Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict in Tigray according o human right organization.
The patriarch of Ethiopia's Orthodox Church recently ignited controversy when he said that genocide was being committed in the northern Tigray region.
His Holiness Abune Matthias - an ethnic Tigrayan himself - explained that since the outbreak of conflict in November between the Ethiopian military and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), his "mouth had been sealed, unable to speak from fear".
Abune Matthias' emotional statement resonated with many Tigrayans, who are deeply traumatized by the violence in their region. More than two million people have been displaced in the conflict.
Through protests in capitals around the world and via social media, members of the diaspora have united to campaign against what they insist is genocide.
The Ethiopian government rejects reports of mass atrocities as exaggerated and politically motivated. Breaking with the traditional hierarchy of the Ethiopian church, the Orthodox Synod distanced itself from the patriarch's statement.
In popular parlance, genocide is the crime of crimes - the very worst on the books. It evokes a special outrage - campaigners against genocide call for exceptional international responses, including military intervention, to stop it.
The term was invented by Rafael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, to describe the uniquely terrible crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against entire peoples.
It won a special place in the international statute books when the United Nations formalized the Genocide Convention in 1948.
In the trials of high-ranking Nazi officials at Nuremberg, prosecutors had brought charges of crimes against humanity - defined as widespread and systematic violations perpetrated by a state or a state-like entity.
Genocide is a different kind of crime, defined by the perpetrator's intent: "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such."
Until now, human rights organizations have said that crimes against humanity may have been committed in Tigray. That may change.
Some Ethiopian media have expressed ethnic animosity towards Tigrayans, with derogatory language used indiscriminately to tar all Tigrayans with the alleged misdeeds of the TPLF, which was in power at a federal level for more than 25 years and had a bitter fall-out with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed after he took office in 2018, resulting in the conflict in its stronghold of Tigray.
Dehumanizing words such as "daylight hyenas" and "unfamiliar others" are used to foment hatred.
Comments