An Indian Air Force fighter jet flies over a mountain range in Leh, the joint capital of the union territory of Ladakh bordering China, on September 15, 2020. (Photo by Mohd Arhaan ARCHER / AFP) (AFP / Mohd Arhaan Archer)

Four-year-old video of Chinese air raid siren circulates in misleading posts about standoff in India's Ladakh

This article is more than one year old.
Published on November 17, 2020 at 05:00
2 min read
By AFP Hong Kong

A video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in posts that claim it shows a "super loudspeaker" that the Chinese military is deploying against Indian soldiers in Ladakh. The claim is misleading: the video is actually four-year-old footage of a Chinese air-raid siren.

The video was published here on Twitter on September 24, 2020. It has been viewed more than 230,000 times.

It shows a wheeled machine playing a loud sound as it spins.

The caption says: “The Chinese army uses this super loud speaker to play music at the Indian military camp in Ladakh! A large number of Indian soldiers’ eardrums were injured and vomiting”.

A screenshot, taken on November 11, 2020, of the misleading post.

Thousands of Chinese and Indian troops have been involved in a face-off since May 2020 in India’s Ladakh region, along the 3,500-kilometre frontier, which has never been properly demarcated.

Both countries announced a "positive consensus" had been reached in June, but tensions continue to flare between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, according to this AFP report.

Identical videos were also published on Facebook here, here and here, on Twitter here, here, here and here, on YouTube here and here, and on Reddit here, alongside similar claims.

However, the claim is misleading.

A reverse image search on Google found the same video published here on YouTube with the title “LIONKING Defender Siren” on March 30, 2016.

A screenshot, taken on November 12, 2020, of the YouTube video.

The description under the video reads: “The largest air-raid siren in the world. Produced by Taizhou LionKing Signal Co.,Ltd.”

According to Collins Dictionary, air-raid sirens are typically used as a warning to an emergency population when there is danger approaching.

Taizhou LionKing Signal Co.,Ltd. is a China-based “safety protection products” manufacturer, specialising in “various Hand operated, Industrial Motor Sirens [and] Large Electromechanical Sirens”.

The same air-raid siren seen in the video in the misleading post can be seen here on the company website.

A screenshot of the air defense alarm product from the Lion King company.

The product description reads, in part: “The defender's air defense alarm...has a wide range of applications and can be used for life-saving occasions or cable installation and wiring of power systems or anti-terrorism occasions or capture of drones.”

The misleading post was also debunked here by an Indian fact-checking organisation NewsMeter on September 29, 2020.

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