Tigrayan IDPs in Abyi Adi, Adigrat, Adwa, Axum, Mekelle, Shire, etc took to the streets on Tuesday morning to demand that they be returned to their homes and that outside forces leave Tigray.
The protesters targeted the Tigray government, the Ethiopian government, the Eritrean government, the Amhara state and its panoply of forces and the international community.
“We want to farm and live; we don’t want to continue waiting for aid,” read a placard held by a woman in Mekelle.
Tens of thousands of Tigrayans have been forcefully removed from their farmlands in Western Tigray by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces and put into crowded makeshift camps in varios cities. They have been asking the Tigrayan and Ethiopian governments to help them return to their places in time to farm during the upcoming rainy season but so far their demands have gone unheeded.
Another protester warned against the “illegal act of demographic change in Western Tigray” by the Amhara state. There have been multiple reports of a deliberate attempt by the Amhara government, with the tacit approval of the federal government, to change the demography of Western Tigray in Amhara’s favour.
Protesters also pleaded with the international community not to stop humanitarian aid to those in need in Tigray. “Humanitarian aid oughtn’t be suspended under any circumstance,” read a text emblazoned across a flag held aloft by a boy in Adigrat, apparently a rebuke to the USAID’s and WFP’s decision to suspend humantiran aid to Tigray on the grounds of an alleged misappropriation of aid.
Other protesters called for the Pretoria agreement to be fully implemented, for outside forces to leave Tigray, for what they called Tigray genocide to stop, for the children of Tigray to be allowed to go to school, and for Tigrayan refugees in Sudan to be protected.
