By Soyome Getachew
Claim: A Tiktok account shared a video claiming Fano militiamen, an armed group in the Amhara Regional State fighting against the Ethiopian government, shot down a helicopter.
Verdict: False. The content was taken from a YouTube channel that produces short military related video games.
A TikTok account with a name Usergojjameeempire, who has 12.6K followers, shared a video with an Amharic text that reads: “Fano can do it, the game has become with BM [BM maybe wrongly referring to BM-21, a self-propelled 122 mm multiple rocket launcher]. Brave. That’s why Birhanu Jula [Ethiopian Field Marshal who is the current Chief of General Staff of the Ethiopian National Defense Force] said we do not have the capacity, and thus, we do not want to fight the Fano” (see screenshot below).
The shared video by “Usergojjameeempire” has received more than 8500 likes and has been shared more than 1230 times.
However, the video used by the account does not support the claim.
MFC used two approaches to verify the claim: (a) observation and (b) use of verification tools.
Observation
After examining the original footage, MFC noticed that the person seen in the video with soldier’s outfit was not what the Fano militiamen often seen wearing.
Verification Tools
MFC also used the InVid and WeVerify tools to verify if the video had been posted before. The verification led to finding the claimed content from Milsim Tower, a YouTube channel. The channel, which has 483K subscribers, features numerous artificially generated short videos that are related to military, particularly those showing attacks on helicopters (see screenshot below).
Thus, the claimed video by the TikTok account holder was taken from the Milsim Tower channel, which garnered 24K likes (see screenshot below).
Based on the collected evidence, MFC verdict the video that was shared by “Usergojjameeempire” claiming Fano militiamen shot down the helicopter is False.
Context to the Claim
In April 2023, the Ethiopian government announced a plan to integrate Amhara Special Forces and the Fanos into its federal police and military. This announcement unleashed a widespread protests and unrest in the Amhara Regional State.
The crisis escalated in April 2023 when the federal government ordered the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) to take action against what it said “extremist” elements after “unidentified” armed groups killed Girma Yeshitla, the Head of the Amhara Prosperity Party.
Then, the armed conflict escalated in August 2023, when Fano militiamen took control of several cities and towns in the Amhara Regional State. The Ethiopian government responded by deploying the ENDF to retake the cities. Although the ENDF claimed it has recaptured most of the major cities, there have been still frequent clashes between state security forces and Fano militiamen, and the situation remains volatile.
