Old Video From Indonesia Shared as 'Violence Against Uyghur Muslims in China'

This video dates back to 2017 and is from Indonesia, not China.

Fact-check: An old video from Indonesia is going viral to falsely claim that it shows Chinese police beating Uighur Muslims.

(Photo: The Quint)

[TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE]

A video showing policemen violently beating up a man is going viral on social media to claim that it shows Chinese authorities hitting an Uyghur Muslim.

An archive can be seen here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)

What's the truth?: This video has been on the internet since 2017 and is from Indonesia.

• It shows an Indonesian soldier beating up an alleged thief.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video on a Russian search engine, Yandex.

• This led us to a YouTube video shared on 15 July 2017 and the title suggested that Indonesian National Armed Forces was dealing with a "gangster" in the same video.

• Taking a cue, we performed a keyword search in Indonesian language using 'Indonesian National Armed Forces beating gangster' (Tentara nasional Indonesia memukuli gangster) on Google.

• This led us to a report shared by Tribun Medan on 24 March 2017.

• The report carried the viral video and stated that the man who was being thrashed by the army personnel was allegedly attacking the public and attempting theft in Indonesia.

This report is from 24 March 2017.

(Source: Tribun Medan/Screenshot altered by The Quint)

• We also noticed 'PKD' written on the helmet worn by another officer in the video and we found out that it stands for Petugas Pengamanan Dalam or Internal Security Officer.

• We compared the image of the helmet to a picture of the guards found on Wikimedia Commons.

Comparison between the two.

(Source: WC Screenshot altered by The Quint)

Further, WebQoof team reached out to Purnama Ayu Rizky, Managing editor of an Indonesian magazine, Magdalene, who told us that this video is from Indonesia.

"That's an incident from 2017. The video shows an Indonesian soldier beating up a thief at Depok Baru train station because he was caught stealing repeatedly and disturbing passengers. So, it's not a video about Uyghur torture," she added.

Conclusion: An old video from Indonesia is going viral to falsely claim that it shows Chinese police beating Uyghur Muslims.

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