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Apr 7, 2013

The TPLF Variant on Apartheid


From the outset TPLF defines itself as a liberator for one specifically racially 
defined group. And still after two decades on power, irrespective of its 
ostensible claim that it is under the umbrella of EPRDF, people of the same 
origin monopolistically has held the whip-hand; and the whole country has been 
cash cowed by one specific racial group while the majority is being treated as 
impediments. 
The apartheid nature and characteristics of TPLF’s policies and behavior is as 
covert as possible to throw the majority into total muddle until it is too late. To 
put it bluntly, the fledgling apartheid system of TPLF is emerging through a frog 
boiling tactic. 
The TPLF’s apartheid system can be described as a subtle state action designed 
to secure and maintain the Tigrian domination by furthering their Economic and 
Political interests through control over the majority Non-Tigrian population. 
The following categories make the necessary, sufficient, and defining 
characteristics of the emerging tender-plant apartheid system in Ethiopia: 
1. Economic Interest
Furthering the Tigrean economic dominance is mainly achieved through a 
threefold economic sabotage: i.e., 
a. Through the creation of Tigrian tycoons in every facet of the economy; 
b. By building extractive business empire; 
c. Through emasculation of Non-Tigrian business firms.
Let’s see each of the above points in detail. 
1.1The incubation of the Tigrian Racketeers: Unlike the loosely 
dispersed and individualistic Non-Tigrian business men, the Tigrian 
racketeers are a highly organized kleptomaniacs that are exclusively 
nurtured by the under-table action of the government in a way that: 
- Favoring to get loan from state-owned banks with least or no 
collateral;

- Facilitating the bureaucratic process in the Custom office with least 
search procedure while this government office intentionally delays the 
items that belonged to the Non-Tigrian business men. 
- Government toleration for their criminal act of tax evasion. 
- For the Tigrian importers, letter of credit will be processed easily and 
access to hard currency is almost unlimited; whereas the Non-Tigrians 
must wait a minimum of 4 to 6 months since their application. 
- The government has granted them key business sites under low bid. 
- The government conducts special training programs and video 
conferences to create situational awareness among them and update 
them with first hand information. At this point, we must not forget that 
nowadays information is equivalent to money. 
On top of that, they have been informed /’’trained’’/ and equipped with the 
following racketeering tactics. 
a. Insider Trading: Obviously all key governmental positions are occupied 
by the Tigrian; which means any policy or information particularly related 
with business reaches to the Tigrian racketeers before the crowd gets it so 
they adjust everything in advance to suit to the new condition. And due to 
such a prior knowledge they net millions from insider trading. 
They also have foreknowledge on every government auction however the 
Non-Tigrians get it lately from news papers. For insider information 
equals ‘’money’’ in a modern market economy, it is a great power in the 
hands of people who are the most cohesive and organized criminal group 
like the Tigrian racketeers. As a matter of fact, insider information is 
illegal both from moral and law perspective.
b. Dual Set of Ethics: In fact, the Tigrian racketeers have been informed 
directly or indirectly to practice a dual set of ethics: 
I. An altruistic set of ethics for themselves and; 
II. A predatory one for the rest of Ethiopian people. 
- They don’t compete with one another for a single niche of market; 
- They don’t interfere with the monopoly controlled by other Tigrian 
racketeer;

- They are barred from underbidding fellow Tigrian racketeer. 
- They are always cooperate with one another so as "not to lose the 
money of Tigray" 
c. Team Strategy: Before we go to how they act in team, let’s see the
psychological set up of the Tigrian racketeers and the Non-Tigrian 
business men. 
The Non-Tigrian have been conditioned to think that everyone must be 
judged on his or her merits and that it would be immoral to be biased for 
his own race. The Tigrian racketeers, on the other hand, have been 
conditioned from early time of TPLF to think in terms of the good of their 
race. 
Keeping this fact in mind, what they are practicing is through "Infect to 
insolvency and then wait to takeover" approach. For example, if they need 
to monopolize certain business sector they allocate a calculated sum of 
money to under bid the price of item which certainly makes the NonTigrian competitor unable to fight with irrationally low price then put the 
competitor company into insolvency and finally buy the company itself 
with a giveaway price and will apply "the abuse of dominance" once they 
control the sector. 
In general, a cohesive and powerful team effort, dual set of ethics along with 
insider information consistently amasses collective power to the Tigrian 
racketeers over a scattered and individualistic Non-Tigrian. 
1.2 By Establishing Extractive Trade Empire: An acronym 
EFFORT stands for the TPLF’s multi-billionaire trade empire called 
Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray. It was established by 
expropriating capital equipments from different parts of the country and 
by the infamous defaulted bank debts. Currently there is no business 
sector that is free from the involvement of EFFORT. It stretched from 
production to distribution, from finance to insurance, from wholesale to 
retail, from real-estate to horticulture, from mining to IT. Peculiarly, this 
trade empire hasn’t ever been audited by external auditor nor repays the 
loan it borrowed periodically. 
Similar to the Tigrian private companies, EFFORT is also privileged in 
the following manner: 

- It is awarded government auctions of big projects; 
- Favored to borrow in billions without collateral and it is not subject to 
repayment; 
- Equipped with insider information; 
- Granted fertile land at a giveaway price by displacing tens of 
thousands of indigenous people from their ancestral land; 
- Granted key mining sites without open bid; 
- Market opportunity will be arranged for it by forcing regional and 
federal offices to buy products which haven’t a relevant importance or 
in an exaggerated quantity. 
Surprisingly, almost 99.9% of the employees in these innumerable companies of 
EFFORT are Tigrian; which means that majority of the economy is occupied by 
either the Tigrian private companies or by the extractive trade empire called 
EFFORT; and they primarily privileged job opportunity for Tigrians. As the 
complete cycle of economic dominance and privileged labor market portrays, 
we are under a severe economic genocide. 
1.3 Stifling of Non-Tigrians’ Business Firms: Obviously the playing 
ground is not level; and the whole situation is an uphill battle for NonTigrians’ business firms to survive all the barriers that they faced from the 
government bureaucracy and from economic sabotage of the highly 
privileged EFFORT companies and the cohesive Tigrian racketeers. 
Consequently, especially after election-2005 we have seen that many 
Non-Tigrian businesses have been either liquidated or down-sized. 
2. Political Interest
The foremost plan of TPLF was to secede the Tigray region from the rest of the 
country and to establish a sovereign republic, as plainly stated in Manifesto-68 
which was formulated by the triumvirate of Abay Tsehaye, Sebhat Nega and 
Meles Zenawi. However, through time they inferred that a sovereign republic of 
Tigray would be a weak and failed state. Then they changed their program to 
live together as a state-within-a state and TPLF’s role as a Quasi-Occupying 
Force.

Similar to the case for economic dominance, TPLF and Tigrians maintain their 
political dominance using racial solidarity as weapon against the Non-Tigrian 
Ethiopians in the following manner: 
2.1. Surrogate Colonization /Repopulation/: The TPLF apartheid 
system has also been featured with Depopulation and PopulationTransfer. The annexation of arable lands of the Amhara region like 
Humera, Welkayt, Tsegede, Alamata, Korem and so on, to Tigray 
province and depopulating the indigenous Amharas from those places 
and then replacing with Tigrians is a case in point of the surrogate 
colonization of the TPLF regime. The expansion of Tigrians is also 
continuing in west and north Gondar to annex the North Mountains 
after they learned that the North Heights are fields of Gold and other 
Precious metals. 
2.2. Expropriation of Land /Landed Property/ Belonging to A 
Racial Group: As a matter of the truth, the people of Gambella have 
been denied its natural right of living on its ancestral land. And clearly 
we know that more than quarter of arable land of the region has been 
awarded to land grabbers at a giveaway price by TPLF megalomaniacs. 
But beside to this, more than 2/3 of the remaining arable land has been 
expropriated by Tigrian Mechanized-Farm owners in which it left more 
than 70,000 indigenous people for forcible relocation to the place where 
the soil is dry with poor quality and with no infrastructure. What 
worsened the situation was that the deployment of the TPLF 
mechanized army upon the unprotected civilians to enforce forcible 
relocation of the indigenous people. As a result, they became victim of 
genocide, rape and conflagration of their villages by TPLF militias. 
2.3. Deliberate Denigration of Living Conditions of NonTigrian Racial Groups: This includes: 
- Demolishing of business areas under cover story of investment which 
are mainly occupied by Gurage business men in the capital city of 
Addis Ababa. Particularly after election-2005, the Gurages have been 
profiled as "Accomplice of Neftegna" and currently as "Ginbot-7 
Sympathizers"; and consequently, they are paying the expensive price 
ever for the alleged charge. 

Internal deportation and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of the 
Amhara people from different parts of the country by confiscation of 
their tenure and property is also one of the cruelest repressions of the 
racist regime of TPLF in order to break the potential resistance from 
this group by throwing them into absolute destitution and instability. 
2.4. Infliction of Serious Bodily and Mental Harm upon 
Certain Racial Members: Tens of thousands of political and 
Conscience prisoners are concentrated in three federal and 120 regional 
major prisons. They are also found in an unofficial detention centers in 
military camps including in Dedessa, Bir Sheleqo, Tolay, Hormat, 
Blate, Tatek, Jijiga, Holeta, and Senqele. Majority of the prisoners are 
racially Oromo; and their alleged charge is "Sympathizers of OLF". 
The number of Amhara, Gambella and Ogadenese political and 
conscience prisoners are also significant. 
The condition of these political prisoners is extremely harsh, overcrowded 
and life threatening. Besides, the TPLF henchmen often use a series of 
torture and brutal interrogation to extract confessions including whipping 
on the soles of feet, over stretching of limbs, slow dripping of water on 
the head, slandering of their race, pulling out of nails, forcible 
extraction of teeth, weights suspended on testicles, plunging into 
spoiled water, solitary confinement in dark cell for long period of 
time, signing a confession, forced self-incrimination, threatening with 
injection of HIV infected blood, forcing to denounce others, burning 
with cigarette, insertion of bottle and hot candle into prisoners’ 
rectum, drowning into ice cold water for long period of time and 
beating with rifle butt, stick, whip, belt etc.
2.5. Access: No matter how the Non-Tigrians have the qualification for 
the high post in the army or the security apparatus or for key 
government offices, they have already been denied by the unwritten law 
of TPLF. Access to government-sponsored scholarship at the overseas 
is also highly secured for Tigrians. 
In conclusion, Ethiopia is a country of nations and nationalities. So there must 
not be room for the socio-political and economic dominance of single race. All 
the people of Ethiopia must be treated as an empowered citizen. The fledgling 
Tigrian apartheid system must be nipped in the bud before it sparks the bloody 
genocide.

; As a universal truth, no one ever negotiated successfully from weakness, but 
from strength. It must be our primary target to be strong. And, I do personally 
believe that awakening to the truth will make us strong. We are now in the 
middle of life-or-death struggle; if we fail to break the yoke of TPLF’s apartheid 
system the future of our people, the continuity of our race and the stability of our 
country will be at stake. 
We have left nothing with TPLF; we have been cornered, humiliated, 
persecuted, harassed, assaulted, exiled, locked-in jail, tortured, expelled, 
impoverished by design, confiscated and decimated. We must not have room for 
the source of all these evil, TPLF, anymore!!! We must fight it by all possible 
means until we regain our freedom!!! We must struggle desperately until we tear 
apart the reins of the Quasi-Occupiers!!! 
On the other hand, the Tigrians must also do their own homework before they 
are being treated as: 
- Accomplice of Criminally guilty TPLF officials; 
- Politically guilty as TPLF Supporters; 
- Morally guilty as Tigrians; 
- And perhaps, metaphysically guilty as Ethiopians. 
Dawit Fanta /Eng./ 
April 2, 2013.

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