Eritrean Minister of Information Yemane Gebremeskel has strongly condemned the Prosperity Party’s escalating propaganda, including the Ethiopian leader’s recent claim that the Eritrean town of Barentu belongs to Ethiopian Oromos, inflammatory war rhetoric from Ethiopian General Bachas, and the party’s persistent assertions over Eritrea’s Red Sea coastline. Gebremeskel described the campaign as increasingly edgy, desperate and spinning out of control.
He pointed to the leader’s marathon interviews over the past ten days with Amhara Media Corporation and Oromo Broadcasting Network, as well as a surge of hostile coverage from the Ethiopian News Agency, Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, Fana Broadcasting Corporate and affiliated outlets. While the domestic narratives remain an internal Ethiopian matter, Gebremeskel noted their clear aim to deepen ethnic polarisation and solicit sectarian support.
On Eritrea, he denounced the manufactured historical fantasies. These include the preposterous assertion of a past Oromo occupation of Midri Bahri and the speculative linguistic claim linking Barentu in Eritrea’s Gash-Barka region to Borona in Oromia, presented as “proof” that the town somehow belongs to Ethiopian Oromos. Gebremeskel warned that such fabrications, combined with General Bachas’ open words of war and the Prosperity Party’s repeated demands on Eritrea’s Dahlak Islands and southern Red Sea coastline for “strategic depth,” mark a dangerous degeneration of earlier calls for a sovereign port through invasion of Eritrean territory.
These revisionist narratives, he stressed, amount to a full-scale denial of Eritrea’s sovereignty and stand in direct contradiction to the 2018 Friendship Agreement based on international law and the EEBC Award. Gebremeskel rejected the portrayal of Eritrea as an insecure state bent on destabilising Ethiopia and the dismissal of its independence struggle as an external conspiracy. Such ruses, he said, are transparent attempts to manufacture justification for aggression.
Eritrea has never sought to destabilise Ethiopia. Its liberation war was imposed by Ethiopian expansionism, and the 1998-2000 border conflict arose from efforts to alter colonial borders in violation of international law. Current tensions, Gebremeskel added, stem from the Prosperity Party’s irredentist policies, the illicit memorandum with Somaliland, external military support arrangements, and continuous threats against Eritrea—including claims on its Red Sea coastline and the war rhetoric now voiced by figures such as General Bachas.
He recalled that during the 1980s Eritrea maintained principled ties with Ethiopian opposition movements while consistently upholding Ethiopia’s unity and territorial integrity.