Ethiopian army implicated in brutal war crime, Telegraph

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Written by northsouth

Category: Africa

Published: 21 February 2021

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LONDON - The ground of the Tigrayan village is soaked with blood and dozens of bodies lie strewn in the grass, according to a report by the British daily The Telegraph.

Groans can be heard from a seriously wounded man squirming on the floor between two corpses.

Chatting as they wander through the aftermath of what appears to be a mass execution of civilians in the Tigray region, soldiers laugh and joke among themselves.

Off to one side they spot a young man who seems to have survived by pretending to be dead.

“You should have finished off the survivors,” the cameraman says in Amharic, Ethiopia’s lingua franca, in an apparent rebuke of the perpetrators of the massacre.

These are scenes from a video clip obtained exclusively by The Telegraph showing the first evidence of what appears to be a war crime carried out by the Ethiopian army. Around 40 bodies in civilian clothes can be seen in the four-minute clip.

Ethiopian and Eritrean forces have for months been battling troops loyal to the former Tigrayan regional government in a war that has left thousands dead and millions on the brink of starvation.

The Ethiopian federal government has imposed a mass communications black-out in Tigray, meaning little is known about the conflict and making it hard to verify a flood of accounts of war crimes from survivors.

The video footage seen by The Telegraph, which is too graphic to publish, has circulated online in shorter form among local journalists and bloggers - deemed rare proof of the alleged brutality of Addis Ababa’s forces.

The Telegraph was able to geolocate the video to Debre Abay monastery in central Tigray - about 175 miles west of Tigray’s capital, Mekele. It has also confirmed that the clip has not been doctored.

Although the timing of the apparent massacre was not possible to ascertain, a pro-Tigrayan blog reported Ethiopian soldiers had killed 100 civilians at the same monastery on January 5.

Experts who were sent the footage called on the Ethiopian government to launch an immediate investigation.

“This is disturbing footage to watch and I would expect the Federal Government to allow the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission full access to establish the facts and to ensure that there is proper accountability for these killings" said Dr Alex Vines, Africa Director at Chatham House.

Ethiopia’s state-run Human Rights Commission (EHRC) confirmed to The Telegraph that they were examining the shorter clip of the massacre that has circulated online.

The video emerged after The Telegraph published dozens of Tigrayan refugees’ accounts of killings, artillery bombardment and looting in Tigray in November.

For the video and more information, visit: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/19/should-have-finished-survivors-ethiopian-army-implicated-brutal/?WT.mc_id=e_DM1339119&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_FPM_New_ES&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_FPM_New_ES20210219&utm_campaign=DM1339119

Nagasaki survivor accepts Nobel Peace Prize, calls for nuclear free world

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Written by Super User

Category: Asia

Published: 11 December 2024

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TOKYO - A survivor of the 1945 Nagasaki nuclear blast has accepted this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of a group representing survivors of the US atomic bombings, and called for a world free from nuclear weapons.

Terumi Tanaka, 92, is one of the three co-chairs of Nihon Hidankyo, a group for those who lived through the US atomic bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and demanded “actions from governments“ to achieve a nuclear-free world.

Mr Tanaka accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on his organisation’s behalf at a formal ceremony in Oslo’s City Hall on Tuesday. He used his speech to shine a spotlight on abuses of nuclear power by aggressive nations engaged in conflicts around the world, pointing to Russia and Israel specifically.

“The nuclear superpower Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, and a cabinet member of Israel, in the midst of its unrelenting attacks on Gaza in Palestine, even spoke of the possible use of nuclear arms,” Mr Tanaka said. “I am infinitely saddened and angered that the nuclear taboo threatens to be broken.”

Calling for an end to the use of nuclear weapons, he said: “I hope that the belief that nuclear weapons cannot – and must not – coexist with humanity will take firm hold among citizens of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, and that this will become a force for change in the nuclear policies of their governments.”

Mr Tanaki recounted the pain and trauma he witnessed in 1945 in an interview with The Independent last month. He was just 13 when the 10,000lb atomic bomb “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, landing around 3.2km from his family home. The scenes from that day would be “imprinted on his brain” forever, he said.

“I was lying down reading a book and then suddenly there was just light everywhere. Everything was completely white around me, and I heard this huge sound. It was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life but of course, I could sense that something very dangerous was happening.”

The US bombings of the two Japanese cities on 6 and 9 August in 1945 killed 214,000 people, leading to Japan’s surrender and the end of the Second World War.

Mr Tanaka said he went to ground zero and walked around the city for days looking for five of his relatives.

“Three days later, you could still see hundreds of bodies everywhere, and the injured were just crouching in the shadows not receiving any care or attention at all. This is not a situation the human race should be living in. This is not what humans should be doing to each other.”

In his address in Oslo on Tuesday, he said that Nihon Hidankyo’s movement had undoubtedly played a major role in creating a “nuclear taboo” – cementing the idea that such weapons must never be used again.

“However, there still remain 12,000 nuclear warheads on Earth today, 4,000 of which are operationally deployed, ready for immediate launch,” he said.

Suicide bomber kills 24 in explosion at Pakistan train station

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Written by Super User

Category: Asia

Published: 09 November 2024

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By James Crisp

QUETTA, PAKISTAN - A suicide bomber killed at least 25 people and wounded at least 50 others in an explosion at a crowded railway station in Pakistan’s Balochistan province on Saturday.

Nearly 100 passengers were on the platform at about 8.45am local time for the Jaffar Express train to Peshawar from Quetta, which is the capital of the turbulent province.

Belongings, including bloodied clothes, were seen scattered across the devastated platform, which had its steel roof blown apart by the force of the blast. Six of the wounded were in a serious condition and three are in intensive care.

The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, which targeted soldiers. Fourteen soldiers, five civilians and six railway workers were killed.

Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, said the armed separatist group “will pay a very heavy price for it”.

He added his security forces were determined to stamp out “the menace of terrorism”.

Commissioner of the Quetta Division, Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat, confirmed the death toll, and that the incident was a suicide bombing. Railway authorities were told to suspend train services, he said, and appealed for blood donations to help the wounded.

He warned the public not to use the railway station because “in such incidents, there is a risk of twin attacks”.

“Right now, we have cordoned off the city and are conducting snap-checking,” he said, “Gatherings have been banned.”

Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran and is Pakistan’s largest province, has had many attacks from armed separatist groups in the poor but resource-rich region.

The BLA, which wants independence from Pakistan, is the biggest of several ethnic groups fighting the Government, which it accuses of exploiting its oil and gas reserves.

In August, the banned BLA claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks that killed 39 people. It is designated a terrorist group by the UK and the US.

Train services between Quetta and Peshawar were restored on Oct 11 after they were suspended for more than a month and a half when a key railway bridge was destroyed by the BLA.

Pakistan has seen an increase in terrorist attacks this year. Last week, a bomb blast near a school and hospital in Balochistan’s Mastung district killed eight people, including five children.

Previous attacks have targeted energy projects with foreign, mostly Chinese, financing because the terrorists believe residents don’t benefit from the profits.

The government’s military operation to suppress the rebellion has led to accusations of human rights abuses, including torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

“Since the beginning of 2024, we’ve really seen a surge of violence in Balochistan. So many attacks on security forces,” journalist Saadullah Akhter, who witnessed the aftermath of the attack, told Al Jazeera.

“But this is the first time that the centre of Quetta has been targeted and it is very shocking to many people.”