Reacting to emerging details of mass killings involving scores of victims in the town of Mai-Kadra, Michelle Bachelet said that “if the Tigray national (and) regional forces and Ethiopian Government forces continue down the path they are on, there is a risk this situation will spiral totally out of control,’’ the official UN website reads.
This risked “heavy casualties and destruction, as well as mass displacement within Ethiopia itself and across borders,” her spokesperson, Rupert Colville, told journalists at a press briefing in Geneva.
Equally worrying were “ethnically and religiously motivated hate speech, incitement to violence,” arbitrary arrests, killings, mass displacement, and destruction in various parts of the country, said senior UN prevention of genocide special adviser Pramila Patten, and the UN’s Responsibility to Protect senior adviser Karen Smith.
Such ethnically motivated attacks and reportedly ethnic profiling of citizens heightened the risk of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, the UN senior officials added.
#Ethiopia: Amid emerging reports of mass killings in the town of Mai-Kadra, @mbachelet expresses increasing alarm at rapidly deteriorating situation in #Tigray: "I strongly urge both sides to realize that there will be no winner in such a situation" https://t.co/vClDLmDjYW pic.twitter.com/zwSNvYJo0U
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) November 13, 2020
