March 22, 2022

Do the images show Oromo people hanged on the streets of Finfinnee by Emperor Menelik ll?

HAQCHECK

HaqCheck looked into the images.

Avatar: Kirubel Tesfaye
By Kirubel Tesfaye

Kirubel works as a fact-checker at Addis Zeybe for HaqCheck. He is interested in learning and expanding his writing and journalistic skills.

Do the images show Oromo people hanged on the streets of Finfinnee by Emperor Menelik ll?

A Twitter account with more than 2000 followers shared two collaged images on Mar 17, with an overlay text that reads, “Menelik Genocide on Oromo people 1897 in Finfinnee.”

However, HaqCheck traced back the source of the images and rendered it False

 

Many Oromo activists and politicians accuse Emperor Menilik of oppressing the Oromo people and committing atrocities on the Oromo people in his process of state formation and his quest southwards in the territory. 

The Twitter post is shared taking advantage of this background history to forward its story of the Oromo genocide.

HaqCheck looked into the images and discovered that the first image was found on different websites at a different time.

One of the sources the picture appeared in jamejamonline describes the image as, “By the time the Italian fascist invaded Ethiopia, Mussolini had made the excuse that on November 23, 1934, Italian investigators had attacked the border between the Italian colony of Somalia and the Ethiopian Empire (Ethiopia)”.

And the first image that is published on this source is captioned, “After several months the Italian fascist army could hardly break the resistance of the Ethiopians.”

The second image was found in Eritrea.be website titled “History of Eritrea”. The image used in the article is captioned, “Ethiopian forces tried to weaken the morale of the population of Eritrea by hanging captured ELF freedom fighters and civil collaborators in the center of Eritrean villages.”

Hence, HaqCheck inspected the image used to support the claim that Emperor Menilik used to hang Oromos on the streets of Finifine and rendered it False.