CLAIM
A video showing an animal market has been circulated on various social media platforms with a claim that the video is of the market in Wuhan which sells living animals and that this is where the coronavirus originated.
The caption with which the video is being shared reads, “Wuhan market, China, the origin of the Coronavirus. No wonder the disaster was waiting to happen in Wuhan (sic).”
The video has been shared by several users on Facebook with the same claim.
Twitter users have also shared the video with similar claims.
TRUE OR FALSE?
False.
The video is actually from Langowan Market in the North Sulawesi region of Indonesia and not a market in China’s Wuhan city, as claimed in the video.
WHAT WE FOUND
We noticed ‘Pasar Extream Langowan’ written in the first few frames of the video.
Subsequently, using that as a clue, we searched on YouTube with keywords ‘Langowan’ and found results for a market from Indonesia where the same video was uploaded in July 2019 by a person named Jerry Mewengkang.
At the 20 seconds mark of both the videos, we saw a similar frame where the YouTube video shows a window with an Indonesian-language sign that translates to English as:
“Langowan Market Office”.
Langowan market in Indonesia has different species of snakes, bats and dogs being sold as delicacies, as reported by media outlet Daily Mail.
We found the same images of Langowan market on Getty, which is a stock image website.
Hence, it is clear that the viral posts are falsely claiming that the video is from Wuhan market in China.
(The viral video has earlier been debunked by AltNews.)
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