Placard Congratulating President & Prime Minister For Eliminating Coronavirus From Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 response from the state was an immediate lockdown for nearly two months which is just now beginning to ease in several parts of the country. While some argued that the state imposed curfew was a harsh one, limiting citizen mobility and access to essential services, others appreciated the government’s swift action to curb the crisis.

In this light, we noticed a post on a Facebook group titled POLITICS OF SRILANKA (P of S), where a profile named Ritigala Jayasena posted an image of a political banner being carried on the streets, well-wishing those who defeated the COVID-19 crisis.

The group of people were holding a placard with the text “කොරෝනාව ලංකාවෙන් තුරන් කරපු ජනපතිට හා අගමැතිට අපෙන් සුභ පැතුම්” translating to English as “Our congratulations to the President & Prime Minister for eradicating Coroanvirus from Sri Lanka”

The meme-like viral post also includes the text “ලංකාවේ තාමත් කලගුන දන්න මිනිස්සු ගොඩක් ඉන්නවා” which means “There are still people in Sri Lanka with gratitude”. The post can be seen below:

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A keyword search revealed that the image was posted on Facebook several times by other pages and groups within the past 24 hours as well as can be seen below:

The comments section of the post also included a Roshan Samaratunga who claimed the post was false with a side by side comparison of the original image which seemed to have been posted by a Bimal Ratnayake as can be seen below:

We searched and archived Samaratunga’s post as follows:

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A further search on leftist JVP party member Bimal Rathnayake’s profile did not bring up a result and former MP Bimal Rathnayaka denied the claim as well.

FACT CHECK

Due to it being declared false by a commenter, we felt it was necessary to do a fact check on the image to ascertain its authenticity. We began with a Google Reverse Image Search for the image of the photograph with the political banner which revealed that the image was related to the November 2019 presidential election in Sri Lanka. Number of international news websites had published the image on 17th November 2019, soon after Gotabaya Rajapaksa stormed to a landslide victory.

Arab News had published an article with the title “Rajapaksa wins Sri Lanka presidency by big margin”, mentioning AFP as the image source, as can be seen below:

We can also see that the text printed on the banner in the viral post has been manipulated since the original image simply says “රටම දිනුම්” meaning “The whole country wins”. See our comparison below:

A further search also revealed that Getty Images had originally posted the image for sale on 17th November 2019. A simple Getty Images search for Gotabaya Rajapakse will bring up this image on top and hence is easily accessible.

The Getty Images post can be seen below with the caption: Supporters of Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa carry cut-out placards to celebrate in Colombo on November 17, 2019. - Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who spearheaded the brutal crushing of the Tamil Tigers 10 years ago, stormed to victory on November 17 in Sri Lanka's presidential elections seven months after Islamist extremist attacks killed 269 people. (Photo by Ishara S. KODIKARA / AFP) (Photo by ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AFP via Getty Images)

We noticed a number of news reports of Director General of Health Dr. Anil Jasinghe and other medical experts that even though the steps to returning to normalcy have resumed in Sri Lanka, the threat of COVID-19 is far from over.

CONCLUSION

Based on our searches and results found that the image was in fact first published in November 2019 after the presidential election victory of Gotabaya Rajapaksa and has no connection to the current COVID-19 crisis, it is both misleading and false.