An open letter to President Biden to eliminate Eritrea’s role in the genocidal war in Tigray

Teka Neguse, PharmD - SJT
Tigrai Online 10/12/2022

President Joseph R. Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden:

Nearly two years have elapsed since the evil forces of Eritrea and Ethiopia surrounded Tigray in an air-tight enclosure and have been killing its seven million inhabitants mercilessly by aerial bombardments, artillery shelling, direct shooting, and by starvation. Their most recent war crime was committed by Eritrean war planes at Adi-Daero where an unknown number of civilians were killed. The world has chosen to turn a blind eye to these crimes. So Security & Justice for Tigrayans (SJT) is writing today to plead with your administration to strongly condemn these civilian killings and to take a firm and swift action to eliminate Eritrea’s involvement in the assault of Tigray.

Adi-Daero is a small town inhabited by peasants near the Eritrean border. In the morning of September 27, the despot of Eritrea sent his war planes to bombard Adi-Daero and instantly turned half of the residential buildings of this small community into rubbles burying people alive and killing and injuring unknown number of children, women, and other civilians. They chose doing so on a religious holiday to maximize killing civilians. We beg for a few minutes of your time to watch this video that shows the devastation and anguish of mothers and children (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qY7tEFfies). As we write this letter, the bombardment resumed this time on an IDP center near Adi-Daero, killing more than 60 civilians including children and elderly women and men.

The barbaric act of the Eritrean government is not new. It invaded Tigray from all entry points of its borders in November 2020 alongside the Ethiopian forces. In the subsequent eight months, its brutal forces raped and gang-raped, looted anything and everything that they could transport to Eritrea from household utensils to factory machinery, destroyed what they could not take including buildings and orchards, massacred boys and men that they found, the list of their crimes is very long.

Mr. Isaias has now sent his full military might to Tigray to finish what his criminal army did not accomplish in the last 23 months. Eritrea has mobilized all of its military including its reservists in close coordination with various Ethiopian forces and is attacking Tigray from many fronts, the largest being in Sheraro, another small town in Tigray. It has been bombing and shelling border towns it could not occupy, indiscriminately killing civilians and destroying property. The despot is realizing that his forces are not making enough destruction because of the resistance from the Tigray Defense Forces and has now announced the conscription of all able-bodied Eritreans including old men in their 50s and 60s. Mr. Isaias will not sleep until he destroys Tigray by killing millions and impoverishing the remainder.

Mr. Isaias must be stopped before he, along with his protégé in Addis Ababa, annihilates Tigray. We ask you, Mr. President, to condemn the most recent bombings and killing of civilians in Adi-Daero and the assault on Tigray. We ask this to be made directly from the White House press room. We also plead with your administration to end the involvement of Eritrea in the conflict using all tools that we know the leader of the free world has in his arsenals. The best medicine might be working towards removal of the tyrant in Eritrea who is about to bring the Russian tyrant to the neighborhood and create havoc in the Horn of Africa. Without a strong action from the US, Tigray has no chance of surviving the encirclement by forces from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and other countries that have been providing logistical support towards the destruction of Tigray.

Mr. President, make no mistake. There is no ambiguity which side is right and which side is wrong in the Tigray conflict. One side is fighting for its survival. The other side is trying to destroy it. It is that simple and clear. Yet the world does not want to see the reality and act to save the seven million inhabitants. If these evil forces are allowed to finish the genocidal campaign they started nearly two years ago, history will one day ask who the world leaders were at the time just in the same way history asked about Rwanda’s genocide. We hope you will follow your heart and stand on the right side of history and prevent further rapes and gang rapes, massacres, starvation, destruction of property and livelihoods. 

We know and understand the crisis in Ukraine deservedly consumes a lot of your time and energy. But, the biggest war and crisis in the world today is in Tigray and we plead with you to pay a fraction of the attention Ukraine receives before things change for the worst for Tigray. The renewed assault on Tigray for the last month from a combined force of approximately one million soldiers sent by Mr. Isaias Afwerki and Mr. Abiy Ahmed is too much for Tigray to defend. Although outnumbered and underequipped, the Tigray Defense Forces have been able to hold their ground to some degree. But we do not believe this is sustainable without support from the US. We urge you, Mr. President, to provide a small fraction of the support that Ukraine receives to help Tigray evict the invading forces and defend its people from annihilation.

SJT hopes your administration will give our appeal a serious consideration to save the lives of millions and prevent the erasure of Tigray from the surface of the earth. 

Most respectfully, 

Teka Neguse, PharmD
President, Security & Justice for Tigrayans (SJT)
Tel: 443-537-3910
Email: sjte.info@gmail.com 

SJT is a US 501(c (3)) registered non-profit organization that advocates for the wellbeing of Tigrayans at a global level.