Military operation in Tigray ‘aims to end impunity’: Ethiopian PM

Addis Ababa, Nov 10 : Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has stressed that the ongoing military operation in Ethiopia’s Northern Tigray region envisaged ending impunity, as he emphasized that “no federation and constitutional order can tolerate such illegality.” “I call upon the international community to understand the context and the consistent transgressions by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) clique that have led the federal government to undertake this law enforcement operation that aims to once and for all put an end to impunity and forces aimed at destabilizing the country as well as the region,” the Ethiopian PM said in a statement issued on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.
Since early Wednesday, the Ethiopian government had been undertaking military operations against the TPLF, the ruling party in Ethiopia’s northernmost Tigray region and now in an official war against the federal government that followed TPLF’s reported attack against the Northern command of the Ethiopian Defence Force, a division that has been stationed in the region for over two decades.
Noting that the Ethiopian people “have paid a huge price thus far for the criminality of belligerent cliques,” Ahmed stressed that “now we all deserve peace and stability. And this operation aims to end the impunity that has prevailed for years.” Ahmed also noted that behind the conflicts that have resulted in the suffering and death of many Ethiopians in the past two years, close observers of Ethiopian politics could clearly see the influence of the TPLF clique.
“They sponsored, trained and equipped any force that was willing to engage in violent and illegal acts to derail the transition,” Ahmed said, adding that their objective “was clearly to make the country ungovernable by instigating clashes along ethnic and religious lines, to sow division and discord so that the democratic transition will lose its momentum.”