NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The head of human rights at the United Nations said on Monday that a long-awaited joint investigation into abuses in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia could not be deployed at the site of one of its deadliest attacks, the alleged massacre of several hundred people in the holy city of Axum.
Michelle Bachelet told the UN Human Rights Council that the deployments east and center of Tigray, where witnesses have accused neighboring Ethiopian and allied forces in neighboring Eritrea of some of the worst abuses of the war ten months, “they couldn’t go on.” He cited “abrupt changes in the security situation and in the dynamics of the conflict.”
She gave no details. The war saw a dramatic change in late June when Tigray forces recaptured much of the northern region of the country and Ethiopian and Allied forces withdrew. Since then, witnesses have said much of Tigray has been much safer and more accessible in the region.
The change in the war came about halfway through the joint investigation work of the UN human rights office and the government-created Ethiopian Commission on Human Rights, conducted between May 16 and on August 20th.
The joint report will be published on November 1, with a delay in publication expected this month.
A joint statement last week said the team conducted investigations in the regional capital of Tigray, Mekele, as well as in the communities of Wukro, Samre, Alamata, Bora, Maichew, Dansha, Maikadra and Humera in the parts south and west of the region. The team also investigated Gondar and Bahir Dar in the neighboring Amhara region along with Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
The war continues to cause great concern for Africa’s second most populous country, where all sides have been accused of atrocities. Bachelet noted that “mass arrests, killings, systematic looting and sexual violence have continued to create an atmosphere of fear and an erosion of living conditions that led to the forced displacement of the Tigrinya civilian population.”
Hundreds of thousands of people have now been recently displaced elsewhere after Tigray forces brought the fighting to the Amhara and Afar regions.
“If the situation does not improve, Ethiopia will be the scene of a human tragedy on an unparalleled scale this century,” British Ambassador Rita French told the human rights council, adding that the Ethiopian government “presides over a de facto blockade in Tigray “where Now 400,000 face famine.
Ethiopia Attorney General Gedion Timothewos Hessebon told the council that due to the deadline of the joint investigation, the team did not investigate the recently reported killings in places like Chenna Teklehaymanot’s Amhara community.
The Attorney General also criticized that an independent investigation by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, an agency of the African Union, was unilateral and “therefore not recognized by the Ethiopian government.”
The report from this body will be available by the end of the year, the vice-chair of the commission of inquiry, Remy Ngoy Lumbu, told the council.