ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The young mother of two was walking with her sister near a desolate highway in northern Ethiopia last month when five men forced them into a pickup truck and drove 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, which has joined Ethiopian troops in months of fighting against anti-government forces in the Tigray border region.
Mehrawit, 27, was separated from her sister and locked in a room with only a thin, dirty mattress. For two weeks, she said, the Eritrean soldiers gang-raped her repeatedly, fracturing her spine and pelvis and leaving her crumpled on the floor. One day, she counted 15 soldiers who took turns sexually assaulting her over eight hours, her 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 giggle. But after a while, I was no longer feeling the pain.”
Her account is one of few emerging from the murky conflict in Tigray, where human rights groups say pro-government forces are sexually abusing civilians in a remote highland region far from the world’s gaze.
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Re: A rape survivor’s story emerges from a remote African war - LA Times
President Isaias is definitely headed to the ICC
His case is easier to prove than Charles Taylor, Liberia President
Watch rape is a huge factor:
His case is easier to prove than Charles Taylor, Liberia President
Watch rape is a huge factor: