Articles

Source: Reuters – Note the full draft resolution is below.

U.S. senators seek possible sanctions over Ethiopia conflict abuses

The proposed resolution was introduced on Wednesday by Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat, and Senator Jim Risch, a Republican.

It was the first such call by U.S. lawmakers since war between Ethiopian federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) broke out on Nov. 4.

The conflict is thought to have killed thousands and displaced more than 950,000 people, according to United Nations estimates, about 50,000 of them into Sudan.

Concern has mounted over reports of civilians targeted by both sides, posing a policy dilemma for the United States, which considers Ethiopia an important ally in a volatile region.

The government has said it will investigate any reports of atrocities or mass killings, but will only allow independent investigations if the government was not able to do so.

Accounts from all sides are difficult to verify because most phone lines and internet connections to the region have been down since the conflict broke out. Foreign journalists are required to have permits to leave the capital city.

The Ethiopian army has captured Tigray’s regional capital Mekelle and declared victory but TPLF leaders say they are fighting back on various fronts around the highland city.

The Senate resolution introduced by Cardin and Risch also called on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the TPLF to cease hostilities and pursue a peaceful resolution to the war.

Civilians fleeing fighting in Tigray last month told Reuters that they witnessed bombing by government warplanes, shooting on the streets, and people being hacked to death with machetes.

Rights group Amnesty International said scores and probably hundreds of people were stabbed or hacked to death in the town of Mai Kadra in Tigray less than a week after the war began.

Ethiopia’s state-appointed human rights commission’s initial report found that an estimated 600 civilians were killed in that attack.

RESTORING ORDER

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in Geneva on Wednesday that events in Tigray were still “worrying and volatile”.

“There is an urgent need for independent monitoring of the human rights situation in the Tigray region, all necessary measures to protect civilians, and accountability for violations,” Bachelet said.

Abiy’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum responded that there was

“nothing volatile about Tigray or Ethiopia”.

“The federal government is well equipped and able to restore order and is undertaking such activities as cities and towns slowly return to regular activities,” she said.

Meanwhile aid groups are pressing for safe access to the northern region, which is home to more than 5 million people and where 600,000 relied on food aid even before the conflict.

The government has said it was delivering aid in areas that it controlled, but relief agencies are increasingly frustrated.

A United Nations team visiting refugees in Tigray was shot at over the weekend. The government said it had failed to stop at two checkpoints.

In response to that, another U.S. Senator, Bob Menendez said in a tweet: “Attacks on humanitarians must STOP. Refugees & all civilians must be PROTECTED.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres acknowledged the problems on Wednesday and said Ethiopia and the United Nations had now agreed on joint missions to assess humanitarian needs.

Source: US Senate

RISCH, CARDIN INTRODUCE RESOLUTION ENCOURAGING PEACEFUL RESOLUTION TO TIGRAY CONFLICT IN ETHIOPIA

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Ben Cardin (D-Md.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that oversees civilian security, democracy and human rights, today introduced a bipartisan resolution calling on the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front to cease all hostilities, protect the human rights of all Ethiopians, and pursue a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

“The conflict in Tigray presents a dire humanitarian situation and a direct threat to Ethiopia’s historic transition to democracy,” said Risch. “This bipartisan resolution encourages the Ethiopian federal government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front to engage in dialogue that will address grievances and pursue a peaceful and sustainable end to the conflict. A stable and democratic Ethiopia is critical to the security of the broader region, and the United States will continue to be supportive of good-faith efforts to further democratic progress.”

“The ongoing fighting in Tigray has already cost thousands of lives and created a humanitarian crisis of disastrous proportions, threatening the long-term stability not only of Ethiopia, but the entire region,” said Cardin. “For the sake of the Ethiopian people and their loved ones across the diaspora, many of whom I’m proud to represent in Maryland, the violence must stop. All parties to this conflict must work together towards reconciliation, justice, and lasting peace.”

Full text of the resolution can be found here.

US Senate Resolution on Ethiopia and Tigray

Three reports below: AP, Reuters and CNN

Source: Associated Press

UN: Ethiopia’s conflict has ‘appalling impact on civilians’

By CARA ANNA

Tigrayans who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, start wood fires to prepare dinner, in front of their temporary shelters at Umm Rakouba refugee camp in Qadarif, eastern Sudan, Monday, Dec. 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ethiopia’s situation is “spiraling out of control with appalling impact on civilians” and urgently needs outside monitoring, the United Nations human rights chief warned Wednesday, but Ethiopia is rejecting calls for independent investigations into the deadly fighting in its Tigray region, saying it “doesn’t need a baby-sitter.”

The government’s declaration came amid international calls for more transparency into the month-long fighting between Ethiopian forces and those of the fugitive Tigray regional government that is thought to have killed thousands, including civilians. At least one large-scale massacre has been documented by human rights groups, and others are feared.

Senior government official Redwan Hussein told reporters on Tuesday evening that Ethiopia will invite others for assistance only if it feels that “it failed to investigate.” To assume the government can’t carry out such probes “is belittling the government,” he said.

Frustration is growing as the northern Tigray region remains largely cut off from the outside world, with food and medicines desperately needed by the population of 6 million — some 1 million of them now thought to be displaced.

The lack of transparency, with most communications and transport links severed, has complicated efforts to verify the warring side’s claims.

It also hurts efforts to understand the extent of atrocities that have been committed since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Nov. 4 announced that fighting had begun with the TPLF, which dominated Ethiopia’s government and military for nearly three decades before he came to power and sidelined it.

Each government now regards the other as illegal, as the TPLF objects to the postponement of national elections until next year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and sees Abiy’s mandate as expired.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said the situation is “exceedingly worrying and volatile” with fighting reported to continue in areas surrounding the Tigray capital, Mekele, and the towns of Sheraro and Axum, “in spite of government claims to the contrary.”

“We have corroborated information of gross human rights violations and abuses including indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects, looting, abductions and sexual violence against women and girls,” Bachelet told reporters. “There are reports of forced recruitment of Tigrayan youth to fight against their own communities.”

However, she said, with communications limited, “we have been unable to access the worst affected areas.”

Ethiopia’s government is pushing back against what it calls outside “interference,” from efforts at dialogue to delivering aid, drawing on its history as the rare African country never colonized, a source of deep national pride.

The government wants to manage aid delivery, and on Tuesday it said its forces had shot at and detained U.N. staffers who allegedly broke through checkpoints while trying to reach areas where “they were not supposed to go.”

The shooting incident “is really costly” because it further delays humanitarian operations for people in Tigray who have been waiting five weeks for aid, U.N. humanitarian spokesman Saviano Abreu told The Associated Press.

He said the six-member U.N. team, which was detained in Humera and released two days later, was the first sent into Tigray and was carrying out security assessments along roads that had been previously agreed upon with Ethiopia’s government. Such assessments are crucial before aid can be moved in.

“Now we have to work out additional operational details with the government,” especially on security, Abreu said, repeating the U.N.’s call for unfettered, unconditional access.

The shooting occurred a week after the U.N. and the government signed a deal to allow humanitarian access. The deal, crucially, allows aid only in areas under federal government control.

The need for aid is critical. Mekele, a city of a half-million people, is “basically today without medical care,” the director-general of the International Committee for the Red Cross, Robert Mardini, told reporters on Tuesday. The city’s Ayder Referral Hospital has run out of supplies, including fuel to power generators.

“Doctors and nurses have been forced to make horrible life and death decisions,” Mardini said. “They suspended intensive care services and are really struggling to take care like delivering babies or providing dialysis treatment.”

A joint ICRC-Ethiopian Red Cross convoy with supplies for hundreds of wounded people is ready to go to Mekele, pending approval, he said. It would be the first international convoy to reach the city since the fighting began.

While the risk of insecurity remains in the Tigray capital, there is no active fighting, Mardini said.

Overall, he said, “People in Tigray have been cut off from services for nearly a month. They have had no phone, no Internet, no electricity and no fuel. Cash is running out. This of course adds to the tension.”

Source: Reuters

Ethiopia volatile with fighting, ethnic profiling of Tigrayans – U.N. rights boss

GENEVA (Reuters) – The situation in Ethiopia is “worrying and volatile” as fighting in the Tigray region continues amid reports of ethnic profiling of Tigrayans including in Addis Ababa, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Wednesday.

“We have reports that particularly areas surrounding towns like Mekelle, Sherero, Axum, Abiy Addi, and the borders between the Amhara and Tigray regions, fighting continues between federal forces and the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front), and affiliated militias on both sides,” Bachelet told a news conference in Geneva.

“There is an urgent need for independent monitoring of the human rights situation in the Tigray region, all necessary measures to protect civilians, and accountability for violations.”

Reuters has been unable to verify claims by either side in the conflict since phone and internet connections to the Tigray region are down and access to the area is strictly controlled.

Source: CNN

CNN uncovers reality for refugees on the Ethiopia-Sudan border

CNN hears testimony from refugees at the Sudan-Ethiopia border, all of whom say they were targeted because of their Tigray ethnicity. CNN also heard from a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front that the majority of the forces operating in Ethiopia’s Tigray region are from Eritrea, suggesting that one of the international community’s biggest fears – regional contagion – is already happening. CNN’s Nima Elbagir reports.