WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Tuesday urged Ethiopia’s leader to end hostilities in the northern Tigray region, citing an “increasing number of credible reports of atrocities and human rights violations and abuses.”
According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ned Price, Mr. Blinking in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed urged Ethiopia to withdraw foreign forces from Tigray and to end the violence immediately.
The Biden government wants an end to which describes it as a deepening humanitarian crisis. It was the second time in less than a week that Mr. Shining reports of atrocities in the region.
“The secretary urged the Ethiopian government to take immediate, concrete steps to protect civilians, including refugees, and prevent further violence,” he said. Price said in a statement Tuesday.
He told reporters: “We strongly condemn the killings, the forced removal and displacement, the sexual assaults and other human rights violations and abuses by several parties that have now been reported by several parties.
Mr Blinken also called on Abiy to allow independent international investigations.
A spokesman for Mr. Abiy, Billene Seyoum, pointed to a statement made late last month in which Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry described US protests as ‘regrettable’.
The statement said Ethiopia’s government took its responsibility for the safety, security and well-being of all its citizens “very seriously” and that it was “fully committed to conducting thorough investigations” into reports of ill-treatment.
But it added that the government had a duty to keep the nation together in the midst of ‘treacherous and divisive forces’.
The army of Ethiopians expelled the former local ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, from the regional capital in November, after what he described as a surprise attack on its forces in Tigray.
Thousands of people were killed, hundreds of thousands were forced out of homes and more than five million people were short of food, water and medicine.