Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on December 20, 2022
🔥 የሰላም ሽልማት-ሰጭዋ ኖርዌይ ዜጎቿን ወደ ኢትዮጵያ እንዳይጓዙ አሳሰበች።
💭 For a pact (Ethiopia and Eritrea) of the preplanned genocidal Tigray war, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2019 to the Current genocidal Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed Ali.
Norwegian authorities have advised its citizens not to travel to large parts of Ethiopia.
Through a statement issued on December 17, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that the travel advisories would tighten up for western Oromia, amongst others, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
The same emphasises that since an explosion that happened in November 2020, the conflict in Ethiopia has gone through several phases, and the place is no longer safe to travel to for non-essential purposes.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises against all travel to the conflict-affected areas in western Ethiopia. This includes the areas of Kelam Welega, West Welega, Buno Bedele, East Welega, Horo Guduru Welega in Oromia Region, Gambella Region, and Benishangul-Gumuz Region,” the statement reads.
According to the Ministry, between the negotiations of the parties, a ceasefire agreement was reached, which contributed to the improvement of the situation in northern Ethiopia, but the situation is still very uncertain in the Tigray region.
Thus, the Ministry has also urged citizens not to travel to the Tigray region, as well as the border areas between the Amhara and Tigray regions and the Afar region.
In addition, the riots in Eastern Ethiopia and towards the border with Somalia have caused an insecure situation for these regions as well. At the same time, the situation for the capital in Addis Ababa is still the same, though the capital is exempted from travel advisories. In this direction, air traffic to and from the capital continues to develop normally.
💭 Ulm, Germany – A 14-year-old girl was stabbed to death by an asylum seeker from Eritrea on Monday.
A 13-year-old child was also injured in the attack that happened while the girls were on their way to school early in the morning.
According to German police, “the attacker had come from a neighboring accommodation for asylum seekers and had fled there again after the crime. When the police searched it with special forces, they found three residents there, all asylum seekers from Eritrea.” The third was injured and had to undergo medical treatment.
“According to the investigators’ findings so far, the girls were probably attacked with a knife. The girls were on their way to school at the time. The 14-year-old had to be revived at the scene after the attack before being taken to the hospital, where she died despite all medical efforts. The 13-year-old, also a German national, had to be treated in a clinic with serious but not life-threatening injuries.” German police said in a press release.
The deadliest killings occurred at the Mirab Abaya prison camp, where current and retired Tigrayan soldiers were detained.
The scent of coffee and cigarettes hung in the hot afternoon air in a makeshift Ethiopian prison camp, prisoners said, as detained Tigrayan soldiers celebrated the holy day of Saint Michael in November 2021. Some joked with friends outside the corrugated iron buildings. Others quietly prayed to be reunited with families they had not seen in a year, when conflict erupted in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
Then the killings began.
By sunset the next day, around 83 prisoners were dead and another score missing, according to six survivors. Some were shot by their guards, others hacked to death by villagers who taunted the soldiers about their Tigrayan ethnicity, prisoners said. Bodies were dumped in a mass grave by the prison gate, according to seven witnesses.
“They were stacked on top of each other like wood,” recounted one detainee who said he saw the aftermath of the slaughter.
The massacre at the camp near Mirab Abaya, which was covered up and has not been previously reported, was the deadliest killing of imprisoned soldiers since the war started, but not the only one. Guards have killed imprisoned soldiers in at least seven other locations, according to witnesses, who were among more than two dozen people interviewed for this story. None of these incidents have been previously reported either.
The dead were all Tigrayans, members of an ethnic group that dominated the Ethiopian government and military for nearly three decades. That changed after Abiy Ahmed was appointed prime minister of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most-populous nation, in 2018. Relations between Abiy and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) quickly nosedived. War broke out in 2020 after Tigrayan soldiers in the Ethiopian army and other Tigrayan forces seized military bases across the Tigray region.
Fearing further attacks, the government detained thousands of Tigrayan soldiers serving elsewhere in the country. They have been held in prison camps for nearly two years with no access to their families, phones or human rights monitors. Other Tigrayan soldiers were disarmed when war broke out but continued working in office jobs. Many of them were detained in November 2021 as Tigrayan forces advanced toward the capital, Addis Ababa.
Most of the killings, including the massacre at Mirab Abaya, happened then. Prisoners speculated the attacks might have been triggered by fear or revenge. None of the soldiers killed had been combatants fighting against the Ethiopians and thus prisoners of war.
In some prisons, senior Ethiopian military officers either ordered the killings or were present when they occurred, prisoners said. Elsewhere, imprisoned soldiers said they continue to be guarded — and beaten — by those who killed their comrades.
While there is little sign that the killings were centrally coordinated, there is evidence of widespread impunity. Only in Mirab Abaya did officers intervene to stop the killing.
These newly revealed details come as both sides in the conflict are hammering out details of a cease-fire, announced last month, that has been met with suspicion among the population over a range of issues, including whether there will be accountability for war crimes and other atrocities. How the government responds to the revelations of prison killings could suggest how it will treat other abuses allegedly committed by security forces.
The witness accounts also illuminate how the ethnic divisions tearing at Ethiopia’s society are also eroding its military, once widely respected as one of the region’s most professional and still often relied upon by Ethiopia’s neighbors to help keep the peace. Many of those killed in the prisons were among the thousands of Ethiopian troops who have served in international peacekeeping missions under the United Nations or African Union.
This article’s account of the bloodletting is based on 26 interviews with prisoners, medical personnel, officials, local residents and relatives, and on a review of satellite imagery, social media posts and medical records. Two lists of the dead were provided separately to The Washington Post, and both included the same 83 names. The identities of 16 victims were verified during interviews with detainees. All witnesses spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
When asked about these accounts, Col. Getnet Adane, a spokesman for the Ethiopian military, said he was too busy to comment. A government spokesman and the prime minister’s spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment. The state-appointed head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Daniel Bekele, said the panel was aware of the incident and had been investigating it.
Bullets and machetes
About 2,000 to 2,500 serving or retired Tigrayan soldiers, both men and women, were being held at the new prison camp about half an hour’s walk north of the town of Mirab Abaya, in a sparsely populated area dotted with banana plantations and near a large, crocodile-infested lake. Some buildings were so new they didn’t even have doors. But the camp had guard towers and demarcated boundaries. Guards told prisoners they would be shot if they crossed the line.
In mid-November 2021, a new prisoner — a just-married major who worked in the military’s defense construction division — was badly injured by guards when he went outside his cell at night to urinate, six other detainees said. He was beaten badly. Some said he was shot in the stomach. Guards later told prisoners that he died on the way to the hospital.
Over the following days, tensions continued to mount with reports — later confirmed by rights activists — that Tigrayan fighters in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region were killing and raping as they advanced toward the capital.
But on Nov. 21, the Mirab Abaya camp seemed calm, prisoners said. Many had been basking in the late afternoon sun when between 16 and 18 guards opened fire.
One prisoner said that he had been near two women when they were shot in the toilet.
“One woman died immediately, and the other was calling out, ‘My son, my son!’ Then they fired another bullet, and she died,” he said. “They [the guards] wanted to kill everyone there.”
One of the women was a major in the Ethiopian ground forces. She was around 50, had served as a peacekeeper in Sudan and had a son and a daughter, according to the witness. Other detainees said the second woman had worked in the Ministry of Defense.
A senior Tigrayan officer said he was inside his cell when he heard gunshots. He stuffed clothes and belongings into a bag. He decided to run if he could.
“I was thinking: ‘Will I ever see my kids? See them succeed in school and have the good things of life?’ ” he said. If he couldn’t run, he would fight, he said. He and his cellmates looked for a stick or anything else to use as a weapon.
A third prisoner said he began to pray.
Not all guards took part in the killing. A fourth prisoner described one guard taking up a position outside the cells and telling the attackers he would shoot them if they came for the detainees inside. That guard was crying, the prisoner said, and was inconsolable for days afterward. Another prisoner said some guards had tried to disarm the attackers.
Yet another prisoner said he was having coffee outside when shots rang out. Like many others, he ran into the surrounding bush. Ethiopian soldiers pursued his small group, he said. After running more than an hour, he said, they saw some locals. The prisoners blurted out that they’d been shot at and begged for help.
“They said … ‘We will show you what you deserve.’ And then they attacked us,” he said.
A crowd of about 150 to 200 people hacked and bludgeoned the escapees with machetes, sticks and stones, he recalled. Most were killed as they begged for mercy, he said, adding that he was hurt badly and left for dead. During the attack, he said, he saw other prisoners run into the lake to escape the mobs.
Other detainees confirmed that there had been machete attacks on those who escaped the prison. They said residents screamed abuse at the escapees and had incorrectly been told they were prisoners of war and to blame for the deaths of local men in the military. Two prisoners said the attacks continued into the next day.
The shooting at the prison stopped an hour or two after it began when Col. Girma Ayele of the Southern Command arrived. By then, prisoners said, the camp was littered with the bodies of the dead and the earth slick with blood. Girma could not be reached for comment.
The Dejen division
The massacre inside the prison was committed by about 18 guards, including a woman, said the six prisoners at Mirab Abaya who were interviewed. These guards and just over a third of the victims came from the same unit: the Dejen army division, formerly known as the 17th Division. It’s stationed in Addis Ababa.
Many Tigrayan soldiers speculated during interviews that the attack was motivated by revenge. Most of the guards who did the killing were from the Amhara region, which Tigrayan forces had invaded as they pushed toward the capital.
Girma told the prisoners these guards were not under his direct control and had been arrested, detainees said. The guards’ status could not be confirmed. The prisoners never saw them again.
A day after the killing, an excavator dug a mass grave just outside the main watchtower at the entrance gate, perhaps 200 meters from the road, according to the six prisoners.
Among those buried was Maj. Meles Belay Gidey, an engineer passionate about his teaching job at the Defense Engineering College. When Meles was serving as a U.N. peacekeeper in Abyei, a disputed area between Sudan and South Sudan, he video-called his two teenage sons and his stepdaughter every evening to talk to them about school, a relative said.
A local resident traveling past the prison camp the next day said the military warned passersby not to take pictures of the grave.
In Mirab Abaya town, officials used loudspeakers mounted on cars to warn the local population that escapees should be killed. The local resident said he saw three or four people attacked near a banana grove and about a dozen bodies bleeding in the streets, some scattered near the church of St. Gabriel. Ethiopian soldiers nearby did not intervene, he said.
The resident also said he saw a man in his mid-20s being beaten by a mob. Both of his hands had been cut off, and his legs were bleeding. The man begged to be killed as he was dragged up and down the street, the resident said. The attackers told the man they would kill him as slowly as possible. Eventually, he was dragged to the camp gate and shot. Another body was being dragged behind a motorbike, the resident said.
“I couldn’t do anything because I feared for my life,” he said.
Ethiopian soldiers take strategic city in Tigray amid civilian exodus
Wounded Tigrayans were taken to three hospitals, survivors said: Arba Minch General Hospital, Soddo Christian Hospital and another hospital in Soddo. Two medical professionals at Arba Minch General Hospital described an influx of patients around 9 p.m. on Nov. 21. One worker shared medical records showing that 19 patients were admitted with bullet wounds and that 15 were discharged the next day. Two died in the hospital and four were dead on arrival, the two medical workers said.
Most of the patients were kept for only a few hours despite life-threatening wounds, the two said. The patients were kept under police guard, both medical professionals said, and they described nurses and other medical staff taunting the wounded about their ethnicity.
Killings in other prisons
Mirab Abaya was not the only prison where imprisoned soldiers were killed. Current and former prisoners said in interviews that they had witnessed guards killing prisoners at Garbassa training center and the headquarters of the 13th Division in the eastern city of Jigjiga; in prisons in Wondotika and toggaa near the southern city of Hawassa; in the southern area of Didessa; and at the Bilate training center in the south. Many of the victims had served as peacekeepers in U.N. missions in Sudan, Abyei or South Sudan or as part of an African Union force in Somalia.
At Wondotika, a detainee said guards had killed five prisoners at facility that holds hundreds of soldiers who are mostly special forces or commandos. The victims included Gebremariam Estifanos, a veteran of a peacekeeping mission in Abyei and an African Union mission in Somalia, who was beaten to death Nov. 8, 2021, in the presence of a colonel and lieutenant colonel from the 103rd Division, a prisoner said. Gebremariam’s biggest wish had been to buy his family a house and his father an ox, the prisoner said. Two other detainees confirmed the account, saying guards often taunted the prisoners about the incident.
Both said that guards had often forced prisoners to dig their own graves, telling them they would soon be killed. The four other soldiers were killed later in November, shot so many times that their bodies were torn to pieces by bullets, the first prisoner said.
“We are beaten and threatened. We have served our country with honor and dignity,” that prisoner said. “I regret my service.”
In toggaa prison, guards beat and then shot two Tigrayan soldiers on Nov. 4, a detainee there said. A second prisoner held at toggaa, a former peacekeeper who served in Somalia, confirmed two killings. In Garbassa, two prisoners said six detainees had been killed and others injured so badly they had lost the use of limbs and eyes.
“I have seen the bodies being dragged from their rooms,” said a detainee there.
Three prisoners — one from the presidential guard and two from the Agazi commandos — were killed in July 2021 in Bilate training center after guards accused them of attempting to escape, said a witness previously held there. He described soldiers shooting at their bodies long after they were dead and throwing the corpses outside for the hyenas. And in a detention center near Didessa, near Nekemte town, at least five soldiers were killed and 30 others taken away and never seen again, a prisoner previously held there said.
He broke down as he listed the names he could remember. “I’m so sorry, they were my friends,” he said.
Two imprisoned soldiers, accused of having mobile phones, were also killed by guards at a detention center in eastern Ethiopia between Harar and Dire Dawa, a witness said.
The imprisoned Tigrayan soldiers interviewed by The Post say none of them have had access to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Until a few days ago, their families had no idea what had become of them. At the end of October, the families of some soldiers killed in Mirab Abaya were informed about their deaths. Several relatives were told their loved ones had died honorable deaths in the line of duty. No other details were given.
Some of the survivors of the Mirab Abaya massacre who are still held there said they fear another outbreak of violence.
“I have a prayer book,” one prisoner there said. “Every day I pray to Mary to see my family again.”
💭 Protesters pushed to the brink by China’s strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country’s all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.
Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China’s financial capital who called for Xi Jinping’s resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.
Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.
Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a “zero COVID” policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating wavs of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.
Then on Friday,10 people died in a fire in an apartment building, and many believe their rescue was delayed because of excessive lockdown measures. That sparked a weekend of protests, as the Chinese public’s ability to tolerate the harsh measures has apparently reached breaking point.
“For the LORD loves justice and will not forsake His saints. They are preserved forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off.”
Amnesty International on Thursday criticized the November 2 peace accord signed in South Africa by the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) over war crimes in Tigray and elsewhere.
The human rights organization said that the agreement “fails to offer a clear roadmap on how to ensure accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and overlooks rampant impunity in the country, which could lead to violations being repeated.”
It called on the African Union to “put pressure” on the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali to fully cooperate with local and international human rights experts.
“The African Union must urgently pressure the Ethiopian government to fully cooperate with both regional and international investigative mechanisms on human rights to ensure justice for victims and survivors of violations — especially sexual violence,” said Flavia Mwangovya, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Great Lakes Region.
“The Ethiopian authorities must urgently allow unfettered access to the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) and the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights to enable investigations to take place, and ultimately to ensure those responsible for atrocities in Ethiopia’s two-year conflict face justice,” added Mwangovya.
Amnesty International’s assessment of the peace deal came on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25, and the beginning of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. It reiterated its call to mediators in the ongoing peace process on Ethiopia to prioritize justice for survivors, including survivors of sexual violence in the two-year conflict.
Amnesty International noted that all parties to the armed conflict in Ethiopia, which pits forces aligned with Ethiopia’s federal government, including the Eritrean army, against those affiliated with Tigray’s regional government led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), “have committed serious human rights violations and abuses, including extrajudicial executions, summary killings and sexual violence against women and girls. Abuses documented by Amnesty International in the conflict include war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
On November 2, 2022, Amnesty International launched a campaign which highlights the atrocities committed by all sides to the conflict, and called on the international community to stand in solidarity with survivors and victims of sexual violence during the conflict. And on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Amnesty International said that it will hold an exhibition in Nairobi at the Baraza Media Lab, in which a documentary film will highlight the demands for justice by survivors of sexual violence during the conflict in Ethiopia.
☆ 28th of November 2022: UN Internet Forum, Addis Ababa
😈A Horribly Grotesque Mockery – a Force of Pure Evil!
❖❖❖ [1 John 5:19] ❖❖❖
“We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”
Exactly a week from today, on the 28th of November Christians of Tigray, Ethiopia will commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the gruesome Axum Massacre.
On this very day, the genocidal fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia is REWARDED, by the genocide-enabler United Nation Organization, with hosting the ‘UN Internet Forum’ amid the government-imposed blackout in the Tigray region that has left six million people without phone or internet access for nearly two years.
The November 28 forum is expected to draw over 2,500 delegates to Addis Ababa, one of the largest international gathering in Ethiopia’s capital in years. With this gathering the UN intends to show a profound disrespect to the memories of the Axum massacre victims, a horribly grotesque mockery.
👉 It’s more or less like awarding the hosting rights of the FIFA World Cup 2022 to gross human-rights violator Qatar.
💭 Ex-Fifa-Boss Blatter: Qatar World Cup ‘Is a Mistake,’ | Qatar World Cup of Shame, Slavery & Genocide
I won’t be surprised if the Biden administration invites monster-genocider Abiy Ahmed Ali to The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington D.C next month.
Monster genocider Abiy Ahmed Ali – imitating his Turkish dictator-mentor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (($615m presidential palace) — plans to spend 50 billion Ethiopian Birr ($1 billion) to build his new official residence. While the fascist Oromo regime has decided to spend a much lesser amount, 20 billion birr, ($38o million) for “war rehabilitation” which does not include Tigray based upon a $300 million grant from the World Bank.
Millions in Tigray are on the brink of famine, in the rest of Ethiopia the cost of food, fuel, medicines, clothing, and other consumer goods has gone up 50% the past year while the birr has is now at an all time low 0.019 to the dollar. The wisdom of undertaking the building of such a monstrosity of a palace for the Prime Minister is hard to justify.
💭 Six million People Silenced: A Two-Year Internet and Phone Outage in Ethiopia by the war-criminal groups of TPLF + ELF + PP . The total media blackout, medieval-like siege and humanitarian blockade aims to buy enough time to hide their genocidal acts, and other egregious crimes they all have committed on the people of Tigray.
I’ve got a feeling that those traitor communists (TPLF + ELF + OLF/ PP = CIA agents) are waging a genocidal Anti-Christian Jihad like the famous Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) which was a historical tragedy launched by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
We notice similar phenomenon in Tigray as in the case of China.
It is estimated that Mao Zedong massacred “at least 3 million people ‘unwanted’ Chinese people. Post-Mao leaders acknowledged that 100 million people, one-ninth of the entire population, suffered in one way or another”
The widespread phenomenon of mass killings in the Cultural Revolution consisted of five types:
☆ 1) mass terror or mass dictatorship encouraged by the government – victims were humiliated and then killed by mobs or forced to commit suicide on streets or other public places;
☆ 2) direct killing of unarmed civilians by armed forces;
☆ 3) pogroms against traditional “class enemies” by government-led perpetrators such as local security officers, militias and mass;
☆ 4) killings as part of political witch-hunts (a huge number of suspects of alleged conspiratorial groups were tortured to death during investigations); and
☆ 5) summary execution of captives, that is, disarmed prisoners from factional armed conflicts. The most frequent forms of massacres were the first four types, which were all state-sponsored killings. The degree of brutality in the mass killings of the Cultural Revolution was very high. Usually, the victims perished only after first being humiliated, struggled and then imprisoned for a long period of time.
💭 The entire turbulent decade during which the waves of mass killings occurred is divided into four time periods:
I. “The Red Terror” (August — December 1966)
II. “All-round Civil War” in China (January – December 1967)
III. Killing for and by the New Organs of Power (1968-1971)
When a gentle word of persuasion has no effect, when people are so steeped in evil that they do not yield to any admonishment and continue doing evil, a Christian cannot and should not take refuge in this teaching of the forgiveness of all, sit indifferently with his arms crossed, and apathetically watch as evil abuses good, as it increases and destroys people, his close ones.
To indifferently watch the ruin of a close one by one who has lost his senses and become a bearer of evil is nothing other than the breaking of the commandment of love for one’s neighbor. Every type of evil should be immediately thwarted with the most decisive measures, even including the sacrifice of oneself in an unequal struggle.
The following words express particularly this idea: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. These are words which our Church has long applies to those Christ-loving soldiers who heroically died for the salvation of their neighbors.
This month marks two years since the civil war broke out in Ethiopia, with troops from the Ethiopian government and surrounding countries deployed to attack the northern Tigray region. Since then, a UN led investigation has found evidence of ethnic cleansing, massacres and sexual violence. Famine-like conditions are widespread.
All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa spoke with Samrawit Silva, an activist who was born in Tigray and lives in Concord, who has been speaking out about the conditions in her home country. Below is a transcript of their conversation.
Julia Furukawa: Samrawit, you’re from Tigray and you still have family there. Can you give us an idea of what the conditions are in the region right now?
Samrawit Silva: I can try. Obviously, or for those who don’t know, Tigray has been in a complete blackout, so there’s a lot of unknowns, but things that are for certain: I have my mother, I have my siblings there that I’m not able to talk to. So, Tigray is currently facing one of the world’s longest Internet shutdown. Hunger is being used as a weapon of war. Sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war. Medicine is not able to get to the people and so already there’s 600,000 Tigrayan civilians that have been killed, including my family members. It’s been called the world’s deadliest war, basically “Hell on Earth,” as the director of the [World Health Organization] called it.
Julia Furukawa: As someone who exists – and I’m talking about myself right now – in a world [where] news is constantly evolving and it’s constantly a part of my life, I feel like I hear stories every day about the war in Ukraine. I feel like I have not heard the same level of coverage of the war in Tigray. Do you think that this blackout, this Internet shutdown, where people are not able to communicate with the outside world, has something to do with it? Are there other factors?
Samrawit Silva: That definitely has a huge role to play because the Ethiopian government knows that if [Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed] can keep Tigray in the dark, then all the horrific things that are happening, if it were to come out, I think the world would be like, they would have nightmares to come. And so that’s a part of it, is the fact that independent journalists are not allowed in. But also there’s that factor that the people that it’s happening to are Black. And just to be very blunt about it, that plays a really huge role. And I know people can say maybe it’s proximity, it’s because it’s happening in Africa, but there are people that live far away from Ukraine that still know about it, that still care about it, that have compassion for people that look like them. And we have heard reporters using very problematic words, but being honest and saying, these are blue-eyed, blonde-haired children. These are people that you could imagine living next to. These are civilized people. So everything that’s happening in Tigray, if it was happening in a European country and it was happening to white people, I wholeheartedly believe that the world would have a stronger reaction. And we’ve seen this because what’s happening in Ukraine, it’s so devastating. I speak out about it. I stand with the people. But what’s happening in Tigray, 600,000 people, civilians killed, and the majority of the world either doesn’t know it or they don’t care or they don’t feel like it’s their responsibility. And it comes down to the skin color. For me and for many others, we feel like the world is continuously showing us Black lives don’t matter.
Julia Furukawa: You have helped organize some demonstrations to raise awareness about what’s been going on in Tigray. Can you tell me about those?
Samrawit Silva: Like throughout all of the U.S., [members of the] Tigrayan diaspora have been getting together and putting together demonstrations for two years straight. In New Hampshire we had one…Boston, Vermont, California. Every single state in the U.S. has had demonstrations, multiple demonstrations, and they look different. In the beginning, we were doing a lot of marching and that was starting to spread awareness. But we needed more people that maybe might not be on the streets to hear us. So people would do interviews, either within U.S. media outlets or outside of the U.S. media outlets as well. More recently, we’ve upped our demonstrations because we peacefully marched on the streets for two years, and people still are not hearing us, they’re not feeling us. And so we really are trying to do more civil disobedience. So we’ve shut down multiple highways throughout the U.S. now, and that’s gotten a lot more coverage. And obviously it’s not convenient for people, but like we say, traffic can wait, Tigray can’t wait. People are being starved to death. They’re dying from lack of medicine. And we want to tell people, hey, this is your responsibility, too. This genocide that’s happening, you should care.
Julia Furukawa: You mentioned that you’ve organized some demonstrations in New Hampshire. What can we do?
Samrawit Silva: At this very moment, it’s still raising awareness. But more than that, once you are spreading that there’s a genocide happening, we need to reach our local officials. So we have two Ethiopia peace bills that are in Congress that we need everyday citizens to care, to push these politicians to take action so that we’ll get unfettered humanitarian access as well as there are opportunities to donate. So there are organizations that are working on getting medical and humanitarian aid to the people. Also, seeing what your skills are. If you are a school teacher, you could be advocating for the schools that were bombed, just relating it to yourself and really using everything in you to try and help the people. If you’re a therapist, you know, there’s a lot of mental health within the diaspora, within your own community. Like me, myself, I’ve struggled with depression, not being able to talk to my mother or my losing family members left and right. And it’s not just me. There’s so many, even just in the diaspora that are dealing with that. And then on top of that, once Tigray is opened, being able to offer your services to the people. I just want to remind people that these are not just numbers. Like we say, over half a million Tigrayans have been killed, but that’s our family members. And so I just want people to be able to attach the numbers that they’re reading with the faces and the stories and the heartbreaks that come with all of these people that are being killed for absolutely no reason other than their ethnicity.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 