BY ASEGEDEW SHEMELIS
(Researcher and Consultant)
PART TWO
BBC’s Reality Check, Peter Mwai retrieving evidences from the UN, 23 aid workers have been killed in the region since fighting broke out in November last year. Fighting has also spread into this region, displacing more people and making the routes insecure. Further, The International Crisis Group (IRC) reported on December 11, 2020 that one of its members and two members of the Danish Refuges Council (DRC) were killed on December 12, 2020. Around June 21 and 25, 2021 three Medecins Sans Frontier (MSF) members were reported killed; TPLF was responsible for humanitarian workers.
Most recently, the US, in fact prestigious media and news agencies including AFP, Al Jazeera, CNN and France 24 had reports, has accused TPLF of attacking and looting aid warehouses in the areas they have captured in the Amhara region. Due to such terror, attacks and violence made hurdles getting into neediest places. Thus, the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions are put in jeopardy by TPLF acts.
TPLF has obviously committed countless acts of terror before and after it seized state power in 1991. GTD only contained TPLF’s terrorism record from 1976 up to 1991. Puzzled why GTD does not contain acts of terrorism that the TPLF has been committing after it came to power, Abebe Gellaw, prominent rights activist and journalist, asked Erin Miller, Project Manager of the GTD. Miller explained him that despite the fact that in circumstances where terrorist organizations like the TPLF have succeeded in seizing state power, they automatically fall outside the domain of the GTD due to the fact that it only records and archives terrorist acts committed by non-state actors. “The rule of inclusion does not include state actors. Terrorism acts committed by governments are state terrorism.”
Herman Hank Cohen, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs who served in the U.S. Foreign Service for 38 years, also blames the TPLF and its surrogates. “The political leaders have a policy of killing all opponents who take to the streets to demonstrate against them. Other opponents who do not demonstrate but make public statements instead, are sent to jail for long periods … I fail to understand why the TPLF regime feels it necessary to exercise such extreme control to the point of committing murder periodically against its own citizens.” Thereby, Cohen’s message to the TPLF criminals was, “relax and loosen up. The more citizens you kill for no reason, the more difficult it will be for you to govern in peace.” (Cohen: On Ethiopia, December 18, 2015). They are too complex to understand for the political broad at home too.
Back to Temben with new form of terrorist plan
After it is removed out from the central power in 2019, TPLF has transformed itself into national clique. Onwards, launching the most organized terror acts against the people of Ethiopia. Training and arming insurgents and militants in different parts of the country for genocide and terrorism become its sole enterprise. Along with the economic sabotages, financing ethnic cleansing in Metekel, sponsoring the Shene terrorists in Wollega (Horro-Guduru, Shambu, Dembi-Dollo and etc.) to murder Amharas; the Chilga attacks allied with Qimant extremists; the Gedio agony that displaced 800,000 people; the Gumayde conflict and many more are the TPLF projects.
Assimilation of Amharas into Tigre was the tool used to change the demography. TPLF has committed the new form of attack known as silent genocide in the Wolkait against the Amharas. To this end, tens of thousands are killed, tortured, kidnapped while hundreds of Wolkait farmers and youth forced to leave their homestead. After the loss of its power, it extended its cleansings into full scale. A similar killing happened in Kobo and Merssa on civilians who were protesting against the killing of innocent civilians in Woldia in 2018.
The November 9-10, 2020, Maikadra Massacre on ethnic Amharas is one of the greatest brutality against humanity. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) had deployed an investigation team to Maikadra, Abrhajira, Sanja, Dansha and Humera and between November 14 and 19th 2020. According to the Commission’s findings, dreadful crime was committed by the TPLF expertise on murders. Evidence gathered and analyzed by the EHRC revealed that the Maikadra attack is not a simple criminal act but is rather “a premeditated and carefully coordinated grave violation of human rights.”
Members of Samri (youth groups assigned for the massacre), with the help of the local Tigrayan police and militia, moving from house to house and from street to street, began a cruel and atrocious rampage on people they pre-identified/profiled as Amharas. They slaughtered more than 1,600 innocents, beating them with batons/sticks, stabbing them with knives, machetes and hatchets and strangling them with ropes. They also looted and destroyed properties.
It has been made apparent that the attack was ethnicity based and specifically targeted men the attackers profiled through, amongst other things, identification cards, as Amharas.
At the beginning of the invasion to the Amhara Region, the Raya, North Wollo Zone of Amhara Region, incident is the most horrible scene. Alamata, Maychew, Kobo and Harra have witnessed the delinquency of the TPLF gangs looting almost all public and private cars, damaging all public enterprises and government offices. Literally, nothing has left in Sekota town. Tefera Hailu Memorial Hospital, Sekota Teachers Education College, Amhara Rehabilitation and Development Organization, Sekota Agricultural Research Institute, Telecom infrastructures and almost all private properties are looted, damaged and taken to Tigray.
One of the most important trade and investment centers of the Amhara Region, Woldia was targeted too many times. The administration on set and the residents two weeks-long fight to protect the city was remarkable. However, the TPLF militias invaded the city with the support of heavy shell attacks. Many civilians are murdered while the vast majority of all properties such as Woldia Hospital, the International Stadium, Woldia University and its Merssa Campus facilities, Woldia Teachers Training Colleges, Woldia Technical and Vocational College, key development institutions, public and private belongings are plundered and taken away to Tigray. To facilitate the pillage, the terrorist militias with the direct command of its criminal leaders, took nearly 1,000 vehicles.
Recently, from 19-20 August 2021, the group assaulted Debre Tabor City and its suburb five times with heavy cannons. The attack devastated entire families without any apparent military target nearby, and all the blasts have had fatal damages over many structures and living rooms. Public and state property pillages and damages in Lalibela, Kobo, Mersa, Checheho, Maytemri, Gayint, Guna Technical and Vocational College teaching facilities including laboratories, workshops and administrative centers, Kimir Dingay, Gashena, Debre-Zebit, Wuchalle, Kon, Dellanta and other towns have been rampant.
The Mehoni, North Wollo Zone, Massacre of that claimed dozens of Muslims is the barbaric act of the TPLF. The Muslims massacre is a clear signal for TPLFs anti-religions foundations across generations. The Agamsa Massacre is another war crime committed by the TPLF. More than 200 civilian farmers are burnt, slaughtered and chopped in North Wollo Zone, Agamssa town in August 2021. The town, according to a Google Earth Pro images and the actual scene the survivors reported to the Regional government, nearly 100 homes and structures are turned to ashes with heavy assault shells.
The prestigious Great Britain daily, The Telegraph gave due emphasis to the atrocity and covered it on 5 August 2021. According to The Telegraph, referring the survivors’ words, ‘They [the TPLF] are out for revenge’. The armed groups have bombed the village for series of nights and killed residents moving door to door. The latest Cheena Massacre has also many to tell about the group. It has murdered about 120 civilians in Cheena village, Dabat Woreda, North Gonder Zone.
Disarm and dismantle it: who should do what?
It’s time to deactivate the terrorist group from the political ecology. Like the Nazis, TPLF should face a lifetime ban from all political environments in Ethiopia and beyond. The federal government of Ethiopia shall disarm its hundreds of thousands criminal forces and unsubscribe them. Further, regional and continental actors like African Union and IGAD have crucial responsibilities to restore peace and order in the Horn; so, they must collaborate with the government and people of Ethiopia to bring the terrorists before the law.
TPLF has done many than any other terrorist group in the world: in terms of severity and intensity. It is the world’s most virulent and violent terrorist group. To obliterate the shocks and scares of the terror manufacturer, TPLF and its fanatic extremists must get obsoleted. The international community has to understand the grief of millions of Ethiopians and designate TPLF as international terrorist. With these, then, the nation will enjoy the future with meaningful stride toward a peaceful and free society.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The Ethiopian Herald
The Ethiopian Herald October 22/2021
