Africa-Press-Ethiopia<\/p>\n
The Norwegian Nobel Committee\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0on October 11, 2019, that Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed had won that year\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize \u201cfor his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation.\u201d The committee wanted to highlight Abiy\u2019s initiative to end Ethiopia\u2019s border conflict with Eritrea and \u201cto recognize all the stakeholders working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and in the East and Northeast African regions.\u201d But they picked the wrong man.<\/p>\n In June 2020, Abiy extra-constitutionally postponed elections. When Ethiopia\u2019s northern Tigray region refused and, on Sept. 9, 2020, held its own parliamentary elections marked by long lines and high participation that the opposition Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front won. Abiy responded two months later by cutting Tigray\u2019s internet access and phone lines and sending in the Ethiopian Army to oust the elected government from Mekelle, the provincial capital. Multiple reports confirm that Eritrea\u2019s military also entered the region, operating side-by-side with Ethiopian troops as they sacked and looted towns and villages in the region. On Jan. 13, 2021, Ethiopia announced that its forces had killed Seyoum Mesfin, the country\u2019s long-serving former foreign minister, while fighting. Subsequent photos suggest that Abiy\u2019s men had summarily executed Mesfin.<\/p>\n While Ethiopia repeatedly said that the situation in Tigray was calm, reports continued to circulate alleging that Ethiopian forces had engaged in widespread human-rights violations. With the restoration of communication to the region, it now appears these reports were legitimate. Ethiopians now circulate videos of summary executions. This video circulated today purports to show the summary execution of two men in the Tigrayan market town of Adwa. The greatest war crime, however, appears to be a massacre of more than eight hundred Tigrayans at the Church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, reputed to be the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, shortly after Ethiopian forces entered the area. Reached by phone by the Associated Press, a church deacon recounted the massacre:<\/p>\n The deacon recalled soldiers bursting into the church, cornering and dragging out worshippers and shooting at those who fled. \u201cI escaped by chance with a priest,\u201d he said. \u201cAs we entered the street, we could hear gunfire all over.\u201d They kept running, stumbling over the dead and wounded along with others trying to find places to hide. Most of the hundreds of victims were killed that day, he said, but the shooting and looting continued the following day. \u201cThey started to kill people who were moving from church to home or home to home, simply because they were on the street,\u201d another witness, visiting university lecturer Getu Mak, told the Associated Press. \u201cIt was a horrible act to see.\u201d<\/p>\n The deacon\u00a0confirmed<\/a>\u00a0that he had counted the bodies of those killed in the massacre, and alleged that Ethiopian forces left bodies in the streets for days where they were feasted upon by hyenas. With growing witness accounts, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry has now\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cRape, plunder, callous & intentional mass killings, as observed & verified in\u00a0#Mikadra<\/a>, & every other imaginable crime might happen in\u00a0#Tigray<\/a>\u201d although it continued to deny both the regime\u2019s own culpability and ignore eyewitness accounts of Eritrean forces participating in human-rights abuses.<\/p>\n