By Addis Getachew
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AA) – Ethiopia’s prime minister on Tuesday said there have been pieces of evidence that point to cases related to rape perpetrated during the post-conflict days in the northernmost region of Tigray.
Abiy Ahmed made his remarks during a question and answer session with parliamentarians.
“It would be investigated to the last detail and perpetrators would be brought to justice,” Abiy said, suggesting that some individual soldiers may have been involved in perpetrating criminal activities in the heat of the moment of victory.
According to him, Ethiopia’s battle history was replete with devastating cases of soldiers perpetrating such crimes, adding that no soldier that raped would be spared this time around from facing the full force of the law.
He, however, said allegations of destruction and rape in the Tigray region was full of hyped narratives.
“These people don’t mention the humiliation inflicted on the Northern Command of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF),” he said, adding women soldiers were made to suffer bayonets stuck in their private parts by the forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
On Nov. 4 last year, the Horn of Africa country launched a sweeping law enforcement operation against the forces of the hitherto all-powerful TPLF, now outlawed, after the latter stormed the Ethiopian federal army command stationed in Tigray, killing soldiers and looting sizable military hardware.
On Nov. 28, Abiy declared the military engagement over after the fall of the regional capital Mekele to the federal army. But sporadic fighting continued in the region as hundreds of thousands of people got internally displaced and more than 60,000 fled to neighboring Sudan.
The TPLF attack was widespread, Abiy told the parliamentarians. “Some 200 military sites were attacked by the TPLF and huge amounts of military hardware seized. More than 7,000 federal soldiers, including generals and other high-ranking officers, were taken hostage.”
In spite of sporadic fighting, however, the prime minister said: “The TPLF is now like a flour dispersed in the thin air and cannot collect itself back to political life.”
