“Reports indicate that atrocities have been committed in the Tigray region,” Abiy wrote in a post on his Twitter account. “Regardless of the TPLF’s exaggerated propaganda, any soldier responsible for raping our women and plundering communities in the region will be held responsible, as their mission is to protect,” he said, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the ruling party of the region, which now leads a resistance against Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the area.
CNN revealed medical records and testimonies from survivors, claiming that women were being raped by gangs, drugged and held hostage by soldiers.
Senior UN agency officials issued a rare statement late on Monday demanding that charges of rape and other forms of sexual violence in the region be investigated.
“Amid the worsening humanitarian situation in the Tigray region in Ethiopia, reports of indiscriminate and targeted attacks against civilians, including rape and other horrific forms of sexual violence, continue to emerge. This should stop ”, says the statement.
“First, it is essential that an independent investigation into conflict-related sexual violence in Tigray be initiated, with the involvement of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.”
They urged all parties to the conflict “to fulfill their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law; ensure that their forces respect and protect civilian populations, especially women and children, from all human rights abuses; explicitly condemn all sexual violence, and take steps to bring perpetrators to justice where abuses occur.
One victim became pregnant
A CNN team in Hamdayet, a Sudanese city on the border with Ethiopia where thousands of Tigray refugees have gathered in recent months, spoke with several women who described being raped while fleeing the conflict.
“He pushed me and said, ‘You Tigrayans have no history, you have no culture. I can do what I want with you and nobody cares,'” said a woman about her attacker. She told CNN that she is now pregnant.
In a separate case in Ethiopia, a woman’s vagina was filled with stones, nails and plastic, according to a video seen by CNN and testimony from one of the doctors who treated her.
According to the doctors CNN spoke with, almost all of the women treated tell similar stories of raped by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers. The women said the troops were on a self-proclaimed retribution mission and operated with almost complete impunity in the region.
“The women who have been raped say that the things they tell them when they rape them is that they need to change their identity – to make them yellow or at least leave their status as Tigrínia … and that they come there to clean them up. … to clean the bloodline, “said Dr. Tedros Tefera.
“It was practically a genocide,” he added.
One of the survivors told Channel 4 News that she and five other women were raped by 30 Eritrean soldiers who were playing and taking photos during the attack. She said she knew they were soldiers from Eritrea because of their dialect and uniforms. She said she only managed to get home to be raped again. When she tried to escape, she remembered being captured, injected with a drug, tied to a stone, stripped, stabbed and raped by soldiers for 10 days.
On Monday, the Eritrean embassy of the United Kingdom and Ireland responded to CNN’s repeated requests for comment by denying accusations of wrongdoing by Eritrean soldiers and denying that Eritrean troops were in Ethiopia.
CNN’s Schams Elwazer, Richard Roth, Sarah Dean and Angela Dewan contributed to this report.