He stresses that the Addis Ababa accusations “are full of the usual lies and distortions”
June 24. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Tigray Liberation Front (TPLF) has called the government’s accusations of blocking humanitarian flights at the airport in Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, “bizarre” and has argued that the reason for the decision is the lack of of fuel to continue operations.
The TPLF Office of Foreign Affairs has indicated in a statement that the Addis Ababa accusations “are full of the usual lies and distortions” to “try to deceive the international community into ignoring their culpability in the devastating humanitarian crisis in Tigray”.
“Unused to being accountable for the myriad lies they publish on a daily basis, the Addis Ababa authorities cannot even construct an argument that seems remotely plausible as to why the Tigray government, fighting for the survival of the people of Tighray, would suspend key operations at the airport for the delivery of humanitarian supplies,” he said.
“Given that the Addis Ababa authorities’ motivation for allowing limited aid to Tigray is fundamentally political and not humanitarian, their instinct is to play politics with humanitarian aid, even when millions of lives are at stake,” he criticized.
In this sense, he recalled that the group “consistently communicated the high risk that the airport would cease operations with humanitarian partners due to fuel shortages” and has charged Ethiopia for “the almost total ban” on the shipment of fuel to the region.
“Without fuel, aid agencies cannot distribute urgently needed food and non-food items,” he said, before accusing the Ethiopian authorities of “advancing a fictitious narrative” and “having no intention of participating in good faith in the efforts to solve the problem.
“The Tigray government is doing everything possible to ensure the restart of services at the airport, while the Addis Ababa authorities are engaged in what they are best at: propagating totally false claims and smearing the people and government of Tigray.” “, has manifested.
In this way, the TPLF has emphasized that “it is an obvious case of moral reversal in which the culprit accuses the victim” and has called on the international community to “see through this transparent subterfuge and adopt appropriate measures to rectify the situation.”
“As usual, the authorities in Addis Ababa shed crocodile tears over the suffering of the people of Tigray and pretend that they have nothing to do with this suffering, when in fact they are primarily responsible for the suffering of Tigrayans,” he concluded. .
The Ethiopian government’s accusations came on a day in which the World Food Program (WFP) warned that it could run out of funds in a month given the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia due to the conflict, climate change and the increase of commodity prices.
The conflict in Ethiopia broke out in November 2020 after an attack by the TPLF against the main Army base, located in Mekelle, after which the Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, ordered an offensive against the group after months of political and administrative tensions. . A “humanitarian truce” is currently in force, although both sides have accused each other of preventing the delivery of aid.
The TPLF has accused Abiy of stirring up tensions since he came to power in April 2018, when he became the first Oromo to take office. Until then, the TPLF had been the dominant force within the ethnically based coalition that had governed Ethiopia since 1991, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The group opposed Abiy’s reforms, seeing them as an attempt to undermine his influence.
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