China’s policy of “mosque consolidation” has closed or demolished hundreds of mosques in Xinjiang province. But the video wasn’t shot there.
MARY ALEXANDER • 22 FEBRUARY 2024
“The Chinese government destroying another mosque,” reads the caption of a short video clip doing the rounds online in Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and elsewhere since 7 February 2024.
It continues: “The Chinese Communist Party has been focusing on mosques as part of its crackdown against the Muslim Uyghurs.”
The clip shows an earth-mover pulling down a minaret, the mosque tower used to call Muslims to prayer.
The Uyghurs are a Turkic people mainly found in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the country’s only province with a Muslim majority.
With a population of about 11 million in Xinjiang, and more spread worldwide, Uyghurs have a distinct language, culture and history and tend to belong to the Sunni branch of Islam.
In 2014 China’s ruling Communist Party launched a campaign of persecution against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim communities in Xinjiang.
Reports on the now 10-year-old campaign, ramped up in 2017, include allegations and evidence of arbitrary detention, disappearance, rape, forced sterilisation, torture and confinement to labour camps, as well as bans on Uyghurs speaking their language and practising their religion.
Then, in 2023, news of China’s “mosque consolidation” policy emerged. Under the policy, hundreds of mosques in the north of the country have been closed, demolished or converted to other use.
The viral claim can also be seen here, here, here, here and here.
But does the clip really show “another mosque” being destroyed by Chinese authorities?
Minarets damaged by quakes pulled down in Turkey
Social media comments challenge the claim, saying the clip was filmed in Turkey, the Middle Eastern country also known as Türkiye.
We ran frames from the video through Google Lens, which finds exact matches to images online.
This led us to two March 2023 media reports from Turkey, which straddles the divide between Asia and Europe.
Both include longer versions of the video, shot in the city of Adana in southern Turkey. It’s described as showing the damaged minaret of a mosque being torn down after earthquakes.
On 6 February 2023 two massive earthquakes, just nine hours apart, ripped through southern Turkey and the north of neighbouring Syria. More than 47,000 people were killed.
According to machine translation of one report, 150 minarets in Adana started to pose a danger after they were damaged in the quakes, and were demolished one by one.
The video shows an earthquake-damaged minaret being pulled down in Turkey, not an Uyghur mosque being destroyed by the Chinese government.
* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.
Published by Africa Check on 28 February 2024