Joe Biden’s call to ‘write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way … we program computers,’ if applied to humans, could not only cause physical harm, but would open up floodgates to eugenics.
The Biden administration issued an executive order calling for biotechnology that can “predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers,” a transhumanist practice, in service of human “health.”
As an example of such biotechnology, Executive Order 14081 included by implication the COVID-19 mRNA injections, citing the COVID-19 “pandemic” as demonstrating “the vital role of biotechnology … in developing and producing life-saving … vaccines that protect Americans and the world.”
The mRNA jabs are an example of what has been described as “the most prominent area of biotechnology”: The “production” of ostensibly “therapeutic proteins and other drugs through genetic engineering.” However, while the proteins produced by the mRNA shot were touted as beneficial, evidence has emerged that they are toxic to humans. In fact, as StatNews noted in 2016, mRNA experiments were abandoned by several pharma groups before the COVID-19 outbreak over “concerns about toxicity.”
In support of its proposal to use biotechnology to “aid” human health, the order called upon the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “submit a report assessing how to use biotechnology … to achieve medical breakthroughs, reduce the overall burden of disease, and improve health outcomes.”
Efforts to “program biology” in human beings not only present further potential dangers to health, such as those shown by the mRNA shots, but they would also increasingly open up the possibilities of eugenic “enhancement,” which is why gene editing has often been described as a “Pandora’s Box,” potentially “creating classes of genetic haves and have-nots in society.”
In fact, the use of such technology has been underway for years. For example, the gene editing tool CRISPR has been used in China to alter the DNA of babies to apparently eliminate susceptibility to HIV.
According to Biden’s executive order, while “the power of” biotechnology “is most vivid at the moment in the context of human health,” it “can also be used to achieve our climate and energy goals, improve food security and sustainability, secure our supply chains, and grow the economy.”
Biden accordingly calls for the use of biotech to “sequeste[r] carbon and reduc[e] greenhouse gas emissions,” as well as “increas[e] and protec[t] agricultural yields; protec[t] against plant and animal pests and diseases; and cultivat[e] alternative food sources.”
As an example of biotech that could reduce carbon dioxide, commonly demonized as a major culprit of global warming, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has proposed solutions such as the use of trees and microbes to “draw excess Co2 out of the atmosphere.” The U.S. Department of Energy has also proposed the use of a process to convert waste gases into “important chemicals,” which “captures more carbon gases than it releases.”
More controversial is the use of biotech to “assist” farming, such as by increasing crop yields and protecting against disease through the use of genetically modified (GM) foods, which have been shown to have toxic effects on the human body.
Raising further privacy-related questions is Executive Order 14081’s establishment of a “Data for the Bioeconomy Initiative,” which calls for “biological data sets,” to include “genomic” (gene-related) information deemed critical for societal advances.
The Executive Order further calls for a “plan to fill any data gaps” and “make new and existing public data “findable” and “accessible.” This proposal raises the question of whether and how individuals’ genomic information might be publicly disclosed, and whether it would be done so only with informed consent.
Biden’s call for the “programming” of biology the way we program software, if applied to humans, would facilitate transhumanist’s vision of the creation of “superhumans” through various kinds of technology, including biotechnology.
In anticipation of major transhumanist developments, including biotech advances, World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser Yuval Noah Harari has gone so far as to declare that “we are one of the last generations of homo sapiens,” and that “within a century or two, earth will be dominated by entities that are more different from us than we are different from chimpanzees.”
“We’ll soon have the power to re-engineer our bodies and brains, whether it is with genetic engineering or by directly connecting brains to computers … and these technologies are developing at breakneck speed,” Harari explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes in October 2021.
💭 How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight
Four health organizations, working closely together, spent almost $10 billion on responding to Covid across the world. But they lacked the scrutiny of governments, and fell short of their own goals, a POLITICO and WELT investigation found.
When Covid-19 struck, the governments of the world weren’t prepared.
From America to Europe to Asia, they veered from minimizing the threat to closing their borders in ill-fated attempts to quell a viral spread that soon enveloped the world. While the most powerful nations looked inward, four non-governmental global health organizations began making plans for a life-or-death struggle against a virus that would know no boundaries.
What followed was a steady, almost inexorable shift in power from the overwhelmed governments to a group of non-governmental organizations, according to a seven-month investigation by POLITICO journalists based in the U.S. and Europe and the German newspaper WELT. Armed with expertise, bolstered by contacts at the highest levels of Western nations and empowered by well-grooved relationships with drug makers, the four organizations took on roles often played by governments — but without the accountability of governments.
While nations were still debating the seriousness of the pandemic, the groups identified potential vaccine makers and targeted investments in the development of tests, treatments and shots. And they used their clout with the World Health Organization to help create an ambitious worldwide distribution plan for the dissemination of those Covid tools to needy nations, though it would ultimately fail to live up to its original promises.
The four organizations had worked together in the past, and three of them shared a common history. The largest and most powerful was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest philanthropies in the world. Then there was Gavi, the global vaccine organization that Gates helped to found to inoculate people in low-income nations, and the Wellcome Trust, a British research foundation with a multibillion dollar endowment that had worked with the Gates Foundation in previous years. Finally, there was the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, the international vaccine research and development group that Gates and Wellcome both helped to create in 2017.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The four organizations have spent almost $10 billion on Covid since 2020 – the same amount as the leading U.S. agency tasked with fighting Covid abroad.
The organizations collectively gave $1.4 billion to the World Health Organization, where they helped create a critical initiative to distribute Covid-19 tools. That program failed to achieve its original benchmarks.
The organizations’ leaders had unprecedented access to the highest levels of governments, spending at least $8.3 million to lobby lawmakers and officials in the U.S. and Europe.
Officials from the U.S., EU and representatives from the WHO rotated through these four organizations as employees, helping them solidify their political and financial connections in Washington and Brussels.
The leaders of the four organizations pledged to bridge the equity gap. However, during the worst waves of the pandemic, low-income countries were left without life-saving vaccines.
Leaders of three of the four organizations maintained that lifting intellectual property protections was not needed to increase vaccine supplies – which activists believed would have helped save lives.
Civil society organizations active in poorer nations, including Doctors Without Borders, expressed discomfort with the notion that Western-dominated groups, staffed by elite teams of experts, would be helping guide life-and-death decisions affecting people in poorer nations. Those tensions only increased when the Gates Foundation opposed efforts to waive intellectual property rights, a move that critics saw as protecting the interests of pharmaceutical giants over people living poorer nations.
“What makes Bill Gates qualified to be giving advice and advising the U.S. government on where they should be putting the tremendous resources?” asked Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser for the Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign.
👉 Chris Sky’s (Christopher Saccoccia) powerful speech in tribute to the powerful being known as the Unvaccinated:
💭 Even if I was fully vaccinated, I would admire the unvaccinated because they withstood the greatest pressure I’ve ever seen, even from partners, parents, children, friends, colleagues and doctors.
People capable of such personality, courage, and criticality are undoubtedly the best of mankind. They are everywhere, in all ages, stages of education, states and imaginations. They are of a special kind, they are the soldiers that every army of light wants in its ranks. They are the parents every child wants and the children every parent dreams of. They are beings that rise above the average of their society, they are the essence of the people who have built all cultures and conquered horizons. They are there, next to you, they look normal, but they are superheroes.
They did what others couldn’t, they were the tree that endured the hurricane of insults, discrimination and social exclusion. And they did it because they thought they were alone, and believed they were the only ones.
Banned from their family’s table at Christmas, they never saw anything so cruel. They lost their jobs, their careers had sunk, they were out of money… but they didn’t care. They suffered immense discrimination, condemnation, betrayal and humiliation…but they carried on.
Never before in humanity has there been such a “casting”, now we know who are the best on planet earth. Women, men, old, young, rich, poor, of all races or religions, the unvaccinated, the chosen ones of the invisible ark, the only ones who could resist when everything collapsed.
That’s you, you passed an unimaginable test that many of the toughest Marines, Commandos, Green Berets, Astronauts and Geniuses could not pass.
You are made of the material of the greatest that ever lived, the heroes born of ordinary people who glow in the dark.
🛑 Utopia is a British thriller drama television series that was broadcast on Channel 4 from 15 January 2013 to 12 August 2014
🛑 X-Files 2016. In the 10th season of the show, humans have been infected with the Spartan virus, which aliens put in the smallpox vaccine. The aliens apparently plan to use this virus to edit our DNA and wreck havoc on our immune systems.
💭 This is basically exactly what we are seeing right now.
What’s interesting about this video is that it doesn’t stop at where we are at now, it goes in the future talking about what’s to come. Will it happen?
Satan indeed is the force of evil. Satan is still allowed to come before God’s throne and be the accuser of men. One of his roles is prosecuting attorney. He has to tell you of his evil plans for you and the rest of mankind so that when he is standing before God as your accuser, he will claim that your choice to get the vax, mark, whatever was an informed decision. He will claim you are not innocent because you were continually warned, but you chose to ignore it. He instructs his minions to use whatever means they have to tell us indirectly what they plan to do. The media is their choice of instruction and notice of intent, whether you are actually fully aware or not.
Key scene from the UK’s channel 4 series “Utopia”, where the antagonist, played by Stephen Rea, spills the beans (or does he?). Note the Masonic symbols on the ceiling above the two characters on the left, around 0.04, another on the opposite corner for good measure. Other viewers have spotted the “eye in the triangle” in a different episode.
Although Utopia at first seems to be about a UK version of MKUltra, this scene reveals the “real” goal – a plan to sterilise most of humanity, to save the planet, presented here as the lesser of two evils, the other being global war. The show is consciously playing with the popular conspiracy theory that there is an illuminati/freemasonic plot to depopulate the human race to 500 million.
But who will be the select 500, eh?
This scene leaves you unsure as to who is in the “right”, monstrous as the actions of the “villains” are. Wilson, (the character with the eye patch) is swayed by Rea, and changes sides at this point, even though Rea’s character is responsible for his torture and blinding, the murder of his father, and the shootings of half a dozen school children, not to mention involvement in the MK Ultra-type program.
“When they’re through with Africa, they’re coming for you.” — DR. STEPHEN KARANJA
💭 A film by award-winning filmmaker Andy Wakefield, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Children’s Health Defense. Watch the chilling tale of African women whose fertility was tragically stripped away through an experimental tetanus vaccination program. Are women everywhere next?
For more information, studies, memes, and other related content go to InfertilityMovie.org
Where there is a risk, there should be a choice
👉 In this documentary film, you’ll learn:
The chilling, harrowing story of how a World Health Organization (WHO) population control experiment, under the guise of a vaccination program, resulted in the sterilization of millions of women in Africa without their knowledge or consent.
How the ability to carry a pregnancy to term has been tragically stripped away from these women as their government attempts to cover up the evidence.
About a brave, Kenyan doctor — Dr. Stephen Karanja — who warned the world that once they’re done with Africa, they’re coming for the children and everyone else.
Perspectives from leading experts expressing their concerns regarding other vaccines that could cause infertility in women around the world, including the COVID shot.
WHO’s tetanus shot programs may also be covert depopulation tool CHD says that “Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda” exposes the hard-hitting truth about WHO’s “nefarious collaboration with the Kenyan government in which an experimental tetanus vaccination, later found to be laced with the pregnancy hormone (HCG), was given to millions of unknowing African women of childbearing age.” The WHO-sponsored tetanus vaccine programs are similarly questionable as they specifically target women in their childbearing years. Could it be that tetanus shots are another covert depopulation mechanism? As far back as the early 1990s, various groups, including the American pro-life organization Human Life International, have been calling for a congressional investigation into the WHO’s tetanus shot programs in Mexico. For all these years, women in areas where the jabs are being administered have been turning infertile, and yet nothing has been done to look into the situation to see if there might be a link. In 2014, the Catholic Bishops of Kenya and the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association expressed their own concerns about how a tetanus shot sponsored by both the WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) was “laced with a hormone that causes miscarriages and infertility.” Multiple independent tests, according to the bishops, revealed that the hormone was, in fact, present inside the injection vials. This, they concluded, exposed the entire campaign as a “disguised population control program.” In 2017 an open-access study pointed out that as far back as 1976, researchers had been lacing conjugated tetanus toxoid (TT) with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which in effect resulted in a “birth control” vaccine. At the time, The New York Times reported that these laced shots effectively trick the immune system “into producing antibodies to both the tetanus protein and the HCG,” in effect working to “block the action of a hormone that is essential to the life of a newly formed embryo.” All of this and more is discussed in the film, which is worth taking the time to watch, as well as the above interview featuring Dr. Wakefield. At least one of the WHO’s long-range goals with its injection programs is clearly infertility. “The truths exposed in this film cast a long shadow from a tetanus trial in Africa to the symptoms of infertility that are happening all over the world, including reports after the Gardasil vaccine and the COVID shots,” says Dr. Hooker, CHD’s chief science director.
After Gardasil was licensed and three doses recommended for 11-12 year old girls and teenagers, there were thousands of reports of sudden collapse with unconsciousness within 24 hours, seizures, muscle pain and weakness, disabling fatigue, Guillain Barre Syndrome (GBS), facial paralysis, brain inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, blood clots, optic neuritis, multiple sclerosis, strokes, heart and other serious health problems, including death, following receipt of Gardasil vaccine.
💭Today in Vancouver, Canada | Freedom Fighters Yelling: “ARREST BILL GATES!, You Are not Welcome Here”
It is very serious and curious; preparing for The # TigrayGenocide evil Abiy Ahmed and his Luciferian overlords brought Tigrayans to occupy key positions nationally and internationally:
💭 STARVATION AND RELIEF OPERATIONS IN THE NIGERIA/BIAFRA WAR: The Role of Religious Organizations and the Local Population
The Nigeria-Biafra civil war was a complex interplay of political, economic, ethnic, religious and diplomatic conflict. The ethno-religious aspects of the conflict cannot be overlooked. The failure of political and diplomatic agreement led to the economic blockade of the South-Eastern region, mostly dominated by the large Christian Igbo population. This policy of economic blockade created a situation of human-made famine in which millions of Igbo people faced death by starvation and disease. The high media coverage of the conflict and its humanitarian disaster provoked an unprecedented international outcry for relief operations. The operations of international relief agencies were often caught up in the debate on the issue of the priority of humanitarian over political considerations. Religious bodies and the local population played a significant part in the relief operations. Their intervention were often the last hope of saving the lives of thousands of people who could not be reached by the international relief organizations, bounded by Article 23 of 1949 Geneva Convention on refugees and relief operations.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on April 11, 2022
💭 Massive ‘Super Protest’ Ascends Outside of TED Talk Ahead Of Gates’ Keynote Speech
Thousands of outraged freedom activists surrounded the Vancouver Trade & Convention Center in Canada on Sunday demanding the arrest of Bill Gates ahead of the globalist billionaire’s keynote appearance at TED Talk where he has previously outlined plans for depopulation through the vaccines.
Opponents of COVID-19 mandates have been mobilizing for weeks to publicly shame the billionaire magnate who has religiously promoted experimental gene modification injections that have taken millions of lives around the globe and left others critically injured.
“We all heard witness accounts of underage girls and old women being raped and gang-raped by the joint forces. Priests and deacons were slaughtered by the soldiers,” the testimony says.
👉 Courtesy: The Guardian
Lawyers bringing first complaint to Africa’s top rights body over conflict in country say violations ‘could amount to war crimes’
Ethiopia has committed a wide range of human rights violations in its war against Tigrayan rebel forces, including mass killings, sexual violence and military targeting of civilians, according to a landmark legal complaint submitted to Africa’s top human rights body.
Lawyers acting for Tigrayan civilians said the complaint, filed on Monday, marked the first time that the African Union’s human rights commission had been asked to look into the conduct of Ethiopian troops in their war with the northern region’s rebel forces.
The alleged violations, “could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, but further investigation would be required”, said Antonia Mulvey, executive director of the rights organisation Legal Action Worldwide (Law), which submitted the complaint with the US legal firm Debevoise & Plimpton and the Pan African Lawyers Union (Palu).
“The African Commission [on Human and Peoples’ Rights] has a unique opportunity to stand by victims and survivors from this conflict, to order emergency measures to stop unlawful killing of civilians trapped in Tigray and to hold Ethiopia to account,” added Mulvey.
Reporting to the 55-member African Union, the commission’s role is to investigate alleged human rights violations and make recommendations to heads of state and government. It can also make referrals to the African court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the union’s judicial arm.
The Law-Palu complaint alleges that since the conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) erupted in November 2020, federal forces in Ethiopia have committed widespread violations, including the military targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; mass and extrajudicial killings; gender-based sexual violence; arbitrary arrest and detention; mass displacement of civilians; destruction of property, food, and religious sites and cultural heritage; ethnic discrimination; and enforced information blackouts.
In a statement, lawyers said the allegations were based on the testimony of Tigrayan victims who could not be listed as complainants due to fear of reprisals from the government in Addis Ababa.
One written testimony, seen by the Guardian, contains allegations that Ethiopian and Eritrean forces carried out killings and rapes in the Shire region of Tigray in November 2020.
“We all heard witness accounts of underage girls and old women being raped and gang-raped by the joint forces. Priests and deacons were slaughtered by the soldiers,” the testimony says.
“The Ethiopian government has called the military operation in Tigray a ‘law-enforcement operation’,” the testimony continues. “But what we saw in Shire … was quite different. We saw with our own eyes that the military campaign was not only about eliminating the TPLF, but also about destroying the people and development of Tigray.”
A joint investigation released in November by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and the UN found there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that all parties to the conflict in Tigray had, to varying degrees, committed human rights violations. Some of those breaches, it added, might amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On Monday, Law said that, while reports suggested that abuses had been committed by different parties, Tigrayan civilians constituted “the overwhelming majority of victims”.
Mulvey, a British solicitor who served on the UN’s fact-finding mission on Myanmar, said Law was keen to work alongside the commission’s existing inquiry into Tigray “to put an end to the impunity that has allowed these crimes to continue”.
Donald Deya, chief executive officer of Palu, said: “The government of Ethiopia is obliged by both its constitution and international law to protect all its citizens and residents from mass atrocities and violations of their human rights.
“Where it is unable or unwilling to uphold the same, as is the case here, we must seek recourse to competent international institutions. Hence, our urgent appeal to the African commission,” he said.
There was no immediate comment on the complaint from the Ethiopian government or the commission, which is based in the Gambia.
Ethiopia is not a state party to the founding statute of the international criminal court in The Hague, in effect making a trial there for alleged war crimes impossible without a referral from the UN security council. That possibility is considered highly unlikely due to objections from Russia and China, which can veto any such motion as permanent members of the council.
Yohannes and Gebremeskel knew it would be freezing cold inside the bulk cargo area of the Airbus A350 plane on the long flight from Ethiopia’s capital to Belgium.
But the two ground technicians with Ethiopian Airlines, both of Tigrayan origin, said they felt a threat from the Ethiopian authorities that left them no choice but to stow away among crates of fresh flowers.
Both men said family members had been detained under sweeping emergency laws that have targeted ethnic Tigrayans — and that they feared it was their turn next. The laws were imposed in November as Ethiopian government troops battle forces from the northern Tigray region in a bitter conflict that has now dragged on for 14 months. The government denies the laws targeted any particular group and recently lifted the state of emergency.
A view of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on November 27. Witnesses and Ethiopia's human rights commission accused authorities of arresting people in the capital based on ethnicity, using the wider powers granted by the state of emergency.
A view of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on November 27. Witnesses and Ethiopia’s human rights commission accused authorities of arresting people in the capital based on ethnicity, using the wider powers granted by the state of emergency.
So, in the early hours of December 4, Yohannes and Gebremeskel, both 25, made a spur of the moment decision to climb into the storage section of a converted Ethiopian Airlines cargo plane that was sitting in one of the hangars at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, waiting for the early morning flight to Brussels, Belgium.
As ground technicians with Ethiopia’s flagship commercial airline for the past five years, they had access to the compartment for routine inspection purposes. But if their hiding place was discovered, they would face harsh punishment, they said. CNN has changed both men’s names at their request for security reasons.
For more than three hours before take-off, they hid in the cold among the cabin crew’s luggage, not far away from the plane’s cargo shipment — crates loaded with roses ready to be delivered to Europe.
“We took the risk. We were — we had no choice, we had no choice, we couldn’t live in Addis Ababa, we were being treated as terrorists,” Yohannes, who has now obtained asylum in Belgium, told CNN in one of several phone conversations.
Four of his relatives have been killed, his fiancée is in prison in Ethiopia’s Afar region and his sister, about seven months pregnant, was seized from his house along with his furniture, he said. Yohannes believes these killings and detentions were motivated by their Tigrayan ethnicity and actioned under Ethiopia’s new emergency laws. “I don’t know where she [his fiancée] is currently,” he added. CNN has not been able to independently verify the deaths or imprisonment of Yohannes’ relatives.
“We took the risk. We were — we had no choice, we had no choice, we couldn’t live in Addis Ababa, we were being treated as terrorists.”
Yohannes
A spokeswoman for the office of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed noted in an emailed statement to CNN that the state of emergency was lifted on January 26, 2022.
“You would note that the Council of Ministers have today decided to lift the State of Emergency. Individuals apprehended under the SOE [State of Emergency] have been released in great numbers, over the past weeks by the security sector, following investigations,” spokeswoman Billene Seyoum Woldeyes said.
“The SOE was never enacted to ‘persecute’ any group of people based on their identity,” she said.
The pair are not the only airline employees to attempt a risky escape from their home country in recent weeks. On December 1, shortly before Yohannes and Gebremeskel fled to Belgium, two other Ethiopian Airlines technicians concealed themselves in a passenger aircraft destined for Washington, DC, a spokesperson for the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed to CNN via an emailed statement.
Yohannes and Gebremeskel decided to flee from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport after reports that security was more lax there following the suspension of dozens of Tigrayan guards.
Yohannes and Gebremeskel decided to flee from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport after reports that security was more lax there following the suspension of dozens of Tigrayan guards.
They had concealed themselves in the ceiling space above the seating, according to a source at Ethiopian Airlines with firsthand knowledge of the internal investigation that was launched afterward.
Their journey would last more than 36 hours in total, as the plane flew from Addis Ababa via Lagos, Nigeria, and Dublin, Ireland, before finally landing at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC.
Upon arrival in the US, the individuals were detained by the US Department of Homeland Security before later being transferred to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
CNN has also spoken to several other Tigrayan employees of Ethiopian Airlines who have fled Ethiopia in recent months through their jobs as flight crew. They told similar stories of widespread detentions of Tigrayans in Ethiopia and of targeted ethnic harassment from within the airline.
Concealed above plane crew’s bunk
CNN has been unable to speak directly to the stowaways who reached Washington, DC, but the source at Ethiopian Airlines said that both men were also of Tigrayan origin.
A CBP spokesperson said in a statement to CNN that after an identification and security examination, officers discovered the two “possessed Ethiopian Airlines employee identification cards, and that they stowed away with the intent of claiming asylum in the United States.”
“The two Ethiopian males are presently housed at a federal detention facility pending a hearing before an immigration judge,” the statement added. “CBP issued a civil penalty to Ethiopian Airlines for the security breach and were briefed on measures the airline is undertaking to enhance the airline’s aircraft security plan.”
CNN has obtained photos of the inside of the Boeing 777 aircraft as it looked during an inspection in the aftermath of the escape. In some pictures, it is possible to see the crew bunk in the center of the plane’s seating area, which the two men reportedly entered before lifting a mattress to reveal a maintenance access panel.
The images indicate they then cut a larger hole in the panel to enable them to smuggle themselves through the gap into the plane’s ceiling. They hid in this spot, not far above the aircraft’s toilets, for over a day and a half. CNN showed Boeing the photographs and a Boeing representative deferred to Ethiopian Airlines for comment.
The source at the airline told CNN they believed the fact that the stowaways were former maintenance technicians for the airline enabled them to know exactly where to hide inside the plane to go undetected without damaging the structure of the aircraft.
That they had the necessary tools with them to cut through the panelling might suggest the pair had planned the attempt in advance, the source at the airline added.
In total, 16 Ethiopian Airlines technicians appeared to have escaped via any possible means, either by boarding as cabin crew and walking off or stowing away, he said. CNN has been unable to independently verify this number.
For Yohannes and Gebremeskel, the decision to flee was an impromptu one, they said. They picked the first scheduled flight to a European country that was available and had to leave possessions including their cell phones behind in their lockers.
For the whole of their seven-hour flight to Brussels, they sat in the cargo area of the Airbus A350 with no food, no water, in the freezing cold, unbeknownst to the other members of the crew on board.
“I didn’t even have any clothes with me, I was wearing the uniform for maintenance […] I’m still wearing it,” Yohannes said.
“We don’t have anything to change into here, no underwear, no shoes, even the shoes […] we tried to cover our feet and the legs with what we had, it was night shift, on night shift we have the jacket of Ethiopian Airlines crew,” Gebremeskel, who also obtained asylum in Belgium, told CNN.
It was not how Gebremeskel imagined he would experience his first trip out of Ethiopia. Despite working for five years at Ethiopian Airlines, he had never boarded an international flight.
Airline employees claim discrimination against Tigrayans
Many people have left Ethiopia by land since the conflict began in November 2020. As of mid-December 2021, more than 50,000 people had fled into neighboring Sudan, according to UN figures. At the peak of the influx, “more than 1,000 people on average were arriving each day, overwhelming the capacity to provide aid,” a UN report said.
A refugee camp in Um Rakuba, Sudan, pictured in August. More than 50,000 Ethiopians have fled to Sudan since the Tigray conflict began in late 2020, according to the UN.
A refugee camp in Um Rakuba, Sudan, pictured in August. More than 50,000 Ethiopians have fled to Sudan since the Tigray conflict began in late 2020, according to the UN.
Meanwhile, attempts to leave Ethiopia by air by legal means have become increasingly difficult for Tigrayans, according to Ethiopian Airlines employees CNN spoke with.
Several attempted to leave by boarding planes from Addis Ababa’s Bole Airport as legitimate passengers but were denied access due to their Tigrayan ethnicity, they claimed. One former employee told CNN there were four checkpoints at the airport where passengers had their passports checked before departure.
“They check place of birth and name,” they told CNN, recalling three of their own failed attempts to leave. If the person was born in Tigray or had a Tigrayan name they were denied exit from Ethiopia, the former employee said.
As a result, several employees told CNN they escaped by working on board international flights as flight crew and fleeing when the aircraft landed abroad, often when the destination was in Europe or the US.
CNN has obtained IDs that confirm the identities of all four men who stowed away. Flight paths of the two flights — the one to Brussels and the one from Addis to Dulles airport through Dublin — have also been crosschecked on FlightRadar24.
Ethiopian Airlines has not responded to CNN’s request for comment regarding the stowaways’ journeys or the allegations of discrimination against Tigrayans.
This is not the first time Ethiopian Airlines has made headlines during the conflict in Ethiopia. In October last year CNN revealed that the airline had been ferrying weapons between Ethiopia and Eritrea at the outset of the conflict in November 2020, an act that was condemned by the international community as a potential violation of aviation law.
CNN’s investigation triggered calls by US lawmakers for sanctions and investigations into Ethiopia’s eligibility for a lucrative US trade program. Ethiopia was kicked out of the program over human rights violations at the start of 2022.
The airline has issued multiple denials about transporting weapons.
‘We were shaking’
After the aircraft carrying Yohannes and Gebremeskel landed in Brussels, the two waited for their chance to reach the terminal building.
“There were two guys working on the aircraft. One was unloading the cargo shipment and the other was coming with a torch around the plane,” Yohannes said. “So when the first was unloading the flowers we jumped to the ground — me and my friend — we jumped, and we ran to the terminal.”
Inside, employees gave them water and something to eat, but Yohannes and Gebremeskel were still in shock. “We were afraid they were going to send us back […] The guards, they brought us tea, but we were kneeling down on the ground, we were shaking,” Yohannes added.
Slowly, they felt a sense of relief, perhaps for the first time since they took off from Addis Ababa.
Their decision to flee had been prompted in part by reports that 38 Tigrayan security guards had been recently suspended at Bole Airport, meaning security was more lax than usual, they said.
“We were afraid of course … Luckily, we were not found. If we had been found, the punishment would have been harsh.”
Gebremeskel
But NISS, Ethiopia’s national intelligence security service, was still searching every part of the aircraft before departure, Gebremeskel explained, in order to prevent escapes. The Ethiopian Prime Minister’s spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, did not comment on these allegations.
Ethiopian Airlines has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on the security situation at Bole Airport
“We had some tools with us, we were afraid they were going to catch us because they check — the guy from the national intelligence security service checks every flight before departure,” Gebremeskel said.
“We were afraid of course. We were sitting with some tools with us. Maybe they will come to check that we’re working on it. Luckily, we were not found. If we had been found, the punishment would have been harsh.”
Yohannes hopes that in Belgium, he will find a country that will “respect my demands, the right to life.”
Pieter-Jan De Block, their lawyer, confirmed in a statement to CNN that both his clients had “obtained international protection in Belgium” and that they’d been released from the center where they were staying.
For Gebremeskel, the picture is bittersweet. With his family still far away — his parents are in a refugee camp in Sudan — and no money or job in Belgium, life is not easy. Although he has accommodation now, his first two nights after being granted asylum were spent sleeping at a train station.
He told CNN he hoped one day to return to Ethiopia but that until the country is a place where “people aren’t treated differently for their ethnicity,” that hope feels very remote.
_______
_______
_______
_______
_______
______
Addis Ethiopia Weblog 