Open Letter
To: Your Excellency Ambassadors & Military Attaches, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Re: Ethiopian Defence Minister’s speech to Foreign Military Attaches in Addis Ababa on 30/12/21 as shown in the video below.
Dear Mssrs & Madams,
We have become cognizant of the fact that the Ethiopian Defence Minister had convened a meeting with you, Excellencies, to spread its misinformation about the reality on the ground in Ethiopia. We are obliged to drop you a few lines just to dispel two very important facts delivered distortedly by the Ethiopian Officials. In writing these lines, we are not, in any way, assuming that you have a lower understanding of the current Ethiopian politics, as the Ethiopian Defence Minister undermined your knowledge of the Ethiopian polity in general.
Those in power today blaming TPLF were allies of TPLF and members of the EPRDF coalition for 27 years. They believed in EPRDF’s core values & programmes whilst in coalition in governing the country for nearly 30 years. Accusing TPLF being anti-unity, as the cause of under-development and war is not only denial of the truth but a betrayal of their own past. Putting aside the rest of the talks let us examine the two main distortions stated by the Ethiopian Defence Minister & his senior officers.
Distortion 1, “TPLF, from its inception was the cause of Ethiopia’s disunity!”
- What the Minster calls labels TPLF as anti-unity is contrary to the monumental evidence, introduced, developed and decreed of the existing federal system and the constitution which is presently in jeopardy. Both the federal system and the constitution of 1995 recognize the rights of nations & nationalities just like that of the UK’s devolved arrangement to maintain the unity of the different constituencies, counties, countries (Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland, England). Incidentally, may we bring to fore the fact that, as England is to the UK, Tigray is the Core Regional State to the Ethiopian Empire? Hence, Tigray hardly de-associates itself from the Central polity of the land, though geographically situated in the periphery.
- Ethiopia being an empire of so many identities with their own respective geographical settlement areas, cultures, tradition and languages – the centre of the ‘modern’ of the 1960’s. Ethiopian polity were “land to the tiller” and “rights of nations & nationalities” To realize these two political questions numberless youngsters have been devoured during the Emperor Haile Selassie and the Derg (military junta) reigns.
Although the latter tried to address the first question, albeit haphazardly; however, only TPLF managed to resolve the second question constitutionally & democratically. TPLF’s resolute resolution was based on learning from the mishandling of the Eritrean question, the aftermath of annulling the Ethio-Eritrean Federation system in 1952, which culminated in the session of Eritrea after a bloody war of 30 years,
Evidently, the allegation of anti-unity hurled by the current Prosperity Party leaders (ex EPRDF members) at TPLF cannot hold water in view of the historical facts, witnessed by the whole world.
Distortion 2, “Labelling TPLF as a menace for development & progress!” This allegation is at best self-denial at worse self-incriminating, as they were part of the system for the last 27 years. To dispel this allegation, one has only to refer to some internationally recognized statistical facts:
- The high growth rates of the economy witnessed by World Bank & IM,
- the rise & establishment of universities from 2 to 45 within 2 decades,
- the construction of new Addis-Djibouti Railway & Addis Metro- lines,
- the transformation of Ethiopian Airlines to become the largest and most successful in Africa air-business,
- the building of a dozen industrial parks producing even for foreign markets,
- the construction various express roads and airports connecting the main markets,
- the establishment of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX),
- the formation of over 20 private bank & insurance companies with several branches,
- the building of over 6 hydro-dams/structures including GERD generating electric power of 13,320 MW (3000% rise in 2 decades),
- the construction boom of numberless apartments (high-rise building) were all realized during the TPLF/EPRDF leadership with its current betraying cohorts, Prosperity Party (PP) elements.
We hope the above two paragraphs may say it all and crystallize our academic defence of the facts against those two distortions. The rest is to appeal to your good conscience to make a conscious and judicious conclusion; to verify the truth between what the Ethiopian Defence Officers said and we the Academic in Europe echo the voiceless people’s voice for Tigraians, or their leader TPLF as the Party that was not represented to defend themselves or itself, at this mischievously fixed whereby foreign military attaches were called to seat at a jury. For further fact-based evidence against the allegation & defence statement, please refer to the attached documents & links below.
At this very opportunity, can we kindly beseech you all to do something in Ethiopia, in line with your natural& noble task: peace-keeping at your earliest convenience, to thwart the ongoing genocidal war? Until you can act on peace, can we earnestly implore you to act, as any sane/mature individual human being would do, to urge your respective governments to request the Ethiopian government to allow “Humanitarian Aid” to Tigray, whereby thousand children & chronically diseased citizens are denied of basic food & medicines?
Looking forward to hearing or seeing your conscious judgement in a practical sense, unbridled peace in pronto!
Yours regretfully,
Tigrayan Advocacy & Development Association (TADA), formerly known as Tigraian Academic Diaspora in Europe (TADE), UK- Branch
The voice for the voiceless besieged people of Tigray by genocidal war for over a year.
OHCHR | Human Rights Council decides to establish an International Commission of Human Rights Experts to investigate allegations of violations in Ethiopia
Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Urges All Parties to Pull Back from a Posture of War in Ethiopia | UN GENEVA
G7 Foreign Ministers’ Statement on the situation in Tigray, Ethiopia | Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (mofa.go.jp)
Statement on the killing of three MSF aid workers in the Tigray Region
- https://ethiopia.un.org/en/133273-statement-killing-three-msf-aid-workers-tigray-region
- https://ethiopia.un.org/en/146875-statement-secretary-general-ethiopia
- https://ethiopia.un.org/en/150848-secretary-generals-right-reply-security-council-meeting-ethiopia
All Info – H.Res.445 – 117th Congress (2021-2022): Condemning all violence and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, and calling on the Government of Ethiopia and the Government of the State of Eritrea to remove all Eritrean troops from Ethiopia, and for all belligerents in the conflict, including the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and Amhara regional forces, and other armed groups to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations. | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
- OHCHR | Human Rights Council Adopts Three Resolutions on Human Rights in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia, Human Rights in the Context of HIV and AIDS, and on Violence against Women and Girls with Disabilities
- Ethiopia-Related Sanctions | U.S. Department of the Treasury Sanctions on Certain Persons With Respect to the Humanitarian and Human Rights Crisis in Ethiopia