Media Roll-up: June 14th-20th
Elections
Ethiopia prepares for tense, long-delayed elections
Reuters, June 20th, 2021
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia is preparing for national and regional parliamentary elections on Monday that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has said will be the country's first free and fair polls after decades of repressive rule.
Ethiopians set to vote in crunch polls amid conflict and apathy
Al Jazeera, June 19th, 2021
Long-awaited elections due to take place on June 21 but voting will not go ahead in about one-fifth of constituencies.
Tigray Violence, Famine Cast Shadow Over Ethiopian Elections
Fasika Tadesse, June 20th, 2021, BNN Bloomberg
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appears assured of retaining his post after Monday’s elections, despite having waged a civil war that’s triggered a famine and failing to contain exploding ethnic tensions.
Ethiopia elections 2021: Five things to know
Al Jazeera, June 18th, 2021
Twice-postponed polls will mark the first test of voter support for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Abiy predicts peaceful Ethiopia vote as parties wrap up campaigns
Al Jazeera, June 16th, 2021
Political parties taking part next week in Ethiopia’s twice-delayed polls have wrapped up their election campaigns, with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed predicting that the country will successfully hold a peaceful vote.
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Ethiopia's prime minister: next week's election will be peaceful (Reuters)
Refugees
Visualising 70 years of refugee journeys
Mohammed Haddad, June 20th, 2021, Al Jazeera,
On World Refugee Day, Al Jazeera looks at the painful journeys refugees were forced on in 2020 despite global pandemic.
Tigray Families Displaced by War, Economic and Social Crisis
Heather Murdock, June 20th, 2021, Voice of America
SHIRE, ETHIOPIA - Hundreds of displaced families trampled down the stairs carrying stained mattresses, logs and kindling for cooking and sacks of clothing and food.
Genocide
The Daily: The War in Tigray (PODCAST)
The New York Times, June 16th, 2021
Ethiopian leaders said they would ‘wipe out’ Tigrayans: EU envoy
Al Jazeera, June 18th, 2021
The Ethiopian leadership said earlier this year that they were “going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years”, a European Union special envoy to the war-torn country has said.
Don't Turn Away From These Images and These Crimes
Nicholas Kristof, June 17th, 2021, The New York Times
Meet Rahel, 19, a human face of a brutal ethnic cleansing now underway in Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Holy City Reels From Tigray Crisis
Heather Murdock, June 14th, 2021, Voice of America
AXUM, ETHIOPIA - For Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, who comprise more than 40% of their country’s population and most of the people in the Tigray region, the city of Axum is the holiest of places.
Investigations
African Union launches probe into alleged rights abuses in Tigray
Al Jazeera, June 17th, 2021
The African Union (AU) has launched a commission of inquiry into alleged human rights violations in Ethiopia’s northernmost region of Tigray, where a bloody seven-month conflict has led to warnings of famine and allegations of ethnic cleansing.
Ottawa will finance investigation in Tigray after reports of massacres, sexual violence
Geoffrey York, June 15th, 2021, The Globe and Mail
The Canadian government is helping finance a formal investigation of widely reported atrocities in Ethiopia's war in Tigray, but it says it hasn't decided yet whether to join the United States in imposing sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea for their conduct in the war.
Opinion
Lead international Magnitsky sanctions for Tigray
Maria Reisdorf & Sarah Teich, June 16th, 2021, The Hill Times
For a nation that prides itself on being committed to human rights, silence in the face of a devastating and worsening conflict is insufficient. Leading on Magnitsky sanctions will be an important first step, both to show solidarity with the Tigray community, and to impose real consequences against those committing atrocity crimes against them.
Famine
UK envoy warns of famine threat in Ethiopia’s Tigray region
Al Jazeera, June 16th, 2021
An estimated 350,000 people in Tigray are facing hunger on a scale not seen since the famine in Somalia.
Most farmers in Ethiopia's Tigray are planting crops, says gov't after UN famine warning
Reuters, June 15th, 2021
NAIROBI, June 15 (Reuters) - Ethiopia's state agriculture minister said on Tuesday a majority of farmers in the Tigray region were planting crops on time, after the United Nations warned of famine in the area following conflict that has displaced more than two million people.
Gender Based Violence
‘Don’t betray women of Tigray’: calls grow for international action against rape in war
Zeinab Mohammed Salih, June 19th, 2021, The Guardian
The former prime minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, and Zimbabwean author and 2020 Booker prize nominee Tsitsi Dangarembga are among the signatories of two separate letters demanding international action after shocking reports of sexual violence in Tigray.
Eritrea in Tigray
Eritrea files new complaint with UN over Tigray allegations
Africa Times, June 17th, 2021
The Eritrean government has filed another complaint against the United Nations Security Council and UN heads of humanitarian agencies over the situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
Eritrean troops in Tigray to ‘leave soon’: Ethiopia UN envoy
Al Jazeera, June 16th, 2021
Move would be welcomed by the UN whose humanitarian chief accused Eritrean troops of using starvation as a weapon.