Shame on you, Western media, for ignoring this story. And if by some miracle I have any influence with Fano contacts, I will tell them to raise their rifles at you Western media bloodsuckers and escort you to the border.

**

It has been more than a day since the ordeal for Birtukan Temesegn, once a pharmacy student at Dembidolo University, ignited the social media platforms after she told her story on Ethiopia’s EBS network. White Westerners who don’t follow the news much from the Horn of Africa understandably have little clue what happened to her—especially as it’s only now that the nightmarish facts are beginning to get retold in English. But a good summary is offered in a Facebook post by Eyerusalem Tesemma, and the details are horrifying.

And after the broadcast, after a truly moving instant of compassion on-air (shown in the screen shot I took from the broadcast, above), the Aby government moved quickly to intimidate the EBS. Journalist Lula Gezu was arrested, and the safety of Birkutan herself is left in doubt. EBS was intimidated into issuing a retraction and denial that would be farcical if it weren’t so tragic.

My loathing of what the Abiy regime is doing to the Amhara people is on record. I’ve written about it again and again on this platform. But today my fury is for others.

Because as I publish this, there is no story about Birtukan and EBS on the BBC English news website.

There is no story out by Associated Press about Birtukan EBS.

There is no story out by Reuters about Birtukan EBS.

You look in vain on the Amnesty International or the Human Rights Watch websites about Birtukan and EBS—nothing so far.

Zecharias Zelalem—who has proved himself a vulture-on-the-spot to capitalize on Amhara suffering, now that he’s realized the political ground has shifted and Tigray has mostly faded from the news—hasn’t rushed to even tweet about the story.

It’s been more than a day. That is an eternity in news time. But nothing so far.

Less than two weeks ago, the Tigray greatest hits were dragged out again by the worst peddlers of Africa disaster-porn like the Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York and Lauren Blanchard (who, if she were any more corrosively misleading, Disney would put her in animated form). The little media mafia was squeaking about imminent war between Aby’s regime and Eritrea, with poor Tigrayans caught in the middle. Quick! We must help the Tigrayans! And then… when war didn’t break out, they shut up again.

For years now, a collection of white Western journalists have tried to demonize Ethiopia and often for the stupidest of reasons. Not just its prime minister but the whole country, its history, and its culture. Its people kicked out the Tigray People’s Liberation Front for nearly thirty years of cruelty and corruption and greed, but the West decided that was wrong because the U.S. government—especially the Democrats—were best buds with dictator Meles Zenawi.

First they portrayed Ethiopia’s awkward peace with Eritrea as sinister, and whatever one thinks of the Isaias regime, you really have to do pretzel logic to suggest a sovereign nation doesn’t have the right to pick its own allies in a war or for Eritrea to defend itself. Particularly when the TPLF attacked it first.

Then after the Pretoria Treaty was signed, we rapidly got a whole selection of stories that portrayed Isaias as the mastermind and Abiy the puppet. Now we have stories in which no, the peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea was sinister and put Tigrayans in danger, but they’re on the brink of war so that’s sinister, too, and oh, by the way, the Tigrayans are in danger.

Oh, and that Amhara thing? That’s just ethnic militias. No big whoop.

There have been massacres. There have been drone strikes on civilians. But still white Western reporters portray Fano as some kind of fringe movement when its forces were practically breathing down the regime’s neck with its recent “Operation Unity” strikes.

And so now we have the tragedy of Birtukan Temesgen. Which is only met by silent indifference from Europe and Washington and New York.

And those of us who care are left with impotent fury…

At you bastards who do nothing, who write nothing, who delay in writing when you do because you know the story will get cold. Or park a story in “BBC Amharic” because you know it won’t get as much play as when you post stories in the English website.

Through all of 2021, you exploited and plastered all over the Internet the suffering of alleged rape victims and even burn victims without even doing basic fact checks over the more ludicrous claims, which did a disservice to genuine victims. You raised a holy noise about those supposedly starving—while leaving out the crucial details that the TPLF were stealing aid and extorting families to put up fighters in exchange for food. And then we all find out that there was no famine, although there was real food insecurity. You lied. Again.

You pretended TPLF child soldiers and human shields didn’t exist. Even though a New York Times photographer took shots of them, and Reuters had to concede they existed much later on. Yes, I could stuff this article full of links, but I’ve done that so many times, it’s beyond absurd. I had to write a whole book about it.

Oh, I recorded what you did, you bastards, and it’s in The Hyena War, all of it sourced and referenced, and for the rest of time, you will not escape the factual record.

As for you “humanitarian” organizations, you even went out of your way to make up whole populations and misrepresent photos to push a false narrative. And when you got caught, you did the equivalent of “Oopsy!” and either took down your posts or tried to bluff your way out your errors.

But this one really takes the cake. Here’s a story you jackals would normally pounce on, and in this case you would have been right to do so. A case in which the Abiy regime openly intimidates a TV network, makes it do an about-face in Orwellian style and deny a victim her story… and you do nothing.

You guys collectively jumped up and down and screamed and tried to make Tom Gardner into a journalistic folk hero, despite his effort to smear Professor Ann Fitz-Gerald of the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

You ranted repeatedly about “lack of access” to Ethiopia for big brand reporters while the TPLF war was on. CNN tried to make people think footage up in Tigray was video just outside Addis Ababa—remember that?

Yet here is an Ethiopian government which is apparently shutting down a whole television network because a rape survivor of a persecuted ethnic group told her story on-air, and we hear no frantic screams of suppression of free speech, an egregious affront to freedom of the press, blah, blah, blah…

You do nothing.

Not because you don’t think Abiy is the villain. He clearly, undeniably is. You do nothing because, as Tsion Bacha has reminded us, you obviously don’t consider Amhara “worthy victims,” the ones who are useful to your geopolitical security perspective.

Shame on you, shame that should last generations. A shame that’s fitting to record next to the Western newspapers’ downplaying of the Holocaust. That deserves to go next to the chapter on screwing up the story of Rwanda. That’s as callous and ruthless as the efforts to minimize what’s happening to Palestinians.

When Fano wins, I know you bloodsuckers will bang your fists and shout with your constant sense of entitlement to get in and tell the story of its win —and tell it in your usual warped, painfully ignorant way.

But if by some miracle I have any influence with Fano contacts, even a tiny bit, I will tell them to raise their rifles at you and escort you to the border or put you on a plane to send you home. And I hope to hell they do.

Because not all enemies show their hand with active malice. Some are content to casually step over the dying in the street. Or they hang up the phone when the desperate plead for their case to be heard.

A lie of omission, as even schoolchildren are told, is still a lie.

Shame, eternal shame, on all you lying bastards.