Tigray: A Genocide in Silence

There are numbers too big to say out loud. In Tigray, between 600,000 and 800,000 civilians—mostly unarmed, mostly rural, mostly invisible—were killed between November 2020 and November 2022.. They were not casualties of combat, but victims of starvation, bombs, rape, and execution. Farmers, children, priests, and students were swept away in a tide of violence so vast that towns like Axum, Mai Kadra, Shire, and Adwa became mass graves.

Most victims were never counted. Their stories vanished with their bones. To this day, no international court has called it genocide, but the death toll whispers what legal language cannot: this was an attempt to erase a people.

This was not chaos; it was a system—methodical, bureaucratic, and cold. Soldiers used ID cards, accents, and names to identify Tigrayans, executing them in public squares and open fields. In Axum, hundreds were massacred in church courtyards. In Adigrat, bodies were dumped in wells. Turkish Bayraktar and Chinese Wing Loong drones rained death on markets and IDP camps. Siege warfare choked the region—aid blocked, fields torched, food destroyed.

Rape was weaponized: thousands of women and girls gang-raped, mutilated, left with trauma or children born of horror. Starvation, trauma, and sexual violence were not byproducts—they were deliberate tools of war.

But the horror did not stop there. Women were raped with sticks, melted plastic, and metal rods. Some were told, “You will never birth a Woyane again.” Mass sterilizations occurred in military camps. Children were murdered in front of their mothers—some after being forced to choose who would live. Priests were shot at altars. Monasteries were bombed. Incubators unplugged. Patients left to die. Ambulances destroyed.

One survivor recounted being raped by seven soldiers who then burned her legs with hot metal. She survived, but she no longer walks.

This was not “excessive violence”—it was calculated annihilation. The goal was not just to defeat the TPLF, but to shatter Tigray’s identity, to make the region unlivable for generations. “We will make sure no Tigrayan is ever born again,” said one soldier. This was ethnic cleansing—a campaign of physical, cultural, and spiritual destruction.

The Left’s Silence: A Failure of Internationalism

While Tigray burned, the world’s anti-imperialist and leftist parties mostly stayed silent. Not out of malice—but out of ideological paralysis. The TPLF’s historic ties with U.S. institutions confused the narrative. But genocide does not ask for clean ideology before it kills.

By the time the truth became undeniable, much of the left had already buried its voice. Some feared echoing Western hypocrisy. Others claimed ignorance. But true internationalism does not wait for perfect clarity. It listens to the oppressed. It shows up. The left failed Tigray. It rationalized. It hesitated. And it ignored the screams because they came from a place it didn’t fully understand.

If a principled internationalist movement is to rise again, it must begin with accountability—for the enemies of liberation, and for ourselves.

Racialized Silence and Global Apathy

The world’s silence wasn’t just apathy—it was cold, calculated racism. Media called it “tribal violence” or “internal conflict,” erasing the human horror. Unlike Ukraine or Palestine, Tigray didn’t trend. No global protests. No viral outrage.

Because Black death rarely makes headlines unless it fits a tidy narrative. Social media flooded with hashtags for some wars. But for Tigray—only silence. Only whispers. Only absence.

This silence is the legacy of colonial logic: that Black suffering is distant, less tragic, less urgent. Tigray’s agony reveals not only the brutality of its tormentors, but the world’s willingness to look away.

A Mirror We Must Face

Tigray is a mirror. It reflects the cost of ideological convenience. It reflects the price of global indifference. And it shows us that internationalism is not a hashtag or a brand—it is a duty. A duty we abandoned.

To rebuild solidarity, we must start with that silence. Not just theirs—but ours.