First invented (archived here) by the Social Affairs Advisor to the Ethiopian Prime Minister Daniel Kibret, the term “Jawisa” – meaning bandit in Amharic – is often used by government supporters on social media to refer to the Fano rebel group in the region Amhara. Fano has been fighting the Ethiopian army since July 2023.
The post further claims that alleged divisions within the rebel group have forced the militants to surrender to the military. “The Jawisa groups operating around Shewa have been divided and the militant groups led by Meketaw and Asegid have been fighting and killing each other,” the report said.
Shewa is a zone in the Amhara region, while Asegid and Meketaw are Fano leaders from the area.
The post says 15 members of the Asegid group were among those who surrendered.
The same claim was also shared on Facebook here and here.
Ongoing armed conflict
A recent report by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (archived here) implicated government security forces in numerous cases of extrajudicial killings and civilian casualties in the ongoing conflicts in Amhara and Oromia, the country’s two most populous regions.
In mid-May, the African Union and the US ambassador to Ethiopia urged (archived here) the immediate cessation of hostilities and the continuation of dialogue to achieve this.
The Ethiopian military repeatedly claimed to have captured rebels along with their firearms (archived here) in the Amhara region.
However, the photo does not show rebels in the Amhara region who have surrendered to the army.
Tigray war
AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches and found that the photo shows fighters in the Tigray region who surrendered to the military in September 2022.
The two-year bloody war between the federal government and rebels in the Tigray region claimed nearly a million lives before hostilities ended in November 2022 with a peace deal in Pretoria.
The photo was originally published (archived here) by Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC), a government-affiliated broadcaster, on September 5, 2022, along with a report explaining that Tigray fighters had been captured by the military during several battles in the Tigray region. region.
In early September 2022, about two months before the peace agreement, the Ethiopian army and the Eritrean army – then the Ethiopian government’s main ally – launched a large-scale military offensive against the TPLF forces (archived here).
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked similar claims here and here.
