Image of Chilean protester tackling policeman in 2019 falsely linked to Kenyan unrest

This article is more than one year old.
Published on March 27, 2023 at 17:31
3 min read
By Mary KULUNDU, AFP Kenya

Online posts have shared a series of images showing a hooded protester tackling a riot police officer alongside claims that the scene was captured during recent opposition rallies in Kenya. The claim is false: the dramatic pictures are from 2019 and were taken during demonstrations in Chile.

On March 20, 2023, opposition leader Raila Odinga led a mass action (archived here) in Kenya’s capital Nairobi to protest the high cost of living and the election of William Ruto as president last August.

The demonstrations brought businesses to a standstill as supporters clashed with riot police.

Police fire killed a university student in western Kenya while 31 officers were injured. More than 200 people were arrested.

The same day, this tweet shared two images showing a protester tackling a police officer to the ground alongside the caption "Scenes at Nairobi CBD".

A screenshot of the false tweet, taken on March 23, 2023 ( Mary KULUNDU)

A similar claim was repeated elsewhere on Twitter and Facebook.

A TikTok account included the images in a video compilation that has been viewed more than 600,000 times. The clip calls the protester a "hero".

A screenshot of the false TikTok video, taken on March 23, 2023 ( Mary KULUNDU)

However, the images are old and unrelated to the March 2023 rallies in Kenya.

Chile protests

A reverse image search on Google revealed an AFP article from 2019 describing protests (archived here) in Chile over social inequality.

AFP Fact Check followed up with a keyword search in Spanish which led to publications (here and here) that used the photos in their articles - and featured the name of a shop in the background cropped out in the false posts.

A screenshot of the images from Chile and the name of the shop circled in red ( Mary KULUNDU)

According to the reports, the photos were taken in the Chilean city of Valparaíso at an intersection of the streets Pedro Montt and Cruz General.

AFP Fact Check also found a YouTube video that captured the scene and the surrounding buildings but from a different angle.

To confirm the location, we searched Google Maps and pinpointed the intersection. At least two buildings correspond to frames in the YouTube video.

A screenshot showing corresponding features at the intersection where the video was taken ( Mary KULUNDU)

By rotating the view on Google Maps and again matching elements like a yellow fire hydrant, architecture and part of a sign above an adjacent business, we identified the blue building in the images, before it had been repainted.

Comparison screenshots of the blue building in the pictures, left, and Google Maps

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