Clip shows bulldozed Indonesian theme park, not Chinese mosque
- Published on October 18, 2025 at 10:29
- 2 min read
- By AFP Thailand
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
China has long faced scrutiny over its treatment of Muslim communities and religious sites, but a video circulating online of an excavator tearing down a building resembling a mosque is unrelated to Beijing's crackdown. The clip in fact shows the demolition of an illegal structure at an amusement park in Indonesia.
"China officially declares Islam as a mental illness," read superimposed text on a now-deleted TikTok video shared on October 6, 2025.
The 45-second clip showed an excavator knocking down a domed building that looked like a mosque.
Rights groups allege that China has detained more than a million Muslims, mostly Uyghurs, in a network of facilities in Xinjiang that are rife with violence, torture, forced labour, political indoctrination and other abuses (archived link).
Beijing vehemently denies the accusations, and says the facilities were voluntarily attended training centres that closed years ago after attendees "graduated".
According to a report from the nonprofit Human Rights Watch in 2023, the Chinese government has also reduced the number of mosques in Ningxia and Gansu provinces -- both areas with significant Muslim populations -- under a "mosque consolidation" policy (archived link).
The video of the mosque-like structure being torn down has circulated with a similar claim as early as March. It resurfaced in October across various languages including English, Greek, Portuguese, and as part of a compilation in Burmese.
AFP has previously debunked posts sharing the same video with the false claim it shows India knocking down a mosque. In reality, the clip shows an illegal structure at an amusement park in Indonesia.
A reverse image search of keyframes from the video found a higher quality version of the same clip on TikTok on March 8, 2025 (archived link).
The Indonesian-language caption reads: "The second day of the dismantling of the Hibisc tourist attraction in Puncak Bogor".
The caption also includes a disclaimer in English stating that the building is an "Indian style building in a fantasy park", not a mosque.
Hibisc Fantasy Park was an amusement park in Puncak, a mountain pass in Indonesia's West Java province, which has been permanently closed since March 2025.
A now-deleted longer video of the demolition was shared on Facebook on March 14, 2025.
According to a local news report, West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi had ordered the demolition of unlicensed structures at the Hibisc Fantasy Park after flooding in early March 2025 killed three people (archived here and here).
The development of the park had disrupted the natural forest cover in the area, contributing to the floods, the governor had said.
The structures seen in the circulating video correspond to those visible in archived images of the Indonesian theme park uploaded to Google Maps.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
