A video showing an animal being roasted on a spit has brought vitriolic racist hate online, with commenters claiming it shows African migrants in Ireland roasting a dog. But the animal in the video is a pig.
A fact check report by Mary Alexander.
Disclaimer: this post contains strong language that some may find offensive.
An animal roasting on a spit over a fire. Young men chatting at a barbeque in a garden. This simple 15-second video has gone viral on social media since late September 2023.
Here’s why.
The clip, from TikTok, is overlaid with the text: “wtf have the done to our country … this is a fucking dog being cooked on a bbq … a fucking dog folks …”
One caption on Facebook reads, in part: “African migrants in Dublin roast a dog on a spit in public.”
Dublin is the capital city of Ireland, a country in Europe.
The video was also posted here, here, here and here with similar captions. The claim can also be seen here, here, here, here and here.
The video was shot in Dublin. But the rest of the details in the captions are incorrect.
Pig roast in Dublin
The clip ends with a screenshot of a post on the social media platform X, previously Twitter, that identifies it as being from “Dorset Street Flats apparently, welcome to Dublin. #IrelandisFull”.
On 28 September the Instagram user livelifesexy posted a photo of a pig on a spit above a barrel cut in half, with a man appearing to be turning the pig. One side of the barrel is painted orange. The BBQ setup is against a brick wall.
The photo is tagged Dorset Street Flats, an apartment complex in Dublin.
Part of its caption reads:
I want to bring a fine dining culinary once of event, collaborating with chefs and butchers.
Singers and story tellers, to the heart of Dorset Street, in the middle where we used to light bomb-fires and burn rob cars, only this time light a BBQ feeding all the homeless and all the refugees, and all the community.
The orange on the barrel, the brick wall and other features are the same as those in the video. And the animal is clearly a pig.
A fact-checker at Reuters reported that they had spoken to the person in the photo, who said “the animal being cooked was a pig, not a dog”.
This report was written by Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website.
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