China seeking court’s approval to kill 20,000 coronavirus patients, not true

Last week, we carried a story on China seeking court’s nod to kill over 20,000 coronavirus patients, but we have found out that it is not true.

An independent fact-facting site, African Check, in partnership with Facebook, has thrown more light on the story.

“China seek for court’s approval to kill the over 20,000 coronavirus patients to avoid further spread of the virus,” claims a 6 February 2020 article on the site AB-TC City News.

“The highest level of court in Chhina, Supreme People’s Court, is expected to give an approval on Friday for the mass killing of coronavirus patients in China as sure means of controlling the spread of the deadly virus,” it says.

The claim has been reposted on Facebook in Malawi andZimbabwe, and republished on a Nigerian blog.

Could this terrible news be true?

Junk news website

AB-TC City News shows all the signs of a junk site – not a trustworthy news source.

Its reports are badly written and riddled with spelling errors – “Chhina” instead of “China”, for example.

And it’s full of false articles.

In 2020 alone it has published reports claiming the UK’s Prince Andrew committed suicide (he hasn’t), South African celebrity couple Connie and Shona Ferguson drowned on a fishing trip (they didn’t) and students at an African university developed a coronavirus vaccine (they haven’t).

And it has a curious obsession with repeatedly publishing the same fake article, word for word, about a club being “shut down for killing patrons and selling as meat”. It just changes the name of the club and its location – Australia, Belize,Canada, Guyana, Pennsylvania, Thailand, the UK, Trinidad and Tobago and many, many more.

(The site has a similar obsession with claiming a “mass shooting” in some or other US city has been “thwarted”.)

On 30 January it reported that five Singaporeans, who hadn’t travelled to China, had contracted novel coronavirus. Singapore’s government was quick to dismiss the report as false.

No evidence of claim

If China had asked its supreme court for permission to kill 20,000 people it would have made international news. It hasn’t.

And there’s no mention of the case on China’s Supreme People’s Court website.

The World Health Organization publishes daily situation reports on the novel coronavirus outbreak. These give statistics on cases and deaths, and a run-down on new developments.

If China was seeking to kill 20,000 people as a way to stop the virus spreading, the WHO would have reported it. But there’s no mention of it in any of the WHO’s recent updates. – Mary Alexander

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check has partnered with Facebook to combat fake news and false information on the social platform. This fact-check is part of the initiative.

As part of its third-party fact-checking programme, Facebook allows its partners to see public articles, pictures or videos that have been flagged as potentially inaccurate.

Content rated as “false” by fact-checkers will be downgraded in news feeds. This means fewer people will see it.

You can help us identify fake news and false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.