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Is this picture of refugees from March 17 at the Franco-Italian border? No.

Categories: False and Fabricated News, Misinformation and Disinformation



This post was originally based on verification work carried out collaboratively by newsrooms in France and the UK through CrossCheck (French [1] | English [2]), a not-for-profit collaboration to combat disinformation online, and is republished as part of a partnership with Global Voices.

A photograph showing a large crowd of refugees supposedly walking towards France has been shared over 2,000 times this weekend from the Facebook page “SOS anti-white-racism“. According to this page, the image depicts thousands of refugees attempting to cross the Franco-Italian border on the 17th of March, near the commune of Menton in southern France. In reality, the photograph dates back to the 18th September 2015, and was taken near the city of Edirne in Turkey by a photographer from the Reuters news agency.

At the time the image was shot, the migration crisis was at its peak with thousands of refugees travelling from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries to Europe. Some reporters followed their journey, including Osman Orsal [3], a photographer with Reuters, who took this picture. A closer investigation of the image clearly shows that the group is walking along the the Turkish O-3 highway that links Istanbul with Edirne, close to the Greek and Bulgarian borders. On the road sign we can identify directions to the “Otogar” in Edirne. A quick online translation tell us the word Otogar [4] in Turkish translates to English as “bus station”.

You can read about other fabrications and the French elections here [5].