Author: Rasmus Sonderris

A response to Graham Peebles’ essay on “the Amhara genocide”. And to his praise for the Fano militia. By Rasmus Sonderriis, Ethiopia correspondent for media in Chile and Denmark since 2004 and author of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”, writing from Addis Ababa. Genre conventions help the audience orientate themselves. Graham Peebles uses that to full effect in his essay: “We’re still breathing: Amhara genocide in Ethiopia”, published in Counterpunch on November 7, 2025, as well as in his award-winning documentary with the same title. The context analysis does not go much beyond this short sentence: “The Amhara people have been…

By Rasmus Sonderriis, Ethiopia correspondent for media in Chile and Denmark since 2004 and author of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”. It passed for publication never mind that it portrays Africans as beasts, because it was penned by two Ethiopian academics for the affable-sounding magazine “The Conversation”. It reads like standing up for good against evil. But this is a deceit, explains a veteran observer of how the propagandists of Ethiopia’s various militias spew hate in human-rights language. The headline sums up the message: “Starvation as a weapon of war: how Ethiopia created a famine in Tigray” published in The Conversation on November 2,…

This is an excerpt from “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”, a book which chronicles the narrative on the so-called “Tigray War” (2020–2022) in northern Ethiopia. On November 3, around one thousand senior Ethiopian commanders stationed in Tigray went for a dinner party with regional government officials. The invitation, however, was a ruse to take them prisoner. That same night, while the world was focused on vote-counting in the US presidential election, a total of five federal military bases in Tigray came under fire. Defenders were killed or captured, though those in the Sero Base, near the border with Eritrea, held out for a grueling ten…

This is an excerpt from the latest extended version of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” a book by veteran Horn of Africa correspondent Rasmus Sonderris On November 3, around one thousand senior Ethiopian commanders stationed in Tigray went for a dinner party with regional government officials. The invitation, however, was a ruse to take them prisoner. That same night, while the world was focused on vote-counting in the US presidential election, a total of five federal military bases in Tigray came under fire. Defenders were killed or captured, though those in the Sero Base, near the border with Eritrea, held out for a grueling ten…

Biden’s foreign policy failure to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate violence in Ethiopia is depressingly déjà vu. Let’s hope Trump’s team can see through the garbage. This is an excerpt from the latest extended version of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” a book by veteran Horn of Africa correspondent Rasmus Sonderris A quick Google search finds that “Meaza Mohammed is an Ethiopian journalist and human rights activist”. Countless newspaper articles depict her as an advocate for raped women. International organizations dedicated to press freedom portray her as persecuted for speaking truth to power. The website of the US State Department, no less, pays homage to…

This is an excerpt from the latest extended version of “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong” a book by veteran Horn of Africa correspondent Rasmus Sonderris Even in the event of peace, Ethiopia is not going to achieve a democratic political culture overnight. It may even get worse before it gets better. However, it is wrong and reckless to conclude that violence is now a last resort. During the darkest years of the TPLF/EPRDF, when armed resistance was in every way legitimate, I personally disagreed with that path, not out of pacifism, but from a strategic perspective. Because violence begets violence. Conversely,…

To cries of “white demon”, The Economist’s angelical Tom Gardner was hounded out of war-torn Ethiopia. Or this is how he wants us to see it, not by challenging the grounds for his deportation, but by invoking his moral superiority as a liberal Westerner. Here, a ruthless mirror is held up to him by a peer reviewer, who has, yes, his own book and a very different message to promote. In the opening lines of “The Abiy Project: God, Power and War in the New Ethiopia”, author Tom Gardner recounts his struggle to obtain close-up testimonies about the Ethiopian prime minister since…

Did The Washington Post stick up for girls and women against hordes of vicious degenerates? Or did The Washington Post exploit racist prejudice to peddle dehumanizing hate? The fine line between the two is the truth. A veteran Ethiopia correspondent ponders the evidence. Harrowing tales of sadistic rape were recounted in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe by Katharine Houreld on November 26, 2023. This Nairobi-based East Africa correspondent touches every nerve of revulsion and anger in her retelling of tearful interviews with a dozen female rape survivors. These are not mere denunciations of bad apples, such as the three men who were recently sentenced…