A Facebook page with more than 2,100,000 followers posted a claim with a picture on April 4 captioned, “As they are done with taking all the land with the illegal land grabbing, playfields of the youth at Lemi Kura sub-city are being distributed to the specially privileged ones in the name of farmers. Those who used to play on this field at Ayat found it plowed when they came back in the morning.”
By the time this article was published, The post had 1.2 thousand reactions and was shared by 114 users.
However, Haqcheck confirmed that the image used to support the claim is old and rendered it FALSE.
There is a recent finding of extensive illegal land grabbing in Addis Ababa which is mostly observed in Kaliti, Lemi Kura, Bole, and Nefas Silk sub-cities.
According to a study report of the case by a major opposition party, the land grabbing had been justified with claims of the perpetrators that the lands used to belong to families and they were displaced from their previous areas without any compensation. The statement also noted that the illegal act was often conducted by sub-city and woreda officers orchestrated by illegal brokers.
HaqCheck analyzed the image used to prove the claim and found out that it was taken from an old online article from May 29, 2019, entitled “Addis Ababa’s football fields are being transformed into a farm by those who say are lords of the time.
Hence, HaqCheck has come to realize that the image used to support the claim on Facebook is outdated and has nothing to do with the current situation in the area.
Therefore HaqCheck rated the image used to support the claim FALSE.
