When the world is ushering a
new year, celebrating the ending of a year of biblical calamities, Tigray will
be in pitch black darkness. Tigrayans will be suffocating under the alliance of
the iron boots of Isaias Afewerki, Abiy Ahmed and the Amhara chauvinists.
As if the recurring civilian killing in villages and towns of Tigray, bombing
of civilian targets, a widespread of rape and daily imprisonment of citizens as
weapons of war are not enough, the unholy alliance of the three are very much
determined to sentence Tigrayans to death by starvation. Abiy (and his
representative in Tigray) is pulling out every trick from the chronicle of
dictators to conceal his crimes against humanity from the public view.
According to United Nations
conservative estimates, there are 1.3 million Tigrayans displaced by this war
who are in need of emergency assistance. “
Some 2.3
million children in Tigray, Ethiopia, remain cut off from humanitarian
assistance amid continuing violence since the beginning of November.
”
This was a warning by the Executive Director of UNICEF, Henrietta Fore.
By now, the fate of such a vulnerable sector of the population, including
the elderly, is anybody’s guess.
Yesterday,
city dwellers of Mekelle were hoping to get access to withdraw money from some
of the banks around town after two months of closure. Sadly enough, they
rudely awakened to a sick joke of being told the banks are only opened to those
who could deposit money. The sudden closure of banks in Tigray for the last two
months has added to the widespread starvation and to the loss of human life.
In highly
ruralized societies like Tigray, researchers (such as Amartya Sen) have
identified the cause of starvation as being the inadequate command over
foodstuff. This is currently happening in Tigray due to mainly looting, burning
of crops and slaughtering animals by the invading armies of Isaias, Abiy and
the Amhara Fano. Thereby destroying the endowment of farmers. The second factor
is the dwindling sources of foodstuff coming from other regions and Abiy’s
blockage of safety nets provided by international assistance groups. These two
main factors coupled with the closure of banks and the immobility of people due
to violence surrounding areas are quickening the widespread starvation in Tigray.
It should be
noted here these acts are deliberately done by Abiy Ahmed and his imps running
rampant over the forces of well-meaning humanitarian organizations. To
put it another way, this war is a savage war imposed by strong men who are
itching for personal concentration of power in the region at any cost. Abiy,
Isaias and the Amhara Fano are operating as if they had received their
instruction and their historical compass, from the fascists of the world of the
1930’s and 1940’s. I am still stunningly in disbelief that the Abiy
regime deployed the flag-waving killers of the Amhara Fano and the Tigrgna
speaking Derg army (aka Isaias’ army) against innocent Tigrayan.
At the end let me note the
following. For some curious reasons, most of the Amhara elites have largely
bypassed the suffering of the Tigrayans. The consequence of this neglect or
silence has been the prevalence of an amazing set of cliches about the
country’s shared values and our willingness to live and let live. Suffice it
here to note the widespread indifference of Ethiopians to the ongoing suffering
of Tigrayans under the guise of “law enforcement operation” is bringing about
the collapse of “Ethiopianess” which brings nostalgic tears to the eyes of many
Tigrayans. The state of mind of Tigrayans is understandable.
Whatever biases I may have, I submit that the evidence is clear in the
role of Tigrayans in building the country from looking back at the great
distance all Ethiopians have traveled in their history. Given this history, Tigrayans
deserve better than they are treated now.