Among the hoaxes deemed false by the federal government are that the mayor of Palu, an earthquake-ravaged city, was killed within the crash, that victims’ families were supplied with free flights to Palu, and that the Bili Bili Dam in South Sulawesi had cracks and was vulnerable to bursting.
People have also posted photos of corpses that they are saying are from the earthquake, but actually show the consequences of other disasters, including the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.
Fake news is a significant issue in Indonesia. Last week the federal government announced it might be holding weekly briefings on fake news to assist the general public “sort through the news”.
I told them it was a hoax. If you allow your own home, people will come and steal, that is why they’re spreading this fake news
Another false report was that an 8.1-magnitude earthquake was expected to hit Central Sulawesi after Friday’s 7.5-magnitude earthquake. The national emergency agency BNBP confirmed that this report was false. Palu residents say false reports proceed to be spread.
“I talked to people in Palu this morning and they stayed. We heard that tomorrow there will be the biggest earthquake [Friday]” said Badarudin, a resident of Palu. “I told them it was a hoax. If you leave your house, people will come and steal, that’s why they are spreading this fake news.
Badarudin said the fake news was spread mainly by word of mouth because there was still no electricity in the city on Thursday and places to charge phones were limited.
Bambang Triyono, an employee of the humanitarian NGO Aksi Cepat Tanggap (ACT), which employs a team of volunteers distributing aid in Palu, says fake news often spreads during natural disasters.
“It also happened in Lombok. There was news that a few weeks after the disaster there would be a big tsunami,” he said of the deadly quakes in Lombok in late July and early August.
In the days since the earthquake, BNBP’s chief spokesman, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, has repeatedly used Twitter to debunk false reports, many of which related to Wednesday’s eruption of the Soputan volcano on the island of Sulawesi.
The volcano located almost 1,000 km from Palu, the city at the epicenter of Friday’s earthquake, actually erupted. However, false news reports used doctored photos and videos to suggest that the eruption was much more serious than it actually was.
One of the videos shared by Sutopo shows lava moving through farmland, while another shows a terrifying cloud of ash moving down a street, which Sutopo said was created by a volcanic eruption in South America.
Sutopo shared photos showing a huge cloud of ash billowing from the volcano, along with the message: “This is the eruption of Mount Soputan. This photo is a hoax. This fake photo was also spread during the 2014 eruption of Mount Sinabung.
Police said they had identified four people they said were the instigators of the scams and claimed to be from the Majene region in western Sulawesi.
“We already have their identity. We hope to arrest them soon,” chief police spokesman Inspector General Setyo Wasisto told Antara News, a state-backed Indonesian news agency.
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: Officials are cracking down on fake news as scammers spread much more panic
