False: Video of violence against woman is unrelated to human trafficking in Cambodia
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A video shared on Twitter on Aug. 19 shows three men repeatedly hitting a woman in a black dress with what appears to be wooden sticks.
The text overlay in Chinese reads, when translated to English, “Still want to find a job in Cambodia?” seemingly referring to the job scams and human trafficking cases in Southeast Asia that have been in the news lately.
The tweet implied that the woman in the video was Chinese. A similar claim was also made by another user with the same clip.
Together, these tweets have more than 1,100 likes and 600 retweets at the time of writing while the video has been viewed over 63,700 times.
However, these claims are false. The video was actually shot in the neighborhood of Tapanã in Belém, Brazil, not in Cambodia.
Annie Lab found a news report from Brazilian media Ver-O-Fato published on July 21, which features several screenshots of the video in question.
According to Ver-O-Fato, five men allegedly attacked a woman following a dispute over drugs.
Another report from Brazilian broadcaster TV Liberal and its news program called Jornal Liberal 2ª Edição included an edited version of the same video on July 21 as well.
Annie Lab asked a medical student from Brazil at the University of Hong Kong, Pedro Santalucia, to translate the news video.
According to him, the report says she was “beaten up in a northern state in Brazil by a criminal group,” but she managed to go to the police and survived the attack.
Cases of employment scams in Southeast Asia have been making headlines in recent weeks in Hong Kong and Taiwan where many victims reportedly came from.
Hong Kong authorities say they have recorded at least 37 suspected victims from the city and 23 of them are still believed to be in Cambodia and Myanmar.
