Fear pervades as Tigrayans rounded up after battlefield reversals (Al Jazeera)
Posted: 14 Jul 2021, 19:26
Lawyers say ethnic Tigrayans living outside embattled region are being arrested and their businesses shut amid eight-month conflict.
Luwam Gebrekirstos* spent her savings from years of working abroad as a maid to open a small coffee shop in Addis Ababa. Business was going well for the ethnic Tigrayan resident of Ethiopia’s capital until early July when a number of uniformed and plainclothes officers came to her shop and abruptly shut it down.
“The closure sign on my coffee shop said I had hosted unspecified meetings, even though it can barely hold three people at once,” said Luwam, who was briefly arrested before being released that evening.
The incident came days after Tigrayan fighters, in a stunning turn of events, retook control of Mekelle, the capital of the northern Tigray region, from federal government forces.
The eight-month conflict in Tigray pitting the Ethiopian army and its allied Eritrean troops and fighters from Ethiopia’s Amhara region against forces loyal to the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), has been marred by grave human rights abuses, including massacres and rape, with hundreds of thousands of people facing famine.
Outside Tigray, reports have also emerged about a number of ethnic Tigrayans having their businesses shuttered, being dismissed from their jobs in the civil or security sector and being arbitrarily arrested since the start of the fighting in November 2020. The Ethiopian government has previously rejected reports of ethnic profiling, telling Al Jazeera they were a “total lie”.
But ethnic Tigrayans in Addis Ababa say the situation has escalated following the recent battlefield reversals. Among those swept up in the new wave of arrests were at least 15 employees of two independent media outlets, as well as Tsegazab Kidanu, a humanitarian aid coordinator at the Finote Yared Philanthropic local charity.
Continue reading https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/1 ... -reversals
Luwam Gebrekirstos* spent her savings from years of working abroad as a maid to open a small coffee shop in Addis Ababa. Business was going well for the ethnic Tigrayan resident of Ethiopia’s capital until early July when a number of uniformed and plainclothes officers came to her shop and abruptly shut it down.
“The closure sign on my coffee shop said I had hosted unspecified meetings, even though it can barely hold three people at once,” said Luwam, who was briefly arrested before being released that evening.
The incident came days after Tigrayan fighters, in a stunning turn of events, retook control of Mekelle, the capital of the northern Tigray region, from federal government forces.
The eight-month conflict in Tigray pitting the Ethiopian army and its allied Eritrean troops and fighters from Ethiopia’s Amhara region against forces loyal to the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), has been marred by grave human rights abuses, including massacres and rape, with hundreds of thousands of people facing famine.
Outside Tigray, reports have also emerged about a number of ethnic Tigrayans having their businesses shuttered, being dismissed from their jobs in the civil or security sector and being arbitrarily arrested since the start of the fighting in November 2020. The Ethiopian government has previously rejected reports of ethnic profiling, telling Al Jazeera they were a “total lie”.
But ethnic Tigrayans in Addis Ababa say the situation has escalated following the recent battlefield reversals. Among those swept up in the new wave of arrests were at least 15 employees of two independent media outlets, as well as Tsegazab Kidanu, a humanitarian aid coordinator at the Finote Yared Philanthropic local charity.
Continue reading https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/1 ... -reversals