Another in our series of Ethiopian academics who lobbied for genocide in Tigray is Moges Zewdu Teshome. He gained a law degree in Ethiopia before continuing his studies at Vienna School of International Studies in Austria. But despite his law degree, just like the others featured in this blog, Moges Zewdu Teshome used his expertise to deny genocide in Tigray, deny specific atrocities in Tigray. He used his social media presence from 2020 to 2022 as a spamming tool to attack journalists, human rights researchers, diplomats, activists and anyone who called for an end to war crimes and an end to Ethiopia’s genocidal war in Tigray. He appeared in Ethiopian television outlets where he spread his views and mocked suffering victims of drone massacres. Today, he remains active in atrocity denial, genocide denial, and played an important role in the spread of genocidal propaganda.
Shortly after Ethiopian and Eritrean troops began attacking Tigray in November 2020, much of the world expressed fear and worry about possible human rights abuses and the impact on Tigrayans. You would expect the educated elite to feel the same. But like many of his fellow Ethiopian academics, Moges Zewdu Teshome feverishly cheered on the war even as reports of slaughter of civilians began to emerge.
Two days after the war began he tweeted the following: My single most important advise in relation to the war in Ethiopia is this: once you chose the path of war, GIVE WAR A CHANCE!!!
“Give war a chance!” he later tweeted on November 11th 2020, a week after the fighting had begun. “Surge the offensive and finish off the job. When there is no peace to keep, war brings it along. Talk to the bandits in the only language they know, coercion, not persuasion.”
He tweeted at the Ethiopian genocidal Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that all out war was necessary, because “half measures were as bad as no measures.”
On Twitter, Moges Zewdu Teshome joined other likeminded Ethiopian academics in harassing people who denounce war. Moges targeted Belgian European Parliament member Assita Kanko after she denounced the war, Moges targeted Human Rights Watch researcher Laetitia Bader by calling her a “TPLF crony” after she condemned the targeting of the city of Mekelle in airstrikes, and UN Human Rights Council lawyer Betty Murungi who he called “disgraceful” because she called for crimes against humanity to stop.
He once tweeted, when Mekelle sneezes, Minnesota sneezes! This was how he was mocking the many anti genocide protests that were taking place in Minnesota and other cities across the United States.
When he was on air he said something similar about the anti war voices who were tweeting using the hashtag #saynotowar: “they are just pack mules for the OLA (rebel group) and TPLF (rebel group). The people who say “no to war” they are TPLF sympathizer and only want to save the rebels.”
During the war, he appeared on the Adebabay TV, which was famous for spreading hate speech targeting Tigrayans. While their, he went on air and spoke about war crimes and made arguments that justify the targeting of residential and civilian areas of a town, saying that this act does not violate war crimes laws if it is being used by rebel forces to store weapons. Remember, this person allegedly has a degree in international law.
“If an enemy is using a location as war trench or firing position or a place to hide, it can be an oil depot or another type of infrastructure, it is no longer protected (by Geneva convention) and is a legitimate military target.”
Moges Zewdu Teshome was saying this as at the time the Ethiopian government was shelling hospitals, schools, and markets in the city of Mekelle, and the towns of Humera and Shire, killing at least 83 civilians, including children, and wounding over 300 (Human Rights Watch). His comments timing came and became justification for the use of everything from hospitals to homes as military targets.
He also stated in the same interview that the war was not a civil war, because only the Ethiopian government could designate it as a civil war and it had not done so. According to Moges Zewdu Teshome’s hilarious misinformation, only if it is an international conflict can outsiders designate a conflict. In that case, only the international community and the Red Cross (ICRC) a humanitarian medical organization can issue a designation! This was done to promote the government description of the war as “law enforcement operation” very similar to Russian government term for its invasion of Ukraine: “special military operation.” He attacked people who used the world civil war to describe conflict that killed hundreds of thousands.
He used genocidal language to justify the war in another interview. He said it was necessary operation to “make Tigrayans accept Ethiopianism again.”
For the next couple of years, he used his air time and social media time to mock Tigrayan victims of atrocities and the anti war protesters who called for a ceasefire.
Between August and September 2022, there were several drone massacres in Tigray, including one which killed seven people including children when a kindergarten in the city of Mekelle was struck, and two more which killed ten people in residential areas a few weeks later.
Most of the time, when drones and airstrikes were killing people in Tigray, journalists would reach out to doctors at Ayder Hospital, the only functioning major hospital in Tigray, since genocidal forces had destroyed and looted over 70% of the region’s health centers. Dr. Kibrom Gebreselassie from the Ayder Hospital, would often confirm the drone strikes since he personally received victims.
As a result of his work, Mr Moges Zewdu Teshome identified Dr Kibrom and began singling him out for harassment on social media. He denied the drone strikes even happened and would claim that Dr. Kibrom was lying.
“General Kibrom Gebreselassie is back again from the front line of the battlefield!” he said. “whenever and wherever there is Kibrom, there is a drone!” He would repeatedly insult him, once calling him “the sole mouthpiece for the TPLF propaganda wing.”
He claimed that the reports of drones attacking civilians were a “distortion of facts.”
“How can every drone strike attack civilians? And how can all the medical professionals speak the same narrative? Coincidence or coordinated campaign?”
Drone strike massacres across Tigray were confirmed by many media reportings. But Moges Zewdu Teshome denied the reportings. Remember, he spoke on air saying that drone massacres of civilian targets would be permitted if there were rebel armaments in the area. He uses the same logic used by genocidal Israeli forces in Gaza who justify air massacres of civilians by saying “Hamas has a tunnel there.”
“If there is a drone attack, it’s because there was fighting,” he said in response to news about the aerial massacre of 70 civilians in the village of Adi Daero. But there was no fighting and the BBC found destruction of homes in civilian areas where no fighting was happening.
He repeatedly denied genocide. Even after reports emerged of death tolls in Tigray passing half a million he still called the claim “baseless and dry propaganda.” He said “I specialize in international criminal justice I know the ins and outs of genocide.”
But even after international genocide experts came together and published a 120 page report on genocide which confirms that the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies which he defended during the war actually commit genocide in Tigray he still denies it to this day.
After people with far superior expertise than him put together a paper which he has no ability to refute, he recently changed his view from “there is no genocide” to “I wont accept genocide claim by non-authoritative scholars, only from international tribunal.”
Of course this is all hypocritical. Moges Zewdu Teshome has previously labeled two massacres outside of Tigray, one of 50 people another of 161 people that took place in 2020 as both being genocide. No international tribunal ever referred to those mass killings as genocide but it was still enough for him to give it the genocide label. It is clear that for Mr Moges Zewdu Teshome, when victims are non Tigrayan he needs no time to label it genocide even if there is no international tribunal declaration.
But if Tigrayans are slaughtered on an unprecedented scale to the point where genocide scholars release a two year report confirming genocide, it is suddenly no longer sufficient.
There is nothing new here. Moges Zewdu Teshome simply followed the pathway of the many other Ethiopian fascist scholars who have zero critical thinking and only herd mentality skills. As a result of this during a genocidal war and an attempt to wipe out Tigrayans by using killings and hunger, they all sided with two powerful armies and used their education to justify the collective punishment of 6 million people.