Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 22:38:30 +0200
The distorted narrative, media war and Eritrea's culture of silence Part I & II
Ruby Sandhu
Founder and Principal Consultant at RS Collaboration
02. MAY 2016
- We Eritreans believe that when you do what you believe, your actions speak loud for you — when you don’t do what you believe in then you have to speak louder to be heard —
I have had to resort to publishing this piece and inquiry as a blog as no paper entertains any perspective other than the sensationalised unhealthy narrative maintained as against Eritrea.
My reference to Culture of Silence and Eritrea is premised on an inquiry further to a number of discussions and focus groups with the Eritrean diaspora based here in the UK, Europe, USA and Eritrea on the prevalent narrative as against Eritrea. This was after my experience and travel in Eritrea meeting with senior officials, diplomats, Eritreans, businessmen and our shared experience of the narrative in the western media as compared to the reality on the ground in Eritrea. And it is from those direct and candid discussions that I am presented with an overwhelming awareness of the distorted and unbalanced narrative as against Eritrea deliberately propagated by our western supposed free journalism, press and media.
My journey on Eritrea was initiated a couple years ago when I was retained by a client to evaluate the legitimacy of the Rehabilitation and Diaspora Tax (RDT) — see below. My preliminary and superficial research was premised on references to genuine human rights reports exacerbated by the mass media and sensationalised journalism. From this emotive and judgemental space I concluded and with a clinical approach to international law that Eritrea was indeed a despot lawless state and the North Korea of Africa. This was me providing advice not grounded in any contextual understanding or any genuine research on my part, in fact actions from my silo of expertise as a lawyer and couched activism.
I later continued the inquiry in my role as the Vice Chair of the SIHRG (Solicitor’s International Human Rights Group). I had within SIHRG set up a working group on Business Ethics incorporating an inquiry on the implementation of the United Nation’s Guiding Principles on the state duty to protect and the Corporate duty to respect human rights and the provision for access of remedy through the appropriate grievance mechanisms in Eritrea.
It was after travel to Eritrea on that specific inquiry and on a number of occasions on different mandates that I returned to the UK to consolidate my thoughts and research which culminated in me disseminating my paper titled Eritrea through the lens of nation building, business ethics and sustainability to much criticism, that I resigned as the Vice Chair of the Solicitor’s International Human Rights Group as I was accused of whitewashing human rights. This was unfair as my work was premised on the work of Business and Human Rights. There were a number of slurs and defamatory statements in the open media, certain MPs and MEPs refused to engage and I was turned in part like Eritrea into a pariah.
Subsequently I was re-elected back as a committee member of SIHRG and the itinerant individual and non lawyers who had spearheaded this campaign and not read my report were removed. However it provided me with an understanding of how emotive certain elements genuine and at worse subversive were on Eritrea. Subversive in regard to the attacks and shutting down spaces for engagement in the West. This caused me concern as you cannot with one hand state your rights to freedom of expression in Eritrea and then ensure through lobbying that all other perspectives or voices are removed from discussion especially in my country which is a functioning democracy. Eritreans would mock our freedom of expression when Baroness Kinnock was able to silence other perspectives through her concerted successful effort to close down open discussions with a holistic approach to engaging with Eritrea. An event that was organised at the House of Lords titled “Building bridges for a Sustainable Eritrea’. This detrimental and manipulative approach and unhealthy subversive stance on non engagement is perceived by many Eritreans as a personal emotive vendetta against Eritrea creating further fractions as instead of an evolved approach to engagement — this is disappointing when there is potential for an evolved and intelligent approach as instead of simply acting from a reactive space of activism.
Further concern as to how our MPs and MEPs had taken a one sided reactive and biased stance on the issue. On a simple search of the media, MPs and MEPs discussion, debates and resolutions there is a predominantly repetitive and one lens narrative and further to the Commission of Inquiry Report, which one should note was specifically for the mandate of carrying out investigations on human right violations. There are concerns as to the methodology applied, individuals appointed, concerns of bias and lack of impartiality and the individuals / refugees interviewed and without access to Eritrea. For us to engage with a sovereign state relying on COI is an irresponsible approach especially when we know that COI’s have been used as highly politicised instruments to target states on agendas other than genuine human rights concerns.
Eritreans are reminded of Mahatma Gandhi’s response to Katherine Mayo’s book “Mother India” when they consider the Commission of Inquiry’s report and its mandate.
This book is cleverly and powerfully written. The carefully chosen quotations give it the false appearance of a truthful book. But the impression it leaves on my mind is that it is the report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon, or to give a graphic description of the stench exuded by the opened drains. If Miss Mayo had confessed that she had come to India merely to open out and examine the drains of India, there would perhaps be little to complain about her compilation. But she declared her abominable and patently wrong conclusion with a certain amount of triumph: ‘the drains are India”.
It is the reference to the “the drains are India” on how the allegations by COI of systemic human rights violations are perceived by many Eritreans. COI does not take into account the unique characteristics of the Eritrean journey, context and history underlying concerns as to the inherent motive, potential bias of activism from prior work as instead of genuine inquiry and concerns on human rights and importantly the drains are not Eritrea.
Read it in Word Attachment fully below:
- application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document attachment: The_distorted_narrative__media_war_and_Eritrea_s_culture_of_silence.docx