Not The First Human Rights Hoax

On the same day as he is published on the presumably nonexistent Comment Is Free, the famously never-published Neil Clark writes:

It's the story that's had western bloggers, journalists and human rights crusaders up in arms. When Amina Abdalla Arraf, a US/Syrian lesbian blogger and staunch critic of President Assad, was kidnapped by the Syrian authorities for daring to express her opinions, more than 14,000 people rushed to join a Facebook group to campaign for her release.

Reporters Without Borders issued a press release condemning the abduction. In a short space of time, Amina became the poster girl for the anti-Assad protests sweeping across Syria.

"We ask all those who care about Amina to send this message to the Syrian embassy in your country to show the regime that the world is very much aware of Amina's case and will not let the Syrian regime get away with any harm that might come to her," declared the 'Free Amina Abdalla' Facebook site.

It's unlikely, however, that any harm will come to Amina. That's because she doesn't appear to exist.

On Wednesday, a Croatian woman living in London, Jelena Lecic, revealed that the photographs of Amina were actually photographs of her, stolen from her Facebook profile. Meanwhile, a Canadian woman who claimed to have been Amina's girlfriend has admitted she had never actually met her. The Guardian reports that no one has been identified who can confirm they have ever met Amina or spoken to her by Skype or telephone.

At the same time, US officials in Damascus have been unable to confirm that they have records of Amina Abdalla Arraf. Neither do the authorities in Virginia, the US state where the self-styled 'Gay Girl in Damascus' said she was born. Meanwhile, a search of the IP address on which the celebrated blogger contacted a US blog editor has been traced to a server in Scotland.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Amina Abdalla Arraf affair has been one big elaborate hoax, designed to further discredit the Syrian regime abroad. If that's the case, it wouldn't be the first time that gullible westerners have been taken in, hook, line and sinker, over alleged human rights abuses in far-away countries which are not in the West's good books.

In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, stories emerged of a people shredder, which Saddam Hussein dumped his opponents into. "See men shredded, then say you don't back war," was the headline for a piece the Labour MP Ann Clwyd wrote in the pro-war Times. The story was seized on by neo-con and liberal interventionists as proof of the total depravity of Saddam's regime, bolstering the case for war.

But, as Brendan O'Neill revealed in The Guardian, Clwyd's lurid tales were based on the uncorroborated claims of just one individual from northern Iraq: no evidence has ever existed that Saddam did indeed shred his enemies.

After the invasion of Iraq, it was the Iranian regime's turn to be in the line of fire. In their press release for 'Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week', of which they were a sponsor, the American 'FrontPageMag.Com' published a horrific photograph of a woman half buried in the ground.

"The photo accompanying this article, which shows a teenage girl buried before being stoned to death for alleged sexual offenses, will serve as the poster for the protest week. The stoning took place in Iran," the press release said.

But, as the blogger 'Sadly, No!' revealed, the photograph was not from Iran, but from a 1994 Dutch film called De Steen, directed by Mahnaz Tamizi. The 'teenage girl', was an actress called Smadar Mosinos.

The image, which had earlier appeared on the US Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website, was reproduced on other anti-Iranian sites and helped further demonise the country's regime. "There's an example of a picture that's worth a lot more than a thousand words – they really are barbaric", one commenter on a right-wing American website wrote.

Of course, the regimes in Syria, Iran and Iraq have been responsible for human rights abuses. But the willingness of western journalists and bloggers to suspend their critical thinking when stories of alleged abuses from the 'Official Bad Guys' emerge, as they've apparently done in the case of Amina Abdalla Arraf, plays right into the hands of those who have an agenda to isolate or even use military action against the countries in question.

As Alexander Cockburn highlighted on The First Post yesterday, whereas 'Libya' appears at least 14 times in the three major declarations issued at the recent G8 summit in Deauville, and 'Syria' 12 times, 'Bahrain', another state where anti-government protesters have been brutally repressed by the authorities, appears not at all.

By obsessively focusing on human rights transgressions in certain countries at the expense of others, bloggers and journalists, many of whom no doubt consider themselves to be left-wing, are in fact furthering an agenda which is anything but progressive.