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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said that Tigrayan people across the country are being targeted and arrested by thousands.
The war-torn Tigray region in Ethiopia is “systematically closed”, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief said, warning that people are dying of starvation and death due to lack of treatment.
“People are dying of want,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, from northern Ethiopia, told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
The UN Health Agency, Tedros said, “could not ship goods and medicines to Tigray because it is closed, and the closure is well-organized.” The WHO chief did not say who thought he was blocking aid to Tigray, where the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had been fighting a year-long battle with Ethiopian troops.
Shortly after the war broke out, the Ethiopian army chief accused Tedros of backing the Tigray rebels. He denied the allegations. The WHO director general, who was Ethiopia’s health minister at the time of the TPLF’s coup d’état, has repeatedly stated that he did not take part in the war.
The government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has refused to suspend aid to the region and will rebuild construction. The UN has repeatedly called on the government to provide assistance to the north, and said the current crisis was “man-made”.
No aid has been provided in the area since October 18, and 364 vehicles have been detained at the Afar headquarters “awaiting permission from the authorities to continue,” the UN said Thursday in a weekly humanitarian report.
Assistance from the WHO and other aid agencies in the region has dwindled “nothing”, said Tedros. “Then there is no cure. Dead people. No food. People are starving. No connection. They are isolated from the rest of the world. No fat. There is no money, “he added.
The WHO official also lamented the fact that Tigrayan people across the country are “being exposed and imprisoned in large numbers, by the thousands.”
“This is very clear and concise,” he said.
The government last week announced an emergency for six months across the country amid fears that Tigrayan terrorists and members of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) might move to the capital. The move has led to a new overcrowding that has severely disrupted aid.
Lawmakers say the illegal detention of Tigrayans has increased significantly since then, with new methods that have allowed governments to arrest anyone suspected of supporting “terrorist groups” without permission. Law enforcement officials describe the closure as an official part of the TPLF, which the government has identified as a “terrorist group”.
The Ethiopian government has denied the need for Tigrayan on the basis of its nationality. “There is no systematic arrest … because of your reputation,” Redwan Hussein, the foreign minister, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.
“Given the state-of-the-art emergency, people are alert so that citizens are watching each other in their neighborhoods and each other to attack. Then people can alert the police if they see anything unusual,” he said.
At least 22 UN staff members have been detained in what is being called “Tigrayan” protests by human rights groups, and the United Nations has announced fears. 72 drivers built by the World Food Program built in Afar.
The government says such arrests are legal.
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