Photos of Hong Kong artists holding up blank sheets of paper have been digitally altered

 

Screenshot of the Facebook post. 

 

News Brief

On Nov. 24, 2022, a major fire broke out in China’s regional capital Urumqi. According to the official report, the incident led to ten deaths. Some people believed that COVID-19 restrictions hindered the rescue and aggravated the casualties. Waves of protests were triggered across the country, with people holding up blank sheets of paper, a tactic to protest while avoiding censorship. Some media organizations have used the terms “anti-zero COVID protests,” “Blank Paper Protest,” and “Blank Paper Revolution” to refer to the protests in China.

A photo collage shared Nov. 29, 2022, on Facebook, claims to show ten Hong Kong stars, including Eason Chan and Andy Lau, holding up blank sheets of paper in solidarity with the protests against China’s “zero COVID” policy. Someone commented on the post, “Many artists support the Blank Paper Revolution.”

As of the publication of this report, the Facebook post had been shared 145 times, and had received 63 comments as well as 701 likes and reaction.

The collage contains a total of ten images. Each image is marked with a letter, from A to J, as shown below, for easy reference.

Each image in the collage is marked with a letter, from A to J, for easy reference.

 

Fact-checking

A reverse image search found a video titled “True Heroes MV – Salute to Our Firefighters (TVB),” which was released June 29, 2016, on TVB’s official YouTube channel. The one-minute-and-52-second mark of the video is almost identical to image A, except for the tag in Chinese “#向前線消防員致敬 (#Salute to frontline firefighters)”  written on the blank paper shown in the video. Therefore, the image has been circulating online since at least 2016 and has nothing to do with the recent “anti-zero COVID” protests in China. Image A has been digitally edited to remove the text written on the blank paper. A further search has confirmed that the artist in image A is Oscar Leung.

According to a news article published by HK01, a fire broke out in June 2016 in a mini storage facility in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Bay, killing two firefighters. The entertainment industry of Hong Kong launched a campaign to honor the sacrifice of the firefighters who had lost their lives in the line of duty. Many artists wrote the tag in Chinese that translates as “#Salute to frontline firefighters” on the paper. They adapted the lyrics of the Cantonese song “True Heroes” in honor of local firefighters.

Comparison between the original image (left) and the edited version (right) of Oscar Leung.

Artist Raymond Cho posted a photo on Instagram on June 26, 2016. In the photo, he looked at the camera and held up a piece of paper with the tag “#Salute to frontline firefighters.” It can be clearly seen that image B has been digitally edited. 

Comparison between the original image (left) and the edited version (right) of Raymond Cho.

The original version of images C, D, E, F, G, and H can be found in the “True Heroes” video released by TVB as well as in the article published by HK01. Further searches have found that the artists in the images are Eason Chan, Eric Tsang, Jordan Chan, Julian Cheung, Myolie Wu and Andy Lau. All of them were holding up a piece of paper with the words “Salute to frontline firefighters” written on it.

Comparison between the original images captured from the “True Heroes” video (left) and the edited version (right, images C to H).

Artist Koni Lui shared a photo on Facebook of herself holding up a piece of paper with the words “Salute to frontline firefighters” on June 26, 2016. Again, except for the text written on the paper, the photo is almost the same as image I. Therefore, image I has also been digitally altered. 

Comparison between the original image (left) and the edited version (right) of Koni Lui.

In a video report released by HK01 in 2016 and a news article published by Oriental Sunday, there was a photo of artist Miriam Yeung holding up a paper with the same tag. Other than the words written on the paper, the photo is almost identical to image J.

Comparison between the original image (left) and the edited version (right) of Miriam Yeung.

HKBU Fact Check has also found that this group of photos was edited and circulating online repeatedly after several controversial incidents, including the Xinjiang cotton controversy. Both Taiwan FactCheck Center and the local fact-checking organization Annie Lab have debunked similar claims.

To sum up, the photos which appear to show Hong Kong artists holding up blank sheets of paper have been digitally edited. The original photos were taken in 2016 after a fire in a mini storage facility in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Bay, where two firefighters were killed. It was a campaign launched by the entertainment industry to honor the firefighters who had sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. In the original images, there was a Chinese-language tag that translates as “Salute to frontline firefighters” written on every piece of paper held by the artists.