Thread by @althecat

As the war in Ethiopia appears - based on a flurry of govt announcements yesterday - to be coming to a close, the TPLF misinformation machine has not finished with its efforts to distort its horror show.

Thread…

Reliably sourced information suggests CNN is about to publish a third edition of the Humera Massacre / bodies in the Tekeze river story, either later today or tomorrow.
The last story on this subject was subject to lots of criticism.

Concerns over media, political and diplomatic bias around the war in Ethiopia has now escalated into protests by Ethiopian Diaspora under the #NoMore banner outside both CNN’s Atlanta HQ in Georgia, and daily at the White House in Washington DC.

To add fuel to this fire, a leaked conversation between TPLF lobbyist/spokesman Berhane Gebre Christos and a group of former and serving EU/US Ambassadors contains a hint about where this story may have originated.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1466224533917122560?s=20

For the past five months the war in Ethiopia/Tigray has been accompanied by a very active online information battle between the two sides. And international media, and social media giants are getting increasingly drawn into the fray.

The underlying cause is a perception in Ethiopia of a consistent pattern of biased elite politics media and diplomacy around the conflict in Northern Ethiopia and Tigray. And a complete rejection of this, hence #NoMore

The TPLF is considered to have significant diplomatic, political and media support from friends across the US and EU, as well as loyal professional networks inside the UN.

From the before the outset of the war in November 2020 TPLF also invested heavily in lobbying, social and independent media production aligned to its cause - which appears to be violent secession from Ethiopia.

In Ethiopia there is a diverse and large media sector reporting on the conflict in the Amharic, Arabic and English languages . The war is also being widely reported in media across Africa.

But perhaps the most significant development in recent months has been the spontaneous growth of a leaderless independent diaspora led global social media effort to support Ethiopia’s Govt in its efforts to bring the war to an end and peace to Ethiopia.

Twitter founder @Jack visited Addis Ababa incognito in Sept. meeting random people in bars & learning about Ethiopia's honey wine. He also met some officials in the Govt. On his departure he paid his driver $5000 USD enough to put a large down payment on a small flat.

In November after a #NoMore hashtag started to drive protests against military intervention around the world Twitter started to push back, suspending large numbers of accounts of people in the movement.

@BTnewsroom Report >>

This tension escalated sharply after November 17th after Twitter disabled its trending feature in Ethiopia, and flagged that it would take a harder line with accounts it considered breaking its rules, and then started suspending large accounts without explanation.

PART 1 /ENDS

(continuing later today)