NAIROBI (Somaliguardian) – Ethiopia’s Amhara regional state said it had taken control of western Tigray and was planning to resettle up to half a million Amharas after tens of thousands of Tigrayan residents were forcibly evicted from their homes since fighting erupted in the region in November of last year, Reuters news agency reported on Monday.
“There is no space called western Tigray, because this area is part of Amhara region,” Amhara regional government spokesman, Gizachew Muluneh told Reuters.
Since allied Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amhara forces toppled Tigray’s former ruling party, TPLF, Tigrayan residents were driven out by Amhara forces, who also expunged Tigrayan names from street signs and seized Tigrayan homes, daubing some doors and walls with Amharic letters: “This is an Amharaic house”.
New Amhara residents took possession of Tigrayan farms they say were taken from them during the decades of TPLF rule. Reuters reported its journalists saw a number of minibuses packed with household goods traveling from Amhara into western Tigray and new Amhara settlers were among the passengers.
Tens of thousands of Amhara residents from neighboring Sudan and Amhara region have resettled in Tigray region over the past months in what Tigray activists said was an ethnic cleansing campaign and forced evictions of Tigrayans in western Tigray still continue.
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