Authorities cited the reason for detention as being suspicion of links to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
[9] In September, Amhara Region forces detained "thousands" of ethnic Tigrayan men, women and children, residents of Humera, in detention centres that witnesses described to The Daily Telegraph as concentration camps, in which eyes were removed from one victim, victims' limbs were cut off and bodies were thrown into mass graves.
[12] The New York Times described these as having "swept up anyone of Tigrayan descent, many of whom had no ties to the rebels or even affinity for them," including "mothers with children and the elderly".
Laetitia Bader of HRW described the state of emergency, which formally permitted the mass detentions, as "'legitimizing and legalizing unlawful practices' and creating a 'real climate of fear'.
[14] Based on its investigation including "26 interviews with prisoners, medical personnel, officials, local residents and relatives, and on a review of satellite imagery, social media posts and medical records", The Washington Post found that on one day in November 2021, 83 Tigrayan prisoners were executed in the Mirab Abaya detention camp, which held from 2000 to 2500 Tigrayan soldiers and former soldiers, by about 18 of the camp guards.
[2] In the Abbadi camp in November 2020, guards stated in response to a request for the purchase of insulin for a detainee with diabetes, "We are not here to treat you; we are here to kill you.
[5][6] The 2020s camps holding Tigrayans were described as concentration camps by Jonathan Hutson, writing in Salon.com, who argued that the term was justified on the basis of thousands of adults and hundreds of children being "held in harsh conditions, systematically starved and beaten because of their ethnicity and with no judicial process or valid legal pretext" by Ethiopian security forces.
[1] In November 2021, on online social media, journalists, politicians and pro-government activists called for Tigrayans to be held in what they referred to as concentration camps.