Video has circulated in reports years before the COVID-19 pandemic
This video has circulated in reports since at least 2015 -- years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
(AFP) A video of people climbing down a building has been viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp alongside a claim it shows shoppers attempting to flee a shop after police discovered it had flouted Pakistan’s coronavirus lockdown. The claim is false; the footage has circulated online since at least 2015 in reports about a police raid in Karachi, Pakistan.
The three-minute two-second video has been viewed more than 13,000 times after it was published on Facebook on May 4, 2020.
The post’s Urdu-language caption translates to English as: “#Admin. This is Tariq Road, Karachi where women were shopping. Police sealed the shop for violating the lockdown.These women had hid themselves in the storage of the shop. After the police left, they came out from the balcony. My dear mothers and sisters, sale was going on downstairs why did you go upstairs.”
The video’s title in romanized Urdu reads: “This will happen, if you do shopping during the lockdown.”
Various lockdown measures have been implemented in Pakistan since March 2020 in a bid to curb the spread of COVID-19. The government eased its nationwide lockdown on May 9, 2020, allowing businesses to reopen in phases in an effort to alleviate the economic burden on daily wage earners and labourers.
The footage has circulated online in reports about a police raid in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2015. It was published by a private news channel on June 13, 2015.
