Post misrepresents decades-old photo of child with dead father in DRC as having been taken recently
- Published on November 21, 2023 at 12:38
- 3 min read
- By James OKONG'O, AFP Kenya
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“Congo is currently going through genocide,” reads a post that was published on X (formerly Twitter) on November 13, 2023.
The post has since been shared more than 1,600 times and attracted over 3,000 likes.
“Please pray for Congo! This is 2023! (sic),” reads the caption on another post published with the photo on Facebook.
The image was also shared on Instagram and elsewhere on X.
Some of the posts implore people to give attention to the plight of the Congolese as wars in the Middle East and Ukraine dominate headlines.
DRC conflict
After lying dormant for years, the M23 rebel group launched an offensive in late 2021 and conquered swathes of North Kivu province in eastern DRC, displacing over a million people (archived here).
M23 is a Tutsi-led group that traces its lineage to earlier rebel movements in eastern DRC.
Militias have plagued the volatile region for decades, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.
The rebel group was defeated in 2013 after seizing the Congolese city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, with many of its fighters taking refuge in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda.
In 2021, M23 fighters reemerged, demanding that DRC honour a previously signed agreement allowing their integration into the army, among other issues.
As the new conflict expands, the rebel group has justified itself differently, claiming now that it is defending the Tutsi minority in eastern DRC.
On October 26, 2023, M23 rebels launched a new offensive north of Goma (archived here).
But the image circulating on social media was not taken during the current conflict in the country.
Old photo
In a previous debunk, AFP Fact Check found that the image depicts events from nearly three decades ago in the DRC (archived here).
A reverse image search traced the photo to the Getty Images photo archives. According to the caption, it shows a Rwandan child crying while clinging to his father who had died of cholera in 1994 in Zaire, now the DRC (archived here).
“The two had fled the Hutu-Tutsi violence in Rwanda and come to Zaire for safety,” the caption reads.
During the 1994 genocide, thousands of Rwandans fled the country to seek refuge in eastern DRC (archived here). The 100-day conflict resulted in at least 800,000 deaths (archived here).
The photo is credited to photographer David Turnley who was working for the US newspaper Detroit Free Press.
The image was also published separately in a 2014 photo essay by the German news site Der Spiegel retracing memorable historical photos from the Corbis photo agency (archived here). It described the photo, credited to Turnley, with the same details as those used in the Getty Images archives.
Turnley is yet to reply to AFP Fact Check’s request for comment.
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