Witnesses in Ethiopia have said that more than 400 people, mainly women and children of ethnic Amhara, were killed. They blamed the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), a claim denied by the latter.
The OLA accused government forces of conducting the massacre and called for international investigation.
It is one of the deadliest such attacks in recent memory as ethnic tensions continue in Africa’s second-most populous country.
Residents said the local security didn’t enter the area until more troops arrived as a usual scenario. Regional management is widely questioned for turning a blind eye to the killings.
The Ethiopian government has fallen in its responsibility to protect its citizens. One survivor told state-run regional outlet Amhara Media Corporation that “no one came to our rescue”.
“They [the attackers] have gone, and bodies are being picked up. So far, 300 [bodies] have been collected,” said the survivor. “But it is still early. There are many others whose whereabouts we do not know.”
It’s known that a large number of people were killed in a similar attack on welega on June 19, 2022. According to the locals, more than 1500 civilians were slain (government puts the number only 338). Nobody has been obtained to justice over any of these multitude slayings of Amharas.
“The continuous (genocide) of Amhara has continued on our people living in Qelem Wollega zone Hawa Gelan [Robit Gebeya] Woreda Mechara Lemlem Kebele village 20,” said Christian Tadele Tsegaye, MP of the House of People’s Representatives of Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is mired in a horrible civil war taking the hallmarks of (genocide), war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and removal.
Some Amhara activists accuse Ahmed of enraging the awful cycle of hate politics deployed against their ethnic group, which is presently permeating the country’s social, political, and cultural aspects.
The local Amhara community desperately seeks to be relocated before another round of mass killings happens.
Amhara activists say that they are now believed to be migrants in different regional states and homesteaders’ Neftegna’ in their own country.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) restated calls for “an urgent reinforcement of government security forces to prevent further civilian deaths.”
UN rights Chief Michelle Bachelet has called on Ethiopian officials to conduct a “quick, fair and thorough” investigation into the toll attack.
All the racial groups are trying to find a getaway enemy to blame (conspiracy theory) and turning away their eyes to the killings, The slaughter of babies just weeks old, children who can walk, girls and pregnant women, older people and poor farmers who work on the land to make a living. None of these people are combatants. In the past four years, several thousands of mainly Amhara residents, regardless of religion, have been massacred, dehumanized, and tens of thousands displaced and homeless.
The mass murder statistics concern how large the numbers are, including group graves, fall to give the real sense of those horrors, psychic numbing both by the global community and the Ethiopian government.
