Ethiopia. Twitter and Facebook must take action against the spread of ethnic hatred and incitement to genocide.
Faced with the exponential increase in online messages of ethnic hatred and incitement to genocide on social media in Ethiopia, Twitter, Facebook and other big social networks must intervene by censoring these messages or closing accounts particularly dedicated to this genocidal propaganda. A propaganda that, unfortunately, is orchestrate after the military defeats suffered in Tigray by a government that defines itself as democratic and progressive.
Despite Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed withdrawing federal troops from Mekelle and declaring a unilateral ceasefire on June 28, Tigray is technically under siege. According to the United Nations, out of 7 million inhabitants in the northern region of Ethiopia, between 350,000 and 900,000 people are at risk of starvation and another 2 million are one step away from severe malnutrition. About 5.2 million Tigers are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance.
Farmers, aid workers and local officials say food has been turn into a weapon of war, with federal soldiers and Amhara militias blocking or stealing food aid. UN humanitarian agencies and NGOs facing famine are limited due to lack of fuel, disruption of telecommunications and electricity and the de facto humanitarian embargo enacted by the Ethiopian government.
Since November 2020, Tigers in Ethiopian cities, particularly in the capital Addis Ababa, have been arrested by the thousands, have had bank accounts frozen, have been purged of their jobs and their businesses have been closed. Tigers, a minority ethnic group that makes up about 6% of the Ethiopian population, have been barred from traveling abroad.
Now, Addis Ababa residents from Tigray say the proliferation of racial messages has increased to an alarming level since the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) regained ground, with many Tigrayans too fearful to leave their homes. . Mass arrests have resumed, along with dozens of Tigrinya businesses forcibly closed by Ethiopian authorities. The United Nations claims to have received evidence (currently under investigation) of extrajudicial executions of several recently arrested Ethiopian citizens of Tigrinya origin.
Tigris living elsewhere in Ethiopia fear they will become “The Next Rwanda”. Hate speech and targeting of Tigrayans are intensifying in Addis Ababa, terrorizing both Ethiopian natives of Tigray and mixed couples.
Hate speech and genocide against 7 million Ethiopian citizens is a campaign promoted mainly on social media and orchestrated by the Ethiopian federal government and two national media outlets of the far-right Amhara leadership: Fana Corporation Broadcasting TV and Borkena TV
The Prosperity Party government and Premier Abiy Ahmed Ali base their ethnic hatred campaign on three war stories. Use of child soldiers by the regular Tigrinya army. Massacres of civilians in Amhara and Afar perpetuated by Tigrinya soldiers. Attack on WFP humanitarian convoy (bound for Tigray) on Sunday 18 July in Afar. The international community is not paying attention to these accusations as they are devoid of evidence and spread with propaganda texts by the Addis Ababa government itself.
The Amhara management is aware that these fakenews are not internationally accepted and in fact, they were not design for this purpose. The real purpose is to create a feeling of pure hatred and fear among the Amhara and the other ethnic groups that make up the Ethiopian federation in order to be able to implement the “final solution” against Tigray without popular opposition.
Fana TV and Borkena TV have been task with spreading ethnic hatred and incitement to genocide to national public opinion, while government communications experts are organizing identical social media campaigns. Such widespread campaigns involving in first person the Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed Ali, who on several official occasions has used clear genocidal rhetoric against 7 million of its citizens, calling them: Cancer of the Nation, Satanists, invasive weed that must be annihilated at every cost. On Tuesday, July 20, Abiy in a speech addressed to the federal army urged soldiers to treat all Tigrayans as enemies. The horrendous incitement was also publish on Youtube with English subtitles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcRkc0anvI8
Researchers Muluken Asegidew Chekol, Mulatu Alemayehu Moges and Biset Ayalew Nigatu last January published on the information platform Taylor & Francis Group, a summary of a study on the Social of Hate in Ethiopia that went unnoticed. Unfortunately, this study has become topical. The three Ethiopian researchers say that the phenomenon of hate speech on social media predates the outbreak of the conflict in Tigray and promoted by the Prosperity Party.
The social media sphere, have long been heavily controlled by the TPLF-led coalition government, with two goals: to prevent freedom of expression against the government and the spread of d i ethnic hatred that compromised the federal structure, the only vaccine to avoid civil and / or ethnic wars. With the coming to power of Abiy Ahmed Ali (ironically wanted by the TPLF leadership to try to calm the growing popular opposition Amhara and Oromo) and the start of political reforms, social media has been clear. Relative freedom of expression was guaranteed despite the fact that INSA (an online espionage agency founded by Abiy) continued to spy on the private lives of millions of citizens in search of anti-government “hot heads” or “uncomfortable” journalists and activists.
According to the authors of the study, since 2019 the Prosperity Party has begun to promote the emergence of incitement to political, ethnic and religious hatred in anticipation of creating the social climate conducive to the restoration of the single party and the Amhara ethnic dictatorship. From the beginning, the main groups targeted were Tigrini and Oromo.
The study analyzed the interventions of individuals on social media, the new digital information platforms that were born, and the television channels on Facebook and YouTube. Using a binary analysis, there is a strange homogeneity of offensive hate comments, including comments on inciting violence and genocide.
The study also found a communication tactic identical to thousands of accounts. Contesting the memory of the past, associating ethnicity with religion, culture and linguistic issues, without ever claiming to be supporters of the Prosperity Party. Everything had to appear as free thoughts and opinions of ordinary people that were intertwin with the discourse of ethnic hatred that the government spread orally among the population to create an identity tandem between the real world and that of social networks.
The conclusion that the three researchers have reached that the phenomenon of hate social media in Ethiopia is not spontaneous but a premeditated communication policy studied and promoted by the government, which, unfortunately, after the military defeat suffered at the end of June in Tigray was brought to extreme assuming very worrying connotations. Hate social media are in fact a weapon of war such as sexual violence, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, destruction of infrastructure, and denial of humanitarian assistance, famine and hunger.
This campaign organized by the Ethiopian government must be seriously consider as a crime against humanity and the various social network providers cannot remain indifferent, tolerating messages, videos and fake photos on their platforms praising ethnic hatred and genocide.
It is not just a moral obligation (as messages can break the rules of conduct of these social networks) but also a legal obligation. Since 2016 Facebook, YouTube-Google, Twitter and Microsoft have joined the European Union Code of Conduct to combat racism, xenophobia and messages praising ethnic hatred and discrimination: Digital Service Act.
In 2020, the 4 big names in telematics communication declared that they had examined 90% of the contents reported as suspicious within 24 hours of reporting and removed 71% of the contents branded as illegal, compared to 28% in 2016.
However, online social platforms must improve their moderation service according to the European Union and must ensure that the contents marked as possible “Hate Speec” are always evaluate with the same attention paid by the European Commission in its online monitoring activities.
The messages of ethnic hatred, which arose in 2019 on social media in Ethiopia and among the diaspora, have had an exponential increase since the beginning of the conflict in Tigray. After the military defeat suffered in June by the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies, the phenomenon exploded, transforming Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks into vehicles of fakenews but, above all, of hatred and promotion of genocide. A well-known tactic since the Rwandan genocide in 1994 even if at that time newspapers, radio, TV and word of mouth “at the bar” were use.
Faced with the serious violations of human rights, collective rape, man-made hunger (all crimes against humanity), the clear intentions of genocide expressed without shame even by the Premier and the Ethiopian government, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter and Microsoft must increase their controls not only by waiting for user reports but by screening messages with robotic systems, including those in Amharic. This control is not to be confused with respect for freedom of expression. There is no freedom in inciting the killing of an ethnic group! Social media moguls must abide by the Digital Service Act of the European Union, which is a binding document.
