Dear Mrs, High Commissioner
For the past three decades, we Ethiopians and Swiss citizens of Ethiopian origin were protesting in front of your office to condemn the human right abuses perpetrated by the now defunct TPLF regime and to demand justice for victims of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) brutal regime and the victims of countless ethnic conflicts that were deliberately fanned by the TPLF security apparatus with a purpose of dividing and ruling.
Your office has all our protest letters that we addressed to your predecessors enumerating genocides, massacres, extra judicial executions, random assassinations, forced disappearances, tortures etc., perpetrated by the TPLF brutal regime.
Thanks to the relentless fight and selfless sacrifice that our people paid, the brutal ethnic tyranny of TPLF is totally defeated and a new dawn is born through which we are hoping to see an elected government through a free and fair election in few months’ time.
With the hope of having sustainable peace and development and with well-rooted age-old wisdom, our people, instead of retribution and revenge, granted TPLF a total amnesty for their three decades of brutality.
Unfortunately, while Ethiopians were hoping that TPLF will use the amnesty and work for peace and development, they retreated to Tigray where they managed to subdue genuine popular grievances for four decades through harsh and militaristic control. They organized a huge military force that includes thousands of child soldiers that they trained and shamelessly paraded on each occasion to bully the federal government to accept their terms. From their hideout in Tigray, they organized an illegal sham election and shamelessly proclaimed that they won all seats. They declared that they will no longer recognize the federal government and called for other opposition groups to do the same. They paraded tens of thousands of heavily armed troops and declared that they are ready for war.
Worried with this dangerous development, all the top religious leaders from all denominations together with traditional leaders and national figures like athlete Haile Gebreselassie headed for Tigray to beg the TPLF leadership to deescalate the venomous rhetoric and open a door for dialogue but TPLF chased them out on the same day and they returned heartbroken.
Nationwide women representatives took their turn and sent their delegation to Tigray and a member of the delegation Mrs. Maria Munir head of the non-governmental organization “Ethiopians Against Violence on Women” went on her knees begging the leader of TPLF Debretsion Gebremichael to work for peace and to avoid their call for armed confrontation but TPLF scorned at them and sent them back (The video showing Mrs. Maria Munir on her knees begging Debretsion is attached at the below link) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFJu_Qi3Q8c Defying all these efforts to deal with the political crisis peacefully, TPLF organized a cruel middle of the night surprise military attack on the northern command of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) stationed all over Tigray including those soldiers stationed at the Ethio-Eritrea border to protect the people of Tigray from any attack by Eritrean soldiers across the border.
While the unsuspecting non Tigrayan members of the ENDF were in deep sleep, they were slaughtered by their Tigrayan comrades who were ordered to do so by TPLF leadership. Those who were captured alive were robbed of their clothes and chased naked and forced to cross the border into Eritrea. Those who resisted the TPLF onslaught and caught in the fight were summarily executed.
TPLF rolled their tanks on the bodies of those ENDF soldiers who were wounded in the fight but still alive. Survivors who were prisoners of war (POW) later freed by the ENDF has also witnessed that they were ordered to trek all day through difficult terrain and when darkness falls, they were ordered to sleep on a highway and while the exhausted and unsuspecting POW were in deep sleep TPLF soldiers drove heavy trucks over them killing many and wounding many more.
It is such inhuman and cruel acts of betrayal and outrageous attack by TPLF on the ENDF that triggered the armed conflict in Tigray that resulted into a humanitarian crisis. All the above harrowing stories of TPLF arrogance, warmongering, betrayal, and cruelty are all over the internet but the western media is not interested in it and Ethiopians are asking WHY?
On November 9-10, in an apparent act of genocide, the TPLF youth wing from Samri under TPLF direct command dragged innocent non-Tigrayan civilian residents of Mai-Kadra near Sudan out of their home and cold bloodedly butchered more than 800 of them in a single night using axe, machetes, bayonets etcetera. bodies of butchered people are still being discovered in farms and fields near and around Mai-Kadra. When the Ethiopian defense force gets close by, the Mai-Kadra butchers crossed the border into Sudan and pretended as refugees mingling with the innocent civilian refugees. It is these same butchers who are now feeding the international community with lies and innuendos posturing as innocent refugees and appearing in interviews.
When TPLF realized that their military bravado to come back to power is foiled and the massacre in Mai-Kadra start getting the attention of the international community they immediately activated their foreign collaborators and, in a bid to cover up the Mai–Kadra genocide they started fabricating non existing genocide and massacres and waged a propaganda campaign portraying themselves as victims of genocide while they are the perpetrators of the worst act of genocide in our country’s history.
The TPLF members who were financed to be placed into key positions in international organizations are spearheading the disinformation and misinformation campaign. Amnesty International researcher in East Africa Mr. Fisseha Tekle is one of the TPLF agents placed in key international position and from his Amnesty International office, he has thus reported: “Eritrean troops fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray state systematically killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in the northern city of Axum on 28-29 November 2020, opening fire in the streets and conducting house-to-house raids in a massacre that may amount to a crime against humanity” While on this same date Ethiopians were watching a TV transmission from Axum with people of Axum celebrating the annual Axum Tsion celebration in an orderly manner. People are seen walking freely in the city and some residents were having interviews on the national television. Here is a video clip attesting the same and showing people celebrating the annual Axum Tsion celebration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3prk5hcqFbQ
Dr. Tedros Adhanom who was a member of the Executive Committee of the brutal TPLF, who served the regime as health and foreign minister and currently serving as director of the WHO since 2017 is the other TPLF member who is using his position to lobby for a comeback of his political party TPLF that is dislodged from power and defeated in the war it provoked.
As an executive committee member of the TPLF regime, he should have been charged and brought to justice for the countless human right abuses, murders and tortures committed by his party over the three decades that they were in power. 3 Unfortunately, he is the Director-General of the WHO and he is using the WHO office as a TPLF diplomatic hub leading his party members in the WHO and other international organizations on their propaganda war to cover up their crime and to misinform and disinform the international community.
When Tedros Adhanom was nominated for his current post in the WHO, Ethiopians all over the world protested against his nomination knowing very well that he will use his position in favor of TPLF and to stifle our voice. That is what exactly is happening now. Had there been a grain of truth to what the TPLF agents are claiming as massacre and genocide and had we had the slightest doubt that our innocent unarmed civilian people in Tigray were deliberately targeted by the government forces or foreign soldiers we wouldn’t wait until the likes of Tedros or foreign institutions tell us the story.
We would have come to your office as we have been doing for the last three decades. Ethiopians all over the world are outraged by the fact that the misinformation campaign that is being spearheaded by TPLF agents placed in respected international institutions and paid “journalists” have led the international community to unfairly target our country and it has reached the level of undermining our sovereignty that we enviously defended for the last three thousand years.
Tens of thousands of Ethiopians from all religious and political beliefs including supporters of different political opposition that are challenging the government on the forthcoming election are protesting in every major city to defend our country’s sovereignty. Our rally on the 15th of March 2021 in front of the Geneva UN headquarter is part of this international outrage of Ethiopians and is organized neither to defend the government nor to coverup any crime but to defend our country from being unfairly targeted by trumped-up charges fabricated by the agents of TPLF and paid “journalists” and lobbyists. Although we are encouraged by the unusual international interest on Ethiopia, we are deeply disappointed that many reports including those originating from your office portray allegations as corroborated facts. As reported by Aljazeera on 4th of March 2021 your office had “managed to corroborate information about some of the incidents that occurred in November last year, indicating indiscriminate shelling in Mekelle, Humera and Adigrat towns in Tigray region”.
While your office claims a “corroborated information” on indiscriminate shelling on Mekelle, the Ethiopian people know for sure that Mekelle fell into the hands of the ENDF without any fight let alone an indiscriminate shelling. While the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres confirmed on December 9 “that there is no proof of Eritrean troops inside Ethiopia” during a joint press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York, Aljazeera reported that “your office has corroborated grave violations that could amount to “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, including by Eritrean troops”. It is this kind of deliberate misinformation that we are opposing and protesting today. Based on the false information that they are fed; the USA and EU are also posturing a hostile stance attacking Ethiopia’s sovereignty and forging alliance with the remnants of the terrorist TPLF.
Ethiopia has never in her history succumbed to any foreign intimidation and bullying and we are here to confirm to you and to the international community that we are children of our forefathers and will fight to the end any attempt to undermine Ethiopia’s sovereignty. We are here to defend Ethiopia’s sovereign right to handle its internal affairs using the rule of the land and enforce law and order without any foreign interference and to ask the UN, the USA and the EU to stand with the 110 million Ethiopians instead laboring to resuscitate the TPLF from its grave. 4 The Ethiopian government has confirmed its commitment to investigate all allegations jointly and in cooperation with
In his recent speech to the African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said “We express our will to openly engage the African Commission on Human and Peoples Right in under taking investigations jointly with the Ethiopian human right commission” If your office is interested in finding the truth or has any doubt on the nonexistence of neither massacre nor genocide in Tigray, you can ask for the same opportunity to investigating the situation jointly with the Ethiopian Human Right Commission and other local institutions without infringing Ethiopia’s sovereignty. Having witnessed the enormous pressure on the Ethiopian government to get unfettered access to deliver aid to the beleaguered people of Tigray, we were expecting aid to pour into Tigray. But weeks after the unfettered access was granted, the foreign aid is nowhere to be seen. The Ethiopian government is still covering more than 70 percent of the food aid in Tigray.
Now we are pondering on the purpose of the mountain of pressure to get unfettered access if it were not to bring in the much-needed food and medical supply? While the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres confirmed on December 9 “that there is no proof of Eritrean troops inside Ethiopia” your office, the USA and the EU are demanding the withdrawal of Eritrean forces from Ethiopia but surprisingly you are all muted to ask Sudan to withdraw its forces that officially declared to have annexed lands that were under Ethiopian control since ever and Ethiopians are asking what possibly could be behind this double standard and uncalled for hostility. Being a fragile nation thorned by multiple inter – ethnic conflicts and violence born out of the ethnic politics that the TPLF regime legalized and institutionalized, Ethiopia cannot afford unfair international pressure based on fabricated lies and innuendos.
What Ethiopia needs from the international community is a respect to its sovereignty, a support to investigate and retrieve the billions of dollars that the TPLF mafia stashed in foreign accounts, a support for the forthcoming election and a genuine cooperation based on mutual respect.
Your excellency, as representatives of Ethiopians living in Switzerland and Swiss citizens of Ethiopian origin, we call upon your office to: bring its institutional capacity and experience to support Ethiopian authorities in thoroughly investigating the alleged crimes, if and when they request so; strengthen cooperation with the government as a member state engaged in exemplary institutional transformations to improve its human rights records and acknowledge important reforms being implemented in that regard; work closely with the independent Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. Your excellency, we thank you for your keen interest in Ethiopia and we would highly appreciate if your office could kindly consider our concerns and open its doors to further discuss with us to substantiate the claims and counter claims.
Sincerely, Wuhib Yeshitila, in the name of the organizers of the demonstration of Ethiopians living in Switzerland and Swiss citizens of Ethiopian origin. international organizations.
The Ethiopian Herald March 17/2021
