Zecharias Zelalem

Woke up to a dozen messages of friends in Beirut saying Israel bombed

The Tasnim and Fars news agencies are confirming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

🔴 LIVE updates: aje.news/9i4fmn

This took months of consuming radio, TV and print content produced from Israel by media outlets from South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya. In Kenya and South Africa, the robust press community ensured results wouldn't be successful. Ashamed to say this wasn't the case in Ethiopia.

YouTube video by Al Jazeera English African journalists on a trip to Israel - and the coverage that resulted | The Listening Post

If you missed it when it aired on the weekend, this is my TV production debut, for @aljazeera.com's The Listening Post.

We investigated Israeli gov efforts to whitewash genocide in Gaza for African audiences, using journalists & Christian influencers.

Fellow "journos" were held to account.

I want there to be, because only so much can be shared with an audience in a 10 minute segment. Working on it!

Oops...that's 19h00 GMT. My bad.

It is replicating the CGTN model in too many African states now: broadcasting models that focus solely on development and only addresses human rights violations if they can be linked to western elements.

thanks bro. It had to be, imagine pitching this elsewhere! 😉

Tomorrow, we focus on these trips to Israel and hold African journalists, responsible for downplaying the suffering of Palestinians, to account.

Also...the show also features the queen herself... Dr. @timnitgebru.bsky.social.

Tune in tomorrow, 19h00 on @aljazeera.com.

Cheers,
-ZZ.

All in all...the continent's biggest weakness is the fact that most of our countries are dictatorships. Too many African states have no press culture that would resist efforts by not only Israel, but China and Russia to sell us questionable narratives that violate humanitarian ethics.

Israeli authorities appears to be carefully studying the results, country by country, to determine what sort of group would work best in each country. For instance, after Moroccan journalists lashed out at colleagues who went to Israel, this year, Israel flew out a Moroccan cultural troupe instead.

Journos from Ethiopia have been the most "effective." They have produced some of the most biased, one dimensional coverage that has dehumanized Palestinians & portrayed Israel's genocide as self defense. Coverage also highlighted Israel's role in tech, agriculture polishing the country's reputation.

The trips have had mixed results: they led to backlash in Morocco and Kenya. So Israel has had to be selective: it has chosen journalists primarily from authoritarian countries with no press freedoms. In Kenya, which has a robust media culture, it chose gospel music singers & influencers.

Since 2024, Israel has been quietly flying delegations of journalists, influencers, politicians and others to Israel from different African states. The carefully curated trips take travelers to tourist sites, the Knesset & Oct 7 attack sites.

Nothing that spotlights pesky Palestinians of course.

The Listening Post | Video | Al Jazeera A weekly programme that examines and dissects the world’s media, how they operate and the stories they cover.

THREAD: A first for me: I've co-produced an episode of Al Jazeera's The Listening Post, and it airs tomorrow!

Outrage over genocide in Gaza has led to Israel losing the streets & the campuses of the western world.

So, Israel has recently decided to try selling its narrative...to Africans.

wow.

I cover the Horn. Reporting on 🇵🇸🇮🇱 is generally not part of my mandate.

But the beats have aligned. Six months of work later, this weekend I'll have an investigation go live & it addresses Israel's genocide in Gaza and the African continent.

Coming to @aljazeera.com, hope you'll tune in.

🇰🇪🇿🇦🇪🇹

This is *so* important.

Even the folks who run Bsky need to hear this over and over!

Thank youz And yes...Starlink's direct involvement in enabling these operations is heavily documented & impossible for Musk to deny. Investigators have even used satellite imagery to identify Starlink receivers at infamous & well known locations of torture and murder along the Burmese-Thai border.

💯. Chinese pressure on Thai authorities did a lot (especially after the high profile trafficking of an actual Chinese celebrity) led to police shutterinf a number of camps, internet outages targeting border areas where camps are typically based etc. No such demands from African counterparts sadly.

Africans are being confined and beaten in scam camps in Myanmar Migrants toil for long hours on social-media platforms, targeting people with crypto and romance scams

Learn more about what's behind the spammy, sometimes flirty text messages from unknown numbers crowding up your Messages app. Warn African friends about the dangers of job offers from Southeast Asia that seem too good to be true.

Readers in Canada can find the story in the newspaper tomorrow.

-ZZ.

They know nobody would come if they knew the location was actually in war-torn Myanmar. They prey on the desperation of the unemployed.

Hundreds of thousands of victims of about forty different nationalities have been trafficked this way. Telegram is a huge culprit here.

Scam camp advert used to lure unsuspecting victims to Cambodia before being trafficked into bondage in war-torn Myanmar

Scam camp advert used to lure unsuspecting victims to Cambodia before being trafficked into bondage in war-torn Myanmar

Examples of AI generated job ads disseminated by the criminals. These target educated, tech savy victims. "Typing speed" is a giveaway, they want people who can learn preprepared scam scripts with ease. Ads pretend the job is in Thailand or Cambodia with a salary. It's in Myanmar, few ever get paid.

IOM Urgently Seeks USD 2.5 Million to Repatriate Victims of Trafficking for Forced Criminality Stranded along Thai-Myanmar Border Bangkok, Thailand — The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is urgently appealing for USD 2.5 million to facilitate the safe and dignified return and reintegration of around 1,000 presumed ...

As such, African trafficking victims are being disproportionately targeted by traffickers, with the knowledge that their governments will do little to rescue them.

The UN is low on funds to fly them home. Last April, it published this call for $2.5M in donations to help send 1,000 survivors home.

But while China, India, the Philippines are prompt to repatriate their rescued nationals, African victims can expect to spend lengthy and indefinite stints in Thai immigration detention, until someone pays their airfare. That is if they are lucky enough to escape the camps with their lives.

China executes 11 members of Myanmar scam mafia China executes 11 members of the Ming family that ran scam centres in Myanmar, state media report.

China recently executed a dozen criminals accused of operating Myanmar scam camps. The UN estimates that over 100k people from around the world have been trafficked to the camps, lured with the promise of well paid work in Thailand. AI generated fake ads on social media are used to reel in victims.

Chinese camp operators dish out beatings, sexual violence and even electrocutions. One Ethiopian survivor though was sent to a military camp of the DKBA militia, where she was stripped naked and forced to spend hours in the searing heat. These are punishments for failure to meet scamming targets.

The pandemic & the coup induced civil war in Myanmar have created conditions for Asian criminal syndicates to set up shop along the Thai border, and run cryptocurrency or romance scams. Using Elon Musk's Starlink to circumvent attempts to cut off their internet, they've created a billion $ industry.

Africans are being confined and beaten in scam camps in Myanmar Migrants toil for long hours on social-media platforms, targeting people with crypto and romance scams

Wrote for @theglobeandmail.com:
I spent months hearing from African survivors of Myanmar scam camps, where trafficking victims are forced to run scams targeting westerners. Chinese criminals & at least one pro-junta militia cooperate to dish out horrific abuse against migrants to ensure compliance.