A video claims to show an Eid prayer in China in December 2019.
The four-minute 32-second video shows people performing an Islamic prayer in front of a mosque., Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:, The video’s Indonesian-language title translates to English as: “VIRAL!!! Non-Muslim Chinese citizens joined a Friday prayer so not to be infected by coronavirus.”, "The videos caption translates to English as: “Afraid of being infected by coronavirus, they joined the Islamic prayer though they did not know how to do it. May this become a medium for the coming of a guidance, oh God”.", The outbreak of the novel coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, has killed almost 1,800\xa0people and infected more than 70,000 people across China since it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, AFP reported here on February 17, 2020., The same video has been viewed more than 2.5 million times after it was posted with similar claims on Facebook here\xa0and here, on Twitter here, and on YouTube here\xa0and here., The claim is false; the video actually shows an Eid prayer in the Chinese eastern city of Yiwu, which attracts Muslim traders from overseas, in June 2019, before the novel coronavirus outbreak., A reverse image search using a keyframe from the video in the misleading posts and a subsequent keyword\xa0search on Google found a longer version of the clip\xa0in this\xa0Facebook live video dated June 5, 2019., , The 36-minute and seven-second video was posted on a Facebook account belonging to Facebook user\xa0Mak Mohamed., Below is a screenshot of the Facebook video:, "The\xa0posts caption reads: “Eid prayer in China, Yiwu, Zhejiang province”.", Yiwu\xa0is a city located in China’s eastern coastal province of Zhejiang., It is famous as a trade hub that attracts foreign Muslim businesspeople and traders, as reported by The Guardian here\xa0and Australian broadcaster SBS here., “Eid” in the caption refers to Eid al-Fitr, a major Islamic festival that marks the end of the Ramadan, the fasting month, and is celebrated with a communal prayer on the first day., Chinese-state run Xinhua News Agency reported here\xa0that Muslims across China celebrated Eid al-Fitr on June 5, 2019, the same day Mohamed posted the video on Facebook., "A man can be heard\xa0speaking\xa0Malayalam language\xa0to the camera at the beginning of the Facebook live footage.\xa0His comments translate to English as: “Im at the Eid prayer at this mosque in China’s Yiwu. Im doing this live because I keep hearing people raising doubts on religious freedom – whether Muslims, Christians and Hindus are allowed to practice their religious beliefs in China. Here, roads are blocked, policemen are around and people are allowed to offer prayers even on the road. Dont even see such a sight in Muslim countries. Im not going to explain a lot but this is to correct the misunderstanding that many people have (about China).”", The Chinese government has been accused of detaining the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in hundreds of detention camps in Xinjiang, in China’s far west, and pressuring them to give up tenets of their faiths such as praying, as reported by AFP here\xa0and here., The footage in the misleading post starts at the 2:27 mark in the Facebook live video., Below is a screenshot comparison between video in the misleading post (L) and the original video (R):, The street view of the Yiwu Mosque can be seen here\xa0on Baidu Maps, and corresponds the scenes seen in the video., Below is a comparison between the mosque from the misleading video (L) and the Yiwu Mosque on Baidu Maps (R). AFP has circled some prominent features in red., , 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.
The video shows an Eid prayer in China in June 2019 -- months before the coronavirus outbreak | AFP Fact Check