SPECIAL REPORT: How killings and expulsions swept across Ethiopia’s western Tigray

Record ID: 1620329

  • Title: SPECIAL REPORT: How killings and expulsions swept across Ethiopia’s western Tigray
  • Date: 7th June 2021
  • Summary: THE UM RAKUBA REFUGEE CAMP, SUDAN (FILE - NOVEMBER 28, 2020) (MUTE) (REUTERS) AERIAL DRONE SHOT OF THE UM RAKUBA REFUGEE CAMP THE UM RAKUBA REFUGEE CAMP, SUDAN (FILE - DECEMBER 12 , 2020) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) TIGRAYAN REFUGEE, BINIAM AMDEMARIAM SAYING: "When I entered, they hit me with rocks. I turned over to look at what had hit me. They hit me in the eye. My ri
  • Embargoed: 21st June 2021 10:54
  • Keywords: Ethiopia amhara conflict tigrayan
  • Location: MAI KADRA, SHIRE, ADDIS ABABA AND HUMERA, ETHIOPIA / UM RAKUBA REFUGEE CAMP, SUDAN
  • City: MAI KADRA, SHIRE, ADDIS ABABA AND HUMERA, ETHIOPIA / UM RAKUBA REFUGEE CAMP, SUDAN
  • Country: Ethiopia
  • Topics: Africa,Conflicts/War/Peace,Editors' Choice
  • Reuters ID: LVA005EGEJMTJ
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: The Eritrean government didn't respond to a request for comment. The Amhara regional government said any accusation that its forces attacked and killed Tigrayans is groundless.
    In early November 2020, fighting erupted in Ethiopia's Tigray region between the army and the rebellious Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). Within days, conflicting reports emerged of ethnic killings in a farming town called Mai Kadra, in western Tigray.
    Ethnic Amharas said they'd been attacked by their Tigrayan neighbours. Tigrayans pouring into neighbouring Sudan said they'd been brutalized and driven out by Amharas. The only thing the two sides agreed on was that hundreds died.
    Reuters has drawn on the accounts of more than 120 witnesses chronicling what happened in Mai Kadra and the chain of events the killings unleashed.
    The reporting determined there were two rounds of killings in Mai Kadra. The first killings were committed by ethnic Tigrayan youths and members of a TPLF-dominated town militia against Amharas, and the second by Amhara forces from the neighbouring region by the same name against ethnic Tigrayans.
    The Amhara regional government said any accusation that its forces killed Tigrayans is groundless. The TPLF denied its fighters attacked Amhara civilians.
    Tigrayan militiamen arrived at the home of Abiyu Tsegaye, an Amhara, at around 4 p.m. on Nov. 9, said Abiyu's widow, Agerie Mogessie.
    The mob shouted for Abiyu to come out of his house, Agerie said. Six neighbours described what happened next: Someone hit Abiyu with a machete, they said, then he was shot in the chest. The men set fire to the couple's home and shoved Abiyu's body into the flames. Then the mob began working its way through the street, killing all the Amhara men they could find.
    On Nov. 10, the national military - the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) - and its allies from the Amhara region took control of Mai Kadra. The Amhara forces included around 2,000 volunteers from a part-time militia known as Fano, whose purpose is to defend Amharas. Fano said.
    Amhara residents of Mai Kadra told Reuters they began searching the streets for their loved ones, turning over the corpses.
    Bodies were taken by tractor to a church where the two communities worshipped together, a few blocks from the main square.
    "On Monday they killed," said Maru Gebremariam, a 56-year-old Amhara who serves as the church watchman. "On Tuesday the ENDF came, and we started to collect the dead and wounded. On Wednesday we buried them."
    Many of the dead were buried in mass graves, the watchman said, their identities unknown.
    "Families bring photos and ask, 'Can you identify him?'" said Maru. "We can't. Some bodies were eaten by dogs. Some were brought after three days."
    On the same day, Nov. 10, revenge killings began by the Amhara forces, Tigrayan residents said. These witnesses said the Amhara forces drove out Tigrayans, expunged Tigrayan names from street signs and seized Tigrayan homes, daubing some doors with letters in red paint: "This is an Amhara house."
    Biniam Amdemariam, a Tigrayan baker paralysed from the waist down by polio, said he took his family to a nearby village when the fighting broke out in Mai Kadra. He returned the next day on his adapted three-wheeled motorbike to collect clothes and jewellery. He said Fano members attacked him with stones and knocked him off his bike.
    "When I fell off the motor, I was hit with an axe. You can still see the stitches," he said, pointing to a scar on his head. "Another person held up a cleaver to slit my throat."
    A Tigrayan doctor who worked at the Mai Kadra clinic confirmed that he sutured Biniam's head wound. A prominent Fano volunteer, Weretaw Azanaw, said the group didn't attack civilians.
    In the following weeks and months, the communal violence spread across western Tigray, an area ethnic Amharas claim as their own.
    Berhane Gebrezigher, an ethnic Tigrayan aged 74, said he was among more than 50 Tigrayan civilians rounded up in mid-January and trucked by Amhara forces to the Tekeze River, which separates the disputed zone from the rest of Tigray. The forces ordered the men to climb down into what appeared to be a freshly dug ditch, Berhane said. Then the gunmen fired. Berhane was hit in both legs and in the back; he said he lay among the bodies, listening to the men reload and shoot at anyone who moved.
    Five Tigrayan witnesses told Reuters they saw dozens of dead.
    The Amhara regional government has taken control of administering western Tigray, issuing new identification cards, reorganising the police and militia and running hospitals and schools.
    Some Amhara families are returning to lands they left during Ethiopia's civil war of the 1980s and the decades of TPLF rule that followed.
    Among the returning Amharas is businessman Goshu Alebel, who spent time as a child in some of the same Sudanese refugee camps that are now sheltering Tigrayans. Goshu arrived in the town of Humera, 25 km north of Mai Kadra, in late November. He said his cousins and uncle are buried in the churchyard. A short drive away, the family's ruined, roofless brick house sits atop a small hill.
    He told Reuters, "It feels good" to be back. "I want to show this place to my children, show them their heritage, their roots."
    Yabsira Eshetie, the Amhara-appointed administrator of western Tigray, said that the resettlement of 500,000 people who were previously displaced by the TPLF from their land will continue, including families from Sudan, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
    Ethiopia's government denies there has been "targeted, intentional ethnic cleansing against anyone in the region." It didn't respond to detailed questions.
    (Production: Baz Ratner)
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