A video shows Zimbabwean police beating people gathered at a church service, who were in defiance of the ban on public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A shaky video posted on Facebook on 22 March 2020 shows uniformed officers striking members of a crowd gathered in a street. “Zimbabwean police beating people out of a church #coronavirus,” the caption reads., On 17 March Zimbabwe’s government declared a national emergency to curb the spread of Covid-19, the coronavirus disease. The emergency regulations banned all gatherings, including church services., Does the video show Zimbabwean police enforcing these regulations by “beating people out of a church”?, A Google reverse image search did not return any clues to the video’s origin. So we searched YouTube for footage of police beating people in Zimbabwe, and found two clips of the same video. Both were posted in November 2019., The clips are described as showing police beating people fleeing the Movement for Democratic Change headquarters building in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. The MDC is a political party in opposition to the government., One video is captioned: “Police Brutality in Zimbabwe outside MDC HQ Harvest House 20 November 2019”., The incident was widely reported by global media. The police uniforms in the Facebook video tally with those in other videos where Zimbabwean police are identified., Supporters had gathered to listen to a speech by MDC leader Nelson Chamisa. The incident took place more than a month before the World Health Organization reported the first cases of Covid-19, in China. – Vincent Ng’ethe, , "A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”. What should you do? First, dont delete!", Click on our guide for the steps you should follow., Publishers guide, Africa Check is a partner in Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media., The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it., You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how., Africa Check is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers fighting misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic., Learn more about the alliance here., , © Copyright Africa Check 2020. Read our republishing guidelines.\xa0You may reproduce this piece or content from it for the purpose of reporting and/or discussing news and current events. This is subject to: Crediting Africa Check in the byline, keeping all hyperlinks to the sources used and adding this sentence at the end of your publication: “This report was written by Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website", with a link back to this page., We depend on voluntary donations to run this site. Please help us to keep public figures accountable by supporting the project., Find out more, For democracy to function, public figures need to be held to account for what they say. The claims they make need to be checked, openly and impartially. Africa Check is an independent, non-partisan organisation which assesses claims made in the public arena using journalistic skills and evidence drawn from the latest online tools, readers, public sources and experts, sorting fact from fiction and publishing the results., , Get a weekly dose of facts, straight to your inbox.
Zimbabwe police violence due to political gathering, not coronavirus | Africa Check