Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Report on Wolkait area biased, tendentious: Ethiopian CSO in U.S.

Addis Ababa, April 28, 2022 (FBC) – Ethiopian Civil Society Organizations and prominent individuals in the U.S. have issued a statement that slams Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Report on Wolkait Region of Ethiopia as biased and tendentious. The full statement and respective petitions signed by the organizations and individuals reads as follows:

The civil societies affirmed that the findings and recommendations of the report are fraught with inconsistencies and biases and lack methodological rigor and objectivity.

“Thanks to the work of a team of scientists in Gondar University, however, TPLF’s atrocities have recently come to light for the world to see. This team of scientists has reported that the remains of fifty-nine thousand Amhara victims have been discovered in several mass graves in Wolkait. Yet, the joint report does not reference the team’s report, nor have its authors bothered to consult the team about these findings,”

In rare instances, the report begrudgingly acknowledges that the TPLF security forces abused the rights of Amharas “over many years.” Yet, it makes absolutely no effort to describe in any detail the gravity of these abuses as it has done on behalf of members of the Tigray community residing in Wolkait.

While the report is quick to call for the demobilization of Amhara security forces, there is no similar call for the demobilization of thousands of militia the TPLF has mobilized to wage war and wreak havoc in the Amhara and Afar regions, they said.

“Further, the joint report’s recommendation that calls for a peacekeeping force to be deployed to the region strikes us as especially egregious as it appears to be intended to make it easier for the TPLF to gain direct access to its foreign backers – regional and international. Not only will such a move constitute a blatant violation of the country’s sovereignty but also has the potential to prolong rather than to defuse the tension in the region.”

“Particularly unpersuasive and disconcerting about the report is that its findings and recommendations are based on an egregiously flawed research methodology. As the report itself makes clear, its findings are based on information and data largely gathered by sending “five separate research missions” to interview Tigrean refugees in the Sudan. In fact, many of these so-called refugees are the very same individuals who fled the country after participating in the gruesome Mai–Kadra massacre,” the statement indicates.

“We would be too credulous to believe that the very perpetrators of such a horrendous crime would come forward to tell the truth about their own involvement or what really happened in Wolkait. On the contrary, it is reasonable to assume that they would prevaricate or shade the truth in order to avoid their own accountability for the crime of mass murder they committed in Mai-Kadra.”

The statement underscored that the associations find the joint report of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch simply one sided, tendentious, bereft of methodological rigor, and, therefore, unacceptable.