Fanos Mintesinot is a resident of Wolkayit District. She has been living in the area since her childhood engaging in activities such as agricultural. However, following the death of all her supporters by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) faction, Fanos has been compelled to lead a life from hand-to-mouth.
Following the death of her husband, Fanos’s daughter had gone to a monastery and lost contact with the family. And her grandson, Nigat Andargie, was the one who shoulders the responsibility of supporting and caring for the family. He also had an ambition to create a favorable environment for all Amharas there.
During the past regime (TPLF), ethnic Amharas who live in the land of Wolkayit had been tortured, persecuted and killed just because of their identity. For more than three decades, the people of Amhara living in the district were targeted victims of TPLF’s attacks.
Unfortunately, Fanos’s grandson, Nigat was one of the victims of the torture and persecution of the TPLF. As Fanos stated to local media, her grandson was killed because of his identity; and his propensity to speak his mother tongue-Amharic language.
“Here, life for me is tantamount to be a dead body as I am devoid of siblings due to TPLF merciless killings”, said Fanos. She went on saying in a touchy sullen: “My grandson was killed because he chose to speak in his mother tongue, Amharic language, and he was unwilling to speak Tigregna.”
Sitting alone in her shabby hut; mourning and weeping over the death of her grandson, Nigat, and the disappearance of her daughter due to TPLF has become an accustomed activity of Fanos.
“These days, I have got exhaustively tired. Even no one supports me. Life for me has become devastating and too complicated to deal with,” she uttered.
The TPLF faction while it was in bush, it held power and even after it was overthrown from power, its whole sentiment is anti-Ethiopia and Ethiopians. The recent attack it has opened in the adjacent areas of Amhara and Afar states the best showcase in this regard. Worst of all, the unforgettable inhuman acts- torture, gang rape and atrocities- that the insurgents of the faction committed against little girls, married women and even elderly ones testify this reality.
As Rosa Moussaoui wrote it in French Language under the title “Nos corps sont blessés, nos consciences sont touchées” and published in the L’humanité. (Humanity), and posted in the webpage of Ethiopia Observer in English language, under the title “Women raped by combatants of the TPLF recount ordeal” the inhuman acts of the terrorist group is beyond words.
As the piece narrated, she was seated on a swing wooden bench set against the classroom wall, her body wrapped in a gabi- a large and white hard spun cotton. She had tattoos on her forehead and temples, discreet silver rings in her ears, the only thing of value she had managed to keep since the fighters of the Tigray Liberation Front (TPLF) forced her door open to sow devastation in mid-August.
“They took everything from us, they left us naked, in every sense of the word,” breathes Agere, a woman in her thirties, who lifted her head to share her horrific account of being raped.
“They arrived on August 12. We could hear gunfire in all directions. There were a lot of corpses lying by the road, which we could not bury or mourn publicly.”
“They started to loot everything: the hospitals, the business centers, and then the houses one by one. What they could not take, they demolished”, she says. “When they entered my home, they seized my cell phone, my cross, food, and all my savings. They directed my two children, aged 4 and 12, to go outside, threatening to kill them.
Then they raped me at gunpoint,” she stated. “They were two and very young. If I had not been afraid of their weapon, I would certainly have given them their just deserts. They said to me: “If you scream, we will kill you.”
Her eldest son had to flee, walking out of the town alone, through hills and rough mountains, for two days to join his relatives. His swollen feet were bleeding when he did.
Tigrayan rebels occupied the area from August 12th to 21st, nine days of terror for inhabitants of Nefas Mewcha, a town in Gayint district of the Amhara State, perched at an altitude of more than 3000 m, between two vertiginous cliffs, the piece further elaborates.
“They told us that they had come to destroy the donkeys; that is how they refer to us, the Amharas. They grabbed us by the throat, by the hair, slapped us, beat us, and threatened to kill our children. They said that these snakes should not be allowed to grow up, they would eventually turn against them.
They did not kill any children, but we were terrorized, holed up at home. They finally left in the direction of Debre Tabor, promising to come back and slaughter us if the army forced them to go back”, Agere continued.
In this nightmare, her only source of relief is having escaped pregnancy.
Her husband, who was then in Bahir Dar, the regional capital, was completely unaware of her ordeal. A woman who is raped brings shame on her family in the Ethiopian tradition.
Other women may have kept silent and accepted their fate. The trauma on the whole family and community has been magnified by the public nature of many of these rapes, used as a weapon of war.
“There were two of them, one grabbed me by the throat, the other pulled my legs away by reproaching me for supporting the government, even though I was never involved in politics,” she recounted. “They took everything I had on me. I wandered naked in the forest for five days”. She stood up, lifted a part of her dress to show the long scar on her groin.
Abaye Tsegaye, resident of Nefas Mewcha, who is around fifty years of age said the above statement.
When the TPLF forces arrived, she said that she went to the forest with her neighbors to hide. The three men in the group were shot dead before the attackers turned on the seven fleeing women.
Another victim, Menalu Goshu, a woman of the same age, was by her side, desperate to find a way out. She also reveals the scars of an injury: she was raped under the threat of a knife which slashed her stomach and left leg.
He said to me: “My mother was attacked by the Eritrean army so I do the same to you.” She said that he was very young that he could have been her son.
In the same token, Alem Tsehaye who is less than 30 years old was pregnant at the time of the rape. “I had a flag of the Prosperity Party at my house.
He said to me: even if you are pregnant, I must rape you because you are Abiy’s donkey. He raped me while someone else watched,” she whispered.
It is recalled that in merely Nefas Mewcha, Amhara State 73 women reported that they have been subjected to sexual violence.
As studies indicate, many of the experiences of women and girls in armed conflict are traumatizing disproportionately. Women and girls have become prime targets of armed conflict and suffered its impact. They forcibly displaced, injured and killed, and have difficulties in making a living during and after conflict.
BY BETELHEM BEDLU
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 14 APRIL 2022
