THE TRUTH ABOUT MAI-KADRA
Wondimu Mekonnen, UK, 08 January 2021
Hiram Warren Johnson is purported to have said: “The first
casualty when war comes is truth.” The Tigray Liberation front (TPLF) is
the best at the game of misinformation in the wars it has been waging since 1974.
Gullible journalists could easily be taken for a ride. The Morning Star
knowingly or unknowingly is the the latest victim.
History tells us there have been messengers
of justice to the persecuted and downtrodden mass. They taught us to stand up
for the rights of the poor, the marginalised and the disadvantaged. Many of my
generation read Morning Star because it promoted those ideals. I am truly shocked
to see the perpetrators had taken this amazing newspaper to mislead when they used
it as a platform to broadcast their lies and innuendoes under the title of “Ethiopia Accused of War Crimes in
Mai Kadra Massacre”[1],
reported by Steve Sweeney.
I thought this is not a genuine representation
of the Morning Star as we normally know it, but more like a dodgy social media piece
from the likes of the digital TPLF, also better known as the Tigrayan Peoples’
Looting Front. The whole story in the paper was contrary to the facts on the ground.
Such disinformation may temporarily confuse your readers but sooner or later
the truth will come out and when it does, it would be the Morning Star that
will loses credibility. The TPLF is at war. History tells us that it fights
dirty. It murders in cold blooded and blames the victim.
The ugly background of the TPLF
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is
a master of lies and deceit. To use more formal vocabulary, it is a crafty engineer
of disinformation and fake news with experience since its inception in 1974. The
TPLF is deadly narrow minded tribalists, worse than the genocide criminal Hutus
of Rwanda. Just a bit craftier.
The Tigray Liberation Front (TLF),
predecessor of the TPLF, shared the same values of Tigrayan hegemony over
Ethiopia. The two fronts who shared identical objectives, met to discuss the
modalities of their union, way back in 1974 and celebrated an agreement eating,
drinking and singing well into the night at a TPLF camp. As custom would have
it, TLF leaders retired to bed first as guests of the TPLF. All the leadership
of TPLF were then massacred in their beds, in cold blood. Almost the same fate happened
to the EPRP, an opposition group to the Dengue regime operating at Assimba, in Tigray
region during the same period.
Catalogue of deceit goes on. Journalist
Martin Plaut discovered, with the help of eyewitnesses and personalities, the
deceitful instructions of TPLF seniors in the years 1984/85. Cunning and extortionist,
TPLF approached Bob Geldof for a share of the funds mobilized by Band Aid to feed
a starving population in the territories it controlled. An entire
£25,000,000[2] was diverted to purchase arms and
raise interest in foreign banks for a start-up capital of the Endowment Fund
for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT), owned privately by TPLF leaders. Cash
payments intending to deliver sacks of grain invested instead in bags of sand facilitated
by Mr Gebremedhin Araya, posing as a Sudanese grain trader counting his money.
Some grains received from donor countries in kind were openly sold on the open Sudanese
market.
For the TPLF, lying is not considered as a
sin. It is rather a tactic to achieve its goals. For the TPLF, politics is a
game. At a game, any trick is allowed if one remains uncaught. The late PM Meles
Zenawi once said on the Parliament: “As long as you don’t get caught, stealing
is a job. Their main moto is defeating the enemy by any means necessary. So,
they lie between their teeth when it suits them. Gullible aspiring Western
journalists are ready to buy that. They sit back, laugh the white journalist and
move on to deceive another victim. Who would be at the receiving end when the
truth comes out? No! Not them.
Right now, they have managed to convince
score of journalists to echo their own version of stories contrary to the truth.
They are playing victims. The Morning Star is duped into believing them. The
TPLF laughs at you and goes looking for another victim elsewhere. They have
lots of money they looted from Ethiopia. They can pay anyone who is willing to
write their lies. The TPLF well knows it has lost the war it started on the
ground. Today, the founding father of TPLF, Sebat Nega had been captured, but
like Trump, Diaspora TPLF just went on saying “fake news!” While they are
denying, Makale, the capital city of Tigray went on celebrating this evening
with lightworks and gunshots, after the confirmation of the capture of the TPLF
Mafiosi God father. Its supporters residing abroad are working day and night to
win the propaganda war. What they don’t know is it is not going to bring the
terrorist backs to power. The TPLF is gone for good! Some journalists are
enriching themselves, at the risk of putting their credibility on the firing
line.
THE TRUTHS ABOUT MAI-KADRA
It appears that Steve Sweeney got his facts about Mai Kadra upside down. After igniting the conflict by massacring, the
restive Ethiopian Defence Force Northern Division, in Tigray, as reported by Sekoture Getachew[3], the TPLF spokesperson, who
was killed yesterday, on 07 January, trying to escape, their force marched and
crossed the border with the neighbouring region of Amhara. The objective was to
subjugate the unsuspecting Amharas within just less than a day, capture cities like
Gondar, Bahr Dar and Woldia then on the third day to capture Addis Ababa the
capital city, to topple the central Government of Ethiopia.
The TPLF underestimated the whole
scenario. The war adventurist plan backfired on it. It couldn’t overrun the
Amharas as it planned because the Amharas gallantly fought back. The Amhara
militia stopped them at the border. Then the army of the Ethiopian National
Defence force arrived next day from elsewhere to free the captive ENDF. The
joint force of Ethiopian Defence Force and the Amhara local militia was too
much for the miscalculated TPLF force to stand up against. They pushed the aggressors
back into the territories captured by the TPLF 29 years ago from the Amharas and
forcefully incorporated into the region of Tigray, that includes the town of
Mai-Kadra. The population of that part the country is composed of the
indigenous Amharas and late settler Tigrayans, to change the demography of the
occupied land. Regardless of the grievances and discrimination of the occupying
Tigrayan forces, the people used to live peacefully side by side until 09
November 2020.
The TPLF force was completely defeated,
many surrendered, some killed and those who ran for the lives fled the
battlefield, retreating to Mai-Kadra. ENDF and the Amharas militias pursued
them and Mai-Kadra was about to fall. Then the retreating army committed war
crime on civilians of non-Tigrayan origin. The local Tigrayan vigilante youth
called “Samri”, who knew who lived where in that small town, together with the
Tigrayan Special Force went door to door and massacred cowardly in cold blood 600
innocent civilians, belonging to Amhara ethnic
group in just few hours before the arrival of the National Army. The streets
were littered with dead bodies of innocent Amhara civilians. Since then two
more mass graves were discovered two weeks later, one containing 74 bodies and
another 56 bodies of the murdered Amharas by TPLF Special Force. What an irony
that Morning Star is telling us a diametrically opposite stories, unblinking,
yelling the victims were the perpetrators and the perpetrators were the victims.
This was like telling us the 25,000,000 Russians perished in the WWII were
Germans! No journalism ethics here at all.
Steve
Sweeney should have done his research well, before putting
pen to paper. Either he is ignorant of the facts or he is deliberately twisting
them to save the face of the criminals. Amnesty International[4] interviews had clearly reported the outcome of its investigation and
concluded convincingly the crime was committed by the TPLF retreating force and
the “Samri” vigilante youth. The survivors clearly described the perpetrators
of these crimes to be TPLF militias and Samri youth. Interviews with survivors
on Ethiopian Television in Amharic shows the victims corroborating the
version given to Amnesty International. There have also been reports that those
who committed these crimes, TPLF fighters, fled the scene changing their
uniforms into farmers clothes and fleeing to Sudan as "civilian refugees"
while they are the TPLF fighters. Now from there they are spreading this false allegation.
An independent Ethiopian Human Rights Commission also sent fact-finding mission to the
place and came back with the same conclusion as the Amnesty International[5]. Both group of residents, the Amharas and the Tigrayans were interviewed
and confirmed what had happened. Therefore, The Morning Star should travel to
the place and needs to investigate the matter if it is genuinely concerned. If
need be, they should join an independent group and those responsible should be
arrested under international arrest warrants and tried for war crimes against
civilians.
There is this picture used by the Guardian newspaper of 21 December 2020
to illustrate the deplorable situation of the so-called refugees but ended up misleading
its readers and the international community to reach homeless refugees watching
outdoor television.
A close look at the mentioned picture posted below reveals that there
are no women and children among the so-called refugees. How come? Who are they?
Perhaps Mai-Kadra mass murderers? May be TPLF Special Force who committed war
crimes, crossed the borders and are now telling their version of reversed story,
spreading disinformation through the likes of Steve Sweeney? All that is done with hope of securing undeserving sympathy
from the international community, to grant them asylum when they arrive in some
advanced Western countries.
The TPLF is no different from the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. They share
the same political ideology and brutality. TPLF has perfected its propaganda
machine, in lobbying adventurist journalists, and disseminating its
disinformation and fake news. This ruthless group need not be forgotten for
callous kidnapping of foreigners such as Sunday Times Reporter, Jon Swain[6], in 1976. You are dealing here not with an ordinary
manipulator, but masters of deception.
To enable the perpetrators escape
from being hunted down for war crimes, the TPLF supporters living in the
democratic world are currently actively engaged in echoing the disinformation. Though
the social media had been their playing field, they have elevated themselves to
the mainstream media. Morning Star is the latest victim of deception. Can you
save your reputation by sorting out your facts straight and reporting the
truth? You must not be the platform to spread such blatant lies.
Steve Sweeney wrote:
“The UN Office at Geneva (UNOG) says an independent probe
must take place to determine what took place in Tigray amid reports that
civilians were targeted and massacres took place during the operation which
started in November.”
Be
our guest. That is exactly what we need. Not only UNOG alone, but also African
Union, United National Human Rights Commission and European Human Rights
Commission should also send a joint investigative mission to Mai-Kadra, so that
the truth be revealed, for the perpetrators to be captured and faced justice. There
should be no safe place for war criminals to hide.
Morning
Star! The truth will set you free!
[2]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8535189.stm#:~:text=Millions%20of%20dollars%20in%20Western,weapons%2C%20a%20BBC%20investigation%20finds.&text=The%20CIA%2C%20in%20a%201985,aid%20money%20was%20being%20misused.
[4]
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/11/ethiopia-investigation-reveals-evidence-that-scores-of-civilians-were-killed-in-massacre-in-tigray-state/
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