On 19 December 2020 a facebook post by the name ኩዒታ – Kuéta (a personal blog with 2,137 followers) emerged posting an image that shows troops with the claim that Sudan has fully controlled 2,000 square kilometers of disputed territories and declared that it will not give up one inch of its land. The text which is written in Amharic reads “…. Sudan has deployed several troops and Egypt has sided with Sudan and expressed its favor that it would support politically and economically in defending Sudan’s sovereignty….”
However, HaqCheck has interogetted the claim and confirmed that the image below that shows Sudanese soldiers is not of the recent clashes in the Ethio-Sudanese border, therefore, rendered the post as FALSE due to the usage of an inaccurate image to support the claim.
There have been armed clashes between the Amhara militia and Sudanese forces in the Ethio-Sudanese border last week. On 17 December 2020 the Sudanese army claimed control of the undemarcated territories that borders Ethiopia and Sudan. The army declared that the international borders with Ethiopia are clear and indisputable and that Sudan will not give up one inch of its territory. The statement by the army further clarified that the international borders with Ethiopia, are obvious and unquestionable and therefore, Sudan will not allow its sovereign territories to be controlled by any other country. Abiy Ahmed (PhD), Prime Minister of Ethiopia in a statement he made on Twitter on 17 December 2020 said that his administration is closely following the border clash incident with local militia. He played down the border clash with Sudan saying that such incidents will not break the bond between the two countries. On 22 December 2020 Demeke Mekonnen, deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Ethiopia paid a visit to Khartoum to negotiate with Sudanese officials to delineate the shared borders.
Amid the conflict between Ethiopian and Sudanese forces in the border areas a facebook post claiming that Sudan has fully controlled disputed territories sharing an image that depicts troops to support the claim was posted. However, a reverse image search of the image used in the facebook post shows that the picture was taken by Mohamed Babiker of Xinhua from Sudan and first published on alamy, a British stock photography agency on 13 March 2017 (3 years, 9 months and 6 days before the post was shared) with a description that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) marching during the inauguration of the biggest batch of RSF forces that amounted to 11,450 in Khartoum. The post that contains the original image can be accessed with the following link.
Original Image:
Granted, the Sudanese army claimed control of undemarcated borders at the time the facebook post was shared. However, HaqCheck has interrogated the post and rated it as FALSE information due to the usage of an inaccurate image to support the claim.
Fact Checked by: Hagos Gebreamlak
Edited by: Bruck Negash Teame
The following article is part of HaqCheck, Addis Zeybe’s multilingual fact checking initiative, which is run by its R&D Department.
