Based on a tip from Bellingcat’s Open Source Leads Twitter account, I decided to try my hand at verifying a report of a mass burial of Ambazonian fighters in Cameroon. The Open Source Leads tweet links to a video of bodies being dumped into an open pit in a field surrounded by buildings. After looking into this event a little bit more, I found that, despite the initially damning evidence, it’s unlikely that the video depicted a mass burial of Ambazonian separatists. However, my conclusion is not rock solid and I’m open to evidence to the contrary. Either way, how can we verify if this video does or does not show a mass burial? To do that, we need to do two things: geolocate the event and then find information that contextualizes the video.
Mass Graves in Cameroon
Mass Graves in Cameroon
Mass Graves in Cameroon
Based on a tip from Bellingcat’s Open Source Leads Twitter account, I decided to try my hand at verifying a report of a mass burial of Ambazonian fighters in Cameroon. The Open Source Leads tweet links to a video of bodies being dumped into an open pit in a field surrounded by buildings. After looking into this event a little bit more, I found that, despite the initially damning evidence, it’s unlikely that the video depicted a mass burial of Ambazonian separatists. However, my conclusion is not rock solid and I’m open to evidence to the contrary. Either way, how can we verify if this video does or does not show a mass burial? To do that, we need to do two things: geolocate the event and then find information that contextualizes the video.