👉 Courtesy:The
Irish News, by Allan Preston, December 10, 2025
Trócaire spoke to The
Irish News in Ethiopia about efforts to combat ongoing epidemic of
gender-based violence and sexual assault against women and girls.
For Ethiopian women, the
upheaval of war has brought with it a sustained epidemic of
gender-based violence (GBV) and sexual assault.
During a visit to the
Tigray region with Irish aid agency Trócaire, The Irish News
received a briefing about the sheer scale of the inhuman cruelty that
has taken place.
Some of the distressing
details caused a stunned silence in the room, but those working to
help survivors say the reality of the problem must not be ignored.
According to a report from
Tigray regional authorities, 60% of over 480,000 women surveyed had
suffered at least one form of GBV.
Over 150,000 had survived
rape while 12% of the sexual violence survivors were “forcefully
enslaved by their perpetrators”.
Among the GBV categories,
gang rapes were the most frequently reported – as 70% of survivors
were willing to report the number of perpetrators.
A “significant number”
of sexual violence survivors (12%) were “subjected to sexual
slavery for weeks….and were raped or gang raped on a daily basis”.
Another common occurrence
was for people being forced to witness sexual assaults on their
family members.
Other details are too
graphic to repeat in print, but resulted in severe reproductive
health issues for victims and long-term trauma.
Another consequence was
family breakdown, including rejection and blame from husbands, while
the destruction of medical services meant that over 80% of GBV
survivors said they had no access to medical and psychological
support.
While the reality is
impossible to fully understand, there is also hope with a programme
funded by the Irish government and Trócaire to create safe spaces
and new economic opportunities for women.
“It’s difficult to
express in words what women in Tigray have been through,” she said.
“Because it’s not a
single experience they’ve had, and it still continues. Even after
the stop of the war, the forms of violence are increasing.
“They have passed
through sexual violence during the war, they lost their children and
husbands.
“They also witnessed
dead bodies, they observe mass killings. They’re in need of
psycho-social support as well as healthy intervention to recover.”
She said a breakdown of
law and order has created a feeling there are no consequences for
crimes against women and girls.
“There is also a new
practice and new challenge the women of Tigray have been suffering
due to bad learnings during the war – gang rapes, rape by their
family members, being killed by family members,” she said.
“Because everybody is
not in (the right) state of mind. So they are just practicing the bad
things.
“What makes it worse is
that there is no legal enforcement…but even if people are killed or
raped, there is no justice.
“It’s like giving
permission for those who are committing crimes.”
With the
support of the Irish government, 16 safe spaces for women and girls
have now been established across Tigray.
“It is a
space where it helps them to heal from the trauma they have. There
are multiple services like individual counselling, group
psycho-social counselling, other healing activities,” Tsega said.
Another major
aspect is to help women regain their livelihood, through saving
schemes and business support such as keeping chickens, goats and
bees.
“During the
first time they visit us, they are in trauma. Bad things happen to
them. Now they start to have a new hope.
“They are
having a new hope to start life again. So for every woman you talk to
in the safe spaces, they have their own healing stories.”
The Irish News
was invited to one of the safe spaces in the town of Agula.
In one room, a
group of women share their experiences with each other as well as
trading their skills like knitting.
Next door is a
creche, allowing mothers the chance to take part in counselling or
time to themselves while a savings groups also encourages them to
grow their financial independence.
One woman,
Lugeberhwet (35), spoke to the Irish News about how the group has
helped her since the death of her son Mahom (15) during the war.
“Initially I
heard about the safe space, I was suffering from the trauma of the
war. I was not in a peace of mind so I decided to come here and heal
from the feeling that I had,” she said.
She said the
group has now helped her “to feel peaceful inside.”
While not
experiencing GBV herself, she said helping other women through this
kind of trauma has helped with her own grief.
Tsega
commented: “This helped her to look after the other kids. So this
centre helped her to heal from that.
“She also
shared that the other women who passed through similar experiences
are also coping with new life and hope.”
An extensive
organ-harvesting ring has been uncovered in Nigeria after weeks of
covert surveillance, local officials have said.
In a statement
shared on X, the Imo State Police Command said their investigation
was launched after reports of a worrying spate of kidnappings near a
hotel and mortuary in Ngor Okpala.
According to
police, intelligence-led investigations went on to identify a man
called High Chief Stanley Oparaugo, also known as "Morocco,"
as the suspected leader of the criminal network and who is now on the
run and wanted, per reports.
😲
Senior Nigerian politician and wife guilty of organ harvesting
plot in London| ITV News
👹
Nigeria is
100% Ruled by Satan and Its 'Human' Agents
👹 The
following nations are 100% Ruled by Satan and Its 'Human' Agents:
☆ France
☆ Britain
☆ Italy
☆ Switzerland
☆ Australia
+ New Zealand
☆ China
☆ India
☆ South
Africa
☆ Kenya
👹
NIGERIA
☆ Ghana
☆ Haiti
☆ Argentina
☆ Brazil
☆ All
57 Islamic Countries
Many others are
on their way to be fully controlled by Satan.
It's no secret that President
Trump really, really loves gold.
Trump has been comprised by the
billions invested in Trump Organizations and in America by Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Qatar, and other Muslim Countries which are
waging all forms of jihad (eg. lives, money), war against Non-Muslims
to make Islam supreme (Quran 9:5, 29, 111, etc.).I t’s worse than
that.
💭
"President Dollar Trump: In Gold We Trust – We’re Going to
Become So Rich...
👉 Courtesy:The
Globe and Mail, Canada, by Claire Wilmot and Ashenafi Endale,
November 13, 2025
As gold prices skyrocket,
Chinese and western companies are working side by side to exploit a
region ravaged by civil war.
Illegal gold mining industry
has exploded in Ethiopia's Tigray region since the end of the civil
war
Shady foreign investors
have joined forces with local military to exploit it for profit
Unregulated mining is
ruining land, killing cattle and poisoning local people
At a military checkpoint in
Ethiopia’s Tigray region, an area reckoning with the aftermath of
one of the 21st century’s deadliest wars, heavily armed soldiers
ordered TBIJ to pull over. After a brief interrogation, we were told
in no uncertain terms to turn back. Only those with written
permission from the military controlling the area could go any
further.
As we tried to negotiate our way
through, a dusty pickup truck skidded to a halt next to us. Its
driver, a Chinese national, was accompanied by a local interpreter
dressed in army fatigues. In the back were vinyl sacks, pickaxes and
half a dozen men. The interpreter handed a piece of paper to one of
the soldiers, who waved them through.
The truck accelerated away from
the checkpoint and towards the sites we had been forbidden from
approaching: two vast gold mines, so big they can be seen from space.
The Bureau of Investigative
Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal that for over a year these sites, known
as Mato Bula and Da Tambuk, were both home to huge illegal mining
operations, part of an illicit post-war gold rush in Tigray now worth
billions, according to records from Ethiopia’s National Bank.
On paper, the sites are licensed
to subsidiaries of East Africa Metals (EAM), a Canadian mining
company with deep ties to China. EAM has said publicly it is
developing legal industrial mines here through its business partners.
Meanwhile, on the ground, gold has been illegally excavated by former
soldiers working alongside Chinese miners whose machinery is paid for
by shadowy “foreign investors”, according to miners and former
security officials. The sites are guarded by military men who control
vast smuggling networks, which are in turn fuelling yet more violence
across a region already devastated by conflict.
Part of what is driving the
explosion of illegal mining in Tigray is the sky-high price of gold
around the world. The US, China and others are scrambling to buy up
gold reserves. But our investigation also challenges popular
depictions of Chinese and western companies as fierce competitors: in
Tigray, the two are working hand-in-glove.
EAM told us it “categorically
denies the suggestion it is implicated in activities that violate
Canadian, Ethiopian or international law”. It acknowledged that
mining operations appear to have taken place at the sites, including
potentially by foreigners, but believes they are acting as
individuals, not as representatives of any company. EAM also told us
operations on the sites were suspended and its subsidiaries and
development partners were unable to access them.
It is not only EAM’s sites
that became hubs of illegal gold production. Since the end of the
war, large illicit mines have sprung up across Tigray, fuelled by
foreign capital and enabled by local military men. The chemicals
being used to pry gold from the earth are poisoning the local land
and water. People living nearby have reported strange skin
conditions. Their crops and animals are dying.
Canadian companies hold most
foreign mining licences in Tigray and numerous people within the
industry told us they believe some of these firms have been involved
in the boom of illicit mining. For over a year, TBIJ has been
investigating these claims. Our reporters have travelled across
hundreds of kilometres to some of Tigray’s most remote corners,
conducting more than 200 interviews in search of answers.
The stakes are high. Journalists
reporting on these matters have been detained and threatened with
serious violence. Whistleblowers have been intimidated, assaulted and
threatened with death. Tigrayans protesting the looting of their land
have been injured and killed.
For these reasons, almost
everyone who spoke to us for this story did so on the condition of
anonymity. But their testimonies paint the clearest picture yet of an
illicit industry that is ruining the land, stoking deadly violence
and threatens to push Ethiopia back to war.
The gold rush
Gold has always been a precious
commodity – but right now, it is worth more than ever. In October
prices surpassed $4,000 an ounce, and across Tigray, the gold rush
can be seen everywhere. Along the highway that links the regional
capital Mekelle with the gold hub of Shire, young children brandish
small bags of dust and nuggets at passing cars.
Not long ago, this region was
the scene of a brutal civil war that broke out in late 2020 between
Ethiopia’s federal government and Tigray’s leading political
party. By the time a peace deal was signed two years later, more than
half a million people were believed to have been killed.
Before the war, Tigray’s
mining industry was smaller and more tightly regulated. For foreign
companies, licences were granted federally and implemented
regionally. Meanwhile, licences for so-called “artisanal” mining
– which permit small-scale methods, like digging and panning for
gold by hand – were granted by local and regional governments.
But the war drove a wedge
between the federal and regional governments, and fragmented
political authority within Tigray. In its aftermath, as an economic
crisis took hold, opportunistic military men took control of key
gold-producing sites.
Gold mining in Tigray became a
multibillion-dollar industry – and those who controlled the most
profitable sites gained sudden political power. Unnamed “investors”
from outside the region, spotting their opportunity, began to cut
deals to expand production and smuggle gold out of Tigray, local
miners and former government officials told us.
The result was the expansion of
sites like Mato Bula and Da Tambuk into sprawling quarries where
artisanal miners, in violation of laws and regulations, began to use
heavy machinery and toxic chemicals to unearth gold. Many people we
spoke to were clear that mines like these could not be built without
the approval of local military leaders involved in the illicit gold
trade.
EAM told us it does not engage
with any military or paramilitary organisations and has no
involvement with armed actors in the region.
“The gold economy is fuelling
conflict and empowering armed actors in Ethiopia,” said Ahmed
Soliman, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. “We should have
seen these resources being used to rebuild the region. Instead, they
are being misappropriated.”
Our findings raise major
questions about Tigray’s mining industry – not least around the
role of East Africa Metals, whose previous public statements about
the legal development of its sites are a far cry from what is
happening on the ground.
‘This
is the wild west’
While a number of Canadian
companies hold mining exploration licenses in Tigray, EAM’s
subsidiaries are the only ones permitted to develop large-scale
industrial mines. In so doing, EAM has enlisted the help of a
China-registered firm called Tibet Huayu, which, as well as promoting
the projects to potential Chinese investors, is covering the two
mines’ construction costs. According to stock exchange filings, it
has spent at least $2m on the projects since 2019.
The official word from both
companies is that the mines are not yet operational. Neither company
has reported any revenue from the mines.
But Mato Bula and Da Tambuk were
already producing gold. Both sites have been hubs of illegal
extraction for well over a year, according to artisanal miners, gold
brokers and security officials.
Heavy machinery has been visible
in satellite imagery of both sites since January 2024, and one
smuggler who moves gold from both sites said that returns have grown
rapidly.
Justin Lynch of Conflict
Insights Group, a research organisation that has analysed images of
both sites, said they show “clear signs of expansion from 2024 to
2025”. He added that more equipment associated with large-scale
artisanal mining appeared between January and November 2024.
According to four artisanal
miners who have witnessed the expansion, as well as a government
official, two former security officers and an individual involved in
smuggling, most equipment was brought to the site by Chinese miners,
who ramped up production midway through 2024, around the same time
EAM announced construction would be starting.
Three investors with first-hand
knowledge of operations at the sites also told us that the expansion
of these illegal operations has been financed by EAM’s Chinese
business partners. They said Chinese miners employed by EAM’s
partners and subsidiaries have been mining on these sites, in
collusion with some Tigrayan military officers, for around a year –
and that the gold has been smuggled out of the region.
Other insiders who have visited
the sites went as far as saying that the miners in question worked
for Silk Road Investments, a company wholly owned by Tibet Huayu,
EAM’s business partner. Others told us that illegal miners at the
sites worked for Tigray Resources, a company joint-owned by EAM and
Tibet Huayu.
EAM told us it “unequivocally
rejects the suggestion that it, or any of its subsidiaries or
affiliated business partners, financed or facilitated illegal
artisanal mining activities”, including any complicity in
smuggling. Tibet Huayu did not respond to requests for comment.
In June, Tigray’s new
president dispatched a task force to seize mining assets and enforce
temporary pauses on mining across the region. His allies say the move
is meant to bring the illicit economy to heel. His critics say it is
a means of asserting his authority over all sites. One of his key
allies maintains control over Mato Bula and Da Tambuk, though sources
near the sites say that machinery has changed hands in recent months,
and Chinese miners were replaced by locals. The task force was set to
conclude in the coming weeks, but worsening violence on Tigray’s
southern border may cause further delays.
“This is the wild west,”
said Ahmed Soliman of Chatham House. “[Tigray’s illegal mines]
appear to be causing serious environmental harms, labour is
unregulated and there is very little transparency about the
relationships western companies have with problematic actors.”
In the case of EAM, its business
links throw up some especially intriguing questions. Not least
because its partnership with Tibet Huayu is only the most public of
its numerous connections to Chinese companies, Chinese capital –
and Chinese state strategy.
The
China connection
EAM’s links to China go back
as far as the company itself. Shortly after its creation in 2012, it
acquired exploration licences in Tigray – including for Mato Bula
and Da Tambuk – from a company called Beijing Donia Resources.
Thirteen years on, EAM says it
has not made a penny from its Ethiopia projects. But since the war
ended, it has received cash injections from other companies – known
as private placements – worth at least $5m. These are often made
anonymously.
Two of these, totalling $1.1m,
originated from a Chinese company called Sinotech Minerals
Exploration Co Ltd, according to well-placed business insiders. They
said the money had been paid via another Canadian company, which
Sinotech part-owns, called Nickel North Exploration Co.
EAM told us that Nickel North
has never made a private placement to EAM. When asked if the payments
in question came from individuals associated with Nickel North or
Sinotech, the company said it could not disclose the information
without the investors’ consent. Nickel North and Sinotech did not
respond to multiple requests for comment.
In June 2025, EAM closed a $4m
private placement – this time with a company called Anchises
Capital, a newly formed US-registered company. Anchises executives
also have ties to China, according to two industry insiders and
business registry documents.
Linking these entities is one
man: a businessman called Jingbin Wang. He is chairman of Sinotech,
chairman of Nickel North, former chairman of Beijing Donia, and
chairman of the board of directors at EAM.
Wang is also the chief geologist
for Zijin Mining Group, a Chinese enterprise that has a 55% interest
in a third mine licensed to an EAM subsidiary.
On top of this, he holds key
roles in government agencies responsible for China’s gold and
critical minerals strategy. And copper, a vital mineral for the green
transition, is found alongside gold in the earth at EAM’s Tigray
mines. The Canadian government has limited Chinese control of
Canadian critical minerals companies, including a Lithium company
owned by EAM’s CEO and Wang's business partner, Andrew Lee Smith.
Nickel North, Sinotech, Anchises
and Jingbin Wang did not respond to our requests for comment.
EAM told us that no copper is
expected to be recovered from Da Tambuk and is not present “in
economically significant amounts” at Mato Bula.
“The pattern in high-risk
resource ventures often reveals opportunistic, risk-tolerant frontier
investors who leverage political connections back home to secure
deals,” said JR Mailey, research associate at the Africa Center for
Strategic Studies. “Profit dictates collaboration.”
Days after we presented our
findings to EAM, the company announced that it had applied for a
management cease trade order, which means it can delay filing its
statements for the most recent financial year. It said the order was
unrelated to our questions.
EAM published its statements in
mid-September, and the cease trade order has been lifted. In the new
filings, EAM says the continuation of the project is contingent on
its ability to access its sites.
‘A
captive workforce’
When we asked miners at another,
smaller EAM-licensed site who had paid for their excavators and rock
crushers, most kept quiet. Those who did speak told us of anonymous
“investors” from abroad.
Nearby at the same site,
Abrihet*, a miner, sat on the ground and swirled pearls of mercury
over a slurry of dirt and gold – a way of extracting the metal from
the ore by hand. The gold trade was new to her, she explained: her
family had been left destitute by the war, so she, like so many, was
forced to find an alternative income.
Yet for miners like her, gold is
far from lucrative. After the investors and the military men took
their cut, Abrihet was left with just enough to keep her and her
family fed. Her situation isn’t unique. These profit-sharing deals
between investors and the military can leave the miners themselves –
already risking their health and safety to eke out a living – with
very little.
“It’s a captive workforce,”
explained one local researcher.
Just down the hill from Abrihet
was a large metal structure that sifts ore and mercury through a
series of sieves. The process typically extracts only about 30% of
gold in the ore, so the runoff that pools at the bottom of the
structure is then treated with cyanide.
These processes present serious
dangers. Mercury is a toxic chemical that accumulates in the body and
even in small amounts can cause neurological damage, skin conditions
and loss of vision. It can be especially harmful to unborn babies and
infants. Cyanide, meanwhile, is a poison that can seriously damage
the brain, heart and nervous system.
In the type of illegal activity
seen across Tigray, the use of these chemicals is far more dangerous
than in industrial mining, which is bound by regulations designed to
keep workers safe. Rules around the containment of runoffs, for
instance, shield both miners and the surrounding environment from
severe harm. Here there is no such protection.
EAM told us: “Neither EAM, its
officers, employees, contractors, or partners have engaged in
transactions introducing equipment or chemicals at the target areas.”
It categorically denied any suggestion of complicity in environmental
harm.
The ecological crisis gripping
the region has been extensively documented. A confidential legal
report, obtained by TBIJ, detailed the widespread use of chemicals
near sources of drinking water. One miner who lives nearby a mine
showed us welts covering her hands. In a village downstream, Abrihet
said, two children have died from illnesses she attributes to
cyanide.
“Without these chemicals, we
don’t earn enough,” she said. “But they are also killing us.”
A
country at odds
At first, little of the
illegally mined gold in Tigray stayed in Ethiopia for very long. Most
of it was roughly refined in Shire, and then smuggled out of the
country through Eritrea to be sold around the world.
Last summer, however, this
changed when federal politicians moved to take control of an industry
that they said was empowering some of their Tigrayan rivals.
According to an internal report
compiled by the Federal Ministry of Mines, obtained by TBIJ, the
National Bank of Ethiopia purchased just over 18,000kg of gold from
Tigray’s artisanal miners over the past year. This is nearly 30
times the amount Tigray was projected to legally produce in the same
period.
The conclusions are clear: the
vast majority of Tigrayan gold that made its way to Addis Ababa was
of illicit provenance. Ethiopia generated nearly $3.5bn from gold
exports last year, according to the above report, the vast majority
of which was reportedly mined in Tigray.
Smugglers and brokers told us
that most of the gold, rather than being taken across borders, is now
being moved to government purchasing sites, with federal officers
complicit.
“There are people who are
known to participate in this network from top to bottom among
government and security officials,” said Tigray’s former interim
president Getachew Reda last year.
Ethiopia’s federal government,
Tigray’s regional government, and a military spokesperson did not
reply to requests for comment.
The region’s shifting politics
may also be warding off the bigger mining companies. An employee
formerly with the Newmont Corporation, one of the world’s largest
gold mining firms, told us it did not plan to return to the region
any time soon despite holding licences there.
This presents a problem for the
so-called “junior” companies (a category EAM falls into), which
typically operate by selling their prospects on to bigger buyers. A
foreign miner who has worked in Tigray said that some overseas mining
companies – or individuals using them as cover – have begun
trying to take a cut from the illegal mining happening on their
patch.
‘They
make the chaos’
At a mining camp near Shire, a
young woman told us that her sister’s six-month-old baby had
recently died of a mysterious illness. The child was buried without a
clear cause of death having been established, but she believes it was
because of chemicals that leached into the drinking water.
Tigray’s gold rush has lined
the pockets of a few, but for countless others it has brought death
and disillusionment. Dozens have been killed in clashes at mining
sites and untold more will suffer long-term effects of toxic land.
Gold has transformed Ethiopia’s political landscape – and as its
value continues to rise in an increasingly uncertain world, so too
will the incentives to expand production at all costs.
The future of EAM’s projects
are uncertain. Tigray’s new interim president is trying to
consolidate control over mining, and many artisanal projects appear
to have been paused. Equipment at some of the larger sites, including
Mato Bula and Da Tambuk, have been handed over from the Chinese to
Tigrayans. Whether this indicates a material change in who is
benefiting from these sites is not clear. But whoever controls these
sites moving forward, the root problems are likely to persist.
“What we now see in Tigray is
not just an environmental, economic and security crisis of a colossal
scale,” Getachew Reda, the former president of Tigray’s interim
administration, told TBIJ. “It will also help to precipitate a
regional crisis. Those [benefiting from the gold trade] have a vested
interest in destabilising the region, because it is better to fish in
troubled waters.”
Sitting under dim lights in a
bar in Shire, an ex-soldier told us how he quit the army several
months ago, angered by the corruption he saw throughout the ranks.
But he seemed resigned to the fact that illegal gold mining will only
continue to spread across the region.
“Tigrayan commanders, federal
officers, foreigners […] they make the chaos and then they profit
from the chaos,” he said.
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