Faith Nyasuguta
Tigray rebels intentionally killed civilians and gang-raped scores of women and underage girls in two towns in Ethiopia’s Amhara region last year.
This was revealed on Wednesday by Amnesty International, the latest example of the horrific toll exacted by the 15-month war.
According to the rights watchdog, 30 rape survivors were interviewed — others as young as 14 — with others being victims of violence.
This draws a picture of the atrocities in Chenna and Kobo in August and September after rebels from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) seized control of the towns.
Nearly half the victims of sexual violence said they were gang-raped, with doctors telling Amnesty that some survivors had suffered lacerations likely caused by rifle bayonets being inserted into their genitals.
The rights group was informed by a 14-year-old schoolgirl that she and her mother were both raped by TPLF fighters who noted that the attacks were in revenge for atrocities committed against their own families.
“One of them raped me in the courtyard and the other raped my mother inside the house,” she said.
“My mother is very sick now, she is very depressed and desperate. We don’t speak about what happened; it is impossible.”
The probe follows the publication of an Amnesty report in November which documented sexual assaults by Tigrayan rebels in the Amhara town of Nifas Mewcha.
“Evidence is mounting of a pattern of Tigrayan forces committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in areas under their control in the Amhara region from July 2021 onwards.”
“This includes repeated incidents of widespread rape, summary killings and looting, including from hospitals,” Amnesty’s deputy director for East Africa, Sarah Jackson, said.
REVENGE KILLINGS
Kobo residents said TPLF fighters shot dead unarmed civilians, apparently in a revenge killing spree after facing opposition on their advance by Amhara militias.
“The first dead bodies we saw were by the school fence. There were 20 bodies lying in their underwear and facing the fence and three more bodies in the school compound. Most were shot at the back of their heads and some in the back,” a male resident said.
Adding, “Those who were shot at the back of their heads could not be recognised because their faces were partially blown off.”
The rights group said its satellite imagery analysis showed the existence of the new burial sites referred to by the villagers.
So far, the TPLF has not responded to the latest accusations, Amnesty said. However, the rebel group has previously criticised the watchdog over its earlier report on alleged atrocities in Nifas Mewcha, saying it would conduct its own probe and bring perpetrators to justice.
The war in northern Ethiopia has been punctuated by accounts of massacres and mass rapes, with thousands of people killed and hundreds of thousands on the brink of starvation.
A joint investigation by UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s office and the government-affiliated Ethiopian Human Rights Commission published last November found evidence of “serious abuses” , saying that some violations may amount to crimes against humanity.
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