Many women have been raped ‘definitely and without a doubt’ in the Tigray region, home to Ethiopia’s secret conflict.
The fighting has left tens of thousands of civilians dead, the country’s women’s minister said Thursday in a rare government acknowledgment of its failure.
More than 100 women in the largely remote northern region have reported being raped amid the four-month conflict between Ethiopian forces and related fighters – including Eritrean fighters whose presence is denied – and the fleeing former Tigray leaders who run the government of Ethiopia has long dominated.
The rape charges came out despite the fact that women have few police or health institutions to report alleged crimes.
“Thus, there is a possibility that the actual number of cases may be higher and wider than the reported cases,” the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a report on the 108 suspected rapes over the past two months.
Both sides in the conflict that began in early November consider the other illegal after the national election was delayed last year due to the coronavirus, and Tigray defiantly maintained his own position.
MORE THAN 100 DEAD LONG ETHNIC LINES IN ETHIOPY
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed once said that no civilian was killed in the conflict, but more recently he admitted that it “personally caused a lot of upset for me.”
Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, attempted to centralize power in the country in September and was apparently furious at Tigray’s decision to hold his own election after the national election was postponed.
Refugees fleeing the conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia travel by bus to the temporary shelter 8 Village, near the border between Sudan and Ethiopia, in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, on December 1, 2020. (Associated Press)
Hailu Kebede, head of foreign affairs of the Salsay Woyane Tigray opposition party, calls the conflict the least documented war, and estimates along with two others that more than 52,000 civilians have died in the past few months.
“The world will apologize to the people of Tigray, but it will be too late,” he told The Associated Press.
Journalists have been banned from the region where communication is volatile, but reports of escaped survivors paint an unimaginable picture of the atrocities taking place in the region.
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Disturbing reports contain allegations that men are being forced to rape members of their own families under violent violence, and that women are being forced to have sex with soldiers in exchange for basic necessities.
“Very, very serious cases of malnutrition” have also been reported in the region where the vast majority of its 6 million citizens remain unreachable, the Red Cross said on Wednesday. According to the organization, thousands of people could go hungry.
A Tigray woman studying in Europe said Ethiopian soldiers had recently come to her town with food, but it was withheld from families who allegedly had ties to Tigray fighters.
“If you do not bring your father, your brothers, with you, you will not get the help, you will starve,” the woman told the Associated Press after talking to her sister who lives in the Tigray.
She also learned that her uncle and two nephews had been killed by Eritrean soldiers during a recent holiday gathering. A local bar association, which relies on witnesses who reached cities with telephone services, listed a total of 59 victims.
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“I am so ashamed of my government,” the student exclaimed out of anonymity because of her family’s safety. And since it’s almost impossible to contact people in the region, she said she was worried if ‘someone in my family dies, I’ll learn it on Facebook.’
An American nurse who visited her family in the border town of Rama has estimated that Eritrean soldiers looted left 1,000 dead.
She was able to fly out of the country and return to her home in Colorado.
If the fighting does not end soon, she told the AP: “We will be left without families.”
Fox News’ Edmund DeMarche and The Associated Press contributed to this report.