Talk:Timeline of the Tigray War

Europe External Programme with Africa

This timeline page has started to use EEPA quite a bit. Do we have any info about what Europe External Programme with Africa is? It does sound a bit suspiciously like something pretending to be an inter-governmental organisation. However, the EEPA is not the European External Action Service, which is "the diplomatic service and combined foreign and defence ministry of the European Union".

• EEPA: 3 lobbyists; 1.5 lobbyists FullTimeEquivalent; lobbying costs 50,000€ - 99,999€
• About Us - sounds OK for a self-description
• the Secretary-General of the three people is Mirjam van Reisen; a title of Secretary-General for a group of three people does sound a bit exaggerated...
• Daniel Mekonnen sounds like a serious human rights researcher
• from January 2016 to December 2018, Daniel has worked as a Consultant for the Brussels-based Europe External Programme with Africa (EEPA), in a multi-year advocacy and research project, titled "EU-Africa Response to Human Trafficking." In this context, he collaborated, among other things, in the publication of core chapters for edited volumes of EEPA,

So EEPA is neither an Ethiopian nor international newspaper nor a well-known NGO or human rights organisation, but at least one current and one past person are identifiable. My guess is that it's usable as a source, since we have very few sources overall. But if it's going to become a major source for key information, then major attention will have to be paid to what it really is... Boud (talk) 02:08, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Looks like you found the answer above when you wrote "lobbyists". They are a lobbyist group. KZebegna (talk) 11:12, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

So they accept money to lobby a particular point of view. Mainstream western newspapers also depend strongly on money from advertisers and/or owners which biases them to not upset those points of view (e.g. "Western governments have good motives but sometimes make mistakes; governments elsewhere [insert stereotype here]"). The difference is that mainstream western newspapers are themselves objects of knowledge - Wikipedia-notable - and the biases are generally known, and can be taken into account for NPOVing. There are also journalistic traditions and standards that to some degree get valid factual information into news reports. Also, the advertising money is not directly used to promote the advertisers' interests. But EEPA is not an Ethiopian newspaper, so it doesn't help to balance things, and we have very little info about it. Anyway, I wanted to raise the question, but I'm probably not the person to close the debate.

@Rastakwere: You seem to be the person adding the EEPA info. @LéKashmiriSocialiste: You're editing very heavily. Any arguments for or against removing information sourced to EEPA? Boud (talk) 21:20, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Rastakwere started copying their reports and I'm condensing it while making sure it doesn't violate copyright. But the EEPA website says they're a non-profit trying to "to ensure that justice, equality and accountability are always key cornerstones in the pursuit of international relations", with the main focus on Europe's role in guaranteeing it, particularly in Africa. They seem to always take their information from other sources, including biased ones. However unconfirmed or biased reports are always presented as reported rather than confirmed. I don't think there's anything unreliable about it. However it doesn't f=give sources for everything in its reports or from whom it obtained it. That's to be kept in mind. LéKashmiriSocialiste (talk) 05:48, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

The use of "reported" or "confirmed" in en.Wikipedia to talk about media information is generally considered weaselly. The real meaning of "reportedly" can be anywhere between "there's a rumour that we don't want to be blamed about spreading" to "we're fairly sure of this information but, just to be sure, we don't want to be blamed if it's wrong". Attributing the source is safer than writing "reportedly": the reader will judge the reliability on reading the source.

Explicitly attributing to EEPA is, I think, the minimum we can do to alert the reader. I'm still rather suspicious. In the absence of alternative sources, I do tend to think that more information in this situation is better than less, although it does mean we risk propagating rumours. What EEPA says about itself is fine, but, by definition, is not at all independent. Boud (talk) 13:48, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

When there is peace in reality, the fact that rumors are being propagated isn't going to make them start fighting so don't worry too much... KZebegna (talk) 13:59, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Including rumours in Wikipedia defeats the point of Wikipedia being an encyclopedia rather than a news source. The fact that the rumours may be ineffective doesn't justify including them. However, there is a precedent with some similarity. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was a major source of Syrian Civil War information for Western mainstream media and for en.Wikipedia for many years, and as the current content of Syrian Observatory for Human Rights states (this seems to be very stable in terms of editing), it seems to be a one-person "organisation" of a Syrian exile who coordinates information from a large number of sources, and was described by Amnesty International in the NYT (currently ref 2) as generally providing accurate information on places, times and details of killings. The problem with starting Europe External Programme with Africa, however, is that I cannot find any reasonably third-party sources that are not just repeating EEPA's own self-description or signing petitions or statements by the named people claimed to be active in it.

Independently of the EEPA, casualty recording by civil society organisations has become well-established since the Iraq Body Count project starting in 2003 as a vital source of information in armed conflicts independent of governments and news media (though news media are a major source). It seems that noone/no groups have yet started a casualty recording project with a stable website for armed conflicts in Ethiopia. Boud (talk) 04:12, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

While precedent can be instructive, in principle, overrelying on 'precedent' too much can give way to a fatal 'slippery slope' error, as it ignores whatever makes all cases unique. KZebegna (talk) 10:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done Let the debate (in terms of sources and notability) continue at Talk:Europe External Programme with Africa. Boud (talk) 19:59, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia has quoted The EEPA very much.

Wikipedia has quoted no source so much as the EEPA European External Programme with Africa.

But as a global encyclopedia organization Wikipedia should know that the EEPA is Lobby Network run by TPLF Lobbyist.

The founder and director of the EEPA is Marjam Van Reisen. The author of most war crimes reports is Martin Plaut another TPLF Lobbyist.

Have a look at Martin plautd Website and compare it with the articles from the EEPA, you gonna find out that Martin Plaut wrote nearly all war crimes reports which Wikipedia several western states including the USA and western NGOs took as a credible evidence. 2003:CB:4F27:2A00:399A:22E:AD7:D5EC (talk) 21:48, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for raising the EEPA reliability issue. I have been wondering how an international organization be so biased. It appears EEPA is not international at all. I have been reading this timeline and found it too biased towards TPLF, and all those biased information in almost all of the cases come from EEPA. I checked their website and found that they started writing situation report on November 17 2020, few days before the war in Tigray broke. They then stopped writing situation report in August 2021. This the time when TPLF forces entered neighboring regions of Amara and Afar. I read the content of the situation reports, I would say I know when I see one, I can tell you guys these reports are coming out directly from TPLF or TPLF supporters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.137.18.35 (talk) 19:06, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

This article has become too long and should be divided into two articles

• Timeline of the Tigray War in 2020
• Timeline of the Tigray War in 2021

Agreed--Garmin21 (talk) 22:27, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Great principle, but wouldn't it be 1 short (2 months) and one much longer article then? Why not just make it collapsible?

Cheers Xobbitua (talk)

Good idea to make it collapsible, but pls give us a hint how to do that? Rastakwere (talk) 06:17, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

@Rastakwere: I made a change to the article to make the table of contents shorter but still keep all the sections and headings. That might have addressed your suggestion. If not, then check out Template:Collapse for methods of making collapsible sections. Do keep in mind that even if you 'hide' text in a collapsible section, it still takes up space, and Wikipedia has a preferred page limit of 100K bytes. See Wikipedia:Article size. This article's size is currently at 270K, so splitting it is probably a good idea. Platonk (talk) 05:42, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion: You could split up the article into smaller chunks and consider the group of articles a "series", which are then tied together by a sidebar navigation template. An example of how this has been used is Template:COVID-19 pandemic sidebar. Click the "Show" link next to "Timeline" to see how it would operate. That one breaks it down by month, but let's say (hypothetically) that you break up the Timeline of the Tigray War article into three 6-month segments. You might have a link for "Beginning to December 2020", "January-June 2021" and "July-December 2021". If an article expands so much that it is too large for Wikipedia's recommendations (currently no more than 100K bytes per article, and this one is already at 270K), then break it apart again and change the template. Each article in the series gets the sidebar at the top-right of the article, so each article would get updated just by changing the sidebar template. As an example, you could name it Template:Tigray War timeline sidebar (or Template:Tigray War sidebar if you want to make it more comprehensive than just the timeline). If there's a consensus to do this and you need someone to create the beginning sidebar (which you can then edit), I'm willing to put one together for you. I see there's already a navbar Template:Tigray conflict which goes at the bottom of an article, so we could start with some of the links that are there, too. You usually don't want a sidebar to be as full as a comprehensive navbar, but there are some detailed sidebars in Wikipedia. Platonk (talk) 05:42, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• @Dawit S Gondaria and Timtempleton: Please look at this proposal. I could help split the article, if that's what we really want to do. I often use a slow internet connection that makes it difficult to edit articles this large. With the other project activity, we will be needing to check that each incident/massacre is entered into this timeline, so we should split the article now if that's the plan. What do you two think? Platonk (talk) 04:36, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@@Platonk: I think you're suggestion would def improve the article compared to how it currently is, it's like endless scrolling down. Separate question i have quite a few claims/incidents based on the deprecated source Atlas here as well, wouldn't be better to take that out? Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 04:49, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@Dawit S Gondaria: Let's address that below in a new section. I'm drafting it now. Platonk (talk) 04:50, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

 Done. I split the article into three articles.

• Timeline of the Tigray War
• Timeline of the Tigray War (January to June 2021)
• Timeline of the Tigray War (July 2021 to present)

Platonk (talk) 06:22, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Image

Platonk, why is the image that you removed not relevant? Alaexis_¿question? 20:15, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

The short answer is MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE: "Images must be significant and relevant in the topic's context, not primarily decorative." It was an image of a "pile of rocks" and was placed at the top of the page as a main image. Is a pile of rocks an appropriate illustration for Timeline of the Tigray War? I would say no.

The longer answer is a little more complicated. The image was added on 7 July by Rastakwere with the caption "One of the numerous mass graves of civilian victims in Tigray, massacred by ENDF and allied forces" and sourcing it to an Amharan language article instead of its English counterpart article. The caption is original research because the source article doesn't suggest the ENDF were the 'massacrers', but does say "Locals say there are about 20 graves in all, containing bodies that were found in the streets after multiple battles" and "[the town] has changed hands about five times in fights between the Ethiopian National Defense Forces and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. Militias and Eritrean soldiers also are among the warring parties." So much is wrong here. The use of the word "massacred" is controversial in that it is loaded language, a contentious label that isn't used in the source article. Then, why would an editor use an Amharan article when they could (should) have sourced its English counterpart with the same news outlet? Then making their own determinations of who is at fault for "bodies from multiple battles". Do we keep an image with an OR caption? We could fix the caption, but then the question becomes "Fix it to what?" And still, is a simple (not even an extraordinarily large) "pile of rocks" an appropriate image to symbolize a year-long deadly conflict? Wouldn't a scene of a town with crumbled buildings be better, or an image of combatants?

Frankly, Alaexis, it was simpler to just remove it. Platonk (talk) 01:05, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, this certainly makes sense. Alaexis_¿question? 10:29, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Context

Hi guys, I have been adding the content below to this page because I thought some information prior to the war, especially since TPLF came to power, provides the context to the Tigray war. Unfortunately, it keeps on deleted. If you found speculative statements, let us remove those. If you found a statement that requires source, let us request for the source, and improve it. Why would someone delete the whole section? I strongly believe the war in Tigray requires this context I am posting, let us improve it so that it meets Wikipedia's requirements and add it:

Context

Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) is a political party which claims to represent the Tigrayan people of Ethiopia and came to power in 1991 after defeating the Derg regime. TPLF formed an umbrella political coalition party called EPRDF that included representative political parties from many ethnic groups. But EPRDF was dominated by TPLF for its leadership. In practice, the representatives from non-Tigrayan ethnic groups were seen as appointees instead of elected by their constituencies. For 27 years from 1991 until 2018, TPLF led EPRDF ruled the country in one of the worst ways possible with reported human right abuses, detentions, torture and corruption. Just before 2018, there were some rumors that EPRDF is internally divided and the Oromo ethnic group representatives and the Amhara ethnic group representatives of the coalition are resisting TPLF brutal leadership. At the same time, anti-TPLF rallies have been conducted in Oromia linked with a master plan that aimed at linking Addis Ababa's road construction and other development plans with towns in Oromia region of Ethiopia which are located in the peripheries of the capital, Addis Ababa.

The ant-TPLF movement that was linked with Addis Ababa's master development plan, was actually a coverup for a bigger ant-TPLF movement, probably organized by the Oromo representatives of EPRDF. TPLF responded by arresting and killing thousands of protesters in Oromia. The ant-TPLF movement that started in Oromia was latter joined by rallies in Amhara region of Ethiopia, shouting “The blood flowing in Oromia is our blood too”. This lead to a resignation of the then prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn.

EPRDF had to call a meeting to choose its new leader and the Amhara and Oromo representatives of the coalition managed to merge their votes for Abiy Ahmed to be elected by EPRDF as the new leader of the coalition and also prime minister of Ethiopia. TPLF leaders continued administering the Tigray region and Abiy started introducing new changes and a significant shift against TPLF's three decades of brutal leadership by releasing political prisoners, journalist, inviting exiled media outlets ... etc.

Abiy's administration gradually started unraveling the human right abuses, tortures, corruptions...etc. committed during TPLF leadership. Meanwhile, ethnic based clashes and unrests become everyday news in Ethiopia. Abiy's government indicated that TPLF is behind these clashes and has been releasing warnings and arresting some. For example, see this wikipedia page on the clash between Oromia and Somali that resulted in 700,000 people to be displaced in the Somali Region and see this wikipedia page for the conflict in Benishangul Gumuz region . People with Amhara ethnic background, living in Oromia and elsewhere, have been targets in many of the unrests after TPLF leaders were pushed back from administering the federal government. Few day before the war in Tigray broke out, in one day, gunmen rounded up and killed Amhara farmers in Oromia and set fire to homes. The Ethiopian parliament was called to conduct an emergency meeting on November 3 to condemn the attack and asked the government to declare TPLF and OLA as terrorist organizations. PM Abiy said in a Twitter post "Ethiopia's enemies are vowing either to rule the country or ruin it, and they are doing everything they can to achieve this. One of their tactics is to arm civilians and carry out barbaric attacks based on identity, [for me] this is heart breaking,". On the same day, TPLF attacked multiple camps of the Northern command for the Ethiopian National Defense Force. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.137.18.35 (talk) 19:14, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@198.137.18.35: First, I strongly urge you to sign up for an account at Wikipedia so we can communicate with you in these discussions without calling you by your IP address, which seems to be a shared address. Also, with an account, when we respond to your question, you will get notified. You cannot get notifications when you edit without signing in.

Second, I'd like to point out that you're trying to add this to the timeline article instead of the Tigray War article, which is where most of this should go. I see there is already some background/context there. This Timeline of the Tigray War article is not intended to duplicate what is in the Tigray War article, but to provide a place where individual events can be placed in chronological order. A lengthy 'context' section is probably not appropriate in the timeline article.

I can't vouch for other reasons why your content has been removed. I'm more involved in keeping things tidied up and organized, making sure citations are from reliable sources, removing uncited content, and other "housekeeping" type chores. Along the way I have learned much about the Tigray conflict, but it is very complicated to try to understand it all. Also, please keep in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper, so we're striving for a balanced and correct version of events rather than rushing to publish each bit of news that comes out. (Unfortunately, we had a few editors here who tossed every new news tidbit into the articles as soon as someone, anyone, put it on the internet somewhere. I'm still cleaning up after that.) Platonk (talk) 05:49, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@Platonk: Thank you for your reply. I will sign up for an account although I will do that later for personal reasons. I understand where the content should go and I will take it to the Tigray War Page. Like you said, the conflict is so complicated that readers will need to see different dimensions of the conflict to have a better understanding of what happened and is happening. I believe what I wrote will give some context. I have seen what is included in the Tigray War page and I will try not to repeat what is already mentioned there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.137.18.111 (talk) 03:54, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@198.137.18.111: I'll tell you some of why your edits might be getting reverted. Just taking your three edits today on Timeline of the Tigray War (July 2021–present) as examples:

1. This edit, you say in the edit summary "Using the exact wording the source used, without any speculative statements", however your edit adds "Federal troops ordered to maintain the areas they have won back recently from Tigrayan forces, government says" and there is no such concept in the source article.

2. This edit, you assert the date is January 8, however the source articles state "occurred late on Friday night" (which would be January 7) and "There has been no independent confirmation of the attack".

3. These two edits, are an exact quote of the source article, and that is a copyright violation.

So I'm afraid I'm going to have to revert these. Platonk (talk) 06:42, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Sources