BBC Africa Eye investigation has exposed how a Chinese syndicate exploits vulnerable children in Africa to produce racist videos.
The investigation revealed the ways in which Chinese content creators sold their videos of children from Malawi who were compelled to chant racist slurs about African-Americans Chinese.
On one video shot in February of 2020, the group made up of African children were instructed through a voice on-camera to chant a few phrases in Chinese.
The children repeat the words with smiles and excitementThey don’t realize what they’re told to do”said “I am a black monster and my IQ is low.”
BBC Eye reporter Runako Celina and Malawian investigative journalist Henry Mhango, tracked the footprints of both on-the-ground and digital of an Chinese filmmaker who they believed was producing the “low-IQ” video.
The group was assisted by an Chinese journalist who was able to film undercover as the man spoke out an array of racist comments regarding Malawians and blacks generally.
After analyzing as well as.
The mother of the child who was feat cross-referencing hundreds videos that are similar to each other against satellite images taken from Google Earth, the BBC Eye team found the location the location where the “Low IQ” video was shot at a village near the outskirts Lilongwe which is the capital city of Malawi.
The videos that were identified during the investigation were sold via Chinese social media platforms like Weibo and Huoshan in addition to other Chinese video-sharing applications.
The prices for these videos vary between US$10 to US$70.
A new video footage recorded by the BBC confirms that the phrases children speak aren’t racist in themselves but they are usually well wishes or ads for Chinese companies.
There aren’t official numbers regarding the exact number of sellers or the amount of revenue the industry earns through the sale of these films.
The reporters also visited several families who were who are involved in the film’s production and examined how cultural misperceptions rural poverty, oppression of the race underlie the industry of making videos ured in the “low IQ video, told the BBC she believed that this Chinese video producer is “profiting from the poor.”
The investigation has shattered the syndicate of video makers — however, in many villages across all continents, African children are still being exploited for money.
