[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 87 (Wednesday, May 19, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3171-S3172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CALLING ON THE GOVERNMENT OF ETHIOPIA, THE TIGRAY PEOPLE'S LIBERATION
FRONT, AND OTHER BELLIGERENTS TO CEASE ALL HOSTILITIES, PROTECT HUMAN
RIGHTS, ALLOW UNFETTERED HUMANITARIAN ACCESS, AND COOPERATE WITH
INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS OF CREDIBLE ATROCITY ALLEGATIONS PERTAINING
TO THE CONFLICT IN THE TIGRAY REGION OF ETHIOPIA
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 25, S. Res. 97.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A resolution (S. Res. 97) calling on the Government of
Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and other
belligerents to cease all hostilities, protect human rights,
allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with
independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations
pertaining to the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the
resolution, which had been reported from the Committee on Foreign
Relations, with an amendment to strike all after the resolving clause
and insert the part printed in italic and an amendment to the preamble
to strike the preamble and insert the part printed in italic, and an
amendment to the title as follows
Whereas the United States and the Federal Democratic
Republic of Ethiopia share an important relationship and more
than a century of diplomatic relations;
Whereas Ethiopia is the second most populous country in
Africa and plays a key role in advancing security and
stability across sub-Saharan Africa, including as a top
contributor of uniformed personnel to United Nations
peacekeeping missions;
Whereas tensions between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's
Prosperity Party and the Tigray People's Liberation Front
(TPLF), which was part of the ruling coalition in Ethiopia
until late 2019, escalated when the TPLF held elections in
the Tigray Region of Ethiopia on September 9, 2020, despite
the decision by the Federal Government of Ethiopia to
postpone general elections due to the COVID-19 pandemic;
Whereas the TPLF rejected the postponement of general
elections and considered the extension of the term of the
Federal Government to be unconstitutional, and the Federal
Government subsequently deemed the Tigray regional elections
illegitimate;
Whereas, in the early hours of November 4, 2020, Prime
Minister Abiy ordered a military offensive in response to an
attack by the TPLF on the Northern Command of the Ethiopian
National Defense Forces (ENDF), which evolved into an armed
conflict between the ENDF and allied forces on one side and
the TPLF on the other side, with thousands of deaths
reported;
Whereas the Government of Ethiopia rejected all offers,
including one extended by African Union Chairman Cyril
Ramaphosa in November 2020, to mediate talks with the TPLF;
Whereas, on November 28, 2020, the Government of Ethiopia
claimed victory in the conflict after taking Mekelle, the
capital city of the Tigray Region, with Prime Minister Abiy
announcing that his forces had ``completed and ceased the
military operations'' and would shift focus to rebuilding the
region and providing humanitarian assistance while Federal
police attempt to apprehend leaders of the TPLF;
Whereas clashes have continued in the Tigray Region and
Ethiopian soldiers and allied forces have pursued prominent
TPLF leaders, notably killing former Minister of Foreign
Affairs of Ethiopia Seyoum Mesfin as part of a ``stabilizing
mission . . . to bring to justice perpetrators'';
Whereas, in 2020, prior to the outbreak of fighting in the
Tigray Region, there were more than 1,800,000 people
internally displaced in Ethiopia and approximately 2,000,000
people in the Tigray Region were already in need of
humanitarian assistance;
Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region has prompted more
than 61,000 Ethiopians to seek refuge in Sudan, has displaced
as many as 500,000 people internally, and has caused severe
shortages of food, water, medical supplies, and other
necessary goods for those who remain in the region;
Whereas the conflict has disrupted harvests, livelihoods,
markets, and supply chains, food and medical supplies have
been looted, and restrictions and bureaucratic impediments
continue to constrain the humanitarian response, with nearly
4,000,000 people in the Tigray Region estimated to require
urgent food assistance, including 100,000 Eritrean refugees;
Whereas, during the first few weeks of the conflict, there
was a complete shutdown of electricity, banking, internet,
and telephone services throughout the Tigray Region by the
Government of Ethiopia, with government reports of TPLF
forces also destroying communications infrastructure, and
subsequent service restorations have been limited;
Whereas, in addition to the shutdown of telephone and
internet services, which has severely limited the flow of
information on the conflict and the humanitarian situation,
journalists have been restricted from accessing much of the
Tigray Region, several journalists have been arrested in
connection to their coverage of the conflict, and one
journalist working for the Tigray Mass Media Agency was
killed;
Whereas, although the Government of Ethiopia entered into
an agreement with the United Nations on November 29, 2020, to
facilitate humanitarian access to the Tigray Region, that
access is not yet unfettered;
Whereas, on February 1, 2021, the Secretary General of the
Norwegian Refugee Council stated, ``Twelve weeks since the
fighting began, the basic elements of a response on the scale
needed are still not in place. It is false to say that aid is
increasingly getting through. Aid has only gone to the places
with little conflict and more limited needs and is not
keeping pace with the humanitarian crisis as it inevitably
grows over time.'';
Whereas, on February 6, 2021, the United Nations World Food
Programme (WFP) announced a new agreement with the Government
of Ethiopia to rapidly scale up the deployment of emergency
food assistance while improving the process for reviewing and
approving requests from United Nations and humanitarian
partner agencies;
Whereas humanitarian access to the refugee camps that were
home to almost 100,000 Eritrean refugees at the start of the
conflict has been especially restricted, with the Hitsats and
Shimelba camps still completely inaccessible, and the United
Nations Refugee Agency estimates that 20,000 Eritrean
refugees displaced from those camps remain unaccounted for;
Whereas United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Filippo Grandi has expressed alarm about the ``overwhelming
number of disturbing reports of Eritrean refugees in Tigray
being killed, abducted and forcibly returned to Eritrea'';
Whereas, in November 2020, four humanitarian workers,
including one employee of the International Rescue Committee
and three employees of the Danish Refugee Council, were
killed at Hitsats refugee camp;
Whereas challenges to access have significantly restricted
the reporting and documentation of atrocities, but survivor
and eye-witness testimony and satellite imagery have enabled
reports to emerge of targeted violence or indiscriminate
attacks against civilians committed by multiple parties to
the conflict;
Whereas examples of reported atrocities committed in the
Tigray Region include the massacre in the town of Mai Kadra
on November 9, 2020, in which, according to estimates from
the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), more than 600
civilians died from what the EHRC Chief Commissioner
concluded was ``for no reason other than their ethnicity,''
and a mass killing in the city of Axum on November 28 through
29, 2020, which involved, according to reports from Amnesty
International, the systematic killing of ``hundreds of
unarmed civilians'' after Ethiopian and Eritrean troops
retook the city;
Whereas United Nations Special Representative of the
Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila
Patten has highlighted reports of sexual and gender-based
violence, including a high number of alleged rapes in
Mekelle;
Whereas, on January 27, 2021, the United States Government
publicly confirmed that Eritrean Defense Forces (EDF) are
participating in the conflict in alliance with the ENDF and
called for the immediate withdrawal of all EDF soldiers from
the Tigray Region, and credible reports have emerged that EDF
soldiers participating in the conflict have attacked
civilians, including Eritrean refugees, and looted and
destroyed homes and religious institutions;
Whereas Ethiopia has been beset for nearly a decade by
multiple human rights and humanitarian challenges, including
targeted ethnic violence, intercommunal conflict, natural
disasters, and political unrest;
Whereas, since mid-2020, the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International,
and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission have reported
atrocities and a rise in ethnic and intercommunal violence in
other parts of Ethiopia, including in the Amhara,
Benishangul-Gumuz, Somali, Afar, and Oromia regions;
Whereas, according to international human rights
organizations, during the conflict in the Tigray Region,
ethnic Tigrayans throughout Ethiopia have been suspended from
their jobs and prevented from leaving the country, and there
are reports of surveillance and mass arrests of citizens of
Ethiopia based on their ethnicity;
Whereas, in March 2021, President Biden asked Senator
Christopher Coons to serve as an emissary to convey the
President's grave concerns to Prime Minister Abiy about the
humanitarian crisis and human rights abuses in the Tigray
Region and the risk of broader instability in the Horn of
Africa;
[[Page S3172]]
Whereas Ethiopia is undergoing a fragile political
transition, with the postponed 2020 general elections
rescheduled for June 2021, except in the Tigray Region, where
elections have not yet been scheduled;
Whereas the Government of Ethiopia has restricted the right
of several opposition political parties to peacefully
assemble and organize, and a number of opposition leaders
have been jailed since the summer of 2020, with varying
degrees of due process violations and procedural delays in
their trials, leading some major opposition parties to
threaten to withdraw from the forthcoming general elections;
Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region, intercommunal
violence in other parts of Ethiopia, and the erosion of
political and civic space calls into the question whether the
general elections in June 2021 can meet the aspirations and
expectations of the Ethiopian people and internationally
accepted standards for free and fair elections; and
Whereas the conflict in the Tigray Region occurs within the
context of complicated regional and global dynamics,
including ongoing negotiations between Ethiopia, Egypt, and
Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Ethiopia's
rapprochement with Eritrea, threats posed by the violent
extremist organization Al-Shabaab, a struggle for influence
and power among regional and global actors, increasingly
hostile border disputes between Ethiopia and Sudan, and the
fragile democratic transition and peace process in Sudan:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved,
That the Senate--
(1) calls for the immediate cessation of hostilities in the
Tigray Region of Ethiopia;
(2) condemns in the strongest terms all violence against
civilians;
(3) calls on the Government of Eritrea to immediately and
fully withdraw its military forces from Ethiopia, and
condemns in the strongest terms any human rights violations,
murder, looting, rape, and other crimes committed by the
Eritrean military or any other forces in the Tigray Region or
elsewhere in Ethiopia;
(4) strongly disapproves of the escalation of political
tensions between the Government of Ethiopia and the Tigray
People's Liberation Front (TPLF) into armed conflict;
(5) calls for the swift and complete restoration of
electricity, banking, telephone, and internet services
throughout the Tigray Region and other parts of Ethiopia
where communications have been restricted;
(6) appreciates the willingness of Sudan to welcome
refugees fleeing the conflict in the Tigray Region;
(7) urges the Government of Ethiopia to--
(A) take tangible steps toward improving humanitarian
access in keeping with commitments made to the United Nations
World Food Programme and Secretary of State Antony Blinken;
(B) pursue accountability for human rights abuses and
atrocities; and
(C) make progress on other key issues with regard to the
conflict in the Tigray Region and threats to regional
stability following the visit of Senator Coons;
(8) calls on the Government of Ethiopia to--
(A) ensure that any apprehensions of TPLF members are
carried out with the least possible use of force and that the
rights to which those detained are entitled under Ethiopian
and international law are fully respected;
(B) require the immediate and full withdrawal of Eritrean
forces from Ethiopia;
(C) release all opposition leaders, supporters, and
activists detained on the basis of their political activity
and views as well as journalists detained on the basis of
their reporting, and respect the rights of all Ethiopians to
free expression and political participation, without
discrimination based on ethnicity, ideology, or political
affiliation; and
(D) convene a credible and countrywide process of national
dialogue and reconciliation inclusive of all nonviolent
political parties, ethnic communities, religious groups, and
civil society organizations in Ethiopia to work toward the
sustainable resolution of grievances and chart a democratic
and peaceful path forward for the country;
(9) urges all parties to the conflict to--
(A) cease all hostilities, commit to a political solution
for resolving existing differences, fully comply with
international humanitarian law, and refrain from actions that
could continue, spread, or escalate the conflict,
particularly attacks on civilian targets;
(B) make demonstrable progress to guarantee unfettered and
immediate humanitarian access, for personnel and supplies, to
areas affected by the conflict, and take all possible steps
to protect the safety of civilians, including refugees,
displaced persons, and humanitarian aid workers; and
(C) allow for, and cooperate with, independent and
transparent investigations of any alleged human rights abuses
committed in the course of the conflict in the Tigray Region
and other conflicts across Ethiopia, and hold perpetrators to
account in a credible process; and
(10) urges the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the
Treasury, and the Administrator of the United States Agency
for International Development, in coordination with the heads
of other relevant Federal departments and agencies, to--
(A) engage at the highest levels with leaders of the
Government of Ethiopia, the Government of Eritrea, and the
TPLF to encourage the full cessation of hostilities and the
withdrawal of Eritrean forces, mitigate the humanitarian
crisis that has emerged from the conflict, and support an
inclusive process of national dialogue and reconciliation;
(B) immediately establish criteria to end the pause of all
non-life-sustaining assistance to Ethiopia and support
programming to meet immediate humanitarian needs, including
of refugees and internally displaced persons, advance
nonviolent conflict resolution and reconciliation throughout
the country, and aid a democratic transition in Ethiopia;
(C) take continued actions to ensure that a ``full,
independent, international investigation into all reports of
human rights violations, abuses, and atrocities'' committed
in the course of the conflict as called for by Secretary of
State Blinken on February 27, 2021, is conducted, and impose
strict accountability measures on those found responsible;
(D) use all diplomatic, developmental, and legal tools to
prevent further ethnic-based violence and mass atrocities,
including by non-state armed groups, and promote competitive
multi-party democracy in Ethiopia; and
(E) maintain close coordination with international allies
and multilateral organizations regarding efforts to address
the conflict in the Tigray Region and other regions of
Ethiopia and bring attention to the conflict in international
fora, including the United Nations Security Council.
Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent the committee-reported
substitute amendment to the resolution be agreed to; the resolution, as
amended, be agreed to; the committee-reported amendment to the preamble
be agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; the committee-
reported amendment to the title be agreed to; the title, as amended, be
agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and
laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendment in the nature of a substitute was
agreed to.
The resolution (S. Res. 97), as amended, was agreed to.
The committee-reported amendment to the preamble in the nature of a
substitute was agreed to.
The preamble, as amended, was agreed to.
The committee-reported amendment to the title was agreed to.
The title amendment, as amended, was agreed to, as follows:
Amend the title so as to read: ``A resolution calling on
the Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation
Front, and other belligerents in the conflict in the Tigray
Region of Ethiopia to cease all hostilities, protect human
rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate
with independent investigations of credible atrocity
allegations.''.
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