Photo of Covid lockdown protest in Sweden falsely shared as 'anti-Biden rally in Finland'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 28, 2023 at 10:38
- 3 min read
- By AFP Thailand
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The photo was posted on Facebook on July 14, 2023.
Translated to English, its Burmese-language caption says, "Finnish people are protesting US President Joe Biden claiming the United States is a country that creates wars."
The photo has been shared with a similar claim on Facebook here, here and here.
NP News, a pro-junta Burmese news outlet, used the photo in a report about Biden's visit to Finland and also shared it on Telegram.
The posts circulated shortly after Biden arrived in Helsinki on July 12 for a meeting with the leaders of Finland and other Nordic countries following a NATO summit in Lithuania.
Finnish public broadcaster YLE reported the visit sparked protests in the capital against Biden and the establishment of NATO bases in Finland as the country became the newest member of the alliance (archived link).
However, the photo has been shared in a false context.
Covid lockdown protest
A reverse image search on Google, followed by a keyword search, found the photo was taken during an anti-lockdown protest in the Swedish capital Stockholm in March 2021.
The picture was published on the AFP Forum website here credited to Henrik Montgomery -- a photographer from Sweden-based TT News Agency -- and AFP (archived links here and here).
"Demonstrators face police as they take part in a protest in Stockholm on March 6, 2021 against the measures taken by the Swedish government to fight the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic," the photo's caption reads.
"The protests were disbanded by police due to lack of permit for public gathering. When faced with police, the protesters started marching north toward downtown Stockholm."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo in the false posts (left) and the photo on AFP Forum (right):
The picture was published by Reuters in a report about the Covid-19 protest in Stockholm, also credited to the same photographer (archived link).
Other photos from the anti-lockdown protest were published by AFP on the same day, with a pair of male protesters appearing in several pictures here, here and here.
Below is a screenshot of a 2021 Stockholm protest photo on AFP Forum:
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
