This video shows Dutch police officers detaining a woman in the Netherlands

This article is more than one year old.
Published on March 6, 2020 at 08:30
2 min read
By AFP Hong Kong

A video showing police officers violently subduing a woman on a street has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter, Weibo and YouTube. The post was published alongside Chinese text which claims it was filmed in the United States. The claim is false; the video actually shows Dutch police detaining a woman in the Netherlands.

The video was published here on Facebook on February 23, 2020. It has since been shared more than 400 times.

The two-minute 33-second video features simplified Chinese subtitles which translate to English as: “See how the American police enforce the law. Looks far more powerful than that of Chinese police. American human rights? Human rights are restricted. Police will still beat and arrest even though passers-by take photos. Passers-by hide far away. The United States has democracy, while its law is enforced strictly.”

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

Screenshot of the misleading video

The video was also shared online in mid-2019, alongside a similar claim, as Hong Kong experienced widespread political unrest. The posts suggest that Hong Kong police are far more gentle than their US counterparts. Examples can be seen on Facebook here, and on Weibo here and here.

Similar footage claiming the incident shows police in the US was also published on Facebook here and here, on Twitter here in 2018, on Weibo here in 2019, also on YouTube here in February 2020.

The claim is false.

Reverse image searches of keyframes extracted from the video found this article published on June 1, 2018 by Rijnmond, a Dutch media news organisation.

The Dutch article's headline translates to English as: “Police respond to video crackdown”. It features video and photos that correspond to the footage shared in the misleading post, and reports that the incident occured in Stadhuisplein, a popular night spot in Rotterdam.

Below is a screenshot of the article:

Screenshot of the article

A subsequent keyword search found this official statement from the Dutch police which states the incident happened in Stadhuisplein on the night of May 30, 2018.

“Aggressive drunk couple arrested on Stadhuisplein,” the statement is titled.

The statement goes on to describe the incident captured on video, noting that the woman “was pushed by one of the agents and fell to the ground” and later “hit a cop in the face.” The arresting officer, the statement adds, “used violence” to subdue the woman.

The incident sparked controversy and accusations of excessive force by police, according to this report published by Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad on June 1, 2018.

Google Street View imagery of the Stadhuisplein in Rotterdam also matches the video shared on social media.

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