Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 6, 2021
💭 My Note: Today fascist Abiy Ahmed Ali has named a new defense minister, traitor Tigrayan Abraham Belay. It is “symbolically interesting” to see a Tigrayan appointed as defense minister. I’ve stated in the past there are very cynic and satanic motives behind the appointment of all these Tigrayan technocrats.
Preparing for The #TigrayGenocide evil Abiy Ahmed and his Luciferian overlords brought Tigrayans to occupy key positions nationally and internationally:
👉 His Holiness Abune Mathias, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
👉 Dr. Lia Tadesse Gebremedhin, Minister of Health of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
👉 Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Director-General of the World Health Organization.
💥 Wow! Let’s connect the dots…this is how monster war criminal Abiy Ahmed Ali and his Luciferian babysitters are literally working hard to destroy Ethiopia, instantly, before our very eyes – with the help of the Amharas — and how they are preparing themselves to blame those Tigrayan appointees for all the evil deeds of the fascist Oromo regime in Addis Ababa.
(CNN) Ethiopia’s government has used the country’s flagship commercial airline to shuttle weapons to and from neighboring Eritrea during the civil war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, a CNN investigation has found.
Cargo documents and manifests seen by CNN, as well as eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence, confirm that arms were transported between Addis Ababa’s international airport and airports in the Eritrean cities of Asmara and Massawa on board multiple Ethiopian Airlines planes in November 2020 during the first few weeks of the Tigray conflict.
It’s the first time this weapons trade between the former foes has been documented during the war. Experts said the flights would constitute a violation of international aviation law, which forbids the smuggling of arms for military use on civil aircraft.
Atrocities committed during the conflict also appear to violate the terms of a trade program that provides lucrative access to the United States market and which Ethiopian Airlines has benefited greatly from.
Ethiopian Airlines is a state-owned economic powerhouse that generates billions of dollars a year carrying passengers to hubs across the African continent and all over the world, and it is also a member of the Star Alliance, a group of some of the world’s top aviation companies.
The airline previously issued two denials about transporting weapons.
Responding to CNN’s latest investigation, Ethiopian Airlines said it “strictly complies with all National, regional and International aviation related regulations” and that “to the best of its knowledge and its records, it has not transported any war armament in any of its routes by any of its Aircraft.”
The governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Military refills
Long-simmering tensions between Ethiopia’s government and the ruling party in the Tigray region exploded on November 4, when Ethiopia accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front of attacking a federal army base.
Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, ordered a military offensive to oust the TPLF from power. Government forces and regional militias poured into Tigray, joined on the front lines by troops from Eritrea.
Thousands of people are estimated to have died in the conflict, which by many accounts bears the hallmarks of genocide and ethnic cleansing. While all sides have been accused of committing grave human rights abuses during Tigray’s war, previous CNN investigations established that Eritrean soldiers have been behind some of the worst atrocities, including sexual violence and mass killings. Eritrea has denied wrongdoing by its soldiers and only admitted to having troops in Tigray this spring.
Documents obtained by CNN indicate that flights carrying weapons between Ethiopia and Eritrea began at least as early as a few days after the outset of the Tigray conflict.
On at least six occasions — from November 9 to November 28 — Ethiopian Airlines billed Ethiopia’s ministry of defense tens of thousands of dollars for military items including guns and ammunition to be shipped to Eritrea, records seen by CNN show.
The documents, known as air waybills, detail the contents of each shipment. In one document, the “nature and quantity of goods” is listed as “Military refill” and “Dry food stuff.” Other entries included the description “Consolidated.” The records also had abbreviations and spelling mistakes such as “AM” for ammunition and “RIFFLES” for rifles, according to airline employees. They told CNN the spelling errors were introduced when the contents were manually entered by employees into the cargo database.
Benno Baksteen, chairman of DEGAS, the Dutch Expert Group Aviation Safety, told CNN that these waybills were required for all commercial flights as the crew on board need to know the contents of the cargo to ensure they are transported safely.
On November 9, five days after Abiy ordered a military offensive in Tigray, records show an Ethiopian Airlines flight transported guns and ammunitions from Addis Ababa to Asmara, Eritrea’s capital.
An air waybill and a cargo manifest from that date show that Ethiopian Airlines charged Ethiopia $166,398.32 for about 2,643 pieces of “DFS & RIFFLE WITH AM (sic)” on that flight. DFS is a reference to “dry food stuff,” according to airline sources.
Another air waybill from a few days later, November 13, has the same shipper and consignee. The content of that shipment was “military refill and dry food stuff,” according to the document. The shipments came at a time of increased military activity; security sources in the region told CNN the Eritreans needed re-supply for the fight in Tigray.
As planes went back and forth between the two countries, massacres of Tigrayans in the city of Axum and the village of Dengelat by Eritrean troops took place on November 19 and November 30 respectively.
Cargo documents show that the series of flights between Ethiopia and Eritrea continued until at least November 28, 2020.
Some current and former Ethiopian Airlines employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, said the flights continued past this date but that the majority of arms trips to Eritrea were in November.
Both cargo and passenger planes were used in the operation, though CNN has no evidence that commercial passengers were on any of the flights carrying weapons. Many of these flights do not appear on popular online flight tracking platforms such as Flightradar24. When they do, the destination in Eritrea is often not visible and the flight path vanishes once the plane crosses the border from Ethiopia.
The employees told CNN the staff could manually turn off the ADS-B signal on board to prevent the flights being publicly tracked.
The flights were often assigned the same flight numbers, primarily ET3312, ET3313 and ET3314, with ‘ET’ being the code for Ethiopian Airlines. All the planes mentioned in the cargo files seen by CNN are American-made Boeing aircraft. The airline has been in a long relationship with the US aviation giant.
A Boeing representative declined to comment.
Ethiopian Airlines workers described witnessing other airline employees loading and unloading arms and military vehicles on flights directed to Asmara. A few even claimed they helped load the weapons on the planes themselves. All spoke of being ethnically profiled for being Tigrayan.
CNN has seen the Ethiopian Airlines’ ID cards of these employees and confirmed their identities.
One former employee told CNN they were instructed at Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport to load guns and four military vehicles onto an Ethiopian Airlines cargo plane that was due to fly to Belgium but was sent instead to Eritrea.
“The cars were Toyota pickups which have a stand for snipers,” the employee said. “I got a call from the managing director late at night informing me to handle the cargo. Soldiers came at 5 a.m. to start loading two big trucks loaded with weapons and the pickups.”
“I had to stop a flight to Brussels, a 777 cargo plane, which was loaded with flowers, then we unloaded half of the perishable goods to make space for the armaments.”
The former employee warned soldiers that the vehicles were carrying far more gas than was allowed under international air transport rules, but said they were overruled after a direct call from an army commander.
“He [the commander] said we are going to war and we need the fuel to be loaded,” the employee said. “Then I referred the issue to my manager and my manager took responsibility and allowed them to load it.”
The flight, loaded with both weapons and flowers, traveled to Eritrea, then returned to Addis before flying on to Brussels the following day, the employee said. CNN cross-referenced this testimony with Flightradar24 and found the record of an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft returning from the direction of Eritrea and flying to Brussels the next day, but could not independently verify it was the same flight referred to by the employee.
Days later, the employee said they were temporarily suspended from work. They believe they were suspended for being Tigrayan but also for the incident with the soldiers. The employee fled Ethiopia in March.
Ethiopian Airlines told CNN in its statement that no employees had been suspended or terminated due to their ethnic background.
It appears to be not the only long-distance international flight with unplanned stops. A flight from Addis Ababa to Shanghai on November 9, 2020, took a long detour via Eritrea according to the ADS-B signal that tracks the route on Flightradar24.
Several employees at the Addis Ababa airport said they saw multiple weapons flights leave for Eritrea each day at the outset of the conflict. They also spoke about flights carrying weapons from Eritrea back to Ethiopia. It’s unclear why armaments were being transferred back to Ethiopia.
One said they saw tanks and heavy artillery loaded onto planes coming to Addis Ababa, while small arms — mortars, launchers — were dispatched to Asmara. Employees told CNN they believed the smaller weaponry were being sent to Asmara to arm Eritrean troops.
All the employees said they were instructed by the airline to delete photos of the weapons from their phones. Not all of them did.
In June, photos circulated on social media platforms showing crates containing mortars on board an Ethiopian Airlines flight and the same crates being loaded on the plane in Massawa, Eritrea.
The company released a statement strongly denying the allegation that its planes were transporting weapons and claimed the photos were photoshopped.
However, CNN has corroborated the photos using visual analysis techniques, interviews and documentary evidence, dating them to a 777 Freighter cargo flight that flew from Ethiopia to Eritrea and back between November 8 and 9.
Despite claims by both Ethiopia and Eritrea that they were leaving, Eritrean soldiers are in fact more firmly entrenched than ever in neighbouring Tigray, where they are brutally gang-raping women, killing civilians, looting hospitals and blocking food and medical aid, The Associated Press has found.
Multiple witnesses, survivors of rape, officials and aid workers say Eritrean soldiers have been spotted far from the border in Ethiopia, deep in eastern and even southern Tigray, sometimes clad in faded Ethiopian army fatigues.
Rather than leaving, witnesses say, the Eritrean soldiers now control key roads and access to some communities.
At a hospital in Mekele, capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, children are being treated for horrific injuries of war.
12-year-old Haftom Gebru’s hand was too mangled during fighting in his village to be saved.
15-year-old Akhbaret Tadesa has deep trauma after a shell detonated near her house.
It has left her trembling all the time, unable to speak or eat on her own.
Her sister and father care for her around the clock, feeding her, talking to her, holding and squeezing her shaking fingers.
These are the scars of the fighting between Ethiopian armed forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
Since the violence erupted last November, there has been an ever-growing number of war-wounded in Tigray, including women and children.
But many at the hospital say that their wounds were caused not by Ethiopian or Tigray fighters – but by fighters from Ethiopia’s one time foe across the border: Eritrea.
Teklemariam Gebremichael is a farmer and says that Eritrean soldiers targeted him for this very reason.
He recounts that he and his neighbours were told that they were no longer allowed to farm.
When Eritrean soldiers came upon him tending to his cattle and harvesting crops, they shot both him and his cows, killing all his livestock.
He survived, but with food now in short supply, his wound is slow to heal.
He appeals for help from the international community.
“They should take immediate action to save the people of Tigray and stand by Tigray, because they are here to ethnically cleanse us,” he says.
Health workers say that they have seen a spike in sexual violence too.
Sister Mulu Mesfin is a nurse at the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele.
She has treated 400 rape victims and says that the wards are still full to overflowing.
Some of the women who sought treatment said they had been held in camps and gang-raped by dozens of soldiers for weeks.
Some were so badly injured that they were unable to walk, with complications like fistulas and prolapses.
The sister says most of the gang rapes were carried out by both Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers.
“Most are from Eritreans, but both soldiers are raping,” she says.
Compounding the problem, hospitals in the region have been attacked and ransacked.
Some of them were taken over by fighters and turned into garrisons.
As a result, people have to go further and further to get medical care as the hospitals they once went to are no longer able to function.
The Hawzen Primary Hospital still shows signs of an occupation that doctors and patients say was by Eritrean soldiers.
Birhan – who didn’t want to give her last name – came to seek treatment for her one-year-old baby, who’s been coughing a lot.
She left her two other children at home on their own; she says her husband had fled, as men of fighting age are more likely to be killed by soldiers.
She recalls how Eritrean soldiers took the hospital as a garrison after looting it.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 28, 2021
Alex de Waal
Under the banner of national sovereignty, Ethiopia is subverting Africa’s hard-won norms, principles and institutions.
Ethiopia is bringing Africa into disrepute and Africans should be outraged.
Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers are killing and raping civilians in Tigray. Millions are facing starvation while the authorities choke off essential relief supplies. The European Union and the United States called for an end to the atrocities and access for humanitarian agencies. Addis Ababa’s defence is that national sovereignty protects its right to do these things.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced sanctions against Ethiopian officials held responsible for the violence and starvation. Thus far, these are just visa restrictions, alongside a suspension of most development and security assistance.
In response, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a statement: “The attempt by the US administration to meddle in its [Ethiopia’s] internal affairs, is not only inappropriate but also completely unacceptable. Ethiopia should not be told how to run and manage its internal affairs.”
Some Africans appear to take at face value this appeal to African solidarity in the face of external diktat. That’s a mistake.
Under the banner of national sovereignty, Ethiopia is subverting Africa’s own hard-won norms, principles and institutions.
The same argument was trotted out in the 1970s and 1980s when African dictatorships used “sovereignty” as a shield behind which to oppress and exploit their people with impunity. At that time, the Organisation of African Unity stood up for untrammelled sovereign rights. Its reasoning was that the independence of African countries wasn’t secure: Apartheid South Africa, along with outgoing colonial powers and their mercenaries wanted to destabilise and divide African countries. That spelled African silence over Eritrea’s long struggle for independence – an inattention that undermined peace and stability in the region. There was also a growing chorus of dissent criticising the OAU’s whitewashing of military coups, massacres and man-made famines. It was “a trade union of heads of state,” in the words of Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.
The refugee crisis was the biggest symptom of African governments’ loss of legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens: millions fled their misgoverned countries. Western nations paid the humanitarian aid bills and began to speak about intervening themselves – and actually did so in Somalia in 1992.
The turning point came in April 1994. That month saw the accomplishment of the OAU’s historic mission, when Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa following that country’s first ever democratic non-racial elections. It also saw the genocide in Rwanda, perpetrated without anything more than symbolic hand-wringing in Africa and globally. With the liberation of South Africa, the main justification for the deployment of unfettered sovereignty was gone, while Rwanda showed the bankruptcy of that doctrine.
Africans led the way in formulating new principles. The Sudanese scholar and diplomat Francis Deng developed the notion of “sovereignty as responsibility”: a government’s sovereign privileges extend only as far as it exercises its responsibility for the rights and welfare of its citizens. The OAU set up an International Panel of Eminent Personalities to examine the Rwanda crisis, which coined the “principle of non-indifference”: Africans should not stand by while one of their governments commits mass atrocities. In due course, this became enshrined in the Constitutive Act of the African Union, drafted in 2000 and adopted when the African Union formally took over from the OAU at a summit in Durban, South Africa, two years later. Article 4(h) provides for intervention in the case of “grave circumstances”, defined as war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
These African initiatives were forerunners of the “responsibility to protect”, or R2P, adopted at the United Nations in 2001. Over the years, especially after R2P was invoked by NATO countries for regime change in Libya, many Africans came to see it as imperialism in philanthropic disguise.
By contrast, the African doctrine of non-indifference was crafted in the spirit of pan-Africanism. The vision of Kwame Nkrumah, the Pan-Africanist who led Ghana to independence in 1957, was that Africans are a single people whose struggle for freedom is one and the same. Sovereignty resides with the people, and is shared across the continent.
African peacemaking practice developed the duty to offer good offices for conflict resolution – along with an obligation of the country in conflict to accept them. African diplomats are proactive in peacemaking. It is now standard for the AU and African regional economic communities to respond to a crisis within days. When civil war broke out in South Sudan in December 2013, the foreign ministers of neighbouring countries flew to Juba within a week to press for a ceasefire. Compare that to the first civil war in Sudan (1955-72) when it took 16 years for an international peace effort and the second civil war (1983-2005) when it took eight years.
These peace efforts don’t always work, but it’s surely better than the alternative of allowing conflicts to rage on and escalate. For example, when a border war broke out between South Sudan and Sudan in April 2012, prompt action by the AU Peace and Security Council set out a road map for resolving the conflict. At that time the UN Security Council was deadlocked on almost every issue, but the US, China and Russia all deferred to the African position and adopted the PSC’s formula, word-for-word, in a Security Council resolution.
By comparison, United Nations envoys to Syria and Yemen were frustrated by the absence of a regional mechanism that could have established principles to contain those wars.
Ethiopia’s war in Tigray is a typical civil war: a political dispute that turned violent and became internationalised with Eritrean intervention. The best chance of containing the war was at the beginning before it escalated out of control. African leaders knew this instinctively. Within weeks of the outbreak of fighting in early November, the AU dispatched a team of three former heads of state as special envoys.
But Ethiopia did not play by Africa’s rules. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rebuffed the AU, making sure that the Peace and Security Council – where Ethiopia sits as a member – did not discuss his war. In fact, he insisted it was only a “law enforcement operation”.
Abiy appears to be following the playbook of his coalition partner in the war in Tigray, Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki, that there should be no constraint on power. Afwerki has defied Africa and the world for decades with a dictatorship without constitution or rule of law. And Eritrea is Africa’s largest generator of refugees relative to its size.
With the AU impotent, Ethiopia’s crisis has gone to the United Nations. But the three African non-permanent members of the UN Security Council – Kenya, Niger and Tunisia – have not spoken out against the war or atrocities. Even when Ireland raised the situation in Ethiopia under the relatively uncontroversial resolution 2417 on armed conflict and hunger, the African representatives wavered. This opened the door for China and Russia to threaten to veto any resolution.
That’s Abiy’s strategy: his government’s statements about “foreign meddling” and “US imperialism” are aimed at winning over China and Russia. Those countries may step in and support him – but for their own interests, not Africa’s. Abiy has shown no regard for Africa and its wisdom. On the opening day of the AU’s February summit, Abiy published an article entitled Towards a peaceful order in the Horn of Africa. He didn’t once mention the AU or Africa’s norms, principles and institutions for peace.
Abiy’s appeal to sovereign impunity is having the exact opposite of its stated goal. Ethiopia faces a catastrophic famine and national crisis – and becoming a cockpit for global rivalries.
Africans should not stand for this. They must stand firm on Africa’s principles: sovereignty entails responsibility, unreserved condemnation of atrocities and starvation crimes, immediate negotiation among the belligerents for a political solution. Or Africa cannot complain if Europeans and Americans take those principles more seriously than they do.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 