The head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church has accused government forces of carrying out “genocide” in the country’s Tigray region, where a six-month conflict between federal and allied troops and forces loyal to the former ruling party is believed to have killed thousands of people.
In a video shot last month on a mobile phone and taken out of Ethiopia, the elderly Patriarch Abune Mathias addresses the church’s millions of followers and the international community, saying his previous attempts to speak out were blocked.
“I am not clear why they want to declare genocide on the people of Tigray,” the patriarch, an ethnic Tigrayan, says, speaking in Amharic.
The head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has condemned his own country's rulers in a video recorded by the director of a US-based charity, saying "they want to destroy the people of Tigray" with actions of "the highest brutality and cruelty."
The head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has accused government forces of committing “genocide” in the Tigray region of the country. six months of conflict It is believed to have killed thousands of federal and allied troops and forces loyal to the former party government.
Filmed last month on a mobile phone and taken from Ethiopia, Patriarch Abune Mathias has addressed millions of church followers and the international community, saying her previous attempts have been blocked.
“I’m not clear why they want to express genocide to the people of Tigray,” says the patriarch, a Tigrinya ethnic group, who speaks Amharic.
University of Gothenburg
Göteborg, Sweden
Introduction
The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground. Sir Winston Churchill
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally
the major anxiety of their people in their time [italics mine].This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. John Kenneth Galbraith
In the summer of 2018, only a few months after Abiy Ahmed had been swept into power, I began to have a gut feeling that something was not quite right with a leader widely considered as Africa’s brightest hope for the future.