These images have circulated in reports about damaged roads in Bangladesh and Malaysia

This article is more than one year old.
Published on May 22, 2020 at 10:05
1 min read
By AFP Sri Lanka

Two images of dilapidated roads have been shared in multiple Facebook posts alongside a claim they were captured in Sri Lanka. The claim is misleading; one of the images has circulated since at least December 2019 in Malaysia-based social media posts; the other image has circulated since 2016 in reports about a road in Bangladesh.

The images were published on Facebook here on May 16, 2020. The post has been shared more than 2,400 times.

Screenshot of the Facebook post

The Sinhala-language text superimposed on the image reads: “A bit of the mega development carried out by the previous government, the asphalt is in the banana tree grove”.

The photos were also shared alongside a similar claim on Facebook here and here.

The claim is misleading.

A reverse Google image search for the photo on the left of the post found the image was published in December 2019 on Malaysia-based Facebook pages here and here.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the misleading post (L) and the photo published in the Malaysian Facebook post (R):

Screenshot comparison of the misleading post (L) and the photo published in the Malaysian Facebook post (R)

The photo on the right in the misleading post has circulated since at least 2016 in reports about a damaged road in Bangladesh and has been featured in social media posts that were previously debunked by AFP.

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