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Claim: A viral video suggests Ghanaian police officers have brutalised Voltarians near the Togo border as elections approach.
Verdict: False. A Google reverse image search reveals that the video dates back to 2013 and is unrelated to any election. The footage shows police officers in Accra beating suspected land guards in Cantonments, not Voltarians in Togo.
Full Text
A video circulating on WhatsApp claims that the Ghana Police Service brutalised Voltarians in border towns near Togo in the lead-up to the upcoming presidential elections. The video, which shows police officers brutalising unarmed civilians, has been shared widely across social media platforms with captions suggesting election-related violence against the Voltarians, a stronghold of the opposition National Democratic Congress.
The video’s caption is: “See how some Voltarians are being treated in the border towns near Togo because of the coming presidential election. Please share all over and let it go viral.”
Some users also claimed that the incident occurred in 2020 at the Aflao border.
Verification
DUBAWA conducted a thorough Google reverse image search, and the results revealed that the full video was originally uploaded to YouTube in 2013 by a user named Classic Ghana under the title “Police brutalise suspected land guards in Cantonments, Accra.”
The news was also carried out by news portals, including Allafrica.com, confirming the incident.
This same video resurfaced in 2020, with users falsely claiming the beatings were related to violations of COVID-19 regulations.
In 2020, the Ghana Police Service debunked this claim, clarifying that the video had no connection to the pandemic.
Conclusion
The claim associated with the video is false. The footage is from 2013 and depicts an unrelated incident in Accra, not election-related violence in Togo.
