A photo of a man with puffy eyes and swollen lips, used as evidence of a false claim Africa Check debunked in May 2020, resurfaced on Facebook in June 2021 with another false claim. This time, it is described as showing a “Chinese man beaten in Kilimani for allegedly sending flowers to his watchman’s wife.”
Kilimani is a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
On 11 May 2020, the photo was posted with the claim it showed a “Chinese man mercilessly beaten in Kilimani for deliberately coughing in the face of a security guard”. On 11 May that year, the World Health Organization reported that Kenya had 672 confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 32 deaths.
Here’s the real story of the photo’s origins.
Stung by bees while harvesting honey
The photo first surfaced online in a now-deleted video posted on a Cambodia-based Facebook page on 1 May 2020. The video has since been deleted.
We also found the photo on a Facebook page in Thailand, posted in May 2020. It also appears in a Reddit post from a year ago. Both posts say the photo shows a man stung by bees while harvesting honey.
The photo appears to have originated in either Cambodia or Thailand, not Nairobi’s Kilimani neighbourhood. It doesn’t show a “Chinese man beaten in Kilimani for allegedly sending flowers to his watchman’s wife” in June 2021.
Republish our content for free
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?
Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.
Publishers guideAfrica Check teams up with Facebook
Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.
The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.
You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.
Add new comment