A Car with Chinese Number Plates Roaming in Rathmalana area? Find Out the Truth!!
Sri Lanka and China have shared strong bilateral ties over the years and with a number of ongoing Chinese projects, aids and loans, there have been mixed reactions among the Sri Lankan public on the future outcome of these increased interactions.
With the ongoing developments involving Colombo Port City Project, we noticed more noise on the social media related to Chinese influence recently. In this backdrop, a video went viral in Sri Lanka, claiming to scenes of a motor car having Chinese letters on its number plate, roaming in Rathmalana area on Galle Road. However, our investigation with relevant authorities and other related sources proved that the concerned vehicle was registered several years ago Sri Lanka and the letters were in fact Japanese and not Chinese.
Social Media Posts
The below video with a background narration in Tamil, claims that a Chinese vehicle is roaming around Rathmalana area on the Galle Road with Chinese letters on its number plate.
A Facebook user also shared the same video questioning whether “Sri Lanka is allowing Chinese number plates to run in Colombo?”
The video was viral in WhatsApp as well.
Due to the viral nature of this video, we decided to find out the facts behind this strange claim.
Fact Check
At first we inspected the digits mentioned in the number plate on the vehicle in the viral video.
It can be clearly seen that; the number here is 301-9947.We checked whether this number was registered under the Department of Motor Traffic (DMT). Using the limited vehicle information search functionality given in the DMT website, we found that this vehicle was registered under the Department of Motor Traffic. The make of the vehicle was “NISSAN”, a vehicle Manufacturer originated from Japan and the model is a “BLUE BIRD”. The year of manufacturing is shown as 1996 with “LOLC Finance PLC” as the absolute owner as shown below.
To get further information regarding the letters mentioned in the number plate we used a OCR reader and were able to identify that the letters were in fact Japanese and it meant the name of a Japanese city,” Nagano”.
We also checked whether there were any other vehicles in Sri Lanka with Japanese characters and their number plates similar to the one seen in the viral claim. Below is a screenshot taken from an advertisement of another 1996 Nissan Bluebird car.
We contacted the commissioner of the Department of Motor Traffic, Sumith Alahakoone to find out more details regarding the above claim and legal framework pertaining to such number plates.
He explained that incidents using foreign letters and symbols for vehicle number plates not related to Sri Lanka was illegal and would be considered as violations of 1988 Motor Traffic Act. He further stated that the Department of Motor Traffic issued the number plates for vehicles registered after the year 2000. Despite the fact that the Department had not issued number plates for the vehicles registered before the year 2000, those number plates should not violate the motor traffic act.
Also Mr. Alahakoone added that in certain special cases, foreign nationals are allowed to drive their cars in the country for less than a year, and even in such rare cases, a number plate issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles is issued in accordance with Sri Lankan Motor Vehicles Act.
The guide lines for the number plates according to motor traffic act can be read from below link.
We also contacted the Police Media Spokesman, Nihal Thalduwa and he also stated that using strange and foreign letters or symbols in vehicle number plates was illegal.
A keyword search showed that the claims of Chinse lettered number plates were nothing new in Sri Lanka and below is an image capture of a 2019 Facebook post with similar claims to the recent viral video.
Here is the Sinhala version of this fact check.
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Conclusion
According to our investigation, we were able to verify that the claims of Chinese letters displayed on a motor car seen in Rathmalana area is misleading.
The letters were in fact Japanese and depicted a city in Japan and the 1996 manufactured motor car was of “Nissan” make, a motor company originated from Japan. Even though the concerned vehicle was registered under the Department of Motor Traffic in Sri Lanka and DMT Director General stated that according to Sri Lankan traffic laws, letters of any other country could not be displayed on vehicle number plates. Yet we found other instances of especially Japanese letters displayed in vehicles registered in Sri Lanka many years ago.
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Title:A Car with Chinese Number Plates Roaming in Rathmalana area? Find Out the Truth!!
Fact Check By: Kalana Krishantha
Result: Misleading