Ethiopia slams WHO leader for statements on Tigray war.

 

Ethiopia has requested the United Nations to investigate its health head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for "harmful disinformation" and "misconduct," accusing him of supporting rebels in his home province of Tigray, which is wracked by civil conflict.

 

Tedros, the most high-profile Tigrayan outside of Ethiopia, characterized the situation in the region as "hell" this week, alleging that the government is preventing medications and other life-saving supplies from reaching people.

 

Tedros'
statements, according to Ethiopia's government, jeopardized the World Health Organization's credibility, and the Ethiopian government demanded that he be probed for "misconduct and breach of his professional and legal duties."

 

"He has been interfering in Ethiopia's domestic affairs, especially Ethiopia's ties with Eritrea," the foreign ministry said late Thursday, citing a letter it submitted to the World Health Organization.

 

Tedros is accused by the government of helping the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), an Ethiopian terror group and its foe in the 14-month battle in the country's north.

 

Thousands have died as a result of the war, and many more are on the verge of starvation.

 

Tedros had "spread damaging falsehoods and harmed WHO's image, independence, and credibility," according to the foreign ministry, as evidenced by his social media comments, which "openly condone the violence perpetrated by the TPLF against the Ethiopian people."

 

Tedros' words drew a rebuke from Ethiopia's UN mission, which demanded that he withdraw himself "from any affairs touching Ethiopia."

 

On Wednesday, it warned on Twitter that "partisan, politically and personally driven workers, distracted from performing their global tasks, limit the most essential work of UN organizations."

 

Tedros called limits on supplies entering rebel-controlled Tigray, which the UN has labeled as a "de facto siege," a "insult to our humanity" on Wednesday.

 

It is "so horrible and incomprehensible in this time, the twenty-first century," Tedros told reporters, "when a government denies its own people food and medication for more than a year and the rest to survive."