By: Anurag Baruah
February 24 2023
False: The video shows a child trying to console her baby brother in the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria.
Share Article:
Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The video is not from the February 6 earthquake and has been available online since November 2022.
Claim ID b5b84e65
Context
On February 6, 2023, two devastating earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria’s border regions, measuring 7.8 and 7.6, respectively. As the death toll nears 50,000, the area has seen multiple aftershocks and tremors.
Numerous unrelated photos and videos alleging to be related to the quakes have since circulated on social media since. One such video on Facebook and Twitter shows a child attempting to breastfeed and console her baby brother in the aftermath of the earthquake. The video, uploaded by numerous profiles, has been shared and viewed extensively worldwide in various languages, including regional languages like Assamese. One user wrote in English, "Their mother died in the recent Syria-Turkey earthquake. Now the older infant is trying to breastfeed her younger sibling in the way their mother would…." Several users shared the video with a similar claim in Hindi, and the Facebook page of an Assam-based news channel, MyNews NE, shared the video on February 11, 2023, in the Assamese language. The post has been shared 37,000 times so far.
However, the video has no connection to the Turkey earthquake.
In Fact
Upon closer inspection, we found that the video in one of the Facebook posts sharing this claim carried the account of a TikTok user. We located the user on TikTok and found the exact video uploaded by the user on November 26, 2022. The video's caption, translated from Russian, read "#childrenlaughing."
We also found another video of the same child on the TikTok user's account, where she could be seen laughing and dancing, uploaded recently on February 19, 2023. We could also see that the same profile uploaded multiple other videos of the child in the past.
Though we could not independently verify the source and location of the video, the fact that it was uploaded on November 26, 2022, makes it clear that the video has no connection to the earthquake, which struck on February 6, 2023.
The Verdict
The viral video was initially uploaded to TikTok on November 26, 2022. Its existence on the internet before the Turkey/Syria earthquake refutes the claim that it shows two orphans in the aftermath of the disaster. Therefore, we have marked the claim as false.