BBC Amharic Exposed Abiy Ahmed’s Fake News Army, Busy Spreading False information and Stories of Defamation of Regime Opponents.
According to an investigative report by the BBC, the media army is scrambling to portray itself as a popular regime, with mass support.
It took the BBC three months to produce this investigative report. Abiy Ahmed’s regime has an elaborate, but crude, social media campaign strategy which is extensively used by Abiy Ahmed and his top officials, to deceive and mislead public opinion. Information coming out of the palace, indicates that Abiy has made it mandatory to “like and share” information posted by him.
Now, an investigative report has been released by the BBC that exposes the regime in this regard. As the investigation report confirmed, the regime’s social media army is working hard to make it look like Abiy Ahmed has huge public support.
He also uses social media to persecute those who oppose him. The BBC confirmed that the efforts to build the image of the Prime Minister in a false way, are well studied and meticulously coordinated.
The BBC report also stated that Addis Ababa’s district administrators are also involved in this social media campaign. The report observed that this social media army is being dispersed throughout the administration to prop up the image of the regime, hide its abuse of power, and to spread defaming information about its opponents.
Beyond these sinister efforts, the regime’s media army has been seen to actively work to confuse people by spreading fake news. For instance, the report reveals how this media army tried to defame Abune Petros by deliberately spreading information that he will not return when he leaves the country. The fake news about the Pope has been posted 1,400 times.
In addition to this, the army was made to spread a series of false information in an article exposing the former Minister of State for Peace, Taye Dandea. This investigation confirmed that this order came from the top of the regime, AbiyAhmed. The BBC report observed that Abiy Ahmed also uses this media army to sometimes target even the leaders of TPLF.
Additionally, this media army works on spreading false and embarrassing information about people who post articles against the regime, by using hate speech.
This regime social media group has a huge budget allocated to it, and its operatives are very well paid.
The release of this BBC report after the regime’s top advisor, Daniel Kibret, made negative comments about Ethiopian regime opponents living abroad, yesterday, has brought more focus to the issue.
This is not the first time that international journalists have revealed the secret operatives in the regime. It should not be forgotten that three months ago, in a six-month investigation by Reuters, it exposed how the regime has organized a deadly killer group, called Qore Negegna. The regime has so far refused to respond to the issue.
