On February 10, 2006, Shabait.com, the official website of Eritrea’s Ministry of Information, told its readers that Eritrea had bought an ocean liner which “can accommodate 2800 passengers.” The “big ship” even had a name, Harat, presumably named after the “buyer”, Harat National Martime Transport Company. Harat was going to “provide services to Asseb and countries in the Middle East.” Accompanying the story were images of the ship, its captain, and President Isaias Afwerki walking astride its hallways. Eritreans debated the merits of the acquisition: detractors questioned the cost-effectiveness of purchasing a “big ship” in times of hardship, particularly when none of the rich Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, owned ocean liners; supporters of the ruling party hailed it as yet another milestone in Eritrea’s development and the soundness of the government’s policies. Even some so-called opposition websites gave due prominence to the story.
There was only one problem with the so-called acquisition: it never happened.
How A Big Ship Became A Big Fib
The origins of this work of fiction can be traced back to February 2006. The government was preparing its annual Fenkel Festival—a day commemorating Operation Fenkel, which ejected the Derg from Massawa on February 10th 1990. President Isaias Afwerki often uses the occasion to address the nation and set the government’s accomplishments and policies.
General Humed Mohammed Karikare, who is the commanding officer of the Eritrean Navy, invited the president to come to Massawa to inspect a vessel that the Navy was planning to acquire. General Karikare argued that the acquisition was important as it would provide “a morale boost to the people.” President Isaias Afwerki toured and inspected the ship. The president, who has yet to meet a White Elephant he didn’t like, gave the green light for the acquisition. Then he told Karikare that the purchase would not be made by the Navy but by Harat, the transportation conglomerate operated by General Samuel China.
The government owned media, Shabait website, Eri-TV, Hadas Eritra newspaper, Broadcast of the Masses radio, all announced that the transaction had occurred and that Eritrea now has a “big ship that can accommodate 2800 passengers” who will be “transported from the Middle East to Eritrea.”
The owner of the ship is an Egyptian businessman with whom the ruling party was already doing business. He was given a permit to fish in Eritrean waters, on the condition that he shared a percentage of his proceeds with the ruling party.
An Eritrean maritime expert was hired to conduct due diligence. When he started digging into the records of the ship, he learned that the ship was owned by an Egyptian company; that it was unregistered; and that due to old age and maintenance failures it had been ordered decommissioned and ordered to be sold as scrap. The expert concluded that the ship is unfit to carry passengers and that it should not be bought.
The ship was sent to an Indian ship yard to be converted to scrap.
Nonetheless, the government media continued to insist that Eritrea now owns a big ship which carried many passengers on its maiden trip to the Middle East. The government could have told the people that the acquisition did not occur due to facts uncovered while conducting due diligence; on the contrary, it chose to compound the original misreporting with a bigger lie. According to a February 14 Shabait article, the “newly purchased Harat passenger ship sailed from Massawa to Jeddah, thus beginning its regular service.” The report went on to tell its readers that “the fee of Harat is fair enough. Harat ship which is equipped with 350 bedrooms, restaurant and other facilities can accommodate a total of 2,800 passengers at a given time.”
To this date, there are still Eritreans who think that Eritrea owns an ocean liner called Harat and the government is only too-willing to let them believe it as it adds one more fake accomplishment to its already long list of fake ones and justifies the relentless begging for money from the exhausted population.
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