Eritrean soldiers fighting across the border in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region killed hundreds of people in a massacre last year in a likely crime against humanity, Amnesty International said on Friday.
The rights guard spoke to survivors of the atrocities and used satellite images to bring together the bloody events of November last year in the ancient city of Axum in a new report.
“The evidence is convincing and points to an incredible conclusion. Ethiopian and Eritrean troops committed several war crimes in their offensive to take control of Axum,” said Deprose Muchena of Amnesty International.
“In addition, Eritrean troops stormed and systematically killed hundreds of cold-blooded civilians, who appear to be committing crimes against humanity. This atrocity ranks among the worst documented in this conflict to date.”
Tigray has been the battlefield since the beginning of November 2020, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced military operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and accused them of attacking federal army camps. He declared victory after government forces captured the regional capital Mekele in late November, although the TPLF promised to continue fighting, and clashes have continued in the region.
Tigray has been without internet and difficult to access since the beginning of the conflict, making allegations and counterclaims of violence difficult to confirm. The presence of Eritrean troops in Ethiopia is widely documented but has been denied by Addis Ababa and Asmara.
Eritrea fought a brutal border war with Ethiopia in 1998-2000, back when the TPLF dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition. Abiy won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize largely to begin a rapprochement with Eritrea, whose president Isaias Afwerki and the TPLF are still bitter enemies.
Amnesty said it had spoken to 41 survivors and witnesses to the violence, saying that on November 19, 2020, Ethiopian and Eritrean military forces took control of Axum in a large-scale offensive, killing and displacing civilians with indiscriminate shelling and shooting. “
“During an approximately 24-hour period, November 28-29, 2020, Eritrean troops operating in the Ethiopian city of Axum killed hundreds of civilians,” Amnesty said, according to Reuters. “During the nine days that followed, the Eritrean military carried out extensive looting of civilian property and extrajudicial executions.”
Witnesses said the Eritrean forces were easy to identify, via their vehicles, language and unique ritual facial scars, while also openly declaring themselves to be such. The worst violence took place after a small group of pro-TPLF militiamen attacked the soldiers’ base on November 28 and they responded, leaving the city strewn with bodies.
“The Eritrean soldiers entered the city and started killing randomly,” said a 22-year-old man who wanted to bring food to the militia, which he described as young and barely knew how to fight.
Residents told Amnesty that many victims in Axum did not carry any weapons and ran away from the soldiers when they were shot. “I saw many people dead on the street. Even my uncle’s family.”
Six of his family members were killed. “So many people were killed,” said a 21-year-old male resident. The next day, the soldiers shot at those who were trying to move the bodies while performing house-to-house raids.
A man told Amnesty International that he saw soldiers line up six men and shoot them from behind on the street outside his house.
The organization said it had collected the names of more than 240 of the victims, but could not independently verify the total number of deaths. But corroborating testimony and evidence made it probable that hundreds had died.
“Residents estimate that several hundred people were buried in the aftermath of the massacre, and they attended funerals in several churches where many were buried,” the report said. Satellite images showed signs of mass burials near two of the city’s churches.
“As an urgent matter, there must be a UN-led investigation into the serious violations in Axum. Those suspected of responsibility for war crimes or crimes against humanity must be prosecuted in fair trials and victims and their families must be fully compensated,” Muchena said.
The Ethiopian human rights chief (EHRC), Daniel Bekele, said Amnesty’s results should be taken “seriously.”
The EHRC said in a statement that it was also investigating the massacre and while the investigation is not complete, preliminary results indicate “the killing of an as yet unknown number of civilians by Eritrean soldiers in the city of Axum.”
The UN Special Rapporteur on Eritrea called for a speedy, independent inquiry this week into allegations that the country’s troops attacked refugee camps in the Ethiopian neighborhood and abducted Eritrean asylum seekers.
Reporting to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker said he was worried about thousands of Eritreans who were in two camps in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region – now claimed to be destroyed by Eritrean and Ethiopian troops.
96,000 Eritrean refugees lived in four camps in Tigray. Babiker said two of the camps, Hitsats and Shimelba, which hosted more than 25,000 Eritrean refugees, were “allegedly destroyed in attacks by Eritrean and Ethiopian troops” between November and January.
He said he had received first-hand accounts of allegations of “outright killings, targeted abductions and forced returns of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers to Eritrea, allegedly by Eritrean forces.”
Babiker said many such refugees had now been imprisoned in Eritrea.
“Such allegations must be investigated quickly and thoroughly by independent mechanisms,” he said. “I ask the Eritrean authorities to give me full access to refugees and asylum seekers who are alleged to have been held in various prisons in Eritrea.”
The Sudanese rapporteur, who took office in November, said there was “no concrete evidence of progress or actual improvements” in Eritrea’s human rights in his first oral update to the Council. Special rapporteurs have a mandate from the Council but do not speak for the UN
“The country lacks the rule of law, a constitution and an independent judiciary to enforce protection and respect for human rights,” Babiker said. “Eritrea still has no national assembly to pass laws, including those governing fundamental rights and the right of the Eritrean people to participate freely in the public life of their country.”
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