Dozens
of women have described shocking sexual assaults by Ethiopian soldiers and
allied forces in the country’s Tigray conflict, says an Amnesty International
report published Wednesday, and its researcher calls it striking how the
perpetrators appeared to act without fear of punishment from their commanders.
“All
of these forces from the very beginning, everywhere, and for a long period of
time felt it was perfectly OK with them to perpetrate these crimes because they
clearly felt they could do so with impunity, nothing holding them back,”
Donatella Rovera told The Associated Press.
She
would not speculate on whether any leader gave the signal to rape, which the
report says was intended to humiliate both the women and their Tigrayan ethnic
group. In her years of work investigating atrocities around the world, these
are some of the worst, Rovera said.
More
than 1,200 cases of sexual violence were documented by health centers in Tigray
between February and April alone, Amnesty said. No one knows the real toll
during the nine-month conflict, as most of the health facilities across the
region of 6 million people were looted or destroyed.
These
numbers are likely a “small fraction” of the reality, Amnesty said. It
interviewed 63 women, along with health workers.
A
dozen women described being held for days or weeks while being raped multiple
times, usually by several men. And 12 other women said they were raped in front
of family members. Five women said they were pregnant at the time they were
assaulted. Two said they had nails, gravel and shrapnel shoved into their
vaginas.
“I
don’t know if they realized I was a person,” one woman told Amnesty, describing
how she was attacked in her home by three men. She was four months pregnant at
the time.
The
AP separately has spoken with women who described being gang-raped by
combatants allied with the Ethiopian military, notably soldiers from
neighboring Eritrea but also fighters with the neighboring Amhara region.
Amnesty
has not received allegations against Tigray forces, who regained control of
much of the Tigray region in late June and have since crossed into the Amhara
and Afar regions in what they call an attempt to break the blockade on their
land and pressure Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to step down.
While
Ethiopian and allied forces retreated from much of Tigray in June, some remain
in western Tigray, and Ethiopia’s government on Tuesday essentially abandoned
its unilateral cease-fire as Abiy called all able citizens to fight.
The
Amnesty report calls for accountability for the sexual violence during the
conflict, saying rape and sexual slavery constitute war crimes. Many women in
Tigray now live with the physical and mental effects of the assaults including
HIV infections and continued bleeding, it said.
Ethiopia’s
government has not responded to the report, Rovera said. A spokesman for the
attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for an update Wednesday
on any investigations.
Earlier
this year, the government said three soldiers had been convicted and 25 others
indicted for rape and other acts of sexual violence. But Amnesty said no
information has been made available about those trials or other measures to
bring perpetrators to justice.
Ethiopia’s
government has not allowed human rights researchers into the Tigray region,
though a joint investigation into alleged atrocities is underway by the United
Nations human rights office and the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights
Commission.
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