Talk:Mai Kadra massacre/Archive 1

Archive 1

Contested deletion

This article should not be speedy deleted as lacking sufficient context to identify its subject, because it is under construction and I am adding detail as we speak.--Varavour (talk) 21:55, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Premature assignment of blame

On reading the ingress, I was led to understand that the TPLF committed the atrocity, but reading further, I understood that this claim is disputed and that government forces have also been blamed. As a casual reader who knows nothing of this conflict, reading that ingress in an instant seemed to color the parties of the conflict very starkly in a way that on further reading, seems dubious. The ingress ought to be edited to reflect how unclear the information regarding this event still is.

Sincerely, Sanna A, Sweden 159.242.234.119 (talk) 21:07, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Just because one party denied it doesn’t mean that they didn’t do it. There is enough evidence showing that they did do it for inclusion. Flalf^Talk 22:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Unless I've misread them, the Thomson Reuters and Telegraph reports at most only have one witness with a discordant report for "Moya Khadra"; one case is for an unnamed town; some are for Humera. A separate article could be broken off for Humera massacre if the reports are serious enough. Boud (talk) 00:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I concur with the concerns of Sanna A. The ingress until minutes ago was misleading in the context of the full article. This article covers a highly-controversial event related to an ongoing conflict; as such, editors should be vigilant about maintaining objectivity and clarity regarding assertions made and the nature of their sources.108.48.44.199 (talk) 02:48, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

There's no dispute about the principles of WP:NPOV for the WP:LEAD, which it can't hurt to call the "ingress" for the sake of this discussion. Feel free to discuss specific edit disagreements here. Boud (talk) 19:00, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I added allegedly. Flalf^Talk 21:59, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Most of the victims per Amnesty and EHRC; and Thomson Reuters

In the Amnesty International report I see:

• the Amhara regional government’s media agency AMMA reported there were around 500 victims, adding that they were primarily non-Tigrayan residents of the town.
• immediate sentence following: A man who is helping to clear the bodies from the streets told Amnesty International that he had looked at the state-issued identification cards of some victims, and most were Amhara.

EHRC preliminary report to media after a 6-day mission:

• hundreds of people they identified as ethnic “Amharas and Wolkait origin”,

So either "mostly Amharans" or "non-Tigrayans" seems to match the two sources.

The Thomson Reuters report has one witness interviewed by a journalist who said that Tigrayans were the victims: Barhat, 52, said she fled from Moya Khadra after people from the Amhara region, which borders Tigray and whose rulers back Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, attacked them. "They killed anyone who said they were Tigrayan."

Based on the depth of information in the various reports, I think that the Thomson Reuters refugee interviewee only counts as an "alternative" point of view, and does not override the Amnesty and EHRC reports concerning "most" of the victims, given the present sources that we have.

Boud (talk) 22:06, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

The EHRC preliminary report posted on GAFAMdocs (the EHRC presumably does not know that it should manage its own webpage independently) gives a lot more depth than the newspaper report. Boud (talk) 22:51, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I would note that every indication suggests that the events described in the Reuters report and the Telegraph are also claimed to have taken place in Mai Kadra as opposed to another towns. In particular, the reference to a "town near Humera" should be clearly taken to mean Mai Kadra. Hence, the separation between events in Mai Kadra and "events in the region" would appear to be fallacious. I will add some things from reports from CNN and AFP which provide independent verification. As for the website I would not be so hard on the EHRC; they are grossly underfunded and hosting a reliable website in Ethiopia is a real pain. --Varavour (talk) 00:26, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

If you think the separation between Mai Kadra and Humera is misleading, then giving specific quotes here would probably be useful, especially given what has been verging on edit wars here, especially by IPs. I'm not saying that you shouldn't edit the article, but details here may help shortcut edit wars, and especially help editors aiming at NPOV (hopefully most, though a few need some time to learn). If federal forces went on a "vengeance" rampage on the way to and in Humera, then that info will hopefully be collected and published.

On the EHRC and a website: it's not a question of funding and hosting a website necessarily locally; it's a question of knowledge: there are plenty of independent, well-reputed alternatives to GAFAM available, which would certainly be better than googledocs. Boud (talk) 00:46, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

• Please note that the Amnesty International article states that the perpetrators could not be independently verified. They are citing Amhara Government Media Agency and phone calls with people accompanied government forces, whilst the Tigrayan media and refugees say the exact opposite. Contact with the Tigray region is completely cut off, and the Ethiopian Government has refused to allow independent investigations. They have only allowed the Government headed EHRC to investigate so government backed reports should be taken with caution as they are unlikely to implicate the government themselves. A.y.187 (talk) 13:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• @A.y.187: I see nothing in the Amnesty report about telephone calls. It's true that face-to-face interviews are more reliable than online (or only audio, e.g. telephone) interviews, but this is not a major argument against the reliability of the investigation. More importantly, the Amnesty report does not say that it is only citing Amhara Government Media Agency; it quite clearly talks about several interviews and gives a fair amount of details of its investigation. There are no particular reasons to expect Amnesty to be biased to one side or another here.

The FT article is new and reports info from a second refugee, that's significant.

Another point which is significant in the Amnesty report is the witnesses who were available for interviews: witnesses, who were providing food and other supplies to the Ethiopian Defense Forces (EDF). People who were attacked by the ENDF (= EDF) or ENDF-associated forces (Amhara militias) would probably be afraid to provide food to the ENDF; they would be more likely to be in hiding or have fled to Sudan.

The degree of independence of the EHRC from the government is an important point - please help develop the article Ethiopian Human Rights Commission - currently it says that a critic of the EHRC, Bekele, was appointed director in Feb 2019, so it appears that the EHRC is not as dependent on the federal government as it used to be. But the more sourced information we have, the better. Boud (talk) 16:10, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• It seems that most of the international media don't have deeper knowledge what was happened and what was going on in the country. To understand this and figure out the right information, it is critical to understand the situation from the complexity perspective of the country and even it is important to have at least 30 years back history of the country. Unfortunately, most of the international media become victims (knowingly and/or unknowingly) of the strategic and systematic propaganda of the TPLF and its fabricated information. So it is important to differentiate between the fact and fake news (false information). Of course I have to acknowledge BBC that figured out the fake news of TPLF (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54985545). The amnesty international and the independent Ethiopian human right commission have investigated the situation from the place and provided documents (reports) to the world, so I think, it is better to consider those information as source and to get the fact what happened in Mai Kadra. One thing that the international media, primarily Reuter and NYT, failed to investigate is that the TPLF had systematically deployed its supporters to Sudan and some of the so called "Samri" youth group who conducted this barbaric massacre had fled to Sudan, after the defeat of the TPLF loyal force by the Ethiopian army. These groups joined refuges camp in Sudan and disseminated false information to the international media and that is why I said above, it is critical to have a deeper knowledge of the situation, historical perspective and strategic agenda of TPLF. In fact there are also some clues that the WHO general, member of the TPLF, tried to pressure the Ethiopian government although he denied it (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/11/19/ethiopia-who-tedros-criminal-military-tigray/) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55001328.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.247.252.171 (talk • contribs) 10:08, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

References

Sources now suggest parallel massacres

This is just a reminder that this en.Wikipedia article cannot get closer to the truth than the reliable sources. The sources we have do not directly contradict each other. If all the witnesses have spoken truthfully and been accurately quoted/summarised by Amnesty, EHRC, Reuters, and the FT, then there have been successive, or partly simultaneous, massacres in Mai Kadra by Samri and the Amhara militias. (Sounds like the UN Security Council will need to get the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, given that Ethiopia is not party to the Rome Statute of the ICC.) Boud (talk) 17:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I started the article Humera massacre, since the number of sources seems strong enough.

For anyone thinking of an overview article, the sources we have now point to:

• Humera Airport massacre - 70 victims - date could be sometime before 10 November when the ENDF arrived; or could be by the ENDF/Amharans after they arrived and before 29 November when the one source (Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, repeated in multiple media) reported it, attributed to TPLF by anonymous military person;
• Mai Kadra massacre - 700 or more victims - 9-10 November - Amnesty + EHRC say by Samri (Tigrayans) against Amharans; two refugees say by Amharans against Tigrayans;
• Humera massacre - 20 or more Tigrayan victims - has to be sometime before/on or around 12 November, the day when the ENDF officially took over Humera; three Western mainstream media sources interviewing refugees;
• ethnic murders taking place "on the road" - dates, locations unknown, interviews with refugess in Western mainstream media.

I don't see any point creating Humera Airport massacre with only one source that has very little information (one human body per grave? forensic analysis to estimate dates of deaths? independent human rights investigation team/prosecutors' team invited to investigate?). A probably uncontroversial title for an overview article could be Human rights violations during the Tigray conflict. This could have more details of the cases at unidentified locations and dates. Boud (talk) 00:36, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Amnesty International 12 Dec 2020 (ref name="AP_Shadowy_massacre", currently ref [12],): Amnesty researcher Fisseha Tekle told an event on Tuesday as fears grow about atrocities elsewhere in Tigray. "Other credible allegations are emerging ... not only in Mai-Kadra but also" in the nearby town of Humera, the town of Dansha and the Tigray capital, Mekele. Tuesday = 8 December. So that makes: Humera Airport massacre (if we get enough sources); Mai Kadra massacre; Humera massacre; Dansha massacre (if we get enough sources); Mekelle massacre (if we get enough sources); "on-the-road" massacres. AFP visited Dansha, which was one of the locations of the 4 November Northern Command attacks, and didn't report any testimonies of killings of civilians, it only reported on the 4 November lethal battle between soldiers/militias and an apparently calm aftermath. AFP doesn't seem to have interviewed Tigrayans in Dansha - they might have fled or might have felt at risk giving interviews. Boud (talk) 23:29, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

References

The incident at Mai Kadra with 600 victims seems to dwarf all the later incidents. May I ask what is your motivation for wanting so badly a separate special dedicated article for every possible alleged incident of ten or twenty people dying in wartime, in this particular war? And there are at least three other conflicts going on now in the world. KZebegna (talk) 14:55, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

I think you missed the words (if we get enough sources). This is an encyclopedia.

• Check out List of massacres in Syria for a precedent. I count about 22 individual pages of massacres there with the median number of victims per massacre article being somewhere around 50 or so, and most in the 20-200 range. There are about 8 massacres listed without dedicated Wikipedia pages.
• Another example: List of massacres in France#Post-War: about 24 massacres; 23 have individual articles, only 1 (the most recent) does not. The number of victims per massacre has a median of something like 5 to 7. There's a high-number tail with a few massacres of over 100.

Is there any reason why massacres in Ethiopia should be less covered in en.Wikipedia than massacres in France? Are massacres of Ethiopians less notable than those of French people? Are massacres of Syrians less notable than massacres of French people?

Regarding "wartime": militarily unjustified killings of civilians have been illegal since nearly a century ago; these are not part of legally permissible military actions.

Regarding other conflicts: you are welcome to edit articles for those other conflicts. Boud (talk) 00:41, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

No they aren't - I have to say you made your point quite well. I didn't realize so many smaller events in Syria and France were so listed, but now that you've shown me that they are, carry on with what you have been doing by all means! KZebegna (talk) 00:53, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Issues raised by 89.247.252.171

Here I put quotes like this with {{tquote}} and respond.

• It seems that most of the international media don't have deeper knowledge what was happened and what was going on in the country.
  • That's quite possible. But we can only use information based on external sources.
• To understand this ... most of the international media become victims (knowingly and/or unknowingly) of the strategic and systematic propaganda of the TPLF and its fabricated information.
  • Again that's possible, but we should not be Manichean. International mainstream media may partly be duped, but they do do some forms of fact-checking themselves and do tend to word their reports carefully.
• So it is important to differentiate between the fact and fake news (false information).
  • Ideally, yes. So the question is how? Do we only choose the mainstream reports with which we agree personally?
• Of course I have to acknowledge BBC that figured out the fake news of TPLF (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54985545). The amnesty international and the independent Ethiopian human right commission have investigated the situation from the place and provided documents (reports) to the world, so I think, it is better to consider those information as source and to get the fact what happened in Mai Kadra.
  • Well yes, we do use BBC and Amnesty International sources.
• One thing that the international media, primarily Reuter and NYT, failed to investigate is that the TPLF had systematically deployed its supporters to Sudan and some of the so called "Samri" youth group who conducted this barbaric massacre had fled to Sudan, after the defeat of the TPLF loyal force by the Ethiopian army. These groups joined refuges camp in Sudan and disseminated false information to the international media
  • That's quite possible. But it's also possible that Reuters and FT (in this case) were aware of the likelikhood of Samri refugees being responsible for the Mai Kadra massacre and lying; and that the news agencies' reporters did their best to judge this by all the usual ways that journalists try to judge the truth.
• and that is why I said above, it is critical to have a deeper knowledge of the situation, historical perspective and strategic agenda of TPLF.
  • For this particular article, we already have a subsection mentioning the claim that refugees might be people responsible for war crimes who have fled and pretended to be victims. But we cannot use that information to ignore the reports by Reuters and FT. The reader of this Wikipedia article has to judge for him/herself which information to believe based on the reports. We give as much detail as we can. Generally, the more information is provided, the easier it is to detect (or find hints of) falsifications.
• In fact there are also some clues that the WHO general, member of the TPLF, tried to pressure the Ethiopian government although he denied it (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/11/19/ethiopia-who-tedros-criminal-military-tigray/) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55001328.
  • Wikipedia articles can only give information based on sources. If you can find sources that show that the particular Reuters and FT articles that we currently have are based on refugees who lied, then please provide that source. For a source (newspaper) that is normally accepted as "reliable", it would be unlikely that we remove the source; instead, we add the other sources that have counterclaims.

In any case, if you make an edit and someone reverts it, then that's a good moment to discuss the specific edit here on the talk page and search for consensus. If you want to make an edit that removes information sourced to Thomson Reuters (name="Reuters_11_12_2") or the Financial Times (name="ft_9_12"), then please propose that here, and then we can see if there is consensus to remove the information on the grounds that Reuters and FT might have been fooled by the TPLF. I'm going to fix one error that I see: the "Reuters_11_12_2" refugee only refers to Amharan militias, not to the ENDF. This correction is based on matching the sources to our Wikipedia article, without interpretations related to TPLF propaganda. Boud (talk) 13:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Re "we should not be Manichean" - I agree wholeheartedly that "Manichean" is what we should not be, and in fact exactly what we should always reject, especially as an encyclopedia - but what does that word mean to you? Could you please clarify the context of saying that here? KZebegna (talk) 14:18, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, in this context, the Manichean point of view seems to be "federal government = good + honest; TPLF and all ethnic Tigrayans = bad + lying" and to associate all formal and informal armed forces and witness statements strictly within one of these two categories. If by "context" you mean the editorial context, then see this edit, this edit, or this edit, which have in their edit summaries: Any report based on refuges from Tigray is highly suffering from strategically fabricated information of the TPLF. Removing the word "Any" and adding a qualifier such as "may" or "might" would have made the statement a lot less Manichean. Boud (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Lol, OK, thanks for explaining. Yes, I agree with that. 'Manichean' can mean so many generally unsavory or sinister things with different people, as they were actually a crypto sect with secretive rituals! KZebegna (talk) 23:45, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Edits of IP 37.116.65.226

IP user 37.116.65.226 made several recent edits such as this one at 23:08, 11 December 2020, with the edit description "the reference articles of Reuters and the financial times do not state the involvement of the Ethiopian Federal army or the Amhara Militia to the massacre". Here are quotes from the sources:

• Reuters Barhat, 52, said she fled from Moya Khadra after people from the Amhara region, which borders Tigray and whose rulers back Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, attacked them. "They killed anyone who said they were Tigrayan. They stole our money, our cattle, and our crops from our homes and we ran with just the clothing on our backs," she said.
• Financial Times But those fleeing the violence give accounts of brutality on all sides, including by Ethiopian federal forces, Amhara special forces and irregular Amhara militias. They say people had their throats slit, were shot in the neck, execution style, or attacked with machetes, and dogs were seen feeding on dead bodies.
• FT: ... Tigrayan student Abrahaley Menasew gingerly touched the stitches in a wound on his head as he lay on a rickety bed. He said the injury was inflicted by an axe after he was dragged from his home in Mai Kadra by Amhara militiamen. His neck and wrist were slashed with a machete, he said, and he almost lost his hand.

Boud (talk) 01:17, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

WP:NPOV complaints in the whole article, including LEAD

Hello everyone, this page has many WP:NPOV issue, against Tigrayans and Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).

• Let us start from the first sentence in the LEAD:- It is not only Thomson Reuters and the Financial Times that attritubed responsibility to the Amhara militias, it is all the below listed media outlets' articles. They include CNN, The Guardian, Yahoo! News, BBC, The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times, NBC News, Sky News, Associated Press (AP), Al Jazeera, The Sydney Morning Herald and even more. Listed are the exact reference from these outlets, that attribute responsibility to the Amhara militias (and/or other Abiy Ahmed ailed forces). Let us not try to promote the other side and discredit the Tigrayans victims and TPLF.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/dec/02/tigray-war-refugees-ethiopia-sudan
2. https://sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/escape-massacre-ethiopians-recall-tigray-092740037.html
3. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-sudan.html
4. https://www.nbcnews.com/video/refugees-from-ethiopia-mass-in-sudan-border-from-conflict-in-tigray-96440901567
5. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ethiopia-conflict-sudan-bombings-idUKKBN27T1OL
6. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172x2z2d5prcjz
7. https://us.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/12/07/ethiopia-tigray-tensions-refugees-sudan-eritrea-horn-of-africa-elbagir-pkg-intl-ldn-vpx.cnn
8. https://www.smh.com.au/world/africa/ethiopia-may-be-on-the-edge-of-genocide-20201122-p56gum.html
9. https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN28A1M7
10. The Telegraph’s official YouTube channel report:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjCfsQWqIo4
11. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/14/fleeing-war-ethiopians-recount-horror-of-tigray-violence

• Furthermore, media outlasts like Associated Press (AP) have reported that Amnesty International (Amnesty) has changed its position; that is, even Amnesty is now saying that both Tigrayan ethnic and Amhara ethnic were possibly targeted. This is the exact quote from the below more recent AP article link:- It’s possible that civilians from both ethnicities were targeted in Mai-Kadra, Amnesty now says.

1. https://apnews.com/article/sudan-ethiopia-massacres-d16a089f8dcb0511172b5662b9244f78

• The communication blackout that is withholding from international journalists from documenting the Tigrayan victims stories in Tigray is not mentioned well . (I'm talking about the internet, phone, mobile, electricity that has been disconnected to Tigray region during this war. Even running water has been disconnected.) We know Abiy Ahmed's government cuts communication whenever. According to Human Rights Watch and NetBlocks, politically motivated Internet shutdowns have intensified in severity and duration under the leadership of Abiy Ahmed despite the country's rapid digitalization and reliance on cellular internet connectivity in recent years. In 2020, Internet shutdowns by the Ethiopian government have been described as "frequently deployed". Access Now said in a statement that shutdowns have become a "go-to tool for authorities to muzzle unrest and activism." His government will the cut internet as and when, "it's neither water nor air" have said Abiy.

Loves Woolf1882 (talk) 07:40, 22 December 2020 (UTC) Loves Woolf1882 (talk) 07:58, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• There is a misleading sentence that says The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, an independent agency of the Ethiopian government.... Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, is known to be NOT an "independent agency", and there is no reference added anywhere in Wikipedia that says it is an "independent agency". In fact, it is more know to hide situations and mislead the public by echoing the Ethiopian government's position. Loves Woolf1882 (talk) 09:19, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

References

Missing talk-reflist added by Boud Boud (talk) 11:00, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Sources for perpetrators or victims of Mai Kadra massacre

No, we do not start with modifying the lead. First we update the body of the article. If it then makes sense to update the lead, then that can follow. If you disagree with any of the analysis below, please here in this talk page give the specific quotes to support your claims.

You stated It is not only Thomson Reuters and the Financial Times that attritubed responsibility to the Amhara militias, it is all the below listed media outlets' articles.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/dec/02/tigray-war-refugees-ethiopia-sudan

I do not see "Mai Khadra" at all in this article. This article does not support your claim.

2. https://sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/escape-massacre-ethiopians-recall-tigray-092740037.html

This is a poor source, at "sports.yahoo.com"; I found a better version, where AFP is attributed. Witness Messah Geidi attributes the massacre to "the army". We can quote that, but it's not clear which particular security forces s/he is referring to. I've done this.  Done

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-sudan.html

The move is likely to lead to violent Tigrayan reprisals, he said, as may have already occurred in the town of Mai Kadra, where human rights groups have said forces loyal to the liberation front massacred as many as 600 people, most of them Amhara. The attribution of the massacre is to "the liberation front", meaning the Tigray People's Liberation Front.

4. https://www.nbcnews.com/video/refugees-from-ethiopia-mass-in-sudan-border-from-conflict-in-tigray-96440901567

This appears to point to a video. It would be best if you provided a transcript (quote) if you wished to consider this as a source. Keep in mind that an archive of the video must exist: WP:PUBLISHED "Additionally, an archived copy of the media must exist."

5. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ethiopia-conflict-sudan-bombings-idUKKBN27T1OL

This is the Thomson Reuters source that is already used in the article.

6. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172x2z2d5prcjz

This appears to point to an audio file. Same situation as for the video.

7. https://us.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/12/07/ethiopia-tigray-tensions-refugees-sudan-eritrea-horn-of-africa-elbagir-pkg-intl-ldn-vpx.cnn

This appears to point to a video. Again the same situation as above.

8. https://www.smh.com.au/world/africa/ethiopia-may-be-on-the-edge-of-genocide-20201122-p56gum.html

Burani's descriptions of knife massacres chime with an Amnesty International investigation that last week concluded hundreds of civilians had been hacked or stabbed to death in the city of Mai-Kadra, in what appears to be an ethnic cleansing. This article does not support your claim.

9. https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN28A1M7

I do not see "Mai Khadra" at all in this article. This article does not support your claim.

10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjCfsQWqIo4

Again, a youtube video. In principle might be usable, but see above.

11. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/14/fleeing-war-ethiopians-recount-horror-of-tigray-violence

the TPLF in a statement denied allegations that scores or even hundreds of civilians were "hacked to death" on Monday in the town of Mai Kadra. ... Ethiopia's Human Rights Commission, appointed by the government but independent, has sent investigators to Mai Kadra, ... Gidey Asafa said the fighting had forced her and her family to flee Mai Kadra with nothing but the clothes on their backs. ... "We saw people being slaughtered. There was blood all over. We fled because we didn't want to die," she told Al Jazeera. "Some women lost their husbands. We came with nothing but our lives. These clothes were given to me by the people here." There is no information here attributing the massacre to the ENDF or Amharan militias.

So out of the 11 sources that you listed:

• 5 fail to support your claim: 1, 3, 8, 9, 11
• 1 source weakly supports your claim: 2 but only states "the army"; this is now done
• 4 video/audio that require an archive (not provided) and would best need a transcript: 4, 6, 7, 10
• 1 redundant with existing source(s): 5

There is no need to use bold to shout in making a point. The AP article citing Amnesty does indeed state It's possible that civilians from both ethnicities were targeted in Mai-Kadra, Amnesty now says.. We could include that in the body of the article, but certainly not the lead, because it's a weak claim. Using bold does not make the claim any stronger. Boud (talk) 11:00, 22 December 2020 (UTC) minor fix (numbering) Boud (talk) 11:24, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Internet communications blockade

It seems to me valid to briefly mention this in context in this article, although if it's not connected directly to Mai Kadra, anything more than a brief mention risks getting into WP:SYNTH. @KZebegna: you might wish to comment on this. Boud (talk) 11:00, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Ideally there will be a source that has already made some kind of point about communications disruption in relation to this topic. In my own observation fwiw, when the TPLF was in power they would shut down communications several times, especially toward the end, and we could actually see for ourselves all internet traffic from Ethiopia drop down to zero. We haven't seen anything like that since Abiy's government. Maybe because this time they had only cut one region's traffic and not the whole country, but reports are that now communications have been reestablished for Tigray, meaning they were shut down for about a month. KZebegna (talk) 11:31, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

EHRC independence

You are correct that this article is not the place to summarise whether or not the EHRC is genuinely independent. This is now done.  Done Boud (talk) 11:00, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Replay to "Sources for perpetrators or victims of Mai Kadra massacre"

@Boud:, you seem to have misunderstood my points for the listed article. My first and main line was “Hello everyone, this page has many WP:NPOV issue, against Tigrayans and Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).” So if they say the “the army” then I have made my point with the references. “The army”, the Amhara paramilitary, the Fano Amhara militias, president Essays Afewerki Eritrean’s forces are all on one side (allied with Abiy Ahmed), against people of Tigray and TPLF. However, my references many times also explicitly say Fano and Amhara militias. And even if “the army” is doing it, the ideology comes from the Amhara imperialists. That is why I spontaneously said the Fano Amhara militias, but they are all on the same side. And my WP:NPOV point is NOT that which exactly (from the federal army, the Amhara paramilitary, the Fano Amhara militias, president Essays Afewerki Eritrean’s forces) are committing the killing & massacres. My WP:NPOV point is that it is being committed by one (or all) of Abiy Ahmed allied forces, but the other side (Tigrayans and TPLF) are being blamed.

• I added this as bold since it is very important to my WP:NPOV claim, thought I listed it second before. It does not need to be included as bold in the article, but it has to be included. I write again and sorry to use bold, but I sometimes use it to pin-point my main points:- Furthermore, media outlasts like Associated Press (AP) have reported that Amnesty International (Amnesty) has changed its position; that is, even Amnesty is now saying that both Tigrayan ethnic and Amhara ethnic were possibly targeted. This is the exact quote from the below more recent AP article link:- It’s possible that civilians from both ethnicities were targeted in Mai-Kadra, Amnesty now says.

• https://apnews.com/article/sudan-ethiopia-massacres-d16a089f8dcb0511172b5662b9244f78

Here I list what I meant by these reference support my WP:NPOV against Tigrayans and TPLF claim. .

1 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/dec/02/tigray-war-refugees-ethiopia-sudan

This says Tela moves gingerly, and has bandages wrapped around his calves and wrists. He said federal soldiers had found him in Humera and beaten him until he was covered in blood and could not walk, then passed him over to a brutal militia force of ethnic Amharans called the Fano. He said the Fano had been tasked with destroying the city and “finishing” Tigrayans.The Fano had taken over a judicial court in Humera. Barely mobile and gushing blood, Tela said he was allowed to heave himself away. Gesturing a knife to his neck, he said he saw a man in his 30s beheaded with machetes. Refugees in the camp reel off accounts of horror they either witnessed themselves or heard from others. In a makeshift ward in a room near the back of the camp, some show wounds they say were caused by knife and machete attacks by Fano militia. For the last month, Tefera Tedros, a 42-year-old surgeon, has seen the results of the violence up close. Before war broke out he divided his time between a government hospital and a private clinic. “It was very successful,” he said. “I was maintaining [a good life], sending my kids to school, and all the basic necessities. Now everything is gone.” Tedros said his hospital in Humera received 15 dead civilians on the first day of shelling on 8 November. “But those who were not brought to the hospital, who died on the streets or at home, were uncountable,” he said.

2 https://sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/escape-massacre-ethiopians-recall-tigray-092740037.html

This says If you are Tigrayan and captured by government soldiers, you are in trouble, said the 24-year-old. "They ask you, with a gun pointed at you, if you belong to Tigrayan forces," he said. "At the slightest hesitation, you are dead. They shoot you down on the spot and leave the body in the street." Pleading with them that you are a civilian does not make a difference, said Burhan. "They beat you, sometimes to death, or they take you with them to an unknown destination -- and I doubt if you come back alive from there," he added. "It's terror." Burhan managed to escape to Sudan, trekking through the hot bush across the border, but he was separated from his father, mother and two sisters on the way. "I don't know if they're okay," he said.....'Slaughtered like sheep' - To escape, Messah Geidi split from his wife and four-year-old son -- and he cannot forgive himself. "I don't know where they are, and if they are still alive," he said. Geidi comes from the southwestern Tigray town of Mai-Kadra, where Amnesty International said last week that "scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death". The rights group cited sources saying the killings were perpetrated by TPLF forces, while the UN warned of possible war crimes in Tigray, condemning "reports of targeted attacks against civilians". But several refugees at the Sudanese camp said federal troops had committed atrocities. "I fled Mai-Kadra, because the army slaughtered the young people like sheep," Geidi said. Almost everyone reporters speak to in Um Raquba has a tragic story -- except 32-year-old teacher Takli Burhano. Burhano, arrested in Mai-Kadra, said he was beaten from 4:00 am to 11:00 pm. Then a soldier grabbed him, and decided to execute him. But as he readied for death, another soldier stepped in to stop the killing. "One soldier went up to his commander and told him 'you can't do that, he was my teacher.'" Burhano said. "He saved my life."

3 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-sudan.html

This says Mr. Ashenafi, 24, was racing on his motorcycle to the aid of a childhood friend trapped by the Ethiopian government’s military offensive in the northern region of Tigray when a group of men on foot confronted him. They identified themselves as militia members of a rival ethnic group, he said, and they took his cash and began beating him, laughing ominously. “Finish him!” Mr. Ashenafi remembered one of the men saying. As they tightened the noose around his neck and began pulling him along the road, Mr. Ashenafi was sure he was going to die, and he eventually passed out. But he said he awoke alone near a pile of bodies, children among them. His motorcycle was gone.

4 https://www.nbcnews.com/video/refugees-from-ethiopia-mass-in-sudan-border-from-conflict-in-tigray-96440901567

This is even a very spacial video, it shows a Tigrayan ethnic people who are surviving witnesses & currently refugees in Sudan, with knife wounds expressing the horrors they experienced. @Boud: please make it archived or whatever the process is to be able to reference it. You know the process better.

5 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ethiopia-conflict-sudan-bombings-idUKKBN27T1OL

This says Reuters spoke to a dozen refugees. Many of them described seeing dead bodies strewn alongside the roads as they fled under cover of darkness, fearing they would be found and killed. They said they expected many more Ethiopians to join them in Sudan in the coming days. Barhat, 52, said she and others had fled from Moya Khadra after people from the Amhara region, which borders Tigray and whose rulers back Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, attacked them. “They killed anyone who said they were Tigrayan. They stole our money, our cattle, and our crops from our homes and we ran with just the clothing on our backs,” she said.

6 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172x2z2d5prcjz

A BBC-News audio interview with a medical doctor who fled to Sudan from western Tigray due to the civil war. He describes the massacres & atrocities being committed by Abiy Ahmed allied forces (the FANO Amhara ethnic militias). Again @Boud:, please have it archived.

7 https://us.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/12/07/ethiopia-tigray-tensions-refugees-sudan-eritrea-horn-of-africa-elbagir-pkg-intl-ldn-vpx.cnn::::

This CNN video, shows the stories of several Tigrayan refugees in Sudan, how they were being massacred by Abiy Ahmed allied forces (including being beaten by president Isaias Afwerki's forces)

8 https://www.smh.com.au/world/africa/ethiopia-may-be-on-the-edge-of-genocide-20201122-p56gum.html

This says The Amhara [militia] cut off the heads of four children. They cut the babies out of pregnant women. I saw it with my own eyes," says Burani, 35, who has just trekked two days across mountainous terrain with no water to find safety in neighbouring Sud an. Composing himself, he pleads for help. "Why is the world looking at what's happening? Why is no one helping us?"

9 https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN28A1M7

This says "Like other mainly Tigrayan refugees who have fled to Sudan, Berhan blamed the violence on government forces and allied militia....'This is inhumane, slaughtering people, stealing all their belongings, I feel the world has betrayed Tigray because people are doing nothing while people are being killed,' said Berhan."

10 The Telegraph’s official YouTube channel report about Mai Kadra massacre witnesses:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjCfsQWqIo4

Please someone who knows how to do this, have this video archived. It a reporting by an independent international journalist telling that the ethnic Amhara militias and government forces massacre Tigrayans with machete. @Boud: you are a human-being, who can open and see this only 2 minutes video, don't you think it supports my claim that mainly ethnic Amhara militias are responsible for the massacres in Mai-Kadra and other places in Tigray?

11 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/14/fleeing-war-ethiopians-recount-horror-of-tigray-violence

This says In Sudan’s Gadarif state, Gidey Asafa said the fighting had forced her and her family to flee Mai Kadra with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “We saw people being slaughtered. There was blood all over. We fled because we didn’t want to die,” she told Al Jazeera. “Some women lost their husbands. We came with nothing but our lives. These clothes were given to me by the people here.”... Niqisti, 42, said her brother was shot dead by government-allied militiamen in front of their home in Humera, in Tigray state, and her small restaurant was looted. It was not possible to verify her account. “They bombed with artillery, and the air force raided,” said Asmara Tefsay, a 31-year old mother. “Then we saw the soldiers approaching and I fled with my two children, my mother and my father.” The refugees quoted by news agencies appeared traumatised by the sheer intensity of the bombardments they say were carried out by the Ethiopian army. Many told stories of artillery attacks and shooting in the streets, with fighting spilling over into neighbouring Amhara state. “I saw women giving birth on the road, but then continuing to walk because they feared the Ethiopian soldiers would kill them,” said Roni Gezergil, a female engineer aged 25. By the way, Gidey Asafa is a typical Tigrayan name. And in the video on the same article it says “The government wants to get rid of Tigrayan people, so we fled. People have been slaughtered with knives, pregnant woman has had their bellies open, the government is bombing civilians and killing us all.”

12 This reference I didn’t even list before:- https://www.africanews.com/2020/11/25/amnesty-international-releases-findings-on-mai-kadra-massacre/

This says But Tigrayan refugees who fled Mai-Kadra for Sudan instead say pro-government forces were responsible for the killings during a brutal assault on the town of 40,000 people…. A different story of the massacre can be found a short distance to the west, in the mushrooming refugee camps across the border in Sudan. "Ethiopian soldiers and Amhara militiamen entered the town and fired into the air and at residents," Marsem Gadi, a 29-year-old farmer who fled with thousands of other Tigrayans to the Um Raquba refugee camp, told AFP. "We ran out of town to find safety. I saw men in civilian clothes attacking villagers with knives and axes," he said. "Corpses were lying in the streets." When Marsem made it home later his house had been looted and his wife and three-year-old son were gone. "I don't know if they're still alive," he said. After that, he fled to Sudan. Other refugees shared similar tales of attacks by pro-government forces, not TPLF. Elifa Sagadi said she too ran for the safety of nearby fields when the gunfire started. "On the road I saw at least 40 bodies. Some had bullets in their heads, others had been stabbed," she said of her return. "When I went home, my house was on fire and my husband and two sons had disappeared." At one part this article says the Amnesty International representative (researcher) sent to Mai-kadra was Fisseha Tekle. Perhaps we should create a Wikipedia page for him, to give the readers a complete picture, as he may have personal bias (due to his Amhara ethnicity). Even though not said in this article, the Amnesty International representative that was sent to Mai-kadra is an Amhara ethnic himself. Furthermore, the preliminary investigation and report only includes interview with the people that where in Mai-Kandra when it was under the Fano & the Amhara paramilitary's control (or with the people who fled to Amhara region), so they are most likely all Amhara. But most of the real victims (the Tigrayans) appear to be dead or have fled to Sudan from the Amhara paramilitary, from the federal army and from the Amhara Fano militias. Loves Woolf1882 (talk) 14:26, 22 December 2020 (UTC)Loves Woolf1882 (talk) 14:38, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

There is no point repeating a vague general claim about anti-TPLF bias that you cannot support from the sources. This is an article mainly about the Mai Kadra massacre, not about the killings during the Tigray conflict in other locations (even though are some sections about other similar events). You listed 11 references, of which only 1 was easily verifiable to give a weak extra support for the claim that "the army" was responsible for the massacre. (And no, I am not going to do your work for you in innovating by discovering how to archive videos and audio files.)

This article is already NPOV-ed. If you read the talk page properly, you'll see that some editors wished to remove all reports claiming Amharan responsibility for the massacre in Mai Kadra. This article already has the two versions of the story clearly indicated. You cannot expect this article to blame the ENDF and Amharan militias for the Mai Kadra massacre in ways that are not supported by the sources.

When I asked for quotes, I did not mean that you should bombard this page with a huge amount of quotes that are unrelated to the point you wish to make. Reports that are not about events in Mai Kadra are irrelevant to the main body of this article. One good quote that is logically coherent in terms of supporting a claim based on the source would have been enough. Boud (talk) 21:44, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

13 https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjpzqw/hes-planning-to-exterminate-us-all-ethiopians-speak-of-ethnic-massacres

This says “First, I want to save my life. Food and clothes come later,” he said from the truck bed. Kahsay fled from his native Ethiopia, without notice and in the middle of his usual work day, leaving behind all of his belongings and any knowledge about his loved ones. He is part of the first wave of Ethiopian arrivals in Sudan, refugees fleeing war in the country’s northern Tigray region. He was working as a day labourer on a farm near the city of Mai Kadra when Ethiopian government-aligned ethnic militias known as Fano, from the neighbouring region of Amhara, descended. “Fano from the Amhara region came, then took us all out from our homes. We saw our neighbours killed and slaughtered, in the same way as you cut wood, with an axe and knife,” Kahsay told VICE World News. As chaos tore through the city, Kahsay said Ethiopian federal forces stood by as Fano fighters went door to door, demanding to see IDs in order to identify ethnic Tigrayans. “We managed to escape and hide in a field for four days. On the fifth day, we made our way to the Sudanese border,” he explained, adding that Fano militants continued to terrorise civilians attempting to flee to Sudan. On the way, he said, “youths were sent to kill us. [A group of] more than 70 were trying to kill us. We hid ourselves in the fields. They hunted us. On the way many were killed. We passed many dead bodies.” In his own group of eight, only six of them made it to the border. “They checked the IDs of people...if they find someone with Tigrayan origin…[they] slaughter with a knife.” As Kahsay spoke of his journey from the relative safety of the camp in eastern Sudan, women and men sitting nearby wept quietly, reliving their own recent horrors as he spoke. The violence he described was echoed by many firsthand accounts told to VICE World News at border crossings and at two new refugee camps that aid agencies are hurriedly setting up to accommodate the crush of over 50,000 new arrivals in under two months.

 14 https://apnews.com/article/eritrea-sudan-middle-east-ethiopia-only-on-ap-a4cba907c516401df0a0b3c7eb095405

 This says “Many ethnic Tigrayan refugees have accused ethnic Amhara fighters of targeting them, while survivors of one massacre last month in the town of Mai-Kadra say Tigrayan fighters targeted Amhara. Other attacks followed. Abrahaley Minasbo, a 22-year-old trained dancer, said Amhara militia members dragged him from his home in Mai-Kadra on Nov. 9 and beat him in the street with a hammer, an axe, sticks and a machete, then left him for dead. Scars now slope across the right side of his face and neck. He was only treated six days later, by Tewodros in Sudan.

The continued justification for the NPOV tag can be found below under:- Talk:Mai Kadra massacre#Response to "Remove the POV tag". (Justifications for the POV/NPOV tag) Loves Woolf1882 (talk) 00:08, 31 December 2020 (UTC)