BY TESFANEWS
The Eritrean Information Ministry once again trashed a 21st December report (No 1488) published on the Indian Ocean Newsletter (ION) about the alleged “plan to send 5,000 soldiers to Somalia as soon as the first AMISOM contingent leaves in February.”
The report claimed that “the Ethiopian and Eritrean leaders have indicated to their Somalian counterpart… their willingness to take over from AMISOM when it departs in 2021 …”
The Ministry dismissed the report in a Press Release as “patently false” and call on the ION to respect its readers while desist from spreading fake news.
In fact, this is not the first time for the Newsletter publishing completely false and unsubstantiated news and analysis on Eritrea, apparently without minimum verification.
The ION has this habit of packaging its fabricated stories as “factual events” emanating from “knowledgeable” intelligence sources only to imbue credibility to its false stories that are mostly based on innuendos if not deliberately floated for the purposes of pure disinformation.
For instance, on its 27 January 2017 edition (No 1443), the Newsletter published a story that alleges how the Director of Sudan’s Intelligence and Security Services, Gen. Mohamed Abbas, “conducted a secret lightening visit to Asmara”, … to meet with his Eritrean counterpart in “Khartoum’s efforts to persuade Eritrea, at the bidding of Saudi Arabia, to break with Iran and the Houthis”.
In keeping with this pattern and in reference to the Eritrean government press release on the joint Ethiopian-Sudanese agreement to continue supporting “Eritrean armed opposition groups”, the Newsletter published a story in 18th May 2018 (No 1474), quoting “unnamed sources in Addis Ababa”, that Eritrea’s President “has reacted by mobilizing his troops to counter any potential threats, calling up reservists and young conscripts”.
These are utterly false and ludicrous stories.
For the record, it was Martin Plaut, the notorious anti-Eritrea fake news peddler who planted the hoax story on ‘Somalia to invite Ethiopia and Eritrea to send troops’ for the first time sometime last month based on a completely suspicious twitter account that no longer exists.
Plaut's latest fiction on #Eritrea is based on a twitter acc that no longer exists (@soereth) . Was it closed b/c it has served its purpose? Will the members of the 'free' western press challenge him or will they just share a platform with him @mary_harper ? Time to stand up pic.twitter.com/fvYHNgoepD
— Yafet Z (@ZYafet) November 26, 2018
Fake News on Eritrea is becoming the trademark of the Indian Ocean Newsletter. Almost all of its stories are glaringly at odds with the actual facts, current realities, and the political dynamics of the country and the region.
However, it looks like the Indian Ocean Newsletter is no longer in the business of publishing validated and verifiable stories as it continues to churn out patently false stories on Eritrea.
That will not serve any purpose except to corrode whatever left of its reputation.
