Africa-Press-Ethiopia
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday spoke with Ethiopia’s prime minister to express concerns over escalating violence and human rights violations in the country’s Tigray region and offer U.S. assistance to help resolve the conflict.
Blinken urged Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed “to take immediate, concrete steps to protect civilians, including refugees, and to prevent further violence,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.
“Secretary Blinken also asked that the Government of Ethiopia work with the international community to facilitate independent, international, and credible investigations into reported human rights abuses and violations and to hold those responsible accountable.”
The secretary also reiterated calls for the immediate withdrawal from Tigray of Eritrean forces and forces from the region of Amhara in northwest Ethiopia, according to Price.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this week, Ethiopia criticized Blinken for seeking a withdrawal of outside forces from Tigray.
“It should be clear that such matters are the sole responsibility of the Ethiopian government,” Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said in a statement issued Sunday, according to The Associated Press. The statement added that no foreign country should try to “dictate a sovereign nation’s internal affairs.”
Ethiopian federal forces in recent weeks have routed Tigray opposition figures from the region that in November sought to put its own leaders in regional government positions, against the wishes of the central government in the capital Addis Ababa.
Abiy, who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2019 for reaching a peace agreement with neighboring Eritrea after 16 years of war, has come under international scrutiny for his government’s actions in Tigray.
The United Nations recently said that the humanitarian situation in Tigray is critical amid intensified fighting, with nearly 100,000 displaced and 1.3 million people in need of aid because of the conflict.
The conflict has drawn international concern over the fate of vulnerable civilians and refugees, as well as condemnation over reported atrocities.
Last week, Amnesty International and The Associated Press published new findings that Eritrean forces, allied with the Ethiopian army, instituted a brutal massacre in the Tigray city of Axum in late November, considered one of the holiest cities in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity.
Amnesty said in the report that “many hundreds” were killed in the city by the Eritrean army that engaged in widespread looting and extrajudicial killings, “deliberately and wantonly” shooting at civilians during the worst of the violence.
