By Washington Media and Information Task Force
10:12pm Mon 22 Mar

600 L Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20001

Contact: Tel.: 202-408-6995; fax: 202-408-6997

March 21, 1999

For Immediate Release

Tens of Thousands to Join March for Peace Friday Rally is Part

of Worldwide Effort to End Africa’s New "Killing Field"

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Eritrean American community in the Washington metropolitan area has called for a march for Friday, March 26, 1999, to appeal for peace in the peace-starved Horn of Africa, which has once again become the continent’s main "killing field."

The march, which will start at 11 a.m. in front of the White House, will be part of a worldwide effort to call upon the international community—especially the United States, the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity—to help bring about an end to the senseless slaughter which now seems to characterize the border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

The peace rally is expected to draw tens of thousands world wide. In addition to more than a dozen U.S. cities, similar demonstrations will be held in South Africa, Canada, as well as several European and Australian cities. Among the key demands of the marchers will be an immediate cease-fire and a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The ten-month conflict between the two sisterly and once-friendly neighbors has shown how destructive a modern war can be. During three days of fighting last week alone, more than 10,000 Ethiopian soldiers were killed—victims of an inhuman and criminal military strategy of the minority regime of Ethiopia which has been using them as cannon fodder in "human waves" on fixed Eritrean positions without regard to human cost.. If not stopped soon, the war threatens to be one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of the continent.

In addition to the unprecedented degree of human cost, the Eritrean-Ethiopian border conflict also threatens to further destabilize a region already shaken by the disintegration of Somalia, as well as the turmoil in the Sudan.

A spokesman for the organizers said the marchers will plead with the United States, the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity to pressure Ethiopia to choose peace rather than war so that the senseless slaughter can end and the two countries can resume their struggles against poverty, ignorance, and disease.

Right from the start of the conflict, the Ethiopian regime has been on the war path. Early last month, it violated a U.S.-brokered airstrike moratorium and reignited the fighting after an eight-month lull. Furthermore, it is now trying to torpedo the Organization of African Unity peace plan that it had previously accepted by adding new preconditions to a peaceful resolution as a pretext to continue the war. This backtracking by Ethiopia coupled with its outright rejection of the recently issued United Nations Security Council call for an immediate cease-fire by both sides is now recognized by diplomats and world leaders as the major obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

The current Ethiopian regime launched—also right from the very start—a policy of extreme ethnic provocation in the form of a massive ethnic cleansing. So far, they have deported more than 54,000 Ethiopians of Eritrean origin and Eritreans that were residing legally in Ethiopia, and has nearly 1500 languishing in concentration camps in the outskirts of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.