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Blockades and security restrictions on movement, lack of relief aid, makes it impossible for the Diocese of Adigrat to reach people affected by war
By La Croix International staff | Ethiopia
The Catholic diocese in Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region has lamented that it is unable and ill-equipped to overcome obstacles to stop thousands of people from dying every day in what it describes as an unprecedented crisis.
The humanitarian situation in Tigray is worsening day by day. Millions of children suffer from severe malnutrition, just as many people are starving, including internally displaced persons. Everywhere disease and death, especially children, the elderly, people at high risk due to chronic diseases and COVID-19, according to the Diocesan Catholic Secretariat of Adigrat (ADCS).
From the beginning of November 2020 until mid-June 2021, the ADCS and various religious congregations operating under the eparchy, contributed to saving lives affected by the war.
However, due to multiple constraints, including security restrictions on movement and access, the cash withdrawal limit and the shortage of basic supplies in the market, humanitarian aid has been limited to the cities and areas around the main roads.
The situation is further aggravated by the blockade of land and air transport, Fides reported.
"Like other humanitarian organizations, we have not been able to continue responding to emergencies, reach people affected by war and alleviate their suffering", said diocesan director Father Abba Abraha Hagos.
It is an "unprecedented humanitarian crisis," with each passing day, each passing hour, thousands of innocent victims lose their lives in this ongoing war, accompanied by indiscriminate air strikes with fighters, helicopters and drones, he said.
Ethnic-based attacks and massacres of civilians, destruction of homes and displacement of millions of people, rampant gender-based violence, which has destroyed the families and lives of women and girls, devastation of the economy, institutions and social infrastructure, destruction of cultural and religious heritages. Millions of people are psychologically destroyed, terrified, said Father Hagos.
"The entire population has been deprived of all the fundamental rights of every human being: the right to live with dignity, the right to security, education, food, water, to receive humanitarian assistance, etc. The daily reality of the country is of suffering, death, lack of medicines for preventable diseases. Any further delay will end in irreparable disaster for human lives and the social fabric of an entire generation", according to Father Hagos.
The ADCS said that the Catholic Diocese of Adigrat, which covers the whole of Tigray, is immersed in an extremely alarming crisis that needs an urgent response.
"We would like to invite all our partners and other humanitarian aid organizations to continue to urge and lobby international communities, the United Nations, humanitarian rights organizations, international government agencies and international diplomacy, to exert pressure for dialogue policy for peace and for unrestricted access to humanitarian aid, basic services and supplies, which are a natural right for human beings," it said in a statement.
Ethnic-cleansing, lack of food as weapon to kill people
Bishop Tesfaselassie Medhin of Adigrat in Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region has renewed his call for an immediate peaceful solution to the "ethnic-cleansing" which started as a political row one year ago in the second most populous nation in Africa.
International human rights groups have stated that Ethiopian officials and allied militia fighters are engaged in a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, the civil war-torn northern region in Ethiopia, after the country's prime minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali, started a surprise military raid in November 2020.
Abiy Ahmed launched an attack on the Tigray People's Liberation Front, former rulers of the semi-autonomous region and which ruled Ethiopia for almost three decades until he assumed power in 2018. The prime minister accused the Tigray People's Liberation Front of seizing the national army base in Mekele, the regional capital.
Tigrayans are only a small minority of about 5 percent in a country of 109 million.
The U.N. human rights office says that in the past two weeks alone at least 108 civilians have been killed and many more injured in several air strikes allegedly carried out by the Ethiopian air force in the country's northern Tigray region.
The United Nations has also reported that tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million people have been displaced but no one knows exactly how many civilians have perished in the conflict.
Reports put the death toll in the 13-month war at thousands of civilians with 400,000 facing famine conditions in Tigray and 9.4 million people needing food in the northern region.
"Unfortunately it is all true, come and see for yourselves", a member of the local Church of Ethiopian Tigray told Fides.
"There are massacres of innocent people massacred only because of their ethnicity, and multitudes who are literally dying of hunger: humanitarian corridors must be opened immediately to help those who are now exhausted," said the Church member, who for security reasons requested anonymity.
"The lack of food has become the weapon with which to make people die and not feed them. Generations of young people have been completely destroyed. We are talking about 6-7 million people who suffer from this unprecedented situation of violence".
According to a recent report by the UN High Commission for Human Rights, war and other crimes against humanity have been conducted by both sides in the yearlong bloody civil war.
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