Part II
There is a saying that the truth will come out any way, even if it may delay. Equivalently, “Truth will triumph in the end.” The inevitability of finding the truth or presenting the truth is undisputed. The recent declarations made by the US Foreign Office and the ones made by organizations such as Amnesty International etc. are clearly fallouts of the false propaganda that has been systematically disseminated using several common and less common channels, including powerful bloggers and lobbyists paid by the resources pillaged from the Ethiopian people during the three decades when the TPLF and company ruled the country singlehandedly.
The machinery they developed along the decades are now giving them the fruits they need when they are now deposed of their status and are labeled a ‘terrorist organization’ by the Ethiopian government, paradoxically just as they used to do it against those forces who tried to question their authority or depose them. Many observers are heard stating ‘Today, we observe that it is their turn to suffer what they used to inflict so many times on others for years!
In short, if there is anything that we need to learn from what has been happening during the past year or so is how key communication strategy is and how we need to catch up diligently. Nationals wherever they might be and others who are friends of Ethiopia need to understand that it is important to present to the world immediately your side of the story, corroborating it with evidence such as videos and photos, sound bites etc. Many people said Ethiopia may have won the battle on the ground but it has yet to win the battle in the media and communications strategy.
Almost systematically an attack was unleashed against the Ethiopian government and people as if they created this state of affairs and that the TPLF and its allies were in the right direction. Many people have regretted that we have made a serious mistake not using all our might to counter this attack on the air waves as much as we have tried to counter it militarily, on the ground.
Eventually, we have to admit that decisions at the highest levels of governments even among our allies are decided by the pressure these forces manage to create and build up. There is no doubt about the importance of ‘the pressure the media’ and even the social media can create in power circles. We saw that certain media deliberately accused Ethiopia of atrocities while it was actually the exact contrary!
We saw that these quite reputed media outlets never bothered to consult the Ethiopian government over whether the allegations and the footages used to advance their claims were authentic or not. There is a lot of literature on how TPLF is generally known to have a track record of ‘inventing stories’ and presenting them not only to its followers but also to the outside world to suit its political purposes.
Many observers have presented the TPLF track record of committing atrocities on its own people if they see it suitable to advance their cynic political gains. They say it has done that again and again even during the armed struggle against the Derg military government in the 1980s and even later on. It is a master of inventing or staging horrible stories and attributing them to others! This is what it did this time as well with the Ethiopian government.
The observers say that this party would report ‘atrocities were committed against its people while they were innocent victims’! This time around we have heard vehement denials of how the conflict first began and how it reached this stage. And yet there are records of their declarations aired to the world and Ethiopia just has to rebroadcast them for the world to judge. Denying that they began the conflict and that it was the federal government of Ethiopia who tried ‘to strangle the aspirations of the people of Tigray’ cannot get them anywhere because the videos are there for viewing.
No one has talked about how the people of Tigray were in fact ‘enslaved’ for years under the oppressive regime of a TPLF clique who built up a sort of family empire at the expense of the entire population of the regional state and the country as a whole. There is ample evidence of these assertions if we consult some literature written on the thirty year reign of TPLF-EPRDF in Ethiopia.
Evidently, all these stories have not been adequately presented or narrated to the international community; and where they had the knowledge of the exact situation even using their intelligence briefings, these foreign forces have preferred to turn a blind eye because they have their own personal or group interests and that was what has happened recently!
It is repeatedly stated that Ethiopians have been at the receiving end of all sorts of injustices for so many years by this group and then they had to suffer the worst attacks a friendly army and people could inflict on its own brothers and sisters. And yet now many western countries are prone to arguing the contrary. Some say we cannot avoid stating our shortcomings in terms of diligently committing resources to expose to the world what we have been through thanks to the infamous treacherous attacks of TPLF forces against innocent citizens.
Our communication efforts may have left a lot to be desired and only recently may we have caught up with the lost time. Our experts may have been shedding strong light on the true picture of the conflict and how we reached this stage only lately. However, we have yet to enjoy the positive outcome and we need to pursue this direction on all fronts without being discouraged by what has been developing.
We must vehemently reject any form of intervention in our internal affairs because as a sovereign country we cannot be ‘servants’ of any foreign hand through various weapons used to challenge our economic viability. We cannot afford to blink on this issue because it is so critical to our very existence and this is the stance of the government.
BY FITSUM GETACHEW
The Ethiopian Herald June 4/2021
