An old video of huge crowds parading through a street has resurfaced in social media posts falsely claiming to show protesters in Bangladesh demonstrating against employment quotas. The footage was in fact filmed in Samawah, Iraq, and has been circulating online since at least July 2023 in TikTok posts about a procession marking the Islamic festival of Ashura.
“Protest against quotas in Bangladesh,” read the Bengali caption of one Youtube video who shared the images on July 18.
The video features a text in Bengali that also shows protests against labor quotas, which have led to widespread unrest in the South Asian country.
At least 191 people, including several police officers, were killed in the violence, according to a July 25 AFP report of casualties reported by police and hospitals.
What started on July 1st as student protests against politicized admission quotas for coveted government positions led to some of the worst unrest during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.
The video also spread on Facebook here And here.
Iraq procession
A reverse image search found a longer version from the video posted to TikTok on July 29, 2023 (archived link).
According to the Arabic-language report, the images show a procession in Samawah in southern Iraq.
Below is a screenshot of the mistakenly shared video (left) and the TikTok video (right):
The video was also shared on Facebook And Instagram in July 2023, a year before the protests in Bangladesh broke out (archived links) here And here).
A security official in Samawah confirmed that the video was shot in the city and shows a procession heading towards the main Corniche Street.
AFP confirmed the location of the video by searching Google Maps in Arabic for a telecommunications company called Zan Cell, which is located in the red building on the corner of the street.
Google Maps also shows a tall blue building and palm trees opposite Zan Cell.
Although the street name is now visible on Google Maps, the road heads towards Corniche Street.
The video circulated on various media TikTok Posts which said it depicted the Procession of Sorrows, a ritual during the Ashura festival, commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in a seventh-century battle (archived link).
The annual event attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who traditionally walk to the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala.
In the run-up to Ashura, mourning rituals are also held in Shiite cities and neighborhoods across the country.
