Report: Ethiopia, Led by Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Committing ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ in Civil War

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a joint report on Wednesday in which they alleged Ethiopia’s federal government has perpetrated “ethnic cleansing … crimes against humanity and war crimes” in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region as part of a civil war between Addis Ababa and the separatist militia known as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

A summary of the joint report’s findings published on April 6 refers to Ethiopian government officials and state-backed security forces as “new administrators in the Western Tigray zone, as well as regional officials and security forces from Ethiopia’s Amhara region.”

Amnesty International and HRW jointly accuse these representatives of Ethiopia’s federal government of responsibility for a “campaign of ethnic cleansing, carried out through crimes against humanity and war crimes, targeting Tigrayan civilians in Western Tigray since the war began in November 2020” in their newly released analysis.

The two human rights organizations said they based their report on data collected through December 2021. Detailing evidence to back up their allegations that Addis Ababa has supported “crimes against humanity” in its latest civil war against the separatist TPLF, Amnesty International and HRW wrote:

[I]nterim authorities in control of the area [Tigray], as well as Amhara authorities and forces, made it clear – via oral and at times written threats – that they intended to push Tigrayans out of “this land” and east across the Tekeze river (a natural boundary with the Northwestern Zone of Tigray).

These forces, at times with the acquiescence and possible participation of Ethiopian federal forces, carried out unlawful killings, including the summary execution by Amhara Special Forces of around 60 Tigrayan men near the Tekeze River Bridge on January 17, 2021, sexual violence against Tigrayan women and girls, mass detentions, the discriminatory withholding of humanitarian aid and services, and the forcible transfer of hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans from the territory.

Reuters published a report in December 2021 in which it alleged the TPLF and forces allied to the group had perpetrated their own share of war crimes against Ethiopian civilians, including gang rapes and massacres.

Ethiopia’s federal government, based in the centrally-located Ethiopian national capital of Addis Ababa, launched a civil war against the TPLF on November 4, 2020, after forces allied to the group attacked a federal military base in Tigray hours earlier. The TPLF is a left-wing militia that has ruled Tigray since 1975 through an ethnic separatist agenda based on Communist ideology. The TPLF was formerly a major Ethiopian political party recognized by the nation’s federal government, though this changed in December 2019 when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed moved to dissolve the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

The TPLF had dominated the EPRDF for three decades prior to Abiy’s request that the EPRDF’s three member parties merge to form a new, politically centrist party known as the Prosperity Party. The TPLF was the only former EPRDF member that refused to cooperate in the merger, laying the groundwork for the current conflict between Tigray and Addis Ababa.

Abiy founded the politically centrist Prosperity Party as part of his greater effort to steer Ethiopia away from decades of ethnic federalism. The prime minister’s prominent role in Ethiopia’s latest civil war has shocked observers who came to know Abiy’s name when he won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end a war between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea. Abiy defied his public persona as a leader of peace in November 2021 when he confirmed that he personally led Ethiopian federal troops on the battlefield against the TPLF in northeastern Ethiopia’s Afar region, which borders Tigray.