Mereja.Forum

[Zmeselo]

I'm laughing, hysterically!



The terror group's spokesperson just said, that they were in Alamata and Korem to allow Vodkachew Reda visit his family. Their mission has been accomplished and have now decided to retreat back to Mekelle.

[Abe Abraham]

[sesame]

You mean they paid hundreds, possibly thousands, of lives just for a photo-op? እዚኦም ኣይሓድጉን

[Zmeselo]

These terrorist junta worshippers, are shamelessly funny!

5 days ago:


Now:

[Zmeselo]

Wave of anger breaks out on Ethiopian Twitter over US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s report on genocide

Nigist Berta

https://addiszeybe.com/featured/addis-a ... n-genocide

July 15, 2021



Ethiopians have taken to Twitter to condemn US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Annual Report on Genocide and Cruelty which has lumped the East African country alongside China, Syria, Iran, Myanmar, and South Sudan.

The hashtag #BlinkenSoWoyane, which labels Blinken as a TPLF ally, has been trending on Twitter since the morning of July 15, 2021.

We will strive for change through diplomacy, foreign aid, fact-finding missions, funding, participatory support, and the like, and we will do our best to produce reports of coordinated global impact and response,

the US Secretary of State said.

However, Ethiopians have expressed their outrage by starting a Twitter campaign referring to the alleged atrocities committed against Ethiopians by the American government. One said the

American government is only concerned about the TPLF's alleged atrocities, ignoring the fact that they are the main cause of the whole mess.

The campaign was mounted under the hashtag: #BlinkenSoWoyane.



It was first started by Tamrat Negera, a well-known political analyst and founder of Terara Network. https://youtube.com/c/TeraraNetwork

Addis Zeybe asked him for an explanation. He explained:

I did not start a campaign denying the fact that the Ethiopian government is not innocent of this war. I have repeatedly referred to the faults of this government at different stages, and will always call them out for their faults.

But he argues the reports from Blinken and other US government officials are not credible, adding that they are untrue, falsified, and misrepresented by TPLF actors and unreliable witnesses across the country.

International news outlets, such as The New York Times and AP are publishing biased reports which overshadow the situation in Tigray denying facts on the ground, he claims.

It is ironic that these reports don't indicate that the collateral damage which happened right at the start of the war was the main cause was the TPLF,

he added.

Tamrat Negera’s first tweet of the campaign is:



Following Tamirat’s request, many tweets flooded the platform, which was satirical but directed different messages to the American state department.

The tweets included such remarks as:

#BlinkenSoWoyane he oversees the #childSoldiers recruitment program and says it is a great development

and

#BlinkenSoWoyane - he knows Ethiopian internal borders more than US_Mexican border.

Referring to the repeated statements by Blinken on the conflict in Tigray, many denounced the US government for interfering in the sovereignty of the nation.

We are an independent nation with the right to exercise our freedom and self-rule,

said one Twitter user which Addis Zeybe contacted via messages, who added:

Though we are economically poor, leave our matters for us.

The declarations fiercely criticizing the Ethiopian government began on May 15, 2021, with a press statement that stated:

There are numerous credible reports that armed forces are committing serious crimes against civilians in Tigray. In particular, the actions of the Eritrean and Amhara forces are deplorable.

Following the first, three further press statements were released by the secretary on May 23, 2021; July 6, 2021, and July 15, 2021. The May 21, 2021 statement stated:

Visa sanctions have been imposed on forces responsible for the Tigray crisis, including those of the Eritrean and Amhara regions.

We urge Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to pledge to completely withdraw Eritrean and Amhara forces from Tigray. Ethiopia's internal borders should not be changed in violation of the constitution

and

Report on Genocide and Violence Prevention

respectively.

Addis Zeybe has repeatedly contacted the US Embassy in Addis Ababa by telephone and email to inquire about the US government's response to these complaints, but is yet to receive a response.

War broke out in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in November 2020, between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)-led armed forces.

On 28 June 2021, ENDF unilaterally declared a ceasefire. However Tigrian forces continued the fighting to the bordering areas of the Amhara regional state, to regain territory in the war-torn region.


Nigist Berta is working as a reporter and content creator at Addis Zeybe, to explore her passion for storytelling. She has Bsc. in medical laboratories & BA in media and Communications.

[Zmeselo]

Child- killers!

[Zmeselo]

Dr Cover-up: Tedros Adhanom’s controversial journey to the WHO

1 May 2020

AVIJIT GOEL

https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/ ... 65493/?amp


Source: WHO

While much has been unflatteringly written about the extended silence of the beleaguered World Health Organization (WHO) in the current pandemic, and the current existential predicament it faces due to funding and support cuts, its notable contributions to global health cannot be ignored.

Since its inception, the WHO has to its large credit the successes of the battle against smallpox, reduction of TB and measles through mass vaccination programmes, and the near eradication of polio.

The WHO faces a crisis of credibility today. And while much can be blamed on its complex bureaucratic sloth, the one man at the centre of it—Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the director-general of the WHO—allegedly personifies the erosion in impartiality and rectitude expected from such a storied body.

As the world seethes at the WHO’s perceived partisanship and deliberate silence, it is important to segment the leader and the organisation for once- however Daedalian that might sound. As one delves into Tedros’s journey to the WHO, you are struck by how the mild-mannered Ethiopian leader might have some proverbial skeletons in the closet. A career politician with a carefully curated past who never let morality come in the way of political expediency, or a well-meaning man with unfortunate happenings under his command?

In understanding Tedros’s rise to head a global organisation, it is important to understand his origins and political choices early in life.

Origin story

Ethiopia is a beautiful country. One of the most rugged topographies in Africa, its rolling verdant hills, picturesque plateaus, massive lakes and the Blue Nile give it a certain geographical diversity and mystical élan, from the wet luxuriant savanna to the desert steppe.

One of the only African countries to pride itself at not being colonised by European powers (barring a brief five-year occupation by Italy before World War 2), Ethiopia was also one of the first independent nations to sign the Charter of the United Nations. At the forefront of Pan-African cooperation, it gave moral https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moral and material support to the decolonisation of Africa. No surprise then that the African Union headquarters sits in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city.

As with most of Africa, the country is very ethnically diverse, with differences primarily on linguistic categorisation. A mosaic of 100 languages that can mainly be classified into four groups, the key ethnicities of the country are Oromo, Amhara, Somali and Tigray, constituting more than 75 percent of the population.



Tedros was born in 1965 in Asmara, which became Eritrea’s capital after independence from Ethiopia in 1991, and grew up in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

An ethnic Tigray, he became a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an ethno-nationalistic movement to secure place for the Tigrays in national polity. TPLF has largely been in the seat of power (through a joint front), since overthrowing a regime perceived as being sympathetic to the Amhara ethnicity in 1991. Primarily, the Tigrays, https://www.britannica.com/place/Ethiop ... -languages a 6 percent constituent of the population of Ethiopia, hold most political power. https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/ ... my-protest

The better-known public alarms went off in 2017 when Tedros, soon after he was appointed the WHO chief, appointed Robert Mugabe, the much-maligned former Zimbabwean president, as a goodwill ambassador https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... ter-outcry to the WHO. Clearly a quid-pro-quo for an electoral favour earlier, even the strongest supporters of Tedros were taken aback at the brazenness of the decision. Several former and current WHO staff said privately they were appalled at Tedros’s “poor judgement” and “miscalculation”. These words are critical as they occur in recurring frequency in the grey legacy left behind by the man in his more than three-decade professional span.

Systematic discrimination

It is interesting to note that Tedros started his political career by aligning with the TPLF, a hard-left organisation that later became part of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition of left-wing parties that ruled Ethiopia until last year (TPLF was classified as a terrorist organisation in the Global terror database https://www.trackingterrorism.org/group ... front-tplf). According to one Ethiopian newspaper, Tedros was listed as the third most important member of the TPLF’s politburo standing committee.

As an important TPLF member, Tedros joined the Ethiopian health ministry and rose through the ranks to become the country’s health minister in 2005. During his tenure, which lasted until 2012, he was credited for work done on reducing rates of HIV, measles and malaria.

However, it was also during this time that strong allegations emerged of the TPLF engaging in

systematic discrimination

and human rights abuses

by refusing emergency healthcare to the Amhara ethnic group because of their affiliation with the opposition party.

In 2010, Human Rights Watch https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/10/19/eth ... repression wrote a report on how to aid in the form of food and fertiliser was withheld from local Amhara villagers.

Interviews by an observer group https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/10/19/eth ... repression in 2009 with several people across three regions of Ethiopia yielded widespread suppression of political dissent by conditioning access to essential government programs on food and health. The report issued by the Human Rights Watch was scathing of how Tedros’s government used donor-supported resources and aid as a tool to consolidate power.

Given the strong ethnic fissures between the Tigray and the Ahmara ethnicities, these allegations started gaining credence further as birth rates were recorded to be significantly lower in the Amhara region compared to other regions and two million Amhara people

“disappeared” from the subsequent population census.

Also, by the time Tedros left office as health minister, the Amhara region was severely underperforming in health indicators as compared to the Tigray region. The health coverage (physician to population ratio) https://www.ambapu.org/press-release/dr ... tolead-WHO was 5X apart in the two regions and infant mortality was vastly different.

If the times weren’t so grim, it would be laughable to think that a career politician, with allegations of discrimination in health provisions to his own countrymen would go on to lead the WHO, where universality and equality in healthcare are enshrined as core principles.

Covering up an epidemic

Going through Tedros’s resume, https://www.who.int/dg/election/cv-tedros-en.pdf a carefully curated document for his bid for the post of director general of the WHO, it is interesting to note that there is a suspiciously hasty mention of his time as Ethiopian health minister—the seven key years of his professional career as a health minister and the primary qualification for his bidding. Yet these seven years are condensed into three points qualifying a little more than a passing mention.

While there is well deserved credit for expanding health infrastructure (although geographically selective), and the work on reducing HIV and malaria mortality, there is a curious omission of the epidemic of cholera in his resume.

Digging a little deeper, it is evident that Tedros was on a campaign to rewrite his questionable past on this aspect. Three disastrous cholera outbreaks occurred in Ethiopia (2006, 2009, 2011) under this watch as health minister. The response under Tedros was to first rechristen the outbreak to something less damaging. So cholera was suddenly—and wrongly—classified as acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) in the outbreaks https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... 2/download in Ethiopia.

AWD is a potentially fatal condition caused by water infected with the vibrio cholera bacterium. Everywhere else in the world it is simply called cholera. But not in Ethiopia, where international humanitarian organisations privately admitted that they were only allowed to call it AWD and are not permitted to publish the number of people affected.

Tedros was apparently concerned about the international impact if news of a significant cholera outbreak were to get out, even though the disease is not unusual in East Africa.

But cholera bacteria were found in samples tested by external experts. As soon as severe diarrhoea began appearing in neighbouring countries, the cause was identified as cholera.

Somalia, which borders Ethiopia, battled a severe outbreak and a vaccine was deployed. However, the vaccine could not be released for Ethiopia without the government confirming that it was cholera.

Not only was there a strong allegation of Tedros covering up three cholera epidemics in his country and thus endangering surrounding states, he supposedly did this just to avoid international embarrassment. The terminology affected whether outside health organisations would marshal resources to fight an outbreak of the deadly bacteria.

A group of American doctors wrote https://southsudannewsagency.org/index. ... anization/ to Tedros in 2017 saying,

Your silence about what is clearly a massive cholera epidemic in Sudan daily becomes more reprehensible.

The inevitable history that will be written of this cholera epidemic will surely cast you in an unforgiving light,

they wrote, adding that Tedros was

fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying that continues to spread in East Africa.

Sounds familiar?

The views expressed above belong to the author(s).