A Press-release from the Amhara People's Fano Front (APFF) (October 26, 2023)

Open Letter to the International Community on the Weaponization of Public Service Institutions and the Procurement of Chemical Weapons by Abiy Ahmed to use against the Amhara People

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The Amhara People's Fano Front (APFF) appreciates the fact that, increasingly, the international community understands the premise that the Amhara people's struggle is initiated not to impose its hegemony on the rest of the country as falsely claimed by the Abiy Ahmed regime to mislead the global community. Instead, it is a struggle to protect the Amhara people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and displacement. This struggle is fundamentally about survival.

In addition to the critical task of safeguarding the Amhara community from extinction, the Fanos, who are the defenders of the Amhara people, are working to unite non-Amhara ethnic groups and patriots. They aim to rally together to advocate for justice, peace, stability, equal treatment of all citizens, equitable access to economic, social, and political opportunities, and to strengthen the rule of law. Ultimately, their goal is to promote the establishment of a democratic government. APFF believes that these efforts are essential to prevent Ethiopia from experiencing further disintegration.

We have made numerous appeals to the international community, urging you to take actions against the Abiy Ahmed regime and its allies for weaponizing telecommunications, electricity, civil air transport, and food supply services. Unfortunately, our pleas have gone unanswered. We are now compelled to confirm, supported by a wealth of evidence, that ethno-nationalist and extremist politicians, including the Oromo elite-dominated Prosperity Party, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), are collaborating to harm the Amhara people through various means.

Over the past three decades, their actions have demonstrated a shared agenda, which involves ethnic cleansing, if not outright extermination, of individuals who do not belong to their respective ethnic groups. The Amhara people are a particular target in this scheme. Their overarching goal is to establish a rule marked by authoritarianism, suppressing any perceived competition within the country.

All Ethiopian institutions, including Ethiopian Airlines, have become instruments of oppression for Abiy Ahmed's regime. Here, once more, we identify two public sector institutions that demand international scrutiny. The Ethiopian Telecommunication Authority has been changing its name constantly with the purported intent of providing Ethiopian consumers with modern and socially responsible public services. From the early 1990s, the TPLF regime used to shut down Ethio-Telecom services deliberately to mask gross human rights violations, including ethnically targeted killings. As a result, the international community was denied access to data and information like names, locations, and times covering atrocities. Ethio-Telecom served solely at the behest of the ruling party and government in power. It obstructed the evidence gathering and reporting of gross human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing, genocide, displacements, and political incarcerations of tens of thousands of civilians. It deterred independent journalists and media from covering incidents. Today, Ethio Telecom is doing the same thing with strict instructions from the regime to serve it as a political agency.

Similarly, the Electricity Authority of Ethiopia, a public corporation with prime responsibility to provide electricity services to the public, unfortunately, operates as a private institutional tool and property of the Oromo Prosperity Party. The availability of electricity is governed by ethnic and political loyalty and affiliation rather than the needs of the Ethiopian people. Contrary to international norms, principles, and practices, the Electricity Authority of Ethiopia turned off access to electricity in the Amhara region as part of the ongoing war against the Amhara people. We believe the weaponization of electricity by the Abiy regime is state terrorism. It is inhumane and punishes ordinary civilians. It violates core principles of human and civil rights laws recognized and normalized by the international community and goes contrary to corporate social responsibility. The water supply has been deliberately shut down due to the interruption of electric power transmission, a decision solely made for political and ethnic-driven reasons.

The psychological warfare inflicted on the Amhara people, which includes denying access to electricity and water, deliberately limiting the availability of agricultural fertilizers and crop seeds, exacerbating the current famine resulting from the war, and intentionally destroying medical facilities while halting banking transactions, can be equated to an act of genocide.

The argument that the Abiy regime is restricting access to telecommunication and electricity services to the Amhara population because of the Fano-led insurgency is both cruel and laughable. The true motivation behind the regime's weaponization of public service institutions is to impoverish and marginalize the Amhara population. This is just one aspect of its broader agenda to ethnically exterminate the Amhara people by any means necessary.

The Abiy Ahmed regime has recently acquired a significant shipment of chemical weapons and stored them in Bahr Dar, the capital of the Amhara region. Abiy Ahmed's actions in transporting and stockpiling chemical weapons are not only aimed at playing a futile psychological game on the courageous and patriotic Fanos, but given his reckless and unpredictable nature, there is a genuine concern that he may deploy these stockpiled chemical weapons against the Amhara people. This could be his last-ditch effort to impose and enforce Oromo ethnic elite hegemony over all 120 million Ethiopians.

APFF is resisting and actively fighting the manipulation of Ethio Telecom and the Electricity Authority of Ethiopia, which have been used as instruments of suppression, oppression, and deprivation by the Abiy Ahmed regime.

The Amhara People's Fano Front (APFF) urgently appeals to the international community to take immediate action to halt the atrocities being committed by Abiy Ahmed against the Amhara population. It is crucial to ensure that he faces justice for the acts of ethnic cleansing, genocide, war crimes, and massacres he has perpetrated against humanity.

Cc:

United Nations Secretariat, NYC

UN Human Rights Council, Geneva

The Africa Commission on Human and People’s Rights, Banjul

European Union, Brussels

African Union Commissioner, Addis Ababa

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocide