Protesters in Italy claim that authorities faked a supposedly live video to depict an empty square in Trieste’s city center while it was thronged with anti-vaccine passport activists.
Crowds gathered in Trieste’s Piazza Unita d’Italia on Monday evening to protest the government’s imposition of a ‘green pass.’ All staff must be vaccinated or show a negative Covid-19 test from the previous 48 hours, according to the government.
Videos from the square showed hundreds of people staging a sit-in in the northern Italian city, however, as highlighted by one of the protesters in a widely shared video, the city’s webcam suggested the piazza was almost empty.
The footage starts with the camera focusing in on a protester’s phone in which SkylineWebcams.com’s live stream for Trieste’s Piazza Unita d’Italia is shown. The empty square, as seen on the live webcam, appears to be in stark contrast to the reality, as the demonstrator pans their camera to show hundreds of people present in the Piazza Unita d’Italia.
Protesters and others online have accused the Italian authorities of tampering with the webcam to ensure news of the unrest did not travel far.
Others highlighted further discrepancies between the live webcam and the scenes in the square. Trieste authorities have not commented on whether the feed was tampered with or whether some glitch occurred.
Forsided, 20.10.2021