Hundreds killed in health facility, school in Ethiopia’s Afar region
09 August 2021 – DEVEX
Over 200 people sheltering at a health facility and school in the Afar region of Ethiopia were reported to have been killed in attacks by armed forces. This includes more than 100 children, UNICEF said in a statement released on Monday.
The conflict in Tigray, which erupted last November, continues to escalate, recently spilling over into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions, adding more than 100,000 newly displaced people to the 2 million people already forced to flee their homes.
Food, health services targeted: Throughout the conflict, health facilities have been deliberately and systematically targeted. A previous assessment by Médecins Sans Frontières in March found that of 106 health facilities visited, only 13% were functioning normally.
The majority were damaged and looted. The government recently suspended MSF from providing health services in the country after a state agency reportedly accused the organization of disseminating “misinformation,” among other things. MSF has since denied these claims.
Severe acute malnutrition cases rise fourfold among children in Tigray
In areas that aid workers can’t reach, at least 33,000 children “are severely malnourished and face imminent death without immediate help,” says UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.
The conflict has also led to massive food insecurity, with an estimated 400,000 people living in famine-like conditions. UNICEF expects the number of children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition will increase tenfold over the next year. The agency said that during the attacks in Afar, food supplies were also destroyed.
“The food security and nutrition crisis is taking place amid extensive, systematic destruction of health and other services that children and communities rely on for survival,” UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in the statement.
Dire situations for those that fled: Those that fled Ethiopia, living in refugee camps in eastern Sudan, are also experiencing “increasingly dire living conditions,” according to a press release issued on Monday from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The organization said that food, clean water, shelter, and sanitation are “desperately insufficient” with an increase in cases
of malnutrition, malaria, and hepatitis
US backed TPLF forces destroyed over 7000 schools in Afar, Amhara regions
August 30, 2021
Well over 1.5 million students out of school in northern Ethiopia because of the war that TPLF triggered in November 2020
As the education sector annual summit is underway, the Ministry of Education revealed some grim images of the state of educational infrastructures in the parts of Ethiopia affected by war. The speaker of the House of Representatives, Tagesse Chafo, has attended it, as reported by FANA.
Getachun Mekuria, the Minister, said over 7000 schools are fully or partially destroyed, by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), in the Afar and Amhara regions of Ethiopia.
In the Afar region alone, 455 schools, primary and secondary, were destroyed. Over 88,000 students are out of school following TPLF’s military adventure in the region that ravaged infrastructures in addition to displacing tens of thousands of people. Earlier this month, the TPLF killed at least 107 children when it attacked, with artillery, a school and health facility in the region. The total number of victims from that single attack was over 240.
In Tigray, 1.4 million students are said to be outside of school and over 48,000 teachers are out of work – according to a Fana Broadcasting Corporate report.
In the Amhara region, 140 schools and two teacher training colleges were entirely destroyed. The rest of the damages in the Amhara and Afar regions seem to be partial one.
The minister also said that the terrorist TPLF is recruiting students for war. Extensive use of child soldiers by TPLF, whom the New York Times described as highly motivated fighters, was making headlines, although the U.S. government and its European allies failed to condemn it.
In a similar development, the TPLF reportedly destroyed Nefas Wewucha, from where it was dislodged last week with heavy causality, primary health care facility. Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation report says it was entirely destroyed.
The TPLF has been enjoying what some Ethiopian voices describe as “tacit” support from the United States and the European Union. They have been putting pressure on the Ethiopian government for several months now on alleged grounds of “human rights violation,” rape ( which is not substantiated yet) ,and blocking of access for the delivery of aid to the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
Nutritious high energy food that was supposed to be distributed to those in need in the Tigray region was caught in the hands of captured TPLF soldiers in the South Gondar front. The USAID,last week, denied distributing them and insinuated that the TPLF forces stole them.
The Ethiopian government has been appealing to the international community to unequivocally condemn the TPLF for blocking aid routes from the Afar region of Ethiopia. TPLF’s military adventure in Afar and Amhara regions of Ethiopia was initially motivated by the ambition to control the Ethio-Djibouti and Ethio-Sudan routes to get arms supply, among other things.
When that failed, it took the wars to north wollo and south Gonder regions and many areas of Afar region where it indulged in what looked like a scorched earth.
Latest update from the Defense Ministry indicates that the US backed TPLF rebels have lost much of the area they controlled in Wollo, Gondar and Afar regions.
More than 1500 health facilities destroyed or damaged in Amhara and Afar: Minister of Health
September 22, 2021
Health facilities across Amhara and Afar regions have been deliberately vandalized and destroyed, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health announced.
The ministry said more than 1,500 health facilities have been severely damaged in Amhara and Afar states in a deliberate attack on health care, following the territorial gains made by the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the regions a few months ago.
The Ethiopian Minister of Health, Dr. Lia Tadesse, said in a press statement on Monday that 20 hospitals and 277 health centers were practically made nonfunctional in the Amhara region alone.
In addition, 14 hospitals, 153 health centers and 642 health posts had been looted in the Amhara region, she said.
In many health facilities, teams found destroyed equipment, doors and windows partially or wholly shattered, and medicine and patients’ files were scattered across the office, the Minister said.
In Afar State, a hospital, 10 health centers and 38 health posts were vandalized, she said. As a result, it is said that millions of people in the regions are being denied access to basic health care.
ReliefWeb
Originally published nov. 9
Ethiopia: Survivors of TPLF attack in Amhara describe gang rape, looting and physical assaults
• Women raped at gunpoint, robbed and assaulted
• Lack of medical care after TPLF fighters damaged and looted hospital
• Abuses committed as Tigray conflict has spilled over into Amhara region
Sixteen women from the town of Nifas Mewcha in Ethiopia’s Amhara region told Amnesty International they were raped by fighters from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) during the group’s attack on the town in mid-August 2021.
Survivors described being raped at gunpoint, robbed, and subjected to physical and verbal assaults by TPLF fighters, who also destroyed and looted medical facilities in the town. Fourteen of the 16 women Amnesty International interviewed said they were gang raped.
The TPLF took control of Nifas Mewcha, in Amhara’s Gaint District, for nine days between 12 and 21 August 2021, as part of an ongoing offensive into parts of the Amhara and Afar regions. Regional government officials told Amnesty International that more than 70 women reported to authorities that they were raped in Nifas Mewcha during this period.
“The testimonies we heard from survivors describe despicable acts by TPLF fighters that amount to war crimes, and potentially crimes against humanity. They defy morality or any iota of humanity,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
“TPLF fighters must immediately stop all human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, including sexual and gender-based violence. The leadership must make clear that such abuses will not be tolerated and remove suspected perpetrators from their ranks.”
Gang rape and physical assaults
Amnesty International used secure video call applications to individually interview 16 survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Nifas Mewcha.
The organization also interviewed the head of Nifas Mewcha hospital, as well as local and regional government officials with knowledge of the assault and its aftermath.
According to a local government desk officer for Women, Children and Youth Affairs, 71 women reported that they were raped by TPLF fighters during the period in question; the Federal Ministry of Justice puts the number at 73.
Survivors told Amnesty International that the attacks began as soon as the TPLF took control of the town on 12 August 2021. The women all identified the perpetrators as TPLF fighters based on their accents and the ethnic slurs they used against victims, as well as their overt announcements that they were TPLF.
Bemnet, a 45-year-old Nifas Mewcha resident, told Amnesty International that four TPLF fighters came to her house on the evening of 14 August and demanded she make them coffee, before three of them gang raped her. She said:
“I suspected their intentions, and I sent away my daughters to stay away from the house. [The soldiers] told me to bring them home. I told them they won’t come. Then they started to insult me. They were saying ‘Amhara is donkey’, ‘Amhara is useless’. One of them told the others to stop insulting me. He said, ‘she is our mother; we don’t have to harm her’. They forced him to leave the house and three of them stayed back at my home. Then they raped me in turns.”
Gebeyanesh, a 30-year-old food seller in the town, told Amnesty International:
“It is not easy to tell you what they did to me. They raped me. Three of them raped me while my children were crying. My elder son is 10 and the other is nine years, they were crying when [the TPLF fighters] raped me. [The fighters] did whatever they wanted and left. They also assaulted me physically and took shiro and berbere [local food items]. They slapped me [and] kicked me. They were cocking their guns as if they are going to shoot me.”
Hamelmal, 28, sells enjera in the town. She told Amnesty International that four TPLF fighters raped her during the night of 13 August at her home, while her daughter watched:
“I have children, 10- and two-year-old girls. I was scared they might kill my daughter. I said, ‘don’t kill my children, do whatever you want to me.’ The youngest was asleep, but the older [one] was awake and saw what happened. I don’t have the strength to tell you what she saw.”
Dehumanizing verbal assaults
TPLF fighters also subjected the women to degrading ethnic slurs, such as ‘donkey Amhara’, and ‘greedy Amhara’. In some cases, the TPLF forces told women they were raping them in revenge for the rape of Tigrayan women by Federal government forces. Amnesty International previously documented widespread rape and sexual violence by government-allied troops and militias in Tigray
Hamelmal, who said she was raped by four TPLF fighters, told Amnesty International:
“The one who raped me first is their superior. He was saying ‘Amhara is a donkey, Amhara has massacred our people (Tigrayans), the Federal Defense forces have raped my wife, now we can rape you as we want’.”
Meskerem, age 30, who told Amnesty International that three TPLF fighters raped her and beat her with the butts of their guns, said:
“They were insulting me, calling me ‘donkey Amhara, you are strong, you can carry much more than this’. I was unconscious for more than an hour.”
Stealing from rape victims
Amnesty International heard that, after raping the women, TPLF fighters then looted their homes. Survivors, many of whom live hand-to-mouth by working in low-paid and informal jobs, running small businesses or engaging in sex work, described fighters stealing food, jewelry, cash and mobile phones.
Meskerem, who sells kollo [a local cereal-based food], told Amnesty International that: “Four of the soldiers came to my restaurant and they ate and drank whatever was in the house. Then two of them raped me. They also took my ring and necklace.”
Frehiwot said she was gang raped several times by TPLF fighters between 12 and 20 August, and that one fighter stole her phone and cash.
Tigist said the TPLF fighters who raped her on 12 August also destroyed her shop items and took her jewelry:
“They took my property. After they drank the beer, they broke the beer bottles in four caskets. They also broke the two caskets of soft drink and took my gold necklace. They also took my beddings. Now I am not able to [run] my business as before since I lost all I had. I am only selling coffee… I am also a sex worker. But it has become difficult for me to trust anyone after what they did to me.”
Health impact
Fifteen of the 16 rape survivors Amnesty International interviewed described suffering physical and mental health problems as a result of the attacks. They described a variety of symptoms including back pain, bloody urine, difficulty walking, anxiety and depression.
While two of the women have sought basic private medical treatment since the rape, damage and looting to the town’s hospital and health station by the TPLF attack has meant that none of the survivors interviewed has been able to access comprehensive post-rape care, including emergency contraception, post emergency prophylaxis for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, assessment and treatment of injuries, or focused therapy for mental health care. An NGO that normally provides such services told Amnesty International that it cannot access the area due to security concerns prompted by the government’s hostile public statements about international humanitarian organizations.
Bemnet, who has a pre-existing medical condition as well as back pain and other symptoms as a result of the rape, said: “I am just relying on God to save me.”
Selamawit, a 20-year-old domestic worker, told Amnesty International that three TPLF fighters raped her on 12 August. She said she is now pregnant due to the rape, but wasn’t able to access any medical services.
Many of the survivors told Amnesty International that they have developed anxiety and depression since the rape.
Amhara regional government officials told Amnesty International that Nifas Mewcha residents, including 54 rape survivors, had received livelihood support since the attack. They also said they are preparing to restock medical equipment and other supplies to looted hospitals and facilities in the region, and to provide counselling and psychosocial services for the survivors.
“The Ethiopian government must speed up efforts to fully support the survivors of sexual violence and the conflict’s other victims. As an urgent first step, it must facilitate immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to all areas of northern Ethiopia impacted by the conflict,” said Agnès Callamard.
“The government must also ensure allegations of all sexual violence are promptly, effectively, independently and impartially investigated. They must bring those suspected of criminal responsibility to justice in open, accessible civilian courts in full compliance with international standards for fair trial without recourse to the death penalty and reparations for the survivors.”
Amnesty reports gang rape, looting, physical assaults committed by TPLF fighters in the Amhara region
November 10,2021
Destruction of local infrastructure in Nefas Mewcha. Photo: Amhara Communication Bureau
– Amnesty International has released a report on Movement 09 featuring troubling testimonies of women raped at gunpoint, robbed, physically and verbally assaulted at the hands of fighters from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) when the group launched an attack on parts of the Amhara region in mid-August 2021. The report also included witnesses such as local and regional government officials with knowledge of the assault and its aftermath.
Amnesty spoke with 16 survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Nifas Mewcha, a town in Gayint woreda of South Gondar zone in the Amhara region. The TPLF took control of Nifas Mewcha, for nine days between 12 and 21 August 2021, according to the report, “70 women reported to authorities that they were raped in Nifas Mewcha during this period.” TPLF fighters also destroyed and looted medical facilities in the town, Amnesty said.
“…Three of them raped me while my children were crying. My elder son is 10 and the other is nine years, they were crying when [the TPLF fighters] raped me.”
Gebeyanesh
“Survivors told Amnesty International that the attacks began as soon as the TPLF took control of the town on 12 August 2021. The women all identified the perpetrators as TPLF fighters based on their accents and the ethnic slurs they used against victims, as well as their overt announcements that they were TPLF,” the report read.
Fourteen of the 16 women Amnesty International interviewed said they were gang raped. “It is not easy to tell you what they did to me. They raped me. Three of them raped me while my children were crying. My elder son is 10 and the other is nine years, they were crying when [the TPLF fighters] raped me,” the 30-year-old Gebeyanesh, told Amnesty International, adding, [The fighters] did whatever they wanted and left. They also assaulted me physically and took shiro and berbere [local food items]. They slapped me [and] kicked me. They were cocking their guns as if they are going to shoot me.”
“They were insulting me, calling me ‘donkey Amhara, you are strong, you can carry much more than this’. I was unconscious for more than an hour.”
Meskerem
Another survivor said, “I have children, 10- and two-year-old girls. I was scared they might kill my daughter. I said, ‘don’t kill my children, do whatever you want to me.’ The youngest was asleep, but the older [one] was awake and saw what happened. I don’t have the strength to tell you what she saw.”
The assaults also came in the form of degrading ethnic slurs, such as ‘donkey Amhara’, and ‘greedy Amhara’, according to the report, in some cases, the TPLF forces told women they were raping them in revenge for the rape of Tigrayan women by Federal government forces. “The one who raped me first is their superior. He was saying ‘Amhara is a donkey, Amhara has massacred our people (Tigrayans), the Federal Defense forces have raped my wife, now we can rape you as we want’, a survivor told Amnesty.
Meskerem, age 30 was raped and beaten with the butts of guns , “They were insulting me, calling me ‘donkey Amhara, you are strong, you can carry much more than this’. I was unconscious for more than an hour.”
“Four of the soldiers came to my restaurant and they ate and drank whatever was in the house. Then two of them raped me. They also took my ring and necklace.”
Meskerem
The abuse didn’t stop there. The report revealed that survivors, many of whom live hand-to-mouth by working in low-paid and informal jobs, running small businesses or engaging in sex work, after being raped, their food, jewelry, cash and mobile phones were stolen by TPLF fighters. “Four of the soldiers came to my restaurant and they ate and drank whatever was in the house. Then two of them raped me. They also took my ring and necklace,” Meskerem, told Amnesty International. “They took my property. After they drank the beer, they broke the beer bottles in four caskets. They also broke the two caskets of soft drink and took my gold necklace. They also took my beddings,” said Tigist, a business owner and a sex worker who lost her business narrated her traumatizing experience, “I am also a sex worker. But it has become difficult for me to trust anyone after what they did to me.”
Fifteen of the 16 rape survivors Amnesty International interviewed described suffering physical and mental health problems as a result of the attacks. TPLF fighters also destroyed and looted medical facilities in the town as stated in the report, two of the women have sought basic private medical treatment since the rape. “None of the survivors interviewed has been able to access comprehensive post-rape care, including emergency contraception, post emergency prophylaxis for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, assessment and treatment of injuries, or focused therapy for mental health care,” the report read. Security concerns prompted by the government’s hostile public statements about international humanitarian organizations hindered NGOs from accessing the area, an NGO that normally provides such services told Amnesty International.
Selamawit, a 20-year-old domestic worker, told Amnesty International that three TPLF fighters raped her on 12 August. She said she is now pregnant due to the rape, but wasn’t able to access any medical services. Regional officlas told Amnesty that 54 rape survivors, had received livelihood support since the attack. They also said they are preparing to restock medical equipment and other supplies to looted hospitals and facilities in the region, and to provide counselling and psychosocial services for the survivors.
“None of the survivors interviewed has been able to access comprehensive post-rape care, including emergency contraception, post emergency prophylaxis for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, assessment and treatment of injuries, or focused therapy for mental health care.”
Amnesty International
The report conlcuded by urging the Ethiopian government to speed up efforts to fully support the survivors of sexual violence and the conflict’s other victims. “The government must also ensure allegations of all sexual violence are promptly, effectively, independently and impartially investigated.” Amnesty said, furher recommending that perpepetrators should be brought to justice in open, accessible civilian courts in full compliance with international standards for fair trial without recourse to the death penalty and reparations for the survivors.
Terrorist TPLF Deliberately Destroys Health Institutions, Properties In Shewarobit, Debresina Towns
Dec 3, 2021 – FBC
Residents of Shewarobit told FBC that the terrorist TPLF has made clear its detestation of the people of Ethiopia through the horrendous crimes it committed in our town and surroundings.
The residents said the terrorist group forces have deliberately destroyed public infrastructures, private properties and health institutions in the town.
TPLF forces looted and vandalized properties of public institutions and burned down the assets it couldn’t take out of the area, they recounted. Residents said the criminal goup has caused large-scale property damage and loss of lives in the area.
Likewise, residents of Debresina town who were contacted by FBC, said the terrorist TPLF fully annihilated town’s primary hospital and damaged health care centers and other related institutions.
Soldiers of the criminal enterprise have also looted medical equipment, drugs and burned down large amounts of medical supplies that they couldn’t transport to the areas it was retreating.
