Ethiopia. Aid agencies under Amhara regime strict control
This is the translation of the original article in Italian published in the Italian magazine Focus On Africa. This is a journalistic investigation carried out on a significant sample of Ethiopian and foreign aid workers operating in Ethiopia. The investigation reveals a premeditated policy of control of international NGOs and UN agencies by the fascist Amhara regime through surveillance, espionage and infiltration of collaborators of the regime.
Nota Bene.
This investigation is the result of a series of testimonies collected between expatriate and Ethiopian humanitarian workers originally from Amhara, Oromo and Tegaru ethnic groups. The identities of the witnesses are protected to prevent Ethiopian regime. revenge and retaliation directed to them or against their families.
Since the beginning of the conflict, international NGOs and UN humanitarian agencies have come under the crosshairs of the fascist Amhara regime which sees them as pro-Western lobbies that interfere in the country’s internal affairs and as haunts of spies serving TPLF and Oromo Liberation Army. (OLA). Dozens of humanitarian workers have been arrested, tortured, interned in concentration camps or killed. Among them we remember Negasi Kidane Ethiopian humanitarian worker of Tigrinya origin of the Italian NGO CISP (International Committee for the Development of Peoples) killed by Eritrean soldiers on the evening of 28 May 2021.
María Hernandez, Yohannes Halefom Reda and Tedros Gebremariam of MSF killed in Tigray on 25 June 2021 by Eritrean soldiers or Amhara FANO militiamen. The perpetrators of the extra-judicial execution and the reasons have never been clarified as the Addis Ababa regime has never launched serious investigations.
Cesare Bullo director of the Salesians Don Bosco Ethiopia and Alberto Livoni country representative of the Italian NGO VIS (International Voluntary Service for Development) arrested and brutally interrogated by the political police last November after a raid at the Don Bosco headquarters in Addis Ababa. Together with them, another 28 people were arrested, including priests, nuns and employees of Don Bosco. Bullo and Livoni were accused of being supporters (including financial ones) of the “terrorist group” TPLF.
On 27 December, a humanitarian worker from UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, was killed in northern Ethiopia. The news was disclosed in a UNHCR press release signed by Clementine Nkweta-Salami, UNHCR Regional Director for the East, the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region.
24 humanitarian workers have been killed since November 2020, including 11 from the Tigray Relief Society (REST). “Violence against humanitarian workers is intolerable. Our humanitarian colleagues work tirelessly to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to civilians affected by this conflict. Maintaining their security and free access to people in need, as established by international human rights and humanitarian law, is critical to providing life-saving assistance. We reiterate our call to respect and protect humanitarian workers and to thoroughly investigate the acts that led to the deaths of our colleagues. Accountability must be pursued to discourage attacks on humanitarian personnel.” This was the press release issued last September by the United Nations interim humanitarian coordinator for Ethiopia, Grant Leaity.
The conflict between the regime and humanitarian agencies has worsened with the humanitarian blockade imposed on Tigray and the escalation of crimes against humanity committed in the capital Addis Ababa against citizens of Tigrinya or Oromo origin. The regime is censoring international humanitarian agencies and NGOs through intimidation, threats, violence and murder. The goal is to prevent any neutral and independent news and testimony on the crimes committed against 47 million people living in Tigray and Oromia.
The regime has tightened the already strict parameters for granting work permits to foreign aid workers. These parameters were (ironically) imposed starting in 2006 by the governing coalition headed by the TPLF with the aim of facilitating skilled work for young Ethiopians and preventing Ethiopia from becoming another African country destined to absorb young Westerners unemployed with little professional experience. The regime has also increased controls and espionage on foreign and domestic personnel of UN agencies and international NGOs.
The regime’s repressive actions have had the desired effects as they have created a comfortable silence by NGOs on war crimes, ethnic cleansing and the genocide taking place in Tigray. “I am aware that our silence risks becoming complicity but it is a forced act. We must safeguard the physical integrity of our employees and remain in the country in order to be able to offer as much aid as possible in a difficult and antagonistic context to humanitarian assistance. If we bear witness to all the violence we have seen, we will expose ourselves to serious reprisals”, explains a country representative of a European NGO.
Unfortunately, the borderline between silence imposed as a security measure to avoid violence or assassinations and complicity is all too thin. NGOs such as MSF and the Norwegian Refugee Committee have chosen to break this silence by denouncing the crimes committed by the Eritrean army and the Ethiopian fascist regime and for this they were expelled from the country. It is widely believed among Ethiopians that the silence of humanitarian agencies and NGOs is also dictated by a strong dose of financial opportunism. Many humanitarian organizations prefer not to irritate the regime for not being expelled from the country and, consequently, ousted from the rain of millions of humanitarian aid when (and if) the conflict will end.
In addition to monitoring NGOs and their staff in order to avoid inconvenient witnesses, the regime is implementing heavy control and interference on the work of the humanitarian agencies working in Tigray. Bank accounts in the “rebel” region are blocked, including those of NGOs. At Bole International Airport, Addis Ababa, the rare authorized flights to Tigray are subject to careful searches of aid workers in order to prevent cash from reaching their Tigrinya branches to pay employees and carry out humanitarian activities.
“Our offices in Mekelle, Adigrat and Shire have become ghost offices. For a year now, we have not seen our expatriate colleagues who are forced to stay in Addis Ababa. Access to bank accounts has been blocked. We have no electricity, no internet connection and water is scarce. Our wages are paid only when we can smuggle cash into Tigray. We go to the office every day but we cannot do any activities”, testifies a humanitarian worker who lives and works in Mekelle.
“Ethiopian government has waged a real war against humanitarian agencies. I fear that this war, which prevents us from giving assistance to civilians, is part of a plan of extermination or ethnic repression aimed at Tigray and Oromia. By now there are too many indications that the denial of aid is a weapon of war adopted by the Ethiopian government”, says a project manager of American origin.
Humanitarian needs remain high in several parts of Ethiopia with nearly 23 million people in need of some form of humanitarian assistance until the end of the year, the latest UNOCHA report says. In Northern Ethiopia (Afar, Amhara, Tigray regions), the number of people dependent on emergency food assistance increased from 8.1 million in August, as indicated in the mid-year review of the 2021 Humanitarian Response Plan. About 9.4 million in November according to an assessment by the World Food Program (WFP).
Due to the effects of the ongoing conflict, the Amhara region has seen the largest increase with 3.7 million people in urgent need of assistance. Humanitarian needs in Ethiopia are expected to remain high through 2021 and 2022 due to conflicts, droughts, floods, epidemics and desert locust infestations.
The control of humanitarian workers is made possible thanks to the surveillance mechanisms established by the TPLF in power which are diligently used by the current Amhara leadership. Cyber control is facilitated by the existence of only one telecommunications company: Ethio Telecom and the espionage of the Ethiopian Information Network Security Agency (INSA) internet surveillance service founded by Premier Abyi in 2006 when he actively collaborated with the TPLF-led government.
The Central Bank has total control over all current accounts of public and private banks and can order unauthorized financial audit or the freezing of accounts with a simple verbal request from the regime authorities. The network of professional spies responsible for national security, created by the TPLF in power, has been replaced by the Prosperity Party with a network of informers (often ordinary citizens) who take advantage of it to also settle various personal issues. It is enough to accuse a person without proof of sympathizing or, worse still, of being a member of the TPLF or the OLA, to have him arrested.
This impressive surveillance and repression apparatus doesn’t, however, explain the heavy control exercised by the regime over humanitarian agencies. There is another explanation.
Since 2019, Premier Abiy and the nationalist Amhara leadership have implemented a silent infiltration plan by humanitarian agencies. “Since 2019, the government has intensified requests to replace expatriate personnel with Ethiopian personnel to fill key positions, especially in logistics, administration and project coordination. Most of the staff employed were Amhara. At each job posting, the political police intervened to discourage citizens of other ethnic groups from submitting their applications. Within the NGOs, the Human Resources departments with the greatest presence of Amhara have facilitated the hiring of their own ethnicity or officially recognized loyal members of the Prosperity Party. We subsequently witnessed strong pressure from the government to replace Tigrinya personnel from NGOs with Amhara one ”, an Amhara humanitarian worker who works in an international NGO in Addis Ababa tells us.
“At the beginning of 2020 the Ethiopian government had infiltrated a large number of collaborators in NGOs and UN agencies who had the task of spying from the inside and providing the political police with all the administrative and planning documents of the NGOs they worked for” continues the our interlocutor.
The Amhara collaborators of the government in less than two years have taken control of several NGO headquarters in Addis Ababa, influencing humanitarian policies in favor of the regime and preventing any humanitarian support for the “enemies”. “Many of the Amhara personnel who occupy key positions within international NGOs perform espionage and political functions. In several cases, this national staff has eliminated uncomfortable expatriates by simply informing the authorities, causing the immediate revocation of the work permit and expulsion from the country. In some extreme cases, the denunciation resulted in the arrest of expatriates accused of terrorism or of being supporters of the TPLF and OLA.
According to the various information gathered from credible sources, at the time of VIS representative Mr. Livoni’s arrest, the political police knew exactly where to look for the briefcase containing 1 million beer that was suppose to be sent to Mekelle the following day.
Government authorities later understood from the books they inspected that this cash was used to pay VIS employees in Mekelle, rent and utilities of their office in Tigray and finance some humanitarian activities. Despite this, the accusation of suspected TPLF financing remained. How could the political police know of the existence of a briefcase of cash if not through a tip to the NGO VIS itself?”, says another humanitarian worker of the Amhara ethnic group who disagrees with own ethnic leaders policy.
The control of foreign NGOs is so strong that it prevents these humanitarian organizations from adequately assisting their employees of Tigrinya origin who have been forced to flee abroad and become refugees. A classic example is that of two Tigrinya refugee aid workers in Uganda who have not received assistance from their NGO operating in Ethiopia. These two young people were assisted thanks to a solidarity campaign promoted in Italy by the ONLUS Time For Africa.
While the control of foreign NGOs is relatively easy, that of the UN humanitarian agencies is more complicated. Expatriate staff enjoy diplomatic immunity. All UN agencies are exempt from government approval of expatriate CVs. Key posts are defined by headquarters in Geneva, Rome or New York and the automatic work permit is part of the framework agreements between the UN agencies and the Ethiopian government.
Given these difficulties dictated by the need for the United Nations to safeguard the independence of action of its humanitarian agencies, the regime limited itself to infiltrating Amhara collaborators in intermediate posts, meanly in the departments of logistics, administration, communication and technological assistance. These infiltrators have the task of controlling the activities of the agencies and of passing to the regime all internal documentation deemed of political interest as well as an extremely detailed picture of all commercial and financial transactions as well as the CVs of personnel of Tigrinya or Oromo origin in order to launch individual inquiries into their “loyalty to the democratic government of Abyi”.
According to the testimonies, the regime also uses beautiful collaborators loyal to him who infiltrates UN agencies with the task of seducing senior expatriate executives and obtaining useful and relevant information. Ethiopian Mata Hari seem to find great success with executives more likely to have romantic or sexual relationships with national staff. The regime is aware of the ease of obtaining confidential information inside the bedroom.
The power of control and influence of these infiltrators in UN humanitarian agencies is sporadically exposed through their illegal actions. In the first week of December, the FANO paramilitary militias seized 8 trucks belonging to UNHCR in Afar and Amhara to use them as troops. If they were attacked by the democratic forces TPLF or OLA the latter would have been accused of hostile and terrorist acts against humanitarian convoys. The trucks have been safely used despite the fact that the UNHCR headquarters in Addis Ababa have the ability to remotely shut off the fuel supply, the supply of current from the battery and the starting of the engine of these trucks.
The latest evidence of the power of infiltration in UN agencies, by chronology, is the vitriolic twitter directed against the South African journalist Martin Plaut sent on December 30 directly from the official twitter account of OCHA Ethiopia, UN Humanitarian Response — Humanitarian Coordination. A few hours later @OCHA_Ethiopia management officially sent an apology to the South African journalist. “We apologize for a previous tweet that was not authorized and has been removed. It does not reflect the views of OCHA Ethiopia ”.
The aggressive twitter directed at Martin Plaut caused a wave of international outrage. According to various experts, it would not be the first time that similar events have occurred within OCHA and other UN agencies. Faced with the dutiful and rattling apologies made by the management of these agencies, one wonders about their ability to control personnel who, with inappropriate actions, seriously jeopardize the political neutrality necessary to carry out humanitarian assistance.
“Surely the twitter addressed to Martin Plaut does not reflect the opinions of OCHA. Unfortunately, the author works for you since he has had access to the official account. Ispo facto his opinion risks being interpreted as the opinion of your agency if the author is not removed from his duties. Any impunity would be another indicator of the absence of accountability in United Nations agencies” tweets D.A. , an Ethiopian human rights activist
“It has now become difficult to operate independently in Ethiopia. The humanitarian intervention in support of civilians in Tigray and Oromia is automatically considered by the government as proof of support to TPLF and OLA rebels and, therefore, seriously hindered. Government infiltrators have created a poisonous climate of fear and suspicion. Many NGOs, including the one I work for, are in fact hostages of these infiltrators. A simple driver can inflict heavy damage on the NGO with a simple act of informing the government authorities.
It is commonplace to think that these infiltrators are exclusively of the Amhara ethnic group. In most cases this is true but the government also acts through Tigrinya and Oromo collaborators, probably blackmailing and threatening them and their families. These controls and spying activities are poisoning the internal climate of NGOs. A psychosis is developing towards our Amhara colleagues. An unwarranted psychosis, believe me. I have many Amhara friends who are in total disagreement with government policy but cannot freely express their views without being accused of being traitors and enemies of the Great Amhara. “ A humanitarian worker of Oromo origin explains.
The NGOs and UN Agencies infiltration, espionage and control project, which began in 2019, is part of the Nobel Peace Prize’s policy of replacing Tigrinya leadership in all sectors of Ethiopian society. In the same period, heavy purges of senior army and police officers were carried out, replaced by totally incompetent commanders but loyal to the Prosperity Party. Hence the origin of the military incapacity of the Ethiopian federal army which requires Arab or Eritrean mercenaries to have the possibility of obtaining victories on the ground.
The process of “rat extermination” (as the purge of the Tegaru from the Amhara leadership is called) also involved the public administration, banks, and the private sector. All original Tigray leaders have been replaced by Amhara leaders. The “rat extermination” took a horrible turn last September when the round-ups and mass deportations of Tegaru citizens to the concentration camps began in Addis Ababa. Most Tigray entrepreneurs have had their bank accounts frozen, business licenses revoked. Their businesses and shops confiscated along with their real estate assets and literally donated to faithful of the Prosperity Party or to members of the families of the Amhara leadership.
With the creation of urban paramilitary militias made up of unemployed Amhara youth, even ordinary Tegaru citizens are seen confiscating or stealing their poor properties. A simple statement is enough. Detractors are allowed to enter the residences of the Tegaru arrested for looting the fridge, TV, furniture: the spoils of war as a just reward for their loyalty. Now the same treatment is reserved for citizens of Oromo origin. By now it takes consistency and credibility the project to transform the capital Addis Ababa into a mono-ethnic metropolis inhabited only by Amhara.
