By Alemayehu G. Mariam
Author’s Note: On October 2, 2016, troops loyal to the Tigrean Peoples’ Liberation Front (T-TPLF) opened fire indiscriminately on crowds attending one of the most important cultural and spiritual events in Ethiopia, the Irreecha (Thanksgiving) Festival in the town of Bishoftu, some 45 miles southeast of the capital Addis Ababa. An estimated 500 plus people were killed and twice that number severely injured during the event.
The following analysis challenges the official T-TPLF version of events leading up to and triggering the so-called stampede at the Irreecha Festival.
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The discussion below also presents a preliminary forensic analysis which contradicts the cynically concocted official story line that at the end of the day, the victims have no one to blame but themselves for the deaths and injuries they sustained. If they had stayed home, none of it would have occurred.
The analysis further lays the groundwork for a crimes against humanity investigation into the actions and omissions of all persons involved in Irreecha Festival Massacres.
The analysis below is longer than my usual long tracts, but I believe the information and evidence discussed herein are of significant public importance and service.
Over the past several days, the T-TPLF disinformation machine has been in high gear trying to convince the world (since no one in Ethiopia will pay any attention to the pathological lies of the T-TPLF) that the October 2, 2016 Bishoftou Irrecha (Thanksgiving Day) Massacre is the result of a “stampede” that occurred when the crowd attending the Festival was somehow suddenly struck by inexplicable mass hysteria. The official T-TPLF explanation stripped off all the lies and subterfuges is simply that crowd-madness induced a “stampede” at the Festival. Their troops did not fire a single shot at the event. They did not engage in the use of deadly or excessive force of any kind.
The puppet T-TPLF prime minister (PPM) (more accurately crime minister) Hailemariam Desalegn gave a statement shortly after news of what happened at the Irreecha Festival was broadcast internationally. The PPM, for all intents and purposes, argued that the victims engaged in the stampede voluntarily (without any external cause such as gunfire by T-TPLF troops or other threats or actions) and therefore the deaths should be regarded as mass suicide by stampede. According to the PPM, the victims solely bear full responsibility for their own deaths and no one else.
It is noteworthy that in all the years of Irreecha Festivals with hundreds of thousands of people in attendance, there has not been a single documented death from violence or other causes. What extraordinary event occurred at the 2016 Irreecha Festival to cause the deaths of over 500 persons?! The PPM did not address this question.
As I argue below, the Irreecha Festival “stampede” was not the type of ordinary stampede which occurs from unexpected crowd dynamics. It has all the finger-, foot- and hoof-prints of a “buffalo jump” (an ancient Native American practice discussed below) planned and executed by the T-TPLF leadership.
My information reveals that after a panicked and hurried meeting of the T-TPLF state-within-the state over the Irreecha Massacre, a plan was devised to bombard the foreign news media and direct T-TPLF state-owned media to propagate several lines of disinformation regarding the Irreecha Festival Massacre: 1) The deaths were the result of a “stampede”. 2) The “stampede” was triggered by “evil forces”. 3) T-TPLF forces did not fire a single shot nor killed any person at the Festival. 4) T-TPLF “security forces” used “only tear gas, rubber bullets and batons”. 5) T-TPLF “security forces” should be commended for their conduct and heroic efforts.
Sure enough, the BBC, the New York Times, Bloomberg News, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, the Italian news agency ANSA, ArabNews and dozens of other international media outlets bought the T-TPLF disinformation hook, line and sinker. The international media was parroting the T-TPLF line about the 52 people who died in a “stampede”, and not a single word about the T-TPLF Irreecha Massacre on October 2, 2016.
The New York Times headlined its October 3, 2016 story, “Day After 55 Dead in Stampede, Ethiopia Unrest Continues”.
In a 532-word story, the New York Times used the word “stampede” 8 times. Out of 16 paragraphs in the story, including 4 paragraphs with single sentences, the dominant theme of 8 paragraphs was “stampede”. Not a single word about a massacre!
This is the type of T-TPLF disinformation I was calling attention to over the past month.
The T-TPLF disinformation campaign is in full swing to discredit the current massive and nationwide uprising and now to absolve T-TPLF leaders from legal, political and moral responsibility for their role in the Irreecha Festival Massacres. .
I call on all Ethiopians, particularly those in the Diaspora, to challenge every major Western media that knowingly or unknowingly propagates T-TPLF disinformation on the ongoing massacres in Ethiopia, particularly the Irreecha Festival Massacre.
Spin doctoring a massacre as a stampede
Sitting in front of a whitewashed background in what appeared to be ad-libbed remarks, (I did not say PPM Hailemariam whitewashed the Irreecha Massacre), PPM Hailemariam Desalegn tried his best to spin the Irreecha Massacre into a blame the victims game.
In his remarks, the PPM
Shed crocodile tears for the “52” (not the several hundred) T-TPLF massacre victims ;
condescendingly patronized and paternalized the Oromo people for their day of celebration and the international importance of Irreecha;
implicitly berated the victims for not standing up and taking it like a man or a woman. If the victims would have simply stood in one place and took a beating from T-TPLF police batons, toughed it out and sucked up the tear gas thrown at them with a stiff upper chin and absorbed all of the rubber bullets coming their way, they might have been alive today;
laid the blame for the deaths and injuries literally at the very (running) feet of the massacre victims. The PPM’s attitude was that if the victims did not behave like stampeding cattle fleeing a cackle of hyenas, they would all be alive today. (But as a grieving mother toldreporters, she literally said she felt like she was fleeing a cackle of T-TPLF hyenas!)
blamed the victims for allowing “evil elements” (not “terrorists”?) to take over the Irreecha Festival and wreak havoc;
demanded the victims’ families and friends and all Ethiopians line up with the T-TPLF and face off the “evil elements” who created the disorder; and
to add insult to injury, he suggested victims’ survivors should thank and kiss the hands (more accurately the trigger fingers) of the T-TPLF security officers who tear-gassed them, beat the crap out of them and shot them to death.
Here is how the PPM shed crocodile tears for the Bishoftou Irreecha Festival Massacre victims: Read more here
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