On Dec 5, 2022, a Facebook page posted an image captioned in Amharic, “this is not a film, this is what happened in our country, Ethiopia” implicitly claiming that a person was burnt during a recent conflict in Ethiopia.
The post has got so many reactions and was shared over sixty times on Facebook.
However, HaqChek looked into the post and confirmed that the image is old and doesn’t show a person immolated in a recent conflict in Ethiopia. The image was first posted on Twitter eight years ago on Oct 6, 2014.
For some years now Ethiopia has been undergoing instability and recurrent internal conflicts. There have been internal border disputes, inter-communal conflicts, widespread displacement, and mass killings.
Above all, war was ongoing between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) for the last two years.
Conflict recently erupted in Wollega, in the Oromia regional state of Ethiopia. Violence and mass killings were reportedly committed during the latest conflict in Wollega.
A local news outlet reported on Dec 3, 2022, that militants (Fano) from the neighboring Amhara region killed dozens of people in the Kiremu district of the East Wollega zone on Nov 25 and 29, 2022.
It is within this context that a Facebook page posted an image claiming that a person was immolated in a recent conflict in Ethiopia.
However, HaqCheck inspected the claim and confirmed that the picture doesn’t support the alleged information that it shows people burning a person during a recent conflict in Ethiopia.
The image was first published on Twitter on Oct 6, 2014. The original picture was posted on the platform with an English caption, “Mob Justice is just bad. Where is the rule of law?”. The Twitter account that posted the original image has over thirty thousand followers and it claims it presents news stories from Malawi.
Therefore, due to its usage of an inaccurate image, HaqCheck rated the post as False.
