BY ADDISALEM MULAT
Since the Ethiopian government declared a unilateral humanitarian ceasefire and withdrew troops from Tigray State, the TPLF terrorist group has been trying to spread conflicts into Amhara and Afar states. Emboldened by the silence of the international community and driven by its years of bloodsucking tendency, the terrorist group has intensified its atrocities against civilians living along Afar and Amhara borders. The group has been indiscriminately shelling civilian infrastructures with heavy artilleries. Its recent incursion into the two states resulted in the death of hundreds of civilians while displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
With TPLF atrocities increasing over time, the international community continues to turn a blind eye. From Mai Kadra massacre to the recent Afar Massacres, TPLF has been committing crimes that amounts to war crimes. Recruiting child soldiers and using civilians as a human shield are also enough evidence to bring the group to the International Criminal Court.
The gruesome killing of civilians in Mai Kadra by the TPLF henchmen drew not enough condemnation from the international community. The international community is playing double-standard role. While putting unfair pressure against the federal government based on false allegations, the international community condoned the terrorist activity of TPLF. This has encouraged the terrorist group to do more harm against Ethiopians. Besides, the group has also been targeting Eritrean refugees sheltered in Tigray State.
Some countries and UN agencies are coming increasingly to know the cruelty and belligerent acts of TPLF terrorist group.
USAID Head Samantha Power after visiting Ethiopia said that the U.S. is watching with great alarm as a conflict that began in Tigray is now beginning to spread. We now estimate that there are roughly 76,000 internally displaced persons in Afar and 150,000 internally displaced persons in Amhara after TPLF In military expansion into neighboring provinces, Samantha added.
In addition to displacing hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians, TPLF is engaged in killings sprees. More recently, the terrorist group has scaled up its atrocities against civilians. In Afar, the terrorist group has massacred 240 civilians, of which 170 were children.
United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said it is extremely alarmed by the reported killing of over 200 civilians, including more than 100 children, in attacks on displaced families sheltering at a health facility and a school in the Afar region of Ethiopia. In a statement it issued on Monday, United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said crucial food supplies were also reportedly destroyed in an area that is already seeing emergency levels of malnutrition and food insecurity.
“The intensification of fighting in Afar and other areas neighboring Tigray, is disastrous for children. It follows months of armed conflict across Tigray that have placed some 400,000 people, including at least 160,000 children, in famine-like conditions,” UNICEF said in the statement.
Similarly, the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center Director Bronwyn Bruton has denounced the act and called on the international community to speak forcefully to restrain TPLF from its heinous crimes targeting innocent civilians and children.
In her Twitter post yesterday, the director said that she is ‘extremely alarmed’ by the reported killing of 200 people, including more than 100 children, in the attacks on displaced families sheltering at a health facility and a school at Afar State of Ethiopia on Thursday, 5 August.
Noting TPLF attacks on refugees, IDPs and civilians are war crimes, Bruton highlighted that the government of Ethiopia’s ceasefire cannot continue while children are being slaughtered and religious sites in Lalibela are being attacked.
In a related development, Weldiya Mayor Mohammad Yasin stated that TPLF is terrorizing the people to leave the city through disseminating unfounded lies and propaganda. Though, the youth and security officials are working in tandem to defend the aggressors.
Officials of the Afar and Amhara states said the terrorist TPLF forces have caused huge public displacement and property damages having taken control of some areas in their respective states.
Both also said that the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) and regional troops have taken proportionate measures to stop the terrorist TPLF’s provocations and inflicted significant harm on the latter.
On Friday, more than 170 displaced civilians stationed in aid centers in Afar State were massacred by the terrorist enterprise’s military attacks.
Speaking to local media, Afar State Human Rights Organization Head Geas Ahmed stated that the terrorist faction has taken the killings of civilians as the retaliation for the heavy price it has paid in the hands of ENDF and Afar Special Forces. Noting TPLF militants have targeted to either displace residents or to commit insane mass killings, the head indicated that thousands of civilians have fled as the invaders took border woredas (districts).
Geas also voiced his grievance over the international media’s silence to the killings of civilians in Afar. “Some Western governments have been working for the resurrection of TPLF and it is clear that they are still not active to condemn the atrocities committed by the outlawed group.”
Amhara National Movement Organization Affairs Head Gashaw Mersha recently said that the militants are trying to penetrate into the Sudan border and to terrify the northwestern part of Amhara State, he said adding that across Welkait fronts, the dissidents have made repeated provocative attacks even though federal and state security forces have successfully repulsed the offense and inflicted significant harm to the aggressors.”
TPLF does not have the capacity to pose a major security threat, Gashaw noted, adding that the faction has made a tireless effort to terrorize the people with a view to harming their trust in the government.
The terrorist TPLF clique has caused humanitarian crises by attacking the neighboring Amhara and Afar states and putting the World Heritage Site in Lalibela town at risk, a renowned Canadian scholar said.
In a recent press conference, Office of the Prime Minister Press Secretary Bilene Seyum said that in developments following the government’s decision to enact humanitarian ceasefire and withdrew from some of the cities, the international community’s silence was quite bold and double standards seem to be at play in muteness towards TPLF’s harassment and overt belligerence.
She further noted that despite TPLF’s overt acts and its open and vocal belligerence against the safety and security of the people of Ethiopia and its blatant statements to attack other states and the capital, the international community has remained unresponsive.
“This silence among the international community is something to be once again raised and questioned.” As to her, “Many that were echoing for the wellbeing of Tigrayans in the State are now mute when the terrorist element is blocking aid, killing Tigrayans accused of being loyal to the federal government and conscripting child soldiers as well as utilizing civilians as human shields.”
Noting the prevalence of a very loud narrative about the withdrawal of federal and Amhara Special Forces from Tigray, she said that now TPLF forces, designated as terrorist elements, are encroaching Amhara and Afar states and there is a dead silence among global players.
The Ethiopian Herald August 11/2021
