An old video of huge crowds parading down a street resurfaced in social media posts that falsely claimed it shows protesters in Bangladesh demonstrating over employment quotas. The footage was in fact filmed in Samawah in Iraq and has circulated online since at least July 2023 in TikTok posts about a procession to mark the Islamic festival of Ashura.
“Bangladesh quota protest,” read the Bengali-language caption of a YouTube video that shared the footage on July 18.
Bengali-language text overlay on the video also claims it shows protests over employment quotas that have sparked widespread unrest in the South Asian country.
At least 191 people have been killed in the violence, including several police officers, according to an AFP count on July 25 of victims reported by police and hospitals.
What began on July 1 as student protests against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs snowballed into some of the worst unrest of 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 of the video posted on TikTok on July 29, 2023 (archived link).
According to the Arabic-language post, the footage shows a procession in Samawah in southern Iraq.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely 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 erupted in Bangladesh (archived links here and here).
A security official in Samawah confirmed the video was filmed in the city, adding that it showed a procession towards the main thoroughfare Corniche Street.
AFP confirmed the location of the video by searching on Google Maps in Arabic for a telecommunications firm called Zan Cell, which occupies the red building seen on the street corner.
A tall blue building and palm trees opposite Zan Cell are also visible on Google Maps.
While the name of the street does now show on Google Maps, the road leads towards Corniche Street.
The video circulated in various TikTok posts which said it showed the Procession of Sorrows, a ritual during the Ashura festival, which commemorates the martyrdom of the Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, in a seventh century battle (archived link).
The annual event draws 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 neighbourhoods across the country.
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