Ethnic cleansing of Tigrayans may prolong Ethiopia’s civil war

THE LUCKY ones were frogmarched onto buses and driven across the river. The less fortunate were slung into detention camps and left there to rot. Others were murdered in the streets or hacked to death as they cowered in their homes. “We don’t need a single one of them any more,” a militiaman told a foreign researcher last year. “They cannot be trusted.”Since the start of Ethiopia’s bloody civil war 18 months ago, there have been frequent allegations of ethnic cleansing targeting people from the northern region of Tigray. Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, first levelled this charge more than a year ago, infuriating the government of Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, which strongly denied it. Because the government has imposed a tight blockade of the region, it has been hard to assess the claims of atrocities. But some horrifying hints have emerged, such as the corpses with their hands bound that have washed up on river banks in Sudan.