This video has circulated in reports about a scuffle outside the Malaysian Parliament in 2016

This article is more than one year old.
Published on January 21, 2020 at 05:30
2 min read
By AFP Malaysia

A video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in multiple Facebook posts in 2019 alongside a claim that it shows residents clashing with a Malaysian politician and police over a land redevelopment project in Kuala Lumpur. The claim is false; the footage has circulated in reports since 2016 about an altercation outside the Malaysian Parliament after the minister targeted in the video allegedly used an insulting slur.

The one-minute, 57-second video was published here on Facebook on November 12, 2019. It has since been viewed over 332,000 times and garnered more than 3,700 shares.

The footage shows Federal Territories Minister Khalid Abdul Samad being escorted through a hostile crowd by police.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:

Screenshot of misleading Facebook post

The post’s Malaysian-language captions translated to English reads:
“IT’S DIFFICULT IF THE CITIZENS ALREADY BECAME ANGRY.....
THAT IS JUST A LITTLE BIT......
DON’T POKE THE BEE’S NEST....

“Federal Territories Minister Khalid Samad wants to sell Kampung Baru KL land.. Without negotiations..he should be beaten and scolded by its residents..embarrassing PH minister DAP clone..”

Khalid is also MP for the city of Shah Alam.

The caption refers to the efforts by Khalid and the Malaysian government to purchase a parcel of land in Kuala Lumpur from its current residents, as reported here by Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times on October 25, 2019.

The video has also been shared with a similar claim in Facebook posts published here, here and here.

The claim is false; the footage has circulated in reports since 2016 about an altercation outside the Malaysian Parliament.

The scuffle seen in the video reportedly broke out after Khalid addressed another politician as “menteri sial”, which can loosely be translated from Malay to English as “damned minister”.

The same footage was published on November 23, 2016, by The Star Online, a Malaysian media outlet, in a YouTube video titled: “Angry mob sets upon Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad over ‘sial’ slur.”

Below is a screenshot of the video in the misleading post (L) and the video from The Star Online (R):

Screenshot of the video in the misleading post (L) and the original video from The Star Online (R)

The video’s caption reads: “Security personnel protect Amanah Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad from an angry mob, believed to be supporters of Umno Pasir Salak MP Datuk Seri Tajuddin Abdul Rahman, outside the entrance of the Dewan Rakyat on Thursday. The incident was believed to be a result of Khalid calling Tajuddin ‘menteri sial’ on Monday.”

The caption also references Tajuddin Abdul Rahman, the Member of Parliament and at that time the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry, who Khalid addressed with a slur.

At one point in the video, a man can be heard shouting in Malaysian “Pasir Salak lives” and “Tajuddin lives.”

“Pasir Salak”, a town in western Malaysian Peninsula, is Tajuddin’s constituency.

The incident was also reported by Malaysian newspaper the New Straits Times on November 24, 2016, here.

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