A video has been viewed more than one million times in multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok which claim it shows people in Italy chanting “Allahu Akbar” and seeking “help from Allah” during the coronavirus pandemic .
People can be heard on the video chanting the shahadah, which translates to English as\xa0“There is no god but God, Muhammad\xa0is the Prophet of God”, as well as\xa0Allahu Akbar, which means “God is great”., Translated from Indonesian-language to English, the tweet reads:\n\t“Italy chanted the takbir..\n\tAllahu Akbar\n\tAllahu Akbar\n\tAllahu Akbar\n\tYaa Allah please help us..”, The English text superimposed on the clip reads: “ITALY PEOPLES STRAT ASKING HELP FROM ALLAH/ YA ALLAH PLEASE HELP US”., Below is the screenshot of the misleading post:, Italy first reported the first cases of the novel coronavirus disease of COVID-19, in late January 2020. As of April 22, 2020, COVID-19 has killed more than\xa024,000 people\xa0and infected more than 184,000 others in the country, according to this WHO tally., The\xa0video was also shared\xa0alongside a similar claim\xa0on YouTube here and on Facebook here, where it has been viewed more than 9,400 times., The clip has also garnered more than 1.7 million views after it was posted on TikTok here with a similar claim in English., The claim is false., A Google reverse image followed by subsequent keyword searches found the same video published on YouTube here on January 14, 2020., , The video’s German-language title translates to English as: “11.01.2020 Uyghur demo in Hamburg”., Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip in the misleading post (L) and the video on YouTube (R):, Hamburg-based radio and TV broadcaster NDR published this report about the rally on January 11, 2020. Translated from German to English, the report’s headline reads: “Protest against oppression of Uighurs”., "The\xa0articles\xa0first two paragraphs\xa0read: “Around 2,000 people in Hamburg-St.Georg staged a demonstration against the oppression of the Uighur ethnic group in China. According to the police, the rally was peaceful.", “Intelligence service warns of Islamists\n\tThe Hamburg Intelligence Service (Office of Protection of the Constitution) had warned on Friday that the demonstration was being organised by Islamists. The banned organisation Hizb-ut-Tahrir, according to the service, is hidden behind the organiser ‘Generation Islam’. It was trying to gain new followers with popular, non-extremist topics, the service said.”, According to the report, the rally started at Steindamm then moved to Gerhart-Hauptmann-Platz., Other German media, including Suddeutsche Zeitung and Welt, also published reports on the protest., Photos of the rally can also be seen here on Getty Images., Below is a screenshot comparison between scenes in the YouTube video (L) and the corresponding location on\xa0Google Street View (R), with similarities circled in red by AFP:, , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This video shows a rally in Hamburg -- it has circulated online since at least January 2020 | AFP Fact Check