Rape as a weapon – Huda Mohammed helps refugees from Tigray

Huda Mohammed: Suffering is very difficult

For almost two years, fighting has been raging in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia.

Rape is used here as a weapon.

– I wish more people were aware of what is going on, says Swedish midwife Huda Mohammed, 58.

– Many women have been raped by the soldiers. Some had become pregnant and then received help to terminate the pregnancy, says Huda Mohammed.

It was at the beginning of last year that UN reports showed that rape was used as a weapon in war-torn Tigray. Also the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sounded the alarm about serious sexual abuse in Tigray.

The information about the sexual violence and the vulnerability of the women made Huda Mohammed, who was himself born in Tigray, act. She started a fundraiser to help the women in the refugee camps. With the help of, among others, Black lives matters, Tigray relief in Sweden, colleagues and her daughter, she managed to raise around SEK 200,000. As a result, last spring she traveled to the refugee camp in Sudan to hand out pregnancy tests, abortion pills, painkillers and hygiene items.

Slaughtered with a knife

The conflict in northern Ethiopia began in November 2020, when government forces captured Tigray.

– The human suffering here is extremely difficult. Tigray is surrounded and there is neither electricity nor water. It is said that indirect negotiations are underway, but nothing happens, says Huda Mohammed.

International relief shipments have been very difficult to reach. In the spring, TT reported that famine and a great shortage of essential supplies and medicine were acute in Tigray, where hundreds of thousands of residents are at risk of starvation.

The area is now very secluded from the outside world. There is no possibility to contact loved ones who remain in Tigray. The banking system is down, people can not withdraw money to buy what they need. People have no opportunity to get help with medication and the hospitals are closed.

Agriculture has been a very important source of income for people here. Huda Mohammed tells of farmers who have been systematically looted – that their livestock has been taken away by soldiers and the tools have been destroyed.

– It will take a long time before they can get it restored, and it is also feared that the drought may be prolonged.

Sleeps on the ground without mattresses

Many of the women who fled now live in refugee camps in Sudan.

– They live in very difficult conditions, and the longer time passes, the worse it gets. Many of them have also seen their loved ones cut down.

Several of the women have been severely injured by the rapes to which they have been subjected, and are struggling hard to heal both their physical and mental wounds. Some now live alone with young children after their husbands have been killed in battle or left behind. They live in simple tents in refugee camps and with a lack of opportunities for tolerable hygiene in the scorching heat.

– Life is very very difficult there. They are lying on the ground without mattresses in tents, and lately there have been both floods and fires, says Huda Mohammed.

During her journey, she had the opportunity to meet the women there and take part in their stories.

– It was a girl who said “I was lucky. He jumped over me to rape another girl sitting next to me. She had her mother next to her. He chose her because she was sitting with her mother. The mother would see and suffer ”.

How have these types of events affected women?

– It’s awful. They have been destroyed for life. That’s what they say.

Huda Mohammed says that the Tigrian men are also exposed to violence.

– They are slaughtered with a knife or shot in front of their mothers and sisters.

Men are also victims of the war. And in some cases, they themselves are forced to become perpetrators.

– They are forced to rape their own women. I heard about a grandfather whom the soldiers tried to force to rape their own grandson. When he refused, they shot him in front of the family.

They should not be ashamed

Half of the money from the fundraiser made last year is still saved. Huda Mohammed had hoped that there would be peace quickly, and that she would be able to use them for operations when the refugees moved home. But a year after her trip, the fighting is still going on. The Tigrian Women’s Association in Sweden has now started the ALENA project (meaning “We exist”), where thirty women who fled Tigray to a refugee camp in Sudan receive help.

– We offer them psychosocial support and help them learn a profession, teach them to sew and embroider and give them a small contribution. The idea is to help them on the way to the future and create job opportunities, says Huda Mohammed who also leads the project.

What can we in Sweden do to help women?

– First and foremost, it is peace that people need. Sweden and the world simply need to force out the soldiers and stop the war. Tigray will also need help with reconstruction, because the devastation is great both in terms of human and material values. I think it is very quiet about this in the media in Sweden. It is about so many dead, so many vulnerable women and so many on the run. There are so few Swedes who know that this is going on.

Read more about project ALENA here.