« Tigray Genocide » an internationally premeditated cyber warfare against Ethiopia

Genesis of Tigray Genocide hashtag

A trending hashtag popularizing the Tigray Genocide worldwide has been investigated upon, with results portraying that it stems from an internationally premeditated cyber-attack against the government of Ethiopia. The data, collected by a team of scientists at GETFACTet, revealed a piece of shocking information indicating that non-military actors outside Ethiopia were coordinating the #TigrayGenocide cyber campaign linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) military command preplanned attack on the Ethiopian military base.

Following research carried out, 17 accounts were created on the night of Tuesday Nov 3 and Wednesday Nov 4, 2020, and the first “#TigrayGenocide” tweet began on Tuesday at 19:46 from one of these accounts. Then an approximately 184 others added up. Making a sum of 201 new accounts within 48 hours and this is what marked the genesis of the “#TigrayGenocide” hashtag, which was never used before this day.

This shows that the “#TigrayGenocide” was launched before and during the attack on thousands of Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) stationed in Tigray, TPLF forces massacred many of whom while they slept. “#TigrayGenocide” was already launched and circulating the international social media hubs long before Ethiopian forces responded to the attack by the TPLF that started the war and the ongoing humanitarian crisis ultimately cause the deaths and dislocation of millions.

Wrong use of social media to fuel crisis

Most often, “war crime, gang rape, ethnic cleansing, blockade, and looting” are terms associated with the ongoing Tigray conflict. The excessive hyperbole that is gratuitously invoked without rigorous examination of facts on the ground, and its timing, invariably invoked whenever the TPLF is on the back foot, indeed belie a sinister political agenda of external intervention designed to salvage the culpable party. Furthermore, most of the reports by media and “Rights Groups” are done from outside Tigray by consulting people affiliated to the TPLF. Hence, a person or a group who has never been to Tigray since the start of the war cannot come up with a concrete and empirical report that reflects the actual reality on the ground.

It should be noted that while the “TigrayGenocide” hashtag tweets increased exponentially to 75,581 with nearly 1633 cumulative new accounts, there was no communication (internet or phone) between Nov 4 to Nov 30 from the Tigray region to the outside world. This raises an important question – if there was no communication in Nov with Tigray, then who are the eyewitnesses to the alleged “genocide,” and who is reporting to the world? Following a deeper review into the accounts, it was uncovered that a large percentage of the accounts tweeting “#TigrayGenocide” for the first two months were outside Ethiopia and concentrated in specific locations such as Melbourne-Australia, Colorado-USA, Enscheda-Netherland, and Islington-London.

Another eyebrow-raising fact about the “#TigrayGenocide” campaign is that the hashtag is circulating without providing specific incidents that include the number of victims, location, date, and time of the alleged genocidal act. Thus, the loose use of the term ‘genocide’ without confirmed evidence makes this serious term a broad statement and proves that this campaign was designed to distract the international community and shape the public perception away from the actual aggression of the TPLF.