Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Plotted to Destabilize Eritrea
by Thomas C. Mountain
“For the first time Amnesty International and HRW are caught in writing accepting 'a reasonable grant' from the US State Department to do its dirty work.”
Secret internal correspondence from Amnesty International has beenm published detailing a plan to instigate regime change in the small east African country of Eritrea funded by a grant from the US State Department under then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
This is not a new charge, having first come to my attention in the fall of 2011 when a journalist in London called me one morning asking for my comments on a press conference by Amnesty International denying charges that the Eritrean government was supposed to have made that Amnesty and HRW had been involved in sending a secret mission to Eritrea in an attempt to destabilize the government.
The problem was the Eritrean government had not made any such charges, at least not that I had heard of. Operating on the maxim made immortal by Claude Cockburn, father of the Cockburn clan of intrepid journalists, that “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied” I set off in search for more on this story.
It wasn’t until that evening that Eritrean TV broke the story with excerpts from the Amnesty International document they claimed to have. The next night EriTV broadcast more highlights from the document and then the story just disappeared. It seemed that the curtain had dropped on another episode in the rancorous relations between the Eritrean government and the human rights corporations. Left with nothing hard to go on I could only file this one in the “hope to follow up on someday” file.
Now, three years later, the letter has been published and it really is a bombshell.
“Our intended goal is that by December of this year [2011] the regime of [Eritrean President] Issayas Aferwerki should be shaking and ready to fall.”
This was going to be done thanks to a “reasonable grant from the US State Department” to “bring about [regime] change...as has happened in other African and Arab countries”....
“Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch...have received a reasonable grant from the US State Department to help in setting up websites and computer centers...”
The letter is signed by one Catherine Price, Africa Special Programmes, Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street Priority Status; Stricktly Confidential Resonance; Urgent To; Mr. Adams Subi Waitara, Amnesty Tanzania Section.
The letter was to inform him that he had been “appointed to be part of a 4-man delegation to Eritrea beginning 6th to 16th September, 2011.” The letter lists the other members of this very secret group including an Amnesty staffer who was then working for HRW
The letter goes on to say “Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch...have received a reasonable grant from the US State Department...” and that “the main aim therefore of this Mission to Eritrea is to provide funding and to help in setting up websites and computer centers...”.
The letter warns about the need for absolute secrecy, “Do not operate, at any time in groups of more than two in the day time...” and “Do not take any photos with normal cameras, except the micro cameras that will be provided for you...”. It informs Mr. Adams that “Mr. Georges Gagnoy, Human Rights Watch Africa Director, will be monitoring the events and activities online from Nairobi, [Kenya] and will offer any emergency assistance should it be needed.”
Deja Vu? Cuba and Venezuela watchers will be reminded of similar programs funded by the US State Department to destabilize the governments of those countries with the goal of “regime change.” The bombshell this letter drops is that for the first time Amnesty International and HRW are caught in writing accepting “a reasonable grant” from the US State Department to do its dirty work.
What makes this letter all the more believable are the links between HRW and the Hillary Clinton mafia that have been the subject of a protest letter signed by several Nobel Peace Laureates. In particular, one Tom Malinowski who goes back and forth between being a speech writer for Hillary and a senior staff member at HRW.
Those of us in the Eritrean support community know Mr. Malinowski all too well for his history of vociferous slanders and other fabrications about Eritrea going back some 15 years or more. It would be all too easy for Malinowski to use his high level contacts in the Hillary Clinton State Department to arrange a “reasonable grant” for his cohorts in HRW and Amnesty International to carry out some undercover dirty work on behalf of Pax Americana.
Amnesty International and HRW are major corporations, with HRW being funded for several years now to the tune of $100 million a year by George Soros who has a long history of working with the US intel community in former Soviet Union republics, for example, the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia. Neither organization is “democratic” or transparent. The Board of Directors of both organizations elect themselves and answer only to the handful of 1%ers that fund their enormous budgets. No one can really tell you just how much and from where these human rights corporations get their funding. Has anyone ever seen an in depth audit of either of these outfits multi million dollar operations budgets?
Hillary, Amnesty, HRW and regime change in Africa. Its about time such matters are being brought to the light of day.
Thomas C. Mountain has been living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached when he is somewhere that has access to the internet at thomascmountain at gmail dot com or more successfully by mobile at 2917175665.
This week’s featured author is Sami Schalk. Schalk is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Her book is Black Disability Politics.
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