War crimes in the Tigray War: Difference between revisions

All sides of the Tigray War have been repeatedly accused of committing war crimes since it began on November 2020.^[2][3][4] A September 2022 report by the UN found evidence of widespread "war crimes and crimes against humanity" committed by all parties, including the Ethiopian government, as well as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)."^[5][6][7]

Mulugeta Gebrehiwot, founder of the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, described the killings of Tigrayans by the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) as "literally genocide by decree".^[8] The elected and deposed leader of Tigray Region, Debretsion Gebremichael, stated on 27 January 2021 that the Tigrayans were being attacked "to exterminate them with bullets and weaponized hunger".^[9] The age threshold above which the EDF soldiers were instructed to kill all Tigrayans varied according to sources from four years old (males only),^[10] to seven years,^[11] to fourteen years (males only).^[12] Additionally, Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) have been accused of extrajudicial killings of civilians, indiscriminate shelling and shooting, rape as a weapon of war, use of civilians as human shields, and widespread looting and destruction of civilian infrastructure and private property in Afar and Amhara Regions.^{[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]}

War crime classification

Starvation as a method of warfare

In early April 2021, the World Peace Foundation argued that Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was likely to be relevant to the case of starvation in the Tigray War. The authors concluded that the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments were responsible for starvation, listing evidence in Section 4 of their report. The authors argued that "circumstantial evidence suggest[ed] that [the starvation was] intentional, systematic and widespread."^[20] Mark Lowcock, who formerly led OCHA, stated in October 2021 that the Ethiopian federal government was deliberately starving Tigray, "running a sophisticated campaign to stop aid getting in" and that there was "not just an attempt to starve six million people but an attempt to cover up what's going on."^[21]

De Waal argued that the looting by the EDF of cars, generators, food stores, cattle, sheep and goats in Tigray Region was a violation of international criminal law that "prohibits a belligerent from removing, destroying or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population" (Rome Statute, Article 7, 2.(b)).^[2] A witness to the massacre in Axum stated that the EDF "burned crops [...] forced farmers and priests to slaughter their own animals [...] stole medicine from health facilities and destroyed the infrastructure."^[10] Ethiopian troops have reportedly withheld food from going to Tigrayan civilians who were suspected of having links to Tigrayan fighters. A student based in Europe, and in contact with her family in Tigray Region, stated that in the Irob woreda where her family lives, "If you don't bring your father, your brothers, you don't get the aid, you'll starve."^[22]

An EHRC report noted that "Tigray Forces carried out widespread and organized pillaging, looting and destruction of government administration facilities, public service facilities (in particular education and health facilities), private property, and commercial properties . . . a total of 2,409 health facilities including hospitals and health posts have ceased operation as a result of the destruction, damage and pillage they sustained. In addition, a total of 1,090 schools were fully destroyed while 3,220 sustained partial damage in both regions." The report also concluded that widespread looting and destruction caused by the TDF occupation were the main drivers of displacement from Afar and Amhara regions.^[14] Satellite imagery analysis confirmed that the TDF intentionally burned a rural village to the ground near the town of Agamsa in the Kobo district of the Amhara Region.^[23][24]

In a September 2022 UN commission, the Ethiopian government, along with forces allied with them, engaged in deliberate efforts to deny the Tigray region "access to basic services [...] and humanitarian assistance," leaving 90% of Tigrayan residents in dire conditions. The commission also stated that they had "reasonable grounds to believe" that the Ethiopian government was using deliberate starvation as a war tactic.^[25] It called on both the federal government and the TPLF to let these services resume without hinderance.^[5]

Rape as a weapon of war

According to nine doctors in Ethiopia and one in a Sudanese refugee camp interviewed by CNN, sexual violence in the Tigray War constituted rape as a weapon of war. The women treated by the doctors stated that the ENDF, EDF and Amhara soldiers who raped them described Tigrayans as having no history and culture, that the intent was to "ethnically cleans[e] Tigray", to "Amharise" them or remove their Tigrayan identity and "blood line". One of the doctors, Tedros Tefera, stated, "Practically this has been a genocide".^[26] In March 2021, The Daily Telegraph argued that testimonies supported the rape as a weapon of war interpretation, stating that "Survivors, doctors, aid workers and experts speaking to the Telegraph all pointed to rape being systematically used as a weapon of war by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces".^[27] Reasons for the rape that were stated to the victims included the aim of "cleansing Tigrayan blood".^[28]

In January 2022, Amnesty International published a report stating that acts of rape and violence by the TDF in the Amhara Region "may have been committed as part of a systematic attack against the Amhara civilian population."^[19] In March 2022, the EHRC published a report stating that the TDF committed widespread and systematic acts of sexual violence against women and girls in the Afar and Amhara regions.^[14]

A UN investigation confirmed the reports of widespread rape and sexual violence by all parties, including the practice of mass rape as "retribution" by the TDF.^[5] They also found that Ethiopian and Eritrean forces engaged in sexual slavery.^[29]

Crimes against humanity claims

The EHRC claimed in November 2020 that the Mai Kadra massacre may constitute a crime against humanity.^[3] Human Rights Concern Eritrea claimed in February 2021 that crimes against humanity occurred during the war, in particular in the "appalling treatment of Eritrean refugees in the Shimelba and Hitsats camps" and called for an immediate independent international enquiry.^[30]

In its 26 February 2021 report on the

In December 2020, Alex de Waal argued that Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki had "the intention of annihilating the [Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF)] and reducing Tigray to a condition of complete incapacity." De Waal argued for intent on the part of Isaias by referring to "eleven high-ranking colleagues [of Isaias], heroes of the [Eritrean War of Independence] . . . and ten journalists" who were arrested in 2001 and remained missing.^[2]

Also in December 2020, Rashid Abdi, interviewed by

On 28 January 2021, Robert I. Rotberg, a professor in governance and foreign affairs, classified the war crimes of the Tigray war using the informal term "purposeful ethnic cleansing", which he saw as "a precursor to all-out genocide". He called for the responsibility to protect procedures to be implemented. Rotberg attributed intent to Abiy, claiming that he "had seemingly decided that [the] very existence [of Tigrayans] threatened his control of 110 million Ethiopians."^[39]

Researchers

In November 2020,

2020 Ethiopia bus attack and the Metekel massacre and listing affected groups as the Amhara, Tigrayans, Oromo, Gedeo, Gumuz, Agaw and Qemant.^[40]

Peace researcher and 2007 founder of the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Mulugeta Gebrehiwot, stated on 27 January 2021 that the killings of Tigrayans by the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) were "literally genocide by decree. Wherever they're moving, whomever they find, they kill him or her, [whether it's] an old man, a child, a nursing women, or anything."^[8]

Peace researcher Kjetil Tronvoll stated on 27 February that for the first time in his three decades of studying Horn of Africa conflicts, he considered the possibility that the term genocide might apply to the actions of the EDF in the Tigray War. He listed separate components as widespread and systematic: massacres of civilians based on their identity as Tigrayans; sexual violence as an aspect of a genocidal campaign; deliberate looting of infrastructure and looting and destruction of food resources for inducing starvation; and destruction and looting of cultural heritage to attack cultural identity. Tronvoll suggested that seen together, the pattern of all these separate war crimes and "likely" crimes against humanity could establish genocidal intent by the EDF against Tigrayans in Tigray Region. He stated that the federal Ethiopian authorities could hold part of the responsibility by having "invited and accommodated" the EDF to participate in the Tigray War.^[41]

On 20 November 2021, Genocide Watch again issued a Genocide Emergency Alert for Ethiopia, stating that "both sides are committing genocide", and that "Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's hate speech and calls for war" together with attacks by the ENDF and TPLF put Ethiopia into stages 4 (dehumanization), 6 (polarization), 8 (persecution), and 9 (extermination) of the ten stages of genocide.^[42]

EHRC Director Daniel Bekele said the EHRC-OHCHR Joint Investigation (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) did not identify violations amounting to genocide.^[43]

Politicians

The elected and deposed leader of Tigray Region, Debretsion Gebremichael, stated on 30 January 2021 that the war was a "genocidal war [that was being] waged upon the People of Tigray to illegally appropriate by force [their] identity and [their] basic right to existence." Debretsion stated that the Tigrayans were being attacked "to exterminate them with bullets and weaponized hunger".^[9][44]

Military

Mohammed Tessema, head of ENDF Indoctrination, stated on 23 November 2020 that the TPLF planned to use ENDF and EDF uniforms produced at the Almeda Textiles Factory in order carry out genocide similar to the Mai Kadra massacre and then accuse the ENDF of responsibility for the killings.^[45]

Extrajudicial killings of civilians

See also: Casualties of the Tigray War § Executions

Massacres

The EHRC stated in its preliminary report on the

Axum.^[50] Extrajudicial executions of civilians by the TDF were reported in Kobo and Chenna in the Amhara Region.^[13][15][14] In Kobo, the TDF killed men and teenage boys working their fields in retaliation for a counterattack by farmers in the district earlier that day.^[51][16]

Reports on gender distinction and the age threshold above which EDF soldiers had been instructed by their superiors to kill Tigrayans varied. A witness to the first part of the

4 November Northern Command attacks occurred, escaped to Addis Ababa after two months. Alem stated that the EDF's orders were "to exterminate you [Tigrayans] – all of you" above the age of seven years.^[11] Another witness described the limit as either "any male over the age of 14" or "those who 'pee against the wall'—a reference to men".^[12]

A witness, who spent two months walking between villages in central Tigray, wrote in early February 2021 in Ethiopia Insight that the towns of the area had become ghost towns and that "once the center of trade, exchange and hope, [the towns had become] the scene of war crimes that [would] never be fully articulated or persecuted."^[12]

Bombing of civilian targets

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on the shelling of civilian targets that could constitute war crimes, if the risk of harm to civilians were greater than the likely military gains. HRW stated that during the early days of the war, Ethiopian forces launched artillery attacks which struck hospitals, schools, and markets in Mekelle, Humera and Shire, killing at least 83 civilians, including children, and wounding over 300. In each of these attacks, the Tigrayan special forces had already retreated. In places that had armed forces present such as Humera, the presence of local militias was too insignificant to defend the town.^[52]

In Humera, local residents said artillery fire also came from Eritrea on 9 November 2020.^[52]

In August 2021, the TDF indiscriminately shelled and killed 107 civilians, including 27 children, and injured 35 civilians during an offensive in Galikoma, Afar Region.^[14][17]

In an airstrike on 22 June 2021, the Ethiopian Air Force killed 64 civilians in Togogwa (Southwestern Tigray) and injured 180 others.^[53][54][46]

In January 2022, an

airstrike was launched into an IDP camp located in Dedebit, killing at least 56.^[55][56] Both Human Rights Watch and UN investigators have characterized this as a war crime.^[5][57][58]

Use of cluster bombs

On 25 February 2021,

In Chenna, Amhara Region, the TDF entered residential areas without allowing civilians to leave, then started shooting at ENDF positions, effectively utilizing the local population as human shields.^[14][15]

Refoulement

De Waal argued that the

Kassahun Molla Yilma, former head of Jimma University School of Law and prosecutor, argued in February 2021 that for the Mai Kadra massacre of the Tigray War and other atrocities taking place in Ethiopia, it would be in Ethiopia's interests to become party to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Among other reasons, Kassahun said that joining the ICC would "help catalyze reform regarding the legal framework regulating atrocity crimes in Ethiopia", since the provisions in the Ethiopian Criminal Code at the time "[did] not fit the nature of atrocity crimes committed [in] Ethiopia", and that the ICC would the Ethiopian justice system build capacity for investigations and prosecutions for the crimes. Kassahun said that as the ICC is a court of last resort, and since Ethiopia was not, as of February 2021, a party to the ICC, war crimes committed during the Tigray War would not be tried in the ICC.^[68]

Debretsion called for Isaias and Abiy to be tried in an international court.^[9]

Tampering with evidence

According to Eritrea Hub, the Transitional Government of Tigray and the ENDF removed evidence of "murder, rape, looting, displacement and destruction" related to the war crimes of the Tigray War, under orders of the federal Ethiopian government. The tampering with evidence was ordered prior to allowing visits by international media.^[69]

Arrests

Enkuayehu Mesele, head of TPLF militias in Western Zone, was arrested in

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights stated that it would start a Commission of Inquiry on Tigray on 17 June 2021 under Article 45 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The Commission was planned to initially start for three months, with headquarters in Banjul, and to "conduct investigations on the ground and in neighbouring countries when the conditions are met".^[71] The chair of the Commission of Inquiry, Rémy Ngoy Lumbu,^[72] stated that the Commission's report would be published by the end of 2021.^[73]

EHRC–OHCHR Tigray investigation

In mid-2021, the EHRC and the OHCHR launched a joint investigation into human rights violations of the Tigray War committed by all parties.^[74][37][75] The EHRC–OHCHR joint investigation team's report was published on 3 November 2021.^[76]

References