Old Photo Used for Spreading Disinformation about Desecration of the Monument to Refugee Children

The post we are reviewing, which refers to Todor Petrov’s Facebook post, misinforms the public using an old photo. If you go to Petrov’s Facebook profile, you will see that one day after he reacted to the containers and the “desecration of the monument”, he then posted photos that the garbage containers had been removed. However, if you take a good look at the two photos, you will notice that the sidewalk in front of the monument is not the same. The pavement in the photo showing the containers is the one from before the Quay was renovated, i.e. it is white. In the photos where the containers are removed from in front of the monument, the sidewalk is red

A Facebook post spreads disinformation that the monument to the violently persecuted 28,000 children aged 2 to 14 from the Aegean part of Macedonia, which is located on the Quay “13 November” near the Holiday Inn Hotel, has been desecrated. According to the post, garbage containers were placed next to the monument. Our check showed that this is disinformation.

The post also shares an article entitled “DESECRATION IN SKOPJE: Garbage containers next to the monument of 28,000 children aged 2 to 14 from the Aegean part of Macedonia who were violently persecuted.”

The Association of Macedonians and Refugee Children from the Aegean part of Macedonia – MACEDON and the World Macedonian Congress (WMC) strongly condemn the irresponsibility of the Mayor of Skopje and the Mayor of the Municipality of Centar, who placed garbage containers in front of the monument of the persecuted children from the Aegean part of Macedonia during the Civil War in Greece 1946-1949, which is located next to the hotel “Holiday Inn” on the Quay of the river Vardar! This is emphasized in the reaction to the desecration of the monument in Skopje, which was announced by the president of the WMC, Todor Petrov on the official Facebook profile, the article reads.

The text published the Facebook reaction of Todor Petrov, president of the WMC, which is accompanied by photos from the monument in front of which garbage containers can be seen.

However, if you go to Petrov’s Facebook profile, you will see that one day after Petrov reacted to the containers and the “desecration of the monument”, he then posted photos telling his Facebook followers that the garbage containers had been removed.

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But the photo with the containers and the one without the containers reveals that it is disinformation. If you take a good look at both photos, you will notice that the sidewalk in front of the monument is not the same. Namely, the sidewalk in the photo showing the containers is the one from before the Quay was renovated, i.e. it is white. In the photos where the containers are removed from in front of the monument, the sidewalk is red. It is impossible to change the sidewalk on the Quay in one day.

The City of Skopje, when it started with the reconstruction of the Quay (in April this year), announced that it will get a completely new look and that it will get new tiles in a shade of red.

Having all this in mind, we can conclude that the post we are reviewing misinforms the public through an old photo. Hence we assess the post as untrue.

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