Misleading: Video shows violent dispute in Guangdong, not recent assault in Tangshan
【點擊查看本文中文版】By Priscilla Chan
A tweet on June 11 contained a video supposedly showing the widely reported brutal attack against four women in a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan a day before.
The tweet claimed in Chinese that the video clip was removed from Weibo and said the women were killed in the incident, adding such hashtags as, when translated to English, “Tangshan assault” and “punish the perpetrators severely.”
The video has been viewed over 41,000 times as of this writing. The same video and some screenshots displaying the same clip were also uploaded on Douyin with similar claims and hashtags.
However, the tweet is misleading.
This video has nothing to do with the violence that sparked public outrage in China. Also, none of the women was killed in the Tangshan incident, either; media reports say two were taken to the hospital but are now in a stable condition.
The video clip in question posted on Twitter actually shows an incident where a man was beaten up by a group of men before accidentally getting run over by a car driven by his friend in the city of Lianjiang in Guangdong on Feb. 20, 2021.
Annie Lab found the same video posted on Guangdong Radio and Television Network (GRTN) and China Press on Feb. 20, 2021, and Feb 21, 2021, respectively.
GRTN reported a dispute occurred near the entrance of a bar in Lianjiang over car scratches.
A group of men attacked a man and hit his head multiple times.
The victim’s friend tried to drive the mob away using a car but accidentally hit the victim instead, according to the news report.
The Lianjiang City Public Security Bureau issued a notice on Feb 20, 2021, and said eight attackers were involved in the incident.
The victim was taken to the hospital but eventually passed away. Other news outlets such as Hebei Youth Newspaper and Xiaoxiang Morning Herald also reported about the incident with screenshots of the same video.
In the Tangshan incident last week, nine men assaulted four women right after one of the men got slapped for making sexual advances on one of the women.
All nine have been arrested, according to a statement issued by the Tangshan Public Security Bureau Lubei District Branch on June 11.
Annie Lab found that the widely circulating graphic video inside the restaurant is still available on various social media platforms including Weibo as of this writing.
Disclaimer: Although faculty members at the Journalism & Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong have done everything possible to verify the accuracy of the story, we cannot guarantee there are no mistakes. If you notice an error or have any questions, please email us.
Originally published at https://annielab.org on June 14, 2022.
