Boy, 6, battling cancer is seized by ICE outside Texas courthouse
A Honduran mother has sued ICE and the Trump administration after she and her cancer-stricken six-year-old son were arrested by agents outside a Los Angeles immigration court.
The woman, who is not named in court documents, said they violated her family's rights by detaining them at a Texas facility, despite their lawful efforts to seek asylum in the U.S.
In a scathing petition filed in San Antonio federal court, her lawyers argue that the arrest was unconstitutional and traumatic, especially for her young son who has undergone chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
The young boy urinated on himself and remained in wet clothes 'for hours' during the traumatic arrest, according to the documents.
'They're asylum seekers fleeing from violence, who had an appointment at the border, were paroled into the country and the government made an assessment that they didn't have to be detained,' said attorney Kate Gibson Kumar of the Texas Civil Rights Project.
'There should be some sort of protection for this family, which is doing everything right.'
The lawsuit claims the mother and her kids were taken into custody without warning on May 29, immediately after a judge granted dismissal of their asylum case at the government's request.
The woman had objected, telling the court, 'We wish to continue [with our cases],' according to legal filings.
The family - already facing death threats in Honduras - had been living in California with relatives while attending court hearings, going to church, and enrolling the children in local public schools.
But shortly after leaving the courtroom, all three were arrested in the hallway by ICE agents and taken to a nearby facility, where they were allegedly held for hours.
Her son, who was due for a medical check-up on June 5, missed the appointment due to the arrest.
According to court documents, all three 'cried in fear' during the ordeal.
They were later flown to San Antonio and transferred to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas - where they remain in detention.
Kumar slammed the move as cruel and unnecessary.
'So often, you'll hear all the rhetoric in this country that immigrants should be doing it 'the right way,' and it's ironic in this case because we're in a situation where this family did it 'the right way' and they're being punished for it,' she told the Los Angeles Times.
Kumar added that the government never gave the mother a chance to contest the detention before a neutral judge - violating her Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.
Federal officials pushed back, saying the case is unfolding lawfully.
'This family had chosen to appeal their case - which had already been thrown out by an immigration judge - and will remain in ICE custody until it is resolved,' said DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin.
As for the boy's cancer, McLaughlin noted that 'the minor child in question has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year, and has been seen regularly by medical personnel since arriving at the Dilley facility.'
She also insisted that 'ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.'
'The implication that ICE would deny a child the medical care they need is flatly FALSE, and it is an insult to the men and women of federal law enforcement,' she said.
But according to the lawsuit, the family was left in limbo - with the children crying each night and praying 'for God to take them out of the detention center.'
The mother says her son went days without proper monitoring for his cancer.
Her legal team is now asking a judge to block their deportation and to release them from detention, warning that returning to Honduras would place the family in grave danger.
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BBC News
35 minutes ago
- BBC News
'It's insane to build the same thing and expect different results': Can LA fire-proof itself?
Six months after the wildfires tore through Los Angeles, residents are tussling with the urban destruction left behind – and a debate over the future of the city's buildings. Countless Los Angeles streets still contain the charred remains of homes that succumbed to wildfire six months ago. Many of their inhabitants are still living with friends and relatives or in hotels, hostels and shelters. With more than 16,000 homes and buildings destroyed in the January 2025 wildfires, the LA neighbourhoods and nearby communities affected have been left contemplating how best to balance the need to get their homes back as soon as possible with future resilience to wildfire. Today, even as the city faces the new turmoil of immigration raids ordered by President Donald Trump and the extensive protests that have followed, LA is clearing debris and preparing to rebuild. Progress so far has been slow, however, with few permits issued to rebuild (in Palisades, for example, just 125 rebuild permits have been issued out of 558 applications, the LA Department of Building and Safety told the BBC). Many residents have moved to communities far from the homes they lost, according to an investigation by the New York Times. Faced with a daunting rebuild, many contractors and homeowners want to build quickly, with some working to loosen environmental protection code and permit requirements. Meanwhile, wildfire experts tell the BBC they want to ensure new construction is compliant with fire and energy codes, while sustainability advocates say they hope greener methods and materials will enter the market. "There are going to be hard decisions on how we want to rebuild versus what is technically required," says Ian Giammanco, managing director for standards and data analytics at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS), a South-Carolina-based research group funded by the insurance industry. California's building code was updated in 2008 to establish standards for wildfire-resistant construction. It requires the use of non-combustible materials and for homeowners to maintain defensible space around the home, such as by creating a safety buffer cleared of vegetation or debris. California is one of only five US states to apply a specific building code to areas designated as having very high wildfire risk. Homes which had been constructed after 2008 in the LA neighbourhood of Pacific Palisades, which lost 6,837 structures in the Palisades Fire, were built with these requirements in place. But in Altadena, an area north of downtown LA where many neighbourhoods were affected by the Eaton Fire, many homes did not fall under the fire code. In March, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a state agency often referred to as Cal Fire, expanded its maps of areas required to use the code, with existing homes at a minimum creating defensible space by clearing brush. The expansion means about 500 additional homes affected by the Eaton Fire will be covered by the code by late July 2025, according to analysis by US broadcaster NPR, but still leaves about 7,800 structures outside the high-risk zone. Some of the proposed methods are already being used in the wider US. In Colorado, for example, where a 2021 wildfire destroyed nearly 1,000 homes in the Denver suburb of Superior, some homeowners have opted to rebuild using compressed earth blocks that have a high resilience to fire. And CalEarth, a California-based nonprofit that pioneered a type of earthbag construction called super adobe, has drawn renewed attention from residents, says Khalili, and is urging state and local officials to work with them on making their designs code-compliant. "Let's do the full tests… and build back prepared for these climate events," Dastan Khalili, president of CalEarth, tells the BBC. "It's insane to build the same thing and expect different results." But bringing alternative building methods to market is costly, especially in California, where materials must prove to be fire-resistant while also passing stringent seismic testing. Any alternative material, such as rammed earth – a building technique using compacted soil mixed with water and stabilisers which has been used for over 1,000 years, including, in recent decades, in California – must be submitted for testing, typically by manufacturers, says Crystal Sujeski, chief of code development and analysis for CalFire. This testing needs to prove they are equivalent to or exceed the standard set by conventional, widely used materials. "A lot of [testing] options are out there," she says. New building materials that pass multiple tests can also be added to a register of approved materials, she says. Khalili says CalEarth has always designed structures to comply with international building codes and has planned tests to meet the fire and seismic requirements of California's code. "All of that is ready to be executed," he says. "The only thing that's stopping us is the funding to go after it and make it happen." Burn tests in a fire lab for a single new material, he says, run at around $40-50k (£30-37k), and the required seismic testing can triple or quadruple this bill. As a result, rammed earth homes and other alternative structures can be costlier than using more conventional methods – and even then, the process of approving construction at the state and municipal levels is arduous. Ann Edminster, a green building consultant and author based in northern California, says that the ease and cost of the permitting process is highly dependent on the jurisdiction and who you work with. "The building official will either be your best friend or your worst enemy," she says. It creates a wall of inertia boxing out those with interest in experimenting with alternative materials, she says. And in any case, if you have just lost your home to fire and don't have a place to live, "you're probably not going to be super enthusiastic about testing some brand new material", she says. Still, there are relatively straightforward options for fire-proofing new builds – especially considering the risks of not doing so. A 2022 report by IBHS and Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based research institute, found that wildfire-resistant construction adds from 2% to 13% to the cost of a new home in California, with the upper cost here going well above current required codes. "Increasing home loss and growing risks require reevaluating the wildfire crisis as a home-ignition problem and not a wildland fire problem," the report said, noting that a home's building materials, design and nearby landscaping all influence its survival. Stephen Quarles, an advisor emeritus at the University of California who has spent decades researching how building materials perform during wildfires, says it's more straightforward to obtain approval for smaller alternative projects. Quarles emphasises that wildfire building codes are flexible and allow for traditional construction to be adapted and use more sustainable materials. For instance, a homeowner constructing a straw bale home can coat the exterior with a fireproof material to get approval from a code official. "You could say, 'My cladding is stucco, which is non-combustible,' and you would be good to go," he says. But he also acknowledges that most homeowners just want to rebuild as quickly as possible. When the June 2007 Angora fire destroyed 280 homes in neighbourhoods around Northern California's Lake Tahoe, some residents raced to rebuild before the stricter code regulations took effect the following January, Quarles recalls. Later that same year, after the Tubbs fire ripped through the Coffey Park neighbourhood of Santa Rosa, the community "built back as if there [hadn't been] a wildfire there", he says. But he believes the latest Los Angeles wildfires – along with the 2023 Lahaina fire on Hawaii's Maui island, which were called the "largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history" – have alerted people to the importance of hardening their homes in the future. A January 2025 study found that the hot, dry weather that gave rise to the LA fires was made about 35% more likely by climate change. The LA wildfire season is getting longer, the study noted, while the rains that normally put out the blazes have reduced. "There's an acknowledgement that these fires can happen in places where you don't expect fires to happen," Quarles says. "I think that's taking hold and there is a desire to genuinely build back better." Giammanco, who contributed to a March 2025 report by IBHS documenting which types of homes survived the fire, agrees. "If you look back at our history of construction, there are inflection points," he says. The report showed that homes compliant with California building codes had a higher survival rate than those which were not. But some homes that took preparatory steps, such as clearing brush and creating defensive space, still succumbed when enough of their neighbours had not taken these steps. "Even the most hardened materials when subject to extreme fire exposure will reach their limit," Giammanco says. "Defending a community is sort of a system that builds on itself." More like this:• The people rebuilding their homes with earth• Could a buffer shield Californian homes from wildfire?• How wildlife survives after wildfires When wildfires spread in urban areas, the homes they ignite become "fuel bombs" and intensify the blaze, says Kimiko Barrett, lead wildfire research and policy analyst at non-profit research group Headwaters Economics. "The home itself is the fuel," she says. "Once your neighbour's house starts to burn, the radiant heat means that your home is threatened as well." This is a particular problem in LA, which despite its sprawling footprint is actually still a densely populated area, especially relative to more rural communities. Slow progress in retrofitting existing homes remains a major problem, says Giammanco – and homes that predate California's 2008 wildfire code are not mandated to do it. But there is precedent for incentive and rebate programmes in the US to help make homes more resilient to extreme weather, from initiatives in arid south-western cities for residents to collect rainwater to an Alabama programme providing grants up to $10,000 (£7,400) to install roofing resilient to wind and rain. Giammanco says similar programmes for wildfire protection could incentivise residents to make their homes more resilient to fire. "I think that's the missing link," he says. Adding fire-resistant materials in retrofits such as fibre cement siding and enclosing roof eaves to make it code compliant costs just a few thousand dollars, Barrett says. Other steps are even easier, such as clearing bark mulch from a home's defensive space. "A lot of these mitigation measures can be done over the weekend by the homeowner," she says. It's still early days in LA for the thousands of homeowners preparing to rebuild, but there are signs that the construction industry is starting to adapt. The LA-based homebuilder KB Home, for example, has designed a fire-resilient community with 64 homes that comply to IBHS standards. When it comes to building new homes, Edminster emphasises that simple structures with minimal openings and overhang can be best, comparing an ideal fire-resistant home to an aerodynamic car. "The same principle could and should apply to homes," she says. "Obviously we don't want to live in little round spaceships or something, but… get your outer shell so that it works really well." Sustainable building advocates are also pushing for greener materials and methods to become commonplace, arguing that they can be used in fire-hardened homes while also reducing emissions and bringing costs down in the longer term. For existing houses, simple retrofitting steps can improve the sustainability as well as the resilience of a home – even when they don't use the greenest materials possible. Some of Edminster's clients have retrofitted homes to be fire-resistant without stripping everything out. "That's a terrible waste of material and the embodied carbon in them," she says. "So there's a trade-off." Edminster is adamant that building codes should stay in place after a disaster. "The whole idea of relaxing code to make it easier for people to rebuild, I think, is nonsense," she says. "[They] have been put in place to protect people and to protect us as a society." And while many of the structures lost in the Eaton fire remain outside the boundaries of California's wildfire code, Barrett believes there is precedent for drastic change. US cities began mandating fire hydrants and sprinkler systems around the turn of the 20th Century after major urban fires in Chicago and San Francisco. Earthquake codes became stiffer in the 1970s, requiring buildings to retrofit for seismic risk reduction "We can do this. We have done it before," Barrett says. "We just need to now think of it through a wildfire lens." -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
BBC News
36 minutes ago
- BBC News
Uproar over sexual assault in Bangladesh after video spreads online
Warning: This article contains details some readers may find distressing A video of a woman being sexually assaulted has caused nationwide uproar in Bangladesh, after the clip was shared widely woman, who has been interviewed by local media, says she was raped at her father's house last Thursday. The clip shows several people at the have arrested five people, including the alleged rapist, and authorities have said they will investigate the case "with utmost seriousness".Protests broke out across the country over the weekend after the clip was circulated, and several human rights groups have demanded severe punishment for those involved. The survivor was visiting her father's home in central Bangladesh's Cumilla district when a neighbour broke in and assaulted her, according to woman, who is from a Hindu minority community, gave interviews to several local outlets saying the accused "entered the house with bad intentions and tortured her".Police have named the main suspect as 36-year-old Fazor Ali, adding that he was hospitalised after being beaten up by members of the public on the night of the incident. The man sustained injuries on his arms and legs which prevented him from showing up in court on Sunday, police other four people were arrested for filming and circulating videos of the assault, police human rights groups are calling for a swift investigation, with some saying the incident is the latest in a series of cases of violence against women where justice was delayed or perpetrators were granted impunity."If a woman is not safe in her own home and identity, it represents a serious failure of the state and a breakdown in security," Ain O Salish Kendra, a national legal aid and human rights organisation, said in a statement on organisation further urged that "the state must send a clear and firm message that such barbarity has no place in this country".Another Dhaka-based group, Manusher Jonno Foundation, condemned those who filmed and distributed the clip, saying they inflicted a "second assault" on the authorities have said the case will be dealt with swiftly."Like ordinary citizens, we are also deeply shocked by the rape. Our home ministry has taken immediate action," the country's law adviser Asif Nazrul said in a media briefing on Sunday. "The prime accused, along with those involved in spreading photos of the incident, a highly irresponsible and criminal act, have all been arrested."Earlier this year, an eight-year-old child who was raped in Bangladesh died of her injuries, setting off fierce protests around the protesters at the time demanded that the government expedite justice for rape victims and reform laws related to women and children's also called for greater clarity around the legal definitions of what constitutes rape in Bangladesh, which they said were currently ambiguous.
The Guardian
36 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Rusted screws, metal spikes and plastic rubbish: the horrific sexual violence used against Tigray's women
For two years, Tseneat carried her rape inside her. The agony never faded. It attacked her from the inside out. The remnants of the attack stayed in Tseneat's womb – not as a memory or metaphor, but a set of physical objects: Eight rusted screws. A steel pair of nail clippers. A note, written in ballpoint pen and wrapped in plastic. 'Sons of Eritrea, we are brave,' the note reads. 'We have committed ourselves to this, and we will continue doing it. We will make Tigrayan females infertile.' The objects, revealed by X-ray and surgically extracted by doctors more than two years later, were forced inside Tseneat as she lay unconscious after being gang-raped by six soldiers. She is one of tens of thousands of Tigrayan women subjected to the most extreme forms of sexual violence, in attacks designed to destroy their fertility. Medical records and X-rays obtained by the Guardian and reviewed by independent medical specialists show a pattern of cases where women have had foreign bodies forced into their reproductive organs, including nails, screws, plastic rubbish, sand, gravel and letters. Under international law, it is genocide to destroy fertility or prevent births with the intention of wholly or partly destroying an ethnic group. The letters – written by their rapists, wrapped in plastic and inserted into the women's uteruses – make their intentions clear. Several mention bitter border disputes with Tigray in the 1990s, and promise vengeance. In another note, extracted by the hospital from a different woman, is written: 'Have you forgotten what you did to us in the 90s? We did not forget. From now on, no Tigrayan will give birth to another Tigrayan.' Tseneat had given birth to twins seven days before the attack, and was breastfeeding when the men arrived. She lived in eastern Tigray, in Zalambessa, a town bordering Eritrea. The soldiers arrived at her home on 25 November 2020, shortly after the war began. After questioning her about the whereabouts of her husband, the men dragged Tseneat outside. 'I tried to resist and I cried and they beat me,' she says, weeping. They kicked her in the head with their military boots until she bled out of her ears. 'Then they all raped me.' At some point during the attack, she says, a soldier injected something into her leg, and she lost consciousness. As she came to, the soldiers were talking. 'I heard one saying, 'She has given birth to twins, who are like her. Kill her.'' Another replied. ''No, she is already dead. Leave her and she will die herself. She does not need a bullet.'' Tseanat did not die. For six months, her mother nursed her. There were no medical facilities functioning in the area but she knew something was terribly wrong: she was in constant pain, and fragments of plastic and debris would occasionally pass from her vagina. It was almost two years before Tseneat finally approached a medical clinic for help. 'I was stressed, I had a bad smell and the other women were not willing to be with me. I was crying outside the clinic. The sister asked me, 'If you are willing, let's check your womb.'' After removing the materials visible through her cervix, the staff performed X-rays to check for more foreign bodies. The image they produced is difficult to comprehend: at the centre of Tseneat's uterus, between her hip bones, lies a pair of metal nail clippers. When they were removed, they were rusting, says Sister Roman, who treated her. Tseneat says she thinks often of ending her life. 'I think of dying,' she says. 'I think of committing suicide.' She says she has one enduring desire: 'Justice must be served and those who are responsible must be accountable. I would be happy then.' Tigray is often described as a forgotten war. If it has been forgotten, it is not by those who endured it, but by the global powers that looked away from one of the most brutal conflicts of this century. It began in November 2020, after Ethiopia's prime minister, the Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed, sent in the army to oust Tigray's regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which he alleged was a threat to national security. The Ethiopian military invaded, joined by forces from the country's then-ally, Eritrea, and militias from the nearby Ethiopian region of Amhara. Where is Tigray? Tigray is the most northern of Ethiopia's 11 regional states, lying along the southern border of Eritrea with Sudan to the west. How did the war start? Years of tensions erupted into war in November 2020. Ethiopia's prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who had inflamed hostilities by delaying federal elections, alleged that Tigray's ruling party had attacked a military camp in the state capital, Mekelle. He sent in troops to oust the state government and ordered a communications blackout. Who is involved? The invasion became a joint effort between three parties: Ethiopia, Eritrea, and regional forces from Tigray's neighbouring state of Amhara. Ethiopia's prime minister denied the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray for months, despite it becoming clear he had formed an alliance with the country's former enemy to mobilise both nations' armies. Amhara has long-standing territorial disputes with Tigray and its own tensions with the federal government – they, too, sent troops. On the other side, the ruling party in Tigray's regional government, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), founded and mobilised its own army when the war began, the Tigray Defence Forces, and was joined by militias from the ethnically marginalised Oromo people. Why are they fighting? Each party has a complex history of disputes. Ethiopia has a federal system, and historically its states have maintained a high level of autonomy. Tigray's ruling party, the TPLF, had been a dominant force in national politics, and led the coalition which ruled Ethiopia for three decades until 2018. The group lost much of its power when Abiy Ahmed was elected prime minister in April 2018, and a political rift began to grow between the TPLF and Abiy's administration. Eritrea and Amhara both have long-standing territorial disputes with Tigray. Eritrea brought violence along Tigray's border during the two decades of the Ethiopia-Eritrea war, a conflict which saw Abiy awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending in 2019. What happened during the conflict? The war resulted in massive civilian casualties, with atrocities and crimes against humanity committed by all parties. As troops moved into Tigray, Ethiopia blockaded the region, preventing journalists, UN agencies and aid from entering and limiting information getting out. Tigray quickly descended into an acute hunger crisis. By the time the ceasefire was signed in November 2022, academics estimated that between 300,000 and 800,000 people had died from violence or starvation as a result of the blockade. The capital Mekelle was decimated. Rates of sexual violence were extreme: surveys indicate that around 10% of Tigrayan women were raped during the conflict. Is the conflict over? The war formally ended in 2022, but violence in the region has continued and is reported to be again escalating. By mid-2025 Eritrean troops were still occupying chunks of Tigray, according to the UN, and continue to be accused of mass rape, arbitrary detention and looting. Large-scale sexual violence by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in the region continues: NGOs have documented hundreds of cases of rape since hostilities ended, and concluded that "the scale and nature of these violations has not materially changed". Now, there are fears the region could descend into war again, after fresh conflicts erupted between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and between Ethiopia's federal government and Amhara state. In the months that followed, Ethiopia imposed a blockade on Tigray, prohibited foreign journalists from visiting and stopped aid, plunging the region into an escalating hunger crisis. Even with a near-total information blackout, reports of human rights abuses emerged, including massacres of hundreds of civilians and the widespread rape of Tigrayan women by government-affiliated forces. By the time a ceasefire was signed in November 2022, between 300,000 and 800,000 civilians had been killed, researchers from the University of Ghent estimate – either directly in the violence, or by starvation as a result of the blockade. There is evidence of abuses committed by all parties, but by far the largest number of alleged atrocities were by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. Randomised surveying conducted by BMJ found that about 10% of Tigray's women were subjected to sexual violence. About 70% of those were gang-raped. When the war broke out, Dr Abraha Gebreegziabher was the head of pediatrics at Tigray's largest hospital, Ayder in Mekelle. Abraha began working with colleagues in gynaecology and obstetrics as women and children who had been raped by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces began to arrive. The first were a group of six girls – all under 18, he says. 'That was very painful.' When they detected their first case of a woman with objects inserted into her womb, Abraha says staff were shocked. 'To us, it was a very painful new phenomenon: we had never heard of this gang-rape and insertion of foreign bodies into women,' he says. 'Even witnessing one case was too painful to bear.' But the women continued to arrive. Abraha, now the hospital's chief clinical director, recalls treating three, and says the clinic attached to the hospital was able to produce medical records for at least five who were operated on. The true number will be many, many times higher. Large numbers of women would not survive the initial attacks, or their aftermath, he says. 'When they have sharp ends, [these objects] are known for migration,' Abraha says. One woman treated in the hospital told staff that nails and screws had been pushed into her uterus. When the medical team performed X-rays, they found the nails in her gastrointestinal tract. 'They may perforate large vessels – bleeding of which can be fatal automatically,' he says. For the survivors, rape remains extremely stigmatising, and women avoid seeking medical care or disclosing their injuries. Many were told by soldiers they would be killed if they sought help. Of those that did make it to hospitals, a significant proportion are unrecorded: medical notes were destroyed in the conflict, or not kept at all in clinics where health workers were threatened for treating survivors of rape. 'The combined invaders during that period were threatening any healthcare providers assisting such women – any healthcare worker assisting the survivors in any way was assumed a traitor. So there was an attempt to hide scared survivors,' Abraha says. Raped women told hospital staff how 'Ethiopian National Defence Forces soldiers warned them not to visit healthcare facilities, otherwise they would find them and kill them', Abraha says. 'Some didn't finish basic lab tests and post-exposure prophylaxis. They just went out and disappeared.' At a clinic in Mekelle, a team of nuns who provided medical care during the war maintained a single, locked cupboard where they kept a cache of evidence of the crimes against these women: X-rays, medical records, and even the objects themselves. 'These foreign bodies are documented and also held in our storage – a lot of foreign bodies, anything, either plastics, metal objects, anything around them are introduced into their reproductive organs,' says Sister Mulu, who led the clinic. She leafs through X-rays, pulling out imaging of yet another abdomen – bisected by a sharp, curved metal spike and a thick bolt. 'This was intentional,' Sister Mulu says. 'Intentionally they make them carry [these objects], for the suffering.' This tiny clinic, in a single-storey, four-room house, received 7,000-8,000 survivors of sexual violence, cases extreme in their brutality. Those being interviewed by the Guardian include women who were wrapped in plastic and set on fire, shot in the genitals, mutilated with scissors or disfigured with acid. 'I'm very traumatised,' Sister Mulu says. 'Thousands of these stories are in my head, in my mind. I'm psychologically disturbed. I can't sleep, and my appetite is very poor because in the night, I see and I hear their stories. I have a big scar in my mind. 'They need justice. We need justice throughout the world.' Justice may be a long time coming. Tseneat, along with other Tigrayan women speaking to the Guardian, says she was raped by Eritrean soldiers working alongside Ethiopian troops. Eritrea is not a party to the peace deal between Tigray's leaders and the Ethiopian government, nor will it be participating in the 'transitional justice' project currently touted by Ethiopia's leadership. Eritrea's president, Isaias Afwerki, has dismissed the allegations as make-believe. 'Everybody talking about human rights violations here and there, rape, looting, this is a fantasy,' he said in 2023. (Isaias rarely responds to non-state media; this 2023 comment constitutes his latest substantive response to the allegations.) The Eritrean government has refused to engage with the international investigation team set up to examine human rights violations in Tigray and, according to the UN, there is 'no likely prospect that the domestic judicial system will hold perpetrators accountable for the violations'. Physicians for Human Rights, which has gathered hundreds of medical records and health worker interviews about the war, says it has 'very serious concerns' about the transitional justice process. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion 'The Eritrean military was a primary perpetrator of very brutal conflict-related sexual violence in Tigray, and they are not party to the transitional justice process,' says Lindsey Green, PHR's deputy director of research, who has overseen its medical record reviews in Tigray. 'This leaves a huge gap for survivors in accessing justice and accountability if this entire group of perpetrators is not included in the process at all.' Abiy, Ethiopia's prime minister, faces allegations of war crimes by his military forces but has had no charges or sanctions laid at his door. A handful of soldiers have been charged for participating in massacres or raping women. Ethiopia repeatedly pushed to defund a UN-backed probe into the abuses, and the commission was finally disbanded in 2023 with no resolution to continue its mandate. Two advisers to the joint UN-Ethiopian human rights investigation, Aaron Maasho and Martin Witteveen, wrote last year that the transitional justice policy had become a 'farce', making it 'all but certain that the Ethiopian government will successfully sweep its atrocities in Tigray under the rug'. The Ethiopian and Eritrean governments did not respond to Guardian requests for comment. While the war is officially over, the violence in Tigray continues. Research since the ceasefire shows sexual violence by security forces has continued unabated. According to the Office of the UN high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR), Eritrean soldiers continue to occupy significant parts of Tigray, particularly eastern regions, where they are 'committing violations, including abductions, rape, property looting and arbitrary arrests'. And now, rising tensions between the Ethiopian government and armed groups in Amhara and Oromio leave the entire region vulnerable to toppling into civil war again. Many of the women speaking to the Guardian allege they were held and repeatedly raped at military bases by both Ethiopian and Eritrean forces – reports that indicate sexual violence against Tigrayan woman was systematic, and to some extent condoned by military hierarchies. On a hilltop outside the city of Adwa, Alana's* rubber sandals scuff over the jagged, stony ground. The spot is desolate. A single, unpaved road curls down the rocky hillside. Today, little remains of the place Alana, 32, was held but the grey cinder block walls. Two years ago in this building, used as a military base in Adi Berak, women say they were repeatedly raped by occupying soldiers. Alana says she was thrown into a cell with another woman, Maeza*, who was about 25. Huddled together, they exchanged phone numbers and the names of family members, promising that if one of them escaped, she would seek help for the other. Alana says Maeza was raped by 14 soldiers before she died – men who then made Alana dig a grave for her friend. She was finally released after her family raised a large sum of money to exchange for her, and she found Maeza's brother to tell him what had happened. When they returned to try to find Maeza's grave, she says, she could not identify it: there were too many corpses left by the soldiers, dumped in hasty mass graves as the war ended. A number of survivors tell the Guardian they were held captive at the bases alongside dozens of others. Hana*, 21, was abducted from home by 10 Eritrean soldiers and held for four days at a military base. Approximately 60 women were being held, she says, and she has no idea if they survived. 'They first locked me in a room. Then, over four days, I was raped repeatedly. At the end, they poured acid on my head.' 'I woke up on the road. The Eritrean soldiers had dumped me there, like I was nothing.' The acid burned through her hair and skin, eating away a thick layer of flesh across her scalp. Now, a mottled, tight layer of scar tissue covers her head, causing constant pain. 'I can't sleep at night,' she says. 'It hurts all the time, and the itching never stops.' To heal, she would require plastic surgery. There are no resources available for her to receive it. All of the women being interviewed by the Guardian have sustained significant internal or external injuries, and most need ongoing medical interventions, surgeries and medication. Yet their access to already-limited help is being severed by huge cuts to aid from the US. Nearly 90% of the women who experienced sexual violence during Tigray's war have not received any form of medical or psychological assistance, with about half citing a lack of medical facilities as the reason. For the women who survived the insertion of objects, living with this kind of foreign body means 'severe and long-lasting adverse health consequences and injuries', says Dr Rose Olson, an internal medicine specialist and instructor at Harvard medical school, who has reviewed and commented on X-rays from the cases. 'If the object was inserted into the vagina and it was done so in a very forceful manner, it could certainly lead to a perforation or break through the tissue and then enter your abdominal cavity, and that would probably lead to very severe illness and injury,' she says. The objects could easily remain there for years, Olson says, but would put the women at extremely high risk of 'pelvic inflammatory disease, or inflammation which can lead to things like infertility and scarring, chronic pelvic pain and fistulas.' 'For someone who's 20 or 30 years old, a lifetime of infertility, a lifetime of chronic pain, a lifetime of post-traumatic stress disorder that's untreated, it's very severe.' She emphasises, however: 'There are treatments. The treatments work. That's where there needs to be a lot of attention and energy focused.' But now, some of the few clinics that helped survivors are shuttering, as the Trump administration closes USAID-funded projects around the world. The Centre for Victims of Torture (CVT), which runs five sites in Ethiopia's Tigray region, had to cease counselling and physiotherapy sessions for women raped during the conflict after receiving a stop-work order. In Tigray's camps for internally displaced people, where a number of women speaking to the Guardian now live, the handful of mobile clinics that provide healthcare are shutting down. The UK government, which provided close to £100m in aid to Ethiopia over the course of the conflict, is now slashing its aid budget by nearly 40%. The women in Tigray are left waiting – for medical care, for psychiatric aid, for justice from the international community. Esther*, now 15, is still waiting for surgery to resolve the aftermath of her attack. She was 10 years old, out walking with her mother, Kelana*, through the rural area of Kafta, near the Eritrean border, when they were accosted by soldiers: three wearing Eritrean uniforms, and one Ethiopian. As the men raped Kelana, Esther, terrified, screamed for help. One of the men stabbed her in the stomach, grabbed a nearby cooking pot, and poured a stream of boiling water on to her midriff. The scars look like a vortex rippling across her stomach. 'Today, she goes to school, but she has no friends,' Kelana says. 'She is afraid of everything. Sometimes, on her way to school, she trembles with fear, worried that someone might attack her again. 'She dreams of becoming a doctor so she can help herself and her people. I dream of opening a small shop, a minimarket, so I can give my four children the education they deserve.' *Names have been changed to protect identity In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at Ximena Borrazas' work in Tigray received the 2024 Tom Stoddart Award for Excellence from the Ian Parry Photojournalism Grant, entries for which are now open
