After dozens of university students were abducted by an armed group in Ethiopia’s Oromia region earlier this month, the government blamed rebels from the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), who denied the accusations. Since then, video posts circulating on Facebook claim that Human Rights Watch called on the international community to classify OLA as a terrorist organisation in response to the abductions. However, this is false: Human Rights Watch made no such call, and its spokesperson confirmed that the claim is fabricated by misrepresenting the organisation’s logo.
The post published on Facebook on July 10, 2024, contains text in Amharic that reads: “International human rights called for the OLF to be classified as international terrorists.”
The OLA split from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in 2018 when the latter renounced its armed struggle. However, the Ethiopian government and its allies still use the terms OLF and the name “Shane” to refer to the OLA.
The post contains a 95-second video clip bearing a Human Rights Watch logo.
In the video, a robotic voice discusses a purported Human Rights Watch report on “ransomware (sic) and kidnappings by OLA in Oromia region” and claims that the report urges the international community to classify OLA as a terrorist organisation.
Pictures showing OLA fighters, the Human Rights Watch logo, buses, UN headquarters and the US embassy in Addis Ababa are seen in the video.
Thirty-two seconds into the clip, a screenshot of an English-language report can be seen. The text makes no mention of a call for the rebels to be classified as terrorists; it simply describes the kidnappings in Oromia and names the OLA as perpetrators.
AFP Fact Check has found more than 100 Facebook accounts that published the same claim on July 10-11, 2024. These accounts regularly share pro-ruling party content in a coordinated manner.
Similar claims were also shared on X here and here.
Kidnappings in Oromia
International media reported that dozens of Ethiopian students from Debrak University in the Amhara region were kidnapped by an unknown armed group while traveling by bus through the neighbouring region of Oromia on July 2, 2024 (archived here). The families of the abductees said that the kidnappers called them with demands to pay 700,000 Ethiopian birr (US$12,000) in ransom.
On July 10, 2024, the Oromia government blamed the OLA rebels for the kidnappings, adding that “160 of the 167 students…were freed by a security forces operation” (archived here).
The rebel group denied this and claimed that the kidnapping had been orchestrated by members of the ruling party (archived here).
The largest and most populous region of Ethiopia, Oromia has been in the grip of an armed insurrection since 2018. Federal forces have been fighting OLA rebels in Oromia ever since, while peace talks have failed to yield meaningful progress.
Classified as a “terrorist organisation” by the authorities, the OLA has been accused by the government of orchestrating massacres, which the rebels deny. The authorities in turn are accused of waging an indiscriminate crackdown that has fuelled Oromo resentment.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council reported on July 12, 2024 that some of the kidnapped students had been released after their families paid the requested ransom and that a few others escaped, while dozens remained abducted (archived here).
Some of the families of the abducted students expressed concern that their children had not been released (archived here).
However, the claim that Human Rights Watch has called for the classification of OLA as an international terrorist organisation is unfounded.
Artificial voice
In the video clip, a robotic female voice speaks haltingly in English.
“Human Rights Watch reports on ransomware (sic) and kidnappings by the OLA in Oromia region,” it says. “In recent weeks, the Oromia region of Ethiopia has faced a disturbing rise in kidnappings for ransom by the Oromo Liberation Army, OLA.”
“This armed insurgent group has targeted civilians, particularly students, demanding significant ransoms,” it continues. “This report urges the international [long pause] community to classify the OLA as a terrorist organisation due to these escalating human rights [pause] violations.”
This robotic voice was created synthetically. Unnatural speech patterns and pauses, which are a clear indication of it being artificial, can be heard throughout.
Numerous online tools allow users to freely create synthetic voices by simply inputting text. AFP Fact Check input the words from the video into the popular voice creation tool Veed.io, and was able to recreate the same female voice.
No HRW call
AFP Fact Check searched online for the alleged call by Human Rights Watch to classify OLA as a terrorist organisation and found that it made no such call, nor did it publish any report on the kidnappings in Oromia.
Furthermore, the human rights group confirmed to AFP Fact Check that the claim was fabricated by misusing its logo.
“HRW does not advocate for the designation of groups as terrorist groups in any country. This is beyond the scope of our mandate,” Human Rights Watch said in an email.
“There are no HRW publications on the recent abductions of students in Oromia,” it continued, adding: “This assertion is therefore factually inaccurate.”
Referring to the screenshots of a purported report used in the clip, Human Rights Watch said it had “never seen the publication in the video”.
AFP Fact Check ran multiple searches for the text of the purported report to check if it had been published by anyone online, but found nothing.
Old photos
AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches and found that the photos used in the false video are old and unrelated to the recent kidnappings.
The pictures of OLA fighters are taken from a post published on the rebels’ official website in 2023 (archived here) and from footage published by France 24 in 2021 (archived here).
Meanwhile, the picture of a bus bearing the name and logo of Debark University is also old. It shows a trip to a seedling plantation event in 2019 (archived here).
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