In the context of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, celebrated on 09 August every year, a video depicting a massive crowd gathered in the streets around a building is being widely shared on social media claiming that the footage shows the crowd assembled on 09 August to commemorate this day. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals of a massive crowd gathered to celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People on 09 August 2023.
Fact: The Video is taken on 09 July 2022 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Visuals show demonstrators protesting inside the Presidential Secretariat (Old Parliament building) premises, Colombo, after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled, amid the country’s economic crisis. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Conducting a reverse image search on the keyframes extracted from the viral video revealed that the same video had been uploaded on YouTube on 09 July 2022. The video portrays visuals of protesters taking over the Sri Lankan old parliament building during the 2022 Sri Lankan protests.
Similar visuals regarding this incident were reported by National and International media outlets (here, here, here, and here). According to these reports, on 09 July 2022, demonstrators protested inside the Presidential Secretariat (Old Parliament building) premises, Colombo, after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled, amid the country’s economic crisis.
However, on 09 August 2023, people belonging to various tribal communities celebrated the International Day of the World’s Indigenous across India and around the world. Some of these visuals can be seen here, here, and here.
To sum it up, visuals from the 2022 Sri Lankan Protests are being circulated as those of a crowd gathering for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People on 09 August 2023.
