By Orji Ruth
Claim– Saudi Arabia had an extreme weather this year.
Earlier this year, @DisasterTv, a TikTok page posted a viral video of what seemed like Saudi Arabia, Mecca precisely with extreme weather, which resulted to the death of hundreds of people including pilgrims. This video has since been flagged to have been manipulated and edited to create a further horrifying sight than it actually is.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMrHbgx1M/
This video has since gathered 1,000,000 views; 385,500 likes; 10,500 comments; 29,300 bookmarks; 37,400 shares.
NatureNews, Africa’s foremost news publications on climate change, which is dedicated to providing accurate insights to stop the spread of fake news particularly among users of social media, subjected the claim to fact checking.
Findings: Using the Google search tool in conducting this research, NatureFact, the fact checking unit of NatureNews, accessed a few papers and studies.
A thorough fact-checking investigation has revealed that this video is only partly true.
The video is indeed of extreme weather conditions that wreaked havoc on both lives and properties. But, it is actually a collage of different videos. Some of which happened in Dubai and not Mecca. Also, the screaming voices in the background was everything but Arabic. It had English, French and also gunshots from a different event embedded in it. It also had Enya’s “Only Time” edited into it to give a more solemn vibe to it.
It is also pertinent to mention that I observed that whomever filmed this/these video(s), that is the person(s) behind the camera doesn’t seem to be fazed by the havoc wreaking around him/her. He or she seemed rather confident filming in the face of impending doom.
Also, some of the clips of rain falling in the praying ground is actually false, people do not walk casually when it’s raining, they hold things over their heads and run for shelter but the reverse was seen in the clips. In addition to that, rain is supposed to stick clothes to one’s body due to wetness but the people in the video still had flowing, not-wet robes.
Entering the URL into the wayback machine to ascertain the authenticity of the video. It took apart the video and ascertained it fake to a 78.9% level due to the following facts.
- It is a compilation of various videos from different times and locations.
- All of it didn’t happen in Mecca.
- It’s audio is fake plus it had music to elicit a somber feel.
These extreme weather conditions that was shown in the video was as a result of the cloud seeding experiment done to increase rainfall in some parts of the middle East such as UAE and Saudi Arabia. This resulted in the extreme weather conditions shown in the above.
Verdict– False. The video was gravely manipulated thereby dampening the truth.