This isn’t the first time this video has gone viral on social media. Our colleagues from “Check” of the VRT have published an article regarding the same images in September 2022.
In another publication in Dutch relayed more than 4000 times on Facebook, the same images are accompanied by the comment: “UIT HET LEVEN GEGREPEN… LES GEVEN IN EEN BRUSSELSE SCHOOL!” or, in French: “Slice of life… TEACHING IN A SCHOOL IN BRUSSELS!”. The publication is accompanied on the Meta social network by the mention “False information”.
Indeed, when the video is broadcast with sound, it is clear that the people present in the video do not speak French or Dutch but rather Portuguese. Therefore, the images obviously do not come from Brussels.
Several fact-checking media including our colleagues from Knack found traces of the original video. They were able to trace the source and determine that the incidents in the video took place in Carapicuíba, a suburb of the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo in Brazil.
As wrote a local newspaper, on May 29, 2019, eight students were arrested by the police at Maria de Lourdes Teixeira public school. Such incidents are said to be more frequent there.