Ethiopia Saturday dismissed allegations by The Economist that the government had used hunger as a weapon in Tigray region.
In an article entitled ‘Ethiopia’s government appears to be wielding hunger as a weapon’, The Economist accused Addis Ababa of blocking food deliveries to the region.
Ethiopia’s State of Emergency Fact Checking Office, which is established to provide information about the law enforcement operation and relevant issues in Tigray region, said “the article trivialize the constitutional obligation of the federal government of Ethiopia and resorts to a wholesale insult that “the government is too incompetent”.
It is regrettable that the Economist assumes that leaders in Africa are either evil of incompetent, the office said in statement on Saturday.
According to the statement, the Government of Ethiopia has mobilized and delivered more than 31,000 metric tons of food; non-food items and medical supplies besides applying necessary security protocols to protect civilians stabilize the region and capture remaining suspects of crimes of treason.
“Federal agencies, utility companies and other service providers have been working at full speed to restore services in Tigray. They are doing so in the wake of the TPLF’s and its militia’s well-documented acts of vandalism against public and private infrastructure and assets including telecom, transport, energy and banking. Reconstruction will take time and this air of disconnect and mystery is fueling misinformation as the one in this article,” the office said.
TPLF has been the grand sponsor of destabilization, terror and massacres for the past three decades and it has not eased its thirst for absolute power even after it was unseated through widespread protests and the electoral rules of the coalition which TPLF itself had engineered, the statement noted.
The gravest error this article makes is it is short sighted. Ethiopians have a dream for peace and prosperity. The past two years have been profoundly painful for all Ethiopians but the Government of Ethiopia believes it is heading in the right direction, according to the statement.
Magnifying troubles and echoing accusations of past regimes by drawing a comparison to this administration is a mere distraction. Ethiopians will not watch helplessly and idly as history repeats itself. This is exactly why the Government of Ethiopia has determined in preventing spoilers such as TPLF from hijacking the nation’s journey to prosperity, the office stated
