An art performance video shared as the visuals of women being auctioned off at a slave market in Syria - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 22, 2023
A video is being shared on social media claiming it is the visuals of women being auctioned off at a slave market in Syria. The video shows an old man lifting the veils of chained burqa-clad women, who stood in a queue for sale at a market. Sharing the same video, a few posts claim it is the visuals of ISIS militants selling Yazidi women at the slave markets of Iraq and Syria. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video showing the visuals from a slave market run by ISIS in Syria.
Fact: The video shared in the post shows an art performance directed by a Kurdish artist named Aryan Rafiz. This street play by Aryan Rafiq portrays the fate of women who were kidnapped and sold as slaves by ISIS. The video does not show the real visuals of a slave auction conducted by ISIS. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, a video with similar visuals was found posted by a TikTok user. This user described it as an art performance “The Unheard Screams Of The Ezidkhan Angel” by an artist named Aryan Rafiq. When Darya Safai, a Member of the Belgian Parliament, shared the same video by describing it as the visuals of a sex slave market run by the ISIS, many news websites responded to the tweet and confirmed that the video shows an art performance depicting the slavery of women during the presence of ISIS in Iraq.
When we searched for further sources using this information, we found the Facebook page of Aryan Rafiq, in which we found a post about her art performance “The Unheard Screams Of The Ezidkhan Angel”.  Aryan Rafiq, a Kurdish artist, in her Facebook post, invited people to visit her art drama “The Unheard Screams Of The Ezidkhan Angel” at the Erbil-Parki Shar near Erbil Citadel on 08 March 2023. The Google Maps images of The Fountains of Shar Park can be seen here.
Speaking about the video to VRT News, Aryan Rafiq confirmed that the video shows an art performance demonstrated by her. Aryan Rafiq said that the video was a fragment of a longer performance about the fate of the women who were kidnapped and sold as slaves by the ISIS. Although the sex slavery of Yazidi women under ISIS is a well-reported phenomenon, the video shared in the post is only a street play by a Kurdish artist named Aryan Rafiq.
Earlier, when a video showing a similar street play performed in London was shared as the visuals of girls being auctioned off in Afghanistan, Factly published a fact-check article debunking that claim.
To sum it up,  an art performance video is shared as the visuals of Yazidi women being auctioned off at a slave market in Syria.