FALSE: Eritrea’s president did not send a message to Ethiopians on election day, and commented on the Nile dam construction
There is no evidence in the Eritrean government archive or media reports that President Isaias Afwerki sent a message to Ethiopians, nor that he commented on the dam.
A Facebook post claiming Eritrean president, Isaias Afwerki, sent a message to Ethiopians on election day and that he commented on the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is FALSE.
The post claims the leader started his message by saying, “I share your happiness. I want to come to my second country, Ethiopia, regularly.” .
“I am eager to walk in the cities of Mekele, Adigrat and Aksum in Tigray. My enemies are the TPLF, not the people of Tigray,” the post adds.
TPLF, short for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, is a former ruling political party of the Tigray region.
The post further claims President Afwerki pledged to work with Ethiopia to finalise the construction of the GERD on the Nile river.
Eritrea confirmed that her army has been involved in the Tigray war, which has raged since November 2020.
There have been accusations made against Eritrean soldiers, saying they have committed grave human right violations against the Tigray people in Ethiopia.
The United Nations (UN) and the United States (US) have repeatedly urged Eritrean soldiers to leave the troubled region and ensure that perpetrators of the alleged rights violations are brought to justice.
In June 2021, Ethiopia’s UN envoy said Eritrean troops in Ethiopia’s Tigray region are expected to “definitely leave soon”.
Though the Eritrean leader has visited Ethiopia multiple times since the normalisation agreement in 2018, the claim that he sent a message to Ethiopians on election day is unfounded.
The said message is not available on the official website of the Eritrean Ministry of Information, where statements by the president are available.
The message in the claim is not available on the official Twitter account of the Eritrean Minister of Information, Yemane Meskel, and no media reports related to the same can be found.
Similarly, the Eritrean Press Facebook page, which usually carries similar messages and updates from Eritrea and Ethiopia, did not post anything related to the alleged statement by President Afwerki.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post claiming that Eritrean president, Isaias Afwerki, sent a message to Ethiopians on election day and commented on the construction of the GERD and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Tolera Gemta and edited by PesaCheck copy editor Eden Berhane, and chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.