In Summary:
- Former lawmaker Acarous Moses Gray shared a video on Facebook of President Joseph Boakai at a protest scene, claiming that Mr. Boakai had attended a protest dubbed “Weah Step Down Campaign” back in 2019.
- We have fact-checked the video by conducting a rigorous reverse image search using online digital tools.
- We found that the video shared by Mr. Gray was taken during a three-day anti-rape protest staged in 2020.
Mr. Acarous Moses Gray, shared a 5 minutes video which he captioned “former VP Boakai encourages protesters calling for President Weah to step down.”
Mr. Gray further said that “Today he (President Joseph Boakai) goes after every perceived opponent with so much anger and bitterness to crush you from the face of the earth.”
Mr. Gray is a former Representative of District # 8 in Montserrado County and a stalwart of the Congress for Democratic Change party. He made the claims while frowning at a recent press statement from the government of Liberia against Bomi County Senator Edwin Snowe.
The government’s statement condemned what they said was an irresponsible and inflammatory statement made by Senator Snowe that he would use his connections at ECOWAS to ensure the failure of the Joseph Boakai administration.
The Council of Patriots of Mr. Henry Costa planned a “Weah step down protest for December 30, 2019. The protest was pushed to January 6, 2020, after the Ministry of Justice failed to issue a permit to the organizers, terming the call for the president to step down as unconstitutional.
The video shared by Mr. Gray had gained huge traction online, getting 17,000 views, over 188 comments, and shared over 138 times.
Other online media, including Freedom FM YouTube Channel, Hope TV, SAPA TV, have shared the video with the same claim that it was Mr. Boakai at the Weah step-down protest. These social media posts can be seen here, here, here, and here.
Claim
Wrote Mr. Gray on Facebook: “This video captures President Boakai arrival at the Weah Step Down Protest where he was interviewed by journalists. President Boakai is very vindictive and an evil old man who was even escorted by EPS officers. Today he goes after every perceived opponent with so much anger and bitterness to crush you from the face of the earth.”
Rating Justification
To fact-check the video, we conducted a reverse image search of the video and found many videos of President Joseph Boakai that were not quite the same shared by Mr. Gray and others.
Further keyword searches found a Hott Fm Facebook Live video recorded on August 27, 2020.
We then compared the video published by Mr. Gray and the one recorded live on Facebook by the Hott FM Facebook page and found that the two videos were recorded at the same event and published by the same platform. This means, the video posted by Mr. Gray is an excerpt of the video recorded by Hott FM Facebook page.
Video caption: The first 5:17 minute video (above) posted by Mr. Gray on Facebook was extracted from the second video (09:14) which was recorded live during the August 27, 2020 ant-rape protest in Monrovia
The over 9-minute video on Hott FM’s Facebook page was recorded when Mr. Boakai, then an opposition leader, had gone to participate in an anti-rape protest that was taking place at the Springs field (Airfield) Community in Monrovia.
He was, however, denied by the organizers of the protest to make a speech arguing that the event was not a political.
To further verify the video, we also found a Facebook post published by Afrik Media on August 27, 2020. The post shared images of Mr. Joseph Boakai in conversation with journalists when he was on the scene of the anti-rape protest on the same day.
Our search also found another video of former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee attending the same protest on August 27, 2020.
Conclusion
Based on the evidence gathered from the verification of the video shared by Mr. Gray, we conclude that the claim that the video is unrelated to the “Weah step down campaign”. The assertion by the former lawmaker that “former VP Boakai encourages protesters calling for President Weah to step down” Is misleading.
The video shared by him shows the arrival of Mr. Boakai on the last day of a three-day anti-rape protest in Monrovia in August 2020.
