New Delhi: Kabeia Rineaki Brock Sutton Allen has credited Indian users for helping him trick the internet into believing he was running the official government account of Kiribati — a small Pacific island nation — on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
The account, followed by foreign affairs experts, top officials, journalists and even the Indian High Commission in Fiji, quickly garnered over 36,000 followers on the social media platform in a matter of months.
This is the second time that Allen, the 32-year-old social media consultant who lives in Utah, successfully faked running an official Kiribati government account. He credited the success of the first one to “the positive response from Indian patriots” and said following Indian dignitaries and influencers helped expand his reach with the latest account.
In a post on 19 February, the account responded to criticism against names of some Kiribati towns which went viral.
Fine. You're not invited https://t.co/oTPtZwM5s2
— Republic of Kiribati (@KiribatiGov) February 19, 2024
Foreign policy analyst James Crabtree included it in his newsletter last week, saying: “Kiribati has social game. The tiny Micronesian island got feisty on X this week.”
Meanwhile, the head of a parliamentary internship programme in Canada, Paul Thomas, said the account “made my day”.
However, an official from the government of Kiribati, Tearinibeia Enoo-Teabo, confirmed to ThePrint that the country does not have a presence on the social media platform. “I am confirming that we do not have a Twitter account yet,” the official said in an email.
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‘Indian users helped me go viral’
Allen is a dual citizen of the US and the small Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Born in Antebuka, a small village in Kiribati, he was adopted as an infant by an American family and then raised in Seattle.
But this isn’t Allen’s first attempt at pretending to be an official government account.
From early 2021 to June 2022, he ran an X account under a different handle (@GovKiribati). It first garnered traction in February 2022 for thanking Australia and India for sending critical medical supplies to Kiribati during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Australia and India are the best mates to have in your corner. We may be a small nation but we love you with all of our hearts and we look forward to the day when we can again show you our gratitude in person,” read a post from the account on 15 February, 2022, which was shared over a thousand times.
“There was an overwhelmingly positive response from Indian users online, with many asking why the account was not verified as yet. Then in June 2022, Twitter suspended my account when they realised this wasn’t a legitimate account,” Allen told ThePrint over WhatsApp.
He then set up a new account last November under a new handle, but continued to follow a formula of posting what appeared to be official statements from the Kiribati government with the official crest and footer.
“I began following a lot of journalists and academics in India who regularly reshared my posts. Indian users definitely helped me go viral,” he told ThePrint.
In May 2022, then-Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi travelled to Kiribati for an official visit during which Allen posted a fake statement from the government of Kiribati. This post on X was carried in a report published by Radio New Zealand, a New Zealand public-service radio broadcaster.
Kiribati’s intriguing history & geopolitics
An island country in the central Pacific Ocean, Kiribati has a population of about 1 lakh. It is also known as ‘Christmas Island’ as its name comes from the English word ‘Christmas’ which when written in the native tongue of Gilbertese, the ‘ti’ is pronounced ‘s’.
It was named on Christmas Day in 1643 by Captain William Mynors of the East India Company, the same entity that ushered British colonialism into India. In 1979, Kiribati gained its independence from Britain.
Many of the towns in the small island country have unusual names such as Paris, Poland and London. These names were given by Europeans who built these settlements or played a role in the country’s history. For example, Polish engineer Stanisław Pełczyński reportedly aided villagers in solving a water supply problem.
Kiribati has been a regular attendee of the Summit of the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC). A delegation led by Kiribati President Taneti Maamau attended the third edition of the summit last May in Papua New Guinea.
In February 2022, when the coronavirus spread rampantly across the island, India and Australia jointly sent a consignment of medical supplies containing PPE kits, oximeters, surgical masks and other emergency supplies. The consignment reached Kiribati onboard a flight coordinated by the Australian government.
In recent years, Kiribati, like, Solomon Islands, has grown closer to China, especially in the economic and defence sphere. In 2019, it notably switched recognition from Taiwan to China.
Amid growing strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific region, Kiribati created waves in 2022 when it announced that it would withdraw from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), a key inter-governmental body in the region. The Kiribati President had at the time said this was done as the concerns of Micronesia were not being adequately addressed, but experts mulled China’s potential role in the development.
Dr Anna Powles, a senior lecturer at Massey University in New Zealand, told The Guardian that Beijing would certainly benefit from an “isolated Kiribati”.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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