The Ethiopian Government has decreed this Monday the "indefinite" suspension of Tigray TV broadcasts, after the channel disseminated the official announcement of the Coalition for the Survival of Ethiopian Popular Forces (CSFPE), an alliance of seven opposition formations that aims to oust the Prosperity Party, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and install a broad transitional government.
The Ethiopian Media Authority has made the decision public, with "immediate effect," through a statement in which it prohibits any media from using Tigray Television as an information source and forbids reproducing "illegally broadcast content" by the channel, which it holds responsible for "inciting conflict and promoting extremism."
"The monitoring and evaluation of the media's content confirm that, recently (...) Tigray TV has been systematically disseminating messages that endanger national and public security, as well as national interests," states the note disseminated on social networks, where the regulator insists that it will take any media that violates the order to court.
The regulatory body also reproaches Tigray Television for not having taken advantage of the "opportunity" opened after the peace agreement in Pretoria in 2022, when Addis Ababa lifted a previous suspension on the channel. It recalls that since then, the media was offered a framework to redirect its informative work.
"Likewise, the Authority has made tireless efforts to steer the media back onto a constitutional and professional path, providing training on peacebuilding and professional capacity development to journalists and professionals of Tigray TV," the regulator has emphasized in its statement.
The decision comes after the intervention in Tigray TV by the president of the Amhara National Movement Fano, Zemene Kassie, who announced the creation of the CSFPE. Along with this group, the coalition includes the Oromo Liberation Army, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the Afar National Unity Front, the Benishangul Popular Liberation Movement, and the Gumuz Popular Democratic Movement.
The Coalition for Survival accuses the "personalist and genocidal dictatorial regime" of Abiy Ahmed of having brought to Ethiopia "war, genocide, and destruction," with the risk of a "total disintegration" of the country.
The federal Executive declared the peace agreement sealed in 2022 in Pretoria with the TPLF broken in July, which meant the resumption of a conflict that, between 2020 and 2022, left between 100,000 and 600,000 dead, according to different estimates.
After the signing in Pretoria, the Tigray region was under a provisional administration accepted by the central Government, until the TPLF returned to regional power at the beginning of May. Since then, the Tigrayan authorities have repeatedly accused the Ethiopian Executive of violating the commitments of the agreement and of keeping the region in a situation of total marginalization.
The federal Government, for its part, refuses to recognize the administration reinstated by the TPLF and maintains that the only legitimate authority in Tigray remains the Provisional Regional Administration of Tigray, created under the Pretoria Agreement and subsequently displaced by the return of the TPLF.