Acknowledgment: Mesfin Tadesse is the main author of this post.

Previous Letters to Leaders

The following is excerpts from letters to world leaders by Ethiopians in 2021. This was at the height of wars waged upon Ethiopia by The Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF).

An 8-year-old Amhara girl wrote to the Vatican pope, ‘Where are you? Children are dying.’

A 5-year-old boy wrote to US President Biden, begging for peace. In his “White Post for White House” letter, he said, ‘Hundreds of thousands of children will never have proper burials.’

They received no reply; nor did the 105-year-old, who wrote to world leaders Joe Biden and Boris Johnson – in English, which would have been at least his 4th language following Amharic, Ge’ez and Hebrew.

Early in 2021, foreign mercenaries tried to destroy the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Defence Construction. They attempted to assassinate Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Interior Minister. He oversaw the capture of TPLF war criminals. Washington diaspora wrote about the attacks to the United Nations. It never replied to them.

In 2021, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wrote an open letter to US President Joe Biden about the criminal enterprise and unlawful junta that is the TPLF and the suffering it is causing his people. He asked for the recognition due to his lawfully elected government [1].

In 2022, he is still waiting for an answer. We could appeal to our national leaders that they all ask the US President to reply. I tried in September 2021 and was ignored by the former Australian prime minister. It is better when more people ask. A simple letter is all that it takes – many times over.

Your suggestions would be welcome in the Comments, below. (I protect your privacy.)

An Open Letter to the World About Ethiopia

Oppose Forced Negotiation with Terrorists

This week, the US and UN Security Council continue to force Ethiopia to negotiate with terrorists. Otherwise, they might invade or impose more crippling economic sanctions. TPLF terrorists were so incompetent that their spokesperson presented at African Union peace talks in Johannesburg without an agenda; and he spent the 1^st day in the smallest room having devoured certain food the previous day. Now, American ‘observers’ have demanded a 3-day recess, in the same hotel as TPLF representatives.

Given only 2 minutes, Ethiopia’s UN ambassador was heckled by a journalist and said Italian fascists did worse to Emperor Haile Selassie I during his 1936 address to the UN General Assembly. Ethiopia asked TPLF to lay down arms and face criminal courts without the presence of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and US Aid: fascists, laboratory made. He declared that Ethiopia’s spirit would never die whatever America and Europe did to her.

Never has America had to negotiate with terrorists; but it now backs 1 of the vilest groups in history. Ethiopians call it junta because the group is trying to seize power by force. It started out as rebels in the 1980s and took over Ethiopia thanks to enormous foreign backing. They never were lawfully elected, unlike the current Ethiopian government of Abiy Ahmed.

Background to TPLF War

The West portrays the rebels as persecuted innocents, but they had their chance at government 1991–2018. For 27 years, their despotic government destroyed Ethiopians, torturing my journalist brother-in-law and countless others. Foreigners knew, laughing when prisoners pleaded for help. The junta also conscripted youth for profit, including another brother-in-law, who died aged 37.

On November 03, 2020, the junta started a series of wars in northern Ethiopia. Its forces laid waste to districts of Tigray, Welo, Afar and parts of Gondar. (Here is a map of Ethiopia.) They caused the displacement of up to 8 million civilians and the death of millions. More than 500,000 Ethiopians died in the first 9 months, November 2020–July 2021.

In November 2020, mass graves in Mai Kadra, Tigray contained the bodies of 70,000 Amhara [2]. Victims included the elderly, pregnant women and babies. Most were Orthodox, but Christians and Muslims were slaughtered with them [3]. ‘A gift from the West,’ was spray-painted on some bodies. An Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation news report on November 20, 2021 documented this, but the video soon vanished. At Welkait and Humera in the northwest, defence forces found more mass graves of Amhara [4].

By 2021, 1.1 million children—chiefly Amhara—faced starvation and this went unreported outside Ethiopia. Then followed starvation in Tigray, reported by the West.

Before his passing in 2021, my 86-year-old friend cried at this loss of life. He said, ‘Never have I seen such a coalition against Ethiopia.’

Universities Attacked

The junta destroys hope. In 2021 at Weldiya University in Welo, thugs burned books. Then they called the names of Amhara students, none seen again. They did this over and over. A European medical teacher was flying out. Female students huddled in a room begged her to take the youngest. The woman replied, ‘Look at who you are.’ Afterwards, one survivor told Ethiopian reporters that he could not go on.

Read this report by Erkihun Engida, Alemayehu: “The Scene of Wollo University During the Invasion of TPLF Led Force”. Then ask your leaders to read it and see if they still support TPLF [5]. The PDF may be slow to access, but it is worth obtaining. Notes and references with links to articles and videos are below.

Let Ethiopia and other African countries use their wisdom in sorting out their problems – even though others contributed to them.

Disarm the TPLF

An Ethiopian citizen told me, ‘In other countries, the majority bullies the minority. In Ethiopia, it is the other way round.’ The junta is part of a minority group [6].

In May 2021, junta broke a ceasefire and invaded neighbouring districts Afar and Welo. Thugs killed 3,000 Amhara people on August 26. This was not hot news in the West, nor for UNHCR. 1,200 more died there on August 28. TPLF were routed from Afar; fleeing, they killed 6-month-old babies on their mothers’ backs. The report on this by Zehabesha Official onSeptember 07, 2021 is now unavailable.

TPLF returned in 2022 and the blood of more Ethiopians is now on America’s hands; Egypt’s too. Recruiters in Sudanese refugee camps were Egyptian; it armed them and sent in armaments by air. [7] In 2022 in Raya in Tigray, a European mercenary ordered thugs to cut off the penises of Orthodox boys. Mussolini’s fascists did so 1935–41. Did anti-Semitic Europeans encourage this?

Ethiopians Prefer Peace

People of Addis Ababa do not want to fight Tigray people nor anybody else. Ethiopians pioneered diplomacy [8]. I was in Addis Ababa; it was peaceful where there was no TPLF, although not as peaceful as a monastery [9]. One night, TPLF sympathisers tried to steal the ATM below my hotel room. On their own, they failed.

In the Republic of Sudan, in a UNHCR camp, 45,000 Ethiopian refugees were taught to shoot 8 hours a day. The European field officer did not notice gunfire, saying, ‘Shots are always heard in Africa.’ In Addis Ababa for 16 months, I heard only 4 volleys during a brief riot.

US has been side by side with the terrorists since 2020 [10]. The world needs to get behind the government of Ethiopia and disarm the TPLF [11].

Stop Foreign Support of Rebels

Instead of trying to return rebels to power, Canadian author Jeff Pearce says that the US should cooperate with the potential economic powerhouse that is Ethiopia with its more than 120 million [12]. US President Joe Biden’s policy on the Horn of Africa is misguided and a colonialist mindset dominates among Caucasians [13].

Countries like the US and Canada, and their allies, smuggle TPLF leaders to asylum [14]. Their rich life is funded by theft from Ethiopians that totalled more than 40 billion dollars in 30 years [15]. Stop safe havens for war criminals.

In August 2022, junta stole 570,000 litres of fuel and tankers from World Food Programme, which barely reacted. Declaring Amhara to be their enemy, thugs drove fast into the district of Gondar and again into Welo and Afar [16].

Foreign non-government organisations (NGOs) showered TPLF with Ethiopian birr. Ethiopians stopped an NGO ambulance carrying more than 1 million USD. Such aid is economic warfare.

In Tigray, a cargo aeroplane crashed. It was smuggling weapons [17]. Defence forces shot down a Republic of Sudanese helicopter that transported 5 military personnel. It would have carried missiles. BBC reported this as an aeroplane, a civilian transport, but it was inside Ethiopian borders after the Republic of Sudan, UK and Egypt had all declared war upon Ethiopia [18]. Stop arming the TPLF.

Know the True Culture

Contrary to messages in the popular press, the government of Ethiopia is not deliberately starving the innocent people of Tigray. In 2021, I witnessed the departure of the first of more than 800 truckloads of food for Tigray. All vanished. Surviving drivers told of TPLF forcing them to drive rebels and their loot. Some suicided. CNN, BBC: how did you report this [19]?

Ethiopians respect women, children and the elderly; the junta does not. It conscripted the people of Tigray—Ethiopian brothers and sisters—including children. In 2021, UK media outlets applauded junta child conscripts that the unofficial coalition against Ethiopia recruited in UN refugee camps. They called boys and girls—12 years or younger—heroes; the poor little kids dragged their heavy guns on the ground [20].

In 2022, it stripped Tigray women naked, forcing them into the front and made the elderly fight. No true Ethiopian soldier can bear this. During past wars in Eritrea, some suicided rather than shoot women, children and the elderly. But Shabiya and TPLF were behind.

Do you know how an Ethiopian soldier graduates? Shivering or sweating, each youth holds the Ethiopian flag in their right hand and a knife in the left. Biting the blade, they vow to support any nation as needed and to never abuse the rights of any woman or child via the weapon in their hand.

Foreign recruiters trained TPLF to gang rape in the most injurious manner possible. Said a group to their 86-year-old female monk victim, ‘We were trained to do this to destroy your morale.’ Recently, Western officials and news reporters insulted honourable Ethiopian men by alleging that government soldiers habitually committed gang rape in Tigray. Do not buy into this lie. Indiscriminate killing and rape has been a junta weapon of war against Amhara and Afar people.

End Sanctions Against Ethiopia

A geological survey of the mountains near Lalibela in Welo revealed that they contain uranium, titanium and tantalum. This a prize for TPLF allies. For minerals, they would sacrifice the UNESCO-listed site of the Lalibela Rock-Hewn Monasteries. Ethiopia is the engine of the Horn of Africa. For this reason alone, her people pay.

A Yeneta Brief video on August 03, 2021 of Siyum speaking of the US using hunger as a weapon is now unavailable. Amhara farmers are productive. By attacking those communities, first in Tigray and then in Amhara, it is the junta that created food insecurity – not the Ethiopian government.

The prime minister says that action against TPLF is not against the Tigray region. Members of every religion prayed together at Genna 2017 when I visited Aksum. However, in Mekele, Tigray, TPLF banned mothers from wearing black, mourning their conscripted children and dressing in traditional yagerlibs. Tigray people identify as Ethiopian. Ethnic warfare is a myth.

Because Ethiopian government forces are defeating the TPLF, the US and allies wish to escalate their weakening of Ethiopia as a state while impoverishing her people through sanctions [21].

End Sanctions Now

In 2020 & 2021, homeless boys and girls were usually under 15. There were easily 85,000 in Addis Ababa alone. The former TPLF government had a quick solution. When the African Union held its meetings, it would round them up at midnight from under bridges and in ghettos, to dump them in the bush 100 kilometres away.

While stranded in Ethiopia, we gave exercise books and pens to children impoverished by Western sanctions. They ran to show their mothers, hungry to learn. Ethiopian youth deserve a future. End sanctions now.

Support Ethiopia

The world’s citizens should not tolerate their own small governments running behind the US, UK, France and Germany when they gang together to bully countries like Ethiopia. Shame on you Australia, Ireland and Denmark for October’s show of support to the UN Security Council when it threatened further sanctions. Remember Emperor Menelik II and Emperor Haile Selassie I and their multiple kindnesses towards Australia, Ireland and others?

We must now show loyalty to Ethiopia, a country that has never invaded another and that prays for the world. I ask that the Australian government retracts its statement of support for sanctions against Ethiopia and apologise to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister.

Citizens of the world, request the following of your leaders:

• universal recognition of and support for the lawfully elected government of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia
• no forced negotiation with terrorists
• leaving Ethiopia in peace to sort out her problems
• disarming the criminal TPLF
• cessation of support for the rebels
• knowledge of the true culture of Ethiopians
• an end to economic sanctions against Ethiopia

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