Video of child swept up by kite was filmed in Taiwan, not India

This article is more than one year old.
Published on February 3, 2023 at 10:19
3 min read
By AFP Sri Lanka

A video showing a child swept into the air by a kite has been viewed hundreds of times in social media posts falsely claiming the accident happened in India. But the clip was filmed at a kite festival in Taiwan in 2020. Similar videos of the accident were included in coverage by local and international news outlets.

The clip was shared in January 2023 among Sri Lankan users of the messaging app WhatsApp.

One Tamil-language message shared alongside the video claims: "3 year old flies off at Ahmedabad kite festival. The child has survived".

The video has been viewed over 800 times alongside a similar claim in Facebook posts by users in India here, here and here.

Screenshot of a Facebook post sharing the false claim in India

Screenshot of a WhatsApp message sharing the false claim in Sri Lanka

The city of Ahmedabad in western India did host the annual International Kite Festival in January 2023.

But the video shared in the posts shows an incident in northern Taiwan in August 2020.

A reverse image search of the video's keyframes led to footage of the incident, taken from a different angle, published by British newspaper The Guardian on YouTube on August 31, 2020.

The Guardian video is titled "Child lifted metres into the air by giant kite at Taiwan festival".

"The unidentified girl was taking part in a kite festival on Sunday in the seaside town of Nanliao when she was hoisted several metres into the air by the giant, long-tailed orange kite."

"News reports said the girl was frightened but suffered no physical injuries in the incident."

Nanliao is a fishing port located in the city of Hsinchu in northern Taiwan.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false posts (left) and the clip published by The Guardian, with similar elements highlighted by AFP:

Screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false posts (left) and the clip published by The Guardian, with similar elements highlighted by AFP

Corresponding images of the incident were also published here by Hong Kong news organisation HK01 on August 30, 2020.

Local news outlets Taiwan News and Eastern Television also reported on the incident.

The mayor of Hsinchu at the time, Lin Chih-chien, posted an apology for the incident on Facebook on the same day.

"A kite accidentally entangled a child at the Hsinchu city government's Kite Festival in the afternoon," he said. "It frightened the child and caused bruising on the child's neck and face."

"We went to the hospital right away to seek medical attention. Fortunately, the child passed the examination with flying colours and has returned home to recover, accompanied by municipal government colleagues."

AFP has previously debunked posts that claimed the incident was filmed in Hong Kong here.

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