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sarcasm
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Joined: 23 Feb 2013, 20:08

Re-engaging Ethiopia at the expense of justice won’t bring peace

Post by sarcasm » 17 Aug 2022, 08:01

The international community should not support the Ethiopian government’s domestic efforts to investigate abuses committed in Tigray as the government itself and its allies are most responsible.


Credible human rights organizations have documented human suffering on a massive scale in Tigray since November 2020, including widespread displacement and forced expulsions, systematic looting, destruction of property and crops, mass detention, extra-judicial killings, rampant sexual violence, manmade famine, denial of basic services, and ethnic profiling.

Among the latest findings is a comprehensive joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, published in April 2022, based on their months-long investigation concerning the ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans from Western Tigray.

The Ethiopian government responded to these reports with denials and has failed to take effective measures to stop the violations and address the dire humanitarian crisis in Tigray.

Despite the increased flow of aid since April, Tigray remains under siege. Entrance in and out of the region is highly restricted, essential services such as electricity, telecommunications, and banking are mostly shut off, and the majority of its population is still being denied assistance.

As a result, Ayder, the largest referral hospital in Tigray, declared that it is terminating its services due to the power outage and lack of medicine.

On 1 June, in some of the only footage captured from within the region in over a year, a team of French journalists surreptitiously documented the famine conditions in Tigray and the devastation of the region’s medical system.

Given the magnitude of the human rights and humanitarian law violations, rights groups continue to call for an independent investigation to be conducted by an international body.

That said, there is reason to believe that justice for victims could be sidelined in the interest of re-engaging Ethiopia and negotiating a peace deal. Doing so, or allowing the Ethiopian government to investigate itself and its allies, would be a grave mistake.

Ethiopia’s defiance


The Ethiopian government initially rejected any form of external investigation, saying that such calls are belittling and undermine its sovereignty.

Following more pressure, Addis Abeba requested that a joint investigation be conducted. After external actors obliged, a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was formed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

Efforts by the OHCHR and EHRC to investigate became more complex when Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) advanced into the adjacent Amhara and Afar regions after expelling the invading forces from Tigray in June 2021.

In the end, the joint investigation was either unable or unwilling to cover large parts of Tigray, and failed to look into the majority of the massacres, sexual violence, and other atrocities.

Aside from giving the government undue influence through the involvement of its human rights organ, the JIT also bought time for officials in Addis Abeba to devise ways to evade accountability.

It, therefore, came as little surprise that when the JIT report was published on 3 November 2021, the federal government was the only party that received it warmly. It took Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed only a few hours to show how relieved his administration was by the findings.


The JIT concluded that all sides have committed atrocities in northern Ethiopia. While this is true, the report downplayed the abuses in Tigray and equalized blame in a way that was out of touch with reality.

Upon publication, Human Rights Watch detailed some of the report’s inadequacies and continued calling for further international investigations.

The Prime Minister immediately announced that he had established an Inter-Ministerial Taskforce (IMTF) to design ways to implement the recommendations in the JIT report.

As evidence that the JIT was insufficient and flawed, the UN adopted a resolution to establish a body of inquiry headed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) a month after the JIT report was released, which the Ethiopian government voted against.

The government wants the IMTF to be the only mechanism and has made clear that it will not allow access to either the UN Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia or the African Union Commission of Inquiry.

As such, this proposal was clearly not made in good faith and reflected the government’s attempts to stonewall any independent accountability mechanism.

EHRC complicity


The JIT investigation was conducted despite overwhelming opposition by Tigrayans concerning the involvement of the EHRC, which, on paper at least, is an independent entity that doesn’t answer to the government. However, the EHRC’s funding is approved by Ethiopia’s parliament, and its Commissioner, presently Daniel Bekele, is also appointed by the government.

In practice, the Commission operates in ways that reveal how it is beholden to the government.

The EHRC supports the government’s position on accountability, as illustrated by a note it wrote to the UNHRC on 16 December 2021 objecting to the formation of an independent probe. It instead called on external actors to support Addis Abeba’s implementation of the JIT’s recommendations and to “encourage ongoing independent investigations in Ethiopia.”

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Abere
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Posts: 10890
Joined: 18 Jul 2019, 20:52

Re: Re-engaging Ethiopia at the expense of justice won’t bring peace

Post by Abere » 17 Aug 2022, 12:16

By the way who is going to investigate the crime committed by TPLF in Wollo and Gondar? The fact that world is blind to the injustice committed by TPLF against the people in these provinces will motivate Amhara Fano to deliver justice on its own. The partiality of the world simply due to false propaganda of corporate media is hurting Tigray while at the same time the credibility of Western media and their enablers is flushed down the toiled. The restlessness of the world is increasing the intensity of antagonism. A world that had been silent for the last 27 years, now all of a sudden barking proves only the hypocrisy as well as how loud bribed mouths are, not actually the level of truth.

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