The Ethiopian Social Media is currently posing higher threats to the national unity than the mainstream west media.
Why and how!?
The Media have played crucial role throughout the Ethiopian conflict both positively and negatively. Particularly the negative role of the western mainstream media has been immense. It had a significant impact on the Ethiopia’s government ability to carry out its day to day operations in a stable manner.
Their impartial and biased reports have been largely against Ethiopia and its government. These media have worked tirelessly to weaken the federal government by widely coordinating with the diplomatic agenda of the TPLF and its supporters in the west especially the US administration. Western Media reports literally disseminated the propaganda fed to them by ethnic extremist or terrorists & allies in Ethiopia. That helped prolong the conflict which means more lives lost and more socio-economic infrastructure destruction.
The west media rarely reported the atrocities committed by the terrorist group on the occupied areas of Amhara or Afar regional states as result of which the international community paid no attention in most of the incidences.
There were clear evidences of abuses of innocent civilians including rape and destruction of properties like education institutions and facilities in Amhara and Afar regions. However these atrocities did not make headlines by the western media, diplomats and leaders of the west or the US or the world’s humanitarian organisations.
But they were quick to report what they thought as humanitarian crisis to use as a pretext evidence against the law enforcement operations of the Government Ethiopian.
On the other hand they were engaged in pure fear-mongering based on the false narrative of the TPLF. The western media had been reporting fake news about Ethiopia saying that TPLF in advance to overtake the capital Addis Ababa. The western media and the western countries especially the US were drumming for the TPLF. The US and most western citizens were warned and advised to leave Ethiopia as soon as possible as they were making deliberate end of the world prediction in Ethiopia and the fierce fight in the capital.
Actually things on the ground were not good for the country as the terrorist already in control of most of Wollo including Dessie and Kombolcha.
Prime minister Abiy Ahmed had been advised to leave the country. It looked like that the history of 1991 was repeating itself.
The US administration used its sanction imposition powers on Ethiopia and its people parallel to all the stated pressures.
Things didn’t look good any more for either Ethiopia or its democratically elected government. The period between September and November 2021 was unforgettable for Ethiopians.
Now the tide has turned in favour of the Ethiopian government after Abiy had committed rather to die and save his mother country contrary to the expectations. He marched to the battlefield while most of the west waiting for him to flee the country in the same way they did to president Mengistu Hailemariam in 1991 to give way to the 27 year of the divisive TPLF rule.
In his statement Abiy underscored that Ethiopia is above everyone of us. We rather die so that Ethiopia lives forever he vowed.
Ethiopia is a country that has maintained its dignity and independence through the bravery and sacrifice of its children. The freedom and sovereignty that Ethiopia enjoyed for thousands of years was not a gift. Freedom cannot be maintained without a price he added.
Our forefathers had differences in their governance and ideology, in their views on rights, justice and equality but they all had one thing in common Ethiopia he continued.
They didn’t have any differences when it comes to Ethiopia and its territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty. Despite their diversity of languages, races and ethnic backgrounds their unwavering determination unites them all. No matter how far apart their personal interests were, Ethiopian-ness comes first whenever a common enemy comes along.
He managed to unite citizens behind him and led them to the battlefield.
He was confident that his generation would pay the price for the victorious name of Ethiopia and the symbol of freedom and keep Ethiopia and Ethiopian-ness in a golden honour book.
Yes he was right indeed. In a matter of 2 weeks things turned around and TPLF was removed from both south and north Wollo as well as Afar region which the group fought and occupied for over 5 months after the government had declared unilateral ceasefire back in June.
Currently TPLF is contained within the Tigray region. The Ethiopian national force didn’t want to enter into Tigray for time being for tactical reason.
The atmosphere has now been changed from different perspectives. Ethiopia and its government have the upper hand. There is no serious national threat in the same level as it was 2 months ago.
No more international shouts on the security of either Addis Ababa or Ethiopia. No more shouts to advise citizens of the west to leave Ethiopia.
The Great Ethiopian Homecoming Challenge that aimed at inviting 1 million diaspora home during the Christmas holiday period has also played a huge role in changing the image of Ethiopia and Addis Ababa.
The world have witnessed that there are no security and safety problems unlike the reports by those mainstream media. Now The African Union summit is also planned to take place from early February next week.
Again this war and victory was not only fought on the war front but on the cyber-front too. The Ethiopian Social Media and high profile activists had played crucial role in the realisation of the victories and bringing the scary circumstances under control.
Neighbouring diplomatic relations especially with Sudan is also looking somewhat good as we can understand from the recent visit of the Sudanese second top military leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
2 weeks ago the Prime minister Abiy received phone call from president Joe Biden which was a clear indication of the change in the US policy and direction in favour of Ethiopia and its legitimate government.
This also indicates that the terrorist group has now lost on both battlefield and in diplomatic fronts. Its deal and partnership with the US administration looked now to be a thing of the past.
In whichever cases Ethiopia is on a winning position to make much better decisions confidently in terms of the government’s key criteria of sovereignty, national interest and honour.
With all that said, it would be foolish to expect every decision the government makes everyone happy and comfortable.
Let’s take the Ethiopian government’s decision to release prisoners on Christmas Day for example.
This announcement had entertained mixed feelings among the Ethiopians home and abroad. Significant numbers of Ethiopians had expressed their angers and confusions over the move and the government’s prisoner release decisions. Other sections of Ethiopians viewed the decision as the foundation for upcoming National Dialogue. Some were just sitting in the middle saying nothing publicly but still confused. Our feeling initially as well surged up in the same way as the first section where we felt angered and confused by the decision.
The government had made 2 or 3 attempts to explain about its decision. The broader reason behind the decision to release was the National Dialogue. But we didn’t see that any of the explanations given were strong enough to convince the confused and angered public.
But we had to make sure that the primary reason of Ethiopia Today site must be maintained all the time. Our site’s playground is the Unity of Ethiopia.
Accordingly below was our final conclusion reported in Ethiopia Today Official YouTube channel on Christmas day.
“We trust on the government’s ability to make the right decision at the right time at this very critical time.
We are so confident that external pressure, primarily the US played no part in this decision as the Ethiopian government comfortably placed itself on a winning position both on battlefield and in diplomatic affairs. “
Even if we were not convinced we needed to report or present the case to our audience in a way it didn’t affect the unity of the country negatively.
But for your information we are now satisfactorily convinced by the prime minister’s last explanation on the matter on January 18, 2022 as the decision to release prisoners was made by ensuring that it maintains the sovereignty, the national interest and the national honour of Ethiopia.
At this juncture, when Ethiopia’s unity is being tested, we must be so careful on how we publicly present sensitive issues. To be specific, we were so shocked by the way most Ethiopians Social media and some well known activists with hundreds of thousands of followers presented their disappointments and disapprovals and angers on the government’s decision to their audience. Remember, these highly honoured activists are also considered to be one of the major sources of the news for Amharic social media platforms. Some of those Amharic news media have followers in millions too. Look, how speedy the information goes and widely made available to hundreds of millions of audience to impact either negatively or positively. But in this case negatively and hence it was not something Ethiopians and Friends of Ethiopia enjoy.
Such negative outcome damages the trust the public has on the government and exposes Ethiopia in the hands of its enemies. The enemies always want to see disunited and dismantled Ethiopia. They are like a roaring lions surrounding the country. They are already doing everything they can to divide and disunite Ethiopia. Their desire is to capitalise on our minor differences and gain access into our daily businesses. However the God of Ethiopia is always there to reverse the ill desires and acts of the enemies. But as a nation we always pay a price as long as we elect to widen up our minor disagreements arising from such decisions of the government at any given time.
After all, the government is there to make any critical decisions like this. That was the reason behind the people of Ethiopia put their faith and elected it to lead the nation. The government has its own highly professional and skilled cabinet and their personnel in their respective hierarchies to undertake professional researches and consultations on their respective departments to come with the right and effective decisions for the nation.
Like we said earlier, we don’t expect every decision to make us happy. Indeed such unhappiness might be partly due to lack of detailed knowledge about the decision made. The government has the responsibility to bridge the gap and clear such confusions if any. But again we don’t believe that whether it is the right thing to publicly explain every decision the government makes. This is because of the fact that any government has its own secret decisions which in fact are based on the national interests. The government must have categories as to whether to designate a particular decision as highly secret or not. Sometimes the government needs just timing, in other times it may not want at all to disclose the reason behind because of its decision’s secrecy category.
Let’s further pick another case.
The recent appointment of 16 ambassadors including General Bacha Debele and Engineer Sileshi Bekele has been also entertaining controversies on various social media platforms.
These disagreements and presentations are coming from high profile social media activists and opinion leaders with immense powers to impress and impact the majority. What worries us most is not whether we agree or disagree on the decisions but the manner such controversies and disagreements are displayed and presented on social media platforms. It is really disturbing and divisive too and we strongly argue that the disapprovals and disagreements must be presented and displayed in moderate and balanced ways.
We are going too deep into expert level analysis particularly in the case of appointments of the Ambassadors.
That is why we come up with the conclusion that the Ethiopian Social Media now is posing higher threats to the national unity than the mainstream west media. As a nation we always pay a price as long as we choose to widen up our minor disagreements. The desire of Ethiopia’s enemies is to capitalise on our minor differences and gain access into our daily businesses. They are already doing everything they can to divide and disunite Ethiopia. So we need to take extra care for the unity of the only mother Ethiopia.
