Gruesome Evidence Points to TPLF’s Atrocities in Welkait

wendimagegn — April 20, 2022 

ADDIS ABABA – The objective of terrorist TPLF’s atrocities against ethnic-Amharas in Welkait, Tegede, Telemt and Humera was to eliminate their entire identity, so said Ethiopian–American journalist Betty Sheba Tekeste.

In her interview with Pacifica Radio’s Ann Garrison, Betty stated that she, with other international photographer Jemal Countess, went to the area and visited some of the torture camps and the cliffs at the area where the ethnic-Amharas were taken to be forced by the TPLF to denounce their ethnicity and thrown off cliffs if they did not.

As to her, the primary targets for these types of killings and torture were elders, mostly men, teachers, historians, landowners, and basically those who can tell the cultural history of Welkait and the people and their culture, because the objective was to eliminate their entire identity and to replace it with a new identity and force the people to accept that they are now Tigrayans.

She also noted that, if you are not accepting of this, then you get thrown off the side of the cliff and killed.

She indicated that: “At first when they said “concentration camps,” I expected to see prisons, and what we saw were holes in the ground which were lined up by stone which looked like walls to like different cells of a prison which were really narrow and deep.”

And the way they described it is there would be ladders thrown down and then people would be brought up, the journalist said, adding that so it was almost like a torture camps where they would try to break you and you would be kept in there and you would be tortured, they would pluck people’s nails off.

As to her, there was descriptions of like these worms that were inside of these caves that would go into your skin, you would be taken out and beat and then put back and then taken out again. And it was more of a breaking process until you would accept the authority of commanders which was a TPLF at the time.

She also stated that, one of the gentlemen Aba Fetanu Gebriye who was, imprisoned for 11 years in total at different time frames clearly described that he would be asked to join the TPLF and he said “I am Ethiopian and why would I do that? What does this have to do with me? And I am from Welkait and I am Amhara.” That was one of the reasons he was imprisoned, she added.

“All of this corresponds with the other stories from the gentleman who showed us he was in prison for a year and seven months in Dejena.” The gentleman said that, ‘they [officials of the TPLF] would take people out and take them to the side of the cliffs and threaten them that if they did not accept that they are Tigrayan and to speak in Tigrinya. If they held on to their Amhara ethnic identity or they said anything otherwise then they would be thrown off, as to the man.

For instance, he described 74 people that he knew personally that were in and out of that specific torture whole that he was in for the year and seven months. And out of the 74 people, 32 made it alive the remaining 42 died.

BY ABDUREZAK MOHAMMED

THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 20 APRIL 2022