Ethiopia: 16-year-old Eritrean soldier trapped in Tigrayan rebellion
An abandoned TPLF tank south of Mehoni, Tigray, Ethiopia.
(illustrative image) EDUARDO SOTERAS AFP / Archivos
Text by: Léonard Vincent Follow
3 min
In Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed admitted after months of denials the involvement of the Eritrean army in the fighting in Tigray against the TPLF.
Today, the veil begins to lift on the reality of Asmara's soldiers, including minors, sent to fight in Ethiopia.
Like the story of Rodanim, a high school student forcibly enlisted and now a prisoner of the Tigrayan rebellion.
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It was with amazement that Rozit Yemane found the trace of his little brother.
She was watching TPLF television's Dimtsi Weyane news on March 23 when
the news anchor named Rodanim Yemane
among Eritrean prisoners of war captured in the fighting.
Since her Swedish exile, she now tells the story of the youngest in her family to RFI: Rodanim had just celebrated his 16th birthday in November;
he was still a high school student, in eighth grade.
On December 15, he was forcibly recruited by the army in front of his home in his neighborhood of Asmara, during a "
giffa
", these roundups of conscripts regularly organized by the Eritrean regime.
Then he was sent to the Himbirti training camp, then to the Kormenae barracks, near Barentu.
At the end of February, after maintaining a telephone connection with him, his family lost contact.
Rodanim is therefore now a prisoner of the TPLF, somewhere in the mountains of Tigray.
According to information disseminated by Dimtsi Weyane, Rodanim said today that his mission, he believed, was to "
capture Debretsion
" Gebremichael, the leader of the rebellion.
"
It's horrible and heartbreaking
," laments his sister Rozit.
They armed him and forced him to fight.
Distraught, she says she hopes the Red Cross can take care of her case.
The conscription of child soldiers by the Eritrean regime "
is illegal, but not new
," explains the director of the NGO Human Rights Concern-Eritrea, Elizabeth Chyrum.
However, sending 16-year-olds into a deadly battle is one more step in child abuse,
she says.
This sets a precedent that even Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki had not dared to openly set in the past.
"
In 2015,
a commission of inquiry
of the UN Human Rights Council had already denounced the enlistment of minor conscripts in the Eritrean army.
All high school students in the country must indeed spend their last year of studies at the Sawa camp, a huge military complex not far from the Sudanese border, after which they are kept in the army or sent to improve their skills in a technological institute, and
maintained under the orders of the Ministry of Defense
for an indefinite period.
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Eritrea
Ethiopia