Ethiopia says Tigrayan peacekeepers victims of rebel ‘propaganda’

Ethiopian peacekeepers from the warfare-torn Tigray area, who’re refusing to return domestic, are sufferers of insurrection “propaganda”, the defence ministry said, following the squaddies’ request for political asylum in Sudan.

More than 500 UN peacekeepers from Tigray who have been deployed to Abyei, a disputed border vicinity between Sudan and South Sudan, have requested Khartoum for asylum, mentioning fears for his or her protection.

The 17-month battle between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s authorities and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) has widened ethnic fissures within the united states of America, with Tigrayan officials accused of colluding with the rebels and regular Tigrayans subjected to arbitrary arrests in Addis Ababa.

In a statement issued late Wednesday, the defence ministry accused the TPLF of inciting defections among Tigrayan peacekeepers “by sowing the lie that they will be imprisoned if they return home”.

It also said some peacekeepers had refused to return because they feared the TPLF “and not because of hatred of their country”.

But the Tigrayan peacekeepers interviewed by AFP all said they were worried about their safety, with one senior officer saying that other returnees had been arrested or killed in Ethiopia.

The conflict has divided the multi-ethnic nation, with Tigray under what the United Nations says is a de facto blockade.

Essential services including banking and communications have been shut for several months while aid trickles in at a snail’s pace after both sides agreed to a conditional humanitarian truce in late March.

In a statement sent to AFP late Wednesday, the group of 528 peacekeepers still in Abyei said they wanted to “be a voice against the siege which is killing our people”.

“We don’t want to continue working for a regime that is massacring and slaughtering our people,” the statement said.

The conflict in northern Ethiopia broke out in November 2020, while Abiy sent troops into Tigray in reaction to what he stated had been rebellion attacks on army camps.

An early victory towards the TPLF — which dominated Ethiopia for almost 30 years until 2018 — became observed by means of a riot comeback final June once they recovered control of Tigray and increased into neighbouring areas.