Thread by @althecat

An ETV #AddisDialogues IV with @GettyImages @JemalCountess and Sheba Tekeste (@PushStartMedia1 on twitter) about their recent journalism work in Ethiopia broadcast yesterday.

>> Covers ongoing humanitarian crisis in Northern Ethiopia, Amhara and Afar and their trip to Wolkayit.

https://twitter.com/PushStartMedia1/status/1513592814512320512

The IV begins with an account of their trip to Northern Amhara, where they met with Tegaru IDPs in camps who have fled over the border.

He speaks of the tragedy of Amhara IDP camps in the areas which are under resourced - water, food, sanitation are all major problems.

. @JemalCountess relates his experience seeing IDPs in extremely brutal circumstances in Sekota, where temperatures are often in over 95 Farenheit (36+ Celsius.) Sheba and Jemal also talk about Lalibela which still has no electricity and running water.

@JemalCountess They also visited Gashena, Woldia, Kombulcha and Dessie - towns on or near the A2 highway which the corridor north from Addis to Mekelle which was attacked and occupied by TPLF forces from July to December 2021.

Sheba @PushStartMedia1 then describes conditions in an IDP camp housing 1400 IDPs who have fled attacks in Wellega, which is also facing very difficult circumstances.

Discussion with @JemalCountess and Sheba @PushStartMedia1 then moves on to their recent visit to Wolkayit/Welkait.
Direct link here to where that segment of the IV begins >>

This passage is particularly disturbing. Describing in detail their visit to Dejene where in the 1980s during the DERG war Amhara in Wolkayit were taken, placed in holes in the ground and forced to abandon their Amhara identity or be killed.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1511842412842430464?s=20&t=GRtdISipqmx_Uh1pM-xVTA

In the next section of the interview Jemal and Sheba describe their visit to Gehanem (pronounced Gehaneb - meaning "hell" in Amharic) where a later generation of TPLF prisons and death camps were built by the TPLF.

This news report from @Borkena talks about the University of Gondar's report on these camps - released Thursday 7th April in a press conference - which was the reason for Jemal and Sheba's visit to the area.borkena.com/2022/04/05/wol…

@borkena The Gehanem part of the interview begins here. Direct link >>

And the passage begins with a question from ETV interviewer Shiferaw Lakew asking: "of all the visits that you paid which were the most shocking, that you would never get out of your head?"

. @JemalCountess describes the conditions experienced by those who were tortured and killed at Gehanem as "medieval". Victims were forced to march several kms to these sites where they were either forced to renounce their identity or in some cases just killed brutally.

In this passage in the IV >> Sheba Tekeste eloquently describes Addis Alem a town near Gehanem - a TPLF Settlement - built on top of a site in which many people were killed, and in which residents have found human bones when digging in their gardens.

"They built a town on top of it. But now that TPLF is not there, there are elders there now who are breaking their silence and telling people where people were buried. The magnitude of this is immense. And the memories of these things are still with these people."

"We asked why they had not spoken about this before and they told us. They were terrified. But now that the TPLF is gone they can speak. The entire town is a burial grave.... they feel suffocated and they just want to tell their stories.... its devastating."

In this passage @JemalCountess answers a question from Shiferaw Lakew seeking a comparison between what was experienced during WWII by the Jews and Gypsies and others held and killed in Nazi deathcamps.

@JemalCountess In his response @JemalCountess says he wishes Ethiopia had the resources to search for and recover the remains. After the war in Europe efforts were undertaken to search for and recover the remains and accord them the dignity of a proper burial memorialising what happened here.

@JemalCountess Sheba backs Jemal up on this >>

"There needs to be serious attention put into doing official research and studies of that entire Wolkayit area. Gehanem is one site. On our way there we stopped at several smaller towns, in each one the community pointed..

@JemalCountess .. to places where there are graves. In Dejene there are graves. You can be virtually anywhere and people in the community will tell you go over here and you will find graves. The people have been silenced with fear about this for three decades."

"Now its years later, you can't just leave it be, it has to be an intense study to even find a number. In that one place, Gehanem, they are estimating over 60,000... their memories are important and they have to be documented." - Sheba Tekeste @PushStartMedia1.

The next part of the ETV discussion with @JemalCountess and @PushStartMedia1 addresses the @Amnesty and @HRW report into Wolkayit which was published two days before the Gondar University study.

Host Shiferaw Lakew asks @JemalCountess for his reactions. Jemal says he has lost faith in these international NGOs. "Its as if the TPLF wrote a script, gave it to these organisations and they did some tweaking and signed their names to it."

In her answer Sheba points out that Amnesty and HRW had not even visited the area, and described how during her time in Wolkayit, the true story of what has happened there is everywhere, drivers, when buying coffee, everyone tells the same story of what has happened there.

"They know who did this to them. And they have been suffering and have been silent for over three decades. So when you see the exact opposite [in the Amnesty/HRW report] People can't even mourn. Even their deaths have been stolen from them...

... it is a tragedy people with respectable credentials, who call themselves journalists, humanitarians, are corroborating these false narratives. [It's]not just damaging to the people who are already gone and who cannot have justice, but to the people who wait for justice."

"And on top of that, to use these narratives to run things like #S3199 and #HR6600, to sanction a country that has already devastated, to sanction Ethiopia and to make the people who are suffering suffer even more, and to not punish the guilty....

... and I am really grateful to people like Jemal. It is not easy to make these trips, [Jemal has made 6 trips to Ethiopia so far] you risk your life. Nobody is giving you a medal of honour you are doing this just to do the right thing."

Jemal: "I have a new perspective on all these things. People are racist who don't think they are. People are arrogant who don't think they are. People are still in 2022 thinking that "white is right" we can tell Africa's story for them because they can't tell it for themselves..

... I think the entire Western Media apparatus has failed. Completely failed. And looking at some of the people who have come to the aid of the underdog, the Tigray Genocide thing... everybody has failed, everybody IMO is morally bankrupt. The Amnesty fiasco just proves that."

"If people want to redeem themselves. Or come back at this and be like 'we made mistakes'. So how do you deal with that? You follow the channels, you send your mature objective journalists here, to Welkait, and you spend some time." - @JemalCountess

Jemal says if media organisations want there to be redemption for these mistakes that they need to start over. "The correspondents who were here were compromised. They chose one side over the other side first. You have to argue with them about whether Maikadra even happened."

This passage on media & NGO failure (described in the above tweets) starts here >>

@JemalCountess speaks first - on media and NGOs. @Pushstartmedia1 follows taking the story back to the #S3199 #HR6600 sanctions effort, which is built their lies.

Sheba's (@PushStartMedia1's) final statement starts here.

1/4 "I wonder who is going to provide this independent investigation [called for by UN US] into atrocities in the Northern Ethiopia conflict] Because if its going to be @HRW and @Amnesty, they proven how incapable they are & how much disdain they have for African lives.

2/4 "... Because this is not a story... something of the past, it is currently going on. People have died. More people are suffering and it is high time that African's get respect. For protecting their sovereignty, and for telling their own stories." - @PushStartMedia1

3/4 "...because we have a right to, because it is our story, and we can investigate ourselves. And that is the biggest message that the international community needs to hear.

4/4 namely:
"That if they [The IC UN US EU - Media & NGOs] do not have the moral compass to do the right thing, then they have to stop perpetuating lies that will effect even more harm."

And the interview ends... with thanks expressed to @JemalCountess and @PushStartMedia1.

Wow!

@JemalCountess @PushStartMedia1 /ENDS

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