TEAO
The Government of Tigray welcomes the report (A/HRC/51/46) of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (henceforth, the ‘Commission’) submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The report sheds light on the multifaceted genocidal war that has been waged, and continues to be waged, against the people of Tigray. This ongoing campaign of national extermination has picked up pace following our enemies’ declaration of a third round of brutal war on Tigray. While the Commission’s investigation will continue, the preliminary findings establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that the invading forces have committed, and continue to commit, heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity in Tigray.
The core conclusions vindicate what the Government of Tigray has been conveying to the world.
Even so, while the shocking crimes identified by the Commission are part of a well-orchestrated campaign to eliminate the people of Tigray, the international community has failed to call this affront to humanity by its rightful name: genocide. Having completely encircled Tigray for two years, our enemies have deployed all kinds of weapons, including starvation and bombing, to subjugate the people of Tigray, and, failing that, eliminate them once and for all. The Government of Tigray urges the international community to live up to its pledge of “Never Again.”
As partners-in-destruction, the Eritrean dictatorship of Isaias Afeworki and the Abiy regime have been implicated in the commission of heinous atrocities in Tigray. Both regimes have deployed starvation as a tool of war. The Eritrean regime’s violation of international humanitarian law was so egregious that the then head of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock, publicly singled out the despotic regime for weaponizing starvation against Tigrayans in June 2021. The Commission’s investigation found that starvation has been weaponized against the people of Tigray, vindicating prior claims.
The Commission also finds the deployment of rampant Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) against Tigrayan women and girls and rape and sexual violence against Tigrayan men and boys. In many cases, these heinous acts of sexual violence resulted in permanent damage to the reproductive organs of the victims, establishing the genocidal intent of the perpetrators.