Good morning, everyone.
I am Britawit Arefayne. I am from Tigray. I immigrated to Canada in 2009 and became a Canadian citizen in 2015.
First, I would like to thank the committee for giving me this chance.
In early November 2020, when the war broke out in Tigray, towns had been targeted with heavy shelling. My brother, Mebratu, left the town with his two young girls and his pregnant wife to go to her aunt in the nearby village. Weeks later, they ran out of food. He came back home on December 10 to grab some food and clothes, but never made it back to his children. He was taken the next morning by Eritrean soldiers with four other men from the neighbourhood. Days passed, but no one returned home, and the Eritrean soldiers refused to answer questions about their whereabouts.
Then the family decided to go on foot to Axum, 20 kilometres away, to ask the Ethiopian general to help them locate the missing men. The Ethiopian general sent two Ethiopian soldiers to escort the families back to Wukro Maray. The Ethiopian soldiers told the Eritreans they had orders from the Ethiopian general.
Then the Eritreans agreed and took them to the mountains outside of the city and showed them the dead bodies of all five men. My brother was one of them. They were found with their hands tied behind their backs, and their legs were bound. All had been shot, and rocks had been placed on their heads. They were buried eight days later.
My uncle, Teamrat, the most-loved person of our whole family and very popular for his kindness, was one of the over 800 civilians who were killed by Eritrean soldiers on the streets of Axum on November 28 and 29, 2020. Days later, one of our family members found him on the street. He was buried three days later. He left two young girls behind.
Similarly, my cousin Yirga was a teacher in the town of Shire. Neighbours told my aunt that he was shot by an Eritrean sniper at his doorstep when they arrived at his door. My other cousin, who grew up with me in the same house, was a teacher and a farmer in Mai Kadra and escaped the first massacre, but his house and his business were burned down by the Amhara militia and the Fano vigilante group. Thank God he is alive. He took his wife and two boys to Shire. They had nothing other than clothes on their backs, and they couldn't travel to my family in Axum because they had no money for transportation. He had to leave them and travel on top of a minibus for free and borrow money from my mom. He had to come back and take his family back to Axum.
Thank you for listening.