COVID-19: Old Video from Azerbaijan Shared as Lockdown in Spain

The video is from the Baku protests in Azerbaijan which took place in October 2019.

A video of police detaining people is being circulated on social media with a claim that it shows the situation of lockdown in Spain.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

CLAIM

A video of police thrashing and detaining people is being circulated on social media with the claim that it shows the situation of lockdown in Spain.

“This is the lockdown in Spain. You guys in India are lucky. You just get caned,” the claim reads.

An archived link of the post can be found here.

Screenshot of the Facebook post.(Source: Facebook)

The video is also being shared on Twitter with the same claim.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

TRUE OR FALSE?

The Quint can confirm that while the video has not been altered in any way, the claim with which it is being circulated in absolutely false. The video is neither recent nor from Spain. It is in fact from Baku in Azerbaijan where the police detained protesters in October 2019.

WHAT WE FOUND

A reverse search using one of the keyframes of the video directed us to multiple links from 2019 which suggested that the video is from Azerbaijan.

Further, we noticed that the video carried a watermark of Toplum TV, which operates from Baku, Azerbaijan.

Taking a cue from here we ran a Google keyword search using terms “Azerbaijan Police detains protesters”. This helped us find the video uploaded by BBC Azerbaijan on YouTube.

We were able to identify several frames that confirmed that the two videos are indeed from the same instance.

Screengrab from the viral video (left) and screengrab from the BBC video (right)(Source: BBC/Screenshot)

Screengrab from the viral video (left) and screengrab from the BBC video (right)(Source: BBC/Screenshot)

According to the video, the incident occurred at Baku where the police detained 60 people during a rally at the National Council Centre on 19 October 2019.

As per a report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “The protest was organised by the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF), an umbrella group of Azerbaijani opposition groups, and was not authorised by the authorities.”

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