Coronavirus: Video from Indonesia shared as wet food market in China’s Wuhan

by Jignesh Patel

In the backdrop of the coronavirus outbreak in India, one Daya Ram Meena tweeted a 44-second video clip showing a dead python kept out in the open in unhygienic conditions. “*चाईना का वो मार्केट जहां से कोरोना वायरस की शुरुआत हुई। देखिए कि जहां राक्षस भी इनके खानपान मार्केट में घुसने पर घबरा जायें (The market in China from which coronavirus originated. Even a demon will feel nervous getting inside their food market -translated)”, said Meena while posting the video.

The video is getting shared on Twitter and Facebook alike since February 2020.

Video from Indonesia

With a keyword search on Facebook, we found a longer version of the same video, which is close to five minutes long.

Whuan market. China, place of origin of the #Corona virus..

Posted by Laxman Singh Dev on Friday, 31 January 2020

At the very beginning of this video, one can spot the text – Pasar EXTREAM Langowan. We then performed a keyword search on Google and found a high-resolution YouTube video posted on July 19, 2019.

In one of the frames at around 20 seconds in the above video, we see a board which reads, “Kantor Pasar Langowan”. In Indonesian, it means ‘market office Langowan’. The “Langowan market” is a traditional market where wild animals are sold for consumption. It is located in Minahasa Regency of Indonesia’s North Sulawesi.

We corroborated the location with two more videos (1, 2) of the same market uploaded by the YouTube channel Dog Meat Free Indonesia, a global campaign calling on the Indonesian government to end slaughter, trade and consumption of dog meat.

TRT shares footage from Indonesia market as Wuhan’s

In the course of our research, we also found that Turkish media outlet TRT also used the scenes (at 32 seconds in the video) of the same Indonesian market while saying, “Coronavirus are fairly common in species of animals but this specific virus was traced back to a seafood market in the city of Wuhan where a number of animals are sold illegally”. This video was tweeted on January 30, 2020. The outlet had sourced the visuals from a YouTube clip which identified this market’s location as Wuhan, China. It was uploaded on January 27, 2020.

A video of an Indonesian market is being circulated on social media with the claim that it shows the ‘wet market’ of China’s Wuhan province where the coronavirus seems to have originated. It was also picked up by an international Turkish media outlet and broadcasted as “Wuhan’s seafood” market.

About the Author

Jignesh is a writer and researcher at Alt News. He has a knack for visual investigation with a major interest in fact-checking videos and images. He has completed his Masters in Journalism from Gujarat University.