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A6 WORLD NEWS
Thursday 7 april 2022
Rights groups charge ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Ethiopia’s Tigray

By RODNEY MUHUMUZA several towns across west-
Associated Press ern Tigray urged Tigrayans
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — to leave, and local officials
Widespread abuses against in meetings discussed plans
civilians in the western part to remove Tigrayans, ac-
of Ethiopia’s embattled Ti- cording to the report. Pam-
gray region amount to war phlets appeared to give Ti-
crimes and crimes against grayans urgent ultimatums
humanity, Human Rights to leave or be killed, the
Watch and Amnesty Inter- report says.
national have charged in a “They kept saying every
new report. night, ‘We will kill you … Go
The crimes were perpetrat- out of the area,’” said one
ed by security officials and woman from the town of
civilian authorities from the Baeker, speaking of threats
neighboring Amhara re- she faced from an Amhara
gion, sometimes “with the militia group, according to
acquiescence and pos- the report. Western Tigray
sible participation of Ethio- has long been contested
pian federal forces,” the territory. Amhara authori-
rights groups say in the re- ties say the area was under
port released Wednesday. their control until the 1990s
The abuses are “part of a when the TPLF-led federal
widespread and system- Refugees who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region ride a bus going to the Village 8 temporary government redrew inter-
atic attack against the shelter, near the Sudan-Ethiopia border, in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan on Dec. 1, 2020. nal boundaries that put
Associated Press
Tigrayan civilian popula- the territory within Tigray’s
tion that amount to crimes for any peace effort, the denial of humanitarian as- dozens of women and pil- borders. Amhara officials
against humanity as well government will reaffirm its sistance. laged property for a period moved swiftly to take over
as war crimes,” the report determination to investi- Widespread atrocities have of several weeks last year the region when the war
says. gate all human rights viola- been reported in the Tigray in Amhara region, Amnesty broke out.
Ethiopian federal authori- tions and make public the war, with Ethiopian govern- said in a report released in U.S. Secretary of State
ties strongly refute allega- results,” said a statement ment troops and their al- February. Antony Blinken asserted
tions they have deliber- from the Government lies, including troops from The new report by Human in March 2021 that ethnic
ately targeted Tigrayans for Communication Service. neighboring Eritrea, facing Rights Watch and Amnesty cleansing had taken place
violent attacks. They said at The report, the result of a most of the charges. International focuses on in western Tigray, marking
the outbreak of the war in months-long investigation Fighters loyal to the party of attacks targeting Tigray- the first time a top official
Nov. 2020 that their objec- including more than 400 in- Tigray’s leaders the Tigray ans in western Tigray and in the international com-
tive was to disarm the re- terviews, charges that hun- People’s Liberation Front, describes them as “ethnic munity openly described
bellious leaders of Tigray. dreds of thousands of Ti- or TPLF also have been cleansing,” a term that re- the situation as such. That
Ethiopian authorities said grayans have been forced accused of committing fers to forcing a popula- allegation was dismissed
Wednesday that they are to leave their homes in a vi- abuses as the war spread tion from a region through by Ethiopian authorities as
“carefully examining” alle- olent campaign of unlaw- into neighboring regions. expulsions and other vio- “a completely unfound-
gations in the rights groups’ ful killings, sexual assaults, Fighters affiliated with the lence, often including kill- ed and spurious verdict
report. While the report has mass arbitrary detentions, TPLF deliberately killed doz- ings and rapes. against the Ethiopian gov-
“ideas that are not useful livestock pillaging, and the ens of people, gang-raped Publicly displayed signs in ernment.” q

Black boxes from China Eastern crash sent to U.S. for analysis

BEIJING (AP) — Both black it could shed light on why end to assist the investiga-
boxes from a passenger the China Eastern Boeing tion by the Civil Aviation
plane crash in southern 737-800 went into a sudden Administration of China.
China last month that killed nosedive and slammed The NTSB team is taking
132 people are being ana- into the ground in a moun- part because the plane
lyzed by U.S. experts at a tainous area on March 21. was manufactured in the
government lab in Wash- The crash left a 20-meter- United States.
ington, D.C. (65-foot-) deep crater in a Chinese officials have said
The National Transporta- mountainside, shattered a preliminary investigation
tion Safety Board said Tues- the plane and set off a fire report would be complet-
day it is helping its Chinese in the surrounding forest. ed within 30 days of the
counterparts download More than 49,000 pieces of crash.
information from the flight plane debris were found. It Flight MU5735 with 123 pas-
data recorder. The Ameri- took two days to find the sengers and nine crew
can agency said last week cockpit voice recorder members was headed
it was doing the same for and six days for the flight from the city of Kunming
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a search and the cockpit voice recorder. data recorder, which was in southwestern China to
rescue worker holds the second orange-colored “black box” Both may have been dam- buried 1.5 meters (5 feet) Guangzhou, a provincial
recorder which recovered at the China Eastern flight crash site
in Tengxian County on Sunday, March 27, 2022, in southern aged by the impact of the underground. capital and export manu-
China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. crash. If the information on U.S. accident investigators facturing hub near Hong
Associated Press them can be recovered, arrived in China last week- Kong in the southeast.q