Who is the War Criminal and Committers of Genocide?

December 21, 2021

Throughout the year-long conflict in Northern Ethiopia, TPLF has committed unspeakable atrocities on its fellow citizens. Notwithstanding the evidence confirming TPLF as the culprit of these genocidal crimes, the western media and governments have been consistently reporting the crimes in passive voice, covering up for the perpetrator, TPLF.

But as the conflict progresses, the war crimes and the genocide, which are serious violations of international humanitarian law, committed by the TPLF become even more naked. TPLF’s inhumane acts have exacerbated so much that the western media could not continue to turn a blind eye anymore in the face of the mounting pressure of global campaigns against their consistently biased and fake news against Ethiopia.

The US Department of State has also recently voiced the accusations against TPLF in the strongest terms so far. “The United States notes with grave concern unconfirmed new reports alleging egregious human rights abuses, atrocities, and destruction of civilian infrastructure by Tigrayan forces in the Amhara and Afar regions of Ethiopia,” it said.

However, the funny thing here is TPLF has been destroying infrastructures and committing egregious atrocities in Amhara and Afar regions since last June. So why did it take the US over five months to speak about these naked TPLF atrocities? Why did it take the US government only a few hours to denounce the Ethiopian forces airstrikes on selected military targets in Mekele and other areas in the Tigray region?

The puzzle of the statement of the US department of state does not end there. Even after five months of silence, the Americans are not condemning TPLF’s atrocities unequivocally, the way they have done it against the Ethiopian government. The statement was almost mocking the suffering of the Ethiopians who fell victim to TPLF’s atrocities. The Americans are telling us the reports of TPLF genocidal crimes are “New” and “Unconfirmed”. This instance substantiates the disingenuous nature of the White House people. The truth is, thanks to the CIA, the Americans know what is really going on in Ethiopia, and therefore they have full knowledge of TPLF crimes.

Human Rights Watch has already confirmed some of the atrocities committed by the terrorist TPLF. Some well-reputed international media outlets, whose agents have been to various locations in the war-affected areas of the Amhara and Afar region, have reported on the atrocities committed by TPLF. For instance, Reuters, which consistently reported biased news against Ethiopia, has recently begun coming to their senses reporting the civilian killings and destruction of civilian establishments in the Amhara region.

And yet, still, the international media is by and large reluctant to report in black and white on the TPLF atrocities in Amhara and Afar region. Reuters reporters have failed to confirm TPLF’s atrocities, even after a visit to the Gashena town to see the mass graves and the massive destructions, and to hear the consistent eyewitness accounts of the town’s residents. This situation fits the saying: “one cannot wake up a person who pretends to sleep.”

The truth is this: Towns have turned into a pile of rubble, collages have turned into cemeteries, and factories have turned into scrap yards. All this happened during as little as a few days of the occupation of TPLF invaders. Stories of petrified women gang-raped in their own homes in front of their families; and of civilians robbed at gunpoint, and left without their harvest, cattle, and household belongings have now become regular news we hear almost every day.

A lady about 50 from a recently liberated village of Zobel in Kobo wereda of North Wollo zone said: “we ran away from our village after learning the rebels were advancing towards us. We left our home empty-handed, to save our lives. If we remained at home, they would rape or even kill us. When we returned home after ten days, following the liberation of our village by the government forces, I found my house completely ransacked. Everything is gone, looted. Foodstuffs and kitchen utensils, all our clothes, bedsheets, farming tools, our live stocks, and even chicken …nothing was spared.”

A 67 years old farmer from the same locality said: “they[the TPLF rebels] took away rings and necklaces from all members of my family, and in some cases, they even took clothes and shoes we were wearing. They killed all our goats. They hit women and the elderly and shoot people without blinking an eye. I have never experienced such sort of cruelty in my entire life.”

The sound bites of grief and sadness coming from the people in the recently liberated areas of the Amhara and Afar regions are overwhelming. The unraveling harrowing of stories of TPLF atrocities has overshadowed the joy we had been feeling for the first time in 5 months at the recent spectacular victory scored by the Ethiopian forces, which liberated several towns in the Amhara region and fully liberated the Afar region.

It is now clear that TPLF’s primary motive for invading the two neighboring regions is not to make way towards Addis Ababa or to intercept the vital highway that is the lifeline of the Ethiopian economy, as the Tplfites may explain. Their primary motive is to execute what they meticulously planned while they were hiding in the deserts of Kola Tembien: “settling a score against Amhara and Afar people”, as a top TPLF leader once put it publicly. It is TPLF’s genocidal war of vengeance.

Sadly, the terrorist TPLF leaders have partially executed the evil plans at the cost of tens of thousands of lives of Tigrayan youth. The Amhara regional government has depicted the massive destruction caused by TPLF stating: rebuilding the Amhara Region economy to the pre-war economic status would take thirty to forty years of hard work and investment.

Several reports have alleged looting units are embedded within each group of the invading TPLF rebels. These units have a specific task of ransacking private and public properties and are skilled in dismantling machinery and instruments, and safely shipping them off to Mekele.

TPLF has targeted social infrastructures that provide vital services to the public. Health facilities, schools, and colleges have been deliberately looted and destroyed. A recent report from the Ministry of Health indicates that more than 2,700 health facilities in Amhara and Afar are out of service due to the damage inflicted by TPLF, and the number would rise as more areas are liberated from TPLF.

Maternal mortality is spiking. Children are missing their vaccination schedules. Patients under regular medications are dying for lack of medicines and follow-ups. Thus the death toll in liberated areas as a result of the TPLF war of aggression is still rising long after the invaders are chased away. And it continues to rise until the damaged health facilities are rehabilitated, a huge task hard to execute in a short period.

Similarly, TPLF has ransacked and damaged over four thousand schools in the Amhara region alone. As a result of this, over 1.9 million students in the region are out of school. And over 116 thousand teachers are staying idle. One of the higher learning institutions in the region that was looted and vandalized by the TPLF rebels, Wollo University, is to remain closed for the coming two years until it completes the repair works.

Despite the reality on the ground, the Americans and Europeans Union is still reluctant to recognize who is behind the misery of the Ethiopians in the war-affected regions. Since last July, the hot spot of humanitarian crises in the country is shifted to the Amhara and Afar regions. There is no armed conflict currently going on in the Tigray region.

The Americans and some of the European powers are deliberately downplaying the plight of the people in the conflict zones in the Amhara and Afar regions. They are focused only on the humanitarian situation in Tigray. They are struggling to exploit the Tigray situation as a means to accuse the Ethiopian government of human rights violations, as a pretext to conduct a military intervention in Ethiopia. The latest decision of the UN Human Rights Council is part of the westerns’ big plot against Ethiopia.

It has been months since the western powers, especially the Americans began sending signals of their interest for military intervention in the Ethiopian conflict. Their ultimate objective is clear. – to bring TPLF back to power, to fragment Ethiopia into weak or divided states that do not stand in its way of dominating the Horn’s geopolitics. Let us not forget that Americans, with their agents like Herman Cohen[Former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Author of a book called Intervening in Africa], and Paul Henze [former CIA station chief in Turkey and Ethiopia] were pulling the strings behind the curtain during TPLF’s ascension to power back in the early 90s.

BY SOLOMON WASSIHUN

THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD DECEMBER 21/2021