Late last week, Eritrea finally admitted to be participating in the Tigrayan genocide on the Ethiopian side of the border. After months of reports, claims, and denials, the east African country finally buckled, folded, and fessed up to taking part in what the UN has described as a meticulous effort to erase the Tigrayan people.
I wanted to try and write something positive for this week. I’ve been all about doom and gloom for a long time, and it’s getting tiresome. Even for me. And this is what I decide to write about.
I’m great at parties…
But behind the ghastly details of the aftermath of the Tigray war, there’s this silver lining to observe (and I’m going to glomp onto this silver lining like a wet tongue to dry ice in lieu of sunnier news because there’s fuck all else to be glad about): Eritrea has owned up to its blunder of sending in troops across a sovereign border to help a neighbour government commit mass murder on a minority.
We’re still talking genocide over here. Ethnic cleansing. Sectarian vengeance. We’re talking about a holocaust, according to reports filtering out of the media black-out of the region. And there’s not a lot for me to say about this sad story at the ass end of a civil war. It’s on the news. Look it up. There’re no snarky takes or funny quips to be made of it. But let’s take a breath and appreciate it when a government that has taken part of a genocide take even a sliver of responsibility and at least say that they’re going to back off. Eritrea owned to their crimes against humanity, even if only because they got caught red handed.
Because accepting your bummer, even of such nightmarish proportions, when you’re caught red-handed is not even close to something we can expect of governments in this day and age of the “fake news”.
Let me present to you some examples that will indicate just how rare this poodle, as we call it in media terms, has become…
The US has decided to start sanctioning and undermining the International Criminal Court because the ICC wants to investigate war crimes in Palestine and Afghanistan. Not even a shimmer of admittance of guilt can be found in the sullied White House. And rather than admit that they’ve behaved poorly, they prefer instead to prosecute and hunt those that tell the tale. Julian Assange. Edward Snowden. Reality Winner. Chelsea Manning. Et al.
In eastern Ukraine in 2014, local media began referring to “little green men” and “polite people” in Russian Federation military gear. Russia always denied involvement in the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, they still do to this day. But I yet remember a Swedish reporter on site that managed to exchange a few sentences with a small group of these “polite people” at a fresh separatist check-point. The reporter asked them what they were doing, to which they responded that they were establishing a new border. When she asked where they came from, seeing as their uniforms were without insignias, they just laughed at her and told her that “we’ll never tell”.
Russia still denies involvement in the creation of the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. Russia also denies that it’s anyone’s business that they’re currently, some seven years later, amassing military might across the Ukraine border. Just as they’ve denied the Skripal and Navalny poisonings. And just as they deny involvement in the 2014 ammunition depot explosion in the Czech Republic. Russia does its best Nixon-impression and denies everything, no matter how brazen they behave.
And let us not forget China. Let us not forget the Uighur concentration camps, which the Chinese Communist Party vehemently denied the existence of. Until the evidence got too much for them, and they changed their tune and tried to rebrand their genocide as re-education. Because there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
But this was going to be a positive column! Yes! Positivity!
As we can see, denial runs deep in international politics these days. If you deny something long and hard enough, you can hope to create enough buzz about it to mask your actions in a bubble of plausible deniability. It’s bullshit, but the perverted trend of “fake news” will carry it enough to give your internet trolls some elbow room. It’s a short-term effective strategy, though history is unlikely to look kindly upon the practise.
But Eritrea didn’t do that. They could have kept denying they were involved in the mass-rape and executions of the Tigrayan people in Ethiopia. But they didn’t. After multitude reports and witness accounts from the Tigray region, they owned up to it. At least to being there, on the wrong side of the border.
That’s how low the bar of commendable behaviour is set nowadays. All you have to do is to admit that you’re behaving like scum to get a pat on the back. So, pat-pat, Eritrea. You’ve earned yourself a cookie. Hope you’re proud.
Never tell me I can’t look at the bright side of life.
/Sebastian Lindberg 19/4-2021
WastedWords 