Post misleads about Ethiopia unrest by rehashing old protest photos in video clip
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 15, 2023 at 12:56
- 4 min read
- By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia
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The post features the English hashtag "#Breakingnews".
Switching to Afaan Oromoo, it then says that the "Fano extremist group has engaged in fierce fighting by blocking many towns". Fano is a local militia in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region.
The post, published on Facebook on May 4, 2023, also asks users to watch an attached YouTube video.
Amhara tensions
On May 4, 2023, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said (archive here) that clashes took place between Ethiopian troops and local armed forces in the Amhara region, resulting in civilian deaths and damage to property.
A day later, international media reports (archived here) said talks were held in Bahir Dar, the capital of the Amhara region, between the federal government's defence forces and Fano representatives to resolve the conflict.
However, the video doesn’t show fighting between Ethiopian federal forces and local armed groups.
Unrelated photos
AFP Fact Check has reviewed the YouTube video attached to the post and established that it carries news stories about public protests and roadblocks in Gonder, Debre Birhan and Debre Sina towns in Amhara region.
The demonstrations began in April 2023 and were directed against the federal government's decision to disarm the regional security forces.
By using the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify and running reverse image searches on keyframes from the video, AFP Fact Check found that the footage comprises old and unrelated photos of different events.
Some 60 seconds into the video, a photo appears showing protests in 2015 in Ethiopia's Oromia region.
The image was first used by Qeeroo.com, a blog covering stories related to the Oromo protests.
According to the caption, the photo shows government security forces dispersing protesting youth in Ambo city, Oromia region in 2015.
The Oromo protests began as a political movement in Ethiopia and played an important role in achieving the political reforms in 2018 that ushered in the premiership of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The video also contained a photo taken in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The reverse image search results revealed that the photo (archived here) was originally captured by an AFP photo stringer in South Africa on October 10, 2007, and archived by Getty Images.
The description attached to the photo says it shows police in South Africa firing rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse students protesting on the Kingsway Campus of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 2007 against a planned increase in tuition fees.
Two other photos used in the video were recently debunked by AFP Fact Check ( here and here) and shown to be of federal troops in the Tigray region securing federal facilities in Mekelle and Ethiopian police officers in the US Embassy in Addis Ababa.
Reverse image search results show that some photos used in the video, however, depict the recent unrest in Amhara. (here and here)
But actual scenes of fighting are not a part of the video.
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