No, video does not show Chinese soldier assaulting an Uyghur Muslim

What is the claim?

Several social media users are sharing a video of a man in a uniform, seemingly a soldier, beating a half-naked man with a claim that a copy of the Quran was found in a Uyghur Muslim man’s house, because of which a Chinese soldier trashed him. The posts also appeared to hail China for not allowing protests.

One X (formerly Twitter) user posted this video with the caption, “When the Quran was found in the house of this Uyghur Muslim 🐷 in China, the Chinese soldier made him read the entire Quran* 👌 *Protest against China, take out a rally, what happened against China???* 🐷 *They are afraid only in India, they talk about constitution only in India*(Translated from Hindi)." At the time of writing this story, this video had amassed over 595,000 views and more than 12,000 likes. The archives of this and other such posts can be seen here, here, and here.

Screenshots of the viral posts sharing this the video with this claim (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, we found that the viral video is from Indonesia and shows an incident in 2017 when an alleged thief was caught by authorities.

What are the facts?

On conducting a reverse image search on one of the keyframes of the viral video, we found several news reports from 2017 that carried screenshots of the video.

According to a news report from May 24, 2017, the incident had occurred in Jakarta, Indonesia, and showed a  gang member being assaulted.

Screenshot from a news report about the incident published by an Indonesian news outlet on May 24, 2017. (Source: Tribun Medan/Modified by Logically Facts)

We were also able to find a video of the same incident posted on Instagram (archived here) by another Indonesian media outlet on May 25, 2017. The caption of the video provided more details about the incident and noted that it occurred at the Depok Baru Station and that the man was beaten on suspicion of being a pickpocket.

Screenshot from the  by an Indonesian news outlet (Source: medantalk/Modified by Logically Facts)

The caption of the Instagram post also led us to a news report by an Indonesia-based news outlet, Tribun News, which stated that the incident occurred on May 13, 2017, in Depok City, West Java, Indonesia. 

According to the report, a state-run commuter line operator said the man had been caught pickpocketing at Depok Baru Station, on the platform heading towards Jakarta, and was beaten by an officer in uniform. However, the report noted that while the suspected thief had a history of pickpocketing, due to a lack of sufficient evidence, he was released without any charges in the past. Moreover, the officer involved in the incident was dismissed from his duty, the news report stated. 

Logically Facts also reached out to Mafindo, an Indonesia-based fact-checking organization and was told that the incident was from Indonesia. “It was a pickpocket on a train station who was captured and beaten by the officer,” they said.

The verdict

The viral video does not depict a Chinese soldier assaulting an Uyghur Muslim man for having the Quran in his house. The incident is from West Java, Indonesia, where a suspected thief was beaten by an officer of a state-run commuter line operator in 2017.