The truth is the best propaganda: Ethiopian Embassy Photoshop Fails

Written By: Kassahun Addis

The regime in Addis Ababa and its diplomatic missions around the globe spend more time bedeviling members of the Diaspora opposed to the lack of democracy in Ethiopia. While they should be working to promote the interest and safety of citizens abroad, they spend resources spying on individuals, dividing communities and fundraising. This is on top of unofficial import export business most embassy officials are engaged in.

The original picture

The photoshopped picture in the tigraionline.com article

This short piece is to put further light on how low these embassies go to achieve their goals. A picture caption of a story published on Tigraionline.com by the Public Relation head, Tsehaye Debalkew, of the embassy ask "What evidence do you want more than a picture?" (See the article written by Ato Tsehaye, an official working for Ethiopian embassy in DC, USA )

How far will the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC go to taint everyone opposed to the systemic and gross violation of basic human rights in the country as hate mongers, Eritrea loving, power mongers? Well, the answer is they will use basic paint program from their desktop and do amateurish Photoshop of pictures showing Ethiopians rallying against the Saudi abuse of their fellow country men and women.

Ato Tsehaye Debalkew accuses what he calls the “few Diaspora" of “character assassination." The irony is that he, and the office he represents, manipulated a picture, or used manipulated picture, to assassinate the characters of the "few Diaspora" Then to add insult to our intelligence, he captioned it "What evidence do you want more than a picture?"

I wouldn't have been surprised if sharing of this fake picture was only circulated in social media. Apparently there were already 50+ shares of this picture. Well, that is unregulated sphere and anyone can do anything. But coming from an official, spokesperson, of the embassy and carried by tigraionline, a semi official website, I felt obliged to put this together.