ADDIS ABABA—Ethiopian American Civil Council (EACC) requested the American people to urge their representative/Malinowski in congress not to support H.R.6600.
“The ‘H.R. 6600 – Ethiopia Stabilization, Peace, and Democracy Act’ will not fulfill the stated purpose nor resolve the current crisis in Ethiopia.
Therefore, EACC appealed to the American people to call on their representative in Congress and to stop supporting H.R. 6600,” said EACC Chairman and Co-Founder Deacon YosephTafari.
“H.R. 6600 which passed in the Foreign Affairs committee without any deliberation, a Hearing or Constituent input is a legislative measure that will harm the people of Ethiopia equally as the war itself has cost the nation thus far.”
“H.R. 6600 has all the hallmarks of providing last-minute support to TPLF by targeting Ethiopia as a nation committing “Genocide”, a claim not supported by UN High Commission for Human Right Report of Nov. 13, 2021,” as to Press released explained.
“Concurrently on Feb. 16, 2022, Sarah Jackson, Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, at Amnesty International reported “Tigrayan forces have shown utter disregard for fundamental rules of international humanitarian law which all warring parties must follow.
This includes repeated incidents of widespread rape, summary killings, and looting, including from hospitals.” H.R. 6600 further sidesteps critical Human Right abuses perpetrated by TPLF as reported by UNHCR and Ethiopian Human Right Council.
In Tigray, the Humanitarian aid is primarily caused by TPLF continued incursion in the neighboring Afar and Amhara region.
This is confirmed by the United Nation where the fighting in Afar region is still the main reason for aid blockage. Combined with the Amnesty report, it is regrettable US congress has provided political cover for TPLF for never calling out its crime, instead of advanced H.R. 6600.
Furthermore, H.R. 6600, a biased resolution clearly ignores the root cause of the conflict, TPLF’s sly move, government’s stoppage of the Defense Force from entering Tigray, Humanitarian aid provision into Tigray, lifting wartime state of emergency three months early, prisoners’ release to begin a comprehensive national dialogue and so forth, as EACC press release stated.
The release cited, “H.R. 6600 contains extremely damaging provisions to the bilateral Security interests, investments in Ethiopia, especially for post-war reconstruction, diaspora’s Civil Liberties, and Ethiopia’s ability to work with international financial institutions including USAID.
These draconian measures are specially to lend collateral benefit to TPLF at a great expense to the ordinary Ethiopian people in order to coerce the Ethiopian government into compulsory negotiation.”
BY ESSEYE MENGISTE
The Ethiopian 24 February 2022
