A video has been viewed hundreds of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter alongside a claim it shows an Italian woman who committed suicide after contracting COVID-19.
The post’s simplified and traditional Chinese caption translates to English as: “Too horrible to see, non-hospitalized patients with novel coronavirus pneumonia in the United States choose to jump into the sea; while some in Italy suffering from that illness with neither money nor food! And they all choose to commit suicide, the old mother saw her daughter hanging outside the balcony. How sad!, "This is the free Lord worshipped by the foreign country\s brown-nosers. Is the United States that great and full of happiness? Free speech? Human rights and freedom? And even air is fresher there than that in China?”, Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:, The video\xa0also includes an Arabic voiceover that translates to English as: “Oh lord... oh lord, tell her she should not pull the rope, tell her... look, look at her mother, Lord have mercy, we must call the ambulance, God is great, God is Great, call the ambulance Wassim.”, The video was also shared alongside a similar claim\xa0on Facebook here, here and here Facebook, and on Twitter here., The claim is false. A reverse image search using keyframes extracted from the footage found this longer version of the video published on Facebook on May 21, 2019., , The post’s Arabic caption reads in English: “I brought you the video of Leila, committing suicide”. The same footage as the video shared in the\xa0misleading posts\xa0can be seen from the one-minute 31-second mark\xa0to the end of the clip., Below are screenshot comparisons of the footage in the misleading post (L) and the video published in May 2019 (R):, The longer version published in May 2019 also shows a production crew speaking to the women in the video and film equipment on the set., Below is a screenshot of the video’s 24-second mark showing a boom microphone and a crew member crouched on the balcony:, A subsequent keyword search found\xa0this YouTube video, which was published on May 25, 2019. It shows footage of the film set from a different angle., , The YouTube video’s headline, which is written in both French and Arabic, translates to English as: “Wlad el Halal series, Behind the scene ALGERIA / WLAD EL HALAL 2019 BEHIND THE SCENE”., Wlad el Halal is an Algerian television series that aired in 2019. Full episodes can be seen on YouTube here., The dramatic scene that appears in the misleading social media posts was\xa0not included in the final version of the series that aired on TV and online., It was, however,\xa0discussed in this YouTube clip of Télé Trend, an entertainment programme on the Arabic TV channel Dzaïr TV. The hosts describe the footage as a leaked scene., The video’s Arabic headline translates as: “Last episode of Wlad el Halal series on Télé Trend”., , The same misleading claim about the video was also debunked by AFP in Arabic here., , , 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 scene that was filmed for an Algerian TV drama in 2019 | AFP Fact Check