Rape ‘with impunity’ widespread in Ethiopia’s Tigray region

Nairobi, Kenya –

Dozens of women have described shocking sexual assaults by Ethiopian soldiers and Allied forces in the country’s Tigray conflict, according to a report by Amnesty International released on Wednesday.

“All of these forces from the start, everywhere, and for a long time felt it was perfectly fine to commit these crimes because they clearly felt they could do it with impunity, nothing was holding them back,” senior researcher Donatella Rovera said the Associated Press.

She would not speculate on whether a leader signaled the rape, which the report said was intended to humiliate women and their Tigran ethnic group. In her years of work investigating atrocities around the world, these are some of the worst, Rovera said.

More than 1,200 cases of sexual violence were documented by health centers in Tigray between February and April alone, Amnesty said. Nobody knows the real price during the nine month conflict as most of the health facilities in the region of 6 million people were destroyed or destroyed.

Those numbers are likely a “small fraction” of reality, Amnesty said. It interviewed 63 women and health workers.

A dozen women reported being held for days or weeks while being raped multiple times, usually by multiple men. And 12 other women said they were raped in front of their family members. Five women said they were pregnant at the time of the attacks. Two said they shoved nails, gravel, and splinters into her vagina.

“I don’t know if they realized I am human,” one woman told Amnesty, describing how she was attacked by three men in her home. She was four months pregnant at the time.

The AP spoke separately to women who described being gang raped by fighters allied with the Ethiopian military, in particular soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, but also fighters from the neighboring Amhara region.

Amnesty has received no allegations against the Tigray forces, who regained control of much of the Tigray region in late June and have since entered the Amhara and Afar regions to break the blockade on their land and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. to put pressure to step.

While Ethiopian and allied forces withdrew from much of Tigray in June, some remain in west Tigray, and the Ethiopian government essentially abandoned its unilateral ceasefire on Tuesday when Abiy called on all capable citizens to fight.

The Amnesty report calls for accountability for sexual violence during the conflict, noting that rape and sexual slavery are war crimes. Many women in Tigray are now living with the physical and psychological effects of the assault, including HIV infection and prolonged bleeding, it said.

In a response to the Amnesty report, the Ethiopian government said it had previously admitted that “some members of the armed forces have committed behavior that is contrary to clear rules of engagement and directives.”

Ethiopia’s statement also accused the human rights group of “sensational attacks and smear campaigns” against the government, while Eritrean Minister of Information Yemane Gebremeskel tweeted that Amnesty had a “hostile agenda” against his country, which borders the Tigray region in the north.

Earlier this year, the Ethiopian government announced that three soldiers had been convicted of rape and other sexual violence, and 25 others had been charged. However, Amnesty said no information about these trials or any other action was provided to bring the perpetrators to justice.

A prosecutor general’s office spokesman did not respond to a request to update the investigation on Wednesday.

The Ethiopian government has not allowed human rights researchers into the Tigray region, despite the fact that the United Nations Human Rights Office and the government-created Ethiopian Commission on Human Rights are conducting joint investigations into suspected atrocities.