On March 9, a video of a child being beaten circulated on social media, linking it to ongoing events in Syria. In the video, a man’s voice can be heard, and he is seen striking the child multiple times. The video is captioned, “Genocide of Christians and Alawites is taking place in Syria.”
The circulated video, depicting the beating of a child, is not related to the events that recently unfolded in Syria; it is dated September 2024. The man seen in the video is the child’s father, and according to media reports, he beat his child because the child went to visit their mother after the parents’ divorce.
An identical video was posted on September 3, 2024, on the Arabic Facebook page “North Syria News.” According to the post, the video shows a father brutally beating his child for visiting his divorced mother. The page also reported that the father was arrested by the military police.
Media outlets reported the incident. The Arabic outlet Hawar News Agency, which focuses on Syrian affairs, reported that the video was filmed in the city of Azaz. According to the media, the father beat his child because she visited her mother without permission.
The video was also analyzed by the Arabic fact-checking platform Misbar. According to the facts presented in their report, the video is not related to the ongoing clashes in Syria. It depicts a father abusing his child and was filmed in 2024.
On March 6, clashes broke out in Syria between supporters of the current government and those of former President Bashar al-Assad. The conflict has resulted in significant human casualties. According to the March 9 data of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 973 civilians were killed within a few days. The United Nations has verified 111 deaths but believes that the real death toll is much higher.
Amid the ongoing violence in Syria, visual manipulations are widely spreading on social media. Often, old photos and videos are falsely linked to the recent violent events in Syria. Additionally, there are frequent accusations that Western countries are either encouraging violence in Syria or failing to take action after the Syrian government kills civilians. Myth Detector has fact-checked a number of suspicious claims related to the situation in Syria.
Archive link
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions.
