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The security situation in Ethiopia was “dire” as Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto was preparing to travel to the region on an EU fact-finding mission.
“Almost three months after the start of the conflict … the security situation in Tigray [a region of Ethiopia] it is still terrible, with reports of localized fighting, especially in rural areas, “Haavisto told EUobserver.
“News circulates that hundreds of thousands of people have not yet received [humanitarian] assistance, “he said.
But “access to the affected regions remains limited due to the challenging security environment and bureaucratic hurdles,” he added.
War broke out last year between the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a local power that challenged his rule.
TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael said on Sunday (February 1) that the Ethiopian army was guilty of “genocide” and “massacres.”
He also said that three foreign powers were fighting on the side of Ethiopia, while urging the international community to investigate “the atrocities” he spoke of.
An Ethiopian government spokeswoman told the BBC that Gebremichael’s words were “the hoaxes of a criminal cabal” and accused the TPLF of “heinous crimes” in return.
Ethiopia has also denied that Eritrean and Somali forces, as well as Emirati drones, were fighting on its side.
But the US state department has confirmed that Eritrea was involved.
And the Tigrayans who fled to neighboring Sudan told Human Rights Watch, an NGO, that Ethiopian forces were guilty of indiscriminate bombing and extrajudicial killings.
For his part, Haavisto from Finland said: “The regional impacts of the Tigray conflict are a growing concern.”
“Reports indicate that more than 58,000 refugees have fled to Sudan and tensions in the border areas are dangerously rising,” he added.
The Nordic diplomat planned to go to “Ethiopia and its neighboring regions” in the “next few weeks,” he said, after being commissioned by the EU’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell last week.
Haavisto will travel with Alexander Rondos, an EU Special Representative for the Horn of Africa.
An internal EU report last November said Europe feared “the collapse of the Ethiopian state” and the creation of millions of refugees if the war worsened.
And he feared that the instability could spread to neighboring Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia.
The Ethiopia conflict is just one of several in the EU’s southern neighborhood, including those in Libya, Israel, the Sahel and Syria.
Meanwhile, the eastern flank of Europe is also becoming increasingly volatile.
War recently broke out in Azerbaijan and continues unabated in eastern Ukraine.
The political crisis in Belarus and the mass demonstrations in Russia have also raised questions about the future of the ruling regimes there.
Russian diplomacy
Russia on Sunday arrested another 4,000 people in nationwide protests calling on authorities to release opposition hero Alexei Navalny.
“The right of Russian citizens to assemble peacefully and freedom of expression must be respected,” Haavisto told EUobserver.
Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, will himself travel to Moscow later this week to urge Navalny’s release and to discuss “strategic” issues.
And Haavisto said it was important for the EU to maintain Russian diplomacy despite deteriorating ties.
He also highlighted the need for “person-to-person contacts” between ordinary Russians and Europeans, “who have suffered a major setback with the Covid pandemic.”
“We have a lot of experience in this, as Finland issues the largest number of Schengen visas in Russia,” Haavisto said, referring to the European “Schengen” free travel area.
