Fake News: The Azerbaijanis Have Entered Yerablur

Verdict –Fake News

On June 12, a video from the Yerablur Military Pantheon started circulating in the media with a description attached that the Azerbaijanis have entered Yerablur and have put on vulgar music. This information was not correct. The original video clip was published months ago, on March 14, on the Instagram channel of haykakan.top. On the other platforms (websites, Azerbaijani Instagram pages), the clip was simply edited; the music was changed, the duration was shortened, thus the context of the clip had entirely been changed.

How Did the News Spread

On May 14, the Instagram page haykakan.top published a video from the road to Yerablur, where a small section of the massive pantheon is visible. The video clip was shot from a car in motion, with an Armenian song playing in the background.

On May 6, the edited version of the clip, accompanied by Azerbaijani music, started spreading on the Azerbaijani Instagram accounts. The page canmusici published it first. Days later, the edited version of the clip began spreading on Facebook with a caption – “The Azerbaijanis have entered Erablur and are playing vulgar music.” The primary source of this post was the website ipress.am.

Therefore, by investigating the origins of the video, it becomes clear that the video clip went through editing upon being published on Azerbaijani pages. This edited clip was later shared on Armenian clickbait sites with a false information that the Azerbaijanis have been at Yerablur.

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This article was produced in partnership with Media Initiatives Center and is part of Facebook’s Fact-checking Programme. Given the rating, Facebook may impose different restrictions – click here for full information. For information on issuing a correction or to dispute a rating, please see here.