June 2024
Jiga massacre, west Gojam, Ethiopia
- U.S. Department of State
- UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China
- Russian Ministry of Defense
- United Nations (UN)
- Amnesty International
- African Union (AU)
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR)
- International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
- Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières – MSF)
- Human Rights Watch (HRW)
- BBC
- CNN
- Al Jazeera
- Thomson Reuters
- Associated Press (AP)
- Agence France-Presse (AFP)
- The New York Times
- The Guardian
June 25, 2024
Re: Jiga massacre, west Gojam, Ethiopia
Old habits die hard. As the Ethiopian regime continues its military campaign and blockade of the Amhara regional state, its barbaric acts, gross human rights violations and retaliatory mass killings are increasingly becoming the hallmark of it. Independent media and human rights campaigners are increasingly exposing the brutal campaign of the Ethiopian regime and its devastating impact on the population in the Amhara region, On 17th of June 2024,the regime’s soldiers brutally executed 25 innocent civilians in Jiga, a town located in the West Gojam zone of the Amhara region in Ethiopia. This brutal and indiscriminate massacre claimed the lives of eleven bankers, including a branch manager, four secondary school teachers, and six other public servants. These were ordinary civilians who were carrying out their daily duties at work, had nothing to do with the ongoing conflict and gunned down in cold blood when they were on their lunch break. According to a parliament representative from the town, these victims were clearly identified as employees of a bank, educators, and civil servants. Their desperate pleas for mercy were ignored by the regime’s troops The only “choice” given to them was how they wanted to die, a macabre offer that underscores the gruesome nature of the attack.
The massacre in Jiga is not an isolated incident rather the norm and the culture of the Ethiopian army that commit atrocities of such nature with impunity. What makes these brutal killings significant is that they found their way to the attention of human rights organisations and added to the mounting evidence of regime’s widespread atrocities. The United Nations Human Rights Commission recently confirmed that seventy percent of the reported atrocities in Ethiopia are committed by regime forces. Additionally, the United States has exposed ongoing violations and extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the regime troops and security forces
This month has also seen the establishment of grave findings during the conflict in Tigray, with clear evidence surfacing that the government committed acts of genocide during the war. These findings paint a dire picture of the current state of human rights violations in Ethiopia, exposing systematic patterns of violence and oppression by the regime.
In light of the mounting evidence of ongoing barbaric executions and violence against ordinary citizens we urge the United Nations and peace-loving nations around the world to condemn these acts of brutality and press the Ethiopian regime to stop committing such heinous crimes against its own people.. The urgency cannot be overstated, as failure to act risks witnessing the unravelling of an ancient nation that has withstood the test of time. Immediate and decisive international intervention is crucial to halt further atrocities and to support the restoration of peace and human rights in Ethiopia.
Old habits die hard. As the Ethiopian regime continues its genocidal military campaign and blockade of the Amhara regional state, its barbaric acts, gross human rights violations and retaliatory mass killings are increasingly becoming the hallmark of it. Independent media and human rights campaigners are exposing the brutal campaign of the Ethiopian regime and its devastating impact on the population in the Amhara region even though access to the region and independent reporting is restricted. On 17th of June 2024, the regime’s soldiers publicly executed 25 innocent civilians in Jiga, a town located in the West Gojam zone of the Amhara region in Ethiopia. This brutal and indiscriminate massacre claimed the lives of eleven bankers, including a branch manager, four secondary school teachers, and six other public servants. These were ordinary civilians who were carrying out their daily duties at work. They had nothing to do with the ongoing conflict and gunned down in cold blood when they were on their lunch break. According to a parliament representative from the town, these victims were clearly identified as employees of a bank, educators, and civil servants. Their desperate pleas for mercy were ignored by the regime’s troops.
The only “choice” given to them was how they wanted to die, a macabre offer that underscores the gruesome nature of the attack and the habit of the regime’s army. This kind of atrocities are committed by institutions who are supposed to protect and serve innocent civilians.
Unfortunately, the massacre in Jiga is not an isolated incident, rather a norm and a culture of the Ethiopian army that commits atrocities of such nature with impunity. What makes these brutal killings significant is that they found their way to the attention of human rights organisations and added to the mounting evidence of the regime’s widespread acts of cruelty and a repeat of genocide of the Amhara people just like that of Tigray. The United Nations Human Rights Commission recently confirmed that seventy percent of the reported atrocities in Ethiopia are committed by regime forces. Additionally, the United States has exposed ongoing violations and extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the regime troops and security forces. The genocidal nature of the military campaign has been reported by independent international vigilantes.
This month has also seen the publication of grave findings during the conflict in Tigray, with clear evidence surfacing that the government committed acts of genocide during the war. These findings paint a dire picture of the current state of human rights violations in Ethiopia, exposing systematic patterns of violence, cruelty and collective punishment by the regime.
We call upon you to press the Ethiopian regime to stop its genocidal campaign and acts of brutality as well as collective punishment and public executions of innocent civilians. The mass detention of the Amhara people across the country has to end. The regime has to pull its army from the Amhara Region, release opposition members, political activists and journalists from prison and find a peaceful solution to the conflict in the Amhara and Oromia regions of Ethiopia.
Yours sincerely,
Federation of Amhara Association in Europe
Amhara under siege
June 25, 2024
Re: Amhara under siege
The year-long invasion and blockade of the Amhara region of Ethiopia by the federal government is at its worst. The failed state of emergency that was declared by the Ethiopian regime and lasted ten months to crush the armed resistance by force has not been officially terminated. The government, without any official extension of the state of emergency, continues its widespread human rights abuses, escalating the civil war and causing significant death and destruction in the region. Amharas continue to be jailed, tortured, and displaced throughout the country. The regime has allocated a large portion of its budget to purchase weapons, drones, and jets, and forcefully conscripting the youth across the country into various military sectors. Its priorities do not include feeding the 30 million hungry citizens, resettling the internally displaced people during the Tigray war nor investing in developing the economy. Rather, its focus is on continuing the civil wars both in the Amhara and Oromo regional states. The regime failed to recognise the reasons for its stalemate in the Amhara region in the last ten months and the root causes of the armed resistance. The public widely supports the armed struggle due to decades-long systematic persecution, economic and political marginalisation of the Amhara people, followed by the current invitation and blockade of the region and Amhara people who have never in their history risen up against any government in the country. They rather have been guardians of their governments and territorial integrity of Ethiopia even in the face of their tyranny. Criminal acts of the regime’s ill-disciplined army that is committing widespread human rights abuses and inhumane treatment of innocent civilians added an insult to injury. The army is no longer seen as a national force in the Amharas region but as an invading force and as an instrument of the regime to crush the Amharas by force and wipe out their culture including their faith.
The regime failed to learn from its own recent mistakes in the 2 years civil war when nearly a million lives were lost and the destruction of infrastructure in Tigray, Amhara, and Afar amounted to an estimated 26 billion of dollars during the war in Tigray. This should have been a lesson to pursue a political solution for conflicts in the Amhara and Oromia regions. Instead, the regime has embarked on a new conflict in the Amhara region forcefully conscripting hundreds of thousands of youth from Oromia and the southern regions and sending them to the Amhara region with little or no training. The regime is fighting for its survival while millions of people are starving in different parts of the country, millions of internally displaced persons are still in dire condition, the country struggles to service its foreign debts, inflation runs rampant, and millions live in poverty.
We urge the international community to recognise that the Amhara people still remain under siege even though the state of the emergency has not officially been extended. Reports on the ground indicate that schoolchildren cannot take their national exams, the sick cannot access hospitals, and food aid cannot reach the hungry. According to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, the army continues its gross human rights violations, retaliatory ethnic based summary executions and the police with its arbitrary mass arrests and detention of the Amhara people even outside the Amhara Region. Lawlessness, corruption, abduction and extortion by the security apparatus of the government are unabating.
We strongly demand that an independent United Nations-led commission of inquiry be established immediately to investigate the genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and human rights violations committed by Abi Ahmed’s regime against the Amhara people and to bring the perpetrators to justice.
We call on the government of …… /EU/ AU to urge the Ethiopian government to stop its failed military campaign in the Amhara region, its arbitrary detention of civilians, pull its troops out of the Amhara Region, set free the representatives of the Amhara people, political activists and journalists and seek a political resolution to the conflict.
We call upon international human rights organisations to press the government to allow independent investigations of ethnic based atrocities committed against the Amhara people throughout Ethiopia and gross human rights violations against innocent civilians in the Amhara Region.
We urge independent international media to document gross human rights violations in Ethiopia and expose the Ethiopian government as the worst jailer of journalists in the world and continues to muzzle reporters across Ethiopia.
As concerned people of Ethiopian origins, we would like to bring our concerns to international aid organisations to be aware of an imminent famine and humanitarian disaster in the making as this is the second farming season when the large parts of the Amhara society is unable to farm due to the ongoing conflict and the region is denied of access to fertiliser and seeds.
We urge financial institutions to refrain from providing any monetary assistance or lending to the Ethiopian government that is desperate for any financial assistance to continue its war against its own people driving the country into unsustainable debt.
Yours sincerely,
Federation of Amhara Association in Europe
Escalation of War in Amhara, Ethiopia
June 18, 2024
Re: Escalation of War in Amhara
We are alarmed by the current escalation of the conflict in the Amhara region. We have been campaigning for termination of the state of emergency and calling for a political solution to the conflict. However, the regime is rounding up tens of thousands of young Ethiopians from Oromo region and the southern regions and forcefully conscripting them into the army to continue its losing battle in the Amhara region. The regime is working tirelessly to give the conflict a tribal dimension through words and deeds. It is attempting to turn this conflict into a war between not just the Amharas and Oromos, but also potentially, the Amharas and the rest of the ethnic groups in Ethiopia.
The young conscripts from the Oromos region and the southern part of Ethiopia are sent to the Amhara region ill-prepared, with little or no military training to serve as cannon-fodders. The vast majority of these young soldiers are victims of the regime’s propaganda and are forced to fight to keep the government that brought about the conflict on itself and continues fighting to cling to power . According to some reports, we hear that the regime is rounding up and forcefully conscripting the young from various regions in the country to raise an army of a million soldiers to crush the Amhara resistance using brute force. We cannot be sure of the number of soldiers who have already been sent to the Amhara region during a year-long conflict but it certainly runs into hundreds of thousands. Sadly they have paid the ultimate sacrifice but the regime has never regained any control. The plan to quell the uprising using brute force initially within a week turned into six months of state- of- emergency further extended by another four months. The regime is showing no signs of willingness to end this needless conflict that is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, causing immense suffering to the population and devastating the fledgling economy. As a last attempt to cling to power, it is spreading hate speech against the Amharas and agitating for the Oromos and other ethnic groups to join the fight, giving the civil war an ethnic dimension. We would like to share our concerns with the international community that ethnic-based conflict will cause more bloodshed and will intensify the Amhara genocide.
The recent statements by the Prime Minister and the Oromo regional leader Shimeles Abdisa‘s ongoing rhetoric have added more weight to our apprehension. Even the national dialogue committee does not include major stakeholders in the country such as TPLF, FANO, and OLA. It was set up for political goals rather than a genuine effort to create an all-inclusive dialogue that paves the way for establishing a system where all Ethiopians can live in harmony and peace. Prominent opposition leaders, journalists, and activists who were vocal in finding a peaceful solution and called for transitional justice or government are languishing in jails and concentration camps.
In a recent meeting with religious leaders, the prime minister was asked why he would not consider a political solution to the conflict. His reply was, “Light and darkness do not exist together” paraphrasing the bible and dashing any hope of a peaceful solution to the conflict. We are witnessing that the conflict is increasingly taking on an ethnic dimension and the international community may not be aware of the deceptive tactics employed by the Ethiopian regime. Various reports that come from the conflict-stricken regions by human rights organisations are that the primary cause of insecurity, gross human rights violations committed, the terror that has been waged against ordinary citizens, death, and destruction in many parts are by the regime’s Army and security apparatus. The lawlessness, the level of corruption, abductions, disappearances, and killings even in the regions where there is no fighting has reached a level that has never been seen in the history of Ethiopia. As a result, the country is tilting towards collapse and more chaos, the repercussions of which would cause much instability in an already fragile eastern African region. The International Community and human rights defenders should send a clear message to the regime to end the cycles of state of emergency in the Amhara region, condemn the regime’s gross human rights violations, and refrain from any financial help that the government is diverting to purchase weapons.
To this end, we applaud the recent unambiguous message from Ambassador Mesinga of the United States in his speech in Addis-Ababa on May 15, 2024, calling for a peaceful and political solution to the conflict. We hope that the European Union and the governments of Germany, France, and the UK take the same stance and call for peace in Ethiopia.
Yours sincerely,
Federation of Amhara Association in Europe