Old clips of UK cargo ship falsely linked to South China Sea tensions
Following a violent clash between Beijing and Manila in the disputed South China Sea, a video made the rounds in social media posts that falsely claimed it shows British and American troops arriving in the Philippines to provide military aid. The video, watched hundreds of thousands of times, is in fact a compilation of old and unrelated clips of a British cargo ship. The Philippine military said in July there had been no such deployment of troops.
The eight-minute video compilation was posted on a YouTube channel called Military Information on June 26, 2024.
It racked up more than 640,000 views before the channel was taken down.
"Philippines surprised by the arrival of 300 Military Vehicles and 20,000 US and UK Soldiers," the video's headline read.
The video's narrator said British cargo ship MV Hurst Point arrived on June 26 at the Subic Bay Port, the location of a former US military base north of the Philippine capital Manila (archived link).
The ship supposedly brought in military equipment to be deployed in areas "under threat of attack from China".
The Philippines and China agreed on July 2 to "de-escalate tensions" over the South China Sea following a violent clash in the disputed waters the previous month in which a Filipino soldier lost a finger.
Manila and Beijing have a long history of maritime territorial disputes in the hotly contested waterway but the incident was the most serious in a series of escalating confrontations in recent months.
The incident fuelled concerns that the dispute could drag in the United States, which has a mutual defence pact with Manila.
The Philippine military said it has observed an "alarming surge of disinformation" following the clash -- some of which AFP has fact-checked (archived link).
The video and screenshots from it were shared alongside similar claims elsewhere on YouTube, X, Rumble and Facebook.
Some social media users appeared to believe the claims.
"I am a Filipino living in the UK. A massive thanks to the UK for supporting my country...I am very emotional watching this," one wrote.
"Our dear friends USA and UK, thank you for assuring the Philippines that we are never alone," another wrote.
Misused clips
The Philippine military, however, denied the claims in a statement on Facebook on July 1, which showed screenshots of the video with a "FAKE" stamp (archived link).
"Such a large-scale deployment would have been officially announced and corroborated by multiple credible sources," the statement read.
"We encourage the public to avoid engaging and sharing reports from unverified sources."
A reverse search of keyframes from the YouTube video found it was composed of old and unrelated footage of the MV Hurst Point published by the United States Armed Forces.
Multiple scenes feature in a video published on the US Marines website in 2017 titled "NOBLE JUMP 17 - Hurst Point Ship Vehicles Disembarkation" (archived link).
The caption read: "Troops from 20 Armoured Brigade (UK) unload vehicles from a roll on roll off (RORO) vessel in Alexandropoulis, Greece. The vehicles are taking part in Exercise Noble Jump in Romania."
Clips of American soldiers entering an airport were taken from a video titled "Arkansas Guardsmen Deploy to Kosovo" recorded in 2017 (archived link).
Below are comparisons of screenshots from the false post (left) and the original footage from the US military (right):
Other clips in the video show different shots of the Hurst Point ship here, here, and here as it docked in Croatia in 2021 (archived links here, here, here).
Below is a screenshot comparison of a clip from the false post (left) and the original footage from the US military (right):
Furthermore, the MV Hurst Point was not near Philippine waters on June 26, according to data from the Marine Traffic tracking website.
The ship left the port of Gibraltar -- a tiny British overseas territory that shares a border with southern Spain -- on June 15 (archived link).
By June 28, it was located in waters near West Africa. As of July 10, it was off the eastern coast of South America.
