War in Tigray: blocking information and pseudo "fact checking"
An abandoned Tigrayan forces tank near Mehoni, in southern Tigray, Ethiopia, December 11, 2020. AFP - EDUARDO SOTERAS
By: Sophie Malibeaux
5 mins
The information coming from Tigray begins to be more and more numerous.
Contrary to what the Ethiopian government claims, the war has claimed civilian lives and the situation has not returned to normal.
Almost four months after the start of the conflict, testimonies are also multiplying on the presence of troops from neighboring Eritrea. This column is produced in partnership with Lucas Bouguet, Solène Gardré and Chadi Yahya of the EPJT, the School journalism public in Tours.
Publicity
Since the end of November, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed assures us that everything has returned to normal in Tigray.
The army was sent there in early November to counter the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a party that challenges the authority of the federal government.
The version of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize is poles apart from the observations of Pekka Haavisto, the Finnish Foreign Minister.
This week, on his return from a mission to Addis Ababa for the European Union, he declared: “
The situation is militarily, humanly and on a humanitarian level, uncontrollable.
"
The information does not come easily from the ground, because the Ethiopian authorities very quickly locked access to Tigray.
In the aftermath of the November 4 offensive, the international press was forced to obtain special permission to go there.
Authorization issued slowly.
Most of the requests go unanswered.
But more and more testimonies are surfacing, videos circulating on social networks, which show the persistent insecurity in Tigray.
NGOs report numerous civilian casualties.
In
a report released on Friday, Amnesty International
denounces the massacre of hundreds of civilians when Ethiopian and Eritrean troops regained control of the town of Aksum in northern Tigray.
The NGO evokes the names of 241 victims, according to testimonies collected from survivors and witnesses refugees on the Sudanese side of the border.
But there was no possibility of an independent evaluation on the ground.
On February 11,
Human Rights Watch
documented the deaths of 83 civilians and thousands of internally displaced persons in the first weeks of the conflict.
They are said to be nearly 60,000 to have fled to neighboring Sudan.
In addition,
sexual violence has been committed
.
The Ethiopian Minister for Women confirmed this, adding that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.
But no question for the moment to designate those responsible.
Many testimonies point to the Eritrean troops
Officially, Ethiopia and Eritrea deny such a presence in the Tigray region.
However, Eritrean journalist Amanuel Ghirmai told RFI at the end of January that the Eritrean army controlled several towns in the region - Adoua, Shire and Adigrat - and the roads and suburbs of Mekele, the capital of Tigray.
Be that as it may, the United States and the European Union apparently have sufficient information on this armed presence, since they are asking for its withdrawal.
The Finnish minister who was on mission for the European Union regretted not having received a clear response from the Ethiopian government on this subject.
In front of journalists in Brussels, he spoke of the sensitive nature of the issue of Eritrean troops in Tigray.
For his part, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the country, Sudanese Mohamed Abiker, calls for an investigation because he is worried about the fate of the Eritrean refugees.
Present in Tigray since 1993 after having fled the dictatorship of Issayas Afewerki, these refugees are threatened with forced return or even imprisonment in their country of origin.
Satellite images from the Bloomberg agency have shown the destruction of two of the four Eritrean refugee camps.
But neither Eritrea nor Ethiopia dwell on the subject.
Ethiopian government turns to social media
With the State of Emergency Fact check (
@SOEFactCheck
) account on Tweeter and Facebook, the authorities claim to inform about the latest developments in Tigray.
In reality, it is by no means a
fact checking
account per
se, but a pro-government body which defends its own version of the facts.
The Ethiopian authorities, for example, seized a great opportunity to disown the international media and in particular AFP which mentioned that 80% of Tigray was inaccessible to humanitarian organizations.
On February 11, this
fact-checking
agency
shared a
post
from the
Ethiopian Red Cross
.
She explains that she has never been denied access to people in need, but rather that she does not have the means to care for 80% of Tigrayans.
Confusing
state government
use of
fact-checking
.
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