FACT CHECK: Death of a Teacher due to COVID-19 Has No Relation With The Recent Protests...

Teachers and principals started a series of island wide protests demanding a solution to long standing salary anomalies. Opposition parties also offered support for this movement, stating that the current government has failed to address this pressing issue. However, many citizens started criticizing the teachers' protests, claiming the time was not right for protests, while some alleged that these protestors helped transmission of COVID-19.

In this context, a number of false and misleading posts also started circulating, claiming to be deaths of teachers who were part of recent protests. Our Factcrescendo Sri Lanka investigation into one such misleading post is given below.

Viral Social Media Posts

A Facebook user named as Sd Ws published a photo claiming to be photo of a teacher who passed away due to covid-19. The English translation of the post read as “The miserable opposition should be responsible for all these deaths” indicating that this person was a recent COVID19 victim and a part of the teachers’ protests.

Facebook | Archived

Similar posts were being shared in Sri Lankan social media space as well.

We were able to find different views of public from the comments below these posts. Given below are some of the comments which criticized the teachers’ trade union action, indicating the death was the caused due to teachers’ protest amidst COVID19.

Whereas, few others commented that this was a fabricated and misleading post indicating the teacher concerned was dead moths before the protests started.

We decided to do an investigation and find out the actual facts behind this viral claim.

Fact Check

We did an image and keyword search and were able to find a similar image, posted by the Sabaragamuwa Provincial Department of Education.The image was posted on 9^th of May which wished Mr. Premajith Thennakoon to attain the blissful Nibbana.

Facebook| Archived

We contacted Mahinda Jayasinghe, senior secretary of the Teachers’ Trade Union and he rejected the viral claims. He clarified that Mr. Premajith Thennakoon, the teachers' instructor for health and physical education from Galigamuwa, Kegalle contracted COVID19 died due to the disease on 9^th of May, around 2 months before the teachers' protests which commenced on the 12^th of July.

We also contacted the relevant public health inspector (PHI) of the area and the PHI also confirmed the late Mr.Thennakoon succumbed due to COVID19 at Kegalle Hospital and confirmed that he was one of the first COVID19 infected personnel from the area.

We contacted the daughter of the late Mr.Thennakoon and she also confirmed the same and here is a Facebook post she had published back on 9^th of May about the tragic loss of her father. She also published this Facebook post condemning the false allegations on her late father.

Here is a news item published on Ada Derana news related with the death of Mr.Thennakoon back on the 9^th of May as well.

Here is our Sinhala fact check of the story. Few more fact checks related to Teachers’ Protest in Sinhala can be seen here

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Conclusion

From our investigation, we found that the posts implying that Mr. Premajith Thennakoon contracted COVID-19 and succumbed to it because of the ongoing teacher’s protests, to be misleading. A teaching instructor, late Mr.Premajith Thennakoon died due to a covid19 on the 9^th of May in Kegalle. This was around 2 months before the commencement of teachers’ protests which started in mid of July.

Also Read: FACT CHECK: ගුරු උද්ඝෝෂණයට සහභාගී වීම හේතුවෙන් කොරෝනා ආසාදනය වී මියගිය ගුරුවරුන් පෙළක් ද?