No, this photo does not show a Japanese professor claiming Indonesian presidential challenger Prabowo won the 2019 election

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 28, 2019 at 06:30
2 min read
By AFP Indonesia

A photo has been shared in multiple Facebook posts which state it shows a Japanese professor claiming that Indonesian presidential challenger Prabowo Subianto won April’s election. The claim in the posts is false: the photo has been doctored from an AFP photo of a Japanese porn actor.

The photo was shared in this Facebook post on June 22, 2019.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:

Screenshot of misleading Facebook post

The Indonesian-language caption translates to English as: “Prof. Tokuda (84) smiles as he shows the data of fraud committed by the KPU. He says that ‘Prabowoはディックを持っていません’ (Prabowo wa Dikku o motte imasen) which means Prabowo is a powerful tiger who is yet to awake.

“He shows that Prabowo, with 61% of the vote, is the real winner of Indonesia’s election, defeating Jokowi (38%). Furthermore, he also puts the hashtag #PrabowoWithoutDick2019 at the end of his document.

“For those who don’t know, Prof Tokuda is a democracy expert in Japan. Since he was a child, he has felt guilty because his grandfathers and grandmothers colonised Indonesia in the past. In his old age (84 years old), he wants to help Indonesia so that it won’t be colonised by China. May he live long and stay healthy, Amen.”

KPU refers to Indonesia’s General Elections Commission. Jokowi is the nickname of President Joko Widodo.

Prabowo lost the April 2019 election to Jokowi, according to final results announced by the KPU on May 21. Here is an AFP report about the result.

An AFP journalist in Tokyo translated the Japanese-language part of the caption, “Prabowoはディックを持っていません”. It actually means “Prabowo Without Dick” – the same as the hashtag.

The same photo and claim were also shared on Facebook in a post archived here, which has since been deleted.

Despite the satirical tone of these posts, neither was shared by pages that identify themselves as satirical. The captions also do not clearly say that the post is satirical. An archived version of a similar Facebook post here shows it was published in a public group for Prabowo supporters.

The claim is false; the image has been doctored from a photo of a Japanese porn film actor.

A reverse image search on Google and a keyword search found the original photo published here on the AFP Forum website.

Below is a screenshot of the original AFP photo:

Screenshot of the original AFP photo

The photo caption states: “A 74-year-old porno video actor Shigeo Tokuda smiles as he shows an advertisement poster of his video at a Tokyo video shop on March 5, 2009. Tokuda might look like an average Japanese grandfather but appearances can be deceiving, he is the country's king of elderly porn, a fast growing niche market in this greying society. AFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO.”

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