Image of DRC oil tanker disaster falsely shared as showing a Ugandan cult massacre
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on April 26, 2023 at 15:54
- Updated on April 26, 2023 at 15:57
- 2 min read
- By Mary KULUNDU, AFP Kenya
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On April 24, 2023, a Kenyan Twitter account posted an image of charred bodies, alleging that it showed members of a Ugandan church who died by immolation.
“17 March 2000, Kanungu Uganda. 778 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God died in Uganda after burning themselves in a Church (sic),” reads the tweet, which was shared more than 600 times.
The same claim was repeated in Facebook posts here, here and here.
The image surfaced as mass graves linked to a starvation cult were discovered in Kenya (news story archived here). Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge had urged his followers to starve to death. After a tip-off, Kenyan police raided Shakahola forest near the coastal town of Malindi where they unearthed dozens of bodies including children in shallow mass graves.
More than two decades before the macabre discovery in Kenya, a cultic massacre was reported (archived here) in neighbouring Uganda where some 700 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God were burned to death.
Members of the cult, which believed the world would end at the turn of the millennium, were locked inside a church, with the doors and windows nailed shut from the outside.
The building was then set alight.
DRC photo from 2010
But while the 2000 cult massacre in Uganda did take place, the graphic image shared in the online posts is unrelated.
A reverse image search locates the image on stock photography website Shutterstock (archived here), where it is credited to the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA).
In the EPA archives, which are only available to paid subscribers, the image is captioned: "A photo made available on 04 July 2010 shows burned bodies of the victims of an oil tanker explosion near Sange, South Kivu province, easter Democratic Republic of the Congo, 03 July 2020".
AFP also reported the 2010 tanker accident here (archived here).
AFP Fact Check has debunked the same image several times in relation to other false claims including in Nigeria, where users alleged the picture showed "Christians burnt alive by Muslims" in the West African country.
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