A long overdue investigation

and another report to contend with

Sep 18, 2023

Hi,

You’re reading Sifter - a weekly newsletter on Ethiopia, curated by me, Maya Misikir. I’m a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba but I’m sending this week’s edition from the city of Gothenburg, Sweden where I came to attend the Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC).

A little side story on that; the GIJC will host around 2,000 people from the media this year, and it is the biggest gathering of investigative journalists and editors. Part of making this get-together diverse includes covering the costs of travel for some (like me) and inviting speakers from different corners of the world.

Important to note here that fellow journalists from some of the major newspapers in Nigeria were denied visas to attend this conference. This despite that all were vetted by the conference organizers, had provided all required documents (memoirs at this point), have previous travel history to the promised land (!), and one was even a speaker at the event! Read about this outrage-inducing story here.

Now, to the news.

Investigation: lithium in Ethiopia

The Reporter came out with an investigative piece on its front page last week; a story about lithium mining in the country entitled, ‘Shadow Fight for Ethiopia’s Lithium Bonanza’.

The story looks into lithium exploration and mining in the country, the fight for control over this license by companies, and the unmet promises by said companies after they secure these extremely sought-after licenses.

So, what’s happening? Lithium is a really big deal. It’s a vital raw material for electric car batteries and renewal energy, and countries across the world are scrambling to get control of the production of this mineral vital for reducing carbon emissions.

So, what’s happening in Ethiopia? Ethiopia has lithium. The amount of which is yet to be quantified according to this story, but geological surveys done way back in the 1980s have revealed that there are (commercially viable) lithium reserves in an area known as Kenticha, in Ethiopia’s Oromia Region.

So, who has the license? Kenticha Mining Plc (KMP). Here’s how the story describes the company:

“Like many mega mining ventures in Ethiopia, KMP lacks capital and expertise in lithium mining. KMP’s other license at nearby Kenticha to explore lithium is also facing scrutiny. The license was approved by then-Minister of Mines Takele Uma on January 10, 2023, just days before he resigned from his position and left the country.”

The story also talks about how the new Minister of Mines, Habtamu Tegegn, is dealing with this.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Habtamu appears to be grappling with a backlog of dysfunctional mining projects left over from his predecessor Takele Uma’s tenure. This includes the troublesome Kenticha lithium venture which KMP’s mining license is set to expire next month, in October 2023, without any production.”

The story is a long one but at the end of it, you can’t help but feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The full scoop on The Reporter here.

Human Rights: even after the peace deal

A new report by Amnesty International says that Eritrean forces, which fought alongside the Ethiopian military during the two-year war in Tigray, committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in Tigray even after the peace deal was signed.

The report outlines extrajudicial killings, where Eritrean forces went door to door searching for alleged allies of Tigrayan fighters and shot people, mostly men, in their homes. It also says that the same fighters raped Tigrayan women and forced them into sexual slavery months after the war officially came to an end. This is the second report to come out on this; Physician for Human Rights released one on sexual violence in the region after the peace deal in August. A quick update on that here.

For this Amnesty report, 49 women were interviewed from May to June of this year and these testimonies were then corroborated by medical experts, local officials, and satellite imagery among others.

One of the places where the Eritrean soldiers committed these crimes, Kokob Tsihbah, is in an area close to the Ethio-Eritrean border. Here’s an excerpt:

“Taken together with previous documentation by Amnesty International, the cases of rape and sexual slavery documented in Kokob Tsibah can be considered as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population and may amount to crimes against humanity.”

Here’s another excerpt on how the women identified the soldiers:

“Survivors of sexual violence and witnesses to killings told Amnesty International they identified perpetrators through their camouflage, the Tigrigna dialect the soldiers spoke, and the type of interrogation questions they asked.”

The report also asks for the continuation of international and independent investigations like renewing the mandate of the UN’s International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, as well as the Commission of Inquiry – the investigative team set up by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the AU’s human rights body. The latter was shut down without releasing a single report if you remember my update on that from last time.

The need for these investigations to be continued is critical says the report, amidst what it says are ‘bleak prospects for domestic accountability’.

Here’s the full Amnesty report entitled “Today or tomorrow, they should be brought before Justice” – Rape, Sexual Slavery, Extrajudicial Executions, and Pillage by Eritrean Defense Forces.

Security: we don’t know her (VII)

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission released a report on the human rights situation in Ethiopia’s Amhara region last week. The report corroborates what news outlets have been reporting over the past few weeks. In particular, the report says to pay attention to three things; injuries to civilians, extra-judicial killings, and unlawful arrests.

The fighting has not stopped and is now happening at lower administrative units across the region, which is also what news reports have been saying. The people who are dying caught between these shoot-outs are farmers and at times people…simply existing in their homes.

This is part VII of these updates; go here and start from scratch if you need context.

The full report by the Commission in Amharic here.

Migration: stuck in between

Over the past month, I’ve followed up on migration issues in this newsletter. These updates include one dedicated to one of the worst migration routes in the world, taken by 100,000 Ethiopians every year.

Following that, a recent Human Rights Watch report came out saying that hundreds (if not thousands) of Ethiopian migrants are being killed by Saudi border guards.

A lot of Ethiopians, after having made their way (on foot, boat, and car) to Yemen, get stuck there. Previously, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), under the UN, was facilitating their return from Yemen back to Ethiopia. Now, that has stopped, because the IOM doesn’t think it’s safe for some of them to return to regions like Amhara and Tigray. This led to protests which then led to fighting, and ended up with some people dying.

Here's an excerpt from a story I did on VOA:

“The IOM cannot stop the migrants from returning to Ethiopia but is currently not facilitating their return to Tigray and Amhara regions. Ethiopian migrants protested that decision in front of an IOM facility in the Yemeni city of Aden last week, which led to fighting and the deaths of an unconfirmed number of people.”

Here’s the full story on VOA.

Sports: another day, another record

Ethiopian runner Gudaf Tsegay broke the 5,000 women’s record last week Sunday. This record was previously held by Kenyan runner Faith Kipyegon. The new record set by Gudaf? 14:00:21. The previous record by Faith? 14:05.20.

If you thought five seconds was not that big a deal, here’s something for context from The Guardian on this story:

“The women’s 5,000m record has fallen by nearly 11 seconds in the last three years thanks to a crop of excellent runners.”

The full story on The Guardian here.

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That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week with more updates!

In the meantime, you can help support my work by forwarding this email to friends and family who might benefit from keeping up with what’s going on.

Note: I go through all the major news outlets, newspapers, online publications, and will at times, include reports, notes on parliamentary sessions, and go through fact-checking websites as well. I try to provide links to both English and Amharic sources.

Sifter