EU envoy: Ethiopian leadership vowed to 'wipe out' Tigrayans

A European Union envoy says Ethiopia’s leaders told him in closed-door talks earlier this year that “they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years.”

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Ethiopia’s leaders in closed-door talks with a European Union special envoy earlier this year said “they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years,” the envoy said this week, warning that such an aim “looks for us like ethnic cleansing.” The remarks by Pekka Haavisto, Finland's foreign minister, describing his talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and other ministers in February are some of the most critical yet of the Ethiopian government's conduct of the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. They came in a question-and-answer session Tuesday with a European Parliament committee. Ethiopia’s foreign ministry dismissed Haavisto’s comments as “ludicrous” and a “hallucination of sorts or a lapse in memory of some kind.” Haavisto’s special adviser, Otto Turtonen, told The Associated Press that the envoy “has no further comment on this matter.”