Dereje Demissie, an Ethio-American law expert, describes the American government bill against Ethiopia, HR 6600: “The bill is written based on heavily biased and distorted assumptions. It is a paid bill [by lobbyists] aiming at pressurizing the Ethiopian government to give way for TPLF to access a considerable space in Ethiopian politics. It is in effect a setup against Ethiopia.” That is exactly what I felt when I read the recently released joint report on Ethiopia by two international human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, [AI/HRW].
Interestingly enough, The AI/HRW report, which is about the alleged atrocities committed in the disputed Welkait-Tegede, and Telemt areas, came just a day after the release of an investigative report by Gondar University researchers that uncovered new mass graves of TPLF victims in that area.
Even though the two reports almost coincide in release timing and the crime scene [Welkait], they have fundamental differences. The AI /HRW report intends to cause a sensation fueling TPLF propaganda, while the university report focused on unearthing factual evidence against atrocities committed by the TPLF during its annexation of the area for more than three decades until the outbreak of the conflict 17 months ago.
The other major difference between the two reports is that the university report was done by investigators who went to the place in person and collected firsthand information, whereas the AI/ HRW report was from investigators sitting in Nairobi who collected data mainly from telephone conversations they had from Tigrayans refugees in Sudan, and from biased news articles of the western media.
A more interesting difference between the two reports is the contrasting reactions they got from the Americans, who shape the opinions of the western world powers. Regarding the university report, they did not make any reactions, but they swiftly responded with outright support to the report made by the AI/ HRW.
This telling situation is yet another proof of the underlying coordinated plot organized by western powers against the Ethiopian state. Like midfielders and strikers of a soccer team, the human rights organizations, WFP, the western Media, ICG, WHO, USAID, US Department of State, the US Congress, and Senate are dribbling and passing the ball back and forth among each other as they move toward their goal.-the goal of fulfilling TPLF’s aspirations.
With their joint report, the AI and HRW have betrayed the core values of impartiality and independence they should have upheld as a human rights organization. They chose to be a political condom for fulfilling the wishes of their benefactors who propagate the interests of the Americans and TPLF.
If the TPLF sympathizers can bribe American senators and congressmen, and if they can corrupt and infiltrate the editorial board of the international media, if Tedros Adhanom can sneak into Washington to ingratiate himself among big shots of the Capitol Hill and White House, then it would be foolish to question if the Tplfites could be able to get the so-called rights organizations [AI/HRW] compromised and have them in their pocket.
Several points show how deeply flawed is the AI/HRW report. Human rights experts said the report has no credibility due to its one sided approach, biased interpretations and tendency for sensationalism. In the area the report called ‘West Tigray’, it is the ethnic Amharas that suffered the worst human rights violation than the Tigrayans. The numerous mass graves discovered, the Maikadra massacre, and the harrowing stories of Wolkiytes exiled to different corners of the world, all are testimonies to this fact. And yet, the focal subjects of the AI/HRW report are the ethnic Tigrayan community in that area.
The report is primarily politically motivated, scheduled, and engineered with the intention of discrediting and labeling Ethiopian forces as perpetrators of crime against humanity based on subjective and circumstantial evidence. The labeling would serve as a pretext for the politicians of the West to enforce comprehensive sanctions against Ethiopia.-A sanction that remains imposed until Ethiopia fully meets its demands, which are now clearly recognized by the majority of Ethiopians as detrimental to Ethiopia’s sovereignty and stability and territorial integrity.
There are several parts of the report where the truth has been skillfully blurred and distorted. The report has intentionally ignored to state that the flame of humanitarian crisis that engulfed millions of civilians in northern Ethiopia is the outcome of the conflict sparked by TPLF. While discussing the Maikadra massacre, for instance, the report has deliberately misquoted the report of a similar investigation jointly conducted and published 5 months ago by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
Unlike the study by the AI/HRW, the human rights commissions’ joint report was based on data collected from extensive fieldwork in different locations in Tigray and Amhara regions. While the OHCHR-EHRC 95 pages investigation report covers the human rights situations across the Tigray Region, [as it were during the TPLF rule], the AI/HRW investigation only focused on the disputed Wolkait -Tegede, a strategic area TPLF calls ‘West Tigray’ and wants to take back. Some analysts consider it one of the top five nerve centers of Ethiopian politics. So, that explains the cause behind AI’s and HRW’s political mission to make a mountain out of a molehill by writing 230 pages reports with shouting titles like a tabloid news reportage.
Here is how the AI and HRW quoted the OHCHR-EHRC report on the Maikadra massacre: “The joint investigation by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) concluded that more than 200 civilians were killed.”Even though the commissions’ report disclosed the ethnicity of the massacred civilians, AI and HRW deliberately overlooked it. “Persons taking no direct part in hostilities were wilfully killed by parties to the conflict, including ethnic-based killings of more than two hundred Amharas, mostly men, in Maikadra by the Samri accompanied by Tigrayan police and militia on 9 November 2020, as well as the retaliatory killing of at least five Tigrayans by the Fano.” Says OHCHR-EHRC report.
It is undeniable that the most horrific episode of the humanitarian crisis that occurred in the Welkait area [also named West Tigray by AI/HRW and TPLF] during the conflict period is the Maikadra massacre. However, the AI/HRW report pays little attention to the major humanitarian crisis and focuses only on situations that recount the alleged killing and displacement of ethnic Tigrayans. “Despite its unparalleled scale and horrors, the Maikadra Massacre, is mentioned in the AI/HRW report almost as a footnote,” says the renowned Ethio–American scholar Aklog Birara.
The downplaying of the Maikadra massacre in some parts of the report goes as far as outright lying. Here is how the condensed version of AI/HRW’s bulky report [Q&A on New Report: “We Will Erase You from This Land”] narrates the Maikadra massacre: “As Tigrayan militia and special forces fought against Ethiopian and federal forces outside the town [Mai-kadra], residents were left to maintain security. Tigrayan youth began carrying out house-to-house searches.” This is a cover-up. The word resident is a cover-up for the militant Samri, and they were not just searching, they were killing civilian male ethnic Amharas in their homes in front of their family members.
The Maikadra massacre was an act of ethnic cleansing. The Samri militants were attacking civilians whom they identified as Amharas from their ID cards or their dialect. While this is the fact on the ground, the AI and HRW report tried to play down the Mai kadra ethnic cleansing as a minor crash that occurred in the wake of the security measures to prevent the looting of Tigrayans businesses in the town.
“By the afternoon of November 9, 2020, the opportunistic looting of Tigrayan businesses sparked arrests of Amhara residents and daily workers. Targeted attacks of Amhara residents and daily workers then followed.” says the report. As if their sad horrific murder is not enough, the victims are considered to be looters by the report.
What is more infuriating is, that the AI and HRW in their report acted as a security think tank by making outrageous recommendations that are more of political and security issues than human rights issues. For instance, they recommended the deployment of an AU-led international peacekeeping force in the Wolkait-Tegede area, and the demobilization and disarmament of Fano and other militias in the area. they also recommended the federal government suspend some civilian officials in the area from their posts.
All these recommendations are focusing on addressing the plights only of Tigrayans who allegedly suffered injustice in Wolkait. The report however does not make any recommendation about the major crime committed in the area, the Maikadra massacre. It does not ask for the disarmament of Tigrayan forces who are still present in some parts of the area, specifically Telemt. It does not recommend inquiry into the role of Tigrayan force commanders, TPLF leaders, as well as Tigrayans that were residing in Maikadra who participated in the carefully planned, organized, and executed Maikadra massacre.
All in All, the AI /HRW report may be heavy in paper size, but it weighs almost nothing on the credibility scale. Similar to the description of HR6600 and S-3199 by Dereje Demmisie, that report is another setup against Ethiopia.It appears the report is co-authored by TPLF sympathizers working for AI and HRW with information gathered by phone interview mainly from perpetrators of the Maikadra massacre, who are now stationed in Refugee camps in Sudan.
The appropriate title for the report should have been “Investigation on the alleged crime Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Tigrayans in Ethiopia’s Welkait–Tegede, Humera, and Telemt.” The subtitle of the report reads “We will erase you from this land”. It would have been more appropriate if the report give equal, if not more attention to the over a thousand Amharas already erased from that land on Nov. 9, 2020 in just under 24 hours, and tens of thousands of them erased from that land during the last three decades by TPLF.
BY SOLOMON WASSIHUN
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 20 APRIL 2022
