Behind every survivor of violence stands a family often struggling to stay upright. The comprehensive report on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) across Tigray released by Commission of Inquiry on Tigray Genocide (CITG) indicate that nearly half (45.6%) of the sexual violence survivors who managed to share the trauma experienced by their family, see their own trauma reflected in the deteriorating health of their loved ones, a rate significantly higher than that was found in SGBV cases in general. This “secondary traumatization” is more than a statistic; it is a physical and emotional burden that can shatter a family’s health and well-being. Miliete’s case, shared below, highlights the heavy toll this shared trauma takes on the family unit as a whole.
Miliete, a 32-year-old married woman, lives in a certain town in Tigray. She used to run a shop for a living. As the war got closer to the town where she was residing, on November 17, 2020, she started to escape the town carrying her 5-year-old daughter on her back. Unfortunately, she was stopped by three ENDF perpetrators on her way to her parents’ house. Then the soldiers commanded her to let her daughter down. Miliete recalls her daughter whispering in her ear ‘Will they kill us?’ Though she pleaded to leave her, one of the soldiers shot her daughter twice to death while she was on her back, where her body had been split into pieces. The bullets also managed to wound Miliete around her chest and left hand. Though she was bleeding and her daughter’s body was dispersed here and there, they mercilessly started raping her, and when she tried to struggle, one of them stabbed her with a knife in her thigh. They repeatedly gang raped her and eventually rendered her unconscious. Persons who manage to escape have picked her up and taken her to a cave, collected the splintered body of her daughter, and buried the same. After three days without medical treatment, Miliete was taken to a nearby Hospital.
As a result of the gang rape, Miliete has sustained serious bodily and mental harm, which includes permanent injury on her left hand, abnormal vaginal discharge, blood pressure, menstrual cycle disorder, and epilepsy, which has subjected her to regular medication. Moreover, she has lost her marriage due to the incident. Her husband always blames and humiliates her as being the cause for the daughter’s death. Her mother has also developed psychological problems after she learnt about the incident her daughter Miliete suffered, and the reason for the death of her granddaughter, too. Just like Miliete, her mother has also been confirmed positive for epilepsy and has started taking pills regularly.
Ultimately, Miliete’s experience reflects a dark reality of the victims and survivors of the Tigray Genocide. As established in the landmark Akayesu case at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, sexual violence is a means of inflicting “serious bodily or mental harm” with the specific intent to destroy a protected group. By targeting the reproductive health and social cohesion of a community, perpetrators seek to ensure that a group cannot recover or grow. Recognizing this war-related sexual violence as a genocidal act rather than a secondary war crime is the only way to ensure that the justice served is as profound as the harm inflicted.
For the details, see the full report, from page 74: https://citghub.org/war-induced-genocidal-sexual-and-gender-based-violence-in-tigray-ethiopia-vol-1/