China and Africa friendship as trade partners can sometimes brings some devastating rumor that can threaten the friendship. The rumor sweeping the entire land of Zambia is that Chinese are sending cans of human flesh to Zambia and Africa.
In a statement released by China’s ambassador to Zambia, he categorically denied the rumour and deemed it a slanderous misinformation :”Today a local tabloid newspaper is openly spreading a rumor, claiming that the Chinese use human meat to make corned beef and sell it to Africa. This is completely a malicious slandering and vilification which is absolutely unacceptable to us.”
Even the Chinese state media also accused Zambian tabloids of spearheading the false rumour especially those “people with ulterior motives were attempting to destroy the long-standing partnership between Zambia and China.”
In the Zambian taboilds “Some reports quoted people who allegedly worked in Chinese meat factories as saying that the practice had begun because China had run out of space to bury their dead or that Beijing reserved its good, nonhuman meat for more powerful countries.
Such rumors are, of course, untrue. As the hoax-busting website Snopes.com notes, the photographs shared online that purport to show “human flesh” were from a 2012 marketing stunt for the video-game Resident Evil 6,” reported by US Washington post.
China has a along time relationship with Zambia and has built many projects in Zambia. But this relationship has not been without troubles. For in the past “there have been a number of scandals involving Chinese projects in Zambia, including an explosion at a factory in 2005 that killed more than 50 Zambian workers.”
China requested an investigation from the government of Zambia and has received a statement of regrets from Zambian government.
Christopher Mulenga, Zambian Deputy Defense Minister was quoted saying that : “The government of Zambia regrets the incident in view of the warm relations that exist between Zambia and China,” Mulenga was quoted as saying by China’s official Xinhua News Agency. “We shall make sure that relevant government authorities will take up the investigations and give a comprehensive statement.”
This type of rumour is not peculiar to China. BBC has once written a false news about human flesh being sold and consumed in Anambra State, Nigeria. But later BBC apologized and withdrew the story.
Leave a Reply