Honorable [title] [last name],
A message from Ethiopian Americans, people of Ethiopian descent and friends of Ethiopia regarding Ethiopia at present.
What was the politico-military situation in Ethiopia prior to the Law Enforcement campaign that the Ethiopian Government was compelled to exercise?
Primarily and contrary to the rules of the Ethiopian Federal Government, “Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)” was organizing, arming, and preparing itself for war. Second, this group was beating its war drum full blast using its media outlet for months. The inevitability of the conflict was growing by the day and seemed apparent. The Federal Government, with the aim to avoid and curb the conflict, pushed for reconciliation by sending elders, religious figures, and prominent personalities. Few days before the full blown conflict on November 4, 2020, TPLF launched a surprise attack on the Border Guard in Northern Command and invaded the Amhara region. Deplorably, it had started sharing intelligence with Ethiopia’s adversaries and defaming Ethiopia. Any nation including your own would have taken unilateral steps for the betrayal of trust and loyalty. What nation would tolerate treason and a force ready to unleash anarchy?
Following the start of the conflict, TPLF had destroyed the Tigray infrastructure, looted hospitals, killed innocent people and invited lawlessness by releasing 10,000 hardened criminals from its jails, thus opening venues to looting and rapes. It ravaged pharmacies, hospitals, grain depositories, fuel depots and offices for anticipatory supplies for the duration of the conflict. It provoked Eritrean involvement by shooting long range missiles directed to Asmara, with the aim to regionalize the conflict. It undermined the peoples will and never anticipated a defeat. As it lost the conflict against a well-disciplined Ethiopian National Defense Forces, it started manufacturing and disseminating distorted facts, misinformation, and deception to the western media like CNN, NYT, the BBC as well as human right organizations, all of which were challenged by the Ethiopian people and members of the international community. The digital falsehood campaign is still raging nonstop with serious allegations.
The century old diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and the United States were challenged by such allegations. CNN ran fake stories in its situation room without dispatching its journalists to the conflict zone. Among the celebrated fake videos that had creeped into the legitimate news media were the act of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and rape. There were false footages of Nigerian massacres pictures dubbed as Axum massacre. There was also a “shocking” account of young lady’s victimization of rape, which was in fact wounded in the war; she was indeed a member of the special force of TPLF. This fabricated and doctored video was circulated and picked by Al Jazeera, who characterized and presented her as a rape victim. It is typical of the TPLF to produce falsehood and mislead the media, which amplifies without due verification.
Shocking atrocities were also committed by this treasonous group. The Mai Kadra genocide in which over 1,300 people were massacred by the Samri squad of TPLF, has been neglected by the Amnesty International and the World Human Rights Counsel, who failed to document a truthful and accurate account. Fake news and disinformation had been engineered and circulated by the paid lobby and western allies of TPLF to defame Ethiopia. For the last 30 years TPLF had sawn ethnic hostilities and hatred against 40 million Amhara, which are an integral part of the Ethiopian population. TPLF has caused the genocide of an estimated number of 470,000 people of Amhara, Gurage and Gamo ethnic groups with a large percentage of Ethiopian Orthodox citizens in the last 30 years. The massacres of Somalis and Gambella people are recorded by Human Rights Organizations.
The identification and tagging of the Amhara people as an invading foreign army in Tigray is total mischaracterization. The Amhara Regional militia is in the Amhara Region. Tigrayans and the Amhara are intermarried and lived together for thousands of years. There is no animosity between these people who share the same culture and religious beliefs. TPLF propaganda preaches hate and division not just between the Amhara and Tigrayans but among all the rest of ethnic groups in Ethiopia as a matter of policy in the 30 years of its brutal regime.
Now the term genocide and ethnic cleansing are abused by TPLF propaganda network. These serious terms that should be taken seriously and not used as political weapons.
We call upon your integrity and justice as members of the legislature of this great nation, the USA, to abhor TPLF’s disinformation and falsehood funded by money stolen from the treasury of the Ethiopian Government, some of which was foreign loan and credits deposited secretly in western banks, a devious irony of enrichment of TPLF Diaspora generation.
Thank you for your attention in this matter.
Sincerely,
