A photo (here, here) showing a billboard where a few men are seen defecating openly with text on the image that says ‘Beaches are not toilets’, is going viral on social media. The claim accompanying the photo states that the Canadian government is erecting these posters across various municipalities with higher Indian population, asking Indians not to defecate openly. We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The Canadian government erected posters across the country asking Indians not to defecate openly.
Fact: The viral photo is an an edited image. The original poster originates from Ghana, Africa. It is part of an anti-open defecation campaign. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To evaluate the truthfulness of this viral claim, we performed a reverse image search on the viral image. This search led us to the original version (archived page) of the billboard on the stock image website Shutterstock.
The caption of the photo revealed that it was taken in May 2018 in Accra, Ghana, Africa. The person depicted in this billboard completely differs from the man seen in the viral photo, and there is no Hindi text on the original billboard. We also searched the internet to check if the Canadian government has launched any such campaign, but could not find any relevant information to validate the claim. This makes it clear that the original billboard from Ghana has been edited to match the false claim.
Further research uncovered news reports (here and here) from 2018 providing context for this billboard placed in Ghana. According to a report (Archived page) by Graphic.com, the billboard is part of a ‘stop open defecation’ sanitation campaign sponsored by the Canadian government.
To sum up, the viral claim stating that the Canadian government erected posters requesting Indians not to defecate openly is False. The original billboard is from Ghana, Africa, and is part of an anti-open defecation sanitation campaign.
