Thank you very much for giving me a chance to speak to the committee.
Before I came to the United States, during the war I was in Tigray. I was an academic dean for the Mekelle University hospital, Ayder, in Tigray. I was witness to all the atrocities happening during the war as the COO of the university hospital.
Today I will only mention a few of the cases of sexual harassment and abuse that happened to girls and women. I was overseeing the transfer of these girls and women from our hospital to the safe house downtown in the city. I will only mention a few of the cases.
I'm sorry if some of the words are a bit disturbing. I'm just making an apology ahead of time.
The first one was a 65-year-old lady who came to our hospital. She presented with a complaint of gang rape. She was raped both anally and vaginally by five Eritrean troops, and she was also beaten with a stick. On examination, she had bruises on her back and her side, and she developed a second-degree perianal tear.
Another case was a six-year-old child, a girl. She presented at our hospital, and she was raped by the military in an area called Hawzen in front of her mother and father. Upon examination, it was found that she had developed a full-blown psychiatric problem, and she was admitted to the psychiatric ward.
Another case was a 21-year-old, a parent with a son, in her first month of postpartum after pregnancy. She was a lactating mother. She was abducted by Ethiopian military and Eritrean military from the outskirts of Mekele, and she was raped for two weeks by 12 assaulters. She had been weakened, and finally her husband was asked for a ransom to get his wife released, and he paid 5,000 Ethiopian birr to get her released after she had been in sexual slavery for two weeks in the camp of the Ethiopian military.
Another one was 30 years old. Before the war, she was on an antiretroviral drug. Then the assailants came, and they tried to rape her. She told them that she was HIV-positive, and they said they were okay with that because they wanted the virus to disseminate to all Tigrayan girls and women so that would help them. They raped her, four of them, and finally.... You can imagine how they are also transmitting the HIV virus to all the girls and women who have been raped. Finally, she had problems of rectal prolapse because they also abused her anally, and she also had psychiatric problems. She was also admitted to the psychiatric ward because she was completely, completely mentally lost.
Another patient was 19 years old. She was gang-raped in all orifices by 10 combined forces, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amhara. She came from the western part of Tigray, and she had multiple lacerations in the perineum. She had also developed what's called “all orifices”—anal and vaginal orifices are combined—and she was not in a position to contain her urine and feces. She totally developed a fistula. She cannot sit properly, and she is also HIV-positive. She was also admitted to our hospital.
Another girl was 25 years old, and she came from Adigrat, which is 120 kilometres from Mekele, from the region. Eritrean troops had gang-raped her, and they put hot metal inside her body. She was completely devastated, and all her internal and external organs were damaged. She also came to our hospital. We could not help her because she developed a very high destruction of her body. She also developed a psychiatric problem and was admitted to a psychiatric ward.
Another example is that two of our medical students were taken at night by the Ethiopian military and they were raped. In the morning, I personally reported to the security apparatus in the region because medical students had been raped, and I was told to keep silent. These two women medical students...the perpetrators were in the street. They just moved with impunity, and they didn't face justice.
Another one was 52 years old, a para 5 mother. Before the war, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, but after the war broke out, she was raped by two military Eritreans on the border of Eritrea. She was brought to our hospital, and on examination she had vaginal bleeding from the fragile cervical and vaginal mass and she also developed an offensive foul smell.
Another girl who came to our hospital was gang-raped, and inside her body they inserted a condom and some softer tissue to protect the bleeding. She came to our hospital, and our gynecology obstetrician removed all this stuff from her body. She was also admitted to the psychiatric ward.
One of the most important parts in this case...553 were diagnosed. This was before I left. I left Ethiopia in April 2021. Before I left, I witnessed 553 rape cases that came to our hospital. All of these were raped either by Ethiopian troops or by Eritrean and Amhara militia.
There is also—