The
findings of the only human rights investigation allowed in Ethiopia’s blockaded
Tigray region will be released Wednesday, a year after war began there. But
people with knowledge of the probe say it has been limited by authorities who
recently expelled a U.N. staffer helping to lead it.
And
yet, with groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International barred
from Tigray, along with foreign media, the report may be the world’s only
official source of information on atrocities in the war, which began in
November 2020 after a political falling-out between the Tigray forces that long
dominated the national government and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s current
government. The conflict has been marked by gang rapes, mass expulsions,
deliberate starvation and thousands of deaths.
The
joint investigation by the U.N. human rights office and the government-created
Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, or EHRC, is a rare collaboration that
immediately raised concerns among ethnic Tigrayans, human rights groups and
other observers about impartiality and government influence.
In
response to questions from The Associated Press, the U.N. human rights office
in Geneva said it wouldn’t have been able to enter Tigray without the
partnership with the rights commission. Although past joint investigations
occurred in Afghanistan and Uganda, the U.N. said, “the current one is unique
in terms of magnitude and context.”
But
Ethiopia’s government has given no basis for expelling U.N. human rightsofficer Sonny Onyegbula last month, the U.N. added, and without an explanation
“we cannot accept the allegation that our staff member ... was ‘meddling in the
internal affairs’ of Ethiopia.”
Because
of those circumstances, and the fact that the U.N. left the investigation to
its less experienced regional office in Ethiopia, the new report is “automatically
suspect,” said David Crane, founder of the Global Accountability Network and
founding chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, an
international tribunal.
“What
you need when you go into an atrocity zone is a clean slate so outside
investigators can look into it neutrally, dispassionately,” Crane said. “You
want to do these things where you don’t build doubt, distrust from the
beginning,” including among people interviewed.
The
investigation might be the international community’s only chance to collect
facts on the ground, he said, but because of its setup, it may disappear “in
the sands of time.”
People
close to the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of
retaliation, asserted that the head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission,
Daniel Bekele, underplayed some allegations that fighters from the country’s
Amhara region were responsible for abuses in Tigray and pressed instead to
highlight abuses by Tigray forces.
That’s
even though witnesses have said the perpetrators of most abuses were soldiers
from neighboring Eritrea, Ethiopian forces and Amhara regional forces.
In
response to AP’s questions, Bekele asserted his commission’s independence,
saying it is “primarily accountable to the people it is created to serve.”
Attempts to influence the investigation, he added, can come from “many
directions” in such a polarized environment.
Bekele
said he and the commission have consistently cited “serious indications that
all parties involved in the conflict have committed atrocities.”
Observers
say a major shortcoming of the investigation is its failure to visit the scene
of many alleged massacres in Tigray, including the deadliest known one in the
city of Axum, where witnesses told the AP that several hundred people were
killed.
Bekele
said the investigation lacked the support of the Tigray authorities now
administering the region after Tigray forces retook much of the area in June,
about midway through the joint team’s work.
The
U.N. human rights office, however, said the government’s subsequent severing of
flights and communications from Tigray during the planned investigation period
made it difficult to access key locations, both “logistically and from a
security point of view.”
Even
the interim Tigray authorities hand-picked by Ethiopia’s government to run the
region earlier in the war rejected the joint investigation, its former chief of
staff, Gebremeskel Kassa, told the AP.
“We
informed the international community we wanted an investigation into human
rights but not with the EHRC because we believe this is a tool of the
government,” he said.
The
U.N. has said Ethiopia’s government had no say in the report’s publication,
though it was given the chance to read the report in advance and to point out
“anything it believes to be incorrect.”
Late
last week, Ethiopia’s government and a diaspora group released the results of
their own investigations focusing on alleged abuses by Tigray forces after they
entered the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar four months ago in what they
called an effort to pressure the government to end its blockade on Tigray.
The
ministry of justice said it found 483 non-combatants were killed and 109 raped
in parts of Amhara and Afar that were recaptured by federal forces in recent
weeks. It also found “widespread and systematic looting” of schools, clinics,
churches, mosques and aid groups’ offices.
A
separate report by the Amhara Association of America said it found that 112
people were raped in several districts covered by the ministry’s findings. The
diaspora group drew on data from offices of women’s and children’s affairs as
well as interviews with witnesses, doctors and officials.
The
diaspora group asserted that the Tigray forces “committed the rapes as revenge
against ethnic Amharas, whom they blame as responsible for abuses in their home
region.”
The
spokesman for the Tigray forces, Getachew Reda, said the allegations aren’t
worth “the paper they’re written on.” Accusations of rapes and killings by
Tigray forces are “absolutely untrue, at least on a level these organizations
are alleging,” he said.
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