Massive Rally Near the White House Condemns U.S. Support to TPLF

September 18, 2022

Protestors call that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) be disarmed in the interest of peace in the Horn of Africa, not just Ethiopia 

The rally at the Whitehouse in Washington D.C. on September 18,2022 (Photo: screenshot from rally video)

Borkena 

Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis living in Washington D.C. and areas close to it are on Sunday staging a massive rally near the Whitehouse.

The rally is part of the “NoMore” movement – one that has been going on for well over a year now. 

Hermela Aregawi, she owns Hermela TV, is one of the founders of the movement, and the hashtag #NoMore has been trending on Twitter for a long time.  

It was started by calling for an end to TPLF political trickery by taking Ethiopians in the Tigray region hostage to its political ideology and foreign intervention in a way to support the radical ethic Tigray political group that is said to have the goal of forming “Greater Tigray” by annexing areas from non-Tigray speaking part of Ethiopia and from Eritrea as well. 

The movement is also advocating that the TPLF group, which the Ethiopian parliament designated as a terrorist group in 2021, be disarmed. 

Neamin Zeleke, an Ethiopian living in the United States, has been an active organizer and participant in the movement against the TPLF since the time the latter were dominating power in Ethiopia. 

He is attending a rally at WhiteHouse this afternoon. He says turnout was huge. 

Protestors are demanding the United States government (and its allies), among other things, to stop supporting the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

They are also calling on the United States government to condemn the third round of war that the TPLF started in late August.   

Protestors are chanting slogans that call for the U.S. government to stand on the side of the Ethiopian government in the interest of durable peace. 

The rebel group in the Tigray region opened a military operation with the goal of “breaking the siege on Tigray.”  

The U.S government has been blaming, and putting pressure, on the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments for the situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. 

The war started two years ago when the radical ethnic Tigray rebel group attacked the Northern Command of the Ethiopian Defense Force on November 4, 2020. 

Humanitarian aid, both food and non-food items has been trickling to the region via the World Food Programme and other United Nations Aid agencies. 

The humanitarian truce that was imposed since March this year came to an end when the TPLF forces launched their third phase of military operation south of Tigay in the Amhara region and in the parts of Afar region that are near the Tigray region. 

Ethiopian and Eritrean governments have confirmed that a war is going on on multiple fronts recently. 

There are confirmed reports that the TPLF group has suffered a severe military loss on many fronts. 

Activists who oppose to the TPLF irredentist claim and “hate ideology”, as many call it, are concerned that pressure from the U.S. government and European Union could embolden the designated terrorist group again. 

U.S. special envoy to the Horn of Africa, Mike Hammer, has been in Ethiopia for over two weeks now pushing the Ethiopian government to end the war that the TPLF started for the third time and resort to peace talk.