BY SARA ISAIAS
You know that there is going to be a review of the mandate of the UN’s Special Rapporteur when the internet is flooded with a plethora of hastily put together, regurgitated, debunked claims against Eritrea.
I have a sneaky suspicion that in organizations like Amnesty International that purport to stand for Human Rights, as long as it furthers the questionable political ambition of their sponsors, all annual leave must be canceled when one of those UN meetings looms on the distant horizon.
Keeping with their tradition, the latter part of February of 2021 saw the cyber world awash with unfounded allegations against Eritrea. One such report was the Amnesty reported dated 25th Feb.
In a report that spanned over 25 pages, Amnesty went into quite some detail about killings that were supposed to have happened a day or two before the holiest of days in the Orthodox calendar: the annual celebration of St Mary of Zion on 30th November, without providing a shred of tangible evidence.
The entire report was based on anonymous and unsubstantiated sources.
Ironically, in a sign of the changing times, it was a news clip broadcast by the Ethiopian state-owned TV station that put a stake right through the heart of Amnesty’s claims.
The atrocious LIE by @amnesty on #FakeAxumMassacre
👉🏾Amnesty International: "Nov 28-29 massacre in Axum Tsion, celebration was canceled"👉🏾Axum Tsion on Nov 30 celebrates its annual religious festival@RussiaUN @Chinamission2un @SecBlinken @EU_Commission @DominicRaab #Ethiopia pic.twitter.com/Mb8mctoZnl
— Hadelibi☝♡ (@Ternafi) March 5, 2021
The wheels came off Amnesty’s report when a video clip of the celebrations in Axum, which had supposedly been canceled if Amnesty was to be believed, shot on 30th of November 2020 and uploaded on YouTube on 4th December 2020 surfaced, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the vicious claims made by Amnesty.
https://twitter.com/jeffpropulsion/status/1367607710393450501
If Amnesty had a modicum of decency and had an honest bone in its body, it would immediately come out and apologize, but as pigs have yet to fly, we should not hold our breath and expect Amnesty to do the right thing.
