Fortunately, these mercenary opportunist elements, shunned and discredited by Eritreans inside the country and in the Diaspora, have isolated themselves from the greater Eritrean communities and latched on to foreigners (almost all of them white) to help advance their illicit and undemocratic agendas. This piece is about one such foreigner who is serving as their mentor and guide. The BBC´s Martin Plaut has been cavorting with individuals and groups of disgruntled defectors, detractors and defeatists residing in Western capitals, who now make their living laundering information, fabricating reports, engaging in human trafficking etc. all the while posing as "victims of religious persecution", "exiled journalists"," reformists", "democrats", and "human rights" activists. Plaut is one of the foreigners, who have decided to provide these treasonous and seditious individuals access to parliamentarians, state officials and the media, they would not have had otherwise.
Martin Plaut and his mercenaries have produced dozens of context and fact-less reports, organized "symposiums", "forums" over the last 10 years. As noted by many others in the past, Plaut´s obsession with Eritrea is evident in the hundreds of articles and reports on Eritrea, a country he has never visited independent Eritrea. For the last 10 years, he has jumped on all the anti-Eritrea bandwagons, no matter who was driving them. Ignoring the larger Eritrean Diaspora communities its historic Festivals, Martyrs Day activities, Adopt a Martyrs Family and other self financed humanitarian programs, Plaut chose instead to dwell on the anti-Eritrea elements and their sponsors.
Allow me to explain:
Plaut joined the Eritrean "human rights", "democracy" bandwagons that hit the Eritrean cyberspace in 2000-2001. Aligning himself with mercenary individuals and groups which included infamous Eritreans such as the group calling itself the Berlin 13, Eritrean for Human Rights and Democracy, Eritrean Public Forum etc., working with opportunists like Bereket Habte Selassie and Paulos Tesfagiorgis, two notorious individuals with long histories of betrayals and chief architects of the infamous Berlin formations. Plaut didn´t even bother to check their checkered histories filled with betrayals before he joined their anti-Eritrea campaigns.
Kassahoun Chekole, whose publishing firm Red Sea Press has been churning out laundered anti-Eritrea books and articles by these individuals and groups has also published Martin Plaut´s book on Eritrea. Kassahoun Chekole, a member of the Berlin 13. has been working to undermine Eritrea´s international reputation and stop development and other aid from reaching Eritrea. I don´t have any issues with making money, but don´t do it at the expense of others. Speaking of other people´s expense, Plaut should ask Chekole about the textbooks for Eritrean children, he knows what I am referring to.
Plaut became a staple in their NED sponsored campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic, disseminating their reports, and providing them forums in which they presented Eritrea as a pariah, campaigned to stop any economic and humanitarian aid from reaching Eritrea and more. A shameful lot if you ask me!
Plaut also joined the "religious persecution" bandwagon and attempted to portray Eritrea as a religious freedom violator instead of taking a serious and educated look at the proliferation of New Religious Movements (NRMs) throughout Africa and Eritrea. Once again, instead of researching the many stories laundered by self serving individuals and groups about religion in Eritrea, he chose instead to present them as facts and rallied against the Government of Eritrea, attacking Eritrea´s laws and giving credence to the US State Department´s absurdities and lists..
Ignoring the plight of thousands of youth in Africa, Plaut chose to narrow his focus on Eritrean youth who were being smuggled out of Eritrea. Instead of investigating the so-called DV lottery programs that targeted Eritrea´s best trained and educated and the lucrative UNHCR run "refugee camps" in Ethiopia, as well as the human traffickers and those in Western capitals that actively recruited these youth in order to advance other political agendas, Plaut chose malign the Government of Eritrea. Contrary to what Plaut writes in his many columns about Eritrean youth, majority of them are serving their country and people, building schools, clinics, hospitals, dams, bridges etc. and laying the foundations for Eritrea´s future. Nothing Plaut and his payors say can change that fact.
When the irate and vindictive US Secretary of State for African Affairs attempted to place Eritrea on the "List of Countries that Sponsor Terror", Plaut was there again, jumping on the "terrorism" bandwagon, pointing fingers at Eritrea without ever questioning her motives and agendas. Once again, Plaut aligned himself with the wrong side.
So it came as no surprise to see his latest anti-Eritrea post in which he implies a relationship between the piracy off the coast of Somalia and Eritrea. I suppose Plaut is fast running out of anti-Eritrea materials and has been reduced to writing yet another Hamster of Hampstead Heath-like fiction.
Over the last ten years, Eritrean Americans, like me, have responded to the BBC´s Martin Plaut´s incessant attempts to distort Eritrea´s image in the international arena by repeatedly pointing out the erroneous and unsubstantiated facts in almost all of his "analysis" on issues relating to Eritrea. His personal bias and lack of honesty and intellectual integrity aside, it is the continued abuse of his credentials at the BBC to perpetuate his ill-advised agendas and that of a handful of treasonous individuals in his employ, and the fact that the issue of Somalia is too serious a matter to be left to amateur analysts such as the BBC´s Martin Plaut, that has compelled me to write once again, and point out the misrepresentations and deliberate distortions in his 18 November 2008 post "Pirates ‘working with Islamists’".
Instead of researching the issue and learning about the real causes for the rise in piracy off the coast of Somalia, Plaut chose instead to refer to a discredited report produced by Bruno Schiemsky and the US-UN financed and commissioned "Monitoring Group´s Report on Somalia", which was replete with bogus and outlandish assertions and unsubstantiated allegations designed to implicate Eritrea in the latest Somalia crisis. Citing Bruno Schiemsky´s discredited Report on Somalia, without providing any other independent verification of its assertions, Plaut wrote:
"…The Islamists are using the pirates to train their own forces in naval tactics so that they can provide protection for arms being smuggled in Somalia from Eritrea… It says two shipments in May were for Sheikh Hassan Abdulle Hersi, who is also known as Hassan Turki, an Islamist leader who is based in southern Somalia near Kismayo…They are reported to have been picked up from islands off the Eritrean coast…"
The fact that the Report camouflaged and covered up for the US and Ethiopia´s continued and repeated flagrant violations of the arms embargo in Somalia was not the only issue that bothered several analysts in the region and prevented Jendayi E. Frazer from using it to implicate Eritrea with "terrorist acts". Turns out, the Report contained manufactured facts, deliberately inserted in order to divert attention away from the real violators in Somalia, and to point fingers instead, at Eritrea. Allow me to present a few of the erroneous and bogus allegations against Eritrea and others in Bruno Schiemsky´s reports to the UN.
The Monitoring Group´s claim that over "2000 Eritrean forces" fighting alongside the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in Somalia has yet to be proven. Almost 2 years since the Ethiopian invasion, there have yet to be a single evidence of Eritrean troop presence in Somalia. The Monitoring Group also attempted to link Eritrea with a particular flight, Ilyushin Il-76, which belonged to a known arms trafficker Victor Bout who had made several trips to Somalia in the past to deliver weapons for many clients, including Ethiopia, was also debunked by Douglas Farah, an independent journalist who has painstakingly chronicled Bout´s activities in his book, "Merchant of Death". Bout´s relationship with the regime in Ethiopia and the US State Department is a matter of public record.
The Group had annexed to the report on Somalia, a "Contract of sale of an IL-76 aircraft to Eriko Enterprise (Eritrea)". According to the "Contract", the buyer is a certain Kelati Haile for Eritrea and the seller is Evgueny Zakharov (of Aerolift Company). According to the Group, Eriko Enterprise was a "front" for the Government of Eritrea and this copy of the "Contract" was supposed to some how prove Eritrean involvement in the arms transport to Somalia. Since I had been collecting information on Somalia for quite sometime, it was not hard to find the 18 February 2007 Sunday Times report (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1400655.ece) by Jon Swain and Brian Johnson-Thomas who were reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa to help put Schiemsky´s distorted Report in perspective.
They reported a very interesting but at the time a very puzzling story about a man, Evgueny Zakharov, the owner of Aerolift who claimed he was transporting Eritreans to Somalia. Here is an excerpt from that news report:
"…Zakharov said his involvement began after he was approached by a General Tambi of the Eritrean People´s Defence Forces… Tambi offered to buy Zakharov´s Ilyushin 76 transport aircraft carrying the Kazakhstan registration number UN 76496 for $1.5m (£770,000), even though the normal price for an aircraft of that vintage and condition is just $1m…Zakharov went ahead despite the unusual contract conditions that stipulated secrecy. He insisted the contract should specify that the new owners were not to use the aircraft to make arms flights…However, he said last week that the Ilyushin made three sanctions-busting arms flights to Somalia from the Eritrean port of Massawa, bringing out the masked men on the return legs…When Zakharov discovered the Eritreans´ real use of the plane was for arms shipments and for flying the masked men from Somalia, he cancelled the contract…Contacted last week, Tambi denied all knowledge of the deal. However, The Sunday Times has a copy of the contract signed in Moscow and Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, between Aerolift and Eriko Enterprise of Asmara on July 21…"
At the time, Eritrean American´s such as I were puzzled; the name ´Tambi´ did not sound Eritrean. It was not much later that we discovered the name belonged to John E.Tambi of Sierra Leone, one of the experts hired by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan to monitor the embargo on Somalia.
See: (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=11744&Cr=somalia&Cr1)
Why did he present himself as an Eritrean if not to deliberately and maliciously implicate Eritrea? Why did the UN not question Tambi´s involvement in this sordid affair? These are questions that Bruno Schiemsky needs to answer.
Bruno Schiemsky´s report also included a copy of a bill of sale for the Ilyushin-76 UN-76496, which belonged to Viktor Bout’s GST Aero Air Company, which according Schiemsky and his team, was the same plane supposedly sold to Eritrea by the same Evgeny Zakharov of Aerolift Ltd, a Virgin Islands company. Obviously this man is not a credible source and inclusion of the bill of sale by the group in their second report as proof of Eritrean culpability is not only suspect but also raised even more disturbing questions about the so-called Monitoring Group, the credibility and integrity of their report and not to mention the efficacy of the UN which is seems to be catering to State Department officials once again, to effectuate US policy in Somalia.
The Group never explained how Aerolift, a Sierra Leone-registry UAE-based company, which went out of business after being blacklisted in March, 2006 managed to sell Victor Bout´s aircraft to Eritrea on 21 July 2006? They also never explained how Victor Bout was seen flying it in Somalia on 26 July 2006 when the plane was supposed to be in Eritrea´s possession? They also need to prove that "Eriko Enterprise" exists. Instead of holding the Group and its payors to account and asking questions, lazy reporters such as the BBC´s Martin Plaut would rather "cut and paste" outlandish assertions to fill their posts.
There is another story reported by the Times journalists and another Russian who is also connected to Victor Bout and a transaction for an airplane that adds to the suspicious activities of the so called Group monitoring the embargo on Somalia and the report they produced. In a 15 July 2007 story entitled "Exposed: the Somalia arms boycott breaker", (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2076015.ece)
the two journalists Jon Swain and Brian Johnson-Thomas write about Alexander Radionov and how a reporter posing as a liaison for the UIC had contacted Radionov. Here is what they wrote:
"…The journalist, posing as an intermediary for the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), contacted Alexander Radionov, who had previously come to the attention of the UN and other international organisations over suspicious arms flights in Africa. In an exchange of telephone calls and faxes the Russian agreed to help in return for a large fee…It was in a fax from Guernsey, chosen because of Bout´s former business links there, that the journalist told Radionov he wanted to charter the Antonov for two flights from the Yemen to "GPS coordinates in central southern Somalia", an area occupied by the rebel UIC. He went on to tell Radionov "the flight will not be declared" and asked for help in finding parachutes for the air drop. …In his faxed reply Radionov asked for the approximate distance to the dropping zone from a Yemeni airstrip so that, for flight declaration purposes…Radionov concluded: "We would like to receive in advance total amount $200,000 [£98,000] for aircraft positioning. The cost of each flight will be $50,000 plus ground expenses and fuel required…"
As if that was not enough we also find out that the other aircraft, the Boeing 707, also a Victor Bout airplane, and used by the same Alexander Radionov, a known associate of Bout is supposed to have leased it to Eritrea to run arms in Somalia. The outfit that the Russian Alexander Radionov is associated with is an Oregon based company SIMIX Ltm. and Radionov is the representative conveniently located in Kenya. Is that the $200000 that is supposed to have been paid by "Eritrean diplomats in the UAE"? How many other such operations did this Russian conduct? Is this not something that should have been in the Group´s report on Somalia?
Unfortunately, such is the kind of "evidence" against Eritrea that BBC´s Martin Plaut wants to present to his readers. He is not interested in finding and reporting the truth, which would lead him to the botched US- Ethiopia invasion and occupation of Somalia and the many individuals and groups that have polluted Africa´s landscape with deadly weapons. Instead of relying on Bruno Schiemsky´s erroneous and fabricated allegations against Eritrea, Plaut should have stuck to addressing the issues facing Somalia today. Eritrea is not the problem in Somalia. He should have addressed Ethiopia´s US-backed and financed illegal invasion and occupation of Somalia, the incessant violations by external forces who have violated Somalia´s sovereignty and territorial integrity, pillaged and destroyed Somalia´s resources, dumped toxic waste onto Somalia waters etc. etc. But that would mean pointing fingers at Plaut´s payors…wouldn´t it?
The rule of law must prevail over the law of the jungle!!!
