February 3, 2017
Indian Ocean Newsletter: Peddling False News on Eritrea
Fake News is the daily staple, the bread and butter so to speak, of the Indian Ocean Newsletter in its periodic “news stories” on Eritrea and the region as a whole.
The Newspaper has also the habit of packaging its fabricated stories as “factual events” emanating from “knowledgeable” intelligence sources. This is a simple ploy to imbue credibility to its false stories that are mostly based on innuendos and/or deliberately floated at times for the purposes of pure disinformation.
In keeping with this pattern, the Newspaper alleges in its edition of 27 January 2017 last week (No 1443) that the Director of Sudan’s Intelligence and Security Services, Gen. Mohamed Abbas, “conducted a secret lightening visit to Asmara”, on 10 January this month, to meet with his Eritrean counterpart in “Khartoum’s efforts to persuade Eritrea, at the bidding of Saudi Arabia, to break with Iran and the Houthis”.
This story is glaringly at odds with the actual facts, current realities, and the political dynamics of the region. But the Indian Ocean Newsletter is not in the business of publishing validated and verifiable stories and will continue, as ever, to churn out patently false news.
Ministry of Information, 31 January 2017
