“It is more than words and it is even unspeakable!” wrote a Christian from Ethiopia’s Tigray region to Barnabas Fund this week. He was struggling to express the horrors that Christians have suffered in seven months of conflict: deaths of pastors, of other Christians in ministry and of ordinary believers; rape of Christian women including Christian workers; destruction and looting of churches and monasteries; deliberate violation of church services.
Some Ethiopian church leaders are calling it a genocide.
The conflict in Ethiopia is creating suffering at a level not seen for decades. An international roundtable meeting last week warned urgently of “human rights atrocities and the full-blown humanitarian crisis” in Tigray.
Countless Christians have fled the murderous attacks by Eritrean forces
“We are seeing wide-scale human suffering that is entirely preventable,” said the roundtable statement. “Systematic violence is being inflicted upon civilians, including widespread sexual violence, and extra-judicial and ethnically motivated killings. The population's essential livelihood assets and health services are being destroyed.”
Huge numbers of Tigrayan people are now displaced. Some have fled over the border to Sudan, but there is no humanitarian assistance for them there. Others have taken shelter in church compounds, but how can they be fed?
Eritrean soldiers dressed as Ethiopian soldiers are engaging in large-scale massacres. Starvation of civilians is being used by the Eritrean troops in Tigray as a weapon of war.
Displaced Christians are in urgent need of food, medicines and other essential items
Almost 90% of the Tigray population (5.2 million out of 6 million) are now in need of emergency food assistance, with 400,000 on the brink of famine and loss of life.
Christian leaders from Tigray have appealed to Barnabas Fund to send aid.
Your gift today will help provide food and medical needs for our suffering brothers and sisters in Tigray.
