KHARTOUM (Somaliguardian) – More than 120 former United Nations peacekeepers from Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region have sought asylum in Sudan over fear that they might be arrested if they return home.
The soldiers part of a recently closed UN mission in Sudan’s Darfur region have been transported from El Fasher airport to the town of Kassala in eastern Sudan earlier this week, head of Sudanese Refugee Commission’s office in El Fasher Al-Fateh Ibrahim has told Darfur 24.
There have been reports that Ethiopia has begun an ethnic profiling campaign against people of Tigrayan ethnicity in the capital Addis Ababa and soldiers serving peacekeeping missions in South Sudan and Somalia.
The soldiers who had been due to return home are now in eastern Sudan and fear persecution if they travel back to Addis Ababa.
Among the former peacekeepers, who applied for asylum at the Sudanese Refugee Commission’s office in Darfur are 14 women. The decision has come after joint United Nations and African Union mission in Darfur, which they had been serving, expired.
Since fighting between allied Ethiopian and Eritrean troops on one side and Tigrayan forces on the other began in the north of the country an increasing number of Tigrayans, among them soldiers have been jailed in what many say is an ethnic profiling campaign.
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