Dear Mehdi Hasan,
We tuned in to your latest Head-to-Head interview with Getachew Reda—the former TPLF rebel leader who is now, astonishingly, packaged as a wise peacemaker and close ally of Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian dictator with real anticipation. That anticipation quickly turned into disbelief.
The conclusions one could draw about the Amhara people after watching the interview, combined with your hand-picked panel of guests who have spent years openly demonizing Ethiopia and the Amhara in particular, forced us to break our silence. The main problem with your program was your attempt to address a huge issue using the very same narrative pushed by the people who created it. It is our strong belief that you cannot address the current problems in Ethiopia without examining their historical roots, what has happened in the past seven years, and where things stand today.
Background
It is with great sadness that we must point out that the root of every evil occurring in the country dates back to the unfounded and totally false historical narrative which was partly inherited from Italian colonizers—that Tigrayan and Oromo political elites have pushed against the Amhara people. These groups based their entire political discourse and ideologies on accusing the Amhara of a non-existent past domination. Let us try to substantiate our claims with some examples.
- The TPLF’s founding Manifesto (February 1976, published 1977) does not merely criticize the Amhara; it officially designates Amharas as the “mortal enemy of the Tigrayan people” and declares that the Amhara must be “denied any rest” until Tigray achieves total political and economic domination. Unfortunately, this single sentence became the ideological fuel for a 17-year guerrilla war and 27 years of tyrannical minority rule (1991–2018).
- You allowed Getachew Reda to repeat, unchallenged, the foundational TPLF lie: that Tigrayans “fought Amhara domination under the Derg.” This is historical fraud. The Derg (1974–1991) was an overwhelmingly Oromo-led Marxist-military dictatorship:
- Chairman & Head of State: Mengistu Haile Mariam – Oromo
- Vice Chairman: Colonel Teka Tulu – Oromo
- Chief of Armed Forces: General Tesfaye Gebre Kidan – Oromo
- Head of Security & Red Terror apparatus: Tesfaye Wolde Selassie – Welayita
- Most of the Derg’s central committee and killing squads – Oromo and Eritrean
In fact, that same regime began its reign by massacring Amhara intellectuals, students, and members of the old imperial elite within weeks of seizing power. The Amhara were not the oppressors of the Derg era—they were its first and most systematic victims.
- After overthrowing the Derg in 1991, the TPLF illegally annexed fertile Amhara lands—Welkait, Tsegede, Tselemti, Humera, and Raya—territories that had never belonged to Tigray on any recorded Ethiopian or European map before 1991—and rebranded them as Western and Southern Tigray. The inhabitants are Amhara by blood, language, culture, and centuries of documentation. The TPLF simply erased their identity by force, invented the terms “Western Tigray” and “Southern Tigray,” and administered the areas as colonies. Especially in the areas it renamed Western Tigray, hundreds of thousands of Amharas were massacred and an ethnic cleansing of biblical proportions took place. Mass graves and survivor testimonies are available for anyone who genuinely wants to understand the facts. It was against this backdrop of misery and suffering that Amhara patriots such as Colonel Demeke Zewdu and other Welkait Identity Committee members came forward to fight for their history, identity, and homeland. They spent decades peacefully demanding the restoration of their homeland and suffered greatly for the Amhara cause. Therefore, the dramatic way in which you tried to portray Demeke Zewdu as a person with Tigrayan blood is an injustice to truth and blatantly biased.
Dear Mehdi,
You are one of the most influential journalists in the world. When you give an unchallenged microphone to a man whose organization once declared an entire people its “mortal enemy,” and then echo his distorted version of history, you do not merely report—you become an instrument of the very propaganda that has justified ethnic cleansing in the Welkait, Tselemti, Tegede, and Setit-Humera zones of the Amhara people.
The Amhara cause is not chauvinism. It is a desperate struggle of a people who have been lied about, dispossessed, massacred in Oromia and Tigray, and portrayed as the eternal villain of Ethiopian history—yet still refuse to vanish.
We ask only this: hold the Amhara to the same moral and historical standard you would apply to any other people fighting dispossession and genocide. Stop laundering the poison of the 1976 TPLF Manifesto as legitimate history. Ethiopia will never heal until the truth is spoken without fear, favor, or selective amnesia.
How Ethiopia’s 2020 War Began—and the Civilians Erased From Its Story:
The events that sparked Ethiopia’s civil war are not in dispute. Before dawn on 4 November 2020, TPLF forces attacked several Ethiopian National Defense Force bases in the Northern Command, killing soldiers and seizing heavy weapons. The federal government framed its response as a security operation to restore order, especially after TDF rockets struck Bahir Dar, Gondar, and Asmara.
By mid-2021, after TDF fighters retook Mekelle, the conflict shifted into Amhara and Afar—where some of the war’s deadliest episodes unfolded.
A Wave of Killings in Amhara
Mai-Kadra.
Investigations by Amnesty International, a UN–EHRC joint team, and Reuters found that more than 1,500 Amhara civilians were killed on 9–10 November 2020. Witnesses described TPLF-aligned Samri youth and local security forces going door to door, checking identity cards, and executing Amharas. The organization and scale of the killings point to coordinated involvement by TPLF structures.
Chenna, Kobo, Kombolcha:
Amnesty International and Reuters documented similar patterns as TDF fighters pushed south:
• In Chenna, 120–200 civilians were executed.
• In Kobo, unarmed men were lined up and shot in revenge killings.
• In Kombolcha, fighters killed more than 100 young men and looted humanitarian warehouses.
These are among the most thoroughly verified atrocities of the war.
Systematic Sexual Violence
Amnesty International and Al Jazeera reported widespread sexual violence by TDF fighters in Amhara towns, including Nifas Mewcha. Survivors described gang rapes and assaults intended to terrorize communities viewed as adversaries—accounts largely absent from the political narratives shaping the conflict.
A Region Overlooked in the War’s Aftermath
The scale of destruction in Amhara is severe. The Amhara Association of America documented more than 3,300 civilians killed and over 7,000 serious violations, with millions displaced. UNICEF reported more than 6,400 damaged schools, most of them in Amhara and Afar. The ICRC confirmed hospitals looted or destroyed across both regions.
Federal Responsibility
The federal government’s actions—and inaction—also shaped the outcome. In 2021, Ethiopian forces withdrew from large parts of Amhara, leaving towns exposed as TDF units advanced. In 2022, Amhara was excluded from the Pretoria Agreement, despite being one of the war’s hardest-hit communities.
Since 2023, federal forces have carried out a sweeping campaign across the region, deploying drones, special units, and mass arrests. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported unlawful killings, disappearances, and widespread detentions.
Atrocities against Tigrayan civilians, including the massacre in Axum, require investigation. But justice cannot hinge on selective memory. The war produced no single victim group and no single perpetrator.
Any credible tribunal must:
- acknowledge TPLF’s initiation of the conflict,
- document atrocities committed against Amharas,
- examine federal and regional complicity, and
- hold all armed actors to account—including TPLF, ENDF, Eritrean forces, and federal units now operating in Amhara.
No group holds a monopoly on suffering.
No group should hold a monopoly on truth.
In the name of the massacred, the displaced, and the silenced, Voices for the Amhara People
Amhara Society Network Team
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
__
Support Borkena : https://borkena.com/subscribe-borkena/
Join our Telegram Channel : t.me/borkena
Like borkena on Facebook
Borkena Ethiopian News Youtube Channel
To submit Press Release, send submission to info@borkena.com
Add your business to Ethiopian Business Listing / Ethiopian Business Directory
Join the conversation. Follow us on X (Formerly Twitter) @zborkena to get the latest Ethiopian News updates regularly.
That was a great piece. You could have added how, after killing Amhara defense officers selectively, they attempted to enter the Amhara region through Sirinka in North Gonder. The millions displaced from Oromia and Benishangul, the suffering and killings under Abdille, the death of hundreds in ጭና, Gonder, the killings in North Shewa, and the robbery of Amhara banks and universities in billions. Getachew confirmed about robbing banks in Dessie and Kombolcha. Getachew’s and Tsadkan’s targeted speech about their intent to kill Amhara elites.