Mekete Tigray UK
TDA House
211 Clapham Road
London, SW9 0QH
UK
3 November 2024
Email:MeketeTigrayUK2020@gmail.com
Website: https://meketetigrayuk.org
To: –
The Government of the United Kingdom,
The Parliament of the United Kingdom,
UK Civil, Faith, Business, Trade Union and Academic Organisations,
UK Media
OPEN LETTER
Remembrance of Four Years of the Tigray Genocide in Ethiopia, and an Urgent Call for Action
- On the 3rd of November 2020, the Ethiopian Federal government in collaboration with the Eritrean government as well as the Amhara Regional Militia launched an attack on the Tigray region with devastating and catastrophic effects. The Genocidal war on Tigray has been characterised by the New Line Institute Investigation report as the “bloodiest war in the 21st Century”. The Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) employed a bombing campaign for two years, supported technically and materially by the United Arab Emirates and the Turkish government. The Somali Federal government of Somali participated by sending thousands of troops to wage war against the people of Tigray. Schools, hospitals, churches, mosques and markets were targeted, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of civilians. Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF)were welcomed across the national border into Tigray by the leader of Ethiopia’s newly formed Prosperity Party, Abiy Ahmed. The perpetration of mass atrocities against Tigrayans have been characterised as genocide, ethnic cleansing, crime against humanity and war crime by investigative reports that include US State Department, UN International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia ((ICHREE), the UK Parliament Tigray Inquiry Committee, the Yale University Law Department, the Ghent University, Amnesty International and the Human Right Group. There is a bank of evidence by survivors of the atrocities committed by both ENDF and EDF fighters which include the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war against over 120,000 women, girls and boys. Massacres at various religious sites where civilians sought refuge, extrajudicial executions of civilians dragged off public transport or dragged from homes and hospitals, mass executions of farmers and hunted campaigns to assassinate TPLF leadership are all recorded meticulously and have been documented in numerous reports by international organisations.
- Over the two-year war, the Federal Government of Ethiopia cut all communications, banking, electricity, salaries and imposed a blockade of desperately needed food aid and a blockade on all journalists. The region of Tigray was cut off from the outside world as the population suffered in silence. By November 2022, over 600,000 civilians had been killed; the numbers have since increased to one million as starvation imposed on the region has led to a high rate of death.
- The explanation for such devastation is rooted in a historical power struggle by the Amhara elites for national domination and the authoritarian policies of the Prosperity Party led by PM Abiy Ahmed. Over the centuries, smaller ethnic groups have been subsumed by the Amhara ruling classes. Tigray has never capitulated and after three decades of rule by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front where the TPLF was one of the four leaderships in the federal government, Amhara elites’ resentment cannot be ruled out as a motivating factor. The immediate cause of the war was due to the region of Tigray holding a regional election in September 2020, in line with its constitutional responsibility and ignoring Abiy Ahmed’s declaration that all regional elections would be postponed due to Covid. The Federal government used this and Tigray’s defence against an attack by Federal Special Forces on Mekelle as a pretext for its so-called “Law and Order Operation in Tigray”.
- On the 4th of November 2022, the Tigray Interim Government signed a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement with the Federal Government of Ethiopia in Pretoria, South Africa. To date, this Agreement has not been fully implemented and there is currently no pressure on the Ethiopian Government to comply. As a result, four years after peace was destroyed in Tigray, the people of Tigray are living amongst the rubble of destruction, hospitals are incapacitated, internally displaced people have not returned home, starvation is at a critical level and famine conditions exist in many parts of the region. Irob and Kunama areas are still occupied by Eritrean troops. Amhara militia remain in stolen territory in the southern and western parts of Tigray and numerous households across Tigray who have lost income earners remain in destitute poverty.
- The UK Government have, during the last four years, expressed concern and urged the Ethiopian Government to stop the mass atrocities being committed in Tigray as well providing aid to avert the acute humanitarian crisis that followed the war. UK Parliamentarians led by Lord Alton and the Rt Hon Helen Hayes MP have tabled several parliamentary debates on the war in Tigray. The Rt Hon Brendan O’Hara MP, the Rt Hon Jeremey Hunt MP and Lord Hague amongst others have spoken against the genocidal war and the weaponisations of sexual violence as strategy of war in Tigray. The groundbreaking UK Parliament Tigray Inquiry Report exemplifies the seriousness of the war in Tigray.
- Yet, overall, the stand and measures taken by the UK Government to date pales into insignificance when compared to the catastrophe of the genocidal war in Tigray. To date, the UK Government has not used its significant diplomatic, political or financial leverage to halt the genocidal war in Tigray. To date, The UK Government has not sanctioned the Ethiopian government or the Ethiopian politico-military leadership for the genocidal war on Tigray. To the contrary, the UK Government owned Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) invested, in partnership with Safaricom, several hundred million pounds in the Ethiopian Telecommunication to buy a license to operate wireless mobile service in the country at a time when Ethio-telecom was complicit in the genocidal war in Tigray by cutting telephone and internet service in Tigray for over two years in order to hide its genocidal war in Tigray. There is ample evidence that the fees received by the CDC from the sale of licenses was used to buy drones from Turkey, which were used to commit mass atrocities. We also believe that the reasons for the lack of concrete and robust actions against the Abiy Ahmed led government to stop the genocidal war include, among others, narrowly ill-defined and unsustainable geo-political calculations as well as misconceived ideological affiliation with the regime in Ethiopia. Similarly, the then Her Majesty Official Opposition, the Labour Party, has been silent or unremarkable during the genocidal war. This is notwithstanding the principled and continuous humanitarian stance of several Labour MPs, such as the Rt Hon Helen Hayes MP. The stance taken by the Labour Party and its leadership on the Tigray genocidal war, arguably the bloodiest in the 21st Century, pales into insignificance when compared to the Party’s positions and pronouncements on the War in Ukraine or the crisis in the Middle East. We believe that humanitarian concern, advocacy and positions should be proportional, just and equal whether they concern Europe or Africa, Tigray or Ukraine, or white or black people.
- Despite the war on Tigray being designated the bloodiest war of the 21st century, it is not covered by the international press, the world leaders have not used leverage to demand accountability and justice, and the people of Tigray continue to suffer in silence. With the exception of reporting by the New York Time, the Guardian, CNN and Al Jazeera and as well as some other media, however, the global reporting of the genocidal war on Tigray has fallen far short of that required the reporting of such a catastrophic war that claimed the death of over 1 million people and the rape and sexual violence against 120,000 Tigrayan girls and women where gender-based violence was weaponised as a strategy of a genocidal war. Furthermore, the reporting of the genocidal war on Tigray pale into insignificance when compared with the global reporting on the Ukrainian war or the war in the Middle East.
- Finally, we urge the UK Government and Parliament to urge the Ethiopian Government to fully implement the Pretoria Peace Agreement including the return of IDPs to their homes; the restoration of Tigray’s regional autonomy and territorial integrity in accordance with the Ethiopian Constitution; the expulsion of Eritrean and Amhara Regional forces from Tigray; securing justice for the victims of Tigray and the rehabilitation and economic reconstruction of Tigray. We urge the UK civil, faith, business, trade union and academic institutions to campaign to end the ongoing silent genocide in Tigray. The community of Tigrayan Diaspora in the UK urges the UK media to cover and report on the still ongoing silent genocide that continues to be perpetrated against the people of Tigray and Ethiopia in general. We have attached below pertinent reports from the New Line Institute, the UK Parliament Tigray Inquiry, the UN International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia and the Yale University Law School that investigated the Genocidal War in Tigray, Ethiopia. Thank you, and for further information Mekete Tigray UK can be contacted at the above address.
Mekete Tigray UK
(Community of Tigrayan Diaspora in the UK)
London, UK
3rd November 2024