who will be our witness? the tigray genocide

who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our witness? who will be our who will be our witness? witness? the tigray genocide

since nov 3 2020, 600,000 tigrayans have been killed There is no greater conflict or humanitarian crisis the world today more devastating than the Tigray Genocide.

As the United States (and majority of the western world) were anticipating the results of the 2020 election, Ethiopia began what would be a two year assault on Tigray. For the majority of this time, Tigray has been in a communications blackout. It's difficult to truly measure the loss of life, earth, and culture in Tigray given the systematic suppression of information by the Ethiopian regime.

The Ethiopian government additionally restricted humanitarian aid such as fuel, medicine, and food to enter Tigray. In Oct 2022, 89% of Tigray’s population was food insecure and 29% of children under five are acutely malnourished. Over 80% of the health infrastructure has been destroyed.

this is not the first time tigray has seen genocide Ethiopia is an empire and has repeatedly reinstated its imperial rule through the use of famine and extrajudicial killings. 3 generations have now been victim to carpet bombing as a form of retaliation for rebelling against imperial rule.

1943

At the request of Emperor Haile Selassie, the British Army bombed Tigray as retribution for the first Woyane Revolution. The bombing continued for a month. 54 bombs were dropped in one day.

At the same time, Tigrayan's land was confiscated and "redistributed".

A drought devastated Tigray and Wollo. Rather than send food and aid, Selassie suppressed all information regarding starvation and famine in the region.

1973

International aid organizations and other governments ignored the death of 200,000 Tigrayans for the sake of maintaining a positive relationship with the Ethiopian Empire. Tigrayans were not the only ones to suffer; Selassie is also well remembered for the subjugation of the Oromo people.

The same year of the '73 famine, Selassie spent $35 million dollars celebrating his 80th birthday.

1975 1977

1983 1984

Under the Derg Regime, state sponsored violence was used consistently to enact assimilation under the military government. The Red Terror saw the death of 500,000 people. Elders in Tigray recall Derg members walking through the streets with their pants stained red to their knees, as if they walked through rivers of blood.

Hunger was once again a weapon of war in 1983. To punish counter-insurgencies by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the Derg withheld food supplies to northern Ethiopia, where multiple conflicts were ongoing.

8 million people across Ethiopia were affected by the '84 famine. 1,200,000 people died - the majority of them in Tigray.

Continued land theft, resettlement, and Red Terror policies at this time displaced 600,000 people and killed an additional 150,000 people.

Abiy and Mengistu share more than a penchant for enforced unity and the targeting and elimination of those who hold different political perspectives. They share the legacy of bombing Tigray, starving its people, and producing generations of refugees fleeing across the border to Sudan: the flight of tens of thousands of Tigrayans has revived Um Raquba, the same refugee camp in eastern Sudan that their parents and grandparents inhabited decades earlier during the devastating famine in the mid1980s. It is not a coincidence that the Ethiopian state invokes unity while committing genocide. The genocide in Tigray cannot be divorced from a wider ongoing crisis at the heart of the Ethiopian state.

an incomplete list of the violences tigray has faced Extrajudicial murders Massacres Destruction of historic and culturally significant sites Gender/sexual based violence Occupation of Western Tigray Carpet bombing Use of chemical weapons Famine Communications blackout Humanitarian aid blockade Destruction of more than 80% of healthcare infrastructure Burning of nearly 70% of Tigray's crops, livestock, and agriculture equipment Theft of homes and businesses Destruction of indigenous communities Concentration camps filled with political prisoners

Ethiopia and eritrea are Ethiopia and eritrea are Ethiopia and eritrea are guilty of genocide Ethiopia and eritrea are guilty of genocide Ethiopia and eritrea are guilty of genocide Ethiopia and eritrea are guilty of genocide Ethiopia and eritrea are guilty of genocide Ethiopia and eritrea are guilty of genocide Ethiopia and eritrea are guilty of genocide Ethiopia and eritrea are guilty of genocide

not the first but it will be the last not the first but it will be the last not the first but it will be the last not the first but it will be the last not the first but it will be the last

not the first. but it will be the last.

genocide is not a failure of the nation state - it is its primary feature

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The monopoly on violence claimed by the nation state is used to forcibly assimilate citizens into a standardized identity.

Assimilate or die.

The State is constantly re-making itself through the death of those who are not representive of and protective of the State's image. Assimilate or die.

Genocide is, therefore, not a one time event, but an ongoing tactic to violently suppress real or imagined threats to the State. Assimilate or die.

"The concept of revolutionary suicide is not defeatist or fatalistic. On the contrary, it converys an awareness of reality in combination with the possibility of hope -reality because the revolutionary must always be prepared to face death, and hope because it symbolizes a resolute determination to bring about change."

-- Huey P. Newton

there are 70,000 tigrayan refugees in sudan. they continue to be at risk in the hands of the united nations Since the start of the war in November 2020, Tigrayans have fled by the thousands to Sudan. For the 3rd time, refugee camps like Um Rakuba are populated with Tigrayans.

Now in the hands of the UN, Tigrayans face two new issues:

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Refugee camps are not meant to be containers for life. They are, by design, temporary spaces meant to hinder the influx of refugees to richer nations

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The potential, and likely, misuse of refugee's biometric data, which has to be submitted to be identified as a refugee under the "care" of the UN

"Their homes are constructed with destruction in mind" -- anthropologist Marnie Thomson

Tenedba Refugee Camp in sudan / Oct 2021

Between Nov 2020 and Jan 2021, nearly 60,000 refugees cross the western border of Tigray into Sudan. The majority of these refugees were placed in 2 camps: Um Rakuba and Tenedba.

Tigrayans in each camps have organized themselves into "blocks", breaking up 20,000+ refugees into 500 person quadrants. Block leaders track the needs of those in their block and prioritize resources based on those needs. When we asked them, they complained of the Red Cross clinics without enough medicine and the UN providing too little food. Surrounded by multi-national NGOs with millions to spare and yet, their needs are never fully met.

Elizabeth Cullen Dunn writes of "The Failure of Refugee Camps" and their design to be featureless, temporary, and to keep refugees out of sight, and out of mind. She states, "Today, more than 80 percent of the world's displaced people are in developing countries. By funding UNHCR and other aid agencies, the world's wealthiest countries pay to keep them there."

Alternatives to refugee camps

suggested by Geographer Elizabeth cullen dunn

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Help refugees resettle in ways that benefit local economies and urban environments

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An influx of young working people—computer repairmen, plumbers, architects and home health-care aides—could be an economic stimulus for countries with aging populations

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Offering them flexible forms of aid, such as cash grants and housing vouchers, instead of isolating them in detention centers or other substitutes for the camp, will allow them to leverage the language skills, professional training, family ties, and financial resources they bring with them.

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But those who choose to stay in camps—whether because they hope to eventually return home; remain close to relatives; or settle in a place with a language, religion, or culture more like their own—will need ongoing support from the West in order to integrate where they are instead of being forced to migrate.

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Rather than continually underfund temporary camps, the United States and the European Union must commit to funding durable housing and functional communities in the countries where refugees seek asylum.

UNHCR is building the largest biometric data system based on the biometrics of 100 million refugees and IDPs In parntership with Accenture, the UNHCR records iris scans, fingerprints, and facial images to composite a personal ID for reach displaced person. As a refugee from Chad explained, "I am registered globally with the UN and you will always know who I am." Each of their identities and movements are quantified and meticulously tracked by the UN as a result of this program.

Displaced persons who enter a camp and seek services by the UNHCR such as housing or food rations, for example, are coerced into surrendering their biometric data to receive an ID card in order to receive aid.

Once given an ID card, refugees are no longer allowed to leave the refugee camp and are effectively imprisioned. In many cases, refugees are not providing their biometrics with informed consent and are unaware of the consequences of this database.

In the case of Rohingya, UNHCR failed to obtain informed consent from Rohingyans for their biometrics and shared this data with Bangladesh. Human Rights Watch reported that "Bangladesh then used the information, including analog photographs, thumbprint images, and other biographic data to submit refugee details to the Myanmar government for possible repatriation."

UNHCR is building the largest biometric data system based on the biometrics of 100 million refugees and IDPs Blockchain technologies such as Etherium are used to store migrant information and are being utilized by the UN to expand the use of iris scans for services like "EyePay," where refugees can withdraw cash from ATMs using iris scans. This provides more and more data points for refugees to be tracked, detained, and disappeared from countries who would, to put it lightly, keep migrants "out of sight, and out of mind."

The collection of Tigrayan biometrics by the UN in Sudan and Ethiopia should be of increasing concern for all. These are not "innovations" for the benefit of refugees who are subject to these technologies, but innovations for empire to seek and destroy those that stand in the way of empire's dominion.

bringing forward a liberated tigray involves us all What can we learn from the Black Radical Tradition about how to create linkages with revolutionary struggles around the world?

(1) We can learn to tie the threads between militarization by Ethiopia and Eritrea in Tigray to that against Palestinians in Israel or Black Americans in the USA (Israel has literally provided Ethiopia with millions in weapons throughout this war).

(2) We can include in our conversations of gendered violence the disproportionate impact this genocide has has had on women in Tigray.

(3) Our rage at the rise of global fascism is also rage at Ethiopian exceptionalism and the mobilization of an "entire arsenal of power to annihilate a segment of its population"

Disrupt conversations about Tech by citing (1) The mismanagement of Migrant biometric data by the UN and the use of blockchain for surveillance and proliferation of state violence (2) The ease and efficiency that technological "innovations" allow states to suppress, at mass, the movement and communications of entire populations

As hard as it is, do not disengage

Tigray cannot continue to be rendered invisible

our freedom dreaming must include the liberation of all those oppressed by ethiopian empire

sources

1. 31, Verso Books August. “Angela Davis on International Solidarity and the Future of Black Radicalism.” Literary Hub, 1 Sept. 2020, https://lithub.com/angela-davis-oninternational-solidarity-and-the-future-of-black-radicalism/.

2. Daniel, Ari, et al. “Conflict in Tigray Has Led to a Collapse of Its Public Health System.”

NPR, NPR, 25 Oct. 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/10/25/1131449387/conflict-in-tigrayhas-led-to-a-collapse-of-its-public-health-system.

3. “The Failure of Refugee Camps.” Boston Review, 28 Sept. 2015, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/elizabeth-dunn-failure-refugee-camps/.

4. Noone, Greg. “The Controversial Rise of Biometric Technology among the Displaced.”

Tech Monitor, 20 Oct. 2022, https://techmonitor.ai/digital-identity/biometrics-safe-dataprotection.

5. Plaut, Author: Martin, et al. “When Britain Bombed Tigray into Submission.” Martin Plaut, 6 Oct. 2019, https://martinplaut.com/2019/10/06/when-britain-bombed-tigray-intosubmission/.

6. Rahman, Zara. “Betrayal and Denial from the UN on Refugee Data.” The New Humanitarian, 9 July 2021, https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2021/6/21/rohingya-data-protection-andUN-betrayal.

7. “Refugee Statistics.” USA for UNHCR, https://www.unrefugees.org/refugeefacts/statistics/.

8. “Tigray, Oromia, and the Ethiopian Empire.” THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 21 July 2022, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/against-genocide/tigray-oromia-and-theethiopian-empire.

9. “'Tigray's Wounded Agriculture and a Second Year of Famine: An Urgent Call for Action'.”

Reinventing Peace, 10 May 2022, https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2022/05/09/tigrays-wounded-agriculture-anda-second-year-of-famine-an-urgent-call-for-action/.

10. “Ukraine Understandably in Focus, but Ethiopia's Tigray Conflict Is World's Largest.”

Wilson Center, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraine-understandably-focusethiopias-tigray-conflict-worlds-largest.

11. “UN Shared Rohingya Data without Informed Consent.” Human Rights Watch, 25 June 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/15/un-shared-rohingya-data-withoutinformed-consent.