The NGO confirms at least 50 civilians executed and denounces the Government's lack of will to investigate what happened
April 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Amnesty International has demanded an international and independent investigation into the massacre allegedly committed by Ethiopian soldiers on January 29 in the Ethiopian city of Merawi, in the state of Amhara, northwest of the country, which, according to Amnesty, left at least 50 dead although Ethiopian NGOs have raised the figure to between 80 and 90 civilians killed.
The incident took place, as local and medical sources initially reported to the Amharic service of the British BBC channel, after a violent confrontation between the Army and the Fano militias, who attacked the military command in the town, 35 kilometers away. from the capital of the Amhara region, Bahir Dar.
After the clashes, the military began to carry out a house-to-house raid to search for militiamen and ended up taking revenge on the population, taking advantage of the state of emergency declared by the federal authorities in the region, in an attempt to contain its extraordinary levels of violence.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission is aware that “more than 80 people died as a result of these 'house-to-house' searches, including two women.” The Amhara Association of America, for its part, has been able to confirm at least 89 deaths and has identified 47 of them as victims of an “indiscriminate killing” carried out by the military after the “significant casualties” recorded by the attack. “Ethiopian forces carried out widespread executions and shot anyone in the street,” the group added.
Now, and in the “absence of any credible effort by the Ethiopian authorities to investigate what happened”, Amnesty's regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa, Tigere Chagutah, has called for an international investigation to determine responsibilities after that more than a dozen interviewees, including survivors, relatives and medical sources, explained to the NGO a detailed version of what happened that spoke of executions carried out by the military in the middle of the street and of corpses scattered throughout the city with shots to the head. .
Amnesty takes the opportunity to warn that “mass executions have become a horribly common phenomenon in Ethiopia”, particularly since the outbreak of the Tigray war in 2020, which has turned the northwest of the country into a lawless place.
In this state, neighboring Amhara and scene of one of the bloodiest armed conflicts in the recent history of the African continent – the Ethiopian Government estimates 100,000 deaths but mediators from the African Union raise this figure to approximately 600,000 deaths -, United Nations The United Nations is aware of the commission of more than 48 “large-scale murders” since the outbreak of the conflict, which ended with the signing of a peace agreement in South Africa in 2022.
