Members of the Ethiopian community take part in a protest calling for the cessation of drone strikes on civilian populations in the Amhara region of Ethiopia during a protest at the White House on Dec. 17, 2023 in Washington.J. Countess/Getty Images
On a late January morning, as the people of Merawi were preparing their white robes and shawls for the monthly St. Mary’s religious procession, they heard the distant sound of gunfire near their town hall.
The Ethiopian army, which had occupied the town in the country’s Amhara region for months, was under attack by Amhara militia fighters. But when the shooting was over, a much more horrific atrocity would follow: a revenge massacre by Ethiopian soldiers, killing as many as 100 civilians, according to four witnesses who spoke to The Globe and Mail.
Many of the victims begged for mercy, telling the soldiers that it was the eve of a holy day, but they were rounded up and gunned down, the witnesses said. More than 30 of the dead were buried on the grounds of St. Mary’s church itself, they said.
The deadly violence in Amhara region, in northwestern Ethiopia, is just the latest battle between the central government and one of its restive regions. Months after the November, 2022, peace agreement that ended the two-year war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the country’s government found itself facing another revolt, this time in Amhara. It has responded with the same heavy-handed military tactics that led to a massive death toll in Tigray.
The crackdown in Amhara has often been brutal. Indiscriminate drone strikes have killed scores of civilians, and there have been multiple reports of extrajudicial killings by the Ethiopian army.
Amnesty International, in a report this week, said it had evidence that Ethiopian soldiers had executed six civilians last August in Amhara’s capital, Bahir Dar, and executed another six men in the same city in October.
“In Ethiopia, systemic impunity continues to embolden perpetrators of crimes in the absence of credible justice and accountability for serious abuses,” Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty’s director for East and Southern Africa, said in a statement this week.
The Amhara militia, known as Fano, was previously allied with the Ethiopian military and fought alongside it during the Tigray war. Displeased by their exclusion from the Tigray peace negotiations and worried by the possibility of losing disputed territories, the Fano militia defied federal government orders to disband in April last year. Clashes broke out when soldiers were sent to disarm the militants by force.
In August, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared a state of emergency in the region and ordered federal troops to crush the revolt.
Seven months later, the fighting persists and the state of emergency has been extended. Having extracted himself from a quagmire in Tigray, Mr. Abiy now risks creating another in Amhara. The Fano rebels are popular among the Amhara people – Ethiopia’s second-largest ethnic group, accounting for about a quarter of the country’s 120 million people – and there is growing anger over the military’s tactics in the region.
Merawi, a town of 35,000 people about 35 kilometres south of the regional capital, was among a series of towns in Amhara that were captured by Fano militia last year and later recaptured by the army. When the rebels attacked an army encampment at Merawi’s town hall on Jan. 29, the federal soldiers were determined to take revenge, the four witnesses who spoke to The Globe said.
Information from Merawi is difficult to obtain. There are military roadblocks on the highways and an internet shutdown in the region, and many people are afraid of reprisals if they speak out. The witnesses related their chilling accounts of the Merawi massacre by phone. The Globe is not identifying them by their full names, because they fear for their safety.
They told The Globe that Ethiopian soldiers killed 50 to 100 people during the rampage, which they said began in the afternoon of Jan. 29 and continued through the night and the next morning. They based this estimate on the number of people they personally helped to bury, and their counting of the dead on the town’s streets.
One witness, a monk, said he saw a dozen Ethiopian soldiers go into a bar and drag out 18 young labourers, some of them in work uniforms. He said the soldiers beat the men, accused them of helping the Fano rebels, lined them up, forced them to kneel, and executed them. One of the soldiers, he said, was carrying a bottle of home-brewed alcohol from the bar.
Others said they saw dozens of men and boys pulled from their homes and shot dead by soldiers in the streets. One witness, a driver named Berihun, said he counted at least 50 bodies on a single street, including his own brother. The soldiers stole the victims’ cellphones and money, accusing them of spying for Fano, he said.
Another witness, Deneke, said he saw people carrying 17 bodies from the street for burial. He and another witness, a civil servant named Birhanu, said the bodies were difficult to identify because the soldiers had shot the victims in their faces. “It was the worst thing I ever experienced in my life,” Birhanu said. “You only imagine this sort of thing in horror movies.”
He said the residents buried 33 people at St. Mary’s church, but that those were only the bodies found near the church. There were mass burials in other sites in the town, while some bodies were not collected because the soldiers forbade it, he said.
A 30-second video clip emerged on social media last week, showing at least 20 bodies of men in civilian clothes strewn over a stretch of about 250 metres of paved road. The Globe geolocated the footage to a business district in Merawi along the A3 highway, which bisects the town.
Analysis of the graphic footage showed that it is consistent with the witness accounts. Dried blood appeared to originate from the heads of the dead bodies, suggesting gunshot wounds.
The state-backed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a statement that it had gathered the names of 45 residents of Merawi killed by Ethiopian soldiers. “It can be assumed that the number of victims is even higher,” it added.
Britain, the United States and the European Union are calling for an investigation of the killings. “Reported killings of civilians in Merawi are disturbing, and follow reports of other violations,” the British embassy in Ethiopia said in a social media post. “Civilians should never be targets.”
Amnesty International said it had received allegations that many civilians were killed in Merawi. “It is alarming that the [Ethiopian National Defense Forces] continue committing extrajudicial executions … emboldened by impunity for previous atrocities,” Amnesty campaigner Suad Nur told The Globe.
Ethiopian government spokesman Legesse Tulu said the soldiers had acted in self defense and never targeted any civilians.
In a social media post, Daniel Kibret, an influential adviser to Mr. Abiy, the Prime Minister, praised the “amazing” army operations in the Amhara region and accused the Fano rebels of opposing peace. Urging the soldiers on, he cited a Biblical quotation from King David: “Thrash the forces of evil and wickedness.”
Tewodrose Tirfe, chairman of the U.S.-based Amhara Association of America, told The Globe that Mr. Kibret was “misusing religious text” as a form of hate speech to justify killings in the region. A spokesperson for Mr. Abiy did not respond to questions from The Globe about Mr. Kibret’s post.
Weeks after the massacre, most of Merawi’s businesses are still closed. The town is quiet. Birhanu, the civil servant, said local residents are still afraid to go out because Ethiopian soldiers remain there.
With a report from Geoffrey York in Johannesburg