Trump Displays Photo to Accuse South Africa of Genocide; Reuters: It Was Taken in Congo

During a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House, US President Donald Trump presented a photo of people carrying body bags as proof of a genocide against white people in South Africa. However, Trump's claims were debunked by several foreign media, who exposed that he mistakenly used a photo from Congo to criticize South Africa.

On the 21st, in the Oval Office, Trump held up a printout and a photo in front of Ramaphosa, saying: “These (bodies) are all white farmers buried in (South Africa).”

But the photo was actually a screenshot from a video taken by Reuters in February this year in Congo.

Reuters reported on the 22nd that the image in Trump's possession was actually a scene of humanitarian workers picking up body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. It was taken from a video after intense fighting with the M23 rebels supported by Rwanda and Uganda.

Reuters released this video on February 3, and their fact-checking team has verified it.

The blog post printout shown to Ramaphosa by Trump was published by the conservative online magazine "American Thinker," involving conflicts and racial tensions in South Africa and Congo. The article did not provide a caption for the image, only stating it was a YouTube screenshot, and included a link to a video news report about Congo, noting that it was copyrighted by Reuters.

Though the White House has not responded to Trump's misuse of the photo, the executive editor of "American Thinker" and the article's author, Videnbert, admitted that Trump indeed made a mistake, but emphasized that he did mention in the article the increasing pressure faced by white people with Ramaphosa's government being obsessed with race.

The photographer, Kintani, expressed surprise: “In the eyes of the world, Trump used my image, used the footage I shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by black people.”