- Applauds JIT report
BY MULATU BELACHEW
ADDIS ABABA – A popular Ethiopian-American popular ethnic Tigray CBS Journalist Hermela Aregawi has called on the people of the U.S. to carefully examine the global media including CNN, New York Times and AP biased reports of Ethiopia’s conflict.
The international media compromise journalism ethics while covering the current situations of Ethiopia and their accounts cannot be regarded as news reports, but propaganda messages, she told the Breakthrough News (BT). The Western media deliberately shun the fact that TPLF does actually start the war.
It is evident that a large number of civilian communities in the northern part of Ethiopia is immensely affected by TPLF’s belligerence and the corporate media have given little attention to this fact. The media have also overlooked Prime Minister Abiy leadership’s tieless efforts to invite TPLF to the round table for discussion instead of going in the direction of war.
“The U.S. is going with their own old partner. The faction was America’s trusted ally from 1991 to 2018 and I can’t necessarily speak to specifics on that but clearly there is an alliance, a beneficial alliance for those two groups but that benefit does not necessarily trickle down to Ethiopian people during those years”.
About the Joint Investigation Team report (JIT) of the Ethiopian Human Right Commission (EHRC) and UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Hermela indicated that the Ethiopian government has taken unprecedented steps. Such kind of things did not happen during the TPLF leadership where a lot of Ethiopians have complained about human right abuses.
“Human Right Watch has given credence to some of those allegations but there wasn’t really a lot of effort just like one could see in JIT report on the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia.”
She further highlighted that the federal government delayed the election due to the global pandemic and TPLF held its regional election which is illegal according to the country’s system. Essentially, the war started when the TPLF went ahead and had an election. “If you think about it, any state in the U.S. can decide to go ahead with their own type of election outside of the system that is created essentially starting a war.”
The Ethiopian Herald November 9/2021
