As Prime Minister Abiy prepares what is possibly a final, bloody stand in the war he has wrought
There are similar efforts to scapegoat all Tigrayans, led personally through the prime minister’s statements and state media, though the rampant use of hateful and dehumanizing speech makes the case that the government may well be inciting genocide as part of its last-ditch defense effort to save itself.
As Ethiopia crosses the one-year mark since the start of its devastating war in the Tigray region, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is preparing the capital, Addis Ababa, for one final stand against a blitzkrieg attack at the hands of Tigrayan rebels, who months ago turned the tide of the war and who now stand poised to turn out the country’s Nobel prize-winning prime minister.
In the process, as international diplomats and Ethiopian-Americans scramble to leave the country, the risk of state-sponsored genocide, and even state collapse, remain frighteningly real scenarios that will have catastrophic consequences for the country, the region, and U.S. interests for years to come.
This was an unfathomable scenario at the start of the conflict. Abiy promised a limited “law-and-order operation” against a select number of Tigrayan leaders who challenged his rule through, in his mind, an unwavering commitment to an anachronistic ethnically-based system they put in place during their more than 20 years of autocratic rule.
In reality, Abiy likely never believed Tigrayans would “go along to get along” and so set about from the start of his time in office to weaken their ties to the state and ensure their future banishment from power. It was those efforts to treat Tigrayans as Tigrayans treated the majority of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups during their time in power that created the self-fulfilling prophecy Abiy is now struggling to survive.
But with the bulk of the Ethiopian army’s best fighters and tacticians hailing from Tigray, the government has slowly seen its overwhelming strategic advantage eroded on the battlefield against a rump force more adept at insurgency combat and clearly more motivated by a fight for its literal survival.
The government’s response to its own tactical shortcomings and sagging morale has been to wage an asymmetric battle against not just the Tigrayan Defense Forces but more broadly against the people of Tigray. A recent joint report from the United Nations and Ethiopia’s own human rights body points out the widespread use of sexual violence as central to the government’s war strategy.
An ongoing government humanitarian blockade of the region has for months put more than 900,000 civilians at risk of famine and forced Tigrayan fighters to expand their fight into neighboring Amhara and Afar regions in a bid to break the siege, expanding the death toll and humanitarian suffering.
There are similar efforts to scapegoat all Tigrayans, led personally through the prime minister’s statements and state media, though the rampant use of hateful and dehumanizing speech makes the case that the government may well be inciting genocide as part of its last-ditch defense effort to save itself.
Reports this past week of mass roundups of Tigrayans living in and around Addis Ababa, under a far-reaching state of emergency declaration “to ensure national security,” suggest a possible last-ditch effort to deter the oncoming onslaught by holding hostage an entire people.
As the situation deteriorates, and the vast human and economic implications begin to take shape for the region, Ethiopia’s neighbors have only just begun to respond. Forced by the possible fall of one of Africa’s most important cities and the continent’s diplomatic capital, after months of callously treating the devastating conflict as Ethiopia’s “internal affair,” Kenya, Uganda and the African Union itself are finally calling for a ceasefire and political talks.
While Washington and its European allies have been sustained in their condemnations of the violence and abuses, they have done little to force either side’s hand to relent. Importantly, a bipartisan Senate bill, introduced last week in the Foreign Relations Committee, makes use of the Biden administration’s own Executive Order sanctions regime — rolled out in September but never applied — by mandating “the imposition of targeted sanctions against individual actors … undermining efforts to resolve the conflict or profit from it.”
Coupled with a freeze of more than $200 million in trade preferences — which, again, the administration was forced to announce last week under congressional deadline — and efforts to impose costs on belligerents are only beginning to take shape after a year of fighting.
As Prime Minister Abiy prepares what is possibly a final, bloody stand in the war he has wrought, will last-minute calls for calm and pressure tactics be enough to change the calculations of the warring parties and avoid catastrophe in the Horn of Africa?
“During the first few decades of their migration, the Oromo moved across lands that were devastated and depopulated by the jihadist wars, the lands relatively empty of people either fled before them or were adopted and assimilated by them.”
„In the place conquer they slay all the men, cut off the privet parts of the boy, kill the old woman and keep the young for their use and service ” Richard Pankhurst, the Ethiopian borderland. (page 284)
5. Historical Geography of Ethiopia, School of African Studies.
6.The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People. Oxford University Press, 1960, Edward Ullendorff
The Gallas had little to contribute to the Semitized civilization of Ethiopia; they possessed no significant material or intellectual culture, and their social organization differed considerably from that of the population among whom they settled. They were not only the cause of the depressed state into which the country now sank, but they helped to prolong a situation from
which even a physically and spiritually exhausted Ethiopia might otherwise have been able to recover far more quickly
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on November 10, 2021
ዋይ! ዋይ! ዋይ!
😠😠😠 😢😢😢
The November Pogrom, the Holocaust, Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide are all back; this time in one country, in Ethiopia – in the 21st century.
💭 Tigrayans are Driven out of their homes in mass sent by the Oromos to concentration camps in Addis Ababa, Debre Zeit, Nazareth/Adama, Jimma, Nekemte, Negele Borana, Arba Minch and in many other unreported villages and towns – many murdered in the mountains, hills, woods and valleys of the Oromia region.
😈 Enabling fascist Abiy Ahmed to commit barbaric acts against Tigrayans, these are some of the Joseph Goebbels of Ethiopia today:
☆ ESAT
☆ Abebe Belew
☆ Ethio 360
☆ Adebabay Media
☆ Ethio-Beteseb Media
☆ Mehal Meda
☆ Haq & Saq
☆ Menilik TV
☆ Zehabesha
☆ Terara Tube
☆ Tswae
😈 Oromo Bilsigna/ Prosperity Party, (PP) = Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, (NSDAP) = Partito Nazionale Fascista, (PNF)
Tigrayan Organizations, parties and leaders must officially and immediately push to outlaw The entire Oromo Biltsigina/ Prosperity Party (PP) of the genocidal fascist regime of evil Abiy Ahmed Ali.
Tigrayan elites should learn from the experience of Germany. In Germany, the very presence of Neo-Nazis openly marching through a city bearing swastika-emblazoned flags is unthinkable, not to mention the formation of a PP like Nazi party. Germany places strict limits on speech and expression when it comes to Fascism and Nazism. It is illegal to produce, distribute or display symbols of the Nazi era — swastikas, the Hitler salute, along with many symbols. Holocaust denial is also illegal.
The law goes further. There is the legal concept of “Volksverhetzung,” the incitement to hatred: Anybody who denigrates an individual or a group based on their ethnicity or religion, or anybody who tries to rouse hatred or promotes violence against such a group or an individual, could face a sentence of up to five years in prison.
These laws apply to individuals, but they and others are also defenses against extremist political parties. The Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest court, can ban parties it deems intent on impairing or destroying the political order.
Furthermore, Germany’s legal ban comes at a cost. Limits on speech are a blunt instrument. Though it seems a legitimate and necessary act of respect toward Holocaust victims and their descendants to outlaw the denial of the Nazi atrocities.
Satellite Images Support Survivors’ Accounts: Ethiopian Forces Held Thousands, Including Children, in Brutal Camps
In the Tigray region of Ethiopia, beginning in November 2020, children who should have been laughing with friends and studying in school were instead locked up, crying, starving and abused in concentration camps, according to multiple eyewitness reports that have been corroborated by satellite imagery and analysis, as well as cell phone video footage smuggled out by an escapee.
Ethiopian federal forces, abetted by special forces, paramilitary groups, militia and police acting under the authority of the Amharan regional government, locked up in multiple locations hundreds of children of all ages — and even pregnant women, infants and toddlers — along with thousands of Tigrayan adults and senior citizens. These people appear to have been held in harsh conditions, systematically starved and beaten because of their ethnicity and with no judicial process or valid legal pretext. That is the definition of a concentration camp. This is a previously unreported part of an ongoinggenocidal campaign led by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed — ironically enough, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate — against various ethnic groups, including Tigrayans, Kimant, Gumuz, Ogaden (Somalis), Agew, Irob, Afar and Sidama.
This report is based on eyewitness accounts by dozens of people from five ethnic groups, including 11 former prisoners who were interviewed in four different refugee camps in eastern Sudan. Doctors have recounted their treatment of another seven former prisoners, including young children. Satellite imagery from Maxar (a space technology company based in Westminster, Colorado) and Planet Labs (an Earth imaging company based in San Francisco) corroborates these eyewitness reports. So does video footage which one former prisoner shot on his cell phone before he escaped a previously unreported concentration camp in western Tigray, located in the notorious Abbadi warehouse compound in Mai Kadra.
The cell phone footage admittedly does not conform to classic notions of what a concentration camp looks like, as in World War II films.There are no bars, guard towers, German Shepherds, barracks, searchlights or coils of razor wire. In the videos, prisoners can be seen eating popcorn, drinking coffee, teasing each other and making jokes in Tigrigna, the language of the Tigray people.
“Young children who were imprisoned and abused”
“We are seeing a generation of Tigrayan refugee children, many of whom are growing up with a sense of hopelessness,” said Dr. Mebrahtom Yehdago, 37, from Humera. He is a Tigrayan doctor and refugee in Tenedba refugee camp in eastern Sudan. “As a doctor, I feel so disturbed, sad, and angry to see these kinds of situations. These children are innocent. These are young children who were imprisoned and abused. How can we get the world to pay attention and do more to help the children?”
Dr. Mebrahtom outlines the cases of former child prisoners in concentration camps whom he has treated: four boys, ages 2, 9, 13 and 15. The two-year-old was imprisoned with his mother in the Mai Kadra concentration camp – which satellite imagery shows is in the Abbadi warehouse compound, a bit north and across the street from the police station, just as eyewitnesses reported. They were imprisoned from Nov. 14 to Nov. 27, 2020, until the mother paid their captors — the Fanu, the Amhara militia and the Amharan Regional Police — a ransom of 50,000 Ethiopian birr (about USD $1,086) for their release.
The toddler presented with physical complications, Dr. Mebrahtom said, including recurrent diarrhea, dehydration, malnutrition and pneumonia, as well as psychological issues. For example, when the boy sees a large group of people, he starts shouting and crying. His mother says he is remembering their hardship in captivity.
Their captors provided no food or water. About twice a week, according to former prisoners who escaped, Doctors Without Borders (or MSF, its French acronym) workers from Abdelrafe would distribute packets of digestive biscuits and fill two large water tanks. MSF repaired one water tank and installed another, without which the prisoners would have had only a few sinks in the bathrooms, where toilets and floors were overflowing with feces. MSF also built a new bathroom. The prisoners in Mai Kadra, like those in other concentration camps in western Tigray, survived by pilfering and roasting sesame seeds stored in the warehouses where they were held captive. This meager sustenance came from bags of seeds that the Amharan forces had looted from Tigrayan farmers and hauled to the warehouses on trailers pulled by tractors. The tractors in Mai Kadra were stolen from the Abbadis, a wealthy Tigrayan family who had owned the warehouse compound.
Satellite imagery shows tractors hooked to trailers near the compound garage. Some prisoners who had Amharan relatives or friends, and who could get money brought to them, paid bribes to Amharan militia guards. In exchange, the guards would allow two or three small boys, around eight years old, to run to the market and return with a kind of flat bread called injera, which the prisoners would distribute.
“We are here to kill you”
Dr. Mebrahtom described the case of a 15-year-old boy, imprisoned in the same place in Mai Kadra. He is an insulin-dependent diabetic. When he asked for permission to buy insulin from a local pharmacy, his captors said, “We are not here to treat you; we are here to kill you. We are gathering the Tigrayan refugees here to kill them.” …..
Dr. Mebrahtom explains that the abuse of Tigrayan children in Mai Kadra was not unique. It was part of a pattern which the doctor has seen, and which other eyewitnesses confirmed in interviews, which also involved children locked up in various sites in the regional capital of western Tigray, Humera. For example, the doctor has treated a 9-year-old boy who had been imprisoned for four days in the old police station in Humera.
Eyewitnesses who had been incarcerated in the old police station, and who were subsequently transferred to the Yitbarak warehouse in Humera, from which they escaped, reported that the only food and water available in the station (administered by the Amhara Regional Police) was whatever the prisoners could buy and have brought in from outside. And in the Yitbarak warehouse (sometimes called the Tabarak warehouse), prisoners subsisted by pilfering sesame seeds from bags looted by the Amhara and stored in the warehouse. So this young child, like hundreds of other children and adults imprisoned in multiple locations, had to survive on handfuls of seeds and a little water, with an occasional supplement of a piece of injera or a few digestive biscuits. I asked the doctor who had arrested the 9-year-old boy, and why.
💭 Five paths to freedom
There were five paths to freedom from the Mai Kadra concentration camp:
the Amharan regional government released some who paid a ransom — an illegal act of extortion which confirms that there was no valid legal purpose for holding the prisoners;
they released some who claimed Amharan ancestry, which confirms that the Ethiopian government was arresting Tigrayans because of their ethnicity;
after several weeks, they released some old people, sick people, pregnant women and women with young children, although one witness among the released prisoners — a woman who returned to Mai Kadra — reported that the Amharans released these Tigrayans into a deadly ambush by Eritrean soldiers allied with Ethiopia’s federal government;
more than 150 Tigrayans escaped Mai Kadra over a four-day period; and
some died of starvation and disease due to lack of adequate nutrition or sufficient medical care in captivity.
Tigrayans Being Sent to Concentration Camps in Addis Ababa | ትግራዋዮች በአዲስ አበባ ወደ ማጎሪያ ካምፖች ሲወሰዱ
💭 My Note: They say, there is war in Oromia too – so, why don’t they do the same to the Oromos in Addis? The Answer is because it’s the Oromos who are the perpetrators. It’s all lies, there is no war in Oromia – there ain’t no such thing as “Eritrean soldiers in Oromia” – Evil Abiy Ahmed’s fascist regime is an Oromo one – and it’s the Oromos + the Amharas who are responsible for the #TigrayGenocide. Will the Addis Ababa residents now have a desire to show solidarity with Tigrayans against this sort of barbarity? No, they won’t! Unless the T.D.F advance towards Addis Ababa, I smell Auschwitz!
Thousands of Ethnic-Tigrayan Residents of Addis Ababa Being Marched to Mass Detention Centers.
Turning Point in Tigray | Bring This Uniquely Monstrous War Criminal to Justice
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on July 5, 2021
💭 My Note: They say, there is war in Oromia too – so, why don’t they do the same to the Oromos in Addis? The Answer is because it’s the Oromos who are the perpetrators. It’s all lies, there is no war in Oromia – there ain’t no such thing as “Eritrean soldiers in Oromia” – Evil Abiy Ahmed’s fascist regime is an Oromo one – and it’s the Oromos + the Amharas who are responsible for the #TigrayGenocide. Will the Addis Ababa residents now have a desire to show solidarity with Tigrayans against this sort of barbarity? No, they won’t! Unless the TDF advance towards Addis Ababa, I smell Auschwitz!
Thousands of Ethnic-Tigrayan Residents of Addis Ababa Being Marched to Mass Detention Centers
FRESH WAVE OF ARBITRARY ARREST OF TIGRAYANS IN ADDIS ABEBA
Video showing thousands of ethnic Tigrayan residents of Addis Ababa – the city they built and modernized — being marched on the street to mass detention centers before they are transferred to concentration camps in Awash Arba and other locations.
Reports are surfacing to the arbitrary arrest and rounding up of ethnic Tigrayans residing in Addis Abeba by police along with non-uniformed security forces. Addis Standard received reports indicating that these arrests are taking place in different locations around the capital.
An eyewitness who wants to remain anonymous in fear of reprisal told Addis Standard that Addis Abeba police accompanied by men wearing civilian clothes appeared in Summit, a neighborhood with a huge presence of Tigrinya speaking community, and started to check for IDs and conduct body searches checking on what is on them. The eyewitness said that the police took people who didn’t have their IDs on them and sarcastically made inappropriate remarks and asked those being checked, “Are you a junta?”
Another eyewitness who also asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal detailed for Addis Standard similar incidents and said, “It was a mix of Addis Abeba police and Federal police personnels.” Addis Standard learned from the same source who was previously arrested that there was physical abuse of detainees at the police station he was held at.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) also said that it is monitoring reports of arrests of media personnel in Addis Abeba as well as residents of Tigray origin suspected of connection with the ongoing situation in the region and warned, “Such measures could aggravate the public‘s concerns on the risk of ethnic profiling.” Addis Standard contacted the senior media advisor at the rights commission, Aaron Maasho who on his part said that no further information is available but added, “Our team is monitoring the situation closely.”
The wife of the Awlo Media cameraman Muse Hadera who was arrested on Friday, July 02, 2021 said that she doesn’t know his whereabouts and was told when she went to the federal police with his lawyer that he was freed. Mesi told Addis Standard, “I know that he wasn’t released and is held somewhere. We just want to know what his charges are as we are still not clear on them. Also we want to make sure that he was not arrested for his identity and we can only understand by having answers as to his whereabouts and his charges.”
This fresh wave of arbitrary arrests coincides with the arrest of at least 12 journalists at two online media platforms. The lawyer, Tadele Gebre, told Addis Standard that the 10 journalists, a cameraman alongside Five members of the Awlo media staff, were arrested by federal police. Tadele also disclosed that Two journalists, Abebe Bayu and Yayesew Shimeles from Ethio-Forum, a Youtube based news outlet were also arrested. At the time the Federal police commission said their arrests were due to their affiliation with a terrorist group which is banned by the parliament. It also comes in the backdrop of an earlier wave of arrests that swapped returnees from the Middle East earlier in May, 2021.
Addis Standard also contacted both the spokesperson of the Addis Abeba Police commission and the spokesperson of the Federal police commission to verify claims made by eyewitnesses and concerned family members. While Fasika Fanta, Addis Abeba police commission spokesperson denied having any knowledge of the arrests, the spokesperson for the federal police commission said, “The federal police commission did not and does not arrest citizens based on their identity unless otherwise they are involved in criminal acts,” he added, “ Police can arrest every one without any discrimination, when suspected with criminal act.” AS
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 28, 2015
“We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims”
“What a deal! Europe/Britain swapped obstetricians/gynecologists for female genital mutilators. Neurologists for head choppers. Geneticists for throngs of genetically malformed babies born to Muslim first cousins. Teachers for pedophile rape gangs.”
Everyone is talking about the current Muslim mass migration into Europe, forgetting that the Islamic mass migration begun 50 years ago, when the then Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie 1 declined to meet Germany’s demands to send her Ethiopian guest workers. This forced Germany to invite millions of Turks as Gastarbeiter. Karma? Destiny?!
Since that time importation of Turks, Arabs, Iranians and Pakistanis is being intensified by the atheist technocrats to all Western European states. The current wave of immigration is intended to complete the replacement of Judeo-Christians with the peoples of the Muslim faith. of Europe speak of the refugee crisis they helped to create as some sort of “Humanitarian action”.
Why don’t they allow real refugees from the Congo, Nigeria or South Sudan into Europe? Why should they die in the Mediterranean sea? Why are there very few Christian refugees from Egypt, Syria or Iraq? Why doesn’t the media portray drowned black refugee children the way it did towards the Syrian Kurdish boy? Demonism!? Racism!?
I personally witnessed how fast Christian asylum-seekers from Albania, Serbia and Macedonia were deported to their respective countries while Muslims from the same states are allowed to stay longer.They intend to replace Christians and Jews with Muslims. I said, whaaaaaaaat!
Some fifteen years ago I remember visiting one of the McDonald’s restaurants in Brussels where an Arab employee refused to serve me because he saw The Cross worn about my neck. I remember telling this to my friends who did not believe then it would happen. Now this sort of disgraceful act happens all over Europe to non-Muslims.
The Jews are leaving Europe in their droves. Those who remain are afraid to express their Jewishness because the hateful Arabs might attack them. For the time being, in “Christian” Europe, Muslims are free to do whatever they want. But, what’s wrong with the Europeans? Are they coerced, possessed or damned? What have they done to deserve this plague?
It’s truly mind boggling that a boatload of enemy aliens are immediately released into to the general population to rape, murder, lie, cheat and steal. And most incomprehensible of all they are given immediate access to the natives treasury. We are no longer citizens – we are becoming colonized natives.
The following interesting article was published in a Spanish Internet magazine, Gentiuno, on November 21, 2004. Written by Sebastian Vivar Rodriguez, it has been widely circulated on the Internet with good re ason. It sums up the tragedy and present agony of Europe as it faces a very gloomy future. This is what it says:
All European Life Died in Auschwitz
I walked down the street in Barcelona , and suddenly discovered a terrible truth – Europe died in Auschwitz .. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.
And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.
Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.
We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe!