NATO Using Fake Viral Syrian Hero Boy Video To Invade Syria
Published Saturday, November 15, 2014
A viral video showing a Syrian boy rescuing a girl under gunfire, watched online by millions of viewers and widely shared by media agencies, was faked by a Norwegian film crew, media reported.
Posted on Youtube on Monday, the "Syrian hero boy" video was shot on location in Malta last May with professional actors, and directed by 34-year-old Norwegian director Lars Klevberg, who claimed he hoped to create a debate on children in war zones.
"The film appears to show an authentic phone- or amateur video recording, but is in fact a short fiction film released in the hopes to create political action and debate and focus on innocent children growing up in war," Klevberg said in a statement released on Twitter on Friday.
In the film, a young boy braves sniper fire and appears to be shot while rescuing a girl hiding behind a burned car in what was meant to look like war-torn Syria.
The video, which had been seen more than six million times by Saturday amid an online debate about its authenticity, received 280,000 kroner ($41,492.85) in funding from the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) and the Norwegian government, the BBC reported.
According to the BBC, the filmmakers said their intention was to upload the video without specifying whether it was real or fiction.
The video spread after the production team uploaded it on Youtube trying to maximize its virality and sent it out on Twitter to generate a “debate.”
The issue of authenticating footage of the conflict has been a major issue in the Syrian civil war, as the country has become an increasingly difficult terrain for media and monitoring outlets to confirm attacks and casualties.
The Syrian government often claims video footage of the conflict are fabricated, which has led to fears by many that the Norwegian movie would be used as ammunition to corroborate these claims.
In June 2011, it was revealed that a widespread blog entitled “A Gay Girl in Damascus” was in fact a hoax by an American man based in Scotland.
Many people took to Twitter to express their anger over the hoax.
Estimates on the number of people killed in the four-year conflict vary between 124,000 and 191,000, and more than half the population of the country has been forced to flee. According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 9,400 children had been killed in the conflict as of August.
(Al-Akhbar, AFP)
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