Foreign Affairs

FACT CHECK: Does This Video Show Paris Police Clashing With Refugees?

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A video shared on Facebook over 350 times allegedly shows French police clashing with refugees in a Paris subway.

Verdict: False

The video shows Romanian law enforcement officers removing soccer fans from a Bucharest subway station, not Paris police clashing with refugees.

Fact Check:

The 81-second video shows a group of police outfitted in riot gear gathering on a train platform, where they proceed to remove passengers from the subway train and push them to the ground.

The caption for this particular post alleges the video shows Paris police “knock some manners” into refugees who were “spitting on people in the underground.” Another Facebook user who shared the video claimed those targeted by the police were Muslims, saying, “In Paris Muslims without masks in Metro spit on the other passengers. See what police did to them.”

But neither of those accounts are accurate. The Daily Caller News Foundation traced the video to several Romanian news reports that explain it actually shows Romanian law enforcement officers having physical confrontations with local soccer fans. The incident captured in the viral video occurred in early October at the Ştefan cel Mare metro station in Bucharest after two groups of rival soccer fans clashed with each other, according to roughly-translated Romanian media reports and a statement from Bucharest authorities.

“Following this conflict, about 30 people were driven to the police station in order to take legal action,” the roughly-translated statement says. “Several objects banned for ownership were found in the subway area, which could jeopardize the safety of people.”

Physical confrontations have previously broken out among soccer fans in Romania, according to The Mirror.