An old video of a demonstration held in London is being shared as a video of girls being auctioned in Afghanistan - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
November 7, 2023
A video is being shared on social media claiming that it shows girls are being auctioned publicly in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Let’s fact-check this post through this article.
Claim: Visuals of girls being sold at public auctions in Afghanistan.
Fact: The video shared in the post shows footage of a performance in London in 2014. Kurdish protesters staged a demonstration to raise awareness about sex slave markets run by Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists in Iraq in 2014. This video is not related to the country of Afghanistan. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
A reverse image search of the screenshots of the video shared in the post revealed that a video containing the same scenes was shared by a YouTube user on 07 October 2017. The description of this video mentioned that it shows visuals of girls being auctioned in the city of London. Based on these details, we ran another search on the internet, which led us to an article published by the ‘BBC’ on 20 October 2014 sharing the video with these visuals. The article reports footage of Kurdish protesters in London demonstrating against the actions of Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists.
In 2014, ‘Newsweek’ published an article regarding this protest held in London. The article stated that the Kurdish protestors staged this demonstration to raise awareness about the sex slave markets run by the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists in Iraq. The article reports that Kurdish protesters staged a demonstration near Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament. The ‘Huffington Post’ news agency published an article on 16 October 2014 giving full details about this show.
The ‘Snopes’ published a fact-check article in 2016 regarding this protest that took place in the city of London. Based on these details, it can be concluded that the visuals from the video are visuals from an old demonstration in London.
To sum up, an old video of an anti-ISIS protest in London is being shared as a video showing girls being auctioned in Afghanistan.