Dec 14 (Reuters) - Video footage of a large traffic jam in Germany has been miscaptioned online, with users falsely claiming it shows thousands of tractors clogging the road to protest COVID-19 vaccine passports.
“Germans Protesting the Vaccine Passports and the Nonsense…Block entry points to and from Berlin with Tractors and Larger Farming Equipment … it is reported over 10,000 tractors clogged roadways …,” reads a tweet with the video ( here ).
The tweet making the claim, however, ‘quote tweets’ another post that consists of the video clip and is dated Nov. 26, 2019 ( here ). Despite the video being posted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been retweeted more than 4,300 times in the context of the claim about vaccine passports.
Other iterations can be found on Twitter ( here , here ) Facebook ( here , here , here ) and GTTR ( here ), too.
In November 2019, news outlets like the Associated Press ( here ) , the Berliner Morgenpost ( here ) and Euronews ( here ) said around 10,000 farmers and 5,000 farm trucks had demonstrated at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate against the government’s agricultural policy - seen as too restrictive.
Other images of the protest reported by Reportnet254TV are viewable here .
On Dec. 4, 2021, Germany registered demonstrations against COVID-19 restrictions in various cities here . On Dec. 2, outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel and her successor Olaf Scholz agreed with leaders of Germany's 16 states to bar the unvaccinated from access to all but the most essential businesses such as grocery stores, pharmacies and bakeries ( here ).
VERDICT
Miscaptioned. The footage has been circulating since at least November 2019 and is associated with a farmers’ protest in Germany.
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