the prime minister of ethiopia, declared a ceasefire. the ethiopian forces withdrew from the city you re in, mekelle. you claimed a victory and he said that his forces would stop fighting. but since then, your forces have pushed beyond tigray s regional borders, into amhara, into afar. you are now taking the fight beyond your own borders. look, we have not yet liberated a significant part of tigray. the western part of tigray is still in the hands of either eritreans or amhara expansionist forces, as well as federal endf forces, and the joke that abiy declared a unilateral ceasefire on 20 june is simply a joke, because it was only a decision made by abiy once his strongest military units in tigray were absolutely decimated by our forces. so we vowed then, and will
live in a territory which we, thanks to the struggle of our people, have liberated from the chokehold of abiy ahmed except that he wants to extend his chokehold through other means because he happens to control the switch in addis. so that s your agenda, is it? it s separatism. what this is really all about. no, no. and it s important people around the world know this, is that you are seeking entire separation from ethiopia. you no longer regard addis ababa and prime minister abiy ahmed as legitimate rulers of your country. no, i don t consider abiy ahmed as a legitimate leader, not only of tigray but also of the 0romos or even the amhara. so as far as we are concerned it s separatism to the extent that there is a tendency of separatism in tigray, it s imposed on us. it is because abiy and his partners in crime caused the kind of suffering which no one in their right mind could have imagined
there are tens and tens of thousands of newly displaced people because of the expansion of the territory controlled by your forces. how far are you prepared to go? there are two things here. you know, we have to make sure the safety and security of our people is secure. and to do so, we have to make sure that abiy and his forces will not be in a position to come back and haunt our people any more, 0k? abiy has continued to maintain a chokehold on our people. he has cut off communications. he has cut off electricity. he has cut off access to humanitarian aid. and he wants us to continue what he has failed to achieve on the warfront, to continue through the kind of siege he has imposed on the people of tigray. so we have made it abundantly clear that until such time that such a siege is lifted and that our people are back to normalcy, that no amount of security threat continues to be posed against our
normal business are not in a position to do so simply because they don t have access to the basic amenities that other people in other parts of ethiopia are entitled to, to the extent that. yeah, i understand you re saying that the ethiopian government and its allies must open up all of the services, the communications, the supply routes into tigray as a precondition for a ceasefire. but the us government, never mind. it s not just. .. hang on never mind the addis government, the us government is saying that another immediate urgent precondition for a ceasefire must be you withdrawing your forces from amhara and from afar regions. and i want to know if you re prepared to do that. we are not prepared to do that. we re not prepared to do that. while we understand where the americans are coming from, while we understand the kind of concerted efforts they have exerted on behalf of our people, we are very grateful to that.
but we totally beg to differ when it comes to withdrawal of our forces back to tigray because we still have to liberate every square inch of tigray territory. the west is still in the control of amhara expansionists, eritreans and the federal forces. second, we don t have any security arrangement which would ensure that abiy, with his declared intention to commit genocide in tigray, will not come back and unleash the kind of suffering he had perfected into an art form the last nine months. i m listening very hard to what you re saying. and when you accuse prime minister abiy ahmed, whose ruling party, let us not forget, did win a crushing majority of seats in the federal parliament just a couple of months ago, when you hang on. i consider that a joke. well, you say it s a joke, but when he is accused by people on your side of genocide, i m wondering whether you re really saying