9/26/2022 Week in Review

In his live press briefing U.S Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, Mike Hammer stated “when I visited Mekelle on 2nd of August 2022, TPLF leaders had mentioned they were getting ready for hostilities unless federal government restored services to their stronghold region”. This is yet another acknowledgement that the group re-ignited recent outburst of conflict in Northern Ethiopia.

In a speech at the UN’s general assembly, Foreign Minister, Demeke Mekonnen mentioned the need for the International Community to support The African Union and its peace initiatives in northern Ethiopia’s conflict. The minister mentioned, TPLF’s continued destabilizing actions posed a threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ethiopia and it must be forced to accept peace.

The official response of the Permeant Mission of Ethiopia to the UN office at Geneva criticized the recent Report of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, in which it said, “nameless and faceless victims were interviewed by phone from a third country located thousands of miles away. The failure to do fieldwork rendered the methodology of the report highly unreliable”.

Furthermore, the chief author of the recent human rights report on Ethiopia, Kaari Murungi has been accused of being in cahoots with TPLF rebels in Northern Ethiopia as evidenced by here Twitter history. Murungi was privately calling for invocation of UN’s Responsibility to Protect(R2P) in April 2021, long before her appointment to the commission ang long before the findings of the commission’s investigation. Her call came during heightened social media activism by supporters of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray rebels who claimed there was a genocide against their ethnic group but failed to provide evidence. More on the serious flaws of the UN report has been provided by Abren.

TPLF officials continued to accuse Eritrea of active involvement in the recent flareup of conflict, however failed to provide tangible evidence to support the claim. Separately, in a press briefing, the group’s top general, Tadesse Worede reiterated their operational and strategic cooperation with the Oromo Liberation Army, a guerrilla force responsible for the brutal slaughter of thousands of civilians in Horo-Gudru and Guji zones of Ethiopia. In the same press briefing the general stated that “their forces had very young and motivated soldiers” The Amharic word he used to indicate “young” can also mean children.