Editor’s note : Editor of Addis Standard Tsedale Lemma published an opinion piece on The New York Times on Wednesday. It is about the existing situation in Ethiopia. Many Ethiopians on social media tend to think that her article is misleading. The following article is from Journalist and activist Abebe Gellaw. He published it on his facebook page on Wednesday.
Abebe Gellaw
November 12, 2020
I hope this open note finds you in good health. I initially wanted to drop you a private message. Having second thoughts, I changed my plan given the circumstances. This is because the matters I want to raise are in the public sphere already in the form of an article you just published in the New York Times, “What’s Happening in Ethiopia Is a Tragedy.”
While I appreciate your effort to inform the international community on current developments in our country, the article reads more like a TPLF propaganda pamphlet than a piece written by someone who claims to be a well-informed journalist. In sum, you claimed that only one person was to take the blame for the current escalations and whatever has gone wrong in the last two years.
You wrote: “Mr. Abiy overreached. His first cardinal mistake was to sideline the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, for decades the most powerful political force in the country, in the peace he brokered between Ethiopia and Eritrea. By pushing the Tigrayan leadership aside as he sealed his signature achievement, Mr. Abiy made clear the limits to his talk of unity.”
You are entitled to your opinion, but not to your own fact. If what you are saying is true, the TPLF is a victim of Mr. Abiy’s machinations. Far from it, we the people of Ethiopia, have been victims of TPLF’s misrule, domination, exploitation, discrimination, gross human rights violations, and massive corruption, to say the least, for nearly three decades. Even if this glaring fact is the very reason why we needed a radical change in the first place, you claimed that the TPLF was sidelined. Contrary to your claims, TPLF has been throwing every spanner at its disposal to undermine and reverse the reform and wreak havoc across Ethiopia in its futile bid to retake the power and privilege it has lost.
You presented the TPLF as a blameless victim and portrayed the Prime Minister as guilty of waging a war of “overreaction” and acting more like “a commander in chief than a prime minister.” What else did you expect him to be when the army under his command came under attack by enemy forces? The tragedy is that the enemy did not come from afar. It came from your fictional victim called the TPLF, a formidable terrorist group whose history is checkered with betrayal, brutality, destruction and greed. Did you expect the Prime Minister to kneel down under the feet of the TPLF and beg for mercy on behalf of the army and the nation? It seems downright naïve to make such a preposterous claim.
In case you do not know, you need to be informed that the Prime Minister is the commander in chief, not TPLF’s private chef, as they would have liked him to be just like his predecessor. While Mr. Abiy made his own share of missteps in the last two years, his achievements and failures need to be weighed in light of the enormous challenges he has faced from powerful adversaries such as the TPLF.
In conclusion, please stop misinforming the international community at this critical juncture in our history ostensibly because your political idols like Jawar Muhammed have fallen into their own traps. No matter how angry and frustrated you could be, going to great lengths to distort and misrepresent the facts on the ground is a shameful disservice to journalism.
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May the eyes of Tsedale be opened
It is very sad to see some biased foreign journalists misled the world about the current situation of Ethiopia and all through history not to stand with the true cause of Ethiopia.
There were honest media people who stood with Ethiopia while all the known western media ignored Ethiopian invasion by facist Italy at first.Later when the same facist attacked them all were condemenining the attack .
Same it true big media like CNN ignored our Ethiopian big demonstration when we gathered in front of CNN office at Atlant GA during our North America sport festival in 2005 to denounce the election fraud and killing of demonstrators by TPLF while the shameful CNN and others were silent on Ethiopia as that renegade Meles Zenawi was their paid servant.
This time while the truth about the 27 years abuse and oppression of TPLF is very clear and the recent back stabbing of TPLF against our national defence confessed by TPLF spokes person Sekuture. Tsedale’s criticism of the legitimate actions to defend our sovereignty and protection of hundred thousands of Ethiopians by TPLF is with out any acceptable evidence rather it is an attack on the dignity of all Ethiopians.
Tsedale get mind and use your pen for the justice of those massacred abuse Ethiopians by the eval TPLF.
TPLF that attacks the human right of Ethiopian people overthrown by popular movement is responsible for all the genocide going on in many marts of Ethiopia.To regain that same oppression,TPLF is waging a war against the request of elders and religious leaders of Ethiopia. Just look at the following links to get facts. cholarlycommons.law.case.edu/jil/vol36/iss1/8/ ena.et/en/?p=18355 foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/19/tigray-tplf-war-against-ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-isnt-about-autonomy-its-about-economic-power/ The TPLF group has been corrupting all the economic and political positions of Ethiopia and the government of this party was sending the children and families of their party members and others who are misinforming the western media from time to time.
Please,correct your wrong report and get the real facts about the human crime on Ethiopian people committed by the TPLF brutal leaders and members.
Ethiopian Community
Omaha NE USA