Mereja Forum

[Aba]

U.S. sanctions against Eritrea are overdue, but incomplete

Opinion by the Editorial Board Today at 2:59 p.m. EDT

“They raped me one after the other. … I don’t know if they realized I was pregnant. I don’t know if they realized I was a person.” This is how one woman described to Amnesty International her assault by troops aligned with Ethiopia’s government, who have committed widespread, targeted rape against women and girls in Tigray, a state in the north of the country. These horrors, among others, have led the United States to sanction Eritrea’s top military leader.

While terrible events in Afghanistan have transfixed Americans, another nightmare has been unfolding in Ethiopia. Eritrean troops have fought against the Tigrayan rebels alongside Ethiopian government forces since the civil dispute turned bloody in November. They have committed among the war’s worst atrocities, including civilian massacres and rapes meant to be so violent they render victims infertile. In its sanctions announcement, the Treasury Department said that Eritrean defense forces have gone house-to-house in search of Tigrayan families to evict and men and boys to execute. Those who survive must leave behind dead loved ones or face execution.

The U.S. sanctions against Gen. Filipos Woldeyohannes, head of Eritrea’s forces, are an overdue acknowledgment of the horrific suffering he has overseen in Tigray. But Eritrea is not the only party that has committed human rights abuses in this conflict.

Ethiopia’s troops have committed many of the crimes for which the United States is sanctioning Eritrea. Amnesty International reports that Ethiopian government forces and allied militias have also weaponized rape. Ethiopian soldiers have forced Tigrayan women into sexual slavery, engaged in gang rapes and targeted Tigrayan women fleeing to neighboring Sudan. A mother raped by government-aligned Amhara militia forces while heading to a Sudanese refugee camp recalled: “They said if you were male we would kill you, but girls can make Amhara babies.”

Amnesty concluded that the highest levels of government in Ethiopia and Eritrea have tolerated these crimes. In response, Ethiopia accused Amnesty of trying to “weaponize human rights.”

Beyond overseeing these atrocities, Ethiopia’s government has blockaded for nearly two months humanitarian aid meant for Tigray — a starvation campaign that has caused the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the blockade has prevented more than 93 percent of needed aid from getting to civilians. If Eritrean officials deserve sanctions, the U.S. government must consider them for Ethiopian government officials, too.

Meanwhile, civilians fleeing the conflict are accusing Tigrayan forces of committing a range of atrocities, including door-to-door executions, as they have widened the conflict beyond the borders of their own region. Displaced people blame Tigrayan troops for “killings, widespread looting and the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas,” Agence France-Presse reported.

U.S. sanctions against Eritrea probably will not force Eritrean troops out of the conflict. The United Nations sanctioned Eritrea for nine years, in part for refusing to withdraw troops from neighboring Djibouti, and the country did not relent. But they should be a warning shot, signaling to Ethiopia’s government and to Tigrayan forces that the world is watching this horrific war — and that the United States will act. The United States should use whatever leverage it has not only to end human rights abuses but also to force both sides to the bargaining table.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ncomplete/

[Fiyameta]

[Aba]

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