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A woman's account of escaping armed rebels in Zambia unleashed Twitter fury
Many have tweeted that her story is riddled with inaccuracies
People have taken to social media to poke holes in a Scottish woman’s terrifying account of fleeing armed rebels in Zambia.
Scottish actress Louise Linton wrote a memoir, “In Congo’s Shadow,” about her gap year spent “helping some of the world’s poorest people.”
In it she reveals that within three months of arriving at Lake Tanganyika she was forced to hide from armed rebels from the “Hutu-Tutsi conflict in neighbouring Congo.”
An extract from the her death-defying account was published in the Daily Telegraph but people have taken to Twitter to say the story just doesn’t quite add up.
One problem is that the Hutu-Tutsi conflict mainly took place in Rwanda - sparking the hashtag #LintonLies.
The hashtag received more than 1,000 tweets and almost 2,000 retweets and rising. Tutsi and Hutu rebels did operate in DR Congo in the late 1990s, and rebels raided a village in Zambia’s northernmost Kaputa district according to a 1999 U.N. report. However others have pointed out that Zambia has no monsoons, as Linton reports in the article.
They also mock Linton for using old stereotypes of the region, accusing her of being racist in the article. In it she writes she was worried “what the rebels would do to the ‘skinny white Muzungu with long angel hair’ if they found me.”
Linton, who now lives in California, has since taken to Twitter to apologize.
She also writes in a statement posted on social media:
“I wrote this book with the hope of conveying my deep humility, respect and appreciation for the people of Zambia and my sincere hope of making a positive impact there as an 18 year old volunteer in 1999. I speak at length about the country’s incredible beauty and my immense gratitude for the friendships and experiences I had there. My aim has only ever been to honor Zambia.”
Neither Linton or the Daily Telegraph responded to CNN’s request for an interview.