Uganda election: False claims about Joe Biden and others

ujangsolih (16)in #news • 4 years ago

With Uganda's elections due in January, there's plenty of misinformation being shared in a heated campaign which has seen serious violence.

President Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, is facing a challenge from 11 candidates, amongst them a young musician known as Bobi Wine.

Some of the misinformation about the campaign involves fabricated content, and in some cases videos taken out of context.
Our first example is a widely-shared video clip, with social media users claiming it shows US President-elect Joe Biden at an event calling for the release of Bobi Wine (real name Robert Kyagulanyi).

Some even claim it shows Mr Biden endorsing him in Ugandan elections.

The grey-haired white man speaking in the video can be heard saying: "We all care about the freedom to exercise our own religion. We all stand together, we need democracy in Uganda."

But the man speaking is not Joe Biden, and the video is two years old.

We traced it back to protests by Ugandan pro-opposition groups held in various cities around the world after Bobi Wine was detained in August 2018.
This particular event was held in Boston, and the man speaking is Nick Carter, a Democratic politician who was contesting a local election there.

He can be heard about three minutes into the video, seeking support from the local community for his bid for a place on the Massachusetts Governor's Council.

We also checked with Mr Biden's media team, who told us: "The president-elect has not tweeted or issued a statement on the matter [the current elections in Uganda]."

They said the most relevant tweet on Uganda was one from Mr Biden in October 2019 on the issue of LGBT rights there.

And Barack Obama hasn't joined in either
Last month, former US President Barack Obama started appearing in pro-opposition content on social media.
Mr Obama can be seen in posts with the hashtag #FreeBobiWine, apparently under his own Twitter handle.

But there's no record of Mr Obama posting such a comment on that day, despite the screenshot indicating the tweet got nearly a million re-tweets.

It also shows a minor spelling mistake with the word "iPhone" incorrectly using an initial capital letter.

And the blue tick which would indicate an authenticated account is white.

The screenshots look similar to tweets prepared using a popular free online tool for fabricating tweets.

#freebobiwine

4 years ago in #news by ujangsolih (16)

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