[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.''.

                          ____________________