A video (here, here and here) claiming to be a clash between protesting farmers (here and here) in India and the police over the minimum support price has gone viral on social media. The translated caption from Hindi reads, “There is a fight going on in the farmers’ movement; today’s true news is horrifying”. This article will fact-check the claim made in this video.
Claim: The video shows a clash between protesting Indian farmers and the police.
Fact: The video actually shows a simulation exercise for the Indonesian police conducted in the Sula Islands, Northern Maluku. Therefore, the claim made in the post is False.
To verify the viral claim about the video, a search for news reports on a clash between the police and protesting farmers was conducted. The search did not yield any recent news reports with visuals matching the alleged clash in the video.
Next, a reverse image search was executed on a few keyframes from the video, which led to several Indonesian articles (here, here and here) featuring visuals similar to those of the viral video. These articles referred to the video as a security preparation simulation exercise for the Indonesian police in Sula Islands, Northern Maluku, in anticipation of the 2024 elections.
The simulation exercise reportedly contained low to high-level escalation scenarios. The goal was to train the police officers in various security activities.
One of these articles included a clearly visible banner that exactly matches the one seen in the viral video.
Upon translating the Indonesian text on the banner, it read, ‘SISPAMKOTA SIMULATION, Dobra Rugba, SECURITY OF THE 2023 2024 ELECTIONS IN THE JURISDICTION OF THE SULA ISLANDS POLICE.’
A further internet search led to the discovery of Facebook and YouTube videos (here, here, here and here) of the same event that featured the same banner seen in the viral video.
To sum up, the viral video is not related to the Indian Farmers’ protest but is a police simulation exercise from Indonesia.
