Unrelated clips and photos used to falsely claim 'graves of unborn infants at Indonesian school'
- Published on September 22, 2023 at 11:01
- 6 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"SHOCKING…!!! Hundreds of graves were found by workers while they were cleaning the plantation of Al Zaytun Indramayu," reads the Indonesian-language sticker text of this TikTok video, posted on August 31, 2023.
Text on the video also says the graves were filled with "the remains of aborted fetuses".
A narrator in the video says in Indonesian that "the fetus graves -- which were first found on August 19, 2023, and wrapped in a cloth -- were secured by the Indramayu local police."
More than 14,000 TikTok users have viewed the two-minutes, 18-second video, which shows a group of people and some police officers at a plot of land and interviews with police officers.
Al-Zaytun, an Islamic boarding school located in Indonesia's Indramayu regency, West Java province, made headlines when its leader Panji Gumilang was detained by police on suspicions of blasphemy and hate speech on August 2, 2023.
The school has faced backlash from conservative Muslim groups for allowing women to pray in the same row as men and to give a sermon in Friday prayers.
In traditional Islamic teaching, women are expected to pray separately from men, and the task of giving sermons in Friday prayers is reserved for men.
The video has gained more than 815,000 views after it was also shared on TikTok here, here, and here, on Facebook here, and in a video-sharing app SnackVideo here, here, and here.
While the building seen at the video's 27-second mark shows Al-Zatyun's school building, other clips and pictures were in fact unrelated to the school (archived link).
Graves of babies
A combination of reverse image and keyword searches on YouTube found the clip showing civilians and police officers digging at an empty plot of land taken from a report aired by an Indonesian local broadcaster Kompas TV on July 2, 2023 (archived link).
The original video reported on the discovery of remains of babies killed by their own father in Banyumas, in Indonesia's Central Java province.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the misleading video (left) and the original video from Kompas TV (right):
A police officer can be seen at the 1:17 mark of the false video, as the narrator can be heard saying: "The Indramayu city police chief Edi Silitonga commanded the Indramayu Police Criminal Unit to solve the case of the discovery of this grave, including to find the perpetrator."
However, the officer is in fact the South Purwokerto police chief Puji Nurochman, as identified by the Kompas TV's report at the one-minute mark.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the policeman as seen in the misleading video (left) and in the original video from Kompas TV (right):
South Purwokerto is located in Central Java province, and Puji can also be seen wearing the badge of the Central Java regional police, which is different from the insignia of the the West Java regional police, whose jurisdiction includes Indramayu (archived links here and here).
This is the comparison of the badge in the video (left), the Central Java regional police badge (centre), and the West Java regional police badge (right):
A man can also be seen at the 25-second mark of the misleading video when the narrator said: "The fetus graves -- which were first found on August 19, 2023, and wrapped in a cloth -- were secured by the Indramayu local police."
A keyword search on YouTube found that the video was taken from a Kompas TV news report about the same case, published on June 27, 2023 (archived link).
The original video is titled: "The perpetrator who buried 7 babies resulting from incest in Banyumas was arrested by the police!"
The same man appeared in the 2:18 mark of the Kompas TV video, which identified him as one of the first local residents who discovered the graves in Banyumas.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the misleading video (left) and the original video from Kompas TV (right):
Mosque incident
At the 1:46 mark, the misleading video shows a photo of a woman wearing a niqab -- or a face veil -- who, according to the narrator, was the mother whose unborn babies were found at Al-Zaytun.
A reverse image found that the image was originally a photo of a man disguising himself as a woman by wearing a veil to harass women at a mosque in Sukoharjo regency, Central Java. The incident took place in September 2019 and was posted on this Facebook account (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading video (left) and the genuine image (right):
The incident was also reported by some local news outlets here and here (archived links here and here).
The misleading video also used other pictures. Another photo of a woman wearing a face veil was taken from a November 2019 news report about an Indonesian couple arrested for an alleged link to a terrorist group, while a photo showing a police investigation is a picture from the Banyumas case, taken by Indonesia's state-run news agency Antara (archived links here and here).
West Java regional police spokesman Ibrahim Tompo told AFP that there were no graves of fetuses discovered at Al-Zaytun.
"The claim has been checked by the police. It isn't true," he said via a WhatsApp message on September 18, 2023.
AFP has debunked false claims about the Al-Zaytun Islamic boarding school here, here, here and here.
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