BBC journalist says Eritrea’s treatment of Ethiopian POWs was shameful By Our Staff Writer: Feb 25, 2005

WASHINGTON DC (Feb 25) – BBC journalist Martin Plaut has said the causes of the 1998-2000 Ethiopia-Eritrea War may be traced several years back, but Eritrea’s treatment of Ethiopian Prisoners of War was “shameful.”

In an interview with the online Asmarino, Plaut said Ethiopians should have been bitter when during the 1984 Famine Eritrea blocked the shipment of food aid through its territory for distribution in TPLF-held territories. This was further compounded in 1991, when EPLF was in control of Asmara, and deported tens of thousands of Ethiopians who used to live in Eritrea. So these kinds of things were the background to any conflict.”

During the 1984 catastrophic famine, it is to be recalled that rebels of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), who had militarily wiped out a number of armed Ethiopian and Eritrean rebels groups, were on the verge of rebelling against TPLF leaders, particularly Meles Zenawi, for opposing their call to militarily crush Isaias Afwerki’s EPLF for commiting the horendous crime of blocking humanitarian aid meant to save the hungry that died of starvation. Meles, as usual, saved the Eritrean rebel group, by appealing to the rebels that TPLF would punish EPLF any other time but not before the bigger enemy, i.e. the Derg military regime, was overthrown.

Plaut said although several organizations, including the Red Cross, the UN, the Boundary Commission and others were involved in the resolution of the conflict, the Claims Commission was “most interesting of all the organisations because very little has been written about it, and yet it was one of the most important [accomplishments].

“I think one of the things only Eritreans should be particularly careful to note is what happened to the Ethiopian Prisoners of War, which is carefully documented, and is particularly shameful because Eritreans in the past treated Prisoners of War with some care and gave them food even when they themselves went without. The way they treated Prisoners of War in the 1998-2000 conflict is, frankly, shameful.”

Eritrea, which was enjoying an average yearly economic growth of 7 percent before the war when it had a free ride into Ethiopia resources and markets today finds itself in dismal conditions.

Plaut said Eritrea was in far more tragic conditions than its larger neighbor Ethiopia as the “Port of Assab was lying idle, Massawa was not working properly, 40% to 50% Eritreans were malnourished, thousands upon thousands of Eritreans were still in the army, far from being able to work the land and help their people.”

Asked how he took the remark that he was a friend of Eritrea, Martin Plaut said he was in fact accused of being in pay by Ethiopia, and said he had no preference. “I frankly have warm feelings towards both peoples.”

Plaut is one of two editors of a book: Unfinished
Business: Ethiopia and Eritrea at war, published by Red Sea Press.