The post has been shared more than 80 times and has received over 2,700 interactions.
In the accompanying video clip, Debretshion Gebremichael, the chairman of the TPLF, speaks for 90 seconds during a press conference.
The video starts with him saying, in Amharic: “Our demands are clear…we demand the appointment of the real members of the TPLF in the positions of the interim administration.”
Leadership rift
The Tigray war between the federal government and the TPLF killed more than half a million people before it was ended by a peace agreement in Pretoria in November 2022 (archived here).
A few months after the peace agreement, an interim administration for the Tigray region was established under the leadership of Getachew Reda, a senior TPLF official (archived here).
However, the TPLF was deeply divided internally, resulting in two factions: one led by Getachew and the other by Debretshion (archived here). The divisions have since escalated, deepening the fragility of a region still reeling from two years of conflict, displacement, and humanitarian crises.
Tensions have reached a critical level since the party’s general assembly held by Debretshion’s faction in August, which Getachew’s faction rejected as “illegal” (archived here).
However, the video does not show the TPLF chairman talking about ousting the chief or the interim government.
Debretshion’s press conference
AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.
By doing this we found the footage was originally published on the official YouTube channel of the news site Ethiopia Insider (archived here).
The original footage was more than 11 minutes long.
Ethiopia Insider’s editor told AFP Fact Check that the video was captured during a press conference in Mekelle – the capital of the Tigray region – on August 21, 2024.
The clip in the misleading post came from a segment in the original video taken from 6’34” to 8’04”.
In this section, Debretshion says: “Those who are in power are not genuine representatives of the TPLF. They look like TPLF representatives but they are not TPLF representatives.”
“The Pretoria peace agreement was made with the TPLF,” he went on. “Therefore, the party can appoint appropriate representatives by excluding those who do not belong to the party. However, we believe that the appointment of representatives as heads of various offices should be done by consensus.”
“This issue requires a thorough discussion with the bodies that appointed the interim administration,” he added. “We need to agree on how to rectify the interim administration.”
Debretshion did not specifically mention ousting the interim administration’s head in either the original video of the press conference or in the clip shared on Facebook.
