A video viewed thousands of times in Nigeria and shared in multiple Facebook posts claims to show police in Spain rounding up people aged 50 and above to transfer them to quarantine centers amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The post’s caption reads: “This is the situation in Spain. Picking up all 50 years old and above from the streets and dumping them into police vans like animals to take them to be quarantined in centers (sic).”, The nearly five-minute video shows uniformed men brutalising and forcing people on the street into police vans., The clip appears alongside a similar claim in other Facebook posts published here and here in Nigeria as well as elsewhere in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Uganda. AFP has debunked a similar claim published in India here., Footage from 2019, The claim is false; the video clip was shot in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku during an unrelated incident., AFP ran a reverse image search using key frames extracted from the video and found\xa0a version with the same footage uploaded on the YouTube channel of Berlin-based Azerbaijani news network Meydan TV on October 21, 2019 -- weeks before the virus struck., The video’s Azerbaijani-language title translates to English as: “Images of police violence and insults to protesters”., , "The videos caption\xa0translates to English as: “Authorities and YAP officials claim that police did not use violence during the October 19 rally. We have collected images of violence for you during the action. Follow, decide for yourself. Share it so that it reaches the official bodies, maybe they took measures.” YAP is the abbreviation of Azerbaijans ruling New Azerbaijan Party.", The police actions during the Baku protests were widely covered by international organisations, including US-based campaign group Human Rights Watch., Governments across Africa and beyond have imposed travel restrictions and declared lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19, which has infected more than a million people and caused\xa0more than 50,000 deaths globally, as reported by AFP 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 was shot in Azerbaijan in October 2019 during an anti-government protest | AFP Fact Check