Open letter from the Security and Justice for Tigrayans (SJT) to all the stakeholders of CoHA

Human Rights Watch
Tigrai Online 5/22/2023

An Open Letter

May 18, 2023

To:

H.E. Abiy Ahmed, PM of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia H.E. Getachew Reda, Interim President of the State of Tigray Region
H.E. Olusegun Obasanjo, High Representative for the Horn of Africa region
H.E Uhuru Kenyatta, Peace Envoy to the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region
H.E Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, AU Panel member of the Ethiopia-Tigray Peace Negotiation H.E. H.E Azali Assoumani, President of the Union of Comoros and AU Chairperson

H.E Moussa Faki Mahamat, African Union Commission Chairperson

Re: Call for Your Urgent Attention and Action to End the Suffering of the people of Tigray

Excellencies,

First and foremost, the Security and Justice for Tigrayans (SJT), a global organization of diaspora Tigrayans, would like to extend its candid appreciation for roles your excellencies have been playing to end the genocidal war launched against the people of Tigray. This letter makes an urgent plea to all parties who have been tirelessly involved to bring peace, regarding the deficiencies that SJT has observed in the process of implementing the CoHA that was signed in Pretoria on November 2, 2022. Yes, the guns have been silenced. The people have started to sleep and move around with little fear of drone attacks and shelling. There has been a gradual start of services including banking, transportation, telephone, and internet. Humanitarian aid is trickling but not sufficient to alleviate Tigray’s grave food shortage following the complete siege for an extended period.

To our dismay, there is a lack of transparency, sincerity, and wholehearted commitment in implementing the CoHA in a timely fashion. The expectation that the CoHA would bring a lasting peace by ending the war that has caused untold atrocities doesn’t seem feasible. The fact on the ground is that there is a deliberate lag in implementing the main pillars of the CoHA. This deeply concerns us because our people haven’t yet got out of the wood.

About 2 million internally displaced people, who have been forcefully uprooted from their homes, are still living in temporary shelters, leading a miserable life and millions of children remain denied access to school.

Close to 70, 000 people are in Sudan refugee camps and now, crying for an urgent help from the international community because their life is in peril due to the unfortunate and ongoing war that lately erupted in Sudan.

The Federal government of Ethiopia has chosen to remain reluctant to order the Eritrean and Amhara forces to withdraw from several parts of Tigray and these forces continue to commit their cruel crimes of extermination. They continue to loot, vandalize, and confiscate properties and everything they find to bring economic ruin and plunge the people of Tigray into the plague of misery, starvation, and massive deaths.

Excellencies,

The damage of the total war and the crimes committed against the people of Tigray remain largely uncovered and unaddressed and seemingly fading away from the radar of all stakeholders engaged in the negotiation process. The international community has been denied from getting complete picture of what has happened in Tigray because independent investigators, media outlets, and journalists have been disallowed access to investigate and report.

To date, reports from limited research works estimated the civilian death toll to be 600,000-800,000, consequent to the genocidal war. About 80% of the health facilities were vandalized. The school system has become dysfunctional. All available industries have been bombarded and private properties looted. These all have inflicted enormous physical pains, psychological traumas, and posttraumatic stress disorders that cannot easily be healed.

Several thousands of Tigrayans remain in prison for no crimes committed other than being Tigrayans by ethnicity.

Tension, pain, fear, and anxiety are still high because the barbaric nature of the war has resulted in untold atrocities and unparalleled damage. To the Eritrean and Amhara forces, gang-raping was not cruel enough. They sexually assaulted many women and young girls in front of their husbands or family members. These criminals went as far as gang-raping of a single woman by over 20 men and then, inserting foreign objects like nails, gravel, hot iron rods, and other types of metal and plastic shrapnel into the victims’ genitals to destroy their ability to give birth and cause irreparable psychological, emotional, physical, and social damages. Some of the victims have deliberately been infected with communicable diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.

The African Union’s Monitoring, Verification and Compliance Mission seems to lack transparency and the authority to fully discharge its designated responsibilities. Just recently, the team remained powerless at a time when the Eritrean Forces denied them entry into border towns that are part of Tigray.

Therefore, it is the SJT’s position that visualizing peace and security in the region is impractical so long as serious consideration is not given to the issues reiterated below and immediate actions are not taken by the international community to remediate the deficiencies and implement the decrees of the CoHA fully and wholeheartedly.

• Immediate Return and resettlement of the Displaced People: An immediate and concrete action should be taken to return and resettle the over 2 million people who have been internally displaced and those close to 70, 000 people who fled to Sudan and now their life is in danger due to the war that erupted in Sudan. These people are leading miserable lives in temporary shelters and need immediate attention and maximum efforts to settle them in their place of origin as soon as possible.

• Take concrete action against the Eritrean and Amhara Forces. There must be a transparent and verifiable mechanism to monitor the complete withdrawal of these forces. First, the Federal Government of Ethiopia must show his willingness by publicly ordering the immediate withdrawal of Eritrean and Amhara forces. Second, the withdrawal of these forces must be closely and carefully monitored by creating a mechanism to identify plausible camouflages and prevent any potential conspiratorial arrangements. As of today, the fact is that the Eritrean and Amhara armed forces who have been working hand in hand continue to occupy large swathes of Tigray administrative zones and are causing cruel crimes and are working day and night to spoil the

CoHA. The African Union’s Monitoring, Verification and Compliance Mission should be able to discharge its designated authority and responsibilities transparently.

• The Unhindered and Full Investigations of all Committed crimes by the UNSC mandated International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia. The crimes committed are complex and systematic and deserve an independent investigation to serve justice. The Federal Government of Ethiopia must be compelled to unconditionally accept the decision to investigate all human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. These crimes must be independently investigated, documented, and reported to serve justice to victims by freely allowing the commission to travel to all crime scenes. The prohibition of international media outlets and journalists from freely entering Tigray must also be lifted. The government of Mr.

Abiy Ahmed’s staunch opposition to an independent investigation and disallowing the media to enter Tigray erodes the trust in the CoHA.

• The Immediate Release of Imprisoned Former ENDF Members and Civilians: As you may be aware, a government-organized perpetrators-the federal police and security forces, in uniform and civilian garb- abused their power to arrest, harass, and torture many thousands of civilians and former ENDF members of Tigrayans who honorably served their country and the UN as peacekeepers in different countries. All Tigrayans from all walks of lives have been subjected to unconstitutional arrests and indiscriminate harassment and thrown into concentration camps and the whereabouts of many have been unknown to their immediate families, relatives, and friends which brings enormous crisis and psychological apprehensions, fear, insecurity, and unprecedented traumatic experience. Their properties have been looted and businesses shut down and money in the bank frozen for no reason but because they are Tigrayans by ethnicity.

SJT solemnly asks your excellencies to consider these issues seriously and urgently not only to build the confidence and trust of the people on the CoHA but also to produce lasting peace. We ask you not to stand on the wrong side of history by allowing the continuation of the project designed to exterminate the people of Tigray. We strongly support the principle of “African solutions by Africans” so long as the rules of law are respected and applied without exception and in a non-partisan manner, and policies and procedures are followed transparently and truly.

Respectfully,

Mahteme F. Demewez (PhD), SJT President
+1(617) 913-5190; Email: sjte.info@gmail.com

CC

Molly Phee, U.S. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Mike Hammer, U.S. Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa
Annette Weber, European Union Special Representative for the Horn of Africa

Hanna Tetteh, UN Under-Secretary-General & Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa Diplomatic Missions in Addis Ababa