Priests carry tabots, wrapped in cloth, during Timkat at Jan Meda in Addis Ababa, January 2015 (Jean Rebiffé, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) [file photo]
Facebook has removed a video of an Ethiopian Orthodox chant honoring Christian martyrs from the የቅዱስ ገብርኤል ማኅበር St. Gabriel Association page, according to details of the removal supplied to Mereja Media. Facebook said the video might show support for a “dangerous” organization but did not name one, according to the same account, which put the page’s following at more than 600,000.
The video was titled “የስጋ እንጂ የሞት ነፍስ የለም.” According to the supplied account, Facebook removed it on Nov. 7 and told the page, in wording quoted in that account, that the video “may contain symbols, glorification or support of people and organizations we define as dangerous,” citing its Community Standard on dangerous organizations and individuals.
The page has requested a review, and Facebook has said the case is under review, according to the same account.
Martyrdom is central to Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo teaching. The church honors many saints who were killed for their faith, and chants commemorating them are part of its liturgical life.
Meta says its dangerous organizations policy targets groups that “promote violence, organized crime, hate or terrorism,” and that it does not publish its list of designated organizations. The supplied removal account does not identify any organization the chant was supposedly supporting.
The same label, again
The St. Gabriel removal follows other cases in which platforms have applied the “dangerous organizations” label to Ethiopian content.
In October, Mereja TV, a U.S.-based Ethiopian multimedia organization, said TikTok had banned its account and then restored it on appeal, and that the TikTok account of Zegabi Media TV anchor Eyerusalem Tesemma remained down and YouTube had suspended Wamera Media’s channel, Mereja Media reported at the time. Eyerusalem wrote on X on Oct. 17 that TikTok had banned more than 400 Amhara creators in a single day, a figure Mereja Media could not independently confirm.
Mereja TV said the platforms had accused the outlets of supporting “dangerous organizations” without naming any organization and without advance warning. When Mereja Media asked TikTok and YouTube about the actions, a TikTok communications lead replied that the team was investigating the accounts, and YouTube’s owner, Google, sent only an automatic acknowledgment.
Mereja Media says Meta has not restored its own Facebook page, which it says had more than 4 million followers and a 12-year archive.
Meta’s past limits in Ethiopian languages are also documented. Internal Facebook documents reviewed by Rest of World in 2021 show the company acknowledged in 2020 that it then had insufficient moderation capacity in Amharic. In a 2021 decision, Meta’s Oversight Board recommended that Meta commission an independent human rights assessment that would examine, among other things, whether its language capabilities in Ethiopia were “adequate to protect the rights of its users,” and publish it in full.
Advocates say the fix is not complicated: Engage independent Ethiopian media organizations (such as Mereja Media) and content creators for input and feedback, publish error rates by language, and give page owners a real appeal in which a human reads the content before a label like “dangerous organization” is attached to a church or a legitimate news organization.