Tigray fighters raped, robbed, and beat up local women after attacking a town in Ethiopia's northern Amhara region, according to a new Amnesty International report released on Wednesday.
The report is the latest account of disturbing human rights abuses committed during the year-long conflict.
It follows an earlier report by the human rights watchdog that documented the rape of thousands of women and girls by the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the Tigray region.
Amnesty's investigation is based on interviews with 16 sexual assault survivors and local authorities in the town of Nifas Mewcha.
The report focused on abuses that took place after the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) entered Amhara in August.
Survivors recount horror
Fourteen out of the 16 women interviewed by Amnesty said they were gang-raped by Tigray fighters, in some cases at gunpoint and with their children watching.
"Three of them raped me while my children were crying," one of the survivors was quoted as saying. "They slapped me (and) kicked me. They were cocking their guns as if they are going to shoot me."
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
A city burns
Residents of Tigray's capital Mekele sift through wreckage following an airstrike by government forces on October 20. The military said it was targeting a weapons manufacturing facility operated by the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which the rebel Tigray forces have denied.
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
The haze of war
Smoke from a recent military airstrike billows above the streets of Mekele. Tigrayan fighters have accused the government of killing civilians, while the federal government maintains it is targeting arms depots. Locals have confirmed that at least one major industrial compound in Mekele has been destroyed.
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
Captured troops
Ethiopian government soliders captured by Tigrayan forces sit in rows and wait to be taken to a detention center on October 22. The soldiers were paraded through the streets of Mekele in open-top trucks in a show of force following the fourth day of airstrikes on the capital.
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
Help on the way
An Ethiopian Red Cross Society vehicle makes its way through Mekele following government airstrikes. The Red Cross has been working to provide medical treatment and basic shelter in the Tigray region. Amid a regional telecommunications blackout, the organization is also key to helping reconnect families separated by the conflict.
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
Rare aid
A cargo plane from the aid organization Samaritan's Purse unloads supplies at Mekele Airport back in March. The flow of humanitarian aid into Tigray has since been severely disrupted, with roadblocks on key routes stopping convoys from getting through and airstrikes forcing aid flights to be aborted.
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
A desperate plea
Heath workers stage a protest outside the United Nations office in Mekele, condemning the deaths of patients due to severe shortages of food and medicine. Stocks of vital supplies are dwindling in the capital, with malnutrition rates among children skyrocketing. The UN recently announced it would withdraw half of its workers from Ethiopia.
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
A victim of war
A victim of the Togoga airstrike is treated in hospital. On June 22, the Ethiopian Air Force launched an airstrike on the Tigrayan town of Togoga on a busy market day, killing 64 civilians and injuring 184. Ambulances attempting to reach the scene were initially blocked by soldiers before another convoy made it through and brought 25 of the wounded to a hospital in Mekele.
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
International protests
On the other side of the world, hundreds rallied in Whitehall, London on October 19 bearing flags and slogans as they called for an end to the violence and to the aid blockade in Tigray. Many of the protesters are members of the Tigrayan, Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora.
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Ethiopia: Tigray crisis one year on
Anger on both sides
Demonstrators in the capital Addis Ababa gathered outside the office of the UN World Food Program in September to protest the sending of aid to the Tigray region. The TPLF has been designated a terrorist group by Ethiopia's government. Officials and rights groups have also accused Tigrayan fighters of committing atrocities, including recruiting child soldiers.
Author: Ineke Mules
The women said they identified the Tigrayans by their accents and ethnic slurs they used against Amhara.
A 28-year-old mother of two told Amnesty that one of her four rapists called her donkey as they assaulted her while her daughter watched.
"He was saying: 'Amhara is a donkey, Amhara has massacred our people, the Federal Defense forces have raped my wife, now we can rape you as we want'," she said.
Yet another woman said she fell unconscious after TPLF fighters raped her and beat her, using the butts of their guns.
Hospitals damaged
The women targeted by the TPLF in Amhara were mostly from low-income families, doing menial jobs, according to Amnesty researcher Fisseha Tekle.
According to the rights group, a majority of the women were suffering from health problems as a result of the assaults.
All of them were unable to get the medical help they needed because Tigray forces looted local hospitals, leaving them without post-rape care.
"The testimonies we heard from survivors describe despicable acts by TPLF fighters that amount to war crimes, and potentially crimes against humanity," said Amnesty's secretary-general Agnes Callamard.
"They defy morality or any iota of humanity."
Why is there a conflict in Ethiopia?
Since early November, 2020, the Ethiopian government and the TPLF have been exchanging fire in a conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and has left more than 400,000 people facing famine.
The Tigray forces, who had dominated Ethiopia's national government for almost three decades, expanded the war into Amhara since retaking much of the northern Tigray region in June.
Last week, a report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that all sides have committed abuses in the war.
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Tigray: War at the expense of women
Hundreds of thousands on the run
The civil war between the Tigray regional government and the central government of Ethiopia under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed continues to escalate. Hundreds of thousands are now on the run, living in hunger and threatened by war crimes. After the self-proclaimed Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) recaptured Tigray's regional capital Mekele, many are fleeing from the contested areas to Mekele.
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Tigray: War at the expense of women
Threat of famine
According to the United Nations, more than 400,000 people in the region are affected by famine, while another 1.8 million people are on the brink of famine. Abiy is denying this, and has blocked deliveries of aid. UNICEF commented in August 2021: "This malnutrition crisis is taking place amid systematic destruction of the food, health, nutrition, water and sanitation infrastructure."
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Tigray: War at the expense of women
Scorched earth
The Ethiopian army is fighting side by side with soldiers from Eritrea — targeting not only the separatist fighters, but also the civilian population of Tigray. For Prime Minister Abiy, this is a means to break resistance in the Tigray region. Reports of war crimes and massacres are piling up. Burned-out cars and destroyed houses are part of the daily picture.
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Tigray: War at the expense of women
Rape as a weapon
A new report by Amnesty International (AI) confirms that rape and sexual violence against women are apparently being used to deliberately destabilize the situation. According to AI, soldiers from Eritrea are also heavily involved in these acts. "They talked to each other. Some of them: 'We kill her.' Some of them: 'No, no. Rape is enough for her,'" recalled the woman pictured.
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Tigray: War at the expense of women
Massacres and makeshift graves
The bodies of fighters from both sides are everywhere. Sometimes they are buried at makeshift sites; sometimes they are dumped in rivers, or simply left on the spot. This picture shows the makeshift grave of an Ethiopian soldier.
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Tigray: War at the expense of women
Youth fighters
Ever more young people are signing up for the resistance to oppose the combined forces of the central government and Eritrea. Many of the new TDF fighters are just teenagers. They face an unsure and possibly bloody future.
Author: Sarah Klein, Claudia Dehn
adi/nm (AFP, AP)
