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Amnesty and HRW have denounced the increase in ill-treatment of Amhara security forces and militias west of Tigray.
Armed forces in the Amhara region of Ethiopia have stepped up killings, mass arrests and deportations of ethnic Tigray in the nearby West Tigray, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Western Tigray has experienced one of the worst forms of violence in a long-running conflict against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which was governed by the federal government and its allies in the Amhara region.
Amhara and Tigray claim fertile areas in western Tigray, which are now controlled by Amhara forces and the Ethiopian military.
The United Nations Office for Human Rights said 1.2 million people had been evacuated from the west of Tigray since the conflict began, including more than 10,000 in the last week of November.
Amnesty and HRW said they had interviewed 31 people in western Tigray by telephone in November and December, describing the rise in Amhara security forces and militia abuses.
“Tigris civilians trying to escape the new wave of violence have been attacked and killed. The scores on the arrests face life-threatening conditions such as torture, starvation and denial of medical care, “the group said in a joint statement on Thursday.
Police in the Amhara region and a volunteer civilian militia known as Fano said the Tigers were being expelled from the villages of Adebai, Humera and Rawyan. Six witnesses said Amhara forces fired on Tigris fleeing the Adebain capture.
“When people tried to run away … [the Fano] he attacked them with a machete and an ax, ”said a 34-year-old farmer.
“We were passing bodies and we were all amazed … Calm down and then we noticed that there were more bodies there too. Every place you turned around, there were five or 10 bodies. ‘
Gizachew Muluneh, a spokesman for the Amhara region, said the allegations were “baseless and unjustifiable”.
Gizachew told Reuters that regional security forces were defending Amhara civilians in their region, saying they were victims of atrocities committed by forces aligned with the TPLF.
“It is shameful to denounce the security forces of the Amhara region government while our people are suffering a devastating humanitarian disaster as a result of the invasion of the TPLF,” he said.
Ethiopian government spokesman Legesse Tulu said Tigris forces were to blame for the atrocities.
Rights groups say all parties to the conflict have been abused. A few days after the start of the war in November 2020, Tigray reported mass killings in the west, including the Mai Kadra massacre, in which hundreds of civilians killed hundreds of civilians and then retaliated against them.
Earlier this month, HRW reported that dozens of civilians had been executed in the two villages controlled by the Tigris forces from 31 August to 9 September in the Amhara region.
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