actors of war crimes and genocides are put to accountability.
May the victims of today’s Mai-Kadra in Ethiopia, the victims of Ona and Beskik-Dira of 50 years ago this month, and all other victims of mass killings of in our region rest in peace.
Tigray hits Asmara with rockets after PM Abiy says military operation in Tigray “completed”
Monday, 30 November 2020 12:21 Written by Martin PlautIt was early evening when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed put out a Tweet proclaiming that the military operation had been “completed” – all that remained was a policing operation to capture the leaders of the TPLF.
But what happened next suggests that the Tigrayans retain a serious military capability.
The Eritrean capital, Asmara was hit by missles after the fall of Mekelle.
The US Embassy in Asmara put out this message on their website.
“Security Alert – U.S. Embassy Asmara, Eritrea
Message: At about 10:13pm on November 28 there were six explosions in Asmara.
The Embassy again advises all U.S. Citizens in Eritrea to continue to exercise caution, remain in their homes (when not at work), conduct only essential travel, and to remain situationally aware of the ongoing conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. US Citizens not in country should avoid travel to Eritrea.”
This would suggest that the Tigrayans managed to move missile launchers away from Mekelle, and that they are still able to strike targets deep inside Eritrea. If this is confirmed then this war would appear to be far from over, and nowhere near the police operation suggested by Prime Minister Abiy.
There are unconfirmed reports of heavy fighting between Tigrayan and Eritrean forces inside Eritrea this evening. Troop movements are also reported inside Eritrea.
While Tigray has faced offensives from Ethiopian Federal Forces, supported by Amhara militia, from the South and East, they have also faced attacks from Eritrean divisions from the North.
The Ethiopian military are reported to have been reinforced by Ethiopian troops flown into the Eritrean capital, Asmara, as well as Ethiopian troops who fled into Eritrea when the Tigrayans seized the Northern Command on 4 October.
Ethiopia- Thousands of Eritrean Refugees Abducted from Tigray Camps by Eritrean Armed Forces
Monday, 30 November 2020 12:19 Written by Eritrea HubSource: Human Rights Concern-Eritrea
Ethiopia- Thousands of Eritrean Refugees Abducted from Tigray Camps by Eritrean Armed Forces
Reports are emerging that 6,000 Eritrean Refugees, who were living in two of the four refugee camps and in the town of Shire in the Tigray Regional State of Ethiopia, have been abducted by Eritrean armed forces working in Tigray with the permission of the Ethiopian army. It is understood that the refugees were removed at gunpoint from the Shimelba and Hitsats camps and Shire town and are being forcibly returned to Eritrea.
Following a period of electoral and constitutional disputes, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, ordered Federal forces on 4th November to move into Tigray and impose a state of emergency by force. Heavy fighting has occurred ever since, with Eritrean armed forces apparently active alongside Ethiopian armed forces. It would appear that the Ethiopian government has allowed Eritrean military personnel total freedom to deal with Eritrean citizens in Tigray as they see fit.
There are up to 100,000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray, almost half of them, living largely in four United Nations-sponsored camps, Hitsats, Mai-Aini, Adi-Harush and Shemelba. However, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is currently unable to provide them with protection, food or health care.
Human Rights Concern-Eritrea (HRCE) commented in a Press Release earlier this month that there was a very real danger that Eritrean refugees might be driven out of the camps, kidnapped or forcibly returned to Eritrea, where arrest, imprisonment, torture and possible execution would almost certainly be their fate.
These camps are under the official protection of the UNHCR. The Ethiopian Government is directly responsible to UNHCR for the safety of refugees in the camps. Under international law the Ethiopian Government must ensure the safety of all refugees in its care, and is responsible for preventing any criminal acts against them. Under the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, “No State shall expel or return (” refoule “) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened.”
Elizabeth Chyrum, Director of HRCE, has issued the following statement: –
- “The criminal kidnapping of defenceless Eritrean refugees must be stopped. Eritrean troops must not be allowed anywhere near these Eritrean refugees, for whose protection Ethiopia is primarily responsible.The decision of the Ethiopian government not to protect refugees in its territoryis an utter dereliction of duty. Allowing refugees to be abducted by troops whom they fled in the first place is tantamount to a crime against humanity.
- If refugees from Eritrea are forcibly returned to the country from which they have fled, arrest, imprisonment and torture are almost certain to be their fate. This must be prevented.
- The very lives and survival of Eritreans in the refugee camps are now hugely endangered. It is vital that the Ethiopian government takes action, protects the camps, and prevents the Eritrean army or any security agents from having any access to the camps and those dwelling in them.
- It appears that these refugees were abandoned by the humanitarian organizations including the UNHCR that were responsible for their care. Why has no one raised their voice against the inhuman treatment of the defenceless refugees? This would appear to be a dereliction of responsibility by those in charge of the camps.
- The UNHCR must be given full access to the camps and provided with safe corridors to supply all necessary food and medical services to these refugees.
- HRCE is appealing most urgently to all member states of the UN to intervene and put pressure on the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea to give immediate priority to the protection of Eritrean refugees.”
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Human Rights Concern – Eritrea (HRCE)
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+44 7958 005 637
Viewpoint: How Ethiopia is undermining the African Union
Monday, 30 November 2020 12:13 Written by Eritrea HubSource: BBC
Viewpoint: How Ethiopia is undermining the African Union
By Alex de Waal
IMAGE COPYRIGHTOFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTEREthiopia took the lead in creating Africa’s continental organisation, the African Union (AU), but Ethiopia analyst Alex de Waal argues that its actions are now jeopardising the body’s founding principles.
Shortly before three former African heads of state arrived in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the northern Tigray region, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered what he called the “final phase of our rule of law operations”.
This was a remarkable rebuff.
Former Presidents Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Joachim Chissano of Mozambique and Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa met Mr Abiy on Friday, but were told that the Ethiopian government would continue its military operations.
Mr Abiy also said that they could not meet any representatives of the group Ethiopia is fighting in Tigray, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which the prime minister has dismissed as a “criminal clique”.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTEPACiting the Charter of the United Nations in a statement earlier in the week, the prime minister insisted that the federal government was engaged in a domestic law-enforcement operation and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation applied.
But Nigerian legal expert Chidi Odinkalu argues that Ethiopia is using the charter to escalate a war, the opposite of its pacific intent, saying that the “audacity of this position is disconcerting”.
He points out that the conflict is already internationalised, because Eritrea is entangled and refugees are crossing into Sudan.
Also, the United Nations has adopted principles to prevent states abusing the doctrine of non-interference to give themselves impunity to commit atrocities.
Since 1981, conflict resolution has been a duty and a right. Since 2005, states have had the responsibility to protect civilians in conflict.
Fears of war crimes
In rebuffing the African mediators, Mr Abiy is not just turning down a peace initiative. He is challenging the foundational principles of the African Union itself.
Article 4(g) of the AU’s Constitutive Act – to which Ethiopia acceded in 2002 – does specify “non-interference by any member state in the internal affairs of another”.
But this is immediately followed by Article 4(h), which gives the AU the right “to intervene in a member state… in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity”.
This so-called “duty of non-indifference” was adopted in the wake of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
It was first formulated by an International Panel of Eminent Personalities, strongly supported by Ethiopia, which was brought together to recommend how Africa should prevent such atrocities in the future. “Non-indifference” is Africa’s version of the UN’s “responsibility to protect”.
MAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGESThe Ethiopian government has itself accused the TPLF of carrying out atrocities, and observers fear that when the news blackout is lifted, evidence of war crimes by both sides will come to light.
There are unconfirmed reports that Eritrean troops have crossed the border and rounded up Eritrean refugees in United Nations camps in Tigray, which would be a violation of the United Nations convention on refugees.
Ethiopia’s diplomatic triumph
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was founded in 1963, with its headquarters in Addis Ababa, with the aim of consolidating the newly won independence of African states.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTAFPLocating the OAU in Ethiopia was a diplomatic triumph for Emperor Haile Selassie, who had long championed international law.
Famously, his 1936 speech at the League of Nations predicted that if Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia were to go unpunished, the world would be bathed in blood.
The OAU was a common front for Africa’s liberation from colonial and racist rule.
But it also served as a club of autocrats, who held to their common interest of staying in power no matter what. Tanzania’s founding President, Julius Nyerere, lamented that it had become “a trade union of heads of state”.
By the 1990s it was clear that the OAU needed to be refashioned to be able to respond to Africa’s wars, coups and atrocities, and in 2002 the AU was created with a far more ambitious agenda of promoting peace and democracy.
Since then it has developed a set of mechanisms that include suspending countries where there is an unconstitutional change in government, and offering help to mediate conflicts, along with an obligation for conflict-afflicted countries to welcome good-faith peacemaking efforts.
How the African Union has helped
Mr Abiy himself intervened in the Sudanese crisis last year when he sought a peaceful resolution to the confrontation between the pro-democracy movement and the military, which had unseated President Omar al-Bashir.
The formula for Sudan’s transition to democracy was drawn up on the AU’s template.
But the AU is not a strong institution. It has a low budget and cannot impose its will.
More powerful states and organisations can overrule it – as Nato did when the AU sought a negotiated settlement to the Libya conflict in 2011, but the United States, European and Arab countries pursued regime change.
The AU’s real value lies in its soft power: it articulates the norms of peace and cooperation and persuades African leaders to go along, knowing that they rise together and sink together.
Over time, it has proven its value: Africa has become more democratic and peaceable.
A generation ago, African diplomatic efforts to avoid conflicts or resolve them were rare. Today, they are standard practice.
