Eritrea Sees Frantic Defamation Campaign That Could Willfully Distort the 2018 Agreement with Ethiopia 

December 13, 2022

Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed (seated left) and Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki (seated right) signing joint declaration in July 2018 in Asmara (Photo: File)

Borkena 

On Monday, Eritrea’s Minister for Information, Yemane Gebre Meskel, said a defamation campaign against Eritrea is increasing.  He did not name names other than using the description “Eritrea’s detractors.” 

He tweeted: 

“Eritrea’s detractors have ratched up [ratchet up], by several notches, their mendacious campaign of defamation. This frantic campaign willfully distorts the 2018 Eritrea-Ethiopia historic Agreement that contains normative pillars of cooperation & the silencing of guns.” 

Mr. Yemane disclosed the full content of the joint declaration signed in Asmara between Eritrea and Ethiopia months after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in April 2018. 

Apart from ending a two decades-old state of war between the two countries, the agreement was meant to (among many other things) create an intimate relationship to which both governments would commit themselves. 

“The two governments will endeavor to forge intimate political, economic, social, cultural and security cooperation that serves and advances the vital interests of their peoples,” says one of the points of the agreement. 

The United States and some of its European allies (including the EU) have been blackmailing Eritrea in connection with the war in the Northern part of Ethiopia which is said to have “ended” with the signing of the Pretoria agreement in November 2022. 

Locally, the TPLF and its propaganda machines have been mounting accusations against Eritrea over “continued rights abuse in the Tigray region.”  The claims are not investigated by an independent party. 

Eritrea was provoked as a country by the TPLF when the latter fired rockets targeting Asmara soon after it attacked the northern commands of the Ethiopian Defense Force in November 2020. 

In addition, Ethiopia and Eritrea entered into an agreement for a joint effort to ensure regional peace, and TPLF’s war was clearly one that called for cooperation between the two countries. 

When several posts of the Northern Command of the Ethiopian Defense Force were attacked, the remaining units were rescued by special forces from the Amhara region responding to the attack in the west and Eritrea allowed Ethiopian troops to enter its border to reorganize response to the TPLF war. 

The United States and its allies have long been demanding the withdrawal of Eritrean forces from the Tigray region. It even became part of the agreement between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government. 

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s at no point responded to the international community in terms of explaining Eritrea’s presence in the Tigray region when the two governments have agreed for a joint security arrangement.