A video has been viewed thousands of times in multiple Facebook posts which claims to show the Koran being distributed to people in China after it lifted a “ban” on the Islamic holy text following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
It has been viewed more than 5,300 times., The 56-second video shows books being distributed to people in a queue., Below is a screenshot of the video in the misleading Facebook post:, The video caption reads: “Earlier banned Holy Quran in China. After Carona Virus transmitted, now China people take Muslim to read Holy Quran”., COVID-19\xa0has killed more than 18,589\xa0people and infected more than 416,686\xa0others worldwide, according to data from the\xa0WHO\xa0on March 26, 2020., The video was also published here, here, and here on Facebook, and here on YouTube, alongside a similar claim., A similar claim was\xa0also made in this and this Arabic Facebook post; as well as in\xa0this and this Malay Facebook post., --Wrong context--, The claim is false. The video has circulated online since at least 2013 and shows Bibles being distributed to people in China., A Google reverse image search using keyframes extracted from the video found identical videos published here, here, here and here on YouTube\xa0between March and May 2013., Below is one of the videos that was uploaded on YouTube in April 2013:, , Translated from Spanish to English, the title reads: “Christians in China are excited and cry when they receive Bibles for the first time”., A further keyword search found screenshots of the video published on multiple Christian news websites, including the Gospel Prime here\xa0and\xa0Breaking Christian News here\xa0in March 2013, and the Christian Post here\xa0in January 2014., Below is a screenshot of the Christian Post article, which claims the video was taken in the 1980s:, "The first paragraph reads: “In this video from the 1980s, Christians in China receive the Bible for the first time. As the box of Bibles is opened, these believers rush to hold in their hands what theyve long hoped for: Gods written words. They clutch their new Bibles as if they dont ever want to let them go, and judging from the exultant joy and emotional gratitude in the room, they probably dont.”", Below is a screenshot comparison of a screenshot of the misleading video (L) and the image used in the the Christian Post report (R):, -- Persecution of Muslims in China--, As of March 2020, the Koran was not "banned" throughout China.\xa0It was listed for purchase in online Chinese shops, including here., But restrictions on religious freedoms in China vary from region to region. Most notably, in recent years, the Chinese government\xa0has implemented a crackdown on Muslim\xa0Uighurs\xa0in the\xa0Xinjiang region.\xa0In 2017, authorities passed "anti-extremism" regulations that critics denounced as discriminatory against Muslims, as reported by AFP here., Upwards of one million mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in the region are held in camps, according to estimates cited by a UN panel in 2018., Washington-based media Radio Free Asia reported here in September 2017 that Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have ordered Muslim families to hand in religious items, including copies of the Koran and prayer mats to the authorities., , , 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 has circulated online since at least 2013 and shows people receiving Bibles | AFP Fact Check