Ethiopia committed genocidal acts against Tigrayans during two-year war, study says

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There is strong evidence that Ethiopia and its military allies committed acts of genocide against Tigrayans during the deadliest armed conflict of this century, a team of legal experts has concluded in a new study.

The 120-page report, published on Monday by the U.S.-based New Lines Institute with contributions from dozens of international law scholars, accuses Ethiopia of violating the Genocide Convention by targeting civilians with mass killings and starvation tactics during the Tigray war from 2020 to 2022.

The study, which took two years to complete, called on governments worldwide to take action against Ethiopia and other perpetrators, including by launching criminal investigations and other proceedings at international courts in The Hague.

It is the first study to cite Ethiopia’s obligations as a signatory of the Genocide Convention, the international treaty that was recently evoked by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in a bid to halt Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

Among the international experts who conducted the Tigray research were former Canadian justice minister Allan Rock and University of Ottawa law professor John Packer, who heads the university’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre.

The Tigray war erupted in November, 2020, when the Ethiopian military moved into the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia in a bid to crush an autonomy movement by the regional government. The war formally ended with a peace agreement in November, 2022, although some atrocities have continued since then.

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The new study found evidence that genocidal acts were committed against Tigrayans by the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) and its allies: the Amhara Special Forces (ASF) and the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF).

There is a reasonable basis to conclude that these groups “possessed the intent to destroy Tigrayans as an ethnic group,” the report said. It also cited the weaponized use of rape and sexual violence against Tigrayans. And it found evidence that some statements on social media were intended to incite genocide.

“This report concludes that, on the evidence currently available, there is a reasonable basis to believe that members of the ENDF, ASF and the EDF have committed genocide against Tigrayans,” it said.

“With the intent described in this report, there is a reasonable basis to believe that EDF, ASF and ENDF members carried out at least four acts constituting the crime of genocide: killing Tigrayans, causing serious bodily or mental harm to Tigrayans, deliberately inflicting conditions of life upon Tigrayans calculated to bring about their destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births among Tigrayans.”

Among the many pieces of evidence gathered in the study is a statement by Finnish diplomat Pekka Haavisto, who said Ethiopian leaders told him in 2021 that “they are going to destroy the Tigrayans, they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years.”

The report cites estimates by scholars that the Tigray war caused the deaths of more than 400,000 soldiers and up to 300,000 civilians, making it the most lethal war of the 21st century and one of the bloodiest since the end of the Cold War. “This would mean that between 5 and 10 per cent of the entire Tigrayan population had perished,” it said.

Many of the victims died from hunger and malnutrition after Ethiopia imposed a blockade on Tigray, preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the region. Crops and arable land in Tigray were deliberately destroyed by Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amharan forces, the report said.

Despite the huge death toll and frequent massacres of civilians in Tigray, the atrocities have been largely ignored by world leaders, the report said.

It cited the decision by the United Nations Human Rights Council to shut down an international investigation into war crimes in Ethiopia, despite pleas from investigators who warned of the high risk of further atrocities. The United States and the European Union, meanwhile, have restored their financial and economic assistance to Ethiopia, despite the lack of accountability for the mass killings, it noted.

Tigrayan Canadian leaders welcomed the report. “It will be hard for the international community, including the Canadian government, to ignore this report,” said Kidane Gebremariam, an Ottawa-based activist who lost family members – including a brother and two nephews – in the Tigray war.

“This is the first report with the conclusion that genocide has been committed in Tigray and on the people of Tigray,” he told The Globe and Mail on Monday.

Makeda Leul, chair of Security and Justice for Tigrayans Canada, said the report provides an “independent, clinical, legal analysis” that brings crucial attention to a neglected crisis. “Tigray has been left completely vulnerable and abandoned by the world,” she told The Globe. “The world that had said ‘never again’ allowed genocide to happen all over again.”

Tes Gebrezghi, chair of Ethiopian Canadians for Peace, said his group hopes the international community will heed the report’s recommendations and ensure that the perpetrators of genocide are brought to justice.