This video shows a special police unit in Congo-Brazzaville, not Uganda’s People Power Movement
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on December 7, 2020 at 10:58
- 3 min read
- By AFP South Africa, Tendai DUBE
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A Facebook post from November 19, 2020, shared a video showing uniformed men using martial arts to disarm a group of people wielding machetes.
“People power fooling themselves that they have power. See how they are handled like grasshoppers,” the caption reads.
The account holder who posted the video cites Rukungiri in western Uganda as their home town.
Uganda has been mired in violence ahead of the scheduled presidential election on January 14, 2021, which pits Wine against long-serving President Yoweri Museveni. The 38-year-old leader of the People Power Movement has become a lightning rod for Museveni, who is seeking a sixth term.
Since entering the political fray in 2017, Wine has been repeatedly detained, his concerts are routinely banned and public rallies have been broken up with teargas.
The latest deadly protests, covered by AFP here, erupted after Wine was briefly arrested ahead of a political rally in early November.
The Facebook account holder details his political views as “Museveni paka life”, which appears to be derived from Museveni’s campaign slogan “Museveni paka last”, a Swahili phrase meaning “Museveni president for life”.
“Paka” can be loosely translated as “until one’s last breath”.
Not a video from Uganda
Using video verification tool InVID, AFP Fact Check did a reverse image search of several screenshots of the 15-second video and found multiple versions dated April 2019, for example here on Reddit.
Comments on the Reddit post indicate that the video depicts a training exercise, but without specifying a location.
Our search also revealed this debunk in French by fact-checking organisation Data Cameroon, which found a longer version of the video. This 35-second version of the video shows a second man with a steel pipe also being disarmed as well as a cameraman filming the altercation.
“La Police congolais. Bsir Brazzaville toujours présent,” reads part of the caption in French, which translates to “The Congolese Police. Bsir Brazzaville always present”.
Towards the end of the video, the uniformed men with vests labelled “police” or “BSIR” are seen piling into a blue truck with the logo “BSIR - Brigade Spéciale d'Intervention Rapide”, or “Special Rapid Intervention Brigade”.
A basic internet search of “BSIR” led to a Facebook page by the same name, categorised as “armed forces” and described as “Brigade spécial d'intervention rapide, Police national du Congo”.
Other pictures shared on the page show men wearing the same uniform and the same blue trucks seen in the video. The logo also appears as the header on the page. Many of the photos are tagged Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, as seen in the image below.
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