A three-year-old Facebook (FB) post by a Filipino netizen showing an image supposedly of 26 corrupt Chinese officials given the death sentence is being revived on social media. This is false.
The 17-year-old photo, taken on April 7, 2004 for Agence France-Presse (AFP), actually shows a “group of hardcore convicts at a sentencing rally” in Wenzhou city in eastern China, according to its image description. None were specified as government officials.
Eleven of the 26 prisoners in the image were later executed for various crimes, AFP said. This runs contrary to the FB post’s claim that all received capital punishment.
The untrue post was originally published on April 14, 2018 by a netizen, who described China’s death by “firing squad” as less severe compared to the “firing” of corrupt officials in the Philippines.
It has obtained over 11,000 shares, 2,500 reactions and over 570 comments, and continues to gain traction as of publishing. It has gotten over 191,000 views in the last 24 hours, according to a Facebook monitoring tool.
The same erroneous claim reflected in posts by other netizens had been debunked by Snopes in 2018 and Rappler and AFP in 2019.
According to the Amnesty International’s 2020 annual report released in April, China remains to be the world’s leading executioner but said the real number of the death penalty cases is “unknown as this data is classified as a state secret.”
The netizen’s false post is making the rounds on social media as tension continues to brew between the Philippines and China, with the latter insisting its “sovereignty” over territories covered by the former’s exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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