Ethiopia. The government expels seven senior UN officials coherently to Genocide agenda in Tigray
The decision taken by the Amhara regime of Addis Ababa to expel seven serior UN Officials is an open challenge to the international community and to the United States which claims the horrible right to genocide against 7 million Ethiopians in action in Tigray.
The Prosperity Party’s Amhara government ordered the expulsion of seven senior UN officials, two days after the UN aid chief warned that northern Ethiopia is slipping into famine as the government is blocking aid deliveries to the region. On the list of expelled there are officials who coordinated relief efforts and raised the alarm on the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, the northern region that has been at war with the Ethiopian government for almost a year.
At least five million people in Tigray are in urgent need of help, but as of July 12, only 606 trucks have been allowed to enter the region, carrying barely a tenth of the supplies needed to avert a catastrophic famine, UN officials said. Aid workers accuse Ethiopian officials of using harassment and obstacles to limit the flow of aid in a region controlled by the regular Tigray army. Already 23 aid workers have been killed by government forces since November 2020, including a Spanish girl from MSF. The Italian NGO CISP also suffered the loss of a valid Ethiopian project leader.
Trucks full of food, medicine and fuel are blocked in the neighboring Afar region, which has been denied permission to move. Amhara officials forced 10 aid workers off a UN flight in Tigray on Thursday, saying they did not have the necessary documents, said a senior aid official who did not want to be identified to avoid reprisals.
To justify the expulsions, the Amhara government accused senior UN officials of meddling in the country’s internal affairs, declaring them “persona non grata”. The UN officials affected by the deportation measure are: Adele Khodr, UNICEF Representative in Ethiopia; Sonny Onyegbula, head of the monitoring, reporting and advocacy team for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; Kwesi Sansculotte, Councilor for Peace and Development, UNOCHA; Saeed Mohamoud Hersi, Deputy Head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia; Grant Leaity, Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia; Ghada Eltahir Mudawi, Acting Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia; Marcy Vigoda, Head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia. The expulsions are expected to be carried out in the next few days.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said he was “shocked” by the announcement and expressed his “full confidence” in the UN staff providing life-saving aid in Ethiopia. “The United States government unreservedly condemns the unprecedented decision taken by the Ethiopian government to expel the leadership of the United Nations humanitarian organizations,” said an official statement from the US State Department. The British government condemned the expulsions and asked the Amhara government to immediately revoke the decision.
The expulsion of senior officials is also linked to the denial of government charges against the TPLF, guilty of having seized humanitarian aid trucks that arrived in Tigray for military purposes. UN officials subjected to deportation three days ago said there was little evidence to support the government allegations. According to them, the TPLF would not have confiscated any trucks. The biggest problem, they said, is that ethnic Tigrinya truckers are reluctant to leave the region for fear of harassment or attack.
The expulsions, in addition to being a revenge against the statements made by UN officials on the policy of boycott of humanitarian aid adopted by the Prosperity Party regime, is also an open challenge to American President Joe Biden who has tightened sanctions against Ethiopia and Eritrea and created a legal commission that will examine the existence of a genocide policy against 7 million Ethiopian citizens residing in Tigray.
The spokesman for the Amhara government: Abiy Ahmed Ali, with this decision demonstrates his inability to react rationally to the growing international pressure that aims at the end of the civil war and the resumption of political dialogue between the parties involved. The only answers Abiy can conceive are: retaliation, revenge, anger, challenge and promise to annihilate the democratic forces of Tigray and Oromia.
An attitude clearly exposed by Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen during his speech at the UN General Assembly last week. Mekonnen denied the accusations made against the Amhara regime stating that they are the result of inventions by foreign enemies who want to denigrate the government of Ethiopian and destroy it. As a preamble to the current expulsions, Mekonnen during his speech accused foreign aid agencies of plotting against the Ethiopian government by inventing imaginary and horrible as false crimes. “We are almost convinced that humanitarian assistance is a pretext for advancing political considerations,” said Mekonnen to lay the foundations for expulsions.
Stephanie Tremblay, a UN spokesperson in New York who expressed Guterres’ reaction during the regular daily news briefing, said discussions are ongoing between Ethiopian and UN officials “at various levels” and stressed that their staff “has not yet left Ethiopia”. “We are really engaging with the government in the expectation that our colleagues can stay and continue their work in the country,” she said.
The expulsion of UN officials was preceded by the expulsion of the NGO Doctors Without Borders, Holland section and the Norwegian Refugee Council, both accused of arming the “terrorists” of Tigray. The Amhara regime has imposed a climate of terror on international NGOs by threatening expulsions if they express negative opinions or oppose the extermination policy aimed at Tigray by blocking humanitarian aid. Various NGOs, including the Italian ones, have preferred to shut themselves up in an inappropriate silence, in order not to suffer consequences that could compromise future funding in Ethiopia. A choice that risks favoring the business aspect of the humanitarian universe over the universal values of justice and respect for human rights.
In addition to the 60,000 Tegaru refugees in Sudan and the 5 million Tegaru at risk of starvation in Tigray, there are also 52,000 displaced persons in Afar and 163,000 in the Amhara region. The Prosperity Party government favors humanitarian assistance in Afar and Amhara by blocking it for Tigray. To this humanitarian catastrophe is added the one taking place in Oromia where the Amhara regime is carrying out numerous crimes against the population to eradicate the support of the freedom fighters of the Oromo Liberation Army.
By channeling all the financial resources to support the civil war in Tigray and Oromia, the Amhara regime is no longer able to intervene at the health level against the threats to the population. In addition to the Covid19 pandemic (totally out of control), a dangerous epidemic of the chijungunya virus is developing in the Dire Dawa, Somali and Afar regions. Cholera has reappeared in Oromia, mitigating dozens of victims. The Ministry of Health is unable to cope with these three epidemics due to lack of financial means.
On the official Ethiopian media and on social media, the watchword repeated over and over again is to exterminate the people of Tigray and suffocate the revolt in Oromia in a bloodbath. The incitement to genocide in Tigray has become commonplace and publicly exposed even by Protestant and Orthodox clerics of Amhara ethnic origin without any shame. A survey conducted by the US Embassy in Eritrea shows that the majority of pro-regime Ethiopian social media accounts are directly managed by the Eritrean government which has created tens of thousands of fake profiles of Ethiopian citizens. Names, photos and personal details of Ethiopian citizens to create these fake profiles would have been provided by the public communications company: Ethiotelecom.
The spokesman for the Amhara regime, Abiy announced the creation of a new government, with the aim of artificially strengthening the Prosperity Party’s control over Parliament and the country. Several foreign diplomats have doubts about the possibility of a ceasefire and the beginning of peace negotiations. Doubts are also harbored over the mediation of the African Union, entrusted to the questionable former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo who failed to mediate peace in Burundi in 2018.
Confirming these doubts are the statements of the spokesman Amhara. Abiy Ahmed Ali has publicly declared that a decisive and final attack will soon be launched against the TPLF and the OLA aimed to destroy the two “terrorist” organizations. Abiy has promised to take back Tigray in just 10 days.
In interviews with the American newspaper The New York Times, several aid workers in Ethiopia said they feared that the expulsions would have a chilling effect on their ability to maneuver in the country and to speak out. The boycott of humanitarian aid in Tigray is clearly placed on the genocidal agenda of an entire people.
