Video of a Bosnian choir's performance is falsely shared as an anthem created by the New Zealand Government. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 18, 2023
A video of a song performance is circulating on social media, claiming that it features an anthem created by the New Zealand government and performed at a Church named ‘Abadala’. Let’s find out the authenticity of this claim through this fact-checking article.
Claim: This song is an anthem created by the New Zealand government.
Fact: This video is of a performance by a choir named ‘Fatih Sultan Mehmet Choir‘ at a concert held on 29 May 2011, in Turkey. It was part of a the choirs’ concert held in the Haiga Irene Musem, Istanbul. This choir is based out of Bosnia and not New Zealand and there is no credible information to prove the claim that it was ceated by the New Zealand Government. Therefore, the claim made in the post is False.
Firstly, we thoroughly searched the internet with relevant keywords to know if the New Zealand government created and produced such an ‘anthem’. But that did not yield any credible information supporting the existence of such an anthem created by the New Zealand government with 99 special names of Allah. Apart from that, we also did not find a Church named ‘Abadala,’ which the post claims to be where this song was performed.
Thereafter, to learn more about the viral video, we took clues from it, which led to its identification and origin. The video features a text reading ‘Saraybosna Fatih Sultan Mehmet Korosu Konseri’ at the bottom right corner. A logo which reads ‘TRT Canli ‘ is also visible on the top left of the video.
Based on these hints, a search using relevant keywords led to a video titled ‘Saraybosna Fatih Sultan Mehmet Korosu Konseri – 2011-05-29,’ uploaded by the Turkish Radio and TV Corporation on their Dailymotion channel 11 years ago in 2011. The video shows a concert held on 29 May 2011 at the Hagia Irene Museum (St. Irene Church) in Istanbul, Turkey.
The performance featured the ‘Fatih Sultan Mehmet Choir.‘ The viral video is obtained from this concert video, which matches it from 4:59 Seconds to 8:28. You can see the keyframe comparison of both these videos below.
Turkish news media outlets reported this incident back then, which can be read here, here and here. The then-president of Turkey, Abdullah Gül ( 2007 to 2014 ), attended the event, and it was mentioned in his blog.
To sum up, the viral video claiming to be a New Zealand government anthem with 99 special names of Allah is actually from a concert held in Istanbul, Turkey, featuring the Sarajevo Fatih Sultan Mehmet Choir.