Ethiopian soldiers killed more than 70 civilians and looted properties in a town in the restive Amhara region, witnesses told The Guardian on Friday.
The alleged slayings took place in a rural town in the region, following two weeks of heavy fighting between federal soldiers and a local militia called Fano.
The federal government of Ethiopia declared a state of emergency in the Amhara region on Aug. 4, 2023. A special session of parliament endorsed the decision, placing the administration of the country’s second-largest region under the military.
The alleged atrocities targeting unarmed farmers occurred after Ethiopian troops occupied the town on Sept. 3.
“As soon as the federal soldiers swept into the town, they conducted house-to-house searches,” a 29-year-old woman whose two younger brothers were killed told The Guardian.
“They came to our village late afternoon. They asked me and my family where we hid our weapons and threatened us to hand over the weapons to them.
“We told them that we are innocent farmers and we don’t have weapons. When they found no weapon after searching the house, they rounded up my two brothers alongside the younger men of our village and shot them all in the head.”
Another witness, a 35-year-old mother of three who fled her home town after witnessing the killings, said: “My uncle was an elderly farmer with no association with the Fano militia.
“The federal soldiers looted our livestock and killed my uncle together with other neighbours, who were also innocent farmers.
“They carried out the killings and looting, saying it is the farmers who are feeding the Fano militia fighters.”
One farmer described how the federal troops looted all his property during a house-to-house search.
“The soldiers of Abiy Ahmed mercilessly took all my cattle, the food grains I stored, and fertilizer. When I begged them to leave at least a few of my cattle, they slapped me in the face. They have also looted cattle from other farmers,” he told The Guardian.
Ethnic Amhara civilians targeted
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has also cited the widespread arrest of ethnic Amhara civilians in Addis Ababa city administration.
The EHRC said in a statement on Aug. 14 that it had received reports of “arbitrary arrests and detentions” of civilians in the capital.
“There has been widespread arrest of civilians who are of ethnic Amhara origin, as well as widespread detention of irregular migrants from Eritrean, some of whom might be seeking asylum status in Ethiopia,” the rights body said in a statement.
EHRC has received multiple reports from families and friends of detainees, however, they have not yet been granted access to monitor the conditions of detentions since the declaration of the State of Emergency.
The state of emergency is the latest sign of the growing instability in Ethiopia. The country has been in a state of civil conflict for years, and the violence in the Amhara region is the latest flare-up.
The government’s crackdown on dissent is likely to further fuel the unrest.
Ethiopia’s Ethnic Violence: Amhara not the first
Once considered the lone hope to resolve Ethiopia’s problems, Abiy eluded scrutiny because of his unifying political rhetoric. But the political challenges continued to intensify. It was not long before political dissent was met with violence by his security forces.
By 2021, the media reported that 5.1 million people had been displaced internally. People from all of Ethiopia’s regional states had experienced forced displacement, mainly due to their ethnic identity. A disproportionate number of these were Amharas targeted in five regions.
The Tigray war was to follow. Two years of fighting, mainly between federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, intensified the destruction in the country. Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have died and the country needs at least US$20 billion for post conflict reconstruction.
A peace agreement was eventually signed in Pretoria, South Africa, in November 2022. The political settlement brought relief in the country’s north.
