US news media The New Yorker on Monday reported Tigrayan leader Getachew Reda privately admitted Ethiopian airstrikes have hit TPLF’s military, contradicting Getachew’s previous claim that Ethiopian government targeted civilians in Tigray. The revelation was part of a new report by American journalist Jon Lee Anderson who compiled information he gained thru exclusive access to high level government officials and rebel leaders.
Speaking to Anderson, Mr Reda said Ethiopian drone strikes “destroyed” his compound and killed TPLF “security men.” Accordingly, he refused to hold long phone conversations with the American journalist for fear of being detected by ENDF, Mr Reda added. In a rare admission on the precision of the Ethiopian Air-force airstrikes, “it was a direct hit,” Getachew Reda told The New Yorker magazine’s investigative writer.
These private acknowledgments by the Tigrayan leader however contradict his public statements that Ethiopian airstrikes hit “only innocent civilians” in Tigray and have “No conceivable military targets.” This admission of TPLF rebel casualties also suggests that hospital officials in Tigray were not being truthful to Western media about their patients and the nature of these airstrikes.
His controversial public allegations have often been endorsed by Tigray’s Ayder hospital senior staff, including Fasika Amdeslasie and Dr Kibrom Gebreselassie, who were accused of referring to all TPLF combatants as “civilian casualties.”
Such inconsistencies highlight the dilemma with Western media reports, that repeatedly quote Tigray health officials, as they are seen as amplifying Tigrayan insurrection narratives by disseminating pro-rebel claims as credible news worldwide. In 2021, Press Secretary Billene Seyoum said most Western media agencies have become an “echo chamber” of the Tigrayan insurrection in northern Ethiopia and an obstacle to peace. AAU Professor Mesenbet Assefa, who has mixed ethnic Tigrayan roots, added that truth has been the first casualty in Tigray, threatening the democratic reforms that the TPLF regime feared most.
Pro-rebel narratives peddled by TPLF supporters and some Western leaders abroad have overshadowed facts on the ground recognized by UN personal who lead operations inside the country. This includes WFP chief David Beasley who asked the TPLF to return “half a million liters of fuel” and hundreds of UN trucks stolen by Tigrayan militia. Many of these UN trucks remain under rebel control.
Latest Western media reports have amplified Getachew Reda’s new claims that one UN truck was allegedly targeted by an Ethiopian airstrike, even though UN staff on the ground downplayed his claim as an isolated collateral incident. Despite these facts, Tigrayan civil society inside and outside the country often reproduce the same pro-rebel rhetoric and propaganda verbatim.
Appearing on the local Tigray TV in August, Getachew Reda sent an eerie message that all members of Tigray’s civil society, “including the medical sector,” have a role in supporting his “Tigray Defense Forces,” with dissemination of propaganda. Critics say this suggests that the entire Tigrayan civil society is operating in tune with his TPLF regime. Many Tigrayan NGOs, including elites in the Global Society of Tigrean Scholars (GSTS) organization, have often joined TPLF executive Dr Tedros in downplaying TPLF crimes in the past and present, including recent atrocities and the destruction of health facilities in Amhara & Afar regions. Critics say Tigrayan NGOs have went as far as justifying TPLF’s ongoing diversion of life-saving humanitarian aid that was meant for their own Tigrayan people, which has had devastating consequences.
