By Srijit Das
A 2019 video from a mock military exercise held at a defence exhibition in Kuwait is viral with a false claim that it shows the Saudi defence minister and his wife getting unpleasantly shocked by sudden fireworks on a visit to the Chinese Embassy.
BOOM found that the video shows a mock military exercise conducted by the Emiri Guards of Kuwait during the Fifth Gulf Defence and Aerospace (GDA) exhibition in 2019 to showcase their skills.
The Hindi caption with the video translates to, "He is the defence minister of Saudi Arabia. He came to attend the celebration of Chinese new year at the Chinese Embassy with his wife. Chinese officers arranged some fireworks to welcome him but the minister did not know it. See what happened then and enjoy yourself."
(Original Text in Hindi: सऊदिया डिफेंस मिनिस्टर हैं, चीनी नव वर्ष के जश्न में शरीक होने चाइना की एम्बेसी आए थे चीनी अफसरों ने उनके वेलकम को आतिशबाज़ी का इंतज़ाम किया था लेकिन ये मिनिस्टर साहब को नहीं पता था। फिर क्या हुआ आप भी मजे लीजिए।)
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on one of the keyframes of the viral video and found the same video uploaded by an Arabic news outlet on December 13, 2019.
The Arabic caption with the video translates to, "Military exercise for personal guards in the State of Kuwait".
(Original Text in Arabic: تمرين عسكري لحرس الشخصيات بدوله الكويت)
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We then ran a search for "Kuwait army" on Google and found the official Instagram profile of Kuwait army. We then searched for posts from 2019 on its profile and found the visuals of the same event was uploaded on Kuwait army's Instagram account on December 16, 2019.
In the video, an aerial shot shows a convoy of cars entering into a venue with pictures of several Arab officials. The video further shows a man dressed in traditional Arabic attire greeting another man dressed similarly.
The video can be seen below.
The caption in Arabic reads as, "Part of the Amiri Guard's display that was carried out during the 5th Gulf Defense and Aviation Exhibition, which was held from 10 to 12 December 2019 at the Mishref fairground."
We also noticed the logo of the Kuwait army at the end of the video with an Arabic sentence below it. We translated the same using Google Lens and found that it says, "Directorate of Moral Guidance and Public Relations Electronic Media".
A search for the same showed that the the Moral Guidance and Public Relations is an actual department in the Kuwait government which takes care of government communication.
We then searched for details on the event and found a Kuwait Times report published on December 10, 2019 which said, "Two hundred and twelve leading international companies in the fields of defense and armament from 32 countries are participating in the 5th Gulf Defense and Aerospace (GDA) exhibition and conference, which kicked off yesterday in Kuwait."
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