This image of street art in Sri Lanka has been doctored to include the posters

This article is more than one year old.
Published on December 18, 2019 at 07:50
2 min read
By AFP Sri Lanka

An image has been shared hundreds of times in multiple Facebook posts alongside a claim it shows two men covering street art with posters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, within days of the artwork being completed. The claim is false; the image has been doctored to include the posters; AFP visited the same street art site one day after the misleading posts were published and found the mural remained intact.

The image was published on Facebook here on December 16. It has been shared more than 125 times.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:

Screenshot of Facebook post

The post’s Sinhala-caption translates to English as: “Couldn’t even keep it for a week”.

The same image was also published with a similar claim on Facebook here, here, here and here. The captions written in these posts, some of which have been deleted, claim that the covered street art is located in Nugegoda, a Colombo suburb.

Below is a screenshot of one of the other Facebook posts:

Screenshot of one of the other Facebook posts.

The post’s Sinhala-caption translates to English as: “Nugegoda art that lasted only two days / Remember, that there are wastes of space like this also living in this country”.

All of the claims are false; the image was digitally altered to include the posters covering the artwork, which is located in Dehiwala, another suburb south of Colombo.

A keyword search in Sinhala on Facebook found this post published on December 14.

It shows the same photo seen in the misleading posts without the posters.

Below is a screenshot of the image in the Facebook post:

A screenshot of the photo in the earlier Facebook post

Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo in the misleading posts (L) and the image in the earlier Facebook post (R):

Comparison between doctored image and original image.

AFP visited the same location in Dehiwala on December 17 and found that the art was still intact. Below is a photo of the mural taken by AFP on that day:

Photograph of the art taken by AFP on December 17, 2019

The creation of the street art mural was reported in this December 13, 2019, article published by Sri Lanka-based news site Asian Mirror, which stated it was painted under a flyover in Dehiwala.

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail

This image of street art in Sri Lanka has been doctored to include the posters

YouTube