This video has circulated in reports about a man beaten to death in Taiwan in April 2020
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 18, 2020 at 06:55
- 3 min read
- By AFP Hong Kong
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The video was uploaded here to a Facebook group with more than 8,000 members on May 9, 2020.
The five-minute, 23-second footage shows a man beaten by several men wielding baseball bats in a room. Conversations in Mandarin about money issues can be heard throughout the video.
Translated to English, a warning banner, written in traditional Chinese characters, at the bottom of the video explains due to its graphic nature, “this footage has been covered so you can decide if you want to see it.”
The caption, written in colloquial Cantonese, translates to English as: “Aren’t our sau zuks who escaped to Taiwan taken care of by like-minded people? Why even…”
“Sau zuk”, literally translates as “hands and feet”, is a Cantonese slang term widely used to describe pro-democracy protesters who participated in the 2019 Hong Kong protests, as reported by local newspaper South China Morning Post here, and here by online news site Quartz.
Hong Kong’s political unrest has prompted more of its residents to consider moving to nearby democractic Taiwan since 2019, according to this AFP report.
The video was also shared alongside a similar claim here and here on Facebook.
The claim, however, is misleading.
A reverse image search using keyframes from the video in the misleading post found this May 5, 2020, report published by the Taiwanese branch of Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily.
The report, which is titled “[Torture footage leaked] Man stole $200,000 from collected debt / beaten to death by seven gang members,” states that on April 29, 2020, a 21-year-old man was beaten to death in a flat in Taipei, Taiwan, over an alleged accusation that he had stolen $200,000.
Below is a screenshot of the Apple Daily article:
The article also contains several screenshots that correspond with the video in the misleading posts.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading post (L) and one of the images published by Apple Daily (R):
Similar screenshots from the assault footage were also published in other Taiwanese news reports, including here by broadcaster TVBS News and here by news website ETtoday.
Hong Kong Economic, Trade and Cultural Office, the city’s representative office in Taiwan, told AFP in an email on May 12, 2020, that it had not received any reports of a recent incident in which a Hong Kong resident was beaten to death.
“From 1 April to today (12 May), the Hong Kong Economic, Trade and Cultural Office has not been informed by the local authorities of any death cases concerning Hong Kong residents due to assault,” the email reads.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
