In July, violence flared in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as a rebel group known as M23 began again clashing with the Congolese army. The conflict gave rise to a wave of activity online – but some contained false information used to incite even more division and tension. In this episode of Truth or Fake, we took a closer look at a few examples of this misinformation with one of our colleagues from the media CongoCheck.
The 23 March Movement (M23) is a Tutsi-led rebel group active in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After being defeated in 2013, M23 resurfaced in late 2021. Amid increasing violence in the border zone, DR Congo has accused Rwanda of backing the rebellion and fostering instability.
Against this backdrop, the hashtag #RwandaIsKilling began trending on social networks in late July. The hashtag was used to share posts accusing Rwanda of waging war in the eastern DRC.
But often, the posts under the hashtag fueled divisions using misinformation. We spoke to Dandjes Luyila, a journalist with the fact-checking media CongoCheck, to see how his team went about separating the fact from the fiction.
Watch the video above to see how misinformation from both the Rwandan and Congolese sides attempted to incite further tension – and what this tells us about the conflict in the DRC.
