It's Thursday June 3rd. I'm Achila Hughes.

And I'm getting registered and this is what today the podcast that is on every great playlist at Pride Events.

Yeah, in between Gaga and Donna Summer, there's sometimes a 20 minute podcast about the news.

Yep, and for that part, the party is just kind of bad.

On stage show, a conversation with Nema El Bageer, a senior international correspondent at CNN about the ongoing crisis in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abbi Ahmed first ordered a military offensive into the country's northern to gray region last November, sparked by his attempts to consolidate power.

Joining the government's forces were Eritrean soldiers and together they targeted to gray ins an ethnic group that represents an estimated 6% of Ethiopia's population.

But yesterday the US, Canada and a number of European countries called for a ceasefire. They cited you and officials who recently warned of impending famine in the region.

This came after the US already imposed sanctions against Ethiopia to try and end the violence, which has been utterly horrific and described in terms like genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Yeah, and it's difficult to get access to fully up to date information, but reports have suggested that millions of people have been displaced with an unknown number dead at least in the thousands.

And the reported atrocities have been truly unfathomable with a massacre occurring at a church, mass rape and sexual violence against women and detainment of to grains.

And the full scale is likely unknowable government forces have issued crackdowns on aid groups, journalists and more, but Nima Albagear has been able to continue reporting on the events for months and joins us to try and get a sense of the horrors going on. Nima, welcome to what a day.

Thank you for having me just to get everybody started here and up to speed. Can you give us a brief overview of the underlying circumstances and tensions that actually led to this recent ongoing violence?

I think the simplest way to understand it is that it was a competition for power between former allies, Aba Ahmed and the Tigray people's liberation front.

You know, the TPLF had been the senior partner in the ruling coalition for all those years and were themselves accused of violations, huge repressions against freedom of speech and the TPLF.

They pushed through with elections last year when Ahmed asked for elections not to move forward. He has yet has not been democratically elected.

And what happened is it deteriorated into essentially what is being perceived at the moment as an ethnic cleansing.

So it's instead of targeting the political group, the Tigray people's liberation front, it became very much about targeting the Tigrayans and the Tigray region in general.

That is devastating. And you know, some reports describe atrocities being committed by the territory and forces who have been fighting on the side of Ethiopia, the Central Government.

You've been covering the conflict very closely for months now. Can you talk about some of what you've witnessed firsthand?

With ethnic cleansings, with crimes against humanity, war crimes, what in my experience tends to differentiate them from the kind of violence that is just a tragic consequence of war is the cruelty in ways that teach everybody else around them lessons.

So you have a region that is incredibly devout, Aksum is believed to be where the arc of the Covenant is. It's an incredibly rich cultural heritage.

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