“Reports indicate that atrocities have been committed in the Tigray region,” Abiy wrote in a post on his Twitter account. Regardless of TPLF’s exaggerated propaganda, any soldier responsible for raping our women and marauding communities in the region will be held accountable as their mission is to protect, he said, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation. Front, the ruling party of the region. which is now leading a resistance against Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the area.
CNN disclosed medical records and testimony from survivors claiming that women were raped, drugged and held hostage by soldiers.
Senior officials from UN agencies made a rare statement late Monday demanding that allegations of rape and other forms of sexual assault in the region be investigated.
“Amid a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, reports of arbitrary and targeted attacks against civilians, including rape and other heinous forms of sexual violence, continue to emerge. This must stop,” the statement read.
“First, it is essential that an independent investigation into conflict-related sexual violence is launched in Tigray, with the involvement of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.”
They called on all parties to the conflict “to fulfill their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law; to ensure that their armed forces respect and protect the civilian population, especially women and children, from all human rights violations; explicitly condemn all sexual violence; and take action. to bring perpetrators to justice where abuse occurs. “
A victim has been left pregnant
A CNN team in Hamdayet, a Sudanese town on the Ethiopian border where thousands of Tigray refugees have gathered in recent months, spoke to several women who described being raped fleeing the fighting.
‘He pushed me and said,’ You Tigrayans have no history, you have no culture. I can do whatever I want with you and no one cares, ” said one woman of her attacker. She told CNN she is now pregnant.
In a separate case in Ethiopia, a woman’s vagina was filled with stones, nails and plastic, according to a video seen by CNN and testimony from one of the doctors who treated her.
According to the doctors CNN spoke to, nearly all the women they treat tell similar stories of rape by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers. The women said the troops were on a self-proclaimed mission of retaliation, operating near total impunity in the region.
“The raped women say the things they say to them when they rape them is that they have to change their identities – to amharisate them or at least leave their Tigrinya status … and that they get there to get them. to cleanse… to cleanse the bloodline, ”said Dr. Tedros Tefera.
“This has been practically genocide,” he added.
One of the survivors told Channel 4 News that she and five other women had been raped by 30 Eritrean soldiers who joked and took pictures during the attack. She said she knew they were Eritrean troops because of their dialect and uniforms. She said she could return home and be raped again. When she tried to escape, she recalled having been captured by soldiers for ten days, injected with a drug, tied to a rock, gutted, stabbed, and raped.
On Monday, the Eritrean embassy of the UK and Ireland responded to CNN’s repeated requests for comment by denying allegations of misconduct by Eritrean soldiers and denying Eritrean troops were in Ethiopia.
CNN’s Schams Elwazer, Richard Roth, Sarah Dean and Angela Dewan contributed to this report.