Ethiopian leader says troops who raped civilians in Tigray will be held accountable after CNN investigation

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“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 robbing communities in the region will be held accountable because their mission is to protect,” he said, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front the ruling party of the region, which is now leading a resistance against Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the area.

In the stories published and broadcast on Friday, CNN spoke to nine doctors from Ethiopia and one from a Sudanese refugee camp who said they have seen an alarming increase in cases of sexual assault and rape, since Prime Minister Abiy launched an operation military against TPLF leaders, troops and fighters in the country’s Amhara region. Forces in neighboring Eritrea are participating in the military campaign by the Ethiopian government, as previously reported by CNN.

CNN revealed the medical records and testimonies of the survivors, claiming that the women were raped in a group, drugged and held hostage by soldiers.

Senior officials at the UN agency issued a rare statement late Monday calling for an investigation into allegations of rape and other forms of sexual violence in the region.

“Amid a worsening humanitarian situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, reports of indiscriminate and targeted attacks on civilians, including rape and other horrific forms of sexual violence, continue to emerge. This must stop,” the statement said.

“First of all, it is essential to launch an independent investigation into sexual violence related to the conflict in Tigray, with the involvement of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.”

They called on all parties to the conflict “to fulfill their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law; to bring perpetrators to justice where abuses occur. “

One victim became pregnant

A CNN team from Hamdayet, a Sudanese town on the Ethiopian border where thousands of Tigray refugees have gathered in recent months, spoke to several women who described being raped while fleeing the fighting.

“He pushed me and said, ‘You Tigraians have no history, you have no culture. I can do what I want for you and no one cares,'” a woman told 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 the testimony of one of the doctors who treated her.

According to the doctors CNN spoke to, almost all the women he treats tell similar stories about raping Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers. The women said the troops were on a self-proclaimed revenge mission and were operating with almost total impunity in the region.

“Women who have been raped say that the things they say when they are raped are that they need to change their identity – either to amaze them or at least to leave their Tigrinya status … and that they have come there to clean them … to clean the bloodline, “said Dr. Tedros Tefera.

“It was basically a genocide,” he added.

Massacre in the mountains
On Thursday, CNN Channel 4 News affiliate published its own horrific investigation into sexual violence against women in Tigray. The report included interviews from a safe house – the only one believed to operate in Tigray for rape survivors – where about 40 women too traumatized to return to their families receive shelter and support.

One of the survivors told Channel 4 News that she and five other women were raped in gangs by 30 Eritrean soldiers who joked and took pictures throughout the attack. She said she knew they were Eritrean troops because of their dialect and uniforms. She said she was able to return home only to be raped again. When she tried to escape, she remembered that she had been captured, injected with a drug, tied to a stone, undressed, stabbed and raped by soldiers for 10 days.

Thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed in the conflict. CNN previously reported that soldiers in neighboring Eritrea had committed extrajudicial crimes, assaults and human rights abuses in the Tigray region. Separate investigations by CNN and Amnesty International in February revealed evidence of massacres by Eritrean forces in Dengelat and Axum.

On Monday, the Eritrean embassy of the United Kingdom and Ireland responded to CNN’s repeated requests for comment by denying allegations 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 the report.

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