After the Sri Lankan Parliament passed a Bill on laws governing the Chinese-backed Colombo Port City, a picture of a passport with the text ‘Colombo Port City, Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic Of China’ is doing rounds on social media.

Social media users claim that the picture shows a China-issued passport for Sri Lanka’s Colombo Port City.

The Facebook caption read, “අලුත්ම පාස්පෝට් එක”
(Translation: The latest passport)

Other similar posts were found here, here, and here.

FACT CHECK

NewsMobile fact-checked the above post and found out that the claim is fake.

Firstly, we used Google lens to translate the text written on the top of the passport in the picture. We found that the text reads, “People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region”.

On putting the picture through Google Reverse Image Search, we found a similar picture on a stock images website, VectorStock. The picture shows the passport of Hong Kong, which is similar.

On comparing the Fake vs Real, we can clearly see that ‘Hong Kong’ has been replaced by ‘Colombo Port City’ using digital manipulation tools.

Further, we found a Twitter post by the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka dated May 23, 2021, claiming that the picture in circulation is fake.

We appreciate the efforts of @factcrescendosl
on fact-checking on 2 altered graphs.

May #Truth prevails always!

Real & Fake @ChinaEmbSL Tweets:https://t.co/6xF9GOUcVF

Real & Fake 🇭🇰Passports:https://t.co/Z1RWYCohfj pic.twitter.com/atdizED9SG

— Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka (@ChinaEmbSL) May 23, 2021

 Hence, with the help of the above information, it is clear that the viral post in question is morphed.

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