"Who Cares?" Why We Need to Take the Tigray Crisis Seriously

 by Nikhil Patel

The three wise monkeys are a Japanese ‘pictorial maxim’, which is used to embody the phrase ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’. This ancient Japanese cultural doctrine tells people to avoid evil in their speech and action and not to dwell on thoughts of evil, but can often be perceived as a willingness to turn a blind eye towards evil things. 

In this age of constant media, what we call evil can be seen everywhere we choose to look. At the time of writing, Olivia Pratt Korbel (9 years old) was shot dead in her home, A woman named Ashley Dale was killed in her own back garden, and Vladimir Putin is still waging a terrible war in Ukraine which is perhaps the greatest security threat to Europe since the 1960s. 

All of these tragic events are results of evil. In these cases, being broadcast to us with live updates every few hours or days. With these, we choose to tackle evil head on and pass our judgement on whatever terrible act may have occurred. However, what about when it is a story that is a little less close to home. One with people who look ‘different’, have ‘funny’ names and speak ‘strange’ languages.Are we as keen to pass judgement then? Or do we do as the monkeys command? Last year the Taliban took over the nation of Afghanistan. Whilst it held our attention for five minutes, we averted our gaze whilst evil took over and continued to fester. Right now, the worst humanitarian crisis in recent history is taking place in Ethiopia, with over 500,000 dead and a massive refugee crisis as a result of a bloody civil war. We do not dwell on these evils, in fact we ignore them as much as possible. Governments, the media and the general populace are more than happy, to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. 

Linguistic verbosity aside, this article is about Ethiopia. The director of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the crisis in Tigray had been largely ignored because of the colour of the skin of the Tigrayans. But in order to even begin analysing whether this is true, a brief summary of the situation and history is needed.

In 2019, Ethiopian Prime Minister (Abiy Ahmed) won the Nobel peace prize for ending a decades long conflict with neighbour Eritrea. But fewer than 12 months later, Ethiopia then attacked its own region of Tigray with its new ally. Considering how the country was nearly at peace, how did it fall into war again so quickly? In 2018, Abiy Ahmed signed a permanent cease fire with its neighbour Eritrea after years of conflict. Ahmed came to power in the same year forming a unifying coalition, ending years of one party dominating the political landscape. That party was the Tigray People's Liberation front (TPLF). Tigray has a population of seven million, just over six percent of the total population of the country. Therefore Ethiopia had largely been exposed to decades of the Tigrayan centered policy. When Ahmed came to power, the hopes of many in Ethiopia rose, as a fairer more equal society was promised. However, the TPLF rejected this sense of national unity and retreated to Tigrays regional capital, Mekelle. This was due to them believing Ahmed's reforms as a way of centralising power. The feud came to a head when Tigray held its own elections, which had been postponed federally due to the pandemic, and the rift grew further when the central government cut funding to Tigray, which the TPLF claimed was ‘an act of war’. The final catalyst, was when the TPLF were accused of attacking Ethiopian army bases. This was the straw that broke the camels back. Ahmed addressed the nation to tell them that war was inevitable. 

Mass graves (centre) and funeral services (left and right)
for the victims of the Mai Kadra massacre
(images by Yonatan Zebdeows)

Since then, as of the beginning of this year, 500,000 people have died, 2.6 million people have been internally displaced and 9.4 million people are in urgent need of food and other aid. To put that in perspective, 5800 people have been killed in Ukraine at the time of writing. Whilst the conflict has been going on longer in Tigray, the rate at which people are being killed in Tigray is much higher. 

These statistics are both terrible and tragic. They are the kind of things you would assume make for a good news story or broadcast. But very rarely do we hear about the Tigray crisis. To the media, it does not make a good news story, it does not interest us. The war in Ukraine is much closer to home and it is impossible to dispute that it poses a possible security threat to us. But Tigray has been suffering for almost five years. It has gained nowhere near the media attention that the war in Ukraine has. Is it because Ukraine possibly threatens our way of life? Is the war in Tigray simply not that interesting? Is the media racist? Are we racist?! Ultimately I am not nearly qualified enough to delve deeply into that. But anyone can see how Ukraine has received just under four billion pounds worth of aid (with another billion promised) from the UK, as opposed to the 30 million given in 2021 to Tigray. Whether we like it or not and no matter how unflattering it may be, the government of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland do not treat every humanitarian crisis equally, and we the electorate are more than happy to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.