Never again means now. On the 30th anniversary of Rwanda, silence is complicity.

Re: Urgent appeal — Stop the Amhara genocide in Ethiopia

Dear Sir or Madam,

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We write on the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide — a moment when the world said “never again” — to tell you that genocide is happening again, now, in Ethiopia, against the Amhara people. And the world is watching.

The evidence is not disputed. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, the European Centre for Law and Justice, the Wilson Center, the Crisis Group, and the United States Department of State — all have documented what is happening in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Mass killings of civilians. Extrajudicial executions. Drone strikes on markets, schools, and hospitals. Internet and communications blackouts. Mass arbitrary detention. The systematic destruction of an entire regional economy and educational system.

The US Secretary of State formally determined in March 2023 that Ethiopian National Defence Forces, Eritrean forces, and Amhara forces committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. That determination has produced no accountability.

The Amhara people are being targeted because of who they are. The Prime Minister of Ethiopia has used language in public speeches — documented and widely circulated — that dehumanises the Amhara and their self-defence movement. Ethnic hate speech from a head of state is not rhetoric; it is incitement.

The pattern meets the legal definition. The Genocide Convention of 1948 — signed and ratified by Ethiopia — defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. The documented acts — mass killings, serious bodily harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, preventing births, forcibly transferring children — are all present.

We call on the international community:

1. Name it: publicly acknowledge that the documented pattern of violence against the Amhara people meets the threshold for investigation under the Genocide Convention;
2. Stop the weapons: immediately suspend all arms sales and military cooperation with Ethiopia until independent monitoring is in place;
3. End the impunity: support referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court;
4. Open the region: press for immediate, unrestricted humanitarian and journalistic access to the Amhara region;
5. Fund accountability: support independent documentation by international human rights organisations operating in Ethiopia.

Thirty years after Rwanda, the international community swore it had learned the lesson. The lesson was simple: act early, act decisively, do not wait for the killing to stop before calling it by its name.

The killing has not stopped. The time to act is now.

Yours faithfully,

Federation of Amhara Associations in Europe