Eritrean troops accused of rape in the Tigray war in Ethiopia

The young mother of two was walking with her sister near a deserted highway in northern Ethiopia last month when five men forced them into a pickup truck and took them to a small building with a metal roof.

The women recognized their captors by their accents and military uniforms: they were soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, who joined Ethiopian troops for months in the fight against anti-government forces in the border region of Tigray.

Mehrawit, 27, was separated from her sister and locked in a room with only a thin, dirty mattress. For two weeks, she said, Eritrean soldiers raped her several times, fracturing her spine and pelvis and leaving her lying on the floor. One day, she counted 15 soldiers who took turns sexually assaulting her for eight hours, their cries of agony punctuated by their laughter.

“I was numb,” she recalled from a hospital bed in the regional capital Mekele, days after she escaped. “I could see their faces. I could hear them laughing. But after a while, I was no longer feeling the pain. “

His account is one of the few emerging from the murky conflict in Tigray, where human rights groups say pro-government forces are sexually abusing civilians in a remote mountainous region, out of sight of the world.

With tens of thousands of people killed, many more fleeing their homes and some surviving by eating leaves in mountain villages without access to the telephone and the Internet, the United Nations has warned that the region of 6 million is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. More than 60,000 have fled to refugee camps on the border with Sudan.

Compounding the suffering are reports of gang rapes and other forms of sexual violence by pro-government forces operating with almost complete impunity.

While Ethiopia struggles to take control of Tigray from the regional governing party, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has barred journalists and most humanitarian groups in the area, rejected the allegations of abuse and denied – despite credible evidence to the contrary – that Eritrean forces have entered the country. The Eritrean government also denies involvement in the conflict.

With Tigray’s local paramilitary forces having retreated mainly to mountainous areas, Ethiopian and Allied troops gained control of population centers, including Mekele, where they established a transitional government. As some communication links are restored, human rights groups have started to compile reports of women with evidence of sexual violence.

Doctors at Mekele’s main hospital say rape survivors are injured and crying. More women are seeking counseling, testing for sexually transmitted infections, emergency contraception and abortions. Girls as young as 12 are among those attacked, the researchers say.

“The growing reports of rape and other sexual violence in the Tigray region in recent weeks add another layer to the alarming abuses against civilians since the beginning of the conflict,” said Laetitia Bader, director of the Horn of Africa at Human Rights Watch.

“These reports bring a new urgency to the need for a UN-led investigation mission in the region, which should also include specialists in sexual violence and mental health, to press for reliable, fair and safe justice for survivors.”

Last month, UN Special Representative Pramila Patten said she was “very concerned about the serious allegations of sexual violence” in Tigray. She cited reports of individuals being forced to rape family members or have sex with military personnel in exchange for basic goods.

Although Patten has not identified the alleged perpetrators, the survivors blame pro-government forces, including Ethiopian and Eritrean troops and paramilitaries from the Amhara region, according to human rights groups.

Mehrawit, whose full name is being withheld under a Times policy of not identifying rape survivors, said Eritrean soldiers did not hide their identities and considered their actions a revenge against Tigray, whose ruling party, the Tigray Popular Liberation Front , has led almost all of the past three decades.

The TPLF presided over a 1998-2000 war with Eritrea, a former Ethiopian state, in which tens of thousands of soldiers died, many in a brutal trench war. The conflict ended with Ethiopian troops retaining control of the border town of Badme, challenging a peace agreement.

When Abiy took office in 2018, he agreed to implement the peace agreement and ceded the city to Eritrea, ending one of Africa’s oldest conflicts. His efforts earned the 44-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Abiy and the strong man from Eritrea Isaias Afwerki – whose little isolationism of the Red Sea nation sometimes brings comparisons to North Korea – they now have a shared opponent in the TPLF, which has lost political influence, but maintains a well-trained paramilitary force estimated at 250,000 soldiers. In November, ending months of disputes between Tigray and the government in Addis Ababa, Abiy blamed the TPLF for an attack on a federal military base and launched air and land attacks across the region.

This trapped women like Mehrawit in a dangerous landscape of fresh bloodshed mixed with complaints from the past. She said she shouted to her Eritrean captors: “Aren’t you our brothers? Why are you so cruel? “

One replied: “You killed our family in the war and took Badme from us. So you deserve to be punished. “

His ordeal began in early January, when troops from Eritrea arrived in his village of Kerestber, some 120 kilometers north of Mekele. Her family – including her father, 24-year-old sister, aunt and two children aged 7 and 5 – sought safety with relatives in a nearby village.

But there was little to eat there. On the morning of January 9, she and her sister ventured back to Kerestber to collect some crops and check the house.

Walking back from Kerestber, she said, Eritrean troops stopped them. Her report was corroborated by a counselor at a rehab center who interviewed Mehrawit repeatedly, as well as medical records from the Ayder Reference Hospital, where she was treated. Officials at both facilities spoke on condition of anonymity to protect them from government reprisals.

Mehrawit said that when she and her sister arrived at the Eritrean’s makeshift camp, they saw about eight other Tigrayan women detained. That day, five soldiers took turns to rape her. The other day, they brought their sister to the room and made Mehrawit watch while she was raped.

For 15 days, Mehrawit received almost nothing to eat. Her injuries left her unable to walk. The Eritreans brought more and more women to the camp and began to insult her, saying that she would soon be “thrown out”.

“We will bring younger and virgin Tigrayan women next time,” said one.

The soldiers finally lost control. On the night of January 23, she crawled out of the camp and onto a main road, where she passed out. Her memory remains obscure, but she remembers a motorcycle driver who found her lying on the side of the asphalt and brought her to Mekele.

A doctor who treated her at the hospital said injuries to her spine and pelvis meant she would have trouble walking again.

“She has to be in a wheelchair,” he said. “But, above all, your psychological trauma is serious.”

Mehrawit has had no contact with her sister, who she fears is still in the custody of the Eritreans. Your children and other relatives remain out of the reach of the phone. She was transferred to a non-governmental center for sexual abuse survivors, where a nurse said she has nightmares in which soldiers climb windows and attack her.

“There are days when she begs me not to leave her alone,” said the nurse.

In daily sessions with a therapist, Mehrawit usually calls his sister’s name. Over and over, she wonders about the women she left behind at camp, said the therapist.

Ethiopian authorities have publicly denied allegations of rape and other abuses. The acting head of Tigray’s social affairs department, Abrha Desta, did not respond to requests for comment.

But at a closed-door meeting in Mekele last week, Muna Ahmed, the federal deputy minister for women’s affairs, said the government recorded 113 cases of rape in the Tigray conflict, according to one person who was present and spoke. under condition of anonymity.

This week, the UN World Food Program said the Ethiopian government agreed to increase access for humanitarian workers in an attempt to accelerate the delivery of food assistance to 1 million people.

Humanitarian organizations say armed groups have looted and looted medical facilities in Tigray, making it difficult for survivors of rape and other crimes to access emergency care. Many others are afraid to move forward, fearing punishment by federal forces that increasingly control the region.

A few days after Mehrawit spoke to a Times reporter for this article, she received a call from an unknown number. The caller knew she had accused Eritrean soldiers of rape, her therapist said. He warned her not to tell her story again.

Special correspondent Lucy Kassa reported from Addis Ababa and the Times editor Bengali from Singapore.