UN aims to get rights team to Ethiopia’s Tigray

The United Nations is striving to get a team on the ground to investigate alleged human rights violations including a mass killing in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the UN rights chief said on Tuesday.

Ethiopia’s army has been fighting rebellious forces in the northern Tigray region for over six weeks in a conflict that has displaced close to 950,000 people.

“If civilians were deliberately killed by a party or parties to the conflict, these killings would amount to war crimes and there needs to be, as I have stressed previously, independent, impartial, thorough and transparent investigations to establish accountability and ensure justice,” UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said , describing incidents there as “heart-breaking” and “appalling”.

One of the events she mentioned was the alleged killing of several hundred people, mainly Amharans, in the north-western town of Mai Kadra on November 9.

She also described other incidents including artillery strikes on populated areas, the deliberate targeting of civilians, extrajudicial killings and widespread looting.

UN rights office (OHCHR) spokeswoman Liz Throssell said that some of the incidents of individual killings of civilians were blamed on the “Fano” militia from the province of Amhara, thought to be aligned with the government.

However, she added that information obtained by the UN consistently pointed to violations by all parties to the conflict.

Until now, the U.N. has been monitoring the situation remotely and has obtained some of its information from refugees among the tens of thousands who have fled to neighbouring Sudan.

Olajumoke Adeleke