Old photo recirculates in hoax about 'stabbings at polling sites in southern Taiwan'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on January 15, 2024 at 09:19
- 4 min read
- By Carina CHENG, AFP Hong Kong
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The false claim was shared in a Facebook post on January 13, 2024. It shows a screenshot of a report by Taiwanese news site My Formosa that has since been removed from its website.
"[Breaking] A series of knife attacks in Tainan on the polling day! Witnesses were scared: the scene was bloody and the suspect escaped," reads the headline written in traditional Chinese text.
The screenshot appears to show a cropped image of a topless man covered in blood alongside several other smaller images of knife wounds to various body parts.
The claim circulated as millions of voters cast their ballots in Taiwan's presidential and legislative elections on January 13, a poll closely watched as China steps up its rhetoric over the self-ruled island.
Voters spurned Beijing's repeated calls not to vote for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) Lai Ching-te, delivering a comfortable victory for a man China's ruling Communist Party sees as a dangerous separatist.
Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory and has never renounced force to bring it under its control, responded to Lai's victory by saying it would not change the "inevitable trend of China's reunification".
The same screenshot alongside the same false claim was shared on X here and here before the posts were deleted.
Police in Tainan city -- traditionally a DPP stronghold -- told AFP that there were no stabbings reported at its polling stations on election day (archived link).
"Up to now, all polling sites in the city are in good order, with police officers on duty at all times to maintain the safety of the voting public, and there have not been any violent knife attacks as rumoured on the Internet," Tainan City Police Department said.
Facebook users shared a link to the false report by My Formosa -- which now redirects users to the site's homepage -- here, here and here.
My Formosa told AFP in a January 15 email that they "immediately took down the story" after learning it was not true and reported their source -- a post in a Telegram channel -- to the police.
China stabbing
AFP also found the main image shared alongside the false claim was old.
A reverse image search using the photo of the wounded man led to a news report published on September 15, 2016 by a Chinese state-run media outlet Haixia News about a stabbing at an internet cafe in China's southeastern Fujian province (archived link).
The report includes an uncropped version of the photo in the false posts, showing a wounded man with a bloodied face and a bandage across his left eye.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image shared in the false posts (left) and the photo in the Haixia News report (right):
Content warning
AFP could not find a source for the other three images, but there is no evidence they relate to knife attacks in Taiwan.
My Formosa's original report stated the knife attack claim and photos were shared on a Telegram channel.
AFP found the Telegram messages have since been deleted from the channel. They were written in a mix of simplified Chinese characters -- used in mainland China -- and traditional characters used in Taiwan.
"In the morning, my husband and I went to the polling station to vote. While we were queuing up, a white van came from nowhere and stopped at the entrance of the polling station, and then a dozen men rushed out of the van, each with a knife in hand. They attacked people at random," one message read.
"We are afraid to go to the polls again. Tainan folks should really be careful today," another message continued.
AFP has debunked other false claims about the Taiwanese elections here and here.
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