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Covid-19 EU Issues Public Health Vaccination
by Senta Depuydt
In a just a few weeks time, the fate of the entire planet seems to have been placed under the command of the World Health Organization and its leader, Tedros Gherbreyesus. But over the last few days his handling of the coronavirus crisis and his relationships with China have put the chairman of the organization under heavy fire, with many calling for his resignation. So who is this man who supposedly has our destiny in his hands?
Very Distinguished
WHO director Tedros with NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci in 2018 signing a memorandum of understanding between NIAID and WHO to enhance future collaborations on research activities conducted in response to emerging infectious disease outbreaks and public health emergencies. Image Source.
During one of the many Covid-19 press conferences at the White House, Dr. Fauci showed all his appreciation for Tedros Ghebreyesus, the new hero:
“Tedros is really an outstanding person. I’ve known him from the time that he was the minister of Health in Ethiopia. The WHO has done very well under his leadership.”[2]
But after what seemed to have been many ‘blunders’ in the announcements and recommendations of the WHO since the pandemic started, many now see him walking the walk of shame, rather than the walk of fame.
Born on March 3rd, 1965 in Asmara (Ethiopia), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was elected Director-General of the WHO in 2017.
He is the first African to head the health agency and the first not to be a doctor. He holds a B.Sc. in Biology from the University of Asmara in Eritrea and a PhD in Community Health from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom in 2000 and served as Ethiopia’s Health Minister from 2005 to 2012.
From 2009 to 2011, Tedros Ghebreyesus was also the Director of the Global Fund, a program to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, initiated by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the head of the UNAIDS Program Coordinating Board.
A member of the Board of the GAVI Alliance for Immunization, Tedros Ghebreyesus was further closely associated with the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton AIDS Initiative (CHAI). Smiling and poised, he is portrayed as a humble, compassionate figure, a benefactor to humanity, dedicated to his heavy responsibilities.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)
It is therefore rather astonishing to discover that Ghebreyesus’ political career began at the politburo of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPFL), a terrorist organization of the Tigray minority ethnic group (6% of the Ethiopian population), listed in the U.S. Homeland Security Global Terrorism Database for a series of kidnappings, bombings and armed robberies.[3]
The United States has classified the TPFL as a Tier III terrorist organization.[4]
Global Terrorism Database. Partial screenshot of TPFL data
In its 1975 manifesto, the TPFL had declared an “eternal war” on neighboring populations, mainly the Amhara and Oromo ethnic groups, representing 30% and 34% of the population.
After several years of guerrilla warfare, the TPFL overthrew the Mengistu regime with the help of another Eritrean liberation movement, and took power in 1991 as a branch of a single Marxist-inspired party, the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Revolutionary Front (EPDRF), which is only democratic in name.
Human Rights Organizations repeated alarms
Amnesty International denounced its political violence for decades.[5]
A report published in an international law journal[6] claimed that in spite of efforts to disguise its dictatorship, the TPFL was actually “abusing the notions of self-determination and democracy to plunder Ethiopia.”
This was also the alarm raised by a document of the Oakland Institute which estimated that the $3.5 billion aid funds received by Ethiopia, (60% of the national budget), were mainly used for political repression.[7]
This was again confirmed by Human Rights Watch (HWR), who accused the European Parliament in 2016 of overlooking the numerous violations committed by the Ethiopian regime it was funding.[8]
HWR claimed that under the leadership of the EPRDF, the government had diverted funds from international aid programs, using them as political weapons to control the population, punish dissent and repress its opponents. Programs for food aid, agriculture, micro-credit or healthcare exclusively benefited certain ethnic groups, while others had been systematically deprived of them.
Genocide accusations
Perhaps one could give Tedros Ghebreyesus the benefit of the doubt, imagining him as a noble reformer who, having strayed at the beginning, would have turned into a devoted humanitarian bringing his light into the darkness of a bad regime.
That illusion quickly fades away when one discovers the damning dossier presented by the Amhara Professional Union (APU), accusing him of having carried out a real genocidal policy as Ethiopia’s Minister of Health.[9]
Indeed, the Amhara ethnic group lost more than 2.5 million people between the 1997 and 2007 censuses. While the other major ethnic groups grew by a yearly average of 2.6%, the Amharas had a slower population increase, with only 1.9%.
They did not benefit from the same health services and were not allocated equal resources as the dominating Tigray population, except for one program, a contraceptive campaign for which the Amhara appeared to have been on top of the list. The Tigray population had 5 times better health coverage in terms of infrastructure and number of healthcare providers.
In contrast, the Amhara population had a much higher use of injectable contraceptives, such as Dep-Provera (19% Tigray, 29% Amhara) while overall receiving less information about family planning and contraceptive methods (Tigray received 2 to 3 times more information on TV, Radio and Print).
Depo-Provera is a highly controversial product that received a black box warning[10, 11] in the U.S. for an increased incidence of osteoporosis and higher risk of breast cancer.
But it has also been associated with a rise in AIDS cases and difficulties to regain fertility after prolonged use, two conditions that also seemed prevailing among the Amhara population. The APU accused the Ethiopian government of racial discrimination by pushing the use of Depo onto their woman without their informed consent.[12]
According to another report “Depo-Provera Deadly Reproductive Violence Against Woman,“[13] family planning promoting this drug in Africa engages in de facto discrimination policies, making false claims about the product’s effects and failing to inform women about its harms and side-effects.
Such products have been restricted or even banned in Europe and the U.S., but they are still included in family planning of the WHO, and programs such as FP2020, supported and led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This led to heavy criticism[14] from health groups and human rights advocates.
Perhaps the Trump administration also took some of these arguments into account when it announced it would stop financing the U.N. Population Fund and policies that perform or provide information on abortion.
Bill Gates said he was ‘deeply troubled’ by the announced U.S. cuts, but at the international summit on family planning that was held in London later in 2017, the U.K., the IMF, World Bank and international NGO’s committed to a new funding for a total of $2,5 billion.
Tedros Ghebreyesus, who attended the meeting as the new leader of the WHO, promised to “personally champion the issue of sexual and reproductive rights as a top priority,“[15] hereby reaffirming his personal interest and involvement in birth control policies… and their dubious consequences.
Anything but cholera
But Tedros Ghebreyesus is also known for covering up of several cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia (2006, 2009, 2011), by relabeling them “Acute Watery Diarrhea” (AWD).[16]
The report of a WHO field expert on the 2006 outbreak, however, certified that Vibrio cholerae had indeed been identified as the causal agent.[17]
Tedros preferred not to damage the image of his party and his country. By refusing to declare the outbreak, he deprived these populations of the basic help they needed, such as re-hydration measures and sanitation of water.
The same scenario was repeated in 2009 and 2011, even under his WHO leadership, when he ignored a massive outbreak in Sudan, Ethiopia’s conflicting neighbor, according to an open letter signed by a team of U.S. doctors and Genocide Watch.[18]
Chairman of the Global Fund, making money
The Global Fund is a partnership led by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In July 2009, Tedros was elected Board Chair of the Fund for a two-year term. In a profile published in April 2010, The Lancet reported that he was “a household name at the Global Fund Secretariat” and that his achievements led to name Ethiopia as an exemplary high-performing country.
A surprising conclusion, when one finds out that during his leadership, the use of international aid funds he supervised was very questionable.
In 2012, an audit[19] of the Global Fund looked at the expenses of the aids, tuberculosis and malaria program in several African countries, including Ethiopia who had received $1.3 billion in grants.
Inspector General John Parson who was in charge of the audit, revealed a flagrant lack of transparency, numerous shortcomings in the accounting and management of the funds, to the point of suggesting a minimum payback of $7 millions to the organization.
Above all, the investigation also showed a huge discrepancy between the results presented and the reality observed in Ethiopia during the field visits.
For example, 77% of the medical centers built did not have drinking water and 32% did not have sanitary facilities. Only 14% had a microscope or a delivery table, and only 12% had a pharmacy.
The report should have led to a series of measures ensuring more transparency and efficacy in the management of the program, but instead the Inspector General and his findings were dismissed.
Obviously, good relationships with African governments leaders had a far greater importance.
Bloody Minister of Foreign Affairs
Then in 2012, at the end of his term in the Health Department, Tedros Ghebreyesus was appointed head of Foreign Affairs (from 2012 to 2016), a further confirmation that he had always remained at the heart of the Party’s decisions, and was still serving its goals with dubious methods.
For example, in 2013, when Saudi Arabia chose to send back immigrants from different nations, the only country that took no steps to repatriate its nationals was Ethiopia.
This inaction, for which he was responsible, led to violence against Ethiopians by the Saudis.[20]
In 2014, Tedros, the former TPLF terrorist, also organized the kidnapping, extradition and condemnation of several dissident leaders and hundreds of asylum seekers in Yemen, with the complicity of the Yemeni government.[21]
WHO election backed by Gates and China
Image from The Epoch Times.
One wonders how such a man could have become Director General of the WHO. No doubt the work carried out by the American communication agency Mercury Public Affairs (specializing in political campaigns) in preparing the presentation of his candidacy was effective, both in terms of watering down his sulphurous image and in pushing him as ‘the voice of developing countries.‘
However, some representatives of the WHO member states did not buy it.
When the candidates were interviewed before the votes, the Brazilian Ambassador asked Tedros how he intended to “represent the voice of developing countries by proposing a program that was much more aligned with the priorities of the countries of the North,” hereby referring to his approach of health through security (pandemic preparedness), and to treating ‘equality’ in terms of “coverage” (vaccines), rather than in the development of universal health systems (for example medical infrastructure and training or access to water).
He also remarked that Tedros had not proposed anything concrete in terms of sustainable development for vulnerable countries.[22]
In fact, this “northern agenda” was very much aligned with the priorities of the Global Health Security Agenda, promoted by WHO’s four main funders and influencers: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (14%), the United States (24%), the U.K. (11%) and GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization which was again mainly funded by Gates (17%), the U.S. (11%) and the U.K. (31%).
Clearly, the influence Bill Gates exerts on the WHO cannot be understated, as we are reminded by an article in the mainstream journal Politico published a few weeks before the vote “Meet the World’s Most Powerful Doctor: Bill Gates“[23] stating
“Some billionaires are satisfied with buying themselves an island. Bill Gates got a UN agency in Geneva.”
Insiders said he is treated like a head of state, not only at the WHO, but also at the G20 summit, and has an outsized influence over the agenda of the organization.
While the World Health Assembly was in session, the Trump administration unveiled its proposed budget which would cut the annual global health budget by 26%, defunding health programs favored by Gates and the Obama administration, such as HIV/malaria/tuberculosis of the Global Fund and family planning.
Needless to say, Tedros was Bill Gates’ favorite candidate, given their strong ties in the Global Fund and Family Planning policies.
But Tedros’ election at the WHO in May 2017, was also backed by China. As part of the Ethiopian government, he already had built a long-time collaboration with Beijing.
To start with, the TPLF is a Marxist-inspired movement that engages in the same kind of authoritarian politics.
But also, China has made huge investments in Ethiopia. The Chinese have developed nearly 70% of the Ethiopian infrastructure and are financing the construction of the headquarters of the future African Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
For its part, Ethiopia occupies a strategic position, as it is the gateway to the African continent, when coming from the East.
No wonder that in March 2017, two months ahead of the WHO election, Ghebreyesus was invited to deliver a keynote speech at the Beijing University.
Mr. Tedros Ghebreyesus at the Beijing University Public Policy Forum International, March 2017
Interestingly Bill Gates took part in same event, with a talk on “Looking to the Future: Innovation, Philanthropy and Global Leadership“[24] in which he summarized his partnerships with the Chinese government in four essential areas: health, agriculture, computer technologies and even nuclear energy. Here are a few eye-opening quotes, showing that Gates clearly invests in China as the world new leader:
“China is primed to step up as a global leader.
It’s great to see China stepping up to fill the leadership vacuum. It is uniquely well-equipped to do so. No other country has accomplished what China has achieved in the last few decades (…) at a scale and speed unprecedented in human history.
And by encouraging investment through innovative financing mechanisms like the China-Africa Development Fund, China is strengthening not only Africa’s economic capacity, but also, over time, markets for Chinese goods.
China has a great opportunity to be a global leader in health innovation. With its rich pool of talented scientists and its capacity to develop new drugs and vaccines, China was a clear choice for us to locate a new Global Health Drug Discovery Institute. This institute—a collaboration between our foundation, the Beijing Municipal Government, and Tsinghua University—will help speed the discovery and development of new lifesaving medicines.
A lot of the most successful entrepreneurs, like Jack Ma, Pony Ma, Charles Chen Yidan and Niu Gensheng, have helped create the world’s second largest pool of individual wealth. And now they’re taking steps to get involved and give back…”
But Gates is obviously not the only ally of China. Its ties with a large part of the western globalist elite deserves a closer investigation.
Looking at the board members[25] of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, hosted by Wang Qishan the vice-president of the Republic of China, we find individuals such as Henry Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Corbat from Citigroup, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Laurence Fink, and the CEOs of Dell, McKinsey, IBM, Walmart, General Motors, BlackRock, Tata and many others.
What are they really doing on the board of a Chinese University? Doesn’t it rather look like a global strategic board?
The role of Tedros in the Coronavirus pandemic
These connections do explain why the WHO management of the Covid-19 crisis has largely been influenced by Beijing and why Tedros openly praised the Chinese government after his meeting with Xi Jinping.
“We appreciate the seriousness of China’s response to this epidemic, especially the strength of its leadership[26] and the transparency they demonstrated.”[27]
or
“China exemplifies new standards in epidemic preparedness and response.”[28]
He further called the draconian quarantine measures taken by the Beijing government “heroic,“[29] while paradoxically insisting on keeping air traffic with China open.
On Feb. 3, Tedros rebuked the U.S. and other countries that had closed off their borders when it became clear that the communist nation wasn’t containing the virus’ spread.
“There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. We call on all countries to implement decisions that are evidence-based and consistent,“ he said.
Although most airlines quickly suspended their flights, Ethiopian Airlines is one of the few that maintained connections with China throughout the crisis.[30]
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation reported a phone call[31] between Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali and Xi Jinping confirming once again the close ties between the two countries.
“This phone call as well as the two letters of sympathies from the Prime Minister attest to the profound friendship and mutual support between China and Ethiopia as comprehensive strategic cooperative partners. Ethiopia has followed WHO recommendations and kept its normal ties and exchanges with China. China appreciates such expression of confidence.”
Control over Africa’s health and economy is obviously an important stake in the management of the coronavirus epidemic. Just a few days ago, the Trump administration warned over Chinese spying in the future African Center for Disease Control facility, saying it would stop funding if Beijing goes on with building its headquarter in Ethiopia.
The Financial Times[32] quoted an official of the U.S. administration,
“It’s a threat to Africa. Africa has vast amounts of genomic data and the Chinese want to build the CDC to eventually steal the data from all the other centres,” referring to five regional Africa CDC hubs, “they handle high-risk viruses, health crises, research and data collection.”
Washington said the U.S. had invested $900m to support health in Africa over the last 15 years, and had given the African CDC $14m in its first year of operation, in 2017.
But the Chinese already went ahead and put $200m in the construction of the ‘bugged’ African Union’s Conference Center which currently houses the African CDC secretariat. It seems China and the U.S. had found a cooperation agreement on the issue under the Obama administration, but it could not last for long under the Trump presidency.
We could also wonder what role the WHO and China are really playing in the Italian crisis
At the beginning of the epidemic, Ghebreyesus called on the Italians “not to stigmatize the Chinese” by insisting that the time was “not for judgment, but for solidarity.”
The valuable recommendations of the WHO director thus barred the Italian government from confining people returning from China.
Worse still, the Mayor of the city of Florence, which has an important number of Chinese immigrants, was encouraged to launch a national campaign inviting his fellow citizens to “hug a Chinese in the street!“[33]
But such a complacency towards China is also due to the fact that last year the Salvini government was the first G7 country to sign an economic partnership with China in the Belt and Road project, that would give them direct access to the Mediterranean.
Now that Salvini’s party left the government last fall, the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis probably urged the new majority to reassess its ties with Beijing.
Italy then suddenly became the first Western government to stop its flights from China. But the country might pay the price of its infidelity as it currently stands very isolated.
European partners refused to come to the rescue and China is trying to maintain its hold by sending medical help and experts to solve the crisis, planning to help reconstruction after the country collapses.
In the meantime, the WHO which has its European headquarters in Venice, one of the main affected areas, has delegated one of its main experts to take control of the pandemic response.
But the number of death cases in Italy is still soaring and is by far exceeding other countries, while no convincing scientific explanation has been offered, even if factors such as an older population and a lack of intensive care units have aggravated the situation and if case reporting is biased.
Last month, Russia sent out a whole team of experts and military doctors to help northern Italy deal with the crisis, but the team will certainly put their efforts into investigating what is truly going on.
In any case, it is now obvious that the WHO and its leaders have a pandemic response agenda that has more to do with global government and world leadership than health.
Bill Gates seems to be leading the initiative with the CEPI fund to hasten the production of vaccines.
He is pushing his global governance agenda with his army of devoted health experts, such as the members of the Coronavirus Response Task Force, Fauci and Birx, who are long-time close partners of the Global Fund AIDS campaign.
And with their Beijing ties, it is no wonder that Fauci refused to answer the press who asked his opinion on Tedros praising China.[34]
The chairman of the World Health Organization is serving Africa on a silver plate to the new leaders of a corporate – communist inspired – global government.
Tedros, you are unmasked.
References
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMjyTioY8Rg
[3] https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?page=1&search=Tigray&…
[4]https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Laws/TRIG/2014_Implemen…
[5] Ethiopia Human Rights, https://www.amnestyusa.org
[6] McCracken Matthew J., Abusing Self-Determination and Democracy: How the TPLF Is Abusing Self-Determination and Democracy: How the TPLF Is Looting Ethiopia Looting Ethiopia, Case Western Reserve Journal of Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law International, 2004.
[7] Flore Luis, Overlooking Violence, Marginalization and Political Repression, Development Aid to Ethiopia, 2013.
[8] Rawlence Ben, Development without Freedom How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch, Oct 25, 2010.
[9] International Organizations Leadership Recruitment Policies: the Failed Experiment of Dr. Tedros A. Ghebreyesus Candidacy for WHO Director General Position, Amhara Professionals Union Research Department, April 2017.
[10] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2004/20246s025lbl…
[11] https://www.nwhn.org/depo-provera-and-bone-mineral-density/
[12] Note: in India, an NGO for women’s rights also warned against malthusian malpractice with Depo campaigns, saying that in low income area’s “widespread illiteracy was making informed consent a farce“, while also fiercely questioning the use of money offered as an incentive to take the contraceptive.
[13] http://rebeccaprojectjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/depo-prover…
[14] https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/gates-foundation-suspected-of-forcing-dang…
[15] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-contraception-summit/contrace…
[16] Rice Xan, Fatal outbreak not a cholera epidemic, insists Ethiopia, The Guardian, Feb 22, 2007.
[17] Kouwonou Amey, WHO field investigator, Investigation of A Cholera Outbreak in Ethiopia’s Oromiya Region, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, Dec 2010.
[18] https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2017/07/24/An-Open-Letter-to-…
[19] Jaramillo G.abriel, Parsons J., Audit Reports and Diagnostic Review issued by the Global Fund’s Office of the Inspector General, The Global Fund, Apr 2012
[20] The Ethiopian Migrant Crisis in Saudi Arabia: Taking Accountability, Tadias Magazine, Nov 18, 2013.
[21] Gellaw Abebe, Tedros Adhanom played a key role in kidnapping of prominent dissident, ECADF, May 5, 2017.
[22] “The audacity of Tedros Adhanom to become WHO chief”, Nov 5, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGme_WD4qk0
[23] https://www.politico.eu/article/bill-gates-who-most-powerful-doctor/
[24] http://www.jubbaland24.com/article/bill-gates–speech-at-peking-university-on-24-march-2017.aspx
[25] https://gmba.sem.tsinghua.edu.cn/content/page/semadvisory.html
[26] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DiiY8a6xMg
[27] https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-china-who-chief-relationship-…
[28] Declaration à l’OMS du 30 janvier 2020, annonce de la pandémie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sRxfbzI19k
[29] Engdahl F. William, Who Is WHO’s Tedros Adhanom? The Wuhan Lockdown is Unprecedented, Global Research, Feb 20, 2020.
[30] Ethiopian Airlines Gambles With its Hardwon Brand Equity by Continuing to Fly to China, ECADF, Feb 6, 2020.
[31] https://www.focac.org/eng/gdtp/t1750414.htm
[32] ‘K. Manson, D. Pilling “US warns over chinese spying on African disease control centre’, Financial Times, Feb. 6th 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/cef96328-475a-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441
[33] https://summit.news/2020/03/12/mayor-of-florence-encouraged-italians-to…
[34] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMjyTioY8Rg
This article was first published on Health Impact News.