On 7th June 2021, Eritrea’s foreign minister presented a letter to the UN Security Council which blamed U.S. administrations for supporting the Tigray People’s Liberation Movement (TPLF) during the last 20 years and blamed the current US administration for the war in Tigray, northern Ethiopia.” Osman Saleh accused President Joe Biden’s administration of “interference and intimidation in the region.” He accused the US of “stoking further conflict and destabilization” and asserted that “the apparent objective of these acts is to resuscitate the remnants of the TPLF regime.”
Eritrea’s Foreign Minister’s letter makes no mention of Eritrean troops in Tigray, despite repeated international calls for them to withdraw. In April 2021, the Eritrean authorities admitted that their troops had been in Tigray. On 26th March 2021, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said that Eritrea had agreed to withdraw troops from Ethiopian territory along their common border, after acknowledging that Eritrean forces had been present in Ethiopia’s Tigray region during the five-month war.
Many reports of murders, massacres and rapes in Tigray have been linked to the Eritrean military. Multiple witnesses, officials and aid workers have all given clear evidence that Eritrean soldiers have been seen recently in Tigray far from the border, sometimes clad in faded Ethiopian army fatigues, controlling key roads and access to some communities. It is clear that Eritrean military forces are still very much present in Tigray.
Most of the Eritrean forces who were sent to fight in Tigray are conscripts who were held against their will illegally and indefinitely under Eritrea’s National Service Programme. It is now certain that Eritrea is also forcing children, under-18-year-olds, into its military and sending them to fight on the front-line in the vicious war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, in breach of international law on the treatment of minors in military conflict.
In addition, the Eritrean regime has committed crimes against humanity against its own people for over 30 years. Since November 2020, the regime is committing war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Tigray by interfering in Ethiopia’s internal affairs.
The US administration has placed restrictions on Eritrean and Ethiopian officials as a result of reports of war crimes committed by their forces in Tigray and the non-compliance of Eritrean military forces with undertakings to withdraw from Tigray.
It is appropriate to note that at no time has USA taken sides in the war in Tigray. US foreign policy under the current administration has consistently called for an end to the fighting, a return to peace negotiations, access for humanitarian aid, and the withdrawal of the Eritrean forces and the Amhara militia from the Tigray region.
Sanctions on Officials in Eritrean and Ethiopia have only been imposed as a result of non-compliance with these policy objectives and with commitments for withdrawal of foreign military forces which have not been adhered to.
As far as Human Rights Concern Eritrea is concerned, the letter to the UN Security Council from Eritrea’s Foreign Minister contains no proof on US “interference and intimidation” in the war in Tigray or its aftermath, and cites no evidence for the charges of “stoking further conflict and destabilization”. It simply makes these unfounded accusations, without any regard for objective truth. Clearly the letter is indeed itself evidence of annoyance within the Eritrean regime about the sanctions placed on its officials, and an attempt to re-focus anti-American sentiment in the United Nations to garner sympathy for what it presents as smaller African nations whose independence is under threat from major world powers.
Human Rights Concern – Eritrea (HRCE)
