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The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said on Sunday that government forces were responsible for burning a Tigrayan man to death, a barbaric act circulated in a widely-shared video that sparked outrage on social media.

Source: AFP

Ethiopian forces burned Tigrayan man alive – rights body

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said on Sunday that government forces were responsible for burning a Tigrayan man to death, a barbaric act circulated in a widely-shared video that sparked outrage on social media.

Ethiopia’s government on Saturday vowed to investigate and take action against anyone involved in “the extremely savage act” depicted in the video, which shows an unarmed man being set on fire as a group of people, including some wearing army uniforms, taunt him.

The atrocity occurred on March 3 in the northwestern region of Benishangul Gumuz, which borders Sudan and South Sudan. It followed an attack a day earlier that left at least 20 people dead, the state-affiliated independent rights body said.

Security officials later captured and shot dead eight Tigrayans suspected of involvement in that assault, it added.

“The bodies of the deceased were taken by security forces to a nearby forest and burned,” the EHRC said in a statement, citing eyewitness testimony.

“In between this, an ethnic Tigrayan who was suspected of having contact with the deceased, was arrested… and thrown (on the pyre) with the deceased, with him dying of fire burns,” the EHRC quoted eyewitnesses as saying.

“Those who were in the area were Ethiopian army soldiers, Amhara region special police forces and Southern region police forces,” the rights body said, calling for a criminal investigation.

The video could not be independently verified by AFP and it was not immediately clear if the atrocity was connected to the ongoing 16-month war in northern Ethiopia.

The conflict between government forces and Tigrayan rebels in Africa’s second most populous country has killed thousands of people. There are widespread reports of atrocities, including mass killings and sexual violence.

According to the UN, the fighting has also displaced more than two million people, driven hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation and left more than nine million in need of assistance.

Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council announced that Fatou Bensouda, a former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), would head a UN investigation into a wide range of alleged violations committed by all sides in the war.

Agence France-Presse

Ethiopia pledges action after video shows uniformed men burning civilians alive – Reuters

By Reuters Staff

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s government said on Saturday it would act against the perpetrators after a video appeared on social media showing armed men, some in military uniforms, burning civilians to death in the country’s west.

The Ethiopia Government Communication Service said in a statement on its Facebook page that the incident occurred in the Ayisid Kebele of Metekel Zone in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, a site of frequent ethnic violence for more than a year in which hundreds of civilians have died.

“A horrific and inhumane act was recently committed… In a series of horrific images circulated on social media, innocent civilians were burned to death,” the statement read.

It did not say when the events took place or who was responsible.

“Regardless of their origin or identity, the government will take legal action against those responsible for this gross and inhumane act.”

Reuters was not able to verify the time and location where the video was filmed or the actions it showed.

In the video, some of the men in the crowd are wearing Ethiopian military uniforms as well as uniforms from other regional security forces.

Military spokesperson Colonel Getnet Adane and government spokesperson Legesse Tulu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The violence in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, which is home to several ethnic groups, is separate from the war in the northern Tigray region that erupted in November 2020 between Ethiopian federal forces and rebellious forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Source: The Economist

Its prickly, isolated dictator has long been hostile to the West

Mar 8th 2022

When russia invaded Ukraine most of the world reacted with horror: on March 2nd an overwhelming majority of countries supported a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression. But among the usual suspects who voted against it (Belarus, Syria, North Korea, Russia itself) one stood out. Eritrea, which was also the only country other than Russia to vote against a UN human-rights investigation in Ukraine, is a small and impoverished country with little to gain from resisting the tide of international opinion so flagrantly. So why is it backing Russia?

Eritrea’s solidarity with an imperialist, revanchist Russia is at first glance surprising. As a young country long threatened by a bigger neighbour, it appears more like Ukraine. Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia, a much more powerful country to its south, in 1993—just a couple of years after Ukraine broke away from Russia. As in Ukraine, nationhood in Eritrea is seen as something fragile which cannot be taken for granted. It took decades of armed struggle against successive regimes in Ethiopia—first the imperial government of Emperor Haile Selassie, then a Soviet-backed Marxist junta known as the Derg—before a referendum on secession was approved. Five years later the two countries fought a bloody border war which cost perhaps 70,000 lives. Even today there are some in Ethiopia who question whether Eritrea is really a separate country at all.

Part of the reason for Eritrea’s unlikely support for Russia lies in its leadership’s background in the liberation struggle. Unlike many African liberation movements in the 20th century, such as the African National Congress which fought apartheid in South Africa, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) was not supported by the Soviet Union. In fact the Soviets armed the Derg and even sent military advisers to assist in the fight against it. But Gaim Kibreab, the author of a recent book on Soviet-Eritrean relations, argues that despite this “the EPLF always considered the Soviet Union as a strategic ally against imperialism, and saw America as its number one enemy.” Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Issaias Afewerki, the EPLF’s former leader and Eritrea’s dictator since independence, has continued to see himself as part of an axis of anti-Western powers led by Russia.

More recent history helps to explain the intensity of Issaias’s hostility to the West. When war broke out between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1998, the Eritrean president felt America and its allies had sided with Ethiopia. After a humiliating defeat Issais retreated into embittered isolation. He put Eritrea on a permanent war footing, bloating its huge army with lifetime conscripts. Hundreds of thousands of Eritreans fled the country. In 2009 the UN, nudged by America and its ally, the Ethiopian government, imposed an arms embargo (in part for Eritrea’s alleged support for jihadists in Somalia). Ironically, Eritrea had briefly courted America in the early 2000s and even publicly backed its invasion of Iraq. Feeling stung, Issais’s regime gradually drifted into being the most anti-Western in Africa.

Eritrea’s controversial involvement in Ethiopia’s current civil war has set it on an even more confrontational path with the West. Eritrean troops are accused of slaughtering civilians, gang-raping women and blocking food from reaching the hungry. Tentative progress towards rehabilitating Issais’s regime, which culminated in the lifting of the arms embargo in late 2018, has screeched into reverse. In November last year America slapped sanctions on the Eritrean armed forces, the ruling party and connected entities. It has repeatedly called for Eritrean forces to withdraw from Ethiopia.

By contrast, the threat of a Russian veto has consistently stymied action against Eritrea or Ethiopia at the UN Security Council. Ethiopia, which also has Mr Putin to thank for this, is now trying to mend bridges with the West in order to rebuild its war-battered economy. But Issais has no interest in foreign aid, seeing it as a Trojan horse for Western interference in his country’s affairs. Nor does he care much for promoting the private sector. More important from his perspective are arms and large, strategic investments which bring lucrative rents. Russia has promised to sell Eritrea weapons and to build a logistics base for its own navy on the Eritrean coast. And in Mr Putin Eritrea’s president has a fellow autocrat who prizes bashing the West, and meddling with his neighbours, above the well-being of his citizens. Viewed this way, the two leaders seem like comrades-in-arms.