Ethiopia: A video shows the execution of civilians by Amhara soldiers and militiamen

An Amhara special forces fighter in Humera, on Ethiopia's border with Eritrea, on November 22, 2020. (Illustrative image) AFP - EDUARDO SOTERAS

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

According to Ethiopian authorities, this particularly gruesome video was shot in late February in the area where the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is located.

It concerns the killing of Tigrayan civilians by soldiers of the federal army and Amhara militiamen.

Advertising

Read more

It is a sequence of five minutes, particularly appalling.

We see a crowd of armed soldiers and civilians, others unarmed, speaking Amharic and gathered around a pyre made of wood and straw.

And we see tied men being simply thrown into the fire, one of them obviously still alive, under the mockery and insults of the crowd.

The circulation of this video, from Friday, caused a wave of disgust, both in the diaspora and in the country.

So much so that the government itself immediately qualified the scene 

 " committed against " 

 ", he said.

He also located the scene of the crime: a village in the sensitive region of Benishangul-Gumuz, in the west of the country, between the capital

.

Several foreign governments have also expressed their horror at this video.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has provided its own details: the crime allegedly took place on February 24, in retaliation for a deadly ambush set up against soldiers the day before.

According to her, the cremated victims would have been Tigrayans first shot on the pretext that they were assailants.

Eight in all, plus one more who was actually not dead when he was thrown into the fire.

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• Ethiopia