- Since the start of the coronavirus epidemic in China, many misleading images have been circulating.
- Photos or videos thus pretend to show the corpses of victims of the disease, lying on the ground of certain cities.
- 20 Minutes returns to a photo and a video of this type taken out of context.
As the milestone of 2,000 coronavirus-related deaths has been crossed in China, would the so-called "lies" of the government of Xi Jinping begin to be exposed by amateur images? This is suggested by photos and videos published on social networks and showing alleged corpses of victims on the streets of certain big cities.
A video filmed from a moving two-wheeler thus furtively reveals bodies, most of them stretched out in front of closed storefronts, which seem to extend the entire length of a street. The twenty-second sequence was viewed more than 110,000 times.
"Bags of the dead are strewn along the streets! This confirms the indications that the crematoriums are overwhelmed, and the calculations that indicate that China is hiding the death toll by counting only those in the hospital ... #Covid ー 19 ", says the text accompanying this tweet dated February 18 .
#CoronaVirus Bags of dead litter the edge of the streets! [video]
This confirms the indications that the crematoriums are overwhelmed, and the calculations that indicate that China is hiding the number of dead by counting only those in the hospital ... # COVID ー 19
pic.twitter.com/aD8wQsUCR7
In the same vein, an aerial photo - particularly viral at the end of January - of many people lying on the asphalt was presented by a Facebook page as the snapshot of a Brazilian journalist "warning the world that the real situation [in China] is completely hidden (sic) ".
FAKE OFF
In reality, this photo is completely out of context since it was taken on March 24, 2014, in Frankfurt (Germany), as we can check on the Reuters image bank.
In addition, the people lying down, far from having died, participated in an artistic project "in memory of the 528 victims of the Katzbach concentration camp", according to the legend accompanying this photograph by photographer Kai Pfaffenbach.
As for the video of the so-called “bags of the dead”, another sequence shot in the same place reveals that they are in fact people covered with sheets or blankets, some of them being in a semi-seated position, the head glued against the nearest storefront (at 0'20 in particular).
新 冠 病毒 期间 ， 深圳 施行 出入证 制度 ， 一夜之间 很多 人 睡 在 大街 上！ 暴政 猛於虎！ pic.twitter.com/ULUwmiAFIR
- 吴文 行 wenxingwu (@wuwenhang) February 12, 2020Regulated access to residential areas
This video, tweeted on February 13, explained that a "pass system" put in place by the city of Shenzhen (in Guangdong province) to fight the spread of the coronavirus forced "many people [ lacking this document] to spend the night sleeping on the street ”. Information confirmed by an article by the New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDT) television channel with the evocative title: "The brutal partitioning of the city [...] has reduced many people to the status of" urban "refugees".
We find in particular an extract from this viral sequence in the NTDT video report integrated into the article (at 0'56), which also shows the health checks carried out by the authorities at certain points of entry into the city (at 0 ' 30).
A witness quoted by NTDT indicated that the municipality had controlled access to "residential areas" for several days, with particularly strict access conditions - effectively forcing people without sesame to sleep on the street, in this city where many Chinese citizens from other regions work. And where drones participate in the filtering of motorists wishing to enter it.
World
Coronavirus: Photo of dead man on Wuhan street accused of misleading
Society
Coronavirus: Is Donald Trump telling the truth when he talks about the end of the epidemic in the spring?
- Society
- Fake Off
- coronavirus
- China