Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you.
I travelled to Ethiopia on two separate occasions last year to visit the war zones. I wrote articles and made video reports for two Ethiopian networks, Balageru TV and ARTS TV. It’s not enough to go look. You have to understand the background of what you’re looking at. The TPLF has routinely used its operatives as fixers for gullible Western journalists, showing them only what it wants to be seen and steering them to its narrative.
I can cite you the example of a British reporter for a major magazine who smugly flew off to Tigray and didn’t even bother to learn Ethiopia’s basic and essential history until after he returned to Europe. He advertised on Twitter for experts to help him.
I do have a reasonable understanding of the history. What I saw was appalling. Both the mainstream media and Amnesty International based their reportage of the Mai Kadra massacre in late 2020 on long-distance phone calls with sources they couldn’t possibly verify. They never visited the place. Virtually none of them went there.
My colleague, photojournalist Jemal Countess, was one of the first to go there, for Getty Images, and I later went there. My team interviewed survivors, a few of whom could name their assailants as agents of Samre, the TPLF youth wing.
During my trips, I visited IDP camps and spoke to witnesses and survivors. While western media keeps calling this the war in Tigray, and Tigray under siege, the TPLF were well beyond Tigray’s borders. I saw what the rebels did to the Amhara and Afar regions.
I toured a hospital where operating tables, ultrasound equipment, drugs and oxygen plants had been stolen and facilities vandalized. I saw a university where a whole COVID lab was stolen and every computer drive taken. The floors were landscapes of broken glass. I walked through a museum where TPLF soldiers had defecated on the floor and stolen priceless artifacts. I was there. People in Afar have been asking, “Why are aid trucks going through our region up to Mekelle, while the TPLF is allowed to harm and kill us?”
It is easy. It is too convenient to reflexively say, “Oh, it's both sides.” It isn’t. Given more time, I could lay out for you in meticulous detail the overwhelming bias shown for two years by the western media, but I want to bring to your attention the set of internal UN communications, leaked to me by sources, that I have included in my additional documents. There is also an additional document that I understand won't get to you until next week, which offers the hate speech of one of your speakers, Mukesh Kapila.
These UN documents show conclusively how UN staff have not only looked the other way as the TPLF committed war crimes, but have even lied to the world about their help in restoring telecoms to the Tigray region. I hope you will review them carefully.
I urge you to do the right thing by Ethiopia, and not let a terrorist group rewrite history and an ancient nation’s destiny.
Thank you.