Ethiopia: report finds authorities 'detain and abuse Tigrayans'

According to a report published on Wednesday by the NGO Human Rights Watch, Ethiopian authorities have arbitrarily detained and mistreated thousands of ethnic Tigrayans recently deported from Saudi Arabia.

In a report, made public on Wednesday, January 5, Human rights Watch states Ethiopian authorities have unlawfully detained and mistreated thousands of Tigrayans recently deported from Saudi Arabia. Before joining the Arabian Peninsula country in hopes of finding a job, these Ethiopians lived in what is now a war-torn region.

The findings of the report suggest those in power have resorted to the practice of enforced disappearance. "Deportees who tried to make their way home to Tigray were apprehended and forcibly disappeared at regional detention facilities where Federal and Afar regional police assaulted them or beat other Tigrayan deportees with rubber or wooden rods", the report read.

Local authorities are also accused of transferring Tigrayan deportees to reception centers in the capital Addis Ababa where some are unlawfully detained.

The NGO's researchers relied amongst other sources on interviews they conducted with Tigrayan deportees from Saudi Arabia.

After more than a year of war in Tigray, a dire shortage of oxygen and other critical equipment have made surgery and essential procedures almost impossible according to doctors from Tigray's biggest hospital.

The de facto blockade due to war makes news from coming that region exceedingly difficult to verify.

Australia, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States expressed their concern on reports accusing the Ethiopian government of detaining large numbers of Ethiopian citizens based of their ethnicity and without charge.