Eritrean troops ‘committed war crimes’ in Ethiopia after peace deal: Report

According to Amnesty International, Eritrean troops working with the Ethiopian government in Tigray "committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity."

 

Following the signing of a peace agreement last year, Eritrean soldiers murdered citizens without due process and sexually trafficked women for months, according to a report released on Monday by Amnesty International.

 

Regional forces from Tigray were opposed against Ethiopia's federal army and its supporters, which included soldiers from other regions and from neighboring Eritrea, in the war that broke out in November 2020.

 

The United States imposed sanctions on Eritrea in 2021 for sending troops into Tigray to aid Ethiopia's federal forces; these soldiers were charged with murder, rape, and looting during the two-year conflict.

 

The conflict resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and it only ended last November with the agreement of a ceasefire between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) under the mediation of the African Union.

The deal called for the withdrawal of foreign forces from the region. Eritrea was not a party to the agreement and residents say its troops continue to be present in border areas.

 

In the border districts of Mariam Shewito and Kokob Tsibah, Amnesty claimed to have conducted 49 interviews in May and June, correlating the results with satellite imagery, the testimonies of social workers, medical professionals, and government officials.

 

"Despite the signing of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, atrocities against civilians in Tigray continued with Eritrean soldiers subjecting women to horrific abuse, including rape, gang rape, and sexual enslavement, while civilian men were extrajudicially executed," said Tigere Chagutah, director of Amnesty International's East and Southern Africa division.

“The serious violations documented in this report amount to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity,” the rights watchdog said.

 

Some women were raped inside an Eritrean military camp while others were attacked and kept prisoner in their own homes, it added.

 

A single mother of three who was detained in a military camp for three months with 14 other women and subjected to frequent sexual assaults, she told Amnesty.

 

She claimed that the troops also denied their victims food and drink while repeatedly raping them.

 

Another woman, 37, claimed that for almost three months, troops battered and sexually assaulted her inside of her own home.

 

“They told me, ‘whether you shout or not, no one is going to come and rescue you’. And then they raped me.”

 

‘Executing civilians’

Amnesty also documented the execution of 24 civilians, including one woman, between November 2022 and January 2023, citing interviews with survivors, witnesses, victims’ families and local officials.

 

Amnesty said Eritrean and Ethiopian authorities have not responded to its preliminary findings.

 

Earlier this year, officials from both countries rejected a determination by the US Department of State that their armies, along with all sides in the conflict, had committed war crimes.

 

Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the US claims “inflammatory” and “untimely”, while the Eritrean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they were “unsubstantiated and defamatory”.

 

"Such apportioning of blame is unwarranted and undercuts support of the US for an inclusive peace process in Ethiopia," the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry stated in a statement in March of this year.

 

Amnesty additionally requested the African Union's rights panel to "rescind its decision" to halt an investigation into atrocities in Tigray without disseminating a report on its conclusions or suggestions.

 

Ethiopia has frequently rebuffed international attempts to look into human rights violations related to the Tigrayan conflict and has cautioned that any investigations could jeopardize the advancement of the AU-brokered peace accord.

 

Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki denied allegations of rights violations by Eritreanforces in Tigray as "fantasy" during a rare news conference in Kenya earlier this year.