ARBEGNOCH raises its voice at the Washington Monument

A new protest group tries another way to wake up the world over Amhara Genocide and the “Mad King’s” deranged dismantling of Ethiopia

Here is the full news release sent out to various TV stations, newspapers and online media over the protest at the Washington Monument on Sunday, November 10, 2024:

TOMORROW, YOU HONOR THOSE WHO BLED FOR THE U.S. IN PAST WARS.

THERE’S A WAR GOING ON IN ETHIOPIA RIGHT NOW, AND WE’D LIKE YOU TO CARE ABOUT THE VICTIMS BLEEDING TODAY.

BECAUSE THE U.S. IS HELPING THEIR KILLERS.

Our organization is called Arbegnoch. It’s an Amharic word pronounced AR-beh-notch. It means “Patriots.”

The Crisis

We made this protest because the Biden Administration, members of Congress, and several major Western news outlets have consistently, repeatedly lied about what’s been going on in Ethiopia for the past four years.

Thanks to their efforts, the world doesn’t know that

· The Abiy Ahmed regime is ethnically cleansing the Amhara people. Massacre after massacre is reported and verified on social media yet gets no proper Western media attention. Why?

· The Abiy government and its accomplices have been attacking clerics and followers of the Orthodox Christian Church, committing massacres. Their fury is also directed at Ethiopia’s Muslims. Why is there no news coverage of this? No blunt condemnation from Washington and London?

· The Abiy Ahmed’s government is jailing journalists and has destroyed whole neighborhoods — even the historical Piassa district in Addis Ababa — to displace innocent and often poor residents and remake the country according to his warped vision. Why no outrage from UNESCO and other cultural institutions?

These crimes are being committed because of an ethno-fascist ideology called “Oromuma” — which insists that the ethnic Oromo people are superior in every way to others. As with other fascist movements championing one group, the majority of Oromo, of course, do not believe this nonsense nor support its hate speech and use of violence. In fact, Oromos are one of the constituent peoples of the nation — just like the Amhara — who have helped build Ethiopia, and many of them gallantly served to protect and defend the nation.

Unfortunately, Abiy Ahmed has given Oromuma followers a free hand to devastate other ethnicities, and their prime target is the Amhara people.

But their real goal is to destroy Ethiopia’s 3,000-year-old culture, its rich historical narrative based in facts and verified records, and its traditional institutions.

And you likely know nothing about it because the Biden administration simply — doesn’t — care. And neither does most of the news establishment in the West.

The Essential Background

© Jemal Countess, “Tears of Wollega” shot of Amhara IDPs

For four years, Western media outlets such as The New York Times, BBC, Reuters, CNN, The Guardian and The Economist have misrepresented events in Ethiopia. And they’re still doing it.

Their coverage is still overwhelmingly devoted to covering events and regurgitating old stories about the Tigray region. But there’s a whole other country apart from Tigray. Ethiopia is a huge, diverse nation, and a war is going on in Amhara and Oromia, with people dying every day.

In fact, the war between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) took part mostly outside Tigray, and this aspect was hardly ever reported.

Major Western news operations did not bother to cover the thousands of Internally Displaced Persons in camps in the Wollo region, nor the vandalism and looting committed by the TPLF in cities such as Dessie and Lalibela, nor the TPLF’s shameful attacks on the innocent Afar people in the east, who had absolutely nothing to do with the main conflict.

The Western media conflated the TPLF with the Tigrayan people, portraying this group as the “underdog” of the war and ignoring research and independent journalism that it preyed on its own people, held back aid, used civilians as forced conscripts and put child soldiers and human shields into battle.

Why this matters is that major news brands are still doing it. Still pushing the messaging of a terrorist group and regional oligarchy and regularly scapegoating the Amhara people.

When the so-called Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was signed in Pretoria in early November 2022, the TPLF was required to fully disarm. It never did so — and in a stunning betrayal, Ethiopia’s National Security Affairs Advisor Redwan Hussein admitted in April 2022 that the Abiy regime never intended to make it comply.

And yet… the Abiy regime insisted that Amhara militias, the so-called “Fano” units, give up their weapons. Before the Pretoria agreement was even signed, Ethiopian military were raiding homes in Lalibela, arresting their old Fano allies. The ethnic cleansing started in earnest.

Maybe Western news brands can explain why if the TPLF’s claims of “genocide” in Tigray were true, one of its top leaders during the war, Getachew Reda, bowed and scraped to Abiy Ahmed at a ceremony carried live on Ethiopian television on April 23, 2022 while he accepted a framed certificate as a “peacemaker” from Abiy, the man he demanded be tried for war crimes?

Maybe the outgoing Democratic administration can explain why in December 2022 after repeatedly accusing Abiy Ahmed’s government of war crimes, President Biden was happy to watch a soccer game with Abiy during the U.S.-African Leaders summit?

Maybe Joe Biden can tell everyone why as the bodies of Amhara pile up and Orthodox Christians are massacred, his Treasury department declared in June 2023 that “Ethiopia was no longer committing a pattern of gross violations of human rights.” And why has the U.S. government kept giving Abiy hundreds of millions in aid?

Maybe he can explain why the U.S. ambassador — with complete disregard for the tradition of diplomatic neutrality — was playing mediator for TPLF factions in Mekelle in recent weeks?

Ethiopia’s situation is highly complicated, but what it comes down is that in 2020, the Biden administration and its allies in Europe sided with their “favorite child” — the TPLF. Under dictator Meles Zenawi — a close personal friend of Susan Rice — the TPLF ruled Ethiopia for decades like Russian kleptocrats, bleeding the nation of its resources and sending the children of its leadership abroad to be educated at top American and European universities. This was the devil Western governments knew and sided with as thousands of Ethiopians died for nothing.

Abiy Ahmed betrayed his fellow citizens and made a cynical deal with the TPLF, letting its oligarchs return to power in Tigray while his Prosperity Party earned an “All is forgiven!” from the White House. It merely swapped one ethno-fascist ideology for another… Oromuma. Now all of Ethiopia is suffering for this devil’s bargain, the Amhara people most of all.

We Are Arbegnoch

We are Ethiopian diaspora members and allies, dedicated to getting justice for persecuted Amhara, and indeed for all Ethiopians now in peril. We invite Americans to learn the truth. We challenge reporters to responsibly cover the story and to properly research events and Ethiopia’s history instead of merely quoting the first available hack pundit they can get on the phone.

Ethiopia is bleeding. The truth can help heal its wounds.