Dear reader,
In this 50th digest, we will again address the catastrophic humanitarian situation despite the Tigray deal (section
1), including some testimonies from the ground (section
2). Further, the murders and other human rights infringements at Ethiopian universities made headlines over the last weeks (section
3). Yet, the Ethiopian government tries to establish smokescreens of normality (section
4), but in Tigray the 2022 cropping season again failed (section
5) and we are far from accountability for genocide and other human rights infringements (section
6).
EU Human Rights chief Borrell: Speech at the 24th
EU-NGO Forum on Human Rights on 14 December 2022: “what is happening in Tigray is the deadliest war. We complain rightly about what is happening in Ukraine, but what is happening in Ethiopia is
really awful. The figures that we have is that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are being killed. Can you imagine? And most of them by famine – not fighting, but by famine, cutting humanitarian support, cutting electricity, cutting any kind of public services.
And that, for months and months. I remind you that this is being done by a government whose Prime Minister is a Nobel Prize laureate.”
The status of the humanitarian aid early December is that international organisations distributed food to 1.15 million people in Tigray during November, while the government made a single supply to 875,000 individuals.
Since October (round 2), Tigray has only achieved 23% of the objective, whereas
in Amhara WFP reached 90% for the 4th time,
and only 27% in Afar.
Trickle aid is inadmissible.
These poor distribution rates are fatal after months of being without any assistance, food, or medicine.
The Ethiopian government comes with overinflated numbers, as if 95% of the aid-needing people in Tigray have received food aid (see this twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/BurbridgeDuke/status/1600333572052697088) .
These attempts of aid distribution are a consequence of the Pretoria ceasefire agreement, though, in the first place, blockading humanitarian aid is a war crime, and should not be dependent on a ceasefire agreement.
The
ICRC (16 December) summarises its rare footage from Tigray as follows: “Hunger, even among healthcare staff themselves, is everywhere. People have been displaced over and over again.”
The
update by UNOCHA on 15th December lacks specifics about Tigray but highlights the immensity of needs throughout Ethiopia (and that this badly jars with the continued 'prosperity narrative' of the leadership).
The
Chicago Council on Global Affairs (16 December) summarizes: “The Ethiopian government is using starvation as a weapon of war against Tigray, inducing a massive famine that requires immediate action from the international community.”
Some additional information on the implementation of the ceasefire agreement:
Mekelle.
“I didn’t hear about aid distribution and did not go. Thanks to the money that you smuggled in, I buy food on the market, I never needed to struggle to get food aid. After some months, when threshing is finished, I will
go to my village of origin and ask my family for grain”.
“We are very happy by the peace agreement but still the people of Tigray are suffering by the lack of food and medicine (there is no change
on the ground except the fighting).”
Adwa (on 24 november).
“It is said that the Eritrean army is going back to Eritrea. But the concrete reality in Tigray is quite different. Eritreans are still looting whatever they can find and are going to Eritrea with hundreds of camels and
then they come back to Tigray whenever they want. Half of Adwa is still under their control, and in the villages they still harm and kill people.”
Aksum (on 18 december).
“The Ethiopian army (ENDF) is in control of the city, Eritrean forces
are marauding the countryside. And ENDF is not capable (or doesn't have the mandate?) of changing that.”
Shire.
“The Ethiopian army seems to be in control of the city, but Eritrean soldiers are looting the area systematically. The Ethiopian army is trying to prevent it, but stands powerless. No food aid
was distributed to the citizens until now; IDPs in the city received food aid.” (Food for max. 100,000
people has been distributed in Shire according to the food cluster).
“Most people stay inside their homes the whole day, there is a curfew in place (not sure if official or informal).
Moving from the town to the countryside is not an option anymore, since Eritrean soldiers are roaming
there and also because abandoned houses in the city are looted by thieves.”
May Tsebri.
“In May Tsebri and the surrounding Tselemti woreda, the Amhara fano militias are looting, stealing livestock and killing, and also in other places along the road to Indabaguna.
They were apparently stopped there by ENDF (during a fight
or at least a shootout) and driven back
beyond the Tekeze river.”
This is a sign that ENDF is not in control of Tselemti (south of the river), but Amhara forces are (like in Western Tigray).
Overall, “third parties” Eritrea and Amhara fano are still violating the Pretoria CoH (cessation of hostilities).
Western Tigray.
Amhara TV visited Welkait (Western Tigay) and interviewed an Amhara Regional government official, who declared that Tigrayans have been totally cleansed from Welkait. Hence, Amhara investors, workers, and farmers can
go there and take over the land. See the interview here: https://twitter.com/AAneniya/status/1594336435007811586
Lalibela.
A.Y. was a driver. He recently joined the ENDF with the promise of an income because he became unemployed. Since more than a month, there are no more messages and there is no trace of him. An ordinary disappearance seems
unthinkable. He was so proud of his wife and children”. He may have been killed in warfare – it is common for ENDF not to inform relatives when a soldier is killed in action, to avoid uprisings about the large number of war deaths. A.Y. leaves behind a wife
and two children.
Arba Minch.
According to a
thorough investigation by The Washington Post (4 December 2022), Ethiopian guards massacred scores of Tigrayan prisoners in Birbir town (woreda Mi’irab Abaya, close to Arba Minch). ENDF soldiers of Tigrayan origin who were held in a prison camp since November
2020 were massacred in this incident. A witness told us that the massacre took place on 21, 22 and 23 November 2021. The massacre was stopped by an earthquake that occurred on November 23rd morning. The
USGS failed to record this earthquake. However, around Mi’irab Abaya, which is situated in the Main Ethiopian Rift Valley, earthquakes with a magnitude of 4 or higher
occur roughly every two years. Therefore, it's possible that an earthquake of lesser magnitude went unreported by worldwide observers. In any case, this earthquake was perceived in Mi'irab Abaya
as God's wrath over the ongoing carnage, through the earthquake He gave the order to cease.
On 22 November, Prof. Michael Gervers and the
University of Toronto organised a webinar on “The Effects of War on Higher Education in Ethiopia”
– speakers were Hagos Abrha, Goitom Tegegn, Kindeya Gebrehiwot, Mitiku Haile, Jan Nyssen, Richard Reid, Wolbert Smidt and
Alexie Tcheuyap. Addis Ababa University and the Ministry of Higher Education were invited but did not respond; Prof. Mengesha Ayene, president of Wollo University agreed to participate in the webinar but did
not show up. It was a very fruitful exchange, moderated by Patrick Wight (Ethiopia Insight). Proceedings are under preparation.
The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit (7 December 2022) published an extensive article on the murder of Prof. Meareg of Bahir Dar University, both in the
online and
printed version. An
English translation has been published.
The article highlights the role of the fano militia, Amhara Special Forces, the BDU STAFF Facebook page and tolerance of hate speech in Ethiopia by Facebook.
Additional information is that the Bahir Dar University management has direct leverage on the BDU STAFF Facebook account manager; Dr. Meareg’s murder was also investigated by the BBC, and a day after journalist Chloé
Hadjimatheou confronted the BDU president and a vice-president with the BDU STAFF posts calling for Prof. Meareg’s murder, these posts disappeared from that Facebook page.
Furthermore, there is
Tadeye Asmare who
works for BDU as a communication expert and also as a journalist.
He was one of the men who actively encouraged the imprisonment of all Tigrayans in the Amhara region.
Among others, he promoted the fano's murder of Wollo university professor Berhanu Gidey
in
the following terms (23 October 2021): “Action has been taken on Birhanu Gidey === The traitor Birhanu Gidey, a lecturer at Wollo University,
was found sending information through radio and GPS to the enemy to capture Dessie and Kombolcha and kill our people”.
TIMELINE
9 October 2021: BDU STAFF Facebook page starts a hate campaign against Prof. Meareg
22 October 2021: Murder of Prof. Birhanu at Wollo University
23 October 2021: Tadeye Asmare of BDU
celebrates the murder of Prof. Birhanu
on Facebook
3 November 2021: Murder of Prof. Meareg in Bahir Dar
Further reading
Ethiopian Airlines
claims preparing to fly to Tigray for sake of tourism.
Yet another Abiy's joke.
For two years nobody was allowed to enter Tigray and now they want tourists
to go there? To see all the destruction and desperate starving people?
Early December, the UN Internet Governance Forum did take place in Addis Ababa – while 99% of Tigray is cut off from the internet since 2 years, and other parts of Ethiopia also since longer periods. Read more:
The
Internet Governance Forum: a spectacle of the United Nations’ complicity in the Tigray Genocide – Tghat
and Letter
to the Attendees of the IGF in Addis Ababa – Tghat.
The Abiy government rewarded Maureen Aching with a senior position at IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa). Remember,
Maureen Aching is the ex-IOM Chief of
Mission to Ethiopia who called media reports on gender-based violence in Tigray a “hype”.
The Ethiopian army (and thus government)
also tries to make
up that the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) has acknowledged Ethiopian army’s
achievement in handling the Tigray War without civilian casualties and destruction of cities.
The ACAPS
November 2022 monthly spotlight focused on crop
production in Tigray. ACAPS is an NGO that provides independent humanitarian analysis.
Key findings were:
• The 2022 harvest is unlikely to address the scale of food needs in the region
which surpasses
the amount of food aid entering;
• The resumption of fighting in late August disrupted harvest activities, while the
lack of fertiliser used during planting led to poor crop conditions;
• The lack of agricultural inputs, such as seeds and fertiliser, and the poor
spring rains affected the planting of high-yielding long-cycle crops, such as sorghum and maize;
• Farmers mostly planted low-yielding short-cycle crops, such as teff, because of
the abundance of the kremti summer rains;
• Rural households have continued to rely on local produce because humanitarian
assistance has been sporadic and insufficient, and the blockade of commercial
supplies since mid-2021 has reduced food availability in the region; and
• Agricultural activities significantly declined after the start of conflict in
November 2020, affecting crop output for 2021, which was only 40% of pre-conflict levels, and leaving significant food gaps.
The report is not available online; I will forward the PDF upon request.
Note also this one: Tesfaalem Ghebreyohannes, Nyssen, J., Emnet Negash, Hailemariam Meaza, Zbelo Tesfamariam, Frankl, A., Biadgilgn Demissie, Van Schaeybroeck, B., Alem Redda, Annys, S., Fetien
Abay, 2022. Challenges and resilience of an indigenous farming system during wartime (Tigray, North Ethiopia). Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 42: 116.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-022-00812-5 The article has been published as Open Access (by courtesy of Springer Nature!).
The International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) invites individuals, groups, and organizations
to submit information and documentation relevant to its mandate until 30 June 2023:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/ichre-ethiopa/call-for-submissions
We fear however, that after the softer-than-soft attitude of international diplomacy with regard to war crimes in the Tigray war, and also due to the substandard earlier joint EHRC-OHCHR investigation,
the victims and their relatives may have lost hope; hence we expect a pro-active attitude of the ICHREE to collect such documentation.
Furthermore, a friend in Mekelle, while evaluating the possibility to investigate a massacre carried out by EDF and ENDF, mentioned: “The current political situation in Tigray is very volatile.
Hence, collecting data on massacres and their broader impact; casualty recording and identification of war criminals is risky for the researchers, data collectors, and data providers.“
As the primary accountable of the war crimes perpetrated in Tigray, it goes without saying that the Ethiopian government
continues opposing the work of the ICHREE in the hopes that a cease-fire or peace deal would also include the forgetting of such war crimes.
You may also be interested to read the newsletter on the casualties of the war in Tigray (Uppsala Conflict Data Program):
https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/newsletter/issue9.html.
It includes a map of locations of organized violence in the Tigray war: battles between ENDF and allies vs TDF and massacres of civilians.
On 21 November, Michael Rubin
wrote in the Washington Examiner:
"Two years ago, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his mentor Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki launched a genocide against Ethiopia’s minority Tigray population marked by starvation and summary execution. They targeted men, women,
and children equally and cut off the region from international assistance, independent media, and communications. Biden’s recognition of the travesty did not translate into substantive deterrence. Abiy simply dismissed a series of envoys sent by Biden. While
the State Department welcomed the current ceasefire, Abiy and Afwerki appear inclined to continue their slow slaughter, the arrival of a small number of aid trucks notwithstanding. In effect, Tigray experiences today what Rwanda’s Tutsis would have been had
the Hutu génocidaires won".
Further reading:
Best wishes for the Holiday Season and for the New Year 2023!
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----------------------------------------------------------
Jan Nyssen
Em. Senior Full Professor
Department of Geography
Ghent University
Belgium
(0032) 9 264 46 23
https://www.researchgate.net/project/War-and-humanitarian-crisis-in-Tigray-and-Ethiopia