Gaza image and AI video falsely linked to post-election violence in Tanzania
- Published on November 13, 2025 at 16:49
- 4 min read
- By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia
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Following Samia Suluhu Hassan’s election victory in late October, which sparked protests and violence in Tanzania, several social media posts claim to show “mass graves” of opposition supporters and a police officer destroying a poster of the president. However, the claims are false: images of a mass burial were taken in Gaza in 2023, while the video of a Tanzanian police officer burning an election poster of Hassan was created using AI.
The English caption of a post shared on Facebook on November 4, 2025, reads: “Reports from Tanzania suggest that families of those killed during recent government operations were denied the right to bury their loved ones.”
It adds: “Instead, mass burials were allegedly conducted under tight security.”
The image in the post shows a row of corpses shrouded in blue cloth placed alongside each other in a trench, with a mechanical digger visible in the background.
The same image was shared here on Facebook, claiming to show “mass graves” of Tanzanian youth secretly buried by the government after the election.
In a separate video published on Instagram, a Tanzanian police officer appears to destroy a poster of Hassan in protest.
“Even the officers in Tanzania are tired of the rogue CCM regime; they want Idi Amin Mama out,” reads the post in English.
“CCM regime” refers to Tanzania’s long-standing single-party dominance under the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Party of the Revolution), while “Idi Amin Mama” refers to the former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada, who ruled from 1971 to 1979.
Tanzania violence
Hassan was declared the winner of the October 29, 2025, Tanzanian election with 98 percent of the vote, but the opposition, which was barred from contesting, branded the polls a "sham” and observers dismissed it as undemocratic (archived here).
Violent protests broke out across the East African country on election day, with sources indicating that hundreds of people may have been killed (archived here). More than 200 people were charged with treason, according to a lawyer and judicial sources who spoke to AFP.
Gruesome images of dead Tanzanians also flooded social media following the election, sparking widespread protests against government repression while politicians expressed shock over the reported mass killings of hundreds of young protesters (archived here).
However, the image and the video alleged to depict post-election violence in Tanzania have been misrepresented.
Palestinian bodies
AFP Fact Check conducted a reverse image search and found that the photograph of a mass grave shows Palestinians praying over the bodies of people killed in an Israeli bombardment two years ago.
The original photo was taken by Associated Press photographer Mohammed Dahman in the town of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on November 22, 2023 — a month after Israel began retaliatory military action for the attack on its soil by Hamas on October 7, 2023 (archived here).
Although the image was cropped in the false posts to exclude the mourners in the top right corner, it matches the original picture from Gaza.
Altered news photograph
Using the verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video, AFP Fact Check found that the clip originates from a news photograph showing a police officer next to a vandalised campaign poster featuring Hassan’s picture.
The photo was originally captured by Reuters photographer Thomas Mukoyaon on October 30, 2025, at the Namanga One-Post Border crossing point between Kenya and Tanzania (archived here).
AI tools like Veo 3.1 and VEED.IO can turn a photo, such as the one taken by Reuters, into a short video.
AFP Fact Check was able to detect anomalies in the footage pointing to AI manipulation: the officer holds the flames with his bare hands; his holstered pistol disappears; and his body proportions distort when he kicks the poster of Hassan.
Additionally, on the poster, Hassan’s lips, which are slightly apart in the Reuters picture and at the beginning of the video, are seen closed by the end of the clip.
We analysed the footage using Hive Moderation’s AI video detector, which determined with a probability of more than 97 percent that the video was artificially created.
AFP Fact Check has debunked other claims related to the Tanzanian election.
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