Ethiopia: video of Tigray massacre lifts lid on 'war without photos' - FRANCE 24
WARNING: Readers may find the contents of this article disturbing
Men in uniform slaughtered dozens of people in a small village in the Tigray region of Ethiopia on January 5, 2021, right in the midst of the usually festive Orthodox Christmas season. Thirty bodies are seen on the ground in a video that has been circulating online despite the current internet blackout in the Tigray region, which has been engulfed in a bloody conflict between the army and rebels. The soldier filming the video points the camera at an injured person, saying to a comrade, "You should have finished off the survivors!" Our team was able to verify this video.
he Tigray region, located in the far north of Ethiopia, has been engulfed in a bloody struggle between the central government and the regional government, who want more representation and political power for the Tigray minority within government.
Last November, this conflict escalated into an outright war after highly anticipated elections were delayed. This led to a humanitarian catastrophe. Shelling in residential areas saw large numbers of people being displaced. The chaos also led to famine.
There was also a ratcheting up of tensions when thousands of Eritrean soldiers joined the side of the Ethiopian central government against the Tigray regional government. This is the result of a complex history. Eritrea and Ethiopia were at war for 30 years. During this time of war, Ethiopia was led by a government where the Tigrayan minority and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front had an enormous amount of political power. However, they lost power in 2018 as Abiy Ahmed was appointed prime minister.
In early February, a video of 4’04” was broadcast on social media— initially posted as a series of one minute excerpts. Those who shared the shocking footage said it was proof that Ethiopian soldiers had massacred civilians in Debre Abay, a district in central Tigray.
News site Tghat, which is run by a group of Tigrayan activists living abroad, reported on January 12 that a massacre had taken place in this location. In early February, the site shared excerpts from the video. Following in the footsteps of Twitter users who had started to investigate the origins of the video, British daily The Telegraph published an article about it on February 19.
Our team decided to only publish blurred screengrabs of the video, due to the extremely violent content.
Where?
The footage shows about 30 bodies on the ground on the outskirts of a village.
We examined the location of the buildings, trails and trees in the video, as well as the mountains on the horizon, and compared this with satellite images and topographical information available on Google Earth Pro. In this way, we were able to determine the exact location where the video was filmed.
It was filmed in a village called Mai Harmaz in the Debre Abay region, which is known for a famous monastery, located about two kilometres from the village.
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