Former foreign minister of Ethiopia, Seyoum Mesfin and two other senior TPLF officials were killed, the Ethiopian defense forces said in its latest announcement released this evening.
The Ethiopian National Defense Force arrested the founding member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Sebahat Nega, along with seven other individuals, including two colonels, who had defected from the national army.
Just a few months into the ascendance of the reformists led by Abiy Ahmed (PhD), the killing of ethnic Gamos and Wolaitas in Burayu and the subsequent mass exodus of people - reminiscent of the Rwandan genocide – between September 14 and 16, 2018 shocked Ethiopians.
Localized fighting and insecurity continues in rural parts of Tigray, though humanitarian workers have been able to access areas that were so far inaccessible in Tirgay region, particularly in cities, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
The war in Tigray following PM Abiy Ahmed’s announcement of an attack on the Northern Command of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) on November 4, 2020, let the genie out of the bottle.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said it discovered crimes were committed against humanity by individuals and groups who “directly participated” in the violence that swept through Oromia region following the assassination of Oromo musical idol –Hachalu Hundessa.
The ethnonationalist movements of the 1960s emerged winners out of a multitude of political orientations and framings of the Ethiopian state that have significantly affected the struggles to democratization to date.
The National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced that the sixth national elections will be held countrywide except in Tigray region on June 5, 2021, despite looming security concerns. It is to be recalled that the Board postponed the elections from late 2020 because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) called for the full control of federal security forces in Metekel Zone of the Benishangul-Gumuz region because the security situation is beyond the region’s capacity to control.