‘This whole accusation is preposterous and peddled for some sinister reason’
By TesfaNews,
Eritrean government spokesperson has laughed at reports that his country was behind an alleged foiled plot to attack Ethiopia’s controversial Renaissance Dam project.
The Ethiopian government said it has killed 13 members of the Benishangul Gumuz People’s Liberation Movement, a rebel group that it alleged traveled all the way from Eritrea to attack the dam, which under construction.
The site of this multi-billion dollar dam is located in the Benishangul region, a vast, arid land on the border with Sudan, some 900km north-west of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
“This whole accusation is preposterous and peddled for some sinister reason,” Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel said in a message sent via Twitter to Bloomberg.
The minister added that he had never heard of the rebel group accused of planning the attack.
The Ethiopian government has a reputation to routinely accuse Eritrea of anything that went wrong in the country, except the drought, of course.
Prominent Ethiopian political analyst Mohammed Ademo of Opride.com translates the latest ‘foiled attack’ drama as a false flag to extend the soon to expire State of Emergency rule.
Last year, Ethiopia also accused Egypt, along with Eritrea, for inciting a wave of protests and violence in the Oromia and Amahara regions. The government killed more than 600 protesters and detained over 70,000 before it declared the six-month State of Emergency (SOE) decree through out the country.
https://twitter.com/KelseyDegen/status/837310098087235584
Ethiopia employed similar preposterous claims in 2010 of an alleged bombing attempt at an African Union Summit held in the capital. That bogus claim earned the regime an unconditional support from African leaders that the regime used it to slap a UN sanctions against Eritrea.
Citing the then U.S. Embassy Charge d’Affairs Vicki Huddleston, a 2006 Wikileaks document, however, exposed the history of how the regime routinely planted bombs in several parts of the country and use it to frame Eritrea and rebel groups.
>> MUST READ : Wikileaks Ethiopia Files : Ethiopia Bombs Itself and Blames Eritrea
Ethiopia’s dam project is about halfway complete and has been a source of regional tension. Egypt has long suspected the controversial dam will reduce share of its only source of water – the Nile River.
#Sudan and #Egypt stand to lose water resource from #Ethiopia dam, and therefore have greater interest in destroying it, not #Eritrea.
— Herman J. Cohen (@CohenOnAfrica) March 2, 2017
