Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Goitom Gebreluel. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to give this presentation. I'll focus my presentation on why the atrocities in Tigray show very strong indications of genocidal intent.
I'll start by noting that the stated objective of the Ethiopian government when they launched the war in November 2020 was to apprehend the leaders of the Tigray People's Liberation Front. What in fact ensued, however, was a systematic set of atrocities committed on the civilian population of Tigray. Many atrocities were committed. I'll go through some of the most severe ones.
The first one is ethnic cleansing. The moment troops from the federal government of Ethiopia, the Amhara regional state and Eritrea entered western and southern Tigray in November 2020, they proceeded to ethnically cleanse 1.2 million Tigrayans from these areas. The remaining Tigrayans were, throughout 2021, subjected to killings and torture. Some of the most disturbing accounts include those about corpses of Tigrayans, whose hands were tied behind their backs and whose eyes had been gouged out, floating down the river to Sudan in high numbers. A recent report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International concluded that these atrocities constituted crimes against humanity.
The other atrocity that has characterized this war is the systemic sexual and gender-based violence and the use of it as a weapon of war. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed unleashed a wave of systemic rape on Tigrayan women and girls after entering Tigray. USAID estimated that in early 2021, 22,500 women and girls would need treatment from these violations, whereas a study by the Tigray Region Health Bureau estimated that these numbers should be around 120,000 women. The victims of these atrocities or crimes also reported that in addition to being subjected to rape, they were also often subjected to other forms of physical violence by the perpetrators, such as having nails inserted into their bodies.
The ethnic motives behind these crimes were also made manifest by the statements made by these perpetrators during these actions. Some victims reported being told that the perpetrators were “Amharaizing” them, “cleansing” them of their Tigrayan blood, and that a “Tigrayan womb should not give birth”. This provides an indication that the purpose of the rape was to destroy the reproductive capacities of Tigrayan women, and thus it constitutes a genocidal intention.
The third atrocity I want to draw attention to is the use of mass starvation as a weapon of war. The Ethiopian government engineered a large-scale famine in Tigray. This began during their occupation of Tigray between November 2020 and June 2021, in which they systematically destroyed water pumps, crops and food storage. They looted the civilian population and blocked those in need from getting access to humanitarian assistance. Since they were pushed out of central and southern Tigray in June 2021, all of Tigray has been under total siege, and no medication, very little food aid and no basic services have been allowed into Tigray.
The former UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock has confirmed that starvation is being used as a weapon of war by the Ethiopian government, and he also stated that the Ethiopian government managed to block a declaration of famine in the UN in 2021.
One important aspect of this war that has been neglected is the hate speech and what that tells us about the war. These atrocities were essentially preceded by two and a half or three years of collective demonization of Tigrayans by the state media and the current leaders of Ethiopia.
Prior to and during the war, public calls for the extermination of the Tigrayans by government officials and associated public figures were rampant. In reference to Tigrayans, there were statements such as “Each of us should kill one Tigrayan and die. We are 30 million, and they are six million. If we sacrifice six million, the rest can be liberated.” Another statement we have seen is “Tigrayans are not of the human race. The devil is better than them.” Statements such as these have been rampant and have been made regularly on public TV and state media, which I think illustrates the motivations behind the war.
A recent report by the UN Human Rights Council also echoed these claims. They found that hate speech and acts of violence in Ethiopia seemed “to go beyond mere intent to kill and, instead, reflect a desire to destroy.” They also conclude that the Ethiopian government has “implemented a widespread range of measures designed to systematically deprive the population of Tigray of material and services indispensable for its survival”.
This is very close to the definition of genocide that we find in the genocide convention, article II(c), which stipulates that “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” constitutes an act of genocide and—