2014 video of the street play in UK viral as women being auctioned off in Afghanistan

A video allegedly showing women being auctioned off on the street is going viral after news of the seizure of the Afghan capital by the Taliban. 

It claims to show the current harrowing situation in Afghanistan. 

Fact Crescendo received many fact-check requests about this video on our WhatsApp FactLine (9049053770).

The truth is that this 2014 video is not from Afghanistan and has nothing to do with the latest developments in the country.

WHAT’S THE CLAIM?

A two-minute video apparently shows chained and burqa-clad women being auctioned on the streets. A man speaking through a megaphone seems to be encouraging passers-by to place a bid on women. Some people even put a price and women are sold to them. 

Twitter users shared this video with a caption that read: Time changes faster than we expect. Those who boasted of selling Hindu women for 2-2 dinars are selling and buying their own women today on the streets.

FACT CHECK

After closely watching the video, we noticed “WINDSORIAN” written on a bus passing behind. It is a London mini-coach that runs in the city. You can see the bus’s photo here.

Also, people can clearly be heard chanting “ISIS Terrorist” at the end of the video. 

This led us to doubt the veracity of the viral claim about this video. Taking clues from them, we looked for similar videos using different keywords.

We came across many Indian news channels that have used this same viral video in their news broadcast in 2014. According to India TV, the video depicts a street play staged on the streets of London. 

Ari Murad, a Kurdish documentary filmmaker, had also posted the same video but longer and in high-quality on Facebook. 

In a video titled “ISIS Sex Slave Market in London (Protest)”, the announcer with megaphone says, “This is just an example of what is going on in Syria, in Iraq, where ISIS had gained power. They are doing these sex slave markets. We are against ISIS.”

The performers can be seen changing the costumes in the background. 

Newsweek reported that Kurdish protesters took to the streets of London to draw attention to the slave-trade tactics of the Islamic State (ISIS) in a mock auction of captured women from territories in Iraq and Syria. 

A group of Kurdish diaspora called ‘Compassion 4 Kurdistan’ had organized this protest and street play highlighting the slave trade in order to raise awareness of ISIS’s atrocities in Iraq and Syria, reported the BBC about the video.

The demonstrations took place on 14 October 2014 in front of the Houses of Parliament, Leicester Square, and Downing Street.

According to Christian Monitor, the name of the man with a megaphone was Karam Krupa. He told that the demonstrators wanted to “shock people into awareness” by bringing onto the streets of London what happens in the Islamic State daily.

CONCLUSION

Hence, the viral video showing women being auctioned off is neither real slave trade nor is from Afghanistan. The video actually shows a street play organized by Kurdish supporters in London in 2014 to raise awareness about the plight of women under ISIS rule.