Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 14, 2022
💭 And this is happening with the help and conspiracy of the West — the day after Ethiopian New Year’s Day – 9/11. The world is not giving enough attention to this crucial phenomenon. To this wicked world, death of the 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth II matters more than the life and fate of Armenian and Ethiopian Christian Children.
🛑 World War III started on Sep 27, 2020 when Turkey and Azerbaijan waged a coordinated Jihad against Christian Armenians of the Republic of Artsakh ( Nagorno-Karabakh). Even Jewish Israel supported Islamic Azerbaijan.
“In trying to describe the conduct of the parties involved in this fight, a cynical observer might quote from “The Tempest,” Shakespeare’s last play: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” This is how Turkey and Israel, currently hostile to one another (with Recep Tayyip Erdogan stating only last week that Jerusalem belongs to the Moslems), find themselves both supporting Azerbaijan, a Shi’ite Moslem country. On the other side, Iran, a third of whose population is of Azeri extraction (including its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei), is supporting Christian Armenia and, according to some reports, supplying it with weapons. Russia, which has a military base in Armenia, is trying to please everyone, arming Azerbaijan as well. The same pattern of behavior characterizes the Kremlin’s policy in Syria, with Vladimir Putin assisting the regime of Bashar Assad and the Iranians, while providing Israel with “silent encouragement” for carrying out air strikes against Iranian positions, Hezbollah and Shi’ite militias. Greece, a strategic ally of Israel, currently in conflict with Turkey over the transport of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean basin, is supporting Armenia…..One other issue that should worry Israel and any other conscientious Jew is that Israel, the state of a people that was murdered in the Holocaust, is refusing to recognize the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, a genocide avant la lettre. ”
🛑 World War III started on Nov 4, 2020 (as America’s presidential election hogs the international media spotlight) after the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia supported by Eritrea, the UAE, Turkey, Somalia, China, Iran and many other Eastern and Western nations waged a coordinated Jihad against Christian Ethiopians of Tigray. Even Jewish Israel to some extent supported the genocidal Islamic-Protestant Oromo regime of Ethiopia.
💭 Are Israel and Iran competing on the same side in Ethiopia?
“When reports surfaced a few months ago of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed deploying combat drones in his government’s fight against local militant groups, Israel was paying close attention. Sharing the concerns of other nations, including the United States, that the fighting could destabilize Africa’s second most populous nation, Israelis were also troubled by which countries were among those supplying the East African nation with the latest armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Diplomats and analysts monitoring the 13-month-long civil war in Ethiopia, a fight between government forces and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a regional force that once controlled the federal government, have determined that these arms came from three main sources: Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and, particularly concerning for Israel, Iran.
Iran’s influence on the African continent is not new. The Islamic Republic is known for spreading its extremist ideology, whether via terror proxies or financing mosques and cultural centers, in certain African states. But its appearance in a new conflict, in a country with which Israel has particularly warm relations – including providing arms and military assistance in the past – as well as a place where an already vulnerable Jewish community resides, has placed Israel in a sensitive and curious position.
“It does make for strange bedfellows that Israel and Iran would seemingly be on the same side in a conflict,” Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, told Jewish Insider.
Iran’s encroachment in the East African country on the side of the government puts the Jewish state in a delicate position…..”
👉 The Ukraine war shows us:
😈 United by their Illuminist-Luciferian-Masonic-Satanist agendas The following Edomite-Ishmaelite entities and bodies are helping the genocidal fascist Oromo regime of evil Abiy Ahmed Ali:
☆ The United Nations
☆ The European Union
☆ The African Union
☆ The United States, Canada & Cuba
☆ Russia
☆ Ukraine
☆ China
☆ Israel
☆ Arab States
☆ Southern Ethiopians
☆ Amharas
☆ Eritrea
☆ Djibouti
☆ Kenya
☆ Sudan
☆ Somalia
☆ Egypt
☆ Iran
☆ Pakistan
☆ India
☆ Azerbaijan
☆ Amnesty International
☆ Human Rights Watch
☆ World Food Program (2020 Nobel Peace Laureate)
☆ The Nobel Prize Committee
☆ The Atheists and Animists
☆ The Muslims
☆ The Protestants
☆ The Sodomites
☆ TPLF
💭 Even those nations that are enemies to each other, like; ‘Israel vs Iran’, ‘Russia + China vs Ukraine + The West’, ‘Egypt + Sudan vs Iran + Turkey’, ‘India vs Pakistan’ have now become friends – and are all united in their anti-Christian, anti-Zionist-Ethiopia-Conspiracy. This has never ever happened before. It really is a very curios phenomenon – a strange unique appearance in world history.
😈 Turkey’s Simultaneous Genocide of the two oldest Christian nations of Armenia & Ethiopia
😈 The Muslim Azerbaijanis turned on Azan through the loudspeakers. Such messages are a primary threat to the Christian Armenian residents.
😈 Enemy of The CROSS ✞
Azerbaijan defiled the Holy Resurrection Church of Hadrut, dismantled THE CROSS & erased all Armenian inscriptions
💭 The Government of Azerbaijan Declares This Warning To All Armenians: “Leave Nagorno-Karabakh, or We Will Force You.”
Now that the world’s attention is diverted to Russia’s war with Ukraine, the Azeris and Turks are in the perfect opportunity to test the waters of the Russian brokered ceasefire. There are still Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh — that region that was governed by Armenians until 2020 when Azerbaijan, armed with Turkish Bayraktars, vanquished them — and the Azeris are beginning to pressure these Armenians to leave. There are Russian soldiers (part of a peacekeeping mission) present in Nagorno-Karabakh, but now with the war occurring in Donbas, the Azeris (and by extension, their Turkish patriarchs whom they ethnically identify with) are acting aggressively, testing the limits of the Russians. For example, in early March, Azeri forces were seen encircling Armenian villages and, with loudspeakers, demanding that the Armenian inhabitants leave Nagorno-Karabakh. This was seen in the village of Khramort where the Azeri military declared through a loudspeaker:
“Urgently leave the territory, otherwise we will force you. All responsibility for the casualties will fall on you․ Do not endanger your life and the lives of your loved ones. You are on the territory of Azerbaijan, and all actions are regulated by Azerbaijani law.”
What the Azeris want is not peace, but ethnic cleansing.
Depriving Armenians of natural gas has followed. On March 8th, a critical gas pipeline that was used to bring natural gas to the Armenians was cut off in Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving them without heat for two weeks. The pipeline was then “repaired” but was reportedly cut off again and then restored. The ethnic and religious hatred towards the Armenians was demonstrated in the recent desecration of the St. Harutyun church in Hadrut, which was condemned by Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia:
“These pre-planned actions carried out by the authorities of Azerbaijan, aimed at destroying and desecrating the identity of Armenian religious, historical and cultural monuments in the territories under the control of the Azerbaijani armed forces, are another manifestation of Azerbaijan’s ethnic and religious intolerance and the continuation of the policy of depriving Artsakh of Armenians and the Armenian trace.”
Azerbaijani soldiers then entered the area occupied by Russian peacekeeping forces, forced the evacuation of an Armenian village and even used drone strikes to kill numerous Armenian soldiers. The Russian Defense Ministry reported that the Azeri soldiers left, but both Azeri and Armenian sources denied this, and even the US, France and Russia have all denounced Azerbaijan for its violation of the ceasefire.
Even with the ceasefire, there has still been violence taking place in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Artsakh, in early February “two members of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces were killed on the spot near the village of Khramort in the Askeran region, on the grounds of national, racial or religious hatred or religious fanaticism.” Following this event, “Unidentified gunmen opened fire on three” Armenian employees who were working in a mine in the administrative area of Khramort village, Askeran region.
On February 11th of 2022, shots were fired from Azerbaijani military positions located near the communities of Karmir Shuka and Taghavard in the region of Artsakh’s Martuni, according to Ombudsman of Artsakh Gegham Stepanyan in a statement on social media. Stepanyan observed:
“Given the distance between the settlements and the Azerbaijani positions, and the fact that the residential part of the village is directly observed from the Azerbaijani positions, it is undeniable that the Azerbaijani side has directly targeted the houses of the residents as a result of which residential houses, mainly walls, roofs, have been damaged.
The window of a house of Karmir Shuka resident was smashed during the same operations which are aimed at threatening civilians, and the bullet penetrated into the living room of the house”
“I reaffirm the claim that the criminal acts of Azerbaijan are of regular and systematic nature, aimed at creating an atmosphere of fear in Artsakh.
Azerbaijan will continue its criminal attempts against the people of Artsakh as long as the international community has not condemned unanimously the open Azerbaijani illegal acts against humanity”, he added.
The Azeris have found a loophole in the ceasefire to try to justify their actions. Article 4 of the ceasefire declaration calls for the withdrawal of Armenian soldiers. Three thousand Armenians reportedly left Nagorno-Karabakh, but local ethnic Armenian soldiers did not, giving the Azeris an avenue for their aggression. While Baku sees these self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Defense soldiers as illegal, the local Armenian population sees them as necessary for security from violence by Azerbaijani soldiers. But now, with the local defense not allowed in the region, the only thing standing between the local Armenians and the Azeri soldiers are the Russian peacekeepers. There are nearly two thousand Russian soldiers in Nagorno-Karabakh (and also around two thousand Russian support staff), and Baku sees this foreign presence as temporary, as there is an expectation that these troops will be sent to fight in Ukraine. The importance of Russian peacekeepers for the security of the Armenians is obvious. For example,on the 15th of February, 2022, Azerbaijani servicemen opened fire in the direction of Armenian farmers near Khramort. While a tractor was damaged, the civilians were saved thanks to the intervention of the Russian peacekeepers, according to the Prosecutor’s Office of Artsakh.
With such recent events, it is obvious that whatever relative peace is ongoing in Nagorno-Karabakh, it will not last long. Violence will resume in the region, and it will most definitely escalate tensions between Russia and Turkey. Such conflict will carry with it a resuming of where the Ottomans left off in the genocide of the Armenian people.
I spent the last week of February teaching Old Testament at the newly-formed Trinity Fellowship Pastors College in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is by far the oldest nation I’ve visited, one of the few Old Testament nations still on the map. Its existence is a theological fact, testimony to the reliability of God’s promises.
According to the “primeval history” of Genesis, descendants of Cush settled the area that is now Ethiopia and Sudan soon after the flood. The Da’amat Empire was established in the tenth century B.C. by Menilek I, reputedly the son of Solomon and Makeda, queen of Sheba. According to the Kebre Negast (“The Glory of the Kings”), which was compiled in the fourteenth century A.D., Queen Makeda made a pilgrimage to Israel to learn statecraft from Solomon, who seduced her. Makeda conceived and went home to give birth to her son. As a boy, Menilek visited his father in Jerusalem, where Solomon anointed him as king of Ethiopia. As retribution for the humiliation of his mother, Menilek stole the Ark of the Covenant and levitated it across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, where it purportedly remains to this day. It’s a persistent national myth. Until Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974, Ethiopian leaders claimed to be sons of Solomon, lions descended from the Lion of Judah.
There’s nothing of this legend in Scripture. To ancient Israelites, Ethiopia wasn’t an ally but an uncanny and terrifying threat. Cush’s son Nimrod founded Nineveh and Babylon (Gen. 10:8–12), cities that later conquered Israel. Aaron and Miriam objected when Moses took a Cushite wife (Num. 12:1). During the reign of King Asa, Zerah the Cushite came over the southern horizon to invade Judah with hundreds of chariots and a million-man army (2 Chron. 14).
Against this background, the heroism of Ebed-Melech is all the more notable (Jer. 38). Ebed-Melech was a Cushite eunuch who served in the court of King Zedekiah during the last days of Judah. The prophet Jeremiah counsels Zedekiah to surrender to Babylon. Enraged by this message, Jerusalem’s officials force Zedekiah to approve their plan to put the traitorous prophet to death. Like Joseph, Jeremiah is tossed into a muddy cistern without water, left to die of thirst.
Ebed-Melech bursts onto the scene as an unexpected deliverer. As the wonderfully-named Deusdedit Musinguzi points out in a monograph on the passage, Ebed-Melech is a model of compassion, justice, and courage. Though a foreigner, he charges Jerusalem’s leaders with “evil” in open court, and persuades the king to let him pull Jeremiah up from the pit. Ebed-Melech’s name, “Servant of the King,” indicates he’s Zedekiah’s servant, but he proves himself loyal to the King. As a Gentile deliverer, he foreshadows Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. He literally rescues Jeremiah from death, raising him from beneath the earth, a figure of the Spirit who brings a greater Prophet from the grave. In every way, Ebed-Melech is the antithesis of the corrupt Jewish courtiers, a Gentile without Torah who keeps the Torah written on his heart (Rom. 2:14–15).
Ebed-Melech is firstfruits of a great harvest from the land of Cush. According to Orthodox tradition, Christianity came to the country in the late third century through two shipwrecked Syrian boys, the brothers Aedisius and Frumentius, who were brought to the court of the Axum emperor. Through their faithful service, the boys rose to high positions, and their witness convinced the emperor to become a Christian. In 305, the emperor’s successor sent Frumentius to Alexandria to ask the patriarch—none other than Athanasius—to send a bishop to Axum to promote evangelism and church construction. Athanasius ordained Frumentius, who returned to baptize Emperor Ezana, who made Christianity the official religion of his empire. Ethiopia is among the oldest of Christian nations.
In Acts, Luke tells us that Christianity arrived in Ethiopia already in the early first century. The first known Gentile to be baptized was another Ethiopian eunuch, a latter-day Ebed-Melech, who meets Philip in a Spirit-arranged encounter on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (Acts 8). Though “cut off” like the Suffering Servant in the text he reads, the Ethiopian eunuch becomes fruitful, with a place in the house of his God (Isa. 56:1–8; Deut. 23:1–5).
Already in the old covenant, when the very name “Cush” could send chills down Israelite spines, the Lord promised he would one day adopt Ethiopia as a “home-born” son and a child of Zion (Ps. 87:4). One day, he promised, Cush would bring tribute to Jerusalem (Isa. 45:14). These promises form the story arc of Ethiopia’s long history. Every time you see Ethiopia is still on the map, you’re seeing real-world proof of the faithfulness of God.
👉 Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute.
💭 Abune Mathias is an Ethiopian patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church since 2013. His full title is “His Holiness Abune Mathias I, Sixth Patriarch and Catholicos of Ethiopia, Archbishop of Axum and Ichege of the See of Saint Taklehaimanot”.
💭 An accelerating wave of Ethiopian air strikes in Tigray region has killed a reported 108 civilians, jeopardizing fragile peace talks and further damaging an emergency aid effort that is already on the verge of ending because of blocked supplies.
Western leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have been pushing for humanitarian aid and peace negotiations to end the 14-month-old war in northern Ethiopia that has killed tens of thousands of people. But the latest volley of air strikes and the rising civilian death toll have angered Tigrayan leaders and hampered the aid effort.
The United Nations human rights office, in a statement on Friday, said the air strikes could constitute a war crime if the perpetrators had not verified whether the targets were military objectives.
“We are alarmed by the multiple, deeply disturbing reports we continue to receive of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian objects resulting from air strikes in Ethiopia’s Tigray region,” said Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
She cited reports that the air strikes have killed 108 civilians and injured 75 in the past two weeks. The air strikes have reportedly hit a refugee camp, a training institute, a flour mill, an airport, a private minibus and a camp for internally displaced people.
The deadliest strike was last Friday at the Dedebit camp for displaced people, killing at least 59 people and injuring dozens of others. Another strike, on Monday, caused devastation at a mill where farmers had gathered to grind their grains into flour. The air strikes are believed to be inflicted by Turkish, Chinese and Iranian drones, imported by Ethiopia’s military in recent months.
Fisseha Tekle, an Ethiopia researcher for Amnesty International, told The Globe and Mail that the warring parties must “stop indiscriminate attacks” that hit civilians and civilian infrastructure. He called on the Ethiopian government to allow access for international and independent investigations of the air strikes.
Last week, as Ethiopia celebrated Orthodox Christmas, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the release of several imprisoned opposition leaders, including some from the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). He called for an “all-inclusive national dialogue” and a peaceful solution to Ethiopia’s problems.
But the air strikes have undermined the prospects for peace. A spokesman for the TPLF, Getachew Reda, tweeted last week that the Prime Minister’s rhetoric about peace was contradicted by “his daily routine of denying medication to helpless children and sending drones targeting civilians.”
This week, Mr. Getachew noted that a drone strike had hit Tigray just minutes after the departure of the African Union’s diplomatic envoy, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who had been discussing peace measures with Tigrayan leaders in the regional capital Mekelle.
Mr. Trudeau, in a quiet diplomatic campaign, has held repeated telephone talks with Mr. Abiy and other leaders in the Horn of Africa in recent weeks, including a conversation with Mr. Obasanjo on Thursday. His office said he had welcomed the envoy’s efforts, but “expressed concern over challenges in ensuring unhindered access to and delivery of humanitarian assistance for those affected by the conflict.”
The drone strikes are another obstacle to the desperately needed supply of aid in Tigray, where the UN estimates that 90 per cent of the population needs emergency assistance. Some aid agencies have already been forced to suspend operations in the area where the air strike hit the displaced people’s camp, because of the continuing threat of further drone attacks, the UN says.
Many humanitarian workers have been killed since the beginning of the Tigray conflict in November 2020. One aid agency, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), says it is still trying to understand how three of its staff workers were killed in an apparent execution in Tigray last June. The three bodies were found within 400 metres of their well-marked MSF car and “their injuries showed that each suffered multiple close-range gunshot wounds,” the agency said in a statement this week.
This shows that the attack was an intentional killing, MSF said. It said it has asked the Ethiopian and Tigrayan authorities to provide information about the presence of their armed forces in the area at the time, but it is still awaiting answers.
A major UN agency, the World Food Programme, warned on Friday that its food assistance in northern Tigray is “about to grind to a halt” because intense fighting has blocked the transport of fuel and food.
No convoys of WFP aid have reached Mekelle since mid-December, the agency said. Stocks of nutritionally fortified food for malnourished children and women are now exhausted, and the last of its cereals, pulses and oil will be distributed next week, it said.
“We’re now having to choose who goes hungry to prevent another from starving,” said WFP Eastern Africa director Michael Dunford in a statement. “We’re on the edge of a humanitarian disaster.”
Across northern Ethiopia, the WFP estimates that 9.4 million people need humanitarian food assistance – the highest number recorded so far, and an increase of 2.7 million in the past four months.
The World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is himself from Tigray, said this week that the Ethiopian government is denying food and medicine to its own people in the region.
“Nowhere in the world are we witnessing hell like in Tigray,” he told reporters. “Imagine a complete blockade of seven million people for more than a year. And there is no food. There is no medication, no medicine. No electricity. No telecom. No media.”
After his comments, the Ethiopian government said it had sent a letter of complaint to the WHO, accusing Dr. Tedros of “misconduct” and interference in Ethiopia’s internal affairs.
Other WHO officials, however, have made similar comments to those of Dr. Tedros. The agency’s director of emergencies, Michael Ryan, said this week that the lack of access to basic medicine in Tigray is “an insult to our humanity.” He warned of “catastrophic, imminent health consequences.”
💭 “At least 28 killed in Islamist attack on South Sudanese Christian community,”
At least 28 people were killed and 57 houses burned down in an attack by Islamist extremists against the Christian community of Yith Pabol, Aweil East county, South Sudan, in early January.
Bishop Joseph Mamer Manot said on 6 January that “massive displacement has happened, and the humanitarian situation is alarming as food and other property have been burned down into ashes, leaving survivors with no shelters, no food and no safe drinking water”.
The incident is the latest example of attacks against South Sudanese Christians by Arab Muslims from the Republic of Sudan, along the disputed border between the two countries.
A similar attack the same week in nearby Miodol village left at least four dead, with three others missing and several houses destroyed.
The state security adviser, Joseph Akook Aleu, said Monday that the state government decided to close the road to Sudan because of the ongoing attacks and killing of civilians.
South Sudan is about 60% Christian, mostly Roman Catholic and Anglican. By grace of God and the blessings of His Beatitude Theodore II, the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, Metropolitan Narkissos (Gammoh) of Nubia founded the first Orthodox Christian missionary center in South Sudan in 2015.
💭 Seis meses después del asesinato de nuestros compañeros María, Tedros y Yohannes, siguen sin estar claras las circunstancias y las responsabilidades.
El 24 de junio de 2021, María Hernández, de 35 años, nuestra coordinadora de emergencias; Yohannes Halefom Reda, de 32 años, nuestro coordinador adjunto; y Tedros Gebremariam, de 31 años, nuestro conductor, se dirigían por la región de Tigray, desde Abi Adi hacia el sur, para buscar y recoger a heridos en zonas afectadas por intensos combates entre la RDFE, sus aliados y el FLPT. El equipo de MSF en Abi Adi había recibido información previa referente a un gran número de heridos en Shoate Egum, una aldea cercana al lugar del incidente. A poco más de una hora de viaje el vehículo se detuvo.
El 25 de junio, localizamos su vehículo vacío y sus cuerpos fueron encontrados a una distancia de entre 100 y 400 metros del coche. Sus lesiones mostraban que los tres habían sufrido múltiples disparos a corta distancia. El tipo de heridas sufridas por nuestros compañeros no correspondían a las que hubieran resultado de un fuego cruzado, y confirman que fue un asesinato intencionado de tres trabajadores de ayuda humanitaria. Cada uno de ellos era claramente reconocible como civil y trabajador humanitario en el momento del incidente. El vehículo, claramente identificado con el logotipo de MSF y dos banderas de la organización, recibió numerosos disparos y fue incendiado.
Durante los últimos seis meses, hemos hecho todo lo posible por entender lo que les ocurrió, entablando un contacto continuo con las partes del conflicto. Nos hemos reunido en múltiples ocasiones con varios Ministerios de la República Democrática Federal de Etiopía (RDFE) para asegurarnos de que se investigan sus asesinatos y se nos comunican los resultados. Hemos hecho las mismas peticiones al Frente de Liberación del Pueblo de Tigray (FLPT).
Además, como parte de nuestra práctica interna habitual tras incidentes críticos de seguridad, hemos recopilado y analizado información que nos ha permitido reconstruir la ruta que siguió el coche de MSF, así como el lugar y la hora del incidente y algunas de las circunstancias materiales del asesinato.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on January 14, 2022
💭 “There’s a lot of areas we haven’t been able to access so we can’t assess what the humanitarian situation is.” 😠😠😠 😢😢😢
Steph Dujarric UN Spokesperson discusses the food, fuel and cash shortage that are adding to Tigray’s humanitarian crises.
“I’m looking at the clock right now. It’s just gone I think about 8:30 in the evening in Tigray. As we’re talking on this program. That means there are a lot of people, millions actually, who are likely going to bed hungry. It’s one thing not to be able to find food for yourself. It’s another thing altogether not to be able to find food for your children.” Zain Asher
In competition with among others Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, Abiy Ahmed has been named the worst head of state in 2021 by a panel of professors and researchers, on behalf of the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet.
An expert panel was put together by the newspaper to discuss and conclude: Who was the worst head of state in 2021?
👉 The final verdict: Abiy Ahmed. 😈
In 2019 he came to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for his “efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation.” Two years later, Ethiopia is marred by civil war.
The New York times recently described the situation as “a year of conflict in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and a linchpin of regional security, has left thousands dead, forced more than two million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.”
A wasted opportunity
While dictactors in general, like North-Koreas Kim Jong-un, suppress their people as a natural part of their leadership, 2021 has been a very active year for Prime Minister Ahmed, Morgenbladet writes.
“Abiy has done nothing to downscale the ongoing civil war in his country, because he wants to secure his own alliances and his own position. He is perhaps the most disappointing head of state of the year,” professor Carl Henrik Knutsen says to the newspaper.
Knutsen served in the newspaper’s expert panel on the topic.
“With the Nobel Prize in his pocket and the recognition that comes with it from international alliances, a lot was in place for Abiy to develop his country in a positive direction. He wasted that opportunity and seems to have put his own concerns over that of his citizens,” he says.
The worst of the bad
The expert panel consisted of Carl Henrik Knutsen, professor of political science at the University of Oslo, Lise Rakner, professor of political science at the University of Bergen, Helle Malmvig, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and Dan Smith, Director at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“A truly bad head of state is an authoritarian and oppressive leader who undermines the political institutions in the country and concentrates all power in his own hands, at any cost,” according to Knutsen.
Discussions that included Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and the king of Saudi-Arabia, Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, finally narrowed down to a list of six nominees:
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK
Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus
Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India
Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brasil
Michel Aoun, President of Lebanon
Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia
Watching people die during a pandemic
Questions that were discussed were whether the head of state has contributed to financial decline in their own country, supported or started a civil war and suppressed civil or political rights. Handling of the pandemic was also an important criterion.
“Leaders who are in denial, who with open eyes watch a large number of people dying during the pandemic and call information about this mortality “fake news” – I believe this is a form of genocide,” said Professor Lise Rakner.
On the more unusual suspect on the list, Boris Johson, Rakner has the following to say:
“The United Kingdom still have a free press, a stable legal system and an independent central bank, which means that Johnson cannot control things in any way he would like to. But if you had given Brasil to Johnson, a lot of things would have gone very wrong. What a clown.”
The violent solution
According to Dan Smith from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the most important criterion in deciding on the worst head of state in 2021 was starting an irresponsible war and using systematic violence. This is why Abiy ends up top, he says to Morgenbladet.
“Since the outbreak of the war, there have been obvious alternative ways of acting, but all of them have been rejected. Both sides have blocked a politically negotiated solution. Instead, Abiy has chosen the most violent solution,” he says.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize, said Thursday that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the honour in 2019, bore special responsibility for ending the bloodshed in Tigray.
“As Prime Minister and winner of the Peace Prize, Abiy Ahmed has a special responsibility to end the conflict and contribute to peace,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the committee, said in a statement to AFP.
Northern Ethiopia has been beset by conflict since November 2020 when Abiy sent troops into Tigray after accusing the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), of attacks on federal army camps.
The fighting between forces loyal to Abiy and the TPLF and their allies has killed thousands of people and forced several million from their homes.
Spokeswoman Billene Seyoum responded to the committee’s comments, saying Abiy had already shouldered his responsibilities.
“The Prime Minister has indeed taken up this ‘special responsibility’ of ending the conflict waged on the state by TPLF and has been engaged in putting an end not only to the past year’s conflict but the destabilising activities of the TPLF, designated a terrorist organisation by parliament,” Billen told AFP.
Tigray is under what the United Nations calls a de facto blockade that is preventing life-saving medicine and food from reaching millions, including hundreds of thousands in famine-like conditions.
Millions of people have fled their homes since the conflict in Tigray erupted in November 2020
“The humanitarian situation is very serious and it is not acceptable that humanitarian aid does not get through sufficiently,” Reiss-Andersen said.
Speaking at a press conference, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth appealed for countries to press Abiy to allow aid to get through.
“The big threat there is the Ethiopian government’s blockade of humanitarian assistance that is desperately needed by millions of people in the region,” Roth told reporters.
“This is a classic case of collective punishment. This is not punishing Tigrayan military forces. It is punishing the people… in Tigray,” he added.
The conflict in Tigray has sparked calls to strip Abiy of the Nobel, but this is not possible under the award’s statutes.
The Norwegian committee said it could not comment on what factors were emphasised when the prize was awarded to Abiy beyond “the reasons given in connection with the award,” as the panel’s discussions are confidential.
In November 2020, Abiy’s government allowed Eritrean forces into Tigray as they together pursued the Tigray leaders after political tensions erupted into war. Some tens of thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands now face famine as Ethiopia’s government has kept almost all food and medical aid from Tigray since late June.
“Since the autumn of 2020, developments in Ethiopia have escalated to a comprehensive armed conflict,” the statement said. “The humanitarian situation is very serious, and it is not acceptable that humanitarian aid does not emerge to a sufficient degree.”
The conflict entered a new phase in late December when Tigray forces retreated into their region amid a new military offensive and Ethiopian forces said they would not advance further there.
_______
_______
_______
_______
________
Addis Ethiopia Weblog 