Amnesty reports widespread rapes ‘with impunity’ in Tigray

Dozens of women said they had been subjected to sexual violence

Ethiopian government soldiers ride in the back of a truck on a road near Agula, north of Mekele, in the Tigray region (AP)

Ethiopian soldiers and allied forces are responsible for widespread sexual violence against women and girls in the country’s Tigray conflict, a new report published by Amnesty International has said.

More than 1,200 cases of sexual assault against women were documented by health centres in Tigray between February and April, the research said.

However the human rights group said that these numbers were likely to be a “small fraction” of the reality as many health facilities have been looted and destroyed during the nine-month conflict.

In the report, published on Wednesday, a dozen women said they were held for days or weeks and then raped multiple times. Another group of women said they were raped in front of family members.

Donatella Rovera, who authored the piece of work, said: "All of these forces from the very beginning, everywhere, and for a long period of time felt it was perfectly ok with them to perpetrate these crimes because they clearly felt they could do so with impunity, nothing holding them back.”

Amnesty has not received allegations against Tigray forces, who regained control of much of the Tigray region in late June and have since crossed into the Amhara and Afar regions.

While Ethiopian government and allied forces retreated from much of Tigray in June, some remain in western Tigray.

The conflict was sparked in November when Prime minister Abiy Ahmed ordered troops into the region after a political fallout with the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF). Since then thousands of people have been displaced sparking a refugee crisis in neighbouring Sudan.

The Amnesty report calls for accountability for the sexual violence during the conflict, saying rape and sexual slavery constitute war crimes.

Many women in Tigray now live with the physical and mental effects of the assaults including HIV infections and continued bleeding, the report said.

Ethiopia's government has not responded to the report, Rovera confirmed.

Ethiopia's government has not allowed human rights researchers into the Tigray region, though a joint investigation into alleged atrocities is underway by the United Nations human rights office and the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.

Additional reporting by AP