With tens of thousands of people reportedly killed,<\/a> many more having fled their homes and some surviving by eating leaves in mountain villages cut off from phone and internet access, the United Nations has warned that the region of 6 million is edging toward a humanitarian disaster.<\/a> More than 60,000 have escaped<\/a> to refugee camps across the border in Sudan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Compounding the suffering are accounts of gang rapes and other sexual violence by pro-government forces operating with near-total impunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Ethiopia battles to wrest control of Tigray from the regional ruling party, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed\u2019s government has barred journalists and most humanitarian groups from the area, rejected allegations of abuses and denied \u2014 despite credible evidence to the contrary \u2014 that Eritrean forces have entered the country. Eritrea\u2019s government also denies involvement in the fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With local Tigrayan paramilitary forces having mostly retreated to mountain areas, Ethiopian and allied troops have gained control of population centers including Mekele, where they have established a transitional government. As some communication links are restored, human rights groups have begun compiling accounts of women bearing telltale signs of sexual violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doctors at Mekele\u2019s main hospital say rape survivors are turning up injured and in tears. More women are seeking counseling, testing for sexually transmitted infections, emergency contraception and abortions. Girls as young as 12 are among those attacked, researchers say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGrowing reports of rape and other sexual violence in the Tigray region over the last few weeks adds yet another layer to alarming abuses against civilians since the start of the conflict,\u201d said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese reports bring new urgency for the need for a U.N.-led fact-finding mission into the region, which should also include experts in sexual violence and mental health, to press for credible, fair and safe justice for survivors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last month, United Nations special representative Pramila Patten said<\/a> she was \u201cgreatly concerned by serious allegations of sexual violence\u201d in Tigray. She cited accounts of individuals being forced to rape family members or to have sex with members of the military in exchange for basic goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Patten did not identify the alleged perpetrators, survivors blame pro-government forces, including Ethiopian and Eritrean troops and paramilitaries from the Amhara region, according to human rights groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mehrawit, whose full name is being withheld under a Times policy not to identify rape survivors, said the Eritrean soldiers did not hide their identities and cast their actions as revenge against Tigray, whose ruling party, the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front, led Ethiopia for nearly all of the last three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The TPLF presided over a 1998-2000 war with Eritrea, a former Ethiopian state, in which tens of thousands of soldiers died, many in brutal trench warfare.<\/a> The conflict ended with Ethiopian troops retaining control of the contested border town of Badme in defiance of a peace agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Abiy took office in 2018, he agreed to implement the peace deal and ceded the town to Eritrea, ending one of Africa\u2019s longest-running conflicts. His efforts earned the 44-year-old leader the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Abiy and Eritrean strongman Isaias Afwerki \u2014 <\/strong>whose tiny Red Sea nation\u2019s isolationism sometimes garners comparisons to North Korea<\/a> \u2014<\/strong> now have a shared adversary in the TPLF, which has lost political influence but retains a well-trained paramilitary force estimated<\/a> at 250,000 troops. In November, capping months of disputes between Tigray and the government in Addis Ababa, Abiy blamed the TPLF for an attack on a federal military base and launched air and ground raids across the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That has trapped women like Mehrawit on a perilous landscape of fresh bloodshed mixed with past grievances. She said she cried out to her Eritrean captors: \u201cAre you not our brothers? Why are you this cruel?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One responded: \u201cYou killed our family in the war and took Badme from us. So you deserve to be punished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her ordeal began in early January, when Eritrean troops arrived in her village of Kerestber, about 75 miles north of Mekele. Her family \u2014 including her father, 24-year-old sister, aunt and two children ages 7 and 5 \u2014 sought safety with relatives in a nearby village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there was little to eat there. On the morning of Jan. 9, she and her sister ventured back to Kerestber to collect some crops and check on their house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walking back from Kerestber, she said, the Eritrean troops stopped them. Her account was corroborated by a counselor at a rehabilitation center who has interviewed Mehrawit repeatedly, as well as medical records from Ayder Referral Hospital, where she was treated. Staffers at both facilities spoke on the condition of anonymity to shield them from government reprisals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mehrawit said that when she and her sister arrived in the Eritreans\u2019 makeshift camp, they saw about eight other Tigrayan women being held. That day, five soldiers took turns raping her. Another day, they brought her sister to her room and made Mehrawit watch as she was raped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For 15 days, Mehrawit was given almost nothing to eat. Her injuries left her unable to walk. The Eritreans brought more and more women to the camp and began to taunt her, saying she would soon be \u201cthrown away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ll bring younger and virgin Tigrayan women next time,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The soldiers eventually loosened their control. On the night of Jan. 23, Mehrawit crawled out of the camp and made it to a main road, where she fainted. Her memory remains unclear, but she recalled a motorcyclist finding her lying next to the asphalt and bringing her to Mekele.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A doctor who treated her in the hospital said injuries to her spine and pelvis meant she would struggle to walk again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe has to be in a wheelchair,\u201d he said. \u201cBut most of all, her psychological trauma is grave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mehrawit has had no contact with her sister, who she worries may still be in the Eritreans\u2019 custody. Her children and other relatives remain out of phone range. She was transferred to a nongovernmental center for sexual abuse survivors, where a nurse said she suffers from nightmares that soldiers will climb through the windows and attack her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are days when she begs me not to leave her alone,\u201d the nurse said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In daily sessions with a therapist, Mehrawit often calls out her sister\u2019s name. Again and again, she wonders about the women she left behind in the camp, the therapist said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ethiopian officials have publicly denied allegations of rape and other abuses. The interim head of Tigray\u2019s social affairs department, Abrha Desta, did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in a closed-door meeting in Mekele last week, Muna Ahmed, the deputy federal minister for women\u2019s affairs, said the government had recorded 113 rape cases in the Tigray conflict, according to a person who was present and spoke on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This week, the U.N. World Food Program said<\/a> the Ethiopian government had agreed to increase access for aid workers in an attempt to speed the delivery of food assistance to 1 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/campaign4her.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com-copy-1030x687.jpg\")
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