Africa-Press – Ethiopia. Addis Ababa August 3/2021 (ENA) The prominent Ethiopian actor, Debebe Eshetu lambasted the U.S. Administration for supporting the terrorist TPLF group that has been working hard to dismember Ethiopia.
The giant actor is considered spokesperson for Ethiopian and African theater in the international scene.
Describing the terrorist TPLF as evil leaders sent to punish Ethiopia rather than properly manage the country, Debebe noted that they had been leading the nation in the wrong direction during their stay in power for the past 27 years.
“They were mafia-type group that mostly hailed from one part of the region but govern in the name Tigray by sowing hatred and discord among Ethiopians,” he said.
The artist noted that the terrorist group leaders committed all the evils in the world until they were forced to step down from power with unprecedented civil disobedience and hid in caves, following the law enforcement operation launched in early November 2020.
Debebe speaks from personal experience he encountered during the rule of TPLF when he was jailed for about two years.
“I never wanted to be a politician. But I joined the Collation for Unity and Democracy at the age of 78. Because I wanted freedom and the right to voice my opinion. We the opposition, won the election, but the TPLF-led government refused to accept the result.”
Close 200 protesters, who came out to voice their opposition in the capital alone, were gunned down.
Subsequently leaders of Collation for Unity and Democracy, including the actor and politician Debebe, were thrown to jail for close to two years by the TPLF-led regime, “ the present junta leaders.”
His detention and the arrest of the other leaders shocked many Ethiopians who know him as a legendary stage and screen actor.
“ So, I joined the political world and saw the bestial nature of TPLF where I spent a year and 10 months in various prisons, including the notorious place Maekelawi,” he stated.
He describes TPLF members and the leadership as cruel, inhumane, materialistic, arrogant and jealous, adding that they interrogators give inmates sleeping pills, deny them food and sunlight, and torture them to make them admit the crime they did not commit.
Debebe, who had suffered ruthless abuses in the hands of the jailers, has no regrets since he did all for freedom and democracy.
“I don’t regret going to prison. I only regret being ruled by people like the TPLF junta that are now trying to come back to power. This is impossible and will never happen in Ethiopia. We have shown to the world that we are capable of holding peaceful and democratic election just before a month.”
TPLF has now continued with its belligerent and fatalistic encroachment, Debebe noted, exposing that the US and some of its European allies are supporting this terrorist group to establish a puppet leadership in Ethiopia in vain.
He warned that the Western countries, including United States of America, have to refrain from supporting a criminal clique that has been perpetrating inhuman acts and atrocities .
According to him, most members of President Joe Biden’s administration are adherent of the terrorist group TPLF and this has resulted in U.S. hostilities towards Ethiopia.
Debebe revealed that “crimes and inhuman acts of the terrorist TPLF have been consistently supported by the United States.
Yet this dream of establishing a puppet transitional government is unacceptable because Ethiopia cannot be ruled by any other entity, save its own elected government, the actor underlined.
Debebe called on the Western powers to refrain from their unwarranted meddling in the domestic affairs of Ethiopia and realize that the people of this country have elected the party they choose and they will not surrender to outsiders.
“The only thing I say for some of the Westerners is to keep your hands off Ethiopia. You need to know that Ethiopia belongs to Ethiopians,” he said.
As an actor, Debebe was introduced to the West as early as 1971 when he appeared in “Shaft in Africa”, where he played a high ranking Wassa in a slavery ring that John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) brought to the “motherland” with an idea to break the ring.
He later joined the Budapest School of Art, Hungary, and starred in other films like The Great Rebellion, The Sailor from Gibraltar, The Grave Digger, and Red Leaves, among others.
