The disinformation campaign in Ethiopia has reached a climax resulting in a situation where Truth cannot be distinguished from Lies. During the 2020-2022 Ethiopian Civil War global news organizations like CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera tried to save the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) from demise and failed miserably. Now they are delegating the disinformation campaign to Western-funded online news channels like Addis Standard, and YouTube-based channel Ethio-Forum. These two foreign-based Ethiopian dis-informers have played a major role in destroying the common good of journalism in the Horn of Africa. They call themselves news organizations. Yet they are always ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder. The core concepts of journalism: Truth, Accuracy, and Objectivity are alien to them. For them, Journalism is convince or confuse and get rich fast. These two so-called news channels have been demonizing the Eritrean people and its government for quite some time. Getting frustrated that their mission to defame Eritrea and its people has not gone anywhere, recently they are taking it to a higher level. Let’s see what the two mis-informers said about Eritrea last week.
Addis Standard.
Last week the Addis Standard online news channel fabricated the following two news about Eritrea. First, Eritrea is among the top plastic-polluted countries in the world and second, the Irob community, being Catholics, are a minority in Eritrea and are subject to religious prosecution.
Plastic Pollution in Eritrea.
Eritrea is among the prominent countries that drafted a law that bans the production and distribution of plastics nineteen years ago, in 2005. If there were any honest environment-friendly country ranking, the widely popular Wednesday cleaning programs, Pristine and unpolluted beaches, nationwide annual high school students summer reforestation programs, and lack of polluting industries in the country would put Eritrea among the top ten non-polluted countries in the world. Yet Addis Standard did not waste time to cite devious sources and label Eritrea a top polluting country. Ethiopian elites get thrilled when they fabricate or hear any bad news about Eritrea. Now that Eritrea has focused on rebuilding its economy and opened itself to Tourists, Addis Standard is trying to sabotage that effort. Fortunately, any effort to defame Eritrea could not have any impact on the ground. In the end, stories told by those who visited the country are more believable than fabricated stories coming from foreign-based Ethiopian media mis-informers. Regardless, Self-reliant, and persistent Eritrea will continue building a green economy beneficial to the Eritrean people and that is bad news for hired guns like Addis Standard.
Ethnicity and Religion of the Irob Community.
The problem with dis-informers like Addis Standard is they do not know what they are talking about. Irobs are Saho and Saho make 4% of the Eritrean population. There is not any ethnic group in Tigray or Ethiopia at large called Saho. The Irob community differs from their Saho brothers and sisters because they are predominantly Catholic. Again, Catholics make up 5% of the Eritrean population. So how are the Irob community to be a minority in Eritrea and as Addis Standard claimed to be subjected of religious prosecution? The Truth is that the Irobs are original Eritrean inhabitants. They were part of the thirty-year struggle for the Liberation of Eritrea and are proud Eritreans. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s (TPLF) forced occupation of The Irob people for three decades does not make them Ethiopians. Ethnically and religiously, they are in synergy with the population of Eritrea. Unlike in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, communal living, inter-ethnic and inter-religion marriage in Eritrea is well accepted, and marriage between Catholics and Orthodox Christians is a norm rather than an exception. Thus, Addis Standard’s disinformation does not have any merit at all and will not bring any change on the ground.
Ethio-forum
Another parlous mis-informer, Ethio-forum, also came with two pieces of fabricated news about Eritrea last week. First depicting Eritrean soldiers as mercenaries and second Eritrean soldiers holding a dozen Ethiopian soldiers stationed in Zalambassa.
Ethiopia Hiring Eritrean Soldiers.
The Ethio-Forum editor, who was a protégé of the late Ethiopian Foreign Minister Sium Mesfin, appears to still be in a grieving mood. Trying to obscure the wicked things the TPLF did to the Eritreans and Eritrea in the last 25 years is simply trying to cover the sun with two bare hands. If the Journalist for hire and owner of Ethio-forum has forgotten, let me remind him. In 1998, TPLF invaded Eritrea, raped and killed Eritrean civilians. It exploded and burned Eritrean public institutions and stole as much as it could. It dug Eritrean Martyr’s cemetery and desecrated the remains. It expelled 80,000 innocent Eritreans from Ethiopia and confiscated their hard-earned property. It signed a binding and final border arbitration agreement, and when the Ethiopia and Eritrea border commission gave its verdict, it blocked its implementation. The TPLF declared a no-war and no-peace policy on Eritrea for 25 years and collaborated with Western powers to impose successive sanctions on Eritrea. Finally, when it attacked the Ethiopian Northern Command on November 4th, 2020, it hurled more than a dozen missiles on the world heritage site capital city of Eritrea, Asmara. Those reasons were more than enough for the Eritrean army to cross to Tigray and hunt the TPLF. Yet the dis-informer Ethio-Forum wants us to believe that the Eritrean Army crossed to Tigray because the Ethiopian government promised to pay billions of dollars. That is nothing more than a hoax. But hoaxes are not new to Ethio-Forum.
Eritrea Kept Ethiopian Soldiers Hostage.
I would like to remind the dis-informer Ethio-Forum that the relationship between the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies is very close. They fought together and even now in the era of fractured politics, they cooperate seamlessly. So, your persistent effort to create conflict between the two armies is futile.
Conclusion
The main objective of the recent disinformation campaign directed at Eritrea and led by Addis Standard and Ethio-Forum is to obscure what the TPLF did in Raya Alamata and divert the audience’s attention somewhere else. The Ethiopian dis-informers should understand that let alone rag-tag online news channels and youtubers like Addis Standard and Ethio- Forum, the persistent disinformation campaign of big global news organizations like CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC etc. against Eritrea did not save the TPLF from demise.
Awet N, Haffash and Eternal Glory to Our Martyr’s