Amid an escalation of tension also evidenced in the belligerent rhetoric of the prime minister who has already won a Nobel Peace Prize, Ethiopia has seen international calls for a ceasefire grow. The return of conflict between the central government and rebels in the Tigre region completes a year this month.
On Wednesday (3), the UN again issued alerts for human rights violations in the war between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s forces and the TPLF (Tiger People’s Liberation Front), the party that now controls this region north of the parents. According to a United Nations report, the conflict is marked by “extreme brutality” and all those involved may have committed crimes against humanity.
The document points out that both sides committed acts of torture, raped men and women and killed civilians, in addition to making ethnic arrests. The US State Department said it would “carefully review” the report.
The American envoy for the region known as the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, was deployed on Thursday (4) to Addis Ababa with the mission of putting pressure on the authorities for the end of military operations and for the beginning of the ceasefire negotiations. UN Secretary General António Guterres said that he spoke with Ahmed and offered to help create the conditions for a dialogue.
The position was also adopted by the European Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) —the East African eight-nation bloc that acts as a mediator in the conflicts in South Sudan— and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet .
“This investigation is an opportunity for all parties to acknowledge their responsibilities, commit to adopting concrete measures in terms of responsibility and reparation for victims, and find a sustainable solution to end the suffering of millions of people,” said the former Chilean president at the presentation of the United Nations report in Geneva.
The text is based on 269 confidential interviews and meetings with local and federal authorities, representatives of NGOs, health professionals and survivors of episodes of abuse — half of the women interviewed were victims of gang rapes.
The entities still accuse the central government of again blocking humanitarian aid — no humanitarian convoy has entered Tigre since Oct. 18, according to the UN. In response, Abiy Ahmed said the report “clearly demonstrates that the genocide charges are false and have no basis.”
In a government note, he dismissed allegations that his actions resulted in civilians starving to death.
The prime minister’s rhetoric has hinted at anything but a retreat. In a post on social media on Thursday, confirmed by authorities to the Associated Press agency, the government returned to attacking the rebels with aggressive speech. “As the saying goes, ‘A mouse that wanders from its den is closer to death’.”
Over the weekend, Facebook deleted a post by Ahmed, considered offensive, asking the population to “bury” the forces of Tigre. “We are committed to helping people stay safe and prevent attacks online and offline through our platforms,” ​​a Facebook spokesman told Reuters news agency.
At the same time, the prime minister rejected the requests for negotiations and accused the Tigre forces of exaggerating their territorial gains. “This country does not give in to foreign propaganda, we are waging an existential war,” he said in a government statement. A spokesman even accused the international media of being “too alarmist” and of “perpetuating terrorist propaganda as the truth”.
Days earlier, the prime minister had asked citizens to take up arms to defend themselves against the rebels.
On Tuesday, Ahmed declared a six-month state of emergency across Ethiopia after the TPLF announced it had advanced into other parts of the country and considered marching into Addis Ababa. Since then, according to Reuters, police have arrested dozens of people — who, according to a spokesman, provide moral, financial and propaganda support to the insurgents.
A spokesman for the rebels said on Wednesday that their troops were in the town of Kemise, in the Amhara region, 325 km from the capital, and had joined fighters from an Oromo ethnic group, the Oromo Liberation Army. “We have no intention of shooting civilians and we do not want bloodshed. If possible, we would like the process to be peaceful,” he said.
This Friday (5), another seven groups –whose capacity and size are uncertain– joined the Oromo and Tigre rebels, forming an alliance of nine forces against the central government. Entitled the United Front of Ethiopian Federal and Confederate Forces, the union includes groups from the Gambela, Afar, Somali and Benishangul regions and from the Agaw, Qemant and Sidama ethnic groups.
“The next step will be to organize ourselves and totally dismantle the existing government, whether by force or negotiation, and then insert a transitional government,” said Mahamud Ugas Muhumed, a member of the Somali group.
Analysts, however, say they believe that a possible takeover of the capital would only take place after the rebels took control of the road that links Addis Ababa to Djibouti, thus avoiding counterattacks from possible allies of the central government.
In this context, the international community fears that the war will spread beyond Ethiopia’s borders. UN Special Adviser for Genocide Prevention Alice Wairimu Nderitu said at an online event Thursday that if that happened it would be “completely uncontrollable.”
The US embassy in Ethiopia authorized the voluntary departure of some employees and their families and, on Friday, the US government advised all its citizens in the country to leave the territory “as soon as possible”.
The current conflict began in November 2020, when groups loyal to the TPLF took over military bases in Tigre. In response, Ahmed, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, sent troops to the region.
The now insurgent group dominated national politics for nearly three decades but lost influence after the current prime minister took office in 2018 after years of anti-government protests.
Relations with the Tigre front, meanwhile, soured after Ahmed was accused of centralizing power at the expense of the country’s regional administrations — a charge the prime minister denies.
In the last year, the conflict has killed thousands of people, forced more than 2 million to flee their homes and left 400,000 Ethiopians starving in Tigre.
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