Eritrean-Smart.org: The Unraveling of yet Another UN Conspiracy Against Eritrea?

On Tuesday, June 30, 2015, the Office of the President of the UN Human Rights Council had on its website a document forged by its staff or, someone who has access to their computers.

The forgery involved a cut-and-paste job of an unrelated North Korea document to one of Eritrea’s replies to the Commission of Inquiry’s politically motivated report. Both responses of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State Eritrea from June 9 [1], and June 19, 2015 [2] were published on the official site for the Ministry of Information of the State of Eritrea www.shabait.com and were widely disseminated over the Internet in a timely manner.

This latest forgery by the Office of the President of the UN Human Rights Council is the latest in a series of anti-Eritrea activities by Council members, and is a small part of a well-designed and complex labyrinth of disinformation campaign against the State of Eritrea, that is fast unraveling.

In a crummy forgery posted as “HRC 29th, 24/06/2015, A/HRC/29/G/6, Note verbale dated 19 June 2015 from the Permanent Mission of the State of Eritrea to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed to the Office of the President of the Human Rights Council” someone in the Office of the President of the Human Rights Council took the June 9, 2015 Eritrean document and added a page that apparently was issued by the North Koreans in February of 2015. We don’t even know whether this North Korean document was ever officially submitted to the Office of the President of the Human Rights Council. A quick search locates the document in few places [3] but never at a UN site. What this means is that, those who attempted this forgery went out of their way to lift paragraphs from a North Korean statement, and attached it to the end of an Eritrean submission in order to frame Eritrea.

It is clear that this is part of a now well-established pattern of intentional disinformation campaign by members of the Office of the President of the Human Rights Council, the Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea, the office of the Special Rapporteur, and countries and organizations that are working hand in hand with the above mentioned entities in order to paint a nonexistent situation in Eritrea. Their attempt is to bring up North Korea, as we will read in their own words, as part of their evil strategy so that they can apply the playbook they used on North Korea.

Nothing is beyond the reach of the detractors of Eritrea; they are taking a page out of the masters of deception and disinformation who destroyed Iraq by claiming the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and “bombed Libya to the stone age” by falsifying reports and siding with hardcore extremists and terrorists. They are now leaving no stone unturned in order to demonize, destabilize and attack Eritrea.

The players of this well-coordinated web of deception that defames Eritrea by calling it “The North Korea of Africa” are many and they come in many shapes, shades of color and creed. Their format, however, has remained the same. They all want to punish Eritrea by first vilifying it using trumped up charges. Right now the vehicle of this “witch hunt” of Eritrea for not being willing to go with dehumanizing policies in the Horn of Africa, is the Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea, there is also the Office Special Rapporteur on Eritrea, and on Tuesday (30/6/2015) we saw how staffers within the Office of the President of the Human Rights Council are also part of this league of deceit.

It is obvious the marching orders are sent from Washington, London and Paris; how else would one explain that Croatia, Montenegro, and Cyprus, countries that have no diplomatic representation in Eritrea, sponsor an anti Eritrea resolution at the HRC29, along with Djibouti and Somalia that are known puppets of the USA? However, the lies about Eritrea are packaged and bulldozed by the self-declared Human Rights advocates like the USA-based Human Rights Watch and UK-based Amnesty International. To give it an African face all the manufactured dirt designed to be thrown at Eritrea is “corroborated” by nameless and faceless individuals that are well known to be in bed with human traffickers and smugglers dehumanizing Eritreans.

These “corroborators” also have different shades of color and backgrounds. Some come wearing religious cloaks, except they are devoid of any religious virtue particularly that of telling the truth; others don the human rights activists’ cloth, except they are key players in the abuse of human rights of Eritreans; there are those pseudo-academicians who cannot speak, read or write in any of Eritrean languages and yet have no shame to present themselves as experts in everything Eritrean and their CVs are padded with crap work on Eritrea, and there are some that are downright intelligence agents in the service of the powerful and the not so powerful like the minority government in Ethiopia.

Giving a big megaphone to all this disinformation campaign are of course some unscrupulous members of the media, people who call themselves journalists but who are giving journalism and journalistic ethics a bad name.

• Philippe Dam, _at_philippe_dam, of Human Right Watch Geneva tweeted “Interesting statement from #Eritrea Gvnt to #HRC29, but they forgot to delete #DPRK in last §!” Mind you if this fellow could make false accusations about an event within his access how much more is he willing to falsify about a country and events he never had an access. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Such is the caliber of the human rights watchers that are manufacturing chaos in the developing world.
• Tom Miles, _at_tgemiles, Chief correspondent, Reuters Geneva bureau who followed by replying “Forgot to delete ‘DPRK’ and write ‘Eritrea’! Suggests they are not taking it very seriously, methinks @philippe_dam“. This “Chief Correspondent” forgot his chief duty was not “him thinking” but verifying first before making a fool out of himself and taking down the news organization he represents with him. It is after the fact, after joining in the anti-Eritrea crowd but when he did check he broke the sad news to his friends by tweeting: “Sorry to spoil the story but #UN says they made an error and will correct the document.” If he was genuinely working a journalists work, why rush to twitter before verifying? Reading his other tweets clearly show that he is more into journalism but part of the web of deception.
• Gianluca Mezzofiore, _at_GianlucaMezzo, Senior Foreign News Reporter International Business Times UK. He tweeted “#Eritrea caught in ironic plagiarism of UN statement from North Korea dictatorship http://ibt.uk/A006KSn #HRC29“ and published an article with the title “In a twist of irony, Eritrea - which is often dubbed the ‘North Korea of Africa’ for its harsh authoritarian rule - has apparently copy and pasted text from a North Korean statement in an official reply to a UN human rights council report” [4] regurgitating the lies churned by the web of deception. This fellow, embedded as journalist has a long history of being in bed with the Eritrea detractors.

If this rush to link Eritrea with North Korea through a hack job bubbled to the top in a wild and adventuresome manner on Tuesday, the evil campaign of labeling Eritrea using the buzzword of choice actually goes back at least 10 years.

• Kevin Turner of Strategic World Impact (SWI) was, to our knowledge, the first person who attempted to associate Eritrea with North Korea. This was far in January of 2005. In a Radio interview he had with a Grand Rapids, Michigan, based Missionary News Network (MNN), he threw the now too common lie that manifested itself big on Tuesday June 30, 2015 in form of a forgery from the OHCHR website.

  He said: "The government, here is pursuing a nationalistic almost communist agenda and part of that agenda is just like North Korea, (who by the way mentors Eritrea), is to stomp out Christianity.” In May of that same year, Turner was again quoted by MNN in an article titled “Eritrea is becoming more like North Korea, persecution against Christians increasing” saying “The situation is getting eerily like North Korea and Saudi Arabia. … They've actually consulted with some of these other governments for those very issues of how to contain or control the church.” [5]
  
  
  At the time he made these slanderous charges Strategic World Impact was operating in Eritrea under the cover of providing assistance to Sudanese refugees in the border areas with Eritrea. By its own admission it “has received the greatest amount of help possible to coordinate these efforts” from the Government of Eritrea “in allowing [it] access the most effected people.” However, as he made it clear in his radio interview over an “encrypted satellite phone” (his own claim), he was not there in Eritrea for humanitarian reasons, but as an undercover religious operative passing malicious reports about Eritrea.

  Turner was one of the first who called for sanctions against Eritrea that Susan Rice and Co. imposed using another web of deception. Here is part of his lies: “We are sure the cause for the problems of the Eritrean Church is the President of Eritrea – so far he has no respect for the Church or for the International community, who is protesting against Christian suffering in Eritrea…What we really would like to see is Christians in the United States trying to help resolve our religious difficulties in Eritrea. To do this, they must deal with the President of the State of Eritrea as an individual who is responsible for the arrest and suffering of 555 Christians in Eritrea…We suggest that an embargo be placed on him.”

  It should be noted that Kevin Turner’s famous quote is "I often say that if you want to minister to terrorists, you have to become one for Jesus Christ.”

  We might add Strategic World Impact was a subcontractor brought to Eritrea through USAID, the “humanitarian” arm of the United States Government who took it upon itself to support the fringe religious organizations that mushroomed in Eritrea. Talk of the US hypocrisy of separation of Church and State! US tax payers money was being spent in Eritrea to advance the agenda of one religion over another in clear violation of the US constitution.

• Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) & Compass Direct has been the source of all the manufactured lies about religious persecution in Eritrea. According to Wikileaks documents, this was done, through the help of a pastor-turned an American informant, one Reverend Zecharias Abraham, who admits in one of his report to the Political Officer at the US Embassy in Asmara, he was responsible for the laundering disinformation to Compass Direct via an organization, Open Doors, based in South African. Like Kevin Turner, VOM also started labeling the President of Eritrea as “Marxist”. As a reflection of its sinister anti-Eritrea agenda this organization does not want to believe Eritrea’s struggle was for independence but a “separation”. Here is how VOM put it: “The Marxist-leaning architect of repression of religion and free speech in Eritrea, President Isaias Afewerki, has been in power since Eritrea's separation from Ethiopia in 1991; the National Assembly elected him as president in 1993.” This is the lie that is now being echoed, verbatim, by several “Christian” groups about Eritrea and its president. It is part of the deliberate strategy of mislabeling Eritrea to achieve an evil goal.

  We also want to add the fact that the Voice of the Martyrs too was a subcontractor brought to Eritrea through USAID.

• Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) together with the Jubilee Campaign has been another key source of disinformation about Eritrea. CSW openly admits in its website, the appointment of the Special Rapporteur is due to its own hard work. We read it boasting with these words: ”this is an amazing proof of our advocacy bearing fruit! The landmark UN resolution is the result of many years of work by CSW, presenting compelling evidence to persuade the UN that the way human rights are violated in Eritrea is utterly horrific, and must be investigated.” It further admitted that: “This resolution is the culmination of years of raising religious freedom and human rights at the UN, campaigning and prayer. It finally came after a roller-coaster two weeks of intense lobbying and negotiations in Geneva earlier this month and means that a Special Rapporteur will be appointed to investigate and monitor human rights in the country and help hold the Eritrean government to account.” [6]

  In its “Breakthrough resolution on Eritrea – the inside track” video that is available on YouTube CSW admits “Particularly we referred back to the work we had done on North Korea a number of years ago, and since that was quite pivotal, and getting a new mandate and new UN mandate on North Korea and we felt this may be possible to replicate with respect to Eritrea and certainly the situation deserved it. So we set about from that point and enacting a strategy at the UN, and raising Eritrea and that consisted of, making speeches, directly at the Human Rights Council, we organized and spoke at side meetings at the Human Rights Council, myself and colleagues, have spoken to diplomats from literally with dozens of state delegations from countries.” [7]

The corporate media and the minority regime in Ethiopia with its surrogates have tried to propagate the mislabel and would not come as any surprise if they, and their handlers, are once again found to be at the bottom of the latest blunder at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The UN Human Rights Council must conduct a thorough investigation of its staff and processes, lest its credibility and integrity are undermined further and its efficacy questioned. Eritrea, as a member state should be accorded equal service and discriminatory acts of any kind, that jeopardize Eritrea’s right to a fair and judicious participation at the UN Human Rights Council will not be accepted or tolerated.

In Eritrea, there is an abiding belief that says “the rod of truth may bend, but it never breaks.” It is this belief that has sustained Eritreans in their continuous struggles against successive conspiracies driven by UN affiliated bodies over the last seven decades.