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  • 2019-03-13 (xsd:date)
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  • No, this photo does not show 'mistreated' Rohingya children (en)
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  • A photo of children hanging by their hands from metal bars has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook alongside claims it shows mistreated Rohingya children. The claims are false; the photo has circulated widely online since 2012 in multiple Chinese and English-language press reports about child gymnasts in China during a training session. This Facebook post, published February 27, 2019 and shared more than 250 times since, shows young boys in underwear hanging on horizontal metal bars. The post’s caption says, in Indonesian: Do you really want our children to be mistreated like these Rohingya children? This is what will happen if we ever allow the Communist to be in power. The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim minority. Here is a recent AFP story on the Rohingya. Below is a screenshot of the misleading post: Screenshot of misleading Facebook post The same image has also been shared here on Twitter with a caption that says in English: Burma Muslim and here in a Facebook post, published on February 26, 2019, and shared more than 1,500 times since, with a caption in Bengali that says: Where are the global human rights bodies? Where are the global courts of justice? Where is UN? Where are the Muslims of the world? Where the world's human rights workers? Have they gone blind? Why are they silent? Allah, you judge them. This is a question for the Muslims. The pain of these innocent kids is unbearable. I rest this case not in international court but in Allah's court. What do you people think? A reverse image search found that the photo actually shows young gymnasts training in the city of Nanning in southern China. The photo appeared in this online report published by the Daily Mail on August 1, 2012, and headlined: Torture or training? Inside the brutal Chinese gymnasium where the country’s future Olympic stars are beaten into shape. Below is a screenshot of the Daily Mail article: Screenshot of the Daily Mail article with the original photo The image and others used in the report were credited to Barcroft Media , a British media company based in London. Basit Umer, Barcroft's India bureau chief, said the photos were taken in China. These pictures were supplied by one of our Chinese partner agencies for syndication, he told AFP. The same photo also appeared in Chinese media reports from 2012, for example here , here and here , published on August 2, 2012, on the website sohu.com, one of the most popular news portals in China. The headline of the sohu.com report, translated into English, says: Chinese children's gymnastic dreams, children train their arms. The text says, in part: In a gymnasium in Nanning, Guangxi, a group of adorable children have been sent to this sporting school by their parents since a young age to train their gymnastic skills, in order to realise their dreams of becoming a part of the national gymnastics team. Tang Huiji, the photojournalist credited for the images in the sohu.com article, told AFP he had taken the photos in China. Yes, that’s a picture I took in Nanning Stadium in 2003, he told AFP by phone. Below is a screenshot of the sohu.com report: Screenshot of the Sohu.com article with the original photo. Indonesia in 1965 banned communism and the Indonesian Communist Party, which was blamed for an attempted coup in the same year. President Joko Widodo, who is seeking re-election in elections in April, has repeatedly been accused of being a communist sympathiser – something he has denied many times. Here is an AFP story on next month’s polls. (en)
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