Al Jazeera’s Anti-Eritrea Line: No Eritrean Voices, Old Accusations, and a Platform for Martin Plaut
Eritrea on trial, Eritreans locked out
Al Jazeera’s recent stream on the Ethiopian security situation, Eritrea, and Martin Plaut was not a balanced debate. It was another chapter in a long pattern: Eritrea is put in the dock, Eritreans are not invited to speak, and familiar Western and Ethiopian special-interest voices are given the microphone.
A one-sided stream, then fresh bloodshed in Ethiopia
The Al Jazeera stream with Martin Plaut is what triggered the latest violence in Ethiopia in late September 2026, when fighting between federal forces and Tigrayan forces intensified around 22–24 September 2026, spread into Amhara and Afar, and Tigrayan forces seized the airports at Mekelle, Axum and Shire.
No Eritrean was allowed to speak for Eritrea
No Eritrean journalist or publisher was invited to speak and represent Eritrea. Instead, a former Ethiopian government/TPLF lobbyist, Martin Plaut, was given airtime to spread misinformation about Eritrea and to defend the TPLF.
Plaut’s double standard: silence on Addis, noise against Asmara
Martin Plaut’s double standard is obvious. He frames Eritrea as the party backing proxies inside Ethiopia, while staying silent about the Abiy Ahmed government’s arming and hosting of Eritrean opposition groups on Ethiopian soil. Those groups include the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization (RSADO), an Afar separatist movement; the Eritrean Afar National Congress (EANC); Brigade N’Hamedu, also known as the Blue Revolution; the Islamic Green Movement; and the so-called Transitional Eritrean Government in Exile. Brigade N’Hamedu has been treated as a terrorist organisation by German federal prosecutors after violent riots at Eritrean gatherings in Europe, in which Eritrean civilians and police officers were attacked.
Plaut is not a neutral commentator. He publishes Brigade N’Hamedu / Blue Revolution statements and essays on his own website and social media. He is affiliated with that current. Al Jazeera still presented him as an expert on Eritrea, not as a partisan who amplifies one side of a proxy fight.
The 2006 AU blast: a smear without evidence
Martin Plaut also raised false claims that Eritrea was behind the 2006 African Union headquarters blast in Addis Ababa, which the Ethiopian government blamed on the opposition. A U.S. Embassy cable from Addis Ababa, later published by WikiLeaks, reported that the Government of Ethiopia announced that the bombs exploded while being assembled and blamed the Oromo Liberation Front.
The same cable said an embassy source, as well as clandestine reporting, suggested that the bombing may in fact have been the work of Ethiopian government security forces. Whether that cable is accurate or not, there was no evidence that Eritrea was behind it.
- Tigray 2020: bury who started the war, blame Eritrea
On Tigray in 2020, Plaut accuses Eritrea of waging war on Tigray. He denies or buries the TPLF’s role in starting the war in northern Ethiopia: the attack on the Northern Command of the ENDF on 3 November 2020. U.S. Senator Chris Coons later said that, to be fair, the initial attacks came from the TPLF against federal military facilities. The U.S. State Department also condemned the TPLF in November 2020, including its missile attacks on Bahir Dar and Gondar and its attack on Asmara airport in Eritrea. He does not speak about TPLF attacks on Eritrean refugees and Amhara civilians. He does not speak about the TPLF’s occupation of Eritrean land—Badme and northern Irob—until 2020. The Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission awarded Badme to Eritrea in 2002, but Ethiopia under TPLF dominance refused to implement the ruling and remained in occupation of Badme and adjacent areas for years.
- Al Jazeera’s long war of words against Eritrea
This is not new for Al Jazeera. The channel has a long history of spreading misinformation and running negative PR campaigns against Eritrea, even when Eritrea had good relations with Qatar.
Jane Dutton’s 2010 interview: excuse Ethiopia, indict Eritrea
In a February 2010 Talk to Al Jazeera interview with Isaias Afwerki, conducted by British journalist Jane Dutton, the Al Jazeera journalist defended the illegal TPLF-led Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and blamed Eritrea for the security crisis. She ignored that Ethiopia violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter when it invaded Somalia in 2006 and removed the ICU government without UN Security Council approval. That invasion created the conditions in which Al-Shabaab grew and displaced millions of Somalis. It was also marked by sexual violence by the Ethiopian army and mosque massacres in Mogadishu, including the April 2008 attack at the Al-Hidaya Mosque, where Ethiopian troops under Meles Zenawi killed Somali Muslims, including the imam of a Sufi mosque that had no ties to Al-Shabaab.
- The UN found no Eritrean hand in Al-Shabaab
Al Jazeera covered for that proxy war against Somalia and blamed Eritrea. From 2012 to 2018, the UN Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group repeatedly found no evidence that Eritrea was supporting Al-Shabaab. In 2018 the Security Council lifted the Eritrea sanctions in Resolution 2444 after five consecutive years in which the Monitoring Group found no such evidence.
The Kenya–Baidoa “weapons flights” that never happened
In November 2011, Ethiopia and Kenya accused Eritrea of flying weapons by plane from Kenya to Al-Shabaab-controlled Baidoa in Somalia. The UN Monitoring Group later reported that it had found no evidence to substantiate the allegations that aircraft landed at Baidoa between 29 October and 3 November 2011, or that Eritrea supplied Al-Shabaab there by air. Officials of three governments with access to their own intelligence assessments separately told the Group that no such flights to Baidoa had taken place on those dates. Kenya also failed to provide the Group with evidence of the alleged flights.
- Iran and Israel at once: another invention
Al Jazeera also claimed that Eritrea was hosting the Iranian army and the Israeli army at the same time and giving weapons to Hamas and the Houthis, even though Eritrea has no diplomatic relations with any Palestinian organization.
The same guest list, the same campaign
Today Al Jazeera is continuing the same anti-Eritrean misinformation campaign by not inviting Eritrean journalists and publishers to the stream, and instead platforming only Ethiopians and Western special-interest figures who have a long history of working against Eritrea, such as former BBC Africa editor Martin Plaut, Kjetil Tronvoll, William Davison, Matt Bryden, and others.
Let Eritreans speak for Eritrea
If Al Jazeera wants to cover a topic about Eritrea, it should invite Eritreans and let Eritreans speak for Eritrea. There are enough educated Eritreans to invite: former Eritrean ambassador Andebrhan Woldegiorgis, Amanuel Biedemariam, Daniel One Nation, Semere Habtemariam, Eritrean publishers, or Eritrean officials living in Eritrea.
Eritrea is not their talking point
What we do not want is people like these speaking for Eritrea.