On May 7, the BBC came up with a totally fabricated and unverified report entitled “Ethiopia war: Evidence of mass killing being burned – witnesses” by Lucy Kasa who has repeatedly came up with rude and false stories who claimed to conduct interviews with anonymous 15 respondents through telephone conversations.
The BBC published this fiction story noting that:
“The remains of hundreds of people are being deliberately destroyed in an organized campaign to dispose of evidence of ethnic cleansing in the west of Ethiopia, Tigray region, according to interviews with 15 eyewitnesses.”
The story defies the most elementary element of news in which journalists are expected to accent the truth on the ground instead of conducting a sham interview which has probably even not happened. In a shameful reversal of the truth on the ground, the ethnic cleansing with the BBC journalist claimed was practically conducted by terrorist hit men over the last 30 years when it annexed Wolkayit which was historically part of Gondar which was settled by ethnic Amhara people for thousands of years. Terrorist TPLF organized underground burials and caves in Wolkayit popularly known by the local residents as “Gehhanem” which meant hell on earth.
In a bid to verify the truth, Gondar University conducted an extensive research and down to earth excavation in which the remains of hundreds of local people from Wolkayit were massacred and buried. This was not conducted through telephone conversations but through the results of the excavations and on spot eye witness accounts delivered by the people in the areas.
The false narrative from BBC’s Lucy continued falsely claiming that “People belonging to security forces from the neighboring Amhara region, which are occupying western Tigray, have been identified as digging up fresh mass graves, exhuming hundreds of bodies, burning them and then transporting what remains out of the region, the eyewitnesses said in telephone interviews.
First of all, the BBC came up with a false story that Western Tigray was annexed by Amhara people while all historical facts and live evidences indicate the TPLF annexed Wolkayit into its regional territory in 1994 as part of the 1975 Tigray Manifesto which claimed that all territories in which Tigrigna is spoken should be forcefully annexed into what it called “Greater Tigray.” It changed that historical name of Western Gondar into Western Tigray and embarked on ethnic cleansing and cultural war on Amharic speaking population and their children to pursue their education in Tigrigna in gross violation of human rights and cultural repression.
In this story, BBC admits that “The authorities have acknowledged that graves have been dug up but say that they show evidence that Tigrayan forces had been carrying out its own campaign of ethnically motivated killing in recent decades. Researchers from Gondar University have also been uncovering mass grave sites that they have linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).”
BBC’s Lucy is well known for her lies and continues to narrate that “Eyewitnesses have said that three days after the funding was approved, the campaign to destroy evidence of atrocities was launched in western Tigray.”
“In the plot of land behind Hamele Hamushte school in Humera town, 200 bodies of ethnic Tigrayan civilians were buried in two mass graves. These were civilians massacred in the early months of the war said an eyewitness from the Wolkayit ethnic group who lives in Humera”.
Lucy tries to bring in false evidence from “eyewitness from Wolkayit ethnic group who lives in Humera trying to show that even a witness from Wokayit Amhara gives authentic evidence which indeed is a daylight lie. BBC is creating a new ethnic group called “Wolkayit ethnic group” while Wolkayit is the name given to a territory in Western Gondar and not the name of an ethnic group, a total misinformation and mix-up of facts by the BBC.
The fairy tale continued unabated on 4 April, the Amhara militias and the Fano [militia] youth group exhumed the remains. They gathered wood, sprayed something we never saw before and burned the remains they collected. The remains crumbled and turned into ash.
This testimony was consistent with what other eyewitnesses said about the same incident. “Amhara militia and Fano youth destroyed the remains of bodies buried in another part of Humera, witnesses have said.”
The fake telephone conversations with no names to mentioned continues with the makeup story that was never verified. The witnesses reportedly said that “The bodies belonged to civilians who were paraded from detention camps. There were around 100 bodies buried in masse behind the land of the public office of the Humera Agricultural Institute, said another witness.
“They took the remains to the compound of the institute and turned them into ash using wood, fire, and chemicals that we don’t know. As they were doing that their faces were covered by masks and they wore gloves.”
It appears that Lucy is trying to shrewdly mix up the general routine activities of excavation and research conducted by Gondar University scientists and attempting to rewrite a story that falsely attempts to criminalize Gondar University in its genuine attempts to provide a scientific evidence that the mass massacres were conducted over three decades in Tigray and not of a recent origin.
This means that Lucy tries to use attempts by Gondar University to disclose the truth as if the University itself has participated in the action. On the other hand, for instance, it is common to wear gloves and face masks when excavation of such matter is conducted.
The witnesses created by Lucy were set up to deliver a confused version of the whole scenario as part of the campaign to obstruct the findings of the researches conducted by the University.
BBC tries to justify the false evidence that attempts to depict the “possibility” with a false assertion that: “Experts have confirmed that it is possible to dispose of human remains using certain chemicals.”
In a futile attempt to provide an evidence from a source thousands of miles away again by telephone, Lucy tries to get an expert opinion to justify her false propaganda. She writes, “Andrea Sella, professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London, said cremation was possible as long as a high enough temperature was reached.”
Can speculations on the part of international forensic experts serve as an evidence to conclude that ethnic Tigryans were massacred by the Amhara people? It must be clear that journalism is a profession well known across the world but venting anger and rage and hatred on issues that are already verified is no less than a daylight lie.
Gebrekidan Gebresilassie, a doctor in chemical engineering at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany, also said “it was possible to destroy forensic evidence with the help of chemicals that are readily available.”
This suggestion or comment has nothing to do with the research that was conducted by Gondar University and simply indicates the scope of the wishful thinking in which Lucy tries to hide. “These chemicals destroy the forensic evidence… But from a chemical point of view even the ashes can show some evidence. It is difficult to destroy it all, he said.”
On the other hand, she says that Senior Amhara official and the speaker of the federal parliament, Agegnehu Teshager, denied the accusations that evidence was being systematically destroyed. He did say that exhumations were going on but that the bodies that were being removed were those of ethnic Amharas who had been killed over the past 40 years.”
She added that Mr. Agegnehu also rejected the reports of ethnic cleansing in western Tigray including those from Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. He described them as a lie. They are sensational reports which do not take into account the reality on the ground, he said.
The above report by a BBC journalist who reports about a situation thousands of miles away from where she is a typical model of a manipulative journalism which is repeatedly used by BBC to misrepresent the peoples and government of Ethiopia and its genuine quest for peace as an input into a western media war on Ethiopia to disrupt the statehood of the country.
It is indeed not surprising to see that BBC is engaged in such an unprofessional gambling on the plight of the Ethiopians in Wolkayit. The BBC has existed enough to know that Wolkayit was part of North Gondar and that TPLF has conducted the massacre which is now revealed after rigorous research by Gondar University.
If Lucy was bold enough to disclose the truth to her readers, she could have just visited the areas under investigation and know exactly what has happened instead of spreading lies by conspiring with terrorist TPLF agents.
Clarity and truthfulness are all beautiful words carefully scripted in the editorial policy of the BBC but always defied willingly simply to support a terrorist organization that is now conducting on crimes against its own people.
Now terrorist TPLF is reportedly getting ready for another human wave war on Ethiopia and Lucy is certainly getting ready to fabricate more fairy tales to misinform the international community under the guise of being a BBC journalists.
Composing false news with absurd conclusions adds no value to the quality of news writing by any BBC staff but it would certainly tarnish the image of this global news agency which is operating worldwide. The BBC should learn to accent the truth by verifying farce from reality.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The Ethiopian Herald
BY SOLOMON DIBABA
The Ethiopian Herald 21 May 2022
