We Talked to Survivors of Ethiopia’s Brutal Civil War
“They were sent to cleanse the Amhara ethnicity,” said a man whose brother and the brother’s entire family were murdered in what’s known as the Chenna massacre.
A member of the Fano militia accused of various human rights violations stands in the town of Zarima in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, September 2021. (Photograph by Zachary Caldwell)
After 13 months of brutal war between the Ethiopian military and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a rebel group in the country’s north, Tigrayan forces now say they’ve withdrawn from neighboring regions. This marks a turning point in the country’s ongoing civil war—perhaps the first step toward a ceasefire.What started in 2020 as a political spat between the federal government and a regional political party morphed into a full-scale ethnic conflict. Thousands have been killed, millions are displaced, and hundreds of thousands are facing famine in the growing humanitarian crisis. If the conflict continues as is, it threatens to destabilize the entire Horn of Africa region.
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People attend a funeral in Debark in the Amhara region of Ethiopia for volunteer militia members killed in the fighting with Tigrayan defense forces. Photograph by Zachary Caldwell.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had once been celebrated as a peacemaker, earning the Nobel Prize for ending the nation’s long-running war with neighboring Eritrea. Now, Ahmed stands accused of genocide, overseeing a period of ethnic violence that has pitted civilians against each other. International journalists have struggled since the war began to document the violence unfolding in the country. After nearly a year of petitioning Ahmed’s government, VICE News correspondent and Nairobi Bureau Chief Julia Steers and producer Amel Guettatfi finally gained access.
Volunteer militia members killed while fighting with Tigrayan rebels being buried in the town of Debark. Photograph by Zachary Caldwell.
Steers spoke with Jember Birle, a survivor of a massacre that fell upon his village of Chenna, near the Tigray border. Birle was able to escape the violence when the town was surrounded, but many of his family members did not—his brother and his brother’s entire family were murdered.When asked about finding his family members’ bodies, Birle replied in Amharic, “They were shot in the head. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I couldn’t forget my brother and my people.” VICE was the first to report this specific and important detail about the nature of the killings, and it was recently backed up by an HRW report on summary executions in the same town.Walking through an open field where Tigrayan forces first descended on the village, he points around to the houses, saying, “This house, they’re dead. That house, they’re dead. A priest died over there. Down there, he’s dead.” And then, Birle tells Steers, “They were sent to cleanse the Amhara ethnicity.” Official reports from the Ethiopian government say at least 200 civilians were killed in what’s become known as the “Chenna massacre.”
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But violence perpetrated against civilians has come from both sides, the brunt of it affecting everyday Tigrayans. Just a few miles from the front lines, there’s evidence that a notoriously violent government-backed militia called the Fano targeted civilians, raping and massacring Tigrayans. Listen to this rare glimpse at a country on the brink on the latest episode of Vice News Reports, wherever you get your podcasts: Google Podcasts, Spotify, Apple.
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