Horrifying Accounts of Women Raped by Soldiers in Ethiopia

Thousands of women and girls as young as eight have been raped by soldiers in Ethiopia during the army’s crackdown on local militias. Horrifying new accounts by victims shed light on how women have been subjected to some of the most brutal and extreme forms of sexual violence in insidious attacks by members of the army. Speaking to the BBC, one 21-year-old victim called Enat described how soldiers entered her home in South Gondar in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, and began forcefully interrogating her and her family about whether Fano fighters – a local militia – had visited them. After admitting that they had, Enat said she was violently raped in front of her eight-year-old niece. Enat, who was a virgin at the time and planned to remain celibate until marriage in accordance with her Orthodox Christian beliefs, said: ‘It would have been better if they had killed me.’ But she is not the only woman to have undergone such a harrowing attack at the hands of the Ethiopian army.