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Ethiopian Orthodox Church Patriarch Blasts Tigray 'Genocide'

Associated Press

   The head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in his first public comments
   on the war in the country's Tigray region is sharply criticizing
   Ethiopia's actions, saying he believes it is genocide: "They want to
   destroy the people of Tigray."

   In a video shot last month on a mobile phone and carried out of
   Ethiopia, the elderly Patriarch Abune Mathias addresses the church's
   scores of millions of followers and the international community, saying
   his previous attempts to speak out were blocked. He is ethnic Tigrayan.

   The video comes as the conflict in Tigray marks six months. Thousands
   of people have been killed in the fighting between Ethiopian and allied
   forces and Tigray ones, the result of a political struggle that turned
   deadly in November. Dozens of witnesses have told the AP that civilians
   are targeted.

   "I am not clear why they want to declare genocide on the people of
   Tigray," Abune Mathias says, speaking in Amharic and listing alleged
   atrocities including the destruction of churches, massacres, forced
   starvation and looting. "It is not the fault of the Tigray people. The
   whole world should know it."

   He calls for strength, adding that "this bad season might pass away."
   And he urges the world to act.

   The comments are a striking denunciation from someone so senior inside
   Ethiopia, where state media reflect the government's narrative and both
   independent journalists and Tigrayans have been intimidated and
   harassed. The video also comes as Ethiopia, facing multiple crises of
   sometimes deadly ethnic tensions, faces a national election on June 5.

   Dennis Wadley, who runs the U.S.-based Bridges of Hope organization and
   has been a friend of the church leader for several years, told the AP
   he shot the video in an impulsive moment while visiting him last month
   in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.

   "I just pulled out my iPhone and said if you want to get the word out,
   let's do it," Wadley said on Friday after arriving in the U.S. "He just
   poured out his heart. ... It is so sad. I actually hugged him; I never
   did that before."

   A church official reached on Friday confirmed the video and the
   interest of Abune Mathias in making it public. The church patriarch
   serves alongside a recently returned exile, Abune Merkorios.

   "I have said a lot of things, but no one allows the message to be
   shared. Rather, it is being stifled and censored," Abune Mathias says
   in the video.

   "Many barbarisms have been conducted" these days all over Ethiopia, he
   says, but "what is happening in Tigray is of the highest brutality and
   cruelty."

   God will judge everything, he adds.

   Ethiopia's government says it is "deeply dismayed" by the deaths of
   civilians, blames the former Tigray leaders and claims normality is
   returning in the region of some 6 million people. It has denied
   widespread profiling and targeting of Tigrayans.

   But witnesses have told the AP about seeing bodies strewn on the ground
   on communities, Tigrayans rounded up and expelled and women raped by
   Ethiopian and allied forces including those from neighboring Eritrea.
   Others have described family members and colleagues including priests
   being swept up and detained, often without charge.

   Churches have been the scenes of massacres -- one deacon in Axum has
   told the AP he believes some 800 people were killed in a November
   weekend at the church and around the city -- [1]and of mass graves.

   "People were dropped over the ground like leaves," the patriarch says
   of Axum, Ethiopia's holiest city.

   Abune Mathias, born in 1942, has been outspoken in the past. In 1980,
   he became the first leader of the church to denounce the rule of
   Ethiopia's communist regime "and was forced to live abroad for more
   than thirty years," according to the United Nations refugee agency.

References

   1. https://apnews.com/article/witnesses-recall-massacre-axum-ethiopia-fa1b531fea069aed6768409bd1d20bfa