Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 19, 2022
💭World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday there was a “very narrow window now to prevent genocide” in his home region of Tigray in northern Ethiopia.
Tedros, who previously served as Ethiopia’s health minister and foreign affairs minister, has been sharply critical of Ethiopian authorities throughout the two-year war.
The government has, in turn, accused him of trying to procure arms and diplomatic backing for rebel forces – charges he has denied.
In his sharpest comments on the war yet, Tedros told reporters in Geneva that food and healthcare were being used as weapons of war in Tigray, which is largely cut off from the outside world.
“There’s no other situation globally in which 6 million people have been kept under siege for almost two years,” Tedros said. “There is a very narrow window now to prevent genocide.”
Ethiopian government spokesperson Legesse Tulu, Redwan Hussein, the national security advisor to the prime minister, and the prime minister’s spokesperson Billene Seyoum did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
👹 Satan the Devil is the source of persecution of those bearing and living the truth of God (verses 41, 44). At times he undoubtedly works through people whom he has duped and inflamed to unrelenting anger toward God’s people so that the persecution appears to be entirely of men. But the Bible reveals the reality of Satan as the source.
The church bears the brunt of Satan’s persecution because, as the body of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:22-23), it is the group of people in whom Christ is being formed (Galatians 4:19). Jesus warns us that this will occur:
If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me. (John 15:18-21)
💭 Fighting in Ethiopia’s civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, while millions more face hunger and starvation. For almost two years, the Tigray region has been largely isolated and under a state of siege. Millions of Tigrayans are in need of food and lack of supplies have pushed health systems to the brink of collapse. “There is nowhere on earth”, says WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “where the health of millions of people is more under threat than in Tigray”.
The genocidal fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia to this day continues deceiving the world by repeatedly denying blocking humanitarian aid to the region, instead blaming others constantly. The world knows about this deception and the tragedy — but it is allowing evil to triumph, because the perpetrators are Islamo-Protestants and the victims ancient Orthodox Christians.
💭 This investigation discovers, the human impact of the siege has been devastating.
👉 Selected Comments from the BBC Channel:
❖ My heart breaks for the children💔 These good people don’t deserve this.
❖ It’s so heart shattering to see such crimes against humanity committed by Ethiopia. The corrupt African Union, seated in Ethiopia, in many ways has exacerbated the problem by covering up for the Ethiopian govt and acting against any meaningful action from the international community.
❖ Every human government imaginable has failed humanity. Sad.
❖ It is horrific, heartbreaking. All is happening under the watch of the so-called IC
❖ I am a mother and the sounds the baby is making made me shatter..God give them food and plenty of water .restore peace on their lands. Amen
❖ This is so sad am crying watching this documentary. Oh Africa 😭
❖ I Hope the cruel regimes of Eritrea and Ethiopia will be in ICC for this drought..shame the international community for keeping quite while 100 billions of donations are flowing to the people of Ukraine. May The Almighty God be with the people of Tigray.
❖ The world has given a noble peace prize to evil Abiy Ahmed Ali who created this hell
💭 Seven weeks ago a truce was called but there are still no way nowhere near enough supplies getting into the region only one convoy of 17 trunks of humanitarian assistance crossed into Tigray last week carrying food and water and sanitation supplies. Current supplies of food are too little to sustain life.
The health system has collapsed, people are starving to death and it is intentional. Things are so bad that journalists can not even access the region, removing the world’s eyes to what’s happening.
I Ask The Ethiopian And Eritrean Governments To End The Siege Now get supplies into the region on a regular and sustainable basis and work for peace.
👉 Irish politician and member of the European Parliament — Michael Wallace:
The terrible Humanitarian Crisis in Tigray continues. The effective embargo on aid reaching the millions of Tigrayans desperately in need, by the Ethiopian government, is absolutely criminal at the moment. And The EU is apparently afraid to say a bad word to PM Abiy Ahmed Ali. Why hasn’t the EU done more to pressure Abiy Ahmed Ali into ending the persecution of the people of Tigray..? Are they afraid it might impact on future Trade arrangements with Ethiopia? Do lives in Africa matter less?
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 8, 2022
💭 Dr. Tedros:
“The Siege of Tigray is The Longest & Worst Siege in Modern History.“
“I Hope the World will give to Tigray a Fraction of Attention it Gave to Ukraine“
👉 Unless they’re working together with the two cruel monsters, Abiy Ahmed Ali and Isaias Afewereki, the Tigray leaders have two options in the next four weeks:
Surrender and leave Tigray
March into Asmara or Addis Ababa to remove the evil monsters, Isaias Afewerki and Abiy Ahmed Ali
The disgraced Prime Minister of Canada Justin ‘Castro’ Trudeau says he’s invoking the Emergencies Act (Canadian Martial Law) for the first time in Canada’s history to give the federal government temporary powers to handle ongoing blockades and protests against pandemic restrictions.
Ottawa Mayor Declares State of Emergency Amid Antigovernment Protests
A 10-day demonstration by truckers and other protesters has ensnarled Canada’s capital and led officials to warn that things could turn violent.
One day after the police chief in Canada’s capital said his city was under “siege” by thousands of truckers and other protesters angry over government policies, the mayor on Sunday declared a state of emergency and called for outside help.
“We’re in the midst of a serious emergency, the most serious emergency our city has ever faced,” the mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, said in a television interview after declaring the emergency. “And we need to get moving much more quickly and much more proactively to bring order back to the streets.”
“Someone is going to get killed or seriously injured because of the irresponsible behavior of some of these people,” the mayor warned.
Across Canada this weekend, thousands of protesters took to the streets for the second week in a row, snarling traffic and disrupting business and residential neighborhoods. The truckers, whose cross-country convoy sparked the protest, paralyzed downtown Ottawa and the area around Parliament, parking their vehicles in intersections and across busy thoroughfares.
Data Shows Siege and Destruction of Health System Are Causing Preventable Deaths In Tigray
Children are dying of malnutrition at increasing rates in Tigray due to a man-made humanitarian catastrophe, writes the head of Tigray’s health bureau. Since the war on Tigray began in November 2020, the Ethiopian military, its Amhara allies, and Eritrean troops have committed countless atrocities.
Most significantly, the war has resulted in the near-total collapse of the region’s health care system. Before the conflict, the region’s health system was based on a sturdy foundation with enhanced community engagement, in addition to an Early Warning, Alert, and Response System.
With the looting and destruction of facilities across Tigray, the family health system has collapsed. A damage assessment study conducted by Mekelle University revealed that 78 percent of health posts, 72 percent of health centers, and 80 percent of hospitals have been destroyed.
On account of the persistent denial of critical medical supplies, health facilities—including the regional flagship hospital, Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Referral Hospital—have run out of medication for chronic illnesses and other basic life-saving medicines.
Patients at Ayder have succumbed to otherwise non-life-threatening wounds because the hospital has run out of gauze. Post-surgery patients have died of septic shock due to the shortage of antibiotics.
The destruction has wiped out 20 years of progress, returning Tigray’s health system to a time when there were no decentralized essential health services.
“We have to deal with anyone who is still shooting,” said Getachew Reda, spokesperson for the Tigrayan forces, early this month. “If it takes marching to Addis to silence the guns, we will.” In fact, Tigray’s army has already covered about a third of the distance to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, since it took back its own provincial capital, Mekelle, in late June.
The fighting has been bloody, for the Ethiopian army is much larger, but the Tigrayan army is more professional and determined. Not only has it liberated all of Tigray except the far west, but it has also seized around one-third of neighbouring Amhara, the province which is the historic core of the Ethiopian empire.
Seven million Tigrayans defeating the army of a country of 110 million people may seem odd, but Ethiopia is a patchwork quilt of different ethnic groups, languages and religions that was held together in the past by a centralised monarchy or dictatorship backed by ruthless military force. Until quite recently, it was Tigray that provided that force.
The Tigrayans earned that job by being the most effective guerrilla force in the long struggle to overthrow the former Communist regime, the Derg. They parlayed that role into an ethnic dictatorship that lasted from 1991 until just a few years ago. But the other ethnic groups then united to instal a new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who started to dismantle that corrupt autocracy.
He did it, but the Tigrayan military elite withdrew to their own homeland and sulked. It was a well-armed sulk, for almost half the Ethiopian army was based in Tigray and it consisted largely of ethnic Tigrayans. When it became clear that Abiy’s project to destroy the old ethnic pecking order was not negotiable, they rebelled.
This was all pretty inevitable, but then the Ethiopian prime minister decided to invade Tigray and end the problem for good. That was bound to end badly for Ethiopia, because he was making a direct attack on what is practically an African Sparta.
The Tigrayan army pulled out of the province’s cities for a while and by last November Abiy declared the war over. But the Tigrayan leaders were just mobilising their forces, and in June they counter-attacked. The Ethiopian forces broke and ran and most of Tigray was liberated without a fight.
If it had stopped there, some sort of Ethiopian state would have survived, albeit with a semi-detached Tigray, but Abiy then made the serious mistake of resorting to a blockade to starve the Tigrayans out. By now many people in landlocked Tigray are close to famine, but their leaders have countered with an invasion of Amhara province.
They are now within striking distance of the roads that carry 95% of the Ethiopia’s import and export traffic between Addis Ababa and the port of Djibouti. Their success has also emboldened the Oromo Liberation Army, a rebel army seeking autonomy or even independence for Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, to make an alliance with the Tigrayans.
Suddenly, Ethiopia starts to look a lot like former Yugoslavia just before the civil wars of the 1990s split it into six different countries. Yet Abiy is rolling the dice once again, hoping to build a rapidly expanded army that will reconquer Tigray and occupied Amhara. That is unlikely to happen.
Abiy has a few new advantages, like the same sort of armed drones from Turkey that the Azerbaijanis used last year to tear the Armenian army apart in the recent war in the Caucasus. But the Ethiopian air force is in poor condition, as most of its experienced commanders and pilots were Tigrayan.
As for the expanded Ethiopian army, trained and seasoned troops like the Tigrayans will usually defeat almost any number of inexperienced and quickly trained volunteers. So if Abiy doesn’t win, what will happen instead?
If Abiy makes a quick deal with the Tigrayans that ends the blockade and recognises their independence and borders, he may have enough troops and credibility left to suppress the Oromos and other ethnic insurgents who will soon come out into the open. If not, Ethiopia probably splinters, and it’s Yugoslavia all over again.
And what would the Tigrayans do next? Some of them are confident enough to dream of invading Eritrea and taking down President Isaias Afwerki, who sent troops to help Abiy invade Tigray. Afwerki has ruled the country of 5,3 million with an iron hand for three decades, and he is so unpopular that one in 10 Eritreans has fled abroad.
Some of the Tigrayan elite may even be speculating about uniting the two countries. After all, half the Eritrean population speaks the same Tigrinya language and joining the two together would give Tigray access to the sea, which sometimes comes in handy.
“The severity and scale of the sexual crimes committed are particularly shocking, amounting to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.”
“All of these forces from the very beginning, everywhere, and for a long period of time felt it was perfectly OK with them to perpetrate these crimes because they clearly felt they could do so with impunity, …. it is intended to humiliate both the women and their Tigrayan ethnic group but described the violence as some of the worst she had ever seen.”
Hundreds of women and girls have been gang-raped, subjected to genital mutilation and weeks of sexual slavery by Ethiopian soldiers, Amnesty International has revealed.
Drawing from interviews with 63 survivors, the report sheds new light on a scourge already being investigated by Ethiopian law enforcement officials, with at least three soldiers convicted and 25 others charged.
Some survivors said they had been gang-raped while held captive for weeks on end. Others described being raped in front of their family members.
And some reported having objects including nails and gravel inserted into their vaginas, ‘causing lasting and possibly irreparable damage’, Amnesty said.
‘It’s clear that rape and sexual violence have been used as a weapon of war to inflict lasting physical and psychological damage on women and girls in Tigray,’ said Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard.
‘Hundreds have been subjected to brutal treatment aimed at degrading and dehumanizing them.
‘The severity and scale of the sexual crimes committed are particularly shocking, amounting to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.’
The BBC has heard new reports of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia amid growing concern that the conflict is entering a dangerous new stage. Tigrayan forces are continuing to extend their control over the region, prompting the Ethiopian government to warn it may end its unilateral ceasefire and to mobilise forces from nearby Amhara and other parts of the country. The likely next flashpoint is in western Tigray, currently controlled by Amhara forces. BBC Africa correspondent Andrew Harding has this report from the border with neighbouring Sudan.
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