War crimes in the Tigray war

[36][35] In March, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that "tens of thousands of people [had] been displaced from [the Western Zone] allegedly on ethnic grounds."

"[35] In a 240-page report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International released on 6 April 2022, it was documented that Amhara Special Forces engaged in systemic campaigns deliberately targeting Tigrayans in the Western Zone.

[9] Tigrayans were often killed en masse, forcibly expelled, or otherwise experienced a number of crimes against humanity, including torture, rape, sex slavery, forced disappearances and arbitrary detention.

"[38] At the same time, federal Ethiopian and Amhara forces prevented civilians from trying to cross the border into Sudan, telling them to go back to their homes "in an apparent attempt to present a veneer of normalcy.

[46] Prime Minister Abiy dismissed reports of crimes committed by the ASF, saying in an April 2021 speech to Ethiopian parliament that "portraying [the Amhara Special Forces] as a looter and conqueror is very wrong.

"[38] Gizachew Muluneh, head of Amhara Regional Communication Affairs, denied the reports of ethnic cleansing in the Western Zone, calling it "propaganda", and claiming that the number of displaced Tigrayans was exaggerated.

[51] The BBC reported on 7 May 2022 that, according to the testimonies of 15 eyewitnesses, the ASF and Fano militias – throughout the occupied Western Zone – began systemically digging up mass graves of ethnic Tigrayans, burning their bodies, and moving them to another, separate location.

On 10 November, according to an aid group (which chose to remain anonymous), over 2,800 people (including children) were held in detention centres for at least a year, before Fano militias rounded them up into trucks and moved them to a town near Sheraro in the North Western Zone, which lies outside of Amhara's territorial claims.

[55]Anti-Tigrayan forces engaged in what HRW and Amnesty described as "pillag[ing]", with "schools, courts, churches, and health centers", in addition to civilian houses, being subject to looting.

[56] Amhara and Eritrean forces also took harvests, livestock and medicine from Tigrayan farmers, who were threatened with violence if they did not comply; these actions caused the looted areas to face "extreme starvation" by June 2021.

[57] Multiple witnesses, from separate villages, gave similar descriptions of Amhara militias and security forces "waiting for farmers to collect or harvest [sorghum crops] before stealing [them].

"[68] De Waal argued that the looting by the EDF of cars, generators, food stores, cattle, sheep and goats in the Tigray Region was a violation of international criminal law that "prohibits a belligerent from removing, destroying or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population" (Rome Statute, Article 7, 2.(b)).

[2]In early April 2021, the World Peace Foundation argued that Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was likely to be relevant to the case of starvation in the Tigray war.

"[69] Additionally, a September 2022 UN commission concluded that the Ethiopian government, along with forces allied with them, engaged in deliberate efforts to deny the Tigray Region "access to basic services […] and humanitarian assistance," leaving 90% of Tigrayan residents in dire conditions.

[5] In June 2023, the Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic of Yale Law School, in a summary of its 18-month study mostly based on public reports, stated that the Ethiopian federal government and its allies had extensively looted and attacked and blocked supplies of food, water, healthcare, electricity, cash, fuel, and humanitarian relief in Tigray during the war.

On 9 December 2021, Human Rights Watch published a report[13] in which residents described witnessing Tigrayan forces summarily execute dozens of civilians in the village of Chenna and the town of Kobo between 31 August and 9 September 2021.

[106][107][108] Human Rights Watch stated that, during the early days of the war, Ethiopian forces launched artillery attacks which struck hospitals, schools, and markets in Mekelle, Humera and Shire, killing at least 83 civilians, including children, and wounding over 300.

Abiy stated that the "TPLF identified and separated hundreds of unarmed Ethiopian soldiers of non-Tigrayan origin, tied their hands and feet together, massacred them in cold blood, and left their bodies lying in open air."

[132] In December 2022, a report by The Washington Post described a massacre of detained Tigrayan soldiers (which left 83 dead and around 20 missing) occurred in November 2021 at a prison camp in Mirab Abaya, SSNPR.

[b] According to the Post, the soldiers in question had not engaged in fighting against the government;[133] Article 3 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that "Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces […] placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely".

[133] On 24 May 2021, a report by The Telegraph featured pictures of severe burn victims, and detailed accounts from them and their families, who described incendiary weapons being launched into multiple civilian areas in Central and Eastern Tigray throughout the month of April.

Chemical weapons experts, including former Joint CBRN Regiment commander Hamish de Bretton-Gordon and Dan Kaszeta of the Royal United Services Institute, considered their injuries to bare a strong resemblance with those caused by white phosphorus munitions.

[135] Ethiopia rejected the claims of the Telegraph report, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying that the country "has not employed and will never use such banned munitions," further stating that it takes the Chemical Weapons Convention "extremely seriously.

"[136] An anonymous former member of the Transitional Government of Tigray claimed that Ethiopia and Eritrea used the destruction of the Tigrayan economy as "a tactic to defeat the enemy", arguing they succeeded in taking the region "back 40 years"; Noé Hochet-Bodin of Le Monde described this as an act of "collective punishment".

[137] On 27 May 2021, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert F. Godec made the argument that the EDF and ENDF had enacted "[what] amounts to the collective punishment of the people of Tigray" through a "campaign of unremitting violence and destruction".

Human Rights Watch reported that families of those who wished to avoid the draft became targets of collective punishment, with government authorities subjecting them to arbitrary detention and forced evictions from their homes.

[2][140][85][141] In August 2021, in Chenna, Amhara Region, the TDF entered residential areas without allowing civilians to leave, then started shooting at ENDF positions, effectively utilizing the local population as human shields.

"[149] On 19 October 2022, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is Tigrayan himself, said that there was a "very narrow window now to prevent genocide," in response to the major wave of violence that occurred after the collapse of the March–August ceasefire that same year.

[156] In mid-September 2021, Daniel Kibret – an advisor to Prime Minister Abiy – made a speech in which he compared Tigrayan forces to Satan, and described them as "weeds" that "should be erased and disappeared from historical records.

"[164] Kjetil Tronvoll, a peace and conflict studies researcher and professor at the Oslo New University College, stated in a Twitter thread on 27 February 2021 that the term genocide might apply to the actions of the EDF in the Tigray war.