Unrelated clips shared with false claim they show 'protest against top Indonesian politician'

This article is more than one year old.
Published on July 13, 2023 at 11:24
5 min read
By AFP Indonesia

A video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in posts that falsely claim it shows residents of Indonesia's East Java province protesting the visit of House Speaker Puan Maharani. But the clips featured in the video are old and have previously appeared in unrelated news reports about an election protest, a fuel hike demonstration and an interview with Puan.

"East Java residents objected to Puan Maharani's visit and expelled the PDIP entourage," reads the Indonesian-language sticker text overlaid on this video posted on TikTok on April 4, 2023.

The thumbnail of the seven-minute 25-second long video shows text that partly reads: "East Java residents are united to expel Megawati's daughter from East Java."

The caption says: "Praise be to God, East Java residents are smart... when will this happen in Central Java????"

The video has been viewed more than 191,000 times.

Screenshot comparison of the misleading post, taken on July 10, 2023

The video shows street protesters and House Speaker Puan Maharani -- daughter of Megawati Sukarnoputri who chairs Indonesia's ruling party PDIP -- surrounded by journalists (archived link).

At the 13-second mark, a male protester can be seen saying to the camera: "Because of that, we object and condemn and we call for the East Java regional police not to issue a permit."

The same video has racked up more than 288,000 views after it was posted elsewhere on TikTok here and here, on Facebook, and Snack Video here and here.

The posts circulated in Indonesia in the leadup to the archipelago's presidential and parliamentary polls in February 2024.

Puan, one of PDIP's senior politicians, is running in the parliamentary elections (archived links here and here).

In the 2019 legislative elections, PDIP won the second most votes in East Java province behind coalition partner PKB and reaped the largest number of votes in the neighbouring Central Java (archived link).

The video shared in the posts, however, shows unrelated clips from old events.

Election protest

Keyword searches found the scenes that show protesters and the male protester being interviewed previously appeared in a report posted on the YouTube channel of local media Tribunnews on August 24, 2018 (archived link).

According to the Tribunnews report, a group of university students protested in Surabaya, East Java province, calling the police not to give a rally permit for the "Change the President" event, which sought to defeat the incumbent Joko "Jokowi" Widodo in the 2019 presidential election.

Jokowi was re-elected for his second and final term in the vote (archived link).

Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and the Tribunnews report (right):

Screenshot comparisons of the video in the misleading post (left) and the genuine video from Tribunnews (right)

The same protester can be also seen in this photo from the rally (archived link).

Fuel hike

Using a combination of reverse image and keyword searches on Google and Yandex, AFP found the protest scene shown from the 19-second mark of the video in the false posts matches footage published on the YouTube channel of media outlet iNews on September 13, 2019 (archived link).

The footage reportedly shows students and workers protesting the rise of fuel prices in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, on the same day.

Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and the iNews report (right):

Screenshot comparisons of the video in the misleading post (left) and the genuine video from iNews (right)

AFP has geolocated the video to this street in Jakarta (archived link). The Indonesian capital is located in the western part of Java island, hundreds of kilometers away from East Java province.

Puan interview

A reverse image search of keyframes using the verification tool InVID-WeVerify found the clip of Puan talking to journalists has circulated since at least October 2014 (archived link).

A similar scene was captured in this AFP picture. According to the photo's caption, it was taken after Puan was sworn in as coordinating minister for human development and culture at the presidential palace in Jakarta on October 27, 2014.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and its corresponding frame in an October 2014 YouTube video (right):

Screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading post (left) and the genuine YouTube video (right)

The video in the false posts also includes snippets from podcasters, such as Refly Harun, who commented in September 2022 about Puan's facial expression while distributing T-shirts in West Java province, and Saeful Zaman, who in May 2021 talked about political parties forming a coalition with PDIP (archived links here, here and here). They did not mention anything about Puan's visit to East Java.

There are no credible reports about any protests opposing Puan's visit to East Java province as of July 13, 2023.

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