Interview with Ethiopian opposition leaders taken out of context

This article is more than one year old.
Published on December 15, 2023 at 12:34
3 min read
By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia

Two opposition leaders from Ethiopia’s western Gambella region were recently interviewed by a US-based journalist about the ongoing conflicts in Ethiopia. A TikTok video published on Facebook after the interview claims one of the politicians warned Ethiopians to join the Fano rebel group that operates in the northern Amhara region or risk “extinction” at the hands of the ruling party. However, this is misleading: while the pair who were interviewed sided with Fano rebels, they did not say Ethiopians would be wiped out if they chose not to do the same.

“The nations and nationalities will face extinction if they do not join the Amhara (Fano) struggle,” reads part of the text on a TikTok video posted to Facebook on December 4, 2023. The post has been shared more than 450 times.

Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on December 12, 2023

The 65-second clip shows Nikaw Ochala, the secretary general of Gambella People’s Democratic Movement, seated in front of a bookcase talking to the camera. However, the audio consists entirely of a narration.

The male narrator begins by saying: “The leader of Gambella Liberation Party said the fate of nations and nationalities will be facing extermination if they do not join the Fano struggle.”

Along the same lines, he adds: “The regime is working to annex Gambella to the Oromia region. All regions should cooperate with the Fano struggle, not for the sake of Fano interests, but to recognise that they will not be eliminated and ensure their future survival.”

Gambella and Amhara

Gambella is one of Ethiopia’s 12 regions (archived here) and has suffered from repeated political conflicts, pitting various ethnic groups against each other (archived here).

AFP covered a report by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission describing how government security forces killed dozens of civilians suspected of collaborating with rebels who attacked Gambella in June 2022 (archived here) .

In July 2023, ethnic riots claimed the lives of 24 people, according to local media reports (archived here).

The Gambella People’s Democratic Movement is one of the opposition parties from the region. Fano, meanwhile, is a rebel group fighting against Ethiopian troops in the Amhara region since July 2023.

The video, however, exaggerated parts of the interview with the two Gambella political leaders.

Rebel interview

AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.

The search results included a link to a longer version of the footage which was originally published (archived here) on YouTube by Ethiopia Voice Network (EVN) on November 28, 2023.

EVN mainly broadcasts content in support of Fano.

The video shows an interview by a US-based journalist with two exiled opposition leaders in the US and UK — Nikaw and his party’s deputy president Ojulu Obala, both from the Gambella People’s Democratic Movement.

The “Gambella Liberation Party” mentioned in the narrated video does not exist.

The original interview is more than 90 minutes long and the video’s title in Amharic reads: “We will support the Fano 100 percent – Gambella People’s Democratic Movement".

The opposition leaders discussed a number of issues related to Gambella, including alleged human rights violations and economic manipulation by the ruling Prosperity Party.

However, the narrator in the misleading TikTok video uses only a fraction of the original interview to arrive at a misleading conclusion.

For example, he claims Ojulu said that “all regions should cooperate with the Fano struggle, not for the sake of Fano interests, but to recognise that they will not be eliminated and ensure their future survival”.

Ojulu’s actual words, spoken at 34’50” in the original video, were: “Our party will collaborate with Fano’s struggle. Our survival depends on the existence of Ethiopia. The Fano struggle promotes the survival of minority peoples like ours in Ethiopia. The Oromo led government would dominate us all.”

Some parts of the claim are fabricated. For instance, neither Ojulu nor Nikaw said in the interview that “the Oromos destroyed 28 nations in the 16th century and this would happen again unless all nations cooperate against the ruling party led by the Oromos”, as appears in text form at the bottom of the video.

Screenshot of the misleading post showing a fabricated quote, taken on December 12, 2023

The Oromo ethnic group accounts for about a third of Ethiopia’s population of 120 million people. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is Oromo.

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