Dear President Biden,
I would first of all like to thank you for your continued engagement to promote peace and human rights across the world, including in Ethiopia. I am particularly grateful for the continued efforts of your administration in attempting to resolve the ongoing genocidal war on the people of Tigray through dialogue and diplomacy.
I am aware that the US has taken encouraging and practical steps including appointing special envoys to the region, imposing visa restrictions, and establishing a framework for further sanctions through an Executive Order. It is also in this regard that I am writing to you today to ask your administration to reconsider the decision to no longer pursue a determination of whether genocide has been committed against the Tigrayan people. While I appreciate the importance of the ongoing work to mediate a political resolution to the crisis in Tigray, I believe not pursuing the determination undermines the commitment made by your administration to center human rights in US foreign policy.
The civil war has been characterized by horrific atrocities against the civilian population of Tigray by the allied Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara forces. These acts have been documented by reputable human rights organizations and journalists are particularly notable for being systematic, on an unprecedented scale, and accompanied by rhetoric establishing intention to commit genocide.
These attacks have included scores of massacres, indiscriminate shelling and drone strikes. It has also been marked with the use of rape as a weapon of war on an industrial scale, at times rendering women infertile and accompanied by genocidal declarations.
In addition, the entire population of Tigray has been denied access to basic essential services and in conjunction with the systematic looting and destruction of vital infrastructures including health, education, agriculture, and economic systems.
Western Tigray, which remains sealed off from the international community and under unconstitutional occupation by Amhara and Eritrean forces, ethnic cleansing continues to take place. Dozens of tortured and brutally murdered bodies arrived at end of Tekeze river streaming from Western Tigray.
It is in light of this context that I appeal to your administration to recognize the systematic efforts to annihilate the Tigrayan ethnic community in Ethiopia.
A determination of genocide at this moment is one that will have an immediate real-world impact in terms of engaging mechanisms that would save the lives of millions of Tigrayans. Recognizing these atrocities as genocide will also support ongoing efforts to engender peace and ensure accountability for grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws. It is also the only mechanism by which the world can mitigate further fracture & protracted violence threatening to irreparably rupture the social fabric in Ethiopia.
