A Twitter account with more than 1100 followers shared a post on May 24, 2022, captioned, “In Tigray, there has been civil unrest, the people of Tigray are saying, ‘May Abiy Ahmed lead us’.” In the picture are depicted rallying people holding different slogan signs having an overlay text that read “May Abiy Ahmed lead us”, “Getachew Reda is criminal”, “TPLF is a thief” along with other two arbitrarily placed texts over the images.
By the time this article was published the post had more than 80 reactions and was retweeted more than 30 times.
However, HaqCheck has examined the image and rendered it Altered.
The prolonged war between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government and its allied forces has remained unsolved.
TPLF has been stating that if the diplomatic means to end the war fail, it will resort to other means indicating that it will seek military solutions. TPLF has been accusing the federal government and regional authorities of blocking aid from entering Tigray and has complained the aid that has recently reached was below that need.
On May 20, TPLF announced in its press release that “The Government of Tigray, consistent with its principled preference for the peaceful resolution of political differences, had agreed to undertake even unilateral confidence-building measures. Accordingly, per the promise we made to chief Obasanjo, we have decided to release 4208 prisoners of war. Of those to be released 401 are women,” reads the statement.
On Jan 13, 2022, Field Martial Birhanu Jula of the Ethiopian Defense Forces said in an interview, “Tigray people don’t have to die for the sake of TPLF anymore, thousands of lives are lost. People of Tigray have to say no to TPLF.”
In a close inspection of the images, HaqCheck found out that the two images on a Facebook post are from DW Amharic’s page on Oct 2, 2018, which reads, “University students and their families who claim to feel insecure held demonstrations in Mekele today. Speaking of their fear of attending their classes in areas where there is a security concern, they appealed to the government to come up with a possible solution. On the rally signs having the messages, ‘I’m concerned about the life of Tigrayans’, ‘we don’t send our children to an insecure place’, ‘students shouldn’t pay sacrifices in vain’, ‘may regional and federal governments give us solutions’ were displayed”
The third image was found on borkena.com in a news article on June 27, 2018, titled, “Fresh ethnic-based violence in Asossa left at least eight people dead.”
The news stated, citing social media reports that “ ethnic Berta youth, who consider themselves to be “locals” as they tend to see everyone else as aliens, organized themselves to launch an attack on businesses owned by ethnic Amhara and Oromo. And in what seems to be an effort to defend themselves, ethnic Amhara tried to respond to the attack but it is not clear if there are victims from the ethnic Berta community.”
Even though the first two images show a protest in Tigray, the Doctored images used to support the claim are learned to be False. Besides, the second picture is known to be not from Tigray,
Therefore HaqCheck has inspected the images and rendered them Altered.