How Long Will the International Community Put Up With the Lies of the TPLF Regime?

Consider the following litany of lies:

* Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, publicly declared in June last year that for his political party, the TPLF, the worst insult that it could ever tolerate was being called "anti-people" because "the welfare of the people was uppermost in its values." Yet, a few weeks later, the same Prime Minister publicly stated that Ethiopia could confiscate the life-time earnings of an innocent civilian and kick him out of the country within 24 hours if it "does not like the color of his eyes."

* Ethiopia's Prime Minister ordered the first air attack against Asmara on June 5, 1998. He later denied this to claim that the attack was in retaliation to Eritrean bombing of Mekele. When he was confronted with incontrovertible evidence -- Ethiopia had forewarned some governments of its plan -- he recanted to claim that the attack was pre-emptive to avert a suspected Eritrean attack.

* During the Summit of the Central Organ in Ouagadougou last December, Meles accused Eritrea of plotting to overthrow "a legitimate government in Khartoum." This, he said, "was against the fundamental tenets of the OAU Charter." The OAU should not tolerate "Eritrea's excesses." This was of course a pure lie. Meles' government was indeed at the forefront of the regional alliance to contain NIF designs of destabilizing the region. What is more preposterous is what Meles is doing and saying these days. He is conspiring with the Sudan to "change the government in Asmara." The TPLF is hosting what it calls "an Eritrean government in exile." The TPLF has prepared a Charter for the "transitional government."

* The Ethiopian government announced at the early stages of its expulsion policy that those affected will be "elements that pose security risk to the country only." The banality of this excuse was soon exposed when octogenarians as well as small kids were expelled; often by separating them from their families. The magnitude of the expulsion itself -- 54,000 Eritreans deported so far -- soon illustrated that the motive was something different. The expulsion process was also designed in a manner that would create maximum pain -- separation of families being a standard pattern. Often the husband or wife together with one or two kids were expelled; the other members to be deported only after a couple of weeks.

* When Ethiopia accused Eritrea of invading its "sovereign territory," it claimed that "Badme and Sheraro" were occupied. This was the false information given to its Parliament when it adopted the declaration of war on May 13, 1998. Ethiopia further distributed a map of the "occupied Yirga triangle" to diplomats in Addis Abeba and to its own domestic audience. The Badme riddle is too familiar today. Ethiopia produced a bogus map of Badme showing it inside Ethiopian territory while Sheraro was not the scene of any battle.

* Ethiopia maintained this lie throughout the past nine months. To the OAU and others, it has been telling them that Badme has a population of 90,000 residents and there are members of Parliament elected from this district. The truth is Badme is a small town of 300 families. The population is Eritrean and they have no representative in Ethiopia's Parliament. And last week, when Ethiopia claimed that it has "reinstated the civilian administration" to the depopulated town, Ethiopian TV only showed a narrow picture of the Ethiopian flag being hoisted on a pole without any glimpse of Badme town and the "district with a constituency of 90,000."

* Ethiopia's lie machine is again churning similar fabricated data on what it calls "occupied territories." It talks, for instance, about the Bada-Burie "occupied area." Burie in Eritrea is a mere customs post at the established border with no residential areas and that is where the Eritrean front line stops. Adi Murug in Bada is an Eritrean village which Ethiopia occupied forcibly in July 1997 and which was one of the causes for the current border dispute. The Bada-Burie terminology is otherwise meaningless as it designates the semi-arid strip of the Eritrean boundary in the Denkali region. This boundary is well defined by the Treaty of 1908 which has remained unaltered for the past ninety years.

* The TPLF regime fabricated the bombing of Adi Grat by Eritrean fighter planes on February 5, 1999, as a transparent pretext to break the moratorium on air strikes and to launch the large-scale offensives it has been unleashing since February 6 this year. Ethiopia concocted this lie because the OAU Framework Agreement and UN Security Council resolutions were invariably calling on both sides to observe maximum restraint and to agree to a cessation of hostilities. The fiction of the bombing of Adi Grat was confirmed by independent sources including the US Government and independent press agencies.

* As Ethiopia's army suffered its biggest defeat ever in the battles that raged from March 14-16, Ethiopia first denied that fighting was taking place at all. Later it attempted to qualify it as "skirmishes which developed into full-scale fighting." As the Tsorona battlefield remains littered with the ghastly scene of over 10,000 dead Ethiopian troops and 57 burning Ethiopian tanks, the TPLF regime continued to dismiss the horrible carnage "as a figment of imagination." Unfortunately for the TPLF regime, the biggest defeat that it has sustained to date was witnessed and indelible footage was taken by independent foreign journalists from the BBC, Der Spiegel, Deutche Welle, Swiss Radio and TV, Xinhua News Agency, Al Hayat, Al Sharq Al Awsat as well as local print media.

But are people really buying these lies? Or is it because there are other forces at play? As one seasoned diplomat observed: "It is naive to think that the diplomatic community is not in the know. But nobody wants to see a larger Ethiopia under a very fragile government stagger under the weight of this crisis. That explains, to me, the deliberate nods and winks."

This may well be the case. But the TPLF's lies are costing thousands of lives and it is time that the international community face up to its responsibilities.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Asmara, 18 March 1999