Viral video of a child in the ice box has no relation to organ trafficking.
Claim
BREAKING: Chinese organ harvesters caught red handed. Children had been packed into ice boxes to be transported #OrganHarvesting
Rating
Explanation
In the viral video, we see a child lying inside an ice box. The child in the foam box containing ice is seen wearing a yellow shirt and blue trousers. One woman takes the ice cubes out of the box one by one and there are some people standing around her, looking more like relatives. We can also hear them crying aloud. This video is circulated with the claims that the child is packed in an ice box and is waiting for transportation, along with hashtags like #Organharvesting
Organ harvesters in China caught with frozen children packed in ice boxes. pic.twitter.com/6E8Z7fugWX
— Michelle Mich (@MichelleMi10625) August 2, 2023
Similarly, we are able to see more users sharing the viral video with the same messages, which can be viewed here and here.
Come, let’s see if this heartbreaking incident is true or not.
What’s the truth?
When we started with the Google reverse image search process, we came to know that the video is from China. While digging a little deeper, we understood that the video contains two different incidents and is made into a captivating piece of news. This video seems to be shared more than 7500 times in Facebook as per the article from AsiaOne
While watching the viral video, you can see a boy in the icebox followed by two men getting punched and kicked by some people. The first portion of the video showing the child covered in ice was taken in the Guangdong province of China in the summer of 2017.
The boy kept in the ice box seems to be drowned while playing in his relative’s house in Guangdong. Since it was summer, his parents were afraid of too much heat, so they transported the boy’s body in an ice box to avoid decomposition. In the video, we can see many relatives around them sobbing and standing, watching the crying mother.
The second portion of this video actually shows a different incident in the town of Shaojiaqiaozhen in the Chinese province of Guizhou in which two men were beaten up in December 2017 after being accused of attempting to defraud elderly people. The GIF seen on ‘py.zjol.com’ is found to have similar visual as this second portion of the video.
These two pieces of footage were made into a single video along with the organ harvesting message that made the sensational headlines in China. We got an online report from Zhejiang describing in detail about the above viral video case.
Hereby, with our intense investigation, we found that the sensational video of the boy kept in the ice box has nothing to do with organ trafficking and transportation.
Conclusion:
Thus, we conclude that those are two separate videos that are combined to form a single video fooled internet users.
In this very old video, the boy died of drowning and his parents worried of the summer heat brought him back in a styrofoam ice box to their hometown for burial purposes. This purported video is circulated with false claims of organ harvesting.
So, let’s be responsible, and don’t believe whatever you read on the internet. Kindly verify and forward such sensitive news after knowing the truth and facts.
