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Human rights activists increasingly question the decision to award Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, as his military operation in the country’s Tigray region continues to displace thousands to neighboring Sudan.
Several international human rights organizations have already launched investigations into allegations of abuses by the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) in Tigray since the fighting began on 4 November.
Some hope that the testimonies of the more than 45,000 people who have fled Tigray for Sudan will help to make an accusation similar to that leveled against former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in the International Criminal Court (ICC), based on the evidence gathered at the International Criminal Court. victims of the deposed ruler’s conflict in Darfur and other regions.
Middle East Eye spoke to several refugees in Sudan who fled the border area with neighboring Eritrea and Ethiopia to escape clashes between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the Tigray region, and the ENDF, which it has also absorbed the Eritrean army and several local militias.
‘They killed in cold blood and mercilessly and ethnically attacked the Tigray’
– Sara Nega, refugee
Gabrew Gado, a 39-year-old man from the village of Mai-Kadra who now lives in Sudan’s Um-Rakoba refugee camp, said he was on his farm when ENDF-backed Amhara ethnic minority militias attacked.
“They attacked us early in the morning … and they kept killing everyone, including children and the elderly, so we ran in all directions just to get away from those abusive soldiers,” he said. “I saw them massacre my grandfather in front of my eyes, because he tried to complain about being killed in this brutal way.
“We ran for three or four days until we reached the Sudanese borders under heavy bombardment and ground attacks from tanks and gunboats from all three sides, the ENDF, the Eritrean army and the Amhara militia.”
Another refugee, Sara Nega, 35, also said she witnessed the massacre and fled with her small family, but lost one of her children and her husband along the way.
“I am traumatized by what I have seen there in my Mai-Kadra village: they killed in cold blood and mercilessly and ethnically attacked the Tigray,” she said, accusing the Ethiopian army soldiers.
Border militarization
The TPLF and ENDF have exchanged accusations of atrocities since the beginning of the conflict, which was sparked by what the Ethiopian central government has claimed to be the illegitimate rule of the TPLF over the Tigray region.
Even though Abiy TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael said at the weekend that his forces had “completed” their operations in the region, saying his followers will continue to fight “as long as these invaders are on our land,” according to AFP.
Sudanese soldiers have classified those fleeing Ethiopia into two groups, military and civilian, taking military personnel, including TPLF and ENDF, to military camps and civilian to refugee reception centers.
A Sudanese military source from the Gadaref region said that the entire border area between Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea had been militarized due to the large scale of the war and the involvement of Ethiopia and Eritrea, as well as the TPLF.
Speaking to MEE, on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, the source said that Sudan had sent military reinforcements to the border to protect the Sudanese territories and prevent any infiltration by soldiers from the warring sides.
“We are protecting our borders from any penetration by fleeing Ethiopian forces or TPLF soldiers, as our command sent more forces into the region. Sudan already has security problems due to recent tribal clashes in eastern Sudan, and we have no interest in getting involved in Ethiopia’s problems, ”he said.
‘Horrible’ atrocities
Human Rights Watch (HRW) Horn of Africa director Laetitia Bader told MEE that the human rights group has little doubt that a massacre had occurred in the Mai-Kadra area.
“Our own initial investigation, the findings of Amnesty International and the national government human rights body in Ethiopia leave little doubt that dozens of people, possibly hundreds, were brutally murdered and many others injured in horrific attacks and violence on November 9 in the city of Mai. “Kadra,” she said. The incident was chilling.
Bader said HRW had already started investigating alleged abuses during the conflict, but said the Ethiopian government was putting obstacles in the way of its investigators.
“Access and communications restrictions make it difficult to corroborate reports and identify claims of who may be responsible for such abuses at this time,” he said.
‘I saw many bodies’: Ethiopians in Sudan traumatized by the Tigray conflict
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He added that it was important for an independent investigation not only to look at the Mai-Kadra incident, “but to consider how it fits into broader abuses against civilians in the context of the fighting and the country as a whole.”
Abiy has rejected allegations of abuse by the Ethiopian army, saying that his army was professional and interested in protecting the lives of civilians in the Tigray region.
In contrast, the government-backed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has accused Tigray forces of committing the massacre in Mai-Kadra and killing hundreds of people.
Nizar Manek, an independent analyst on Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, said he hoped the conflict would attract the attention of the ICC and other international researchers.
“It would be no surprise if the situation has already interested the International Criminal Court,” the analyst told MEE. “If Sudan’s poorly controlled eastern border remains porous as it was in the early stages of the war, the evidence could mount, as with testimonies collected against Bashir from refugees who fled Darfur into Chad.”
He hypothesized that the Ethiopian prime minister feared the long-standing ties between the leaders of Tigray and Khartoum, an issue that could push his army to commit serious border violations, and rejected the prime minister’s claims that the conflict had finished.
“It is astonishing that Abiy diplomats can pretend that the sudden and significant drop in civilians arriving in Sudan is the result of the situation being back to ‘normal’, even as Abiy himself sees fit to continue gagging Tigray with a communications blocking, “Manek added. .
