Whataboutism and Bothsidesism in the War on Tigray
Posted: 31 Oct 2021, 14:37
By Medhanie Gaim and Temesgen Kahsay
It is now close to a year since the war on Tigray started. The Ethiopian and Eritrean governments have mobilized their armies and affiliated militias and regional forces to commit massacres, weaponized rape, displacement, ethnic cleansing, and destruction of critical infrastructure and heritage sites. Thousands have been massacred; hundreds of women and children have been raped; priests and nuns have been killed; sacred places have been desecrated, and hospitals and schools have been vandalized.
With the significant exception of the western part that has become a site of extraordinary cruelty and atrocity, a large part of Tigray’s territory has been liberated, since the end of June 2021. However, despite the unilateral ceasefire declared by the Ethiopian government at that time, Tigray remains under siege. Food aid and vital supplies have been largely prevented from entering the region subjecting 90% of the Tigrayan population to man-made famine and death by starvation. Recently reports are emerging of deaths from hunger, and researchers at Ghent University predict hundreds of deaths per day. To break the humanitarian blockade that is orchestrating what the United Nations has recognized to be the worst famine the world has seen in a decade, the Tigrayan forces have had no choice but to push the battlefronts forward to the Amhara and Afar regions.
Amidst this ongoing crisis as well as the large catalog of human rights violations and war crimes that have thus far characterized the war on Tigray, a notable tragedy has been the whataboutism and bothsidesism that have defined both the domestic and the international response. These responses are permeated by logical inconsistencies and fallacies that either deny, deflect or justify outright the multifaceted violence.
Whataboutism: An Ethiopian trope par excellence
The most superficial observer would recognize “whataboutism” as a mainstay of discourses surrounding the war on Tigray. One instance in which this has been revealed to an extraordinary degree is in responses to reports of the industrial scale to which sexual violence was weaponized against the women and children of Tigray. At the time when reports of the brutal sexual atrocities committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops emerged, journalists, researchers, and government officials almost immediately resorted to pointing to the alleged “prevalence” of rape in the culture and other contextually irrelevant statistics to distract from the issue. This inability to call out and demand accountability from the perpetrators was also reflected by PM Abiy Ahmed, who in a speech to the Ethiopian parliament, sought to minimize the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) committed by his soldiers by presenting it as something inconsequential when compared to “how about our soldiers who were struck by a bayonet?”.
The whataboutism we observe currently in Ethiopia is not limited to responses to SGBV. Other egregious mass crimes like massacres or man-made famine are similarly dismissed and explained away. An almost routine response in this regard has been raising any human rights violations committed during the long tenure of the EPRDF (including crimes in which many of those occupying the helms of power currently are fully culpable) to justify the ongoing atrocities in Tigray.
The so-called “27 years of darkness” used to designate the period of EPRDF rule is invariably used as a blanket excuse for the collective callousness of the Ethiopian elite to atrocities that have shocked and alarmed the rest of the world. This entirely false and logically untenable equivalence nonetheless is also the primary rationale for the academic, media, religious and other elite who have been the architects and cheerleaders of the increasingly catastrophic war and ongoing genocide.
For example, religious leaders, who would have been expected to preach peace but who instead blessed the war, engaged in this type of whataboutism . . . .
Continue reading https://www.tghat.com/2021/10/27/whatab ... on-tigray/
It is now close to a year since the war on Tigray started. The Ethiopian and Eritrean governments have mobilized their armies and affiliated militias and regional forces to commit massacres, weaponized rape, displacement, ethnic cleansing, and destruction of critical infrastructure and heritage sites. Thousands have been massacred; hundreds of women and children have been raped; priests and nuns have been killed; sacred places have been desecrated, and hospitals and schools have been vandalized.
With the significant exception of the western part that has become a site of extraordinary cruelty and atrocity, a large part of Tigray’s territory has been liberated, since the end of June 2021. However, despite the unilateral ceasefire declared by the Ethiopian government at that time, Tigray remains under siege. Food aid and vital supplies have been largely prevented from entering the region subjecting 90% of the Tigrayan population to man-made famine and death by starvation. Recently reports are emerging of deaths from hunger, and researchers at Ghent University predict hundreds of deaths per day. To break the humanitarian blockade that is orchestrating what the United Nations has recognized to be the worst famine the world has seen in a decade, the Tigrayan forces have had no choice but to push the battlefronts forward to the Amhara and Afar regions.
Amidst this ongoing crisis as well as the large catalog of human rights violations and war crimes that have thus far characterized the war on Tigray, a notable tragedy has been the whataboutism and bothsidesism that have defined both the domestic and the international response. These responses are permeated by logical inconsistencies and fallacies that either deny, deflect or justify outright the multifaceted violence.
Whataboutism: An Ethiopian trope par excellence
The most superficial observer would recognize “whataboutism” as a mainstay of discourses surrounding the war on Tigray. One instance in which this has been revealed to an extraordinary degree is in responses to reports of the industrial scale to which sexual violence was weaponized against the women and children of Tigray. At the time when reports of the brutal sexual atrocities committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops emerged, journalists, researchers, and government officials almost immediately resorted to pointing to the alleged “prevalence” of rape in the culture and other contextually irrelevant statistics to distract from the issue. This inability to call out and demand accountability from the perpetrators was also reflected by PM Abiy Ahmed, who in a speech to the Ethiopian parliament, sought to minimize the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) committed by his soldiers by presenting it as something inconsequential when compared to “how about our soldiers who were struck by a bayonet?”.
The whataboutism we observe currently in Ethiopia is not limited to responses to SGBV. Other egregious mass crimes like massacres or man-made famine are similarly dismissed and explained away. An almost routine response in this regard has been raising any human rights violations committed during the long tenure of the EPRDF (including crimes in which many of those occupying the helms of power currently are fully culpable) to justify the ongoing atrocities in Tigray.
The so-called “27 years of darkness” used to designate the period of EPRDF rule is invariably used as a blanket excuse for the collective callousness of the Ethiopian elite to atrocities that have shocked and alarmed the rest of the world. This entirely false and logically untenable equivalence nonetheless is also the primary rationale for the academic, media, religious and other elite who have been the architects and cheerleaders of the increasingly catastrophic war and ongoing genocide.
For example, religious leaders, who would have been expected to preach peace but who instead blessed the war, engaged in this type of whataboutism . . . .
Continue reading https://www.tghat.com/2021/10/27/whatab ... on-tigray/