Videos falsely claiming to show a Chinese military crackdown against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong have flooded social media over the past week, according to an AFP investigation that has debunked multiple posts.
The videos, which have been viewed millions of times, have compounded fears about China’s potential intervention into a two-month crisis that has seen increasingly violent confrontations between protesters and Hong Kong’s police.
Some of the false posts appeared shortly after a Chinese defense ministry spokesman last week highlighted during a press conference a law that allows troops to be deployed across Hong Kong at the request of the city’s government. An op-ed in the state-run Global Times the very next day, however, appeared to temper that ominous suggestion, arguing that such a move was untenable, and that instead local police should merely “get tough” with pro-democracy protesters.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has maintained a garrison in Hong Kong since the former British colony was returned to China in 1997, but those troops generally keep a low profile and are rarely seen in uniform in public.
And while various senior Chinese government officials and Hong Kong’s leaders have voiced outrage at the protesters, city authorities have also repeatedly denied that PLA troops have been deployed.
AFP has, however, detected posts on Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, and other social media platforms with millions of views or interactions that claim to show masses of Chinese soldiers on foot and in tanks across Hong Kong.
“For your own safety all the HK residents are asvised [sic] not to go to public places and sea sides for next 48 hrs and avoid gatherings as PRC army is taking control of HK,” said one purported Hong Kong government announcement posted on Facebook five hours after the Chinese defense ministry’s comments on July 24.
The Hong Kong government has issued no such announcement. And the video used in the post to purportedly show the crackdown was actually of Chinese military vehicles driving through Kowloon in 2018.
In another piece of misinformation that emerged within hours of the Chinese defense ministry spokesman’s comments, a tweet shared footage of PLA troops walking at a train station alongside a claim they were “entering Hong Kong.”
By Tuesday afternoon, the video had been viewed more than 1.4 millions times.
AFP found the video was actually filmed on the Chinese mainland.
Other videos posted on July 24 had the same claims of Chinese troops “entering Hong Kong” while using video from other situations to mislead.
Footage of armored vehicles rolling through the streets of Kowloon was shared on July 24 with a claim that “Communist Party’s troops entered and garrisoned Hong Kong” — but the video was from 2012 and actually shows a routine PLA troop rotation.
Meanwhile, video of uniformed police expertly subduing a flag-waving “mob who rushed into a military camp” is actually old footage of a South Korean riot police training.
Hong Kong’s Basic Law, which outlines the situations under which PLA troops can be deployed in the city, states that the local PLA garrison “shall not interfere in the local affairs of the Region. The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region may, when necessary, ask the Central People’s Government for assistance from the garrison in the maintenance of public order and in disaster relief.”
The heightened paranoia appears to cut both ways. In recent weeks, pro-Beijing figures and social media accounts have circulated photos of purported foreign agents they claim are behind the city’s unrest.
Most recently, multiple Facebook posts and local media reports have shared an image they claim shows a “foreign commander” giving pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong information about police movements.
https://twitter.com/austinramzy/status/1155672656043073538?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1155672656043073538&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffactcheck.afp.com%2Fman-photo-works-new-york-times-and-messaging-journalists-not-protesters
The same image has been published in reports by local Hong Kong media, for example Ta Kung Pao, and also published by other media such as Wen Wei Po and Sing Tao.
The claim is false; the man in the image is actually Kevin Roche, an employee of the New York Times, who was photographed communicating with other Times journalists covering the July 28, 2019 protest.
The name Ezra Cheung can be seen on the smartphone screen in the misleading image.
Ezra Cheung, who describes himself on his Twitter profile as a “part-time reporter @nytimes” tweeted about the incident on July 29, 2019, saying the claims were “fake news.”
A New York Times spokeswoman confirmed in a statement to AFP that Roche is employed by the newspaper and was communicating with a reporter at the time.
