On March 24, Facebook page Psha Vela published the post claiming that Nobel Laureate Dr. Dénis Mukwege refused to work in the COVID-19 response team and stated that the reason was the assignment given to him demanding every disease or death to be attributed to coronavirus, more particularly to coronavirus “Plandemic”, which means that pandemic was pre-determined.
Psha Vela’s post is disinformation, the statement doesn’t belong to Denis Mukwege, the real reason for resigning from the post was the ineffectiveness of the developed strategy to counter coronavirus. A fake quote of Mukwege alleging that he was ordered to attribute every death to coronavirus has been circulating online since June 2020.
Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege had been the president of the COVID-19 Response Health Commission in South Kivu province, Republic of the Congo until June 10, 2020. On June 10, the Panzi Foundation founded by him published the information about his resignation.
Mukwege named two main reasons for his resignation, one of them being lack of PCR tests in the province and thus, a long period necessary for diagnosing, while the second reason was the population’s skepticism towards pandemic and the violation of quarantine measures. Mukwege also noted that the prevention strategy he developed on April 11, 2020, wasn’t effective and couldn’t contain the virus outbreak due to the aforesaid two reasons. In addition, there were unresolved organizational challenges within different responsible agencies.
In his statement, Mukwege also mentioned his future plans and said that he would dedicate the whole energy to his medical practice at Panzi Hospital
There’s no mention of “Plandemic” or any order to attribute all death cases to coronavirus in Mukwege’s letter about resignation.
The English text similar to the fake statement disseminated by Psha Velas has surfaced online a few days after Mukwege’s resignation, Mukwege has responded on Twitter and wrote that statements posted in his name but not appearing on web-pages or social media accounts of organizations associated with him doesn’t belong to him and are false.
Reuters fact-check team has prepared an article about the dissemination of fake account on social networks.
Dr. Denis Mukwege is a Congolese gynecologist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in medicine in 2018 for his effort to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict and for the treatment of women who have been raped by Congolese rebels.
As seen on the photos attached to Psha Vela’s post, the information was taken from one of the Instagram accounts, particularly netramok.
Such information can no longer be found in posts published by this account.
About the source
As for the Facebook page Psha Vela, registered as a personal blog, one more account with the same name and identical profile found on Facebook has socrates.greek indicated in the URL, the account has no photos that would identify the person behind it.
Psha Vela Facebook account and the page publishes anti-vaccination posts with identical content. The latter frequently share posts from fake Facebook account Lasha Modebadze about coronavirus-related conspiracy theories and the harmful nature of a vaccine, indicating a possible connection between the two.
Psha Vela’s Facebook page was created on October 18, 2020, the same day Psha Vela’s Facebook account uploaded the first photo.
Psha Vela’s channel can be found on Youtube that has 12 videos translated and voiced by the author. It’s interesting that the identical videos are voiced in Russian and Georgian by the same person.
Videos mostly have anti-vaccination content, the first video was uploaded on August 26, 2020, even though the channel itself was created on July 8, 2019.
In the video, Roberto Petrella disseminates various disinformation about the coronavirus vaccine. See detailed information about the video in the article prepared by “Myth Detector”:
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What Disinformation is Spread about COVID-19 Vaccines and Who Links Influenza Vaccination to Coronavirus Victims?
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