By Eliud Mutwiri
A screenshot image circulating online depicting a United Nations (UN) message to Kenya’s president William Ruto is false.
“Statement to President of Kenya: Mr William Ruto. Respect the constitution and ensure the protection of citizens’ rights. Facilitate peaceful demonstrations and uphold the principles of democracy. Any act of suppression or violence is unacceptable. Prioritize dialogue and respect human rights. The international community is closely monitoring the situation,” read the statement.
The image was first shared by a verified X (Twitter) account under the username @HonSteveMbogo with 27.2 thousand followers.
The post alleges that the said message was directed towards Kenya’s president William Ruto at a time when a young generation of protestors, now labelled Gen Z, were taking to the streets in various parts of the country including Kenya’s capital Nairobi to protest against the contentious Finance Bill 2024 which has faced a lot of opposition and led to public outcry across the East African nation.
The image is shared as part of a two-post thread on the @ HonSteveMbogo timeline. It has garnered over 812000 views, 16 thousand likes, 8000 retweets, 450 comments, and over 490 bookmarks.
It depicts that the alleged statement from the UN’s official account had 10.8 million views, 1.2 million likes, 46.6 thousand retweets and 13.4 thousand comments.
An accompanying post is a genuine photo of a joint statement of embassies and high commissioners on the Nairobi anti-finance bill protests – including the US embassy, Canadian High Commission, Embassy of Romania, etc. It was posted on the US Embassy Nairobi official X account.
INVESTIGATION
A reverse image search through Google Lens reveals that the image originated from @HonSteveMbogo and was after that shared by other X users who retweeted it (over 8,000 reposts).
Checks on the official United Nations X account show the absence of such an image or tweet.
An Advanced Twitter Search of words contained in the image returned no relevant result, and the checks on the posts made by the UN account on June 24, 2024, revealed that the statement did not exist.
United Nation’s real message
Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said that the UN Secretary-General António Guterres is ‘deeply concerned’ about what is going on in Nairobi.
During the United Nation’s daily press briefing on June 25 a little past 8 pm East African Time Dujarric said, “We are obviously looking at what is going on in Nairobi and in Kenya where the secretary General is obviously deeply concerned over the reported violence that we have seen connected with these protests and street demonstrations.”
This came as he responded to a question on why a troop of Kenyan Police officers was landing in Haiti to quell the ongoing chaos in the Caribbean country while the Kenyan police officers (who have often been linked to human rights violations) were shooting dead protestors in the streets of Nairobi, Kenya.
Stephane further pointed out that the UN Secretary-General was ‘very much saddened’ by the reported deaths, injuries, and ‘cases of targeted arbitrary detentions.’
“It is very important that the rights of people to demonstrate peacefully be upheld… It is up to authorities to ensure that those rights are respected and that all incidents of deaths in the hands of security forces be fully investigated,” said Stephane.
A day after Dujarric’s press briefing, the UN Secretary-General used his X account to call for ‘Kenyan authorities to exercise restraint’, and peaceful demonstrations in Kenya.
VERDICT
The alleged UN statement shared by @HonSteveMbogo claimed to have been published on June 24 is false as it cannot be traced back to the United Nation’s official Twitter account. The post is misleading.
It was observed that the spread of misinformation and disinformation was quite common during protests and one of the ways through which such inaccurate information is shared is through ‘doctored’ or photoshopped pictures.
The stand of the United Nations regarding the Kenya anti-Finance Bill 2024 protests that can be fully relied on and attributed to the UN is that which was delivered by the UN spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, on June 25 and the post by Guterres on June 26.
This fact-check was produced by Eliud Mutwiri with technical support from Code for Africa through the African Fact-Checking Alliance (AFCA).