This footage shows a staged skit produced by a Kenyan comedian
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on June 4, 2020 at 05:30
- 2 min read
- By AFP India
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The 29-second video was published here on Facebook on May 13, 2020.
The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “This Rohingya peace messenger felt that someone had pointed a gun on him. Look at his pathetic situation.”
The video circulated online as the world continued to endure the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Temperature checks for the public using infrared thermometers have become common in many countries in Asia during the pandemic.
The video was also shared alongside a similar claim on Facebook here, here, here and here; and on Twitter here, here, here and here.
The claim is false.
A reverse image search on Google with video keyframes extracted with InVID-WeVerify, a digital verification tool, found a longer version of the video published on YouTube here on May 11, 2020.
The video was posted on a YouTube channel called Bahaliyake TV, which features skits produced and acted in by a Kenyan comedian under the stage name of Bahali Yake Mwenyewe.
The post's Swahili title translates to English as: “Swahili Version: Bahali Yake refuses to be tested and was eventually forced”.
The footage shared in the misleading Facebook posts, which begins at the YouTube video’s four-minute 37-second mark, bears the Bahaliyake TV logo in the top-right corner. AFP also confirmed that the people in the video are speaking Swahili.
A version of the same skit for speakers of Borona, another language spoken in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, was also published on the Bahaliyake TV YouTube channel here.
Bahali Yake Mwenyewe, whose real name is Hussein Yussuf, also published the skit that was shared in the misleading social media posts on his Facebook page on May 11, 2020. Here is a link to the post.
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