Hi. My name is Feben. Thank you for having us here. I will be talking about the gender-based violence that's happening in Tigray.
It's been almost 600 days of Tigray genocide, and rape is still being used as a weapon of war against the women and children of Tigray to demoralize and also traumatize these women. More than 128,000 girls and women have been raped in Tigray. This number is extremely under-reported due to stigma and also due to limited access in Tigray.
Sexual violence is a very systematic way of ethnic cleansing. These abusers have told their victims that their goal is to cleanse them and to prevent them from having future generations of Tigrayans. Women are experiencing barbaric acts of sexual torture with the intent of forced sterilization, which is to mean that these women will physically be unable to have future children. There are many reports of it. For example, a surgeon in Adigrat, a city in Tigray, removed, out of the vagina of these women, rocks and nails that were inserted by Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers. These acts are to ensure that these injuries will result in permanent damage and these women will no longer be able to have children.
Many of our women are also being drugged and abducted by soldiers and forced into sexual slavery or brought to alternative locations. There is a story in the Telegraph of one woman, named Selam, and 17 other women who were abducted by Eritrean soldiers. They took them to a forest where 100 soldiers waited for them. They tied them to trees by their hands and their legs. They proceeded to rape them for three days.
There are many stories like this. Women are also being sexually assaulted by soldiers who have HIV. The intent is to infect these women so that they pass this along to their children, and future generations will be infected with HIV.
These sick acts of sexual violence are meant to destroy them not only physically but also psychologically. Many, many soldiers are forcing family members, at gunpoint, to rape other family members. When they refuse, they are shot and killed. There's a story of a grandfather who was ordered to rape his granddaughter. When he refused, soldiers sexually abused the granddaughter and then shot her in the arms and legs.
All of this is to say that sexual violence is a very systematic way of ethnic cleansing and a way to psychologically and physically torture these women. I just wanted to make it very clear that this is still going on more than a year and a half later. We're approaching almost our two-year mark.
That is all. Thank you so much.