By Pascal Ibe
Claim
X user named @Zoomafrika shared two gory images of the heinous slaughtering of Congolese citizens and claimed they were recent.
Verdict
This claim is MISLEADING. A simple Google Image Reverse search showed that the images were incidents that occurred in 2017 and 2023 respectively.
Full Text
DRC’s current conflict has been ongoing since the 1990s, particularly in the eastern part of the country, which borders South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania. Inter-communal violence regularly breaks out in other regions, as has been the case recently in the central, southern, and western provinces of Kasaï, Tshopo, Mai-Ndombe, Kwilu, and Kwango.
According to Amnesty International, There are currently over a hundred active armed groups in the DRC. Many of them are local militias seeking to protect their communities after over three decades of unrest. Loyalties and rivalries between groups are constantly evolving and generally guided by ethnic identities, economic interests, and political manipulation.
Given this unending conflict in DR Congo, an X user, Zoom Africa, has shared two photos of these heinous killings and claimed they were recent.
The X user shared the first image with a caption that reads, “There is Genocide ongoing in Congo 🇨🇩 but The whole World is silent. 💔
The user shared the second photo and wrote, “The most Heartbreaking picture on the internet from Congo 💔😭
The first and second photos generated over 300k views, 5k reposts, and more than 6k likes, according to a combined X analytics.
Many commenters on X believed that the Images were the true situation in the DR Congo currey.
Verification
When FACTWATCH Nigeria subjected these two images of these killings in Congo to Google Lens, results showed that the first and second photos appeared online in 2017 and 2023, respectively.
The first photo was an incident that occurred on 20 September 2017.
According to a story by the French media, Agenzia Fides, 34 Burundian refugees were killed by security forces on September 16, 3017, in the refugee camp near the village of Kamanyola in the Plain of Ruzizi, South Kivu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to information sent from sources of the local Church to Agenzia Fides, the tragedy was triggered by the arrest of four Burundians on the night of September 13, who were accused of being armed with cudgels and patrolling the fenced area of their camp, without the permission of the local authorities. The four were initially detained by the Immigration Department in Kamanyola and were then handed over to the local security service headquarters, the National Intelligence Agency (ANR).
The second image that was shared by the X user occurred on 17 September 2023.
A report by RadioTayna stated that the lifeless body of a woman was found this Sunday, September 17, 2023, in the Rukoko village in the Munigi group of the Nyiragongo territory. A baby of about 9 months was found next to the mother’s body, lying on the ground. The deceased woman and her child were discovered by passers-by. The circumstances of her death are not yet known, but a local source explains that everything suggests that the woman was killed and abandoned there. Bosenibamwe Muzungu is a notable of Nyiragongo.
See another report that corroborates the story here.
Please note that these were translated from French to the English language for easy understanding.
Conclusion
Findings and news reports have confirmed these photos by the X user, appeared online first in 2017 and 2023, therefore the claim that they were recent images is MISLEADING
