Black Country campaigner will join peace march as Tigray crisis continues
A campaigner with roots in Ethiopia has still not heard from relatives believed to be caught up in conflict in the country’s Tigray region.
Leandra Gebrakedan, of Willenhall, will be among protesters taking part in a street march next month being organised to highlight the second anniversary of the fighting in the East African state which has led to and huge population disruption.
The event in Birmingham on November 5 will be among several being organised in Europe and the United Sates on the same date.
Reports from the region claim that much of the Tigray population has been left cut off from food and aid supplies as a result of the unrest which started in November 2020.
Ethiopia and Eritrea blame Tigray's TPLF group (Tigray People's Liberation Front) for starting it. The fighting has drawn in forces from Eritrea on the side of Ethiopia’s federal military.
Miss Gebrakedan, who has not heard from her relatives for almost 20 months due to a phone and internet blackout caused by the chaos said: "Ten per cent of Tigray's population has been killed. That’s equivalent to the population of Walsall and Wolverhampton.
"The Ethiopian government uses the pretence of being interested in peace talks to ensure that the international community doesn't intervene.
"There is only working hospital for the whole of Tigray. It is running out of all supplies not just insulin."
The protest at Centenary Square on November 5 is being organised by advocacy group Mekete Tigray UK.
African Union (AU) commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat recently called on the warring leaders to agree an “immediate, unconditional ceasefire and the resumption of humanitarian services”. AU-led peace talks due to take place in South Africa earlier this month were postponed.
The Ethiopian government has stated that it will take "defensive measures" including seizing airports and other federal facilities in the region. The Tigrayans have called on the international community to press the government for peace talks.
Ethiopia’s leader, Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending his country’s stalemate with neighbouring Eritrea. But since then the government has been in a bloody conflict with rebels from Tigray.
Meanwhile UN humanitarian chiefs have been warning of a food crisis in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions, where more than 13 million people need life-saving food due to famine and conflict.
