tw // rape , genocide , violence

A thread about the humanitarian crisis and ethnic cleansing that is going on in Ethiopia

( pls rt to spread, I’m begging you )
This is a very complicated situation but I’m going to try to sum it up as best as I can. So basically Ethiopia is going through a civil war with the national Ethiopian troops + Eritrean troops on one side and fighters from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front on the other side
A little background to how we got here:

Tigray is a small province in Ethiopia but it’s political party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), had most of the power over Ethiopia for nearly 30 years until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was elected in 2018
Ahmed actually won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the decades long war with their neighboring country Eritrea. But the TPLF have accused him of overstaying his welcome by delaying Ethiopia’s elections because of COVID-19. So Tigray illegally hosted their own regional elections
This, along with an supposed attack on a Ethiopian national military base ( which Tigray claims never happened and it is a fabricated story) was the boiling point of decades of tension and started the war. Ahmed enlisted their new ally Eritrea to help fight TPLF
This is where the humanitarian crisis comes in:
Ethiopia’s national troops ( but mostly Eritrean troops ) are using rape, starvation and civilian massacres, as weapons of war against Tigray. They have systematically killed an estimated thousands of Tigrayans.
Keep this in mind: Tigrayans doesn’t necessarily mean citizens of Tigray, Tigrayans are an ethnic group. An ethnic group that troops are seemingly aiming to exterminate. Soldiers are looting and destroying Tigray’s food supply and farmlands.
Soldiers are also violently raping every Tigrayan woman they see. Countless women have been violently gang-raped. Their have been stories of mothers who have had their children shot in front of them and then proceeded to get gang-raped for days
UNICEF estimates that only ≈ 20% of Tigray hospitals are operating ( since most were destroyed in the war ). The hospitals are being overflowed with rape victims. Most with brutal injuries, STDs and one woman was even found with nails in her vagina
There is much more stigma surrounding rape compared to the U.S. so typically a far smaller percentage of victims seek help. Which means that the true amount of women who have been raped by women is staggering and somewhere in the 1000s. There is not enough safe house for the
victims who do seek help. Hundreds of Tigrayans have been rounded up and massacred. Over 2 million people have been displaced. Over 60,000 Tigrayans are making the dangerous journey to seek refuge in Sudan. The borders are being guarded by soldiers so they have to sneak through
farmlands. Sudan, although accepting of the refugees, simply doesn’t have enough resources to support the refugees because they are going through an economic crisis themselves. Plus, Sudan is not necessarily a safe place either.
Why is no one talking about this:
Ahmed trying to keep this a secret in order to save his reputation of being a peace maker and he is up for re-election soon. The government media access and there was a total shutdown of communication ( internet access, etc) for 6 weeks.
Plus sadly people really don’t care about African issues or really any issues about black people.
I’ll link my sources and ways to help down below, if you find any ways to help feel free to add.
You can follow @theferalgang.
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