A Facebook page with more than 200 thousand followers shared an image on Jul 14, captioned, “This baby is not the Rwandan Tutsi Immaculée [Immaculée Ilibagiza] … She is the Ethiopian Amhara Immaculée who survived to tell us what really happened. Abiy Ahmed and his group are killing people whom the world saved in the ‘We are the World’ campaign in 1985.”
The post analogized the pictured girl it claimed is Amhara with the renowned Rwandan Tutsi Immaculée Ilibagiza who related the story of the Rwandan massacre and her journey in her book “Left to Tell”. Immaculée Ilibagiza was spared from the Rwanda genocide hidden in a house of a Hutu pastor who sheltered her and a few other Tutsi girls during the three months massacre.
By the time this article is published the post had more than 3 thousand reactions and was shared more than 700 times.
However, HaqCheck inspected the image and rendered it False.
There have been different reports of ethnic-based mass killings and massacres in West Oromia [Wollega] at different times.
Recently, On June 18, there were different reports that more than 100 people were massacred in Wollega. Different unofficial social media posts claimed that the number of civilians killed by the armed group [OLA] is far larger than official reports and would reach close to a thousand.
The government and different reports asserted that the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA)-Shane is behind the mass killings.
However, the international spokesperson of the OLA, Odda Tarbbi denied the claim that OLA soldiers conducted a massacre in Wollega, but rather were perpetrated by local militia.
The other background referred to in the post is the collective initiative of American musicians, We are the World campaign of 1985 aimed at rescuing the victims of the hunger emergency in Ethiopia. The population mainly affected by the hunger crisis were people in the Amhara region, whom the post claimed are being currently killed by the government, the same people who were rescued by the We are the World aid initiative.
The post is thus produced in the context when ethnic based mass killings, especially targetting the Amhara ethnic group, were rampant.
HaqCheck inspected the image used by the Facebook page to support the claim. It is realized that the image is from the genocide that happened in Rwanda. HaqCheck found the images in different posts at different times.
The Rwandan Genocide is one of the most notorious modern genocides. During this 100-day period between April and July 1994, nearly one million ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed as the international community and UN peacekeepers stood by.
On April 6, 1994, when the President’s plane was shot down, killing both the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, the radical Hutu radio channel announced the deaths, urging Hutus to “go to work” and attack the Tutsi population marking the beggining of the genocide.
Even though there are several claims that different massacres happened in Wollega , Western oromia, the image used by the Facebook page is out of context and doesn’t show an Amhara victim from the mass killings.
Therefore, HaqCheck has inspected the image and rendered it False.
