Tigray

Ethiopia on Tuesday became the third African nation in three years to default on its sovereign debt, following Zambia and Ghana.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang vowed on Friday that his country would invest heavily in the “post-war reconstruction” of Ethiopia, which recently exited a two-year war between its government, supported by neighboring Eritrea, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Internally-displaced persons (IDPs) in Ethiopia’s Tigray region staged massive demonstrations on Tuesday to protest delays in returning to their homes, the continued presence of hostile tribal militia forces on their lands, and the suspension of humanitarian aid.

Ethiopia issued an incensed and lengthy statement on Tuesday condemning the U.S. State Department and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in particular for determining that it had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during its recent civil war.

Ethiopia’s Addis Standard on Wednesday reported that dozens of civilians have been killed in clashes in the Oromo Special Zone of the Amhara region.

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus revealed on Wednesday that he had received notice that his uncle in Ethiopia had been “murdered” in a massacre that resulted in the deaths of at least 50 other people in his village.

Civilians in Ethiopia — both within the blockaded northern region of Tigray and throughout the country — are facing rape, executions, torture, beatings, and the abduction of their children to be used as child soldiers, harrowing reports out of the country revealed this week.

Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen, who also serves as foreign minister, devoted very little of his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday to discussing the brutal two-year civil war that heated up again over the past few weeks. He spent no time at all responding to the allegations of war crimes and human rights atrocities against both his government and its adversaries.

A spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – the Marxist political party and armed militia that has been fighting an insurgency against the Ethiopian central government since November 2020 – claimed on Tuesday that neighboring Eritrea launched a “full-scale offensive” across the Ethiopian border into the Tigray region.

Ethiopia’s civil war between the federal government and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is not the only deadly ethnic conflict raging in that turbulent country. On Friday, residents of the Oromiya region reported digging mass graves for at least 42 villagers slaughtered by a rival tribal militia.

The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an Ethiopian insurgent militant group, claimed on Thursday that Ethiopian federal forces and allied Eritrean troops launched a “massive four-pronged offensive” against the northwestern part of the Tigray region.

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Thursday that the government of his native Ethiopia is blocking him from sending money to or even communicating with family in the blockaded Tigray region, lamenting, “I don’t even know who is dead or who is alive.”

The government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the nation’s former ruling party now functioning as a rebel militia, confirmed that a truce that began in March had broken with major hostilities erupting on Tuesday.

The director-general of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused heads of state on Wednesday of racism for failing to address the ongoing “manmade” humanitarian disaster in his native Ethiopia, saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is getting more attention due to the skin color of Ethiopians.

A former U.N. employee alleged on Tuesday that the Ethiopian government intentionally prevented its representatives from declaring an official famine last year in the country’s northern Tigray region, which has been devastated by Ethiopia’s ongoing civil war, the media platform Devex reported.

The latest Ethiopian civil war has caused unexpected casualties since it started in November 2020, including the destruction or damage of several ancient Christian churches built into rock walls in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the Conversation, a non-profit media outlet, reported on Tuesday.

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).

Daniel Bekele, chief of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, said on Friday that a string of highly unusual and little-discussed police raids this month took at least eight Ethiopian government officials into custody, implicity for human rights violations.

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is set to be re-appointed Tuesday via a secret ballot – standing for the role unopposed.

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused the government of Ethiopia of blocking humanitarian aid into the country’s Tigray region, where an ethnic civil war is currently underway, reports highlighted on Wednesday.

Members and associates of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a Marxist political party that ruled Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018, have engaged in human rights atrocities including gang rapes and mass killings of civilians in the ongoing Ethiopian Civil War, Reuters revealed on Tuesday.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for ending an Ethiopian war with Eritrea — is currently leading federal Ethiopian troops on the “frontline” of the country’s latest battle against separatist forces from northern

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, announced on Monday he will head for the front lines of battle and take direct command of his troops to fight the Tigrayan insurrection. 

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, vowed on Wednesday to “bury” his enemies from the rebellious Tigray province in “blood and bones.”

Mekelle, capital city of Ethiopia’s rebellious Tigray province, was reportedly hit by airstrikes on Monday while ground forces from the central government moved against Tigrayan fighters in the neighboring province of Amhara.

The United Nations on Monday recalled two female staffers from Ethiopia after a recording of them accusing U.N. officials of bias toward the Tigrayan rebels was posted online. One of the names they dropped was Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and a Tigrayan himself.

Sudanese military officials said on Sunday that an attempt by Ethiopian forces to cross the border between the two countries was repelled. Ethiopia’s neighbors are worried about its civil war spreading instability across the region, and Sudan is particularly nervous after an attempted coup last week.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report on Thursday accusing Eritrean troops and Tigrayan militia of raping and killing Eritrean refugees living in northern Ethiopia.

Ethiopian government officials on Wednesday accused the rebellious Tigray minority of murdering 120 civilians at a village in the neighboring Amhara region, the first report of a large-scale atrocity since the Tigrayans invaded Amhara. Meanwhile, Sudan summoned its Ethiopian ambassador to complain about the large number of Tigrayan corpses floating across the border on the Setit River.

Amnesty International (AI) published a report on Tuesday that accused forces loyal to the government of Ethiopia – including troops from neighboring Eritrea and militia recruited from the Amhara tribe – of using systematic rape as a weapon against the insurgents of Tigray province.

Ethiopia’s government on Tuesday called on citizens of the East African country to join the Ethiopian federal defense forces in fighting Tigrayan separatists in northern Ethiopia despite Addis Ababa’s official announcement of a ceasefire in June, Voice of America (VOA) reported.

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who hails from the troubled Tigray region of Ethiopia, on Monday denounced the situation in his home country as “very horrific” due to “rampant” starvation, violence, population displacement, and rape.

Ethiopian army soldiers and allied Eritrean troops allegedly “massacred” at least 78 priests of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

A report published Tuesday alleges that Ethiopian federal troops and allied Eritrean army soldiers have committed “starvation crimes” as a military tactic in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region over the past several months.

Eritrean troops fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region “killed hundreds of unarmed civilians” in the city of Axum in late November 2020, according to a report Amnesty International released Friday.

Ethiopian state media Wednesday announced the arrest of 15 people in connection with a plot to attack the embassy of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A similar attack was reportedly planned against the UAE embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.