*Refugees as Weapons in a Propaganda War by Eric Draitser*
http://m.journal-neo.org/2015/11/21/refugees-as-weapons-in-a-propaganda-war/
In the wake of the horrific terror attacks in Paris, world attention will
once again be focused on the issue of refugees entering Europe. While much
of the spotlight has been rightly pointed at Syrian refugees fleeing the
western-sponsored war against the Syrian government, it must be remembered
that the refugees come from a variety of countries, each of which has its
own particular circumstances, with many of them having been victims of
US-NATO aggression in one form or another. Syria, Afghanistan and Libya
have of course been targeted by so-called ‘humanitarian wars’ and fake
‘revolutions’ which have left the countries fractured, divided, and unable
to function; these countries have been transformed into failed states
thanks to US-NATO policy.
What often gets lost in the discussion of refugees however is the fact that
a significant proportion of those seeking sanctuary in Europe and the US
are from the Horn of Africa: Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea
primarily. While there is some discussion of this issue in western media,
it is mostly ignored when it comes to the first three countries as news of
fleeing Sudanese, Somalis, and Ethiopians does not bode well for
Washington’s narrative as the US has, in one way or another, been directly
involved in each of those countries.
However, in the case of Eritrea, a fiercely independent nation that refuses
to bow to the diktats of the US, the country is presented as a seemingly
bottomless wellspring of refugees fleeing the country. Were one to read
solely the UN reports and news stories, one could be forgiven for thinking
that Eritrea has been mostly depopulated as hordes of Eritrean youth flee
the country in droves. But that narrative, one which is periodically
reinforced by distorted coverage in the media, is quickly being eroded as
increasingly the truth is coming out.
*Countering the Eritrean Refugee Propaganda*
The popular understanding of Eritrea in the West (to the extent that people
know of the country at all) is of a nation, formerly ruled by Ethiopia,
which has become the “North Korea of Africa,” a systematic violator of
human rights ruled by a brutal dictatorship that uses slave labor and
tortures its citizens. As such, Eritrea is immediately convicted in the
court of public opinion and, therefore, becomes a convenient scapegoat when
it comes to migration. In fact, it seems that the propaganda against
Eritrea has been so effective, with the US and Europe so keen to take in
anyone fleeing the country, that it has become the stated country of origin
for thousands upon thousands of refugees from a number of countries. It
seems that African refugees, regardless of their true country of origin,
are all Eritreans now.
Take for instance the comments by the Austrian ambassador to Ethiopia
<
http://www.tt.com/home/10694454-91/fl%C3%BCchtlinge---legale-auswanderung-ist-f%C3%BCr-%C3%A4thiopier-tabu.csp>
who
unabashedly explained that, “We believe that 30 to 40 percent of the
Eritreans in Europe are Ethiopians.” Depending on who you ask, the numbers
may actually be even higher than that. Indeed, being granted asylum in
Europe is no easy feat for African refugees who, knowing the political
agenda of Europe and its attempts to isolate and destabilize Eritrea
through promoting the migration of its citizens, quickly lose their
passports and claim to be Eritreans fleeing political persecution.
But who can blame these people when the US itself has established specific
policies and programs aimed at luring Eritrean youths away from their
country? As WikiLeaks revealed in a 2009 diplomatic cable
<
http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09ASMARA146> from the US
Embassy entitled “Promoting Educational Opportunity for Anti-Regime
Eritrean Youth,” the former US ambassador to Eritrea Ronald K. McMullen
noted that the US:
*…intends to begin adjudicating student visa applications, regardless of
whether the regime is willing to issue the applicant an Eritrean passport
and exit visa …With an Eritrean passport and an F1 visa in a Form DS-232,
the lucky young person is off to America. For those visa recipients who
manage to leave the country and receive UNHCR refugee status, a
UN-authorized travel document might allow the young person to travel to
America with his or her F1 in the DS-232.…Due to the Isaias regime´s
ongoing restrictions on Embassy Asmara, [the US] does not contemplate a
resumption of full visa services in the near future. However, giving young
Eritreans hope, the chance for an education, and the skills with which to
rebuild their impoverished country in the post-Isaias period is one of the
strongest signals we can send to the Eritrean people that the United States
has not abandoned them…*
Using the twin enticements of educational scholarships and escape from
mandatory national service, the US and its European allies have attempted
to lure thousands of Eritreans to the West in the hopes of destabilizing
the Asmara government. As the Ambassador noted, the US intention is to
usher in a “post Isaias [Afewerki, president of Eritrea] period.” In other
words: regime change. And it seems that Washington and its European allies
calculated that their policy of economically isolating Eritrea through
sanctions
<
http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Erit%20Djibou%20S%20RES%201907.pdf>
has
not effectively disrupted the country’s development.
And it is just such programs and guidelines which look favorably on
Eritrean migrants which have motivated tens of thousands of Africans to
claim that they all come from the relatively small Eritrea. The reality
however is that a significant number of these refugees (perhaps even the
majority) are actually from Ethiopia and other countries. As Eritrea-based
journalist and East Africa expert Thomas Mountain noted
<
http://www.countercurrents.org/mountain071013.htm> in 2013:
*Every year for a decade or more a million Ethiopians, 10 million and
counting, have left, or fled, their homeland… Why, why would ten million
Ethiopians, one in every 8 people in the country, risking their lives in
many cases, seek refuge in foreign, mostly unwelcoming, lands? The answer
lies in the policies of the Ethiopian regime which have been described by
UN investigators in reports long suppressed with words such as “food and
medical aid blockades”, “scorched earth counterinsurgency tactics”, “mass
murder” and even “genocide”…Most of the Ethiopians refugees are from the
Oromo nationality, at 40 million strong half of Ethiopia, or the ethnic
Somalis of the Ogaden. Both of these regions in southern Ethiopia have long
been victims of some of the most inhumane, brutal treatment any peoples of
the world have ever known.*
There is little mention of this Ethiopian exodus which, for a variety of
reasons, is suppressed in the West. Many of the refugees simply claim to be
Eritrean knowing that they stand a far greater chance of being admitted
into Europe or the US if they claim origin from a blacklisted country like
Eritrea, rather than an ally such as Ethiopia, a country long seen as
Washington’s closest partner in the region.
In fact, Ethiopia is consistently praised as an economic success story,
with the World Bank having recently announced
<
https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects>that
the African nation is the world’s fastest growing economy for 2015-2017.
Despite this alleged ‘economic miracle,’ Ethiopia is still hemorrhaging
population as citizens flee in their thousands, providing further evidence
that outside the glittering capital of Addis Ababa the country remains one
of the most destitute and violent in the world.
The same can be said of South Sudan, a country created by the US and Israel
<
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/south-sudan-when-empire-your-liberator-youre-not-really-independent>primarily,
and which has now descended into civil war sending more than 600,000
refugees
<
http://www.dw.com/en/south-sudan-refugee-exodus-continues/a-18650201>
streaming
out of the newly created country, with another 1.5 million internally
displaced. Somalia remains a living nightmare for the poor souls
unfortunate enough to have been born in a country that is a nation-state in
name only. According to the UN
<
http://m.journal-neo.org/2015/11/21/refugees-as-weapons-in-a-propaganda-war/#.VkuUP9KrRpg>,
Somalia boasts more than 1.1 million internally displaced refugees with
nearly 1 million refugees located outside the country. Taken in total,
Ethiopian, South Sudanese, and Somali refugees comprise a population
greater than the entire population of Eritrea.
However, Somalia, Ethiopia, and South Sudan are all strategic allies (read
clients) of the United States and its western partners; Eritrea is
considered persona non grata by Washington. This fundamental fact far more
than anything else accounts for the completely distorted coverage of the
refugee issue in Eritrea. Put another way, refugees and human trafficking
are a convenient public relations and propaganda weapon employed by the US
to demonize Eritrea, and to tarnish its project of economic and political
self-reliance.
*Refugees as Pretext, Independence Is the Real Sin*
Eritrea has been demonized by the US and the West mainly because it has
refused to be subservient to the imperial system. First and foremost among
Eritrea’s grave sins is its stubborn insistence on maintaining full
independence and sovereignty in both political and economic spheres. This
fact is perhaps best illustrated by Eritrean President Afewerki’s bold
rejection
of foreign aid
<
http://m.journal-neo.org/2015/11/21/refugees-as-weapons-in-a-propaganda-war/#page=1>
of
various sorts, stating repeatedly that Eritrea needs to “stand on its own
two feet.” Afewerki’s pronouncements are in line with what pan-Africanist
leaders such as Thomas Sankara, Marxists such as Walter Rodney, and many
others have argued for decades: namely that, as Afewerkie put it in 2007
after rejecting a $200 million dollar “aid” package from the World Bank,
“Fifty years and billions of dollars in post-colonial international aid
have done little to lift Africa from chronic poverty… [African societies]
are crippled societies…You can’t keep these people living on handouts
because that doesn’t change their lives.”
Of course, there are also other critical political and economic reasons for
Eritrea’s pariah status in the eyes of the so called “developed world,” and
especially the US. Perhaps the most obvious, and most unforgiveable from
the perspective of Washington, is Eritrea’s stubborn refusal to have any
cooperation, formal or informal, with AFRICOM or any other US military.
While every other country in Africa with the exception of the equally
demonized, and equally victimized, Zimbabwe has some military connections
to US imperialism, Eritrea remains stubbornly defiant. I suppose Eritrea
takes the notion of post-colonial independence seriously.
Is it any wonder that Afewerki and his government are demonized by the
West? What is the history of US and European behavior towards independent
African leaders who advocated self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and
anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist ideology? The answer is self-evident.
Such ideas as those embodied by Eritrea are seen by Washington, London, and
Brussels as not only defiant, but dangerous; dangerous not only because of
what they say, but dangerous because they’re actually working.
Naturally there are legitimate concerns to be raised about Eritrea and
major strides still to be made in the political and economic spheres.
Social progress is an arduous process, especially in a part of the world
where nearly every other country is racked with violence, genocide, famine,
and a host of other existential crises. But the progress necessary for
Eritrea will be made by and for Eritreans; it cannot and must not be
imposed from without by the same forces that, in their humanitarian
magnanimity, rained bombs on Libya and systematically undermined,
destabilized, and/or destroyed nations in seemingly every corner of the
globe.
Refugees should be treated with dignity and respect. Their suffering should
never be trivialized, nor should they be scapegoated as terrorists. But
equally so, their tragedies should not be allowed to be cynically exploited
for political gain by the West. The flow of refugees is an outgrowth of the
policies of the Empire – the same Empire that continues to transform this
crisis into a potent weapon of destabilization and war.
*Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York
City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org
<
http://stopimperialism.org/> and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for
the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” <
http://journal-neo.org/>.*
Received on Sun Nov 22 2015 - 18:11:37 EST