Ethiopia leaders said they're going to wipe out Tigrayans for 100 years, says EU envoy

A European Union (EU) envoy, who has served for years in Ethiopia, has claimed that the country’s leaders were planning an “ethnic cleansing” of the minority Tigrayans. Speaking at a question and answer session with European Parliament Committee, Finnish Foreign Affairs Minister Pekka Haavisto, said that Ethiopian leaders had told him that “they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years”.

Haavisto’s comments also sparked a reaction with the Ethiopian foreign ministry which denounced the claim as “ludicrous”, adding that the claim was a “hallucination of sorts or a lapse in memory of some kind.”

What did Haavisto say?

Earlier in February, the Finnish lawmaker had said that he had a meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and other “key members” about the growing humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region. Recalling the same “intensive” meeting, Haavisto said it was then that the lawmakers told him that they destroyed all the minorities of the 6 million-strong region. 

“When I met the Ethiopian leadership in February they really used this kind of language, that they are going to destroy the Tigrayans, they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years and so forth," the envoy said.

“If you wipe out your national minority, well, what is it?" Haavisto added. "You cannot destroy all the people, you cannot destroy all the population in Tigray. And I think that's very obvious, that we have to react, because it looks for us like ethnic cleansing. It is a very, very serious act if this is true."

Since November last year, the Tigray region has been hit by the crisis -not only physical but also emotional. According to reports by rights groups, every year hundreds of children die due to famine and hunger, others die by war. On one side of the battle are the resident of Tigray and on the other end are the country’s military joined by Eritrean forces and Amhara regional forces. Earlier in February, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the African Union and other international partners to help address a deepening crisis in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

Image: AP