The government of Eritrea has rebutted Amnesty International’s allegations that its armed forces committed war crimes during the Tigray war.
The Eritrean government made the rebuttal in a statement posted on its verified Twitter (now known as X) handle.
According to Amnesty International, the Eritrean soldiers perpetrated both war crimes and crimes against humanity in the northern region of Ethiopia’s Tigray despite a peace deal signed last November.
The war began in November 2020 when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray after the region’s dissident rulers orchestrated attacks on army bases.
Eritrean soldiers had supported the federal forces of Ethiopia during its civil war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which began in November 2020 and lasted for two years.
Responding on Tuesday, Eritrea’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations stated that Amnesty International’s war crimes allegations against the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) “have no substance or merit”.
The ministry further stated that the rights group’s report “suffered from its flawed methodology” and was “filled with disgusting lies and distortions that are a futile attempt to disparage the Eritrean people”.
The Eritrean Government said “Amnesty conducted no research. Rather, it chose to use its platform to regurgitate unsubstantiated allegations against Eritrea’s military personnel, taken from third-party sources, faceless, nameless, in continuation of its libellous decade-long campaign against the State of Eritrea.”
The ministry also accused Amnesty International of trying to stir up hate and trigger disunity between Eritrea and Ethiopia through the war crimes allegations.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy met with senior commanders of the Tigray region troops in February for the first time since they signed a peace deal with the national government that ended two years of conflict, according to the state-run television.
The governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea had in March denied allegations from the U.S. State Department which said all the parties involved in the recently ended conflict had committed war crimes.
According to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, war crimes were committed during the conflict by members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF), its allies from the EDF and Amhara regional forces, as well as rival forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
