Video of Pope's visit to East Timor wrongly linked to protest by Indian Muslims

The false claim emerged as former Indian lawmaker Imtiaz Jaleel led a convoy of hundreds of vehicles into Mumbai, demanding the arrest of BJP politician Nitesh Rane and Hindu preacher Ramgiri Maharaj for “inflammatory statements” about Muslims, according to local media (archived Link). .

The protesters were denied entry into the city and returned after handing over their demands to government officials.

The clip was shared with similar false claims elsewhere on X and Facebook here and here.

But the claim is false. The video was filmed during Pope Francis' visit to East Timor.

Photographs from East Timor

A reverse image search of the footage on Google found a higher quality version posted to TikTok on September 11, 2024 by an account named “rey.marques.” It has been viewed more than two million times (archived link).

Hashtags in the caption suggested it was filmed during the Pope's visit to East Timor.

The pope celebrated mass for hundreds of thousands of believers in the small Southeast Asian country on September 10 (archived link).

Around 600,000 people from a population of 1.3 million attended the mass, the Vatican said in a statement, citing local authorities.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in fake posts (left) and the TikTok footage (right):

The footage shows the East Timorese flag on street lamps and a poster of the Pope.

AFP previously debunked another false claim in the Philippines sharing the same video.

Rey Marques, a photographer based in the capital Dili and owner of the TikTok account, told AFP at the time he did not know who shot the video but identified the scene as near the Raikotu General Cemetery in the city.

AFP confirmed the location of the footage by comparing it with Google Street View images from the area (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison highlighting a house, street and tree in the TikTok video (left) and the corresponding elements in Google Street View (right):

A livestream on local media outlet TVET Entertainment's Facebook page shows a similar scene of crowds running after the mass (archived link).