There have been credible reports of atrocities committed by all actors in the conflict, but some of the most concerning reports implicate Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Amhara regional government forces in deliberate violence systematically targeting the Tigrayan people.
As of July 1, 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had registered over 46,000 refugees from Tigray in Sudan, but the total number of refugees is estimated to be almost 70,000.
The violence has caused massive displacement in the region, both of Eritrean refugees previously in Tigray, and of Tigrayans themselves. Making the 1989 act more stringent, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015 added that actions like tonsuring of the head, moustache, or similar acts, which are derogatory to the dignity of the members of the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), will now be treated as atrocities.The Tigray region of Ethiopia is under siege, with Ethiopian and Eritrean forces at war with the armed forces of the Tigray Regional Government, a group fighting for the region’s autonomy under the current Ethiopian Constitution. The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (the SC/ST Act hereafter), which was amended in 2015, punished casteist slurs and denied anticipatory bail to the accused. An attempt is made here to assess how relevant the judgment is and what role perception and interpretation play in deciding what constitutes as misuse of an important law. The judgment was passed under the pretext of protecting innocent persons from being booked under false cases, thereby preventing the misuse of the law. The Supreme Court in March 2020 passed a judgment that diluted the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
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