Tigray government praises UN Right chief for the briefing at UNHRC session; but, says full of flaws, influenced by Ethiopian government propaganda
Source: Globe News Net
March 11, 2022
Tigray government expressed its gratitude for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, for highlighting the atrocities that have been committed against the people of Tigray, but says that her statement was full of inaccuracies.
The statement by Tigray external Affairs Office, mentioned for example the fact that the High Commissioner cited Afar and Amhara regional authorities’ assessment about the number of students that have been affected by alleged ‘destruction of schools’ without conducting a transparent and independent investigations into the claim. The statement said that this consolidates its previous assertion that the High Commissioner is implicitly accusing Tigrayan forces of causing the destruction of schools and health facilities based on information gained from Ethiopian authorities without making its own independent investigation.
“Perplexingly, the High Commissioner did not mention the near-total destruction of health and school facilities across Tigray, the critical shortage of life-saving medical supplies that has claimed the lives of thousands of Tigrayans, and the fact that schools across Tigray have been shuttered for over 2 years now”, the statement said.
The statement also criticized the High Commissioner’s claim that ‘fighting in Abala and its environs was to be blamed for the obstruction of humanitarian aid delivery into Tigray’, and said that it was ‘wrong on multiple levels’.
“To begin with, there is no ongoing fighting at the moment. Second, insofar as there was brief fighting between Tigrayan forces and an assortment of irregulars in the area, including Afar special forces and Eritrean mercenaries, that had been crossing over into Tigrayan territories and launching attacks, it was one that was imposed on us as Tigray’s army had to respond to their repeated cross-border attacks inside Tigray”, the statement said.
“The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has stated that no humanitarian supplies have been delivered to Tigray by road since mid-December, when there were no active hostilities in the area”, the statement reminded.
The statement also criticized the High Commissioner’s praise for the Ethiopian government for ‘trying to “implement” the recommendations of the joint EHRC-OHCHR report’.
“The Ethiopian regime, the chief architect of the genocidal war on Tigray, cannot investigate itself without making a mockery of the whole concept of accountability and justice for victims. The crimes committed against the people of Tigray are staggering in their geographical scope, viciousness, and organization”, the statement said.
“Given the systematic nature of the crimes and the fact that no corner of Tigray has been spared from the long arm of the genocidaires, the regime cannot be a credible agent of justice for the victims. The atrocities committed in Tigray cannot be attributed to so-called ‘bad apples’ in the military; the Eritrean and Ethiopian militaries as institutions are knee-deep in the genocide on Tigray. Accordingly, a state implicated in the commission of heinous crimes can never be an impartial administrator of justice vis-à-vis those crimes”, the statement added.
Tigray government also criticized the High Commissioner for failing to exhort the regime to accept the legitimacy of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, established by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on December 17, 2021.
“The Government of Tigray has always stated that only an independent investigation by an impartial international body can get to the bottom of all atrocities committed since the start of the genocidal war on Tigray”, the statement reaffirmed.
The statement by Tigray government concluded by appealing to the international community to deploy a robust package of punitive actions or the credible threat of one to compel it to accept the legitimacy and mandate of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, come to the negotiating table, facilitate unobstructed humanitarian delivery into Tigray and end the cruel blockade of Tigray.
TheUN rights office on Monday reported that at least 304 civilians had been killed in air strikes in the north, particularly Tigray, since November. The UH Rights office also said that it has received reports of “306 rape incidents by Tigrayan forces in the Amhara region” between November 1 and Dec. 5, 2021.
A recent study by Mekelle University and the Regional Health Bureau showed that 120,000 women in a conservative Tigray came forward to report rape by either Ethiopian, Eritrean, or Amhara. Researchers say that the figure was only a tip of the iceberg, considering the sexual conservativism in Tigray into account. Tigray regional health bureau announced today that 7.3 % of the women who have been raped have been contracted with various sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and 5 % have been infected with HIV.
The war began in November 2020 when Ethiopia’s army, backed by Eritrean and Somalia national armies and troops from Ethiopian regional states, moved to oust a TPLF-led regional government in Tigray after a long-standing political hostilities between Abiy’s ruling party and the TPLF. The other dimension of the war was a genocidal campaign that has been brewing by elites from Amhara and Eritrean government. The trio combined their forces to unleash the November 2020 ‘war-of-annihilation’ on Tigrayans.
The more than 16-month-old war was marked by extreme brutality, including the use of rape and hunger as weapons of war, massacres and ethnic cleansing against Tigrayans. As a result, the conflict has left thousands dead and forced many others to flee their homes with hundreds of thousands driven to the brink of starvation, according to the United Nations.
Since June, Tigray has been put under a total humanitarian blockade by the Ethiopian government, with only less than 10 %of the needed essential aid allowed to enter the region and no aid reached the region since December 15, 2021. This has resulted in man-made famine to more than 900,000 people in the region and more than 5400 deaths as a result.
The World Health Organization last month called for “unfettered access” into war-wracked Tigray, saying its first delivery of life-saving medical supplies since July last year had stalled due to lack of fuel.
Nearly 40 percentof people in Tigray, a region of six million people, face “an extreme lack of food”, the UN said last month. The dire assessment published by the World Food Programme (WFP) came as humanitarian groups increasingly curtail activities because of fuel and supply shortages.
An estimated 9.4 million people in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Millions more are also suffering from severe food shortages, acute malnutrition is rising, disease and chronic illnesses are going untreated.
