Mainers with ties to Ethiopia react to peace treaty

Mainers with ties to Ethiopia and its Tigray region expressed hope but remained skeptical that a permanent cease-fire the warring sides agreed to Wednesday will last.

“I want to see it before I believe it,” Misrak Adane of Portland said Wednesday night in a phone interview.

Adane was born in Tigray and still has family living there.

She knows first hand how devastating the war has been to her country. During the war, which began in November 2020, the Ethiopian government seized her uncle’s business, killed his workers, and burned his home, she said. He escaped to Sudan.

Communications networks in Tigray have been shut down for two years, Adane said. She has been unable to communicate with or send financial help to her relatives there.

“It has been so heartbreaking,” Adane said.

While the cessation of hostilities is a good sign, Adane said, the Ethiopian government has perpetuated propaganda that has misled the global community. Tigrans in the United States plan to demonstrate in Washington, D.C., this weekend on the second anniversary of the war’s start.

“All the Ethiopian community has anxiety right now. We don’t even know who is dead or alive,” she said. “This is 2022 and we shouldn’t be seeing genocide committed.”

The conflict began less than a year after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Eritrea, which borders the Tigray region. Abiy’s government has since declared the Tigray authorities, who ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades before Abiy took office, a terrorist organization. Millions have been displaced by the conflict and thousands killed.

Hagos Tsadik, center, participates in a protest about the situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in Cape Elizabeth in August. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer, file

“I have a feeling of happiness and sadness,” Hagos Tsadik, a native of Tigray who lives in Cape Elizabeth, said Wednesday night. He is happy that there is a glimmer of hope for peace but feels saddened over the loss of life.

Tsadik said he has eight brothers and three sisters living in Tigray whom he has not been in contact with for two years. Like Adane, he has first-hand knowledge of how brutal the Ethiopian government and its Eritrian allies can be. Eritrea was not part of the peace talks and has been accused of war crimes.

Eritrean forces have been blamed for some of the conflict’s worst abuses, including gang rapes, and witnesses have described killings and lootings by Eritrean forces even during the peace talks, The Associated Press reported. On Wednesday, a humanitarian source said several women in the town of Adwa reported being raped by Eritrean soldiers, and some were badly wounded. The source, like many on the situation inside Tigray, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Tsadik said soldiers arrested his 39-year-old nephew, tortured him and then killed him. He attributed his nephew’s death to ethnic cleansing.

“Now we need to wait. We’ll see what happens,” the 62-year-old said. “It’s a beginning, a foundation to build on, but the fighting is still going on.”

He said he may attend this weekend’s demonstration in Washington.

“We have all lost a lot of people to this war. There is no celebration because we are still in mourning,” Tsadik said.